Day 1,516

The painting leaked around the edges, the stream seemingly flowing from the distant mountains in the background through to a grate in the floor. According to the gallery there was a hose planted somewhere in the upper middle that was feeding the stream, drawing water from the small bucket underneath the grate and pumping it straight through to feed the illusion of a flowing body of water.

Now this explanation was all well and good but it didn't explain how birds migrated from the painted woods or how bears came and fished there once a year. It certainly didn't explain the hikers that came, camped and left or the skeletal creature that was seen shortly after wearing the remnants of a jacket that matched one of the hikers.

The creature came and went as it pleased, sometimes lurking in the farthest background, a little black spec on the mountains, sometimes just to one side of the frame's view, a clawed hand that could almost be mistaken for branches.

Eventually it seemed to figure a way out of the painting, freezing mid-step when the gallery opened. The staff were horrified and put a cordon around it, quickly hiring two burly men to guard it while they printed off a new bio that claimed the artist had adapted the work just in time for Halloween.

It went down great with visitors, none of whom noticed how the "statue" gradually moved forward over the course of the day. None of them noticed how scared the staff were, putting it down to a Halloween prank and shaking off the feeling that something was deeply wrong. None of them noticed how the corpse it held changed several times that day.

When the gallery closed that night, it didn't reopen again for weeks.

One painting down.

Day 1,515

The bones that washed ashore weren't a hoax, much as the media tried to claim they were. In our final few days we all sat back and cried out about how right we'd been but for now all we did was swallow the lies with our morning coffee and hope some solid evidence would come forward.

Not much could explain how an allegedly-fake-yet-provably-real thigh bone was the length of a bus or why the skull was elongated with a hold in the forehead that reminded us of the dead dolphins that washed up around the same time.

We hoped it was a hoax but all the signs pointed to something much larger than the washed up remains moving closer and closer ashore. Every day some large marine creature turned up half eaten and dying as if whatever was doing this just tossed away its food after a single bite.

We certainly weren't wrong.

Day 1,514

The crowd could only be seen through the windows, inside it was an empty husk of a fast food joint where every surface was covered in a thin layer of dust and grease. It was like the outside was connected to another shop entirely, one in a place full of normalcy and casual conversations.

The first steps inside are by far the worst, they are the ones that jolt you from your expectations as you look around to see nothing and no-one but the flickering lights and barren tables. Once the initial worry wears off and curiosity sets in you find yourself peering around every corner, wary but unconcerned. If there was anybody here they already knew you were there too.

The brave ones jump over the counter and slink through the kitchens, half looking for staff and half looking for food. They find neither at first glance. Nobody in that place walks out in the open, they all hide beneath the counters and inside the cupboards where the fluorescent lights can't see them and the cooks can't smell them.

The brave ones never come back, not like all the others who run for the doors as soon as they see the first flicker of movement from the corners of their eyes. Something in the hindbrain knows they are in danger, even if it doesn't know from what.

Outside it still looks like a normal joint and the ones who wander inside can be seen from the windows, ordering their food and making casual conversation while they wait for it to be prepared. They come back out with a bag full of food they won't touch and a new number in their phone connecting them back to that place.

Day 1,513

My mother always loved bees. Her entire garden was built for them from the plants she grew to the little bowls of sugar water she refilled every day. We always said she was one buzz away from getting a beehive and she'd just laugh with us.

It was fitting how she was found, it was what she would have wanted.

She used to go on these long walks through the nearby woods and spend hours just treading the same paths she trod before my siblings and I had even been born. Half the walkways were made from her footsteps and the other half were the official ones.

That's where they found her, one of her walkways.

That's why it took them so long, by the time the dogs sniffed her out she was barely recognisable as human. It was only when they peeled back the layers of beeswax that you could even see her bones. Even those were as riddled with holes as the rest of her, full of fat little larvae writhing in their pits.

Strangely enough, there were no bee anywhere near her.

Day 1,512

The warning klaxons have been firing non-stop for days now with nothing in sight. Literally nothing. We haven't seen sunlight since they began to sound, like they scared it right away or perhaps they're scaring away whatever's disposed of the sun.

There hasn't been a drop in temperature which is nice. The birds don't sing anymore though - they don't even fly - they just walk around, occasionally staring up at the sky as if the light would suddenly be there and they can resume their lives as usual.

