Day 1,454

It's coming to that time of year again when summer's heat still lingers among the hanging moss but autumn's bitter air is beginning to settle in. That's when the Egesgríma are at their calmest and the forests suddenly become everyone's favourite place to travel through as if they've already forgotten the red spring and pale summer.

You'd think that the bone ladders they hang from the trees would be enough of a reminder that they haven't suddenly become tame or civil, they're just getting tired and sluggish from all the meat they've consumed. Still, people will gladly forget tragedies if it means they can live a little dangerously.

Humans are, at their core, idiotic thrill-seekers. It's one of our most exploitable weaknesses and the main reason why our Egesgríma are particularly well-fed compared to the less inhabited regions. We blast the names of their victims through the papers, through our social media and put the "trap" in "tourist trap" by making our county mysterious, dangerous and the perfect place to be adventurous...

Day 1,453

Of all the bodies that had merged into one gelatinous tidal wave of flesh, of all the people trapped there in varying states of partial to complete suffocation, of all the minds that had come together to form this...thing,somehow the only voices that could be heard were your parents.

No matter how fast you ran, how high up you climbed or how quietly you snuck away, they'd always find you. Waking up to your mother's humming coming a thousand mouths amidst a rippling mass of skin was practically routine at this point. Your father made less of a vocal appearance but his face was the only recognisable one you saw and was always at the front of the flesh.

In some ways it was comforting to know they were still alive and that they just wanted to go back to being the family you were before the bombs were dropped and the heat-blast had fused the panicked crowds into the ever-shifting, ever-following parent blob who liked to curl up by your feet and gently remind you to triple check the air filters.

Day 1,452

There's no such thing as just one stray, they always bring in something else whether it be other strays or parasites or worse. It's the ones you don't see come in that are the hardest to get rid of, especially when they get up in arms and try to convince you that they invited you in many years ago and that you are the stray.

It's worse still when there are dozens of them, their little heads bobbing and swaying on unnervingly thin necks while their little limbs twitch and spasm from the strain of being upright for so long. That's when pity comes into it and you talk yourself into letting them stay inside where they'll be safe from all the greater terrors that would swallow them whole in the night.

One way or another, you end up removing them all eventually or they remove each other until one bloated and bloodstained little fella is all that's left. They're easier to get rid of in that you are now more evenly matched, one-vs-one is still fairer than countless-dozens-vs-one, no matter the size.

Unfortunately by that point they've developed quite the taste for violence and are more than willing to take you on when you least expect it. Believe me, I've had my fair share of rude awakenings when one the size of a toddler dropped onto me from the ceiling while I slept. Took a good chunk out of my forearm too before I managed to snap its neck.

The idea of leaving them to fend for themselves might seem cruel now, when they're so fragile-looking, all huddled up under the streetlights and by people's feet but you can't let them into your homes. They're humanoid vermin that make rabid badgers seem like tepid dinner guests.

Day 1,451

All my life I've been reminded that my parents are dead but nobody ever said how. There's no gravestone to visit, no obituary to read and nobody willing to say anything other than they're gone and I'm still here as if that somehow makes it alright.

I always liked to think they died in their sleep, all peaceful and serene in some quiet hotel out near the lakes they loved to hike around. They took me with them when I was a baby. I've seen the photos of me tucked away in their rucksack/baby-holder smiling just as hard as them and surrounded by the breathtaking landscape of the lake district.

All the stories of their week long hikes are what got me into camping in the first place. From there it was a downhill tumble into the adrenaline scene and taking dare after dare until I found myself cave-diving near my parent's favourite lake.

They say everything's connected out here, all the streams feed the lakes feed the rivers feed into the sea. They say that if you drop a penny down one stream you'll find it on the beach centuries later. They say one of the caves is full of abandoned cars.

I didn't think the latter was true until a few friend's dragged me along and proved otherwise. All I thought we'd find were a few rusty shells, maybe the odd tyre or steering wheel and we found so much more than that.

I found so much more than that.

I found my parents.

They weren't where I thought they'd be and I must have used most of my air tank while I struggled to wrap my head around what I was seeing and what they must have done to get there among the mountain of broken and unwanted cars, so far down that their bones were the same orange-tinged red as the rusted cars all around them.

I only recognised them for their clothing. The exact same clothing as their last photo of us as a family standing by the lake a few miles from where they are now. It was only when I calmed myself down a bit that I noticed the baby-seat half dislodged through the rear window, the damage that had been done to the rear door  and how the rest of the car was perfectly intact.