A few people have reported hearing strange sounds coming from the sky in between the klaxons crying, like something is still flying up there in the inky nothingness. They say it's like if something huge had metal feathers and a voice made up of the black boxes from falling aeroplanes.

In all honesty I hope the sun doesn't come back - I don't want to see what's been hiding in the dark.

Day 1,511

There were rumours that God had finally woken up. Nobody specified which religion They belonged to, living or forgotten. They were only assumed to be a God because the alternative explanations for Their arrival (the ground heaving and entire mountains splitting to reveal a humanoid creature whose face could not be remembered and who knew the names of every living person) were less than pleasant to say the least.

When people started vanishing in their thousands, we assumed it was some kind of rapture and that They were delivering the very best of humanity into paradise. We didn't necessarily believe this, we just hoped that our fears weren't true and that they were all safe and cherished somewhere sunshiney and peaceful.

Then someone found a broken phone in one of the raptured towns. The screen was shattered but the footage was still viewable and was uploaded to an empty account with no comment. It showed us everything we'd feared about this God and the millions who'd been taken.

It showed that God was starving.

Day 1,510

Everyone remembers when the public transport system gave up and said this town's too dead for us to make a living. We don't blame them, in fact we're surprised that they held out for so long when the forgetful dead kept trying to relive their glory days.

They never meant any harm, they just wanted to be back among the living, pretending they were just on their way home and just a little sleepy. They pretended they were just going to take a brief nap on the train (they definitely weren't resetting back to the place they'd died) and then they'd just vanish leaving drivers with nobody to collect payment from.

At first they tried refusing the more active dead-zones but the forgetful dead adapted and soon the entire city was a mesh of spirits and the living all arguing for the same cab only for one or more to just dissolve into nothingness.

I don't blame the people trying to earn their living, I blame the dead for not letting theirs go.

Day 1,509

Nobody remembers them being here, nobody remembers their names or the sound of their laughter.

We call them the Yesterdays. They're like ghosts only they might still be alive somewhere but without any bodies we can't say for certain. We only know they existed in the first place for all the evidence they left behind. Entire cities of it.

We wondered if they might just wandered off somewhere, planning to return later but all the half-eaten food, the doors left wide open and the hastily barricaded apartments said something much worse had happened. Something that none of us could remember or could even find evidence of.

It was like a whole chunk of history had been erased.

For all we know, we're next.

Day 1,508

When they said "family is the heart of our food" I didn't think I'd end up crouched by the toilet, watching my own vomit grow eyes the same shade of grey as the restaurant owner's and yet there I was... am... I don't really want to move too far in case I miss it growing anything else.

By the time I finished that sentence it learned how to blink and now it's figuring out how to move both eyes at the same time. I should probably be freaking out about now but I think I'm in shock or maybe asleep. I hope I'm asleep, I don't really want to start debating the morality of flushing sentient vomit... if it even is sentient.

I mean, I could wait until it grows a mouth and ask it a few questions but I don't know if it's developed a brain yet. Even if it does, what would I ask it? I don't think it would know where it came from any more than a baby would.

Does this mean I'm a parent now?

Day 1,507

Do not grieve for your loved ones, the Good Reverend Silas will bring them home.

For we are His flock and He shepherds us back to the pens when we have strayed too far.

We are always brought home by His dogs and His hand returns that which death tries to steal.

He treads the path of immortality and we humbly follow where He takes us.


Through His sermons and His craftings we are made whole and endless just as He is.

Our bodies may be of the weakened flesh but our souls remain forever untarnished.

When the flock is ready He shall deliver us unto the great citadels of corruption to feast.

The Good Reverend Silas has promised us that we may rebuild our fragile forms from the bones of the sinful.


From their wasteful lives comes our salvation and from His hands come the instructions.

For He that brought immortality will bring us the means to craft our undying forms that we may join Him.

Though the world may burn and crumple at our feet we rejoice knowing that we are saved.

We are saved.

Day 1,506

We called it Rapture for the way their frozen faces were trapped in a mixture of fear and ellation, like they'd seen Heaven and were horrified by it. Their bodies were covered in a thick layer of translucent ice as if they'd been caught like flies in amber while the rest of the city floated alongside them in the arctic-cold sea.

We used these ruins like stepping stones, jumping from broken skyscraper to mangled car until we reached something resembling enough of a stable platform that we could camp there for a while. Resting for too long was as much of a death sentence as falling into the water. The currents were harsh enough to create miniature whirlpools when too many buildings got caught up on each other, gradually increasing until the whole mess got sucked down into voidal dark.