Day 1,450

It felt like she was sitting in a pan of boiling water and the weird gurgling noises the guy in front made every time the bus jolted about, were only adding to the general aura of stewing-in-your-own-sweat that buses are so well known for.

She wasn't the only one noticing the sounds, after a brief glance about she saw everyone giving him the look of 'something's really wrong with you but I don't know if it's personal or medical so I'm just going to stay Very Much Over Here Thank You'.

An elderly woman sitting opposite beckoned her over with a strained kindly smile and she eagerly took up that offer. Anything to move her further away from the man who, at this point, sounded like he was starting to vomit on himself.

As fate would have it, the gates opened up right behind her and with a painful sounding heave he emptied everything out in front of him. Literally everything. Vomit in a continuous stream that lead to a dark red stream that led to heave after heave until his throat bulged and his stomach began to hang from his lips like a deflated balloon.

The rest of the passengers wouldn't know it was contagious until they felt the first wave of nausea hit them alongside the overwhelming urge to seek out highly populated places. By the time they had enough energy to put the thought of leaving into action, they would already be retching into their laps.

Day 1,449

I knew the main base was suspended somewhere above us and judging by how loud the metallic groaning was, we weren't far enough to be safe. The last quake sent us flying from the walkways and several hundred metres down to the ocean floor, I dread to think what damage it's done to the support beams.

It was just me and Royce at that point. We didn't know who, or even if anyone, survived the initial shockwaves but by the end of the fifth round we knew for sure we were the last. It felt like every time we got close to another crew member they were swept away or crushed or they were already dead.

Honestly it felt like the sea itself was hunting us down, making us suffer and reveling in every last second of our panicked breathing, knowing that each time we cried out for a friend we were wasting precious oxygen. We both lost track of how many tanks we looted from their remains.

Don't tell Royce this but not everyone was dead when we pulled their tanks, at least they weren't when I found them. I still have the bruises on my arm from where Otis grabbed me in his final moments and I sure as hell won't forget the look of betrayal on his face.

It wasn't like he was going to survive anyway - he was missing a good portion of his arm and both his legs were already crab food.What was I supposed to do? Just leave him to be eaten alive while I, a person with all my limbs and far less oxygen, drowned right next to him?

He was the first one I did that to and he certainly wasn't the last. There was Craymer half crushed by a fallen support beam, Marlene who was unconscious, Dray who was too shocked to fight back and just accepted death. I'll miss them all but their deaths helped me and Royce survive.

Two's better than nothing, right? That's what we kept telling ourselves while we climbed up out of the dark water to the flickering lights of the main base. Have you ever been in water that dark? Nothing quite prepares you to be surrounded by an infinite nothingness full of things much larger and much hungrier than you all darting about your head or brushing past your legs.

By the time we got to the base itself, it was flooded out. At least we saved time not having to bother de-pressurising and re-pressurising between sectors. Unfortunately if something's easy for a human in an abyssal diving suit to walk through, there's a lot worse that can swim through.

We got to Burton just as he was being crushed by the biggest angler fish we'd ever seen. Biologists got it all wrong, there is no maximum size.the bastards just keep growing and going deeper. This one had to be about eight feet tall, spines and all, and bigger ones swam past us several times while we rushed to the SS Rising Lark.

Day 1,448

There's been someone knocking from underneath the church floor again and every time we open it we all get a glimpse of the same thing. Countless bodies, some decaying while others breathe their last and succumb like all the rest in their unconsecrated burial pit.

It's over as soon as you blink, then all we see is the cheery blue-tinted waters of the baptismal pool.

The vicar's tried to cleanse the place time and time again and it does us no good. In England you can turn over a log and find an old plague pit. It's what makes all the roadworks take years longer than it should. Any time they stumble across a few hundred bones all meshed together they have to call in the historians, the police and the occasional priest.

Doesn't help but they try their best.

Seems that when a body's been buried you can't just bless their restless soul away, once they're restless they stay restless and the best you can hope for is that enough of them get bored and drag the others with them to wherever they choose to go.

Until they they'll bang on the floor and beg for a doctor that can't cure them.

Day 1,447

My imaginary friends never lived beneath my bed or in my closet. They never followed me around and got me into trouble, in fact they helped me avoid it. Every night their hands would curl around my headboard and they'd lift themselves through from their world into this one.

I never saw all of them, not that they weren't fully in this world, its just that looking directly at them gave me such a headache. They were made from inorganic angles, limbs that vanished and reformed in the blink of an eye and a thousand hushed voices all rolled into a few smallish beings who, for some reason, used their time in our world to tell a little girl how to stay safe.

With their knowledge I avoided car accidents, food poisoning, bad relationships - you name it and they've probably told me how to dodge it. All they asked for in return was that I willingly allow someone else to take my place each and every time.

Day 1,446

They called it the storm of the century and begged us all to stay inside from 3pm onwards to avoid the worst of it. Most people listened and made their excuses to stay later at work or pretend to be too sick to go anywhere. We'd all seen the weather report, seen the swirling vortex of red slowly make its way towards us.

We hadn't seen what it left in its wake. We hadn't heard from the survivors - we still don't know if there are survivors from the rest of the country. All we know for sure is that it wasn't a storm, at least not the weather kind.

Storms don't leave half chewed-up bodies on rooftops or tear cars in half or scream and beg for us to open our doors. The latter can't have been someone trying to get out of the storm, the human screaming came and went pretty quickly.

The council refuses to call it anything other than a storm.

Day 1,445

The mountains beneath the lake look like pebbles from the safety of your boat. Fish slip and swarm around them and for just a few moments you can pretend they are just little minnows, small and harmless little minnows and not at all great behemoths who have a strong record of capsizing water-bound vessels whenever whimsy strikes them.

It's not like the land is all that much safer either, not with the way they launch themselves ashore, crushing and snapping at anything nearby before the rest of their pack drag them back into the lake's depths by their leathery tails.

I almost wish we had mermaids instead - they may be carnivorous but they at least have the decency to give you fair warning and only go for the idiots who are too distracted by their humanoid lure to notice the gaping maw beneath it.

Not like the lake fish, they don't follow their stomachs or some kind of predatory instinct. They follow whatever lives in the drowned villages around the mountains, the ones that were left to rot when the seven tributary rivers burst their banks to form what we now know as the River Dagborough.

Day 1,444

It seemed to take you longer and longer each night to drive by the forest, as if it was spreading itself out and stretching towards the town. Of course this couldn't be true or it would be in the news and people would be panicking and trying to cut the forest away from them.

Right?

These were just the late night inner ramblings of a tired and overworked individual who wanted nothing more than cheap chocolate and cheaper soap operas to unwind with. These were not the thoughts of someone who paid close attention to their surroundings.

In fact, after months of the occasional "I swear the forest wasn't so close to town" and "Didn't the forest start before the bridge, not after it?" you started thinking about it. Actually considering that somehow, for some reason, someone was moving the trees.

It was only when the council put traffic lights by the roundabout into town that you caught a glimpse of something bending the trees. Thinking you'd caught the prankster behind this red-handed you jumped out of your car and yelled "Oi, what d'you think you're doing mate?" only to be met with silence.

Not the awkward silence of  'I've just been told off', but a deafening silence.

And then with slow, deliberate creaking one of the trees bent down to face you.

It held a branch up just below its molten-amber eyes and glared at you until you retreated, quiet and afraid.

The forest has moved right into town since that night and your former view of a quiet street is not a sea of green leaves and amber eyes. The trees still move about the town but they don't seem to want to leave, in fact more are joining them every day.

Day 1,443

At first, they didn't want you to know about the oddities and peculiarities at Hotel Larchgrove. You were just temporarily filling in for their usual on-site handyman while she recovered from a work related accident that they were never able to describe to you.

Back then you just thought they were either genuinely clueless or they didn't want to frighten you off with anything potentially lawsuit-worthy. For weeks you and the rest of the staff danced around the elephant in the room all while they kept giving you oddly specific instructions each and every day.

Some were related to the guests (Mr. Fitzibbit has a phobia of necks so please wear this scarf), some were related to the grounds (the tides are a little unpredictable so all shifts are based around these two tidal times,all the others are a lie) and some were just plain... odd...(if you smell lilacs and oranges then head to the staff room and have a big cup of coffee - don't ask why).

They only offered you the job full time after their official handyman died of unexpected complications. You'd later learn that this meant Mr Fitzibbit had caught sight of her neck one day and left her barely breathing, later going back to finish his meal.

He wasn't the only person-who-wasn't-technically-a-human within the hotel. In fact most of the long-term residents were a something or other, as was the assistant manager, most of the kitchen staff, the gardener and the postman. They were all things you either never heard of, like Jerry (who said he was a Blódgéotend which translated to something distinctly... leech-like... something older than vampires like Mr Fitzibbit) or the usual typical Hollywood monster.