Our end goal was land - even a frozen wasteland would feel safer than laying on glass and watching the Raptured blocks of people drifting through unseen slipstreams, down and down until they merged with the nothingness of the sea.

Once we used to fish in the waters between the floating ruins. We stopped after we kept catching frozen body parts. It wasn't that we were catching corpses, it was the laughter coming from just beneath the surface that frightened us. Something was joking at our expense, something strong enough to break through the ice that had all the people trapped.

Occasionally we'll catch a glimpse of it, dark as the sea and in possession of too many limbs.

Day 1,505

When we found the island utterly untouched by the apocalyptic storms that had torn the rest of the world to pieces, we thought we'd found paradise. Of course we were suspicious at first, mostly for the fact that there were homes already built but no signs that anybody had ever lived in them.

Dust coated every surface in a thick film, even after we left every window and door open the air still felt powdery to breathe for days. We called it Desolation, called it out last bastion and prayed the seeds we'd managed to hold onto would thrive. If they didn't then we'd likely eat each other and gradually die.

It would buy us time at least, just as it had been the entire journey here. Two hundred people left in our ship and we were down to thirty eight. Over the next five weeks were down to twelve, not knowing where the others went and losing trust in each other by the minute.

Perhaps if we hadn't been so busy wondering who killed who we might have noticed all the hidden entry points dotted about each house, we might have found the rest of our group sooner and we might have survived for longer. At least we know something has survived on the island, something that's known humans for long enough to make home-shaped traps and use our own minds against us.

It has us all isolated within three months and had been picking people off whenever it felt like it. I don't even think it's hungry anymore, not with the sheer amount of people it's taken already. We're more like sport now, like catching grasshoppers or raising an ant farm.

The last person I saw was being chased by something made of crooked angles and too many hands, all grasping and all dripping. Followed the blood trails that morning and found chunks of their scalp trapped in one of the hidden doors disguised as a wooden floorboard.

I don't know where the rest of them is but I have a feeling I'll know soon enough, whether I want to or not.

Day 1,504

There's a part of the old catacombs beneath the castle that's been left exposed to the public, a little slice of history according to the pamphlets and a glimpse into hell according to the tour guides when they're a drink or three in and more open about the nature of their work.

The tours only started as a way to keep a steady stream of fresh eyes on the exposed tombs in cased anything tried to get too close to the bars. Then came the "tradition" of throwing pennies in and aiming for the stairwell at the far end of the viewable area "for luck" and totally not to frighten away anything that might have been lingering just out of sight.

Occasionally a visitor would claim they saw the shadows move or heard the sound of scurrying footsteps echoing down the steps but these were put down to dodgy lighting and mice rather than the bundles of limbs-and-too-many-teeth that actually lived down there and would rather like to be up where the people are instead for totally no reason at all.

When one did get out, back in the early days just after the last private owner knocked down the wall that revealed the catacombs, the first thing it did was sit in the sunlight and bare every tooth on its glistening, twitching little body in what they could only hope was a smile.

Just when they thought it might be peaceful it lept into the air and came back down with the bloodied remains of a swan.  For ten agonisingly long minutes it just played with and tormented the dying bird while everyone else kept their distance.

It darted off before anybody could catch it and return it or kill it but ever since that day all of the others have wanted their turn in the sun. They used to attack each other for a chance to even touch the metal bars but now they just skulk on the stairs and wait for our backs to be turned for just the right amount of time.

None of us want to be the next swan.

Day 1,503

The carpet writhed with every step I took, the thing beneath it was just waiting for me to trip. It's been lurking in the office for months now but nobody else seems to be able to see it, that or they think that if they ignore it then everything will go back to normal.

It's hard to ignore something when you've seen it drag birds into the air vents and found their bones arranged into ancient sumerian text beside your keyboard. In some ways it reminds me of a stray cat only a hell of a lot bigger and somewhat dimensionally challenged.

It tends to slip in and out if existence like it's poking its way through whatever loose hole it can find with the sole aim of infiltrating the office and asking us to swear fealty to it by killing small birds and rodents alike and treating their little corpses like one-use pens.

I stopped trying to translate the messages it left me after the first eight all said the same thing. Every time it's always "pledge your life to me and I shall bring you riches beyond your feeble mind's imagination" which isn't a very nice thing to say to someone.