It took a while but he got used to the... quirks of the long-term residents at Hotel Larchgrove. They weren't any less deadly for it and only marginally less terrifying but understanding and acceptance can only get you so far when your duties include corpse disposal and picking out bones stuck between teeth as long as your legs.

At least it wasn't retail.

Day 1,442

When you think "the start of the apocalypse", you don't think of the local chip shop. You think hospitals, graveyards, untrustworthy shipping crates riddles with bullet holes and scratches. You think top secret medical experiments stolen by the military and let loose on an unsuspecting town.

You don't think of Aggie in her grease stained apron and wonky eye,scowling at you over the counter when you say for the fifth time that you don't want vinegar on your chips - just salt please. You don't think of looking down and seeing blood pouring from her sleeves as her body begins to rot away right before your eyes.

She's always claimed to be built for comfort, not speed but she vaults the counter better than any of the lanky athletes you'd seen on the news. She moves fast as she reaches out for you but you move just that little bit faster and her claw-like hand grabs someone else instead while you leg it.

Somebody screams behind you, probably Dennis. He'd been hanging about outside finishing the last of his ciggie and paying attention to exactly nothing else. If ever there was an easy target - it was him and judging by the screams I'd say, yeah it was him.

Aggie was only the beginning of it all. The poor bastards she'd clawed and bitten at got right back up and chased after her, snowballing their way into the Chavpocalypse that would rock the entire country harder than a drunk teen in a mosh pit.

All this and nobody would think to blame the ciggies that everyone on the estate and their mum seemed to smoke. No, they'd blame everything else they could possibly think of from video games to fast food to climate change and the weirder things in between.

As the upper classes sit about and debate causations, costs and the new zombie-based charities they want to set up, we all keep smoking away. We've got it all figured out while they bicker and squabble over funding that we'd likely never see a penny of.

For the first time in our lives, we'll be eating rich food.

Day 1,441

When they finally shut down the oil refinery, the lake got its sheen back. That metallic glaze that, when combined with the deathly stillness of the water, turned it into a near unfathomable mirror. In the void-like silence that followed the refinery's closure, the mirror found itself being used and not from our side.

It's such a selfish thing to think of our side being the only thing that the mirror lake can reflect when our reality is the smallest fractal dot on the spectral scale of existence. We are so pitifully insignificant that it's quite miraculous that we managed to gain the attention of something so utterly Other.

Radio waves, they called it at first, those strange faint lines in the air that seemed to hover over the unmoving water. Something to do with atmospheric pressure and ricocheting signals moving between the old refinery's multitude of towers and the pure reflective properties of the lake all added together to allow us to see sound in its most basic form.

We didn't realise that those were parasites, not sound waves, until it was too late. By then the music was inside our heads and we shared it to the world. The Internet moves so fast and forgets so quickly that one video can be shared thousands upon thousands of times before spontaneously going viral overnight.

All it takes is one click.

Day 1,440

There are times when reality forgets to exist, places where it relaxes and countless occurrences of it letting things inside that shouldn't technically be able to exist... not that anyone ever told them that and I doubt they'd listen either way.

One well documented case is that of reality opening a door into our dimension in the most unlikely of places - the children's ward of a small town hospital. Now the door wasn't an actual door and it wasn't on a wall but it still let something in.

Or rather, someone.

Ever since, she's evaded the hands of everyone who's tried to catch her and free her. Strangely enough, she's never made an attempt to leave the ward or hospital in the fifty years she's been there. We know she's still around, she likes to resurface every now and then to ask for her parents and spook the patients.

I suppose when you see the body of an eight year old child with the face of a creature that is so very much larger than her trying to cram itself into the space her face occupies and that alone, you'd be more than just a little worried.

Not that we could ever do anything though.

Still, we do wonder what she'll do when her parents aren't able to visit her any more or even when they die. They seem to be the only people alive that can calm her to an extent and without them we may seemore faces like hers appearing as she tried to bring her family back from the other side.

Day 1,439

There's no-one you should be closer friends with than a cleaner. They've seen worse than you can possibly show them, heard worse than you can possibly say and wiped away more blood than you've ever seen in your life.

All it takes is a smile here, a kind word there and suddenly all the bodies are gone, the rooms are spotless and faintly lemon-scented and nothing can tie either of you back to the string of missing people. Truly there isn't a finer match made in heaven than a murderer and a cleaner.

If the pigs in neighbouring farms start gaining a little extra weight and the sale of bleach rises equally, well who'd even put two and two together? Nobody's complaining at a little more bacon or a bit more cash running through their businesses.

Da 1,438

When she turned around she expected to see her friends, the same assholes who invited her out to the rail yard promising a share of whatever booze their cousins had managed to smuggle them. Instead she saw nothing, just powdery white snow falling and the barren bleakness of an industrial relic clinging onto the very edges of modernism.

She'd always been one for the bigger picture, a general thinker as her geography teacher had put it, and the general picture she was getting now was that she'd been stood up. They probably hadn't left their homes since school ended, sitting there in their smug warmth while the cold made her fingers grow number than any alcohol ever could.

At some point she knew she should turn back but another part of her wanted to hide that she'd ever gone out there, that she'd ever been dumb enough to fall for their tricks. As she stood there fuming and plotting, a familiar alarm went off.

She remembered it from her friend's tacky new watch, the purple one she got from Paris last year and hadn't stopped showing off ever since. It sounded reasonably close. Maybe they'd just been hiding and not left her to freeze to death?

Seeing a similar purple watch lying half buried in the snow by a graffiti-smothered carriage, she assumed that they'd been waiting inside the entire time. In her mind she could see them sniggering to each other and swigging away at their promised booze and waiting for her to notice them.

She was always one for the bigger picture, never the small details. Not once did she see the footprints scattered all around her as if several people had fled from something that only moved along the rails. Not once did she think to take the watch and see that it was still on her friend's mutilated wrist.

Not once did she look up and see the broken remains of several people she once knew, tangled in the lines.

Day 1,437

You woke up in a tent... not the one you fell asleep in but one that had a distinctly military vibe to it. Identical cots lined the walls, the trunks in front of them all opened and empty as if everyone had to leave in a hurry. It didn't explain how you got there from that coastal forest and it didn't explain why you were now alone.

All you had were the clothes on your back and your boots which had been neatly placed beside the cot. Moving felt harder for some reason. The air felt heavy and harder to breath, slipping down your throat with a syrupy texture which felt natural to you, albeit more effort than you remembered.

As you lifted the tent flap and looked outside, you prayed you were in a dream.

None of this could be real.

Surely?

The area around you was some kind of military complex, utterly deserted and surrounded by tall, crooked fencing. Each post ended in cruel-looking spears, a few of which had some kind of creature impaled but nothing you could immediately identify and then you looked up.

The sky was a deep turquoise and instead of birds flying, you saw whales, large schools of fish and more underwater life than you could even name in your state of shock. Nothing seemed to be swimming down to you at least.

Figuring there may be someone in at least one of these tents that might be able to tell you where you were or at least what was going on but every tent you peered into looked exactly like the one you woke up in down to one single bed in each looking as though somebody had woken up there and left soon after. A few of the beds were still warm you knew - you hoped - you weren't alone.

About halfway through the complex you found a path, an actual stone path that led you to an open gate with a view of several other plateaus like the one you were on. They looked like they'd been underwater for far longer than the level you were on, with thick patched of kelp and coral coating most of the floorspace, aside from the path which remained strangely untouched as it snaked its way through the otherwise barely lit sectors.

As soon as your feet touched the path, the stone beneath you glowed an organic green, as if it had been expecting you, needing you to function. Without so much as a glance behind, you began walking towards the gate, towards the second plateau and further away from the exit to the shore, hidden behind one of the few tents you didn't bother to check.

Day 1,436

Nobody noticed her slip into the party with bloodied clothes and a black eye, they never noticed her at school so why would they start now? She wove between tipsy teenagers and young adults alike, beelining for the kitchen to grab the strongest drink she could find.

This wasn't her first stop of the night but it would be her last. She'd been planning this for as long as they'd been planning the party which was about three months or so. Everything was scheduled down the the exact minute, down to the exact second and it had all finally come to this - her final few steps.

Before the party she'd been to visit a few teachers who'd seemingly lived to ignore her suffering or make it worse. Then she went to the almost vacant homes of the kids who bullied her, a couple of them had younger siblings... had... and the rest either had pets or elderly relatives.

She wondered how they'd react to seeing someone they love, someone vulnerable, suffer like she had. Maybe they'd pass out at the party and come home too late, which would be a shame. They wouldn't get the full extent of her revenge like they would if they got to hold their loved ones while they slowly faded.