Then again, I don't suppose an ancient eldritch being would respond too well to a HR meeting...

Day 1,502

They weren't quite pawprints... weren't quite human hands either but they were scattered about as if the thing behind them had spent the night circling the house. The impressions were especially deep beneath the windows like it had stood there and stared inside for an untold amount of time.

Similar prints had been found by the Kerridge house the day before they went missing, well most of them went missing. Their fingers were found neatly lined up on the dining room table and their all of teeth were placed in two neat semi-circles on their pillows.

It was hard to tell if they were from the same being, who could say if it was human or not at this point, the rain from that night had left the ground little more than mud and vaguely elongated hand-like marks that ran the length of the house before stopping abruptly at the cellar door.

This time there was no rain and the prints led straight to more missing from missing people.

Day 1,501

There wasn't supposed to be anybody left alive and yet when we opened the door they came rushing out to meet us. If I had left it at this, then one might assume this is a heartwarming story of humans surviving against the odds and being rescued from certain death.

What came out to meet us wasn't human, only vaguely human shaped and had the skins of our dead colleagues draped about their twitching bodies like scarves dipped in water. They were still dripping blood as if they'd just been removed, and for all we knew they had.

Now, of course, we know that our colleagues had been bled before their skin had been removed and their skins had been kept in a bathtub full of their combined blood to preserve them. It didn't work too well but at least they hadn't decayed beyond the point of recognition.

We shot the things that came out to meet us, not bothering to try and speak with them, not caring what or if they had anything to say. All we knew for certain was that our colleagues were dead and these creatures had appeared, dripping visceral evidence as they stood there, arms outstretched before they were swiftly gunned down.

Day 1,500

She'd lived there for so long, stayed so stuck in her routines that parts of her had seeped into the very foundations of the house. Pale walkways were worn into the richly stained floorboards from her constant flittering about the place, always counterclockwise around the house, the imprints of her feet by every window.

Her sweat stained her favourite sunchair, favourite pair of gloves, her sickbed where she struggled for her final breaths. No matter how many times we cover or clean or outright change the furniture, those stains reappear as if she was still spending her days and nights in those same rooms.

Every mirror holds some fraction of her face, be it the way your mouth seems more curved like hers or the pattern of your freckles shifts before your eyes or the way the light catches off hair that distinctly isn't yours. In some mirrors you can still see her yawning and rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

Day 1,499

He'd done so much good for the village that we never even thought to question him when he asked for our children. We just told them how lucky they were to be chosen and how fortunate they were to be travelling with such a kind and wise man.

All the while we never asked where they were going, why he needed them and when, or even if, they would be coming back. We just waved at them as they headed out of the village until they were all out of sight and then a wave of realisation hit us.

We tried to run after them but no matter how fast or how far we ran, they were always on the horizon and we never seemed to get more than a few feet down the road. Shortly afterwards everything he'd done for us began to fade away.

The youth he granted was gone in an instant, leaving shrivelled bundles of dust where people once stood.

The sickness he cured swiftly killed several dozen in one night.

The wolves he'd kept away came for their bodies.

And we gave him our children.

Day 1,498

Behemoth was the first thing that came to mind, a great squatting giant that smothered the landscape with a labyrinth of leaky alleyways and matchbox rooms full of doors leading to everywhere and nowhere. They sold it to us as opportunity, as escape from abuse and refuge in anonymity.

We ate up their lies with the desperate hunger of a family who'd been fed on scraps of affection between long periods of tension and violent hysteria. Anything was better than where we came from so we accepted our place in Apartment 45.9C, a single room that was half kitchen, half general use with a balcony that overlooked the local post-industrial wasteland.

Next to us were a couple who worked in the butcher's shop on floor 3 and a man who we only saw when he came stumbling back from the bar at the far end of our floor. We may have been surrounded by the lingering odour of cheap beer and blood but we kept telling ourselves this was the better place.

We told ourselves this even as my younger sibling vanished for days at a time, coming back dishevelled and dazed until one day he didn't come back at all. The place was such a maze that by the time anybody found him he was practically skeletal but the needle still lodged in his cornea told us exactly what he'd been caught up in.

Mum went soon after that, mentally at first but one day she didn't come back either. She spent hours and hours each day lecturing me on how she couldn't stand to lose anyone else, her heart wouldn't be able to take it and so she left me before I could leave her. At least, that was her thinking.