And that brings it all back to the final few steps. The ones that would give her a solid alibi to all the world but those who'd hurt her. All she had to do was wash away the blood from her clothes with a bit of bathroom bleach, sit by the pool and drink until she fell it.

She figured the alcohol would soften and blur the pain of drowning. She didn't expect a drunken student to fall into her and accidentally knock her in with her lungs full of enough air to make the it feel like she'd been sinking for years.

She certainly didn't expect their water cleaning pump to get caught on her dress and suck her in, clogging itself and trapping her in the process. She still didn't think anyone had noticed, not even the person who bumped into her. They never noticed her unless they needed someone to torment but all of that was going to change.

As the air tore itself free from her lungs and water rushed to fill the void, burning with every unwilling breath, she heard a new song come on. Her favorite song. The water pump and drunken crowd distorted it but it still felt like a sign to her.

A sign she'd got it all right.

And she smiled.

Day 1,435

The undead didn't just pop out of the ground all at once, it was more like people just stopped dying so quickly... and eventually, at all. It started with the elderly living far beyond their predicted lifespans, people were hitting their hundred and twentieth birthday at a steadily increasing rate and nobody thought to be concerned back then.

The elongated lifespan was put down to a mixture of better medical care and whatever made-up mumbo jumbo the elderly came up with when asked what made them live for so long. How were we meant to know that it was the beginning of the end of all life?

We only really started seeing this when murder victims stopped being murdered and just stood up in the morgue or as they were being put into body bags. The worst of it wasn't their physical injuries, wasn't the stench of death and decay that lingered around them, it was how calm they were.

It was absolutely nothing like the movies, apart from the brief mass hysteria and sharp increase in murder and re-murder of the living dead. They were just so relaxed about the whole thing, no matter how many times they were shot, stabbed or burned they just said "it'll heal" and carried on as if they weren't missing most of their limbs and a good portion of their head.

Like anything, we adapted to them and now we all feel compelled to take bigger and bolder risks.

After all, life without death holds no threat.

Day 1,434

She may have called herself Cassie, may have walked and talked and dressed like Cassie - she was even perched on the bonnet of that shitty old car just like Cassie had the day before she went missing. But there was no way this could be Cassie. Not when her body had turned up three months ago and you were the poor bastard who had to identify her at the morgue.

Not that there was too much to identify at that point, they had enough of her teeth left to run a DNA test, you were just there to say yes so they could hand her body over to you and free up another drawer for the city's ever-growing legion of corpses. Her funeral was quiet and the weeks after were a mixture of relief and anguish at finally knowing she was dead and resting.

Yet there she was, whatever she was. She smiled that crooked, dimpled smile like she always had and for a moment you forgot how mangled and broken she'd been when you clenched your teeth so hard you chipped a tooth to avoid vomiting at the sight of her.

Still that smile and the slight tilt of her head beckoned you towards her and you wanted so badly to believe it was her and she was alive and everything was fine and you took one step closer and

Day 1,432

You knew you were being watched, that they'd been watching you ever since you set foot in the cathedral after midnight. They allowed people around from sunrise to sunset but at night it belonged to them and them alone which, for a soul as curious as you, was nothing short of temptation.

You really should have been suspicious right from the start. If they were so protective of the cathedral during the night then why would they leave the smaller door on north side unlocked and slightly open? It was practically begging you to enter and find out what they did during the night.

There's something about midnight that has a way of changing even the most familiar structure into a dark parody full of whispering corners and shambling creatures hiding in the ever-shifting shadows. The cathedral was no different in this regard.

It felt like you were being watched before you'd even entered, thousands of unseen eyes saw you walk in and waited for you to be far enough inside that you wouldn't hear them close and lock the door. Of course you were too distracted by the way the moonlight shone through the stained glass and how it gave every Biblical scene a different meaning somehow.

The deeper into the cathedral you went, the more you forgot about the countless eyes staring down at you, at least until you heard their footsteps scuttle across the cold marble floor. They sounded like they had far more legs than anything humanoid should have and yet you were more interested by the open entrance to the crypt.

Deep blue light shone through and you hesitated for a good few moments...until the scuttling footsteps sounded like they were running right at you and you made yet another spur-of-the-moment rash decisions and not only ran into the open crypt but also shut the gate behind you.

As you continued to sprint down the narrow spiral staircase, you didn't hear them lock the gate behind you, trapping you deeper still. By the time you thought to look back you were already several hallways into the crypt and yet you still carried on walking as though you'd chosen to come here all along and not been tricked in the slightest.

You knew the rough layout of the crypt,you knew where it was meant to end and how many rooms there were so why and how did you stumble across a new opening? Not just any opening either but a great stone archway leading out onto some kind of bridge.

It looked like something pulled right out of a video game, with torches lit at even intervals all along it and the seemingly fathomless depths below. You could faintly make out several more bridges above and below you,each one far more occupied than your own and all their eyes upon you.

Far more eyes than anything humanoid ought to be in possession of...

Day 1,431

Please go away.
There is nothing for you here.
This is not your home.

It's ever an easy thing to tell a loved one that they aren't welcome in the very place they grew up but seeing the way the parasite's tendrils wrapped around their eyes and pulsed in time to their heartbeat softened the blow. Not by much, after all the ones who tried to go home weren't quite at the stage where the parasite starts to eat away at the brain so they were more or less themselves.

Usually less than more, especially when they hit the point where their central nervous system gets jacked and every sensation feels like flaming knives being forced into your skin over and over and over again until all you can think about is making everything just stop.

At that point, it stops being classified as murder and becomes euthanasia. The government agreed to it within a week of the first hundred confirmed cases and it all snowballed from there until the world divided itself into two categories - worm-ridden and free.

We still aren't sure which is a worse fate, losing yourself to the parasite or losing everyone else.

Day 1,430

Seagulls swarmed the panicked crowd, herding them towards the ocean in the hopes that the larger coastal predators might leave behind enough meat for them all to feast upon. By this point is was practically tradition to let the first group of tourists perish and let their meat appease the gulls for the rest of the season.

When the season ended, however, things always took a turn for the worst. The seasulls still needed to feed and with the silence that only a beach in winter can bring, there were so few distractions. Not that many stayed behind long enough experience the gull's hunger at its peak, not that enough survived the off-season to pass on particularly useful strategies that didn't involve luring in city-strung fools for one final trip.

It wasn't just the gulls either, it was the thousands upon thousands of voices carried along the beach all begging for their lives back and the iron-cold chill of their spectral hands grasping at you that made the beach truly inhospitable until the onslaught of fresh blood rolled in like clockwork every summer to drown out their noise and join them in equal measure.

Day 1,429

When the summer's heat killed off the grass, we began to see the outlines of all the things that history had tried to bury and forget. Not just the ancient settlements of long dead empires, not just old roads that lead to the middle of nowhere, not just the crooked outlines of poorly dug graves but also the recently restless dead.

Nothing sleeps in this heat, nothing dares to try for fear of not waking up again. You can see them along every inch of the pale yellow fields, their broken skulls and unhinged jaws perfectly visible among the brown stalks that tried to be daisies.

Sometimes they move, the theories are that they're just following people who interest them or that they knew when they were alive... or they're looking for another body to hop into and what better way to make their move than to wait until all the excitement dies down and their shifting presence becomes normalised...

Day 1,428

They thought digging a pit around the city would keep everything out but all it did was seal everything in with them. What was once a nuisance at the best of times and a struggle at the worst was now a straight up battle for life over death for even the simplest of things.

Not even the milk and newspapers delivered every day were safe for human hands, not after the fungal-abominations-formerly-known-as-birds began to spore. Leaving the bottles and parcels alone wasn't an option either - it ran the risk of nests forming, not to mention potential infestations and spore-points right outside your home.

Utterly unthinkable.

Aside from the few who escaped into their own hidden doomsday bunkers to never be seen again, most folk either died before they turned or became so inhuman that their names were added to the list of casualties as soon as the symptoms began.

Some tried to make the most out of it, creating bingo cards for the all the signs and neurosis that accompanied the changes, forming clubs based on what people thought they would become when they finally finished turning and even working to make isolated habitats for themselves and their infected loved ones so they could remain together right until the end.

Of course the latter requires them to try to forget how easily confined creatures turn to cannibalism but it helped them sleep the few nights before they lost themselves entirely. In the end that's all they wanted, that one last moment of peace before their minds were rewritten by the infection and they became just as distorted as everyone else beyond the city limits.

Day 1,427

The river was unusually deep, that much was known. Occasionally a pod of dolphins would make their way upstream to give birth in Lake Lichside which was an oddity in itself but for an entire island to appear overnight was downright miraculous.

It wasn't a small thing either, measuring a couple of miles all around with strange trees that sure as hell weren't native to the area and had drying kelp tangled among the leaves. It was like it had raised itself from the lakebed somehow.

If that wasn't weird enough, around the same time the island appeared, an entire flock of sheep vanished into the lake. It wasn't until a couple of local divers went to investigate the new island that we found out exactly where they'd all gone.

Their farmer reckoned they'd somehow managed to swim across and were settled in on the new island which was a nuisance but not disastrous. When the divers went ashore and found that the grass was actually some kind of sharp bone-like protrusion, they realised that it wasn't an island at all.

Few people have seen a sea urchin's mouth closely but as the "grass" began to writhe and dig into their legs, they found themselves being pierced over and over and dragged towards a valley between a thick cluster of "trees" to where a circle of five jagged teeth opened and closed, the "grass" spines feeding small fish and vermin to it.

Their oxygen tanks washed ashore, heavily punctured and partially crushed.

The island vanished a few days later, leaving behind a lakebed full of bones and a fear of the ocean.

Day 1,426

There were days when the hospital was the safest place the city, where every member of staff was an angel in the eyes of the public... this was not one of those days.

This was a day to avoid the hospital, to pretend you had no symptoms of sickness and had never even sneezed in your life. This was a day to be the pinnacle of health and vigour, a day to convince the hospital that you really didn't need to go there - much less go to ward three.

This was a day to feed the ward and keep the displeased souls of the wretches who'd died there at peace for a while longer. Sometimes they wanted feeding once every five years, other times it was daily for a few months and it was no wonder that the town's population was so young and so few.

Day 1,425

When summer's heat drained Lake Catterstone, the roots of the weeping willows tasted air for the first time since the days of the witch trials. That's what the trees remembered most, all the ash in the air and the bodies tangled beneath the calm waters.

That's what they brought up to the surface, all those mud-drenched bones that slowly reformed themselves into the women who'd been murdered in that same spot. Their voices rang out around the village once more, begging for their lives and cursing the men who killed them all in the same breath.

When whole families were found dead in their homes, we knew the witch hunter's children had been found and their victims had dealt themselves one final justice. There was nothing we could do but bury them in the church grounds and pray they didn't come back when the rains next flooded the cemetery.

Day 1,424

The street lights flickered, as did the gaunt figure beneath them. The first time this happened she was heading home from work, the sun was minutes from breaking the horizon and the world was still bathed in those final few moments of nocturnal neon.

She wouldn't have spotted him if he had stayed still but he seemed to move with the light and not exist without it. He became a part of her nightly walk home - turn left at the kebab shop, cross the road by the underground car park, lightly jog past the man who may or may not exist.

Then she began to notice that the lights were flickering faster and faster each night to the point where both man and street lamp pulsed in time with her own heartbeat and it felt like the world suddenly became so small she could hardly breathe but one glance into his eyes made her feel like she was on the precipice of a vast and unfathomable void that would swallow her if she took one step further and

And then he was gone. He just vanished as suddenly as he'd appeared, leaving her confused and feeling smaller than she'd ever felt before in her life. It was like he'd been holding the world closed and she'd accidentally peeped through the tear and seen the nothingness of the universe.

The street light never worked again.

Day 1,423

The thought that Uncle Arthur had been hiding beneath the house in a bunker he'd started building as a child sounded ridiculous and yet there he was, wearing my father's missing clothes and holding my younger brother by his limp neck.

With a garbled sound that might have tried to be words, he let go and my brother fell to the floor like an old ragdoll. Uncle Arthur walked back through the hidden passageway behind the fridge and we didn't see him alive again.

As far as the police were aware, my brother had been walking up the stairs and slipped. They'd believe that more than a dead relative coming out from a secret door holding an already dead child with no context as to how or when he'd died or even if he was the killer.

The smell was a gradual thing, it slowly rose through the floorboards and clung onto everything in its path. It was that sickly sweet meaty stench that didn't go away no matter how many times we washed the curtains or cleaned the carpets or reupholstered the furniture.

We eventually found a way into Uncle Arthur's bunker when I was helping my parents spring clean the garden. The doorway had been hidden by about forty years worth of ivy and was so badly damaged by woodworm, the ivy's deep roots and four decades of rain that I could pull it apart with my bare hands.

It crumpled like wet cardboard and behind it lay the source of the stench that had been plaguing the house.