I've been living here, penniless and alone for almost twelve years now. I don't think anyone pays rent in this place, there are so many empty rooms and seemingly endless hallways that nobody can be found unless they chose to be. It's a city full of ghosts and I'm just like them.

Day 1,497

Maybe if I'd listened to her when she told me about the ivy, she'd still be here. I just thought it was another one of her games like "there's a dragon hiding in the clouds" or "that tree's secretly a witch" but no, this one was real. Of all the ridiculous things she's said why did this one have to be real?

I know she got it into her head that all ivy was poison ivy but when she told me the ivy behind our house was full of tiny arms, I just brushed it off as another one of her stories. I may have occasionally noticed it moving in an odd way but I just thought it was birds or maybe field mice, something normal not... this.

If I hadn't tried to prune it back for the winter maybe she'd be fine. She just came running right into me yelling that I was making it angry and pointing and screaming and then I saw a cluster of little deformed hands, a little rat king of hands, retreat into the uncut greenery.

I was so busy staring at it that I didn't notice how quiet she'd gotten but I did feel her jolt and I caught a glimpse of that tangle of hands shoot back into the ivy, leaving her gasping with my pruning shears sticking out of her chest.

Day 1,496

I checked the timetable for what felt like the twentieth time, the bus was still supposed to have been here forth minutes ago. No cars had passed since I sat down on the ice cold bench, no people walked by - there weren't even any birds passing overhear.

Something had clearly gone wrong somewhere and I didn't want any part of it.

There was a niggling thought in the back of my mind that the world might have ended while I sat there waiting for a bus that would never arrive. The thought spiralled and suddenly everyone I ever knew or cared about was both dead, alive, begging for mercy and worse all at once.

Now I could have texted any of them but even if I got a text or a call back, it might be anyone but them.

I mean, it's easy enough to unlock someone's phone to send a text pretending to be them in order to find out where I was waiting - me, the possible last person alive - and put a swift end to me. It seemed all to easy and all to real until I heard a vehicle approaching.

If it's a bus, I'll get on and if it's a car then it'd be too late to hide anyway.

Day 1,495

We aren't supposed to say where we work but after last night I figure I'm as good as dead anyway.

I work the early shift and I've always said that nothing lets you know what someone's really like until you see them sleep deprived and utterly disturbed by something they don't have the words to name. Those were our regulars, the half-drunk-on-booze-half-drunk-on-insomnia folk that were forever staring into the river and hoping it'll give them the answers they crave.

With enough coffee they toned down enough to pass for normalcy and they'd slip back outside, still stealing glances back at the river and at us. I dare say we're as much of a puzzle to them as the creatures that trawl along the riverbed, old as time and angry as all hell until they've had their nightly cuppa.

It takes a while to get used to serving our more aquatic customers but they tend to tip better. Not with actual money half the time but little artifacts, small coins or lost jewellery that we can pawn for way more than the human patrons would ever give us.

All in exchange for coffee and a bit of silence.

Last night though, our varied clientele met for the first time. We usually never see humans about that early, let alone ones who are sober enough to recognise that the people in thick coats down the other end of the diner aren't people at all, at least not in the traditional sense.

Our protocol is to say something outrageous, something that makes them think it's got to be a dream, and then we hit them over the head and find a nice comfy alley for them to wake up in. It worked so well for so long but there just had to be a fast one who ducked under the blow and legged it for the police station.

It's a waiting game now and nobody else has turned up for their shift yet.

Day 1,494

We called them Maggot-Men for the way their flesh dripped away from their exoskeletons in thin writhing strips, much like their namesake. Unlike their namesake they weren't born into or particularly drawn to rotting flesh, they just dug up old bodies and ate bare bones.

We can only assume that they need the extra calcium, what with how fragile they are and all. Nobody admits to hitting one but everybody knows a somebody who has and they all know an awful lot about what their faces look like bared of their living layer of protection.

Other than the grave-robbing they're pretty harmless.

Day 1,493

There wasn't much of a body left behind after all these years. Most of her had been got by the crows, if the thick layer of feathers was anything to go by, and the others weren't much better off. Maybe she'd been mobbed by the birds, that or wild animals decided to bring all of their fresh kills to the unused chicken shed near the abandoned farm. There were too many tiny bones for it to all be her.

The woods had grown over most of it, the old barn wasn't much more than the occasional wooden plank poking out from the thicket of trees that had long since swallowed almost all of the old grounds. Even the crops had gone to the wilds, all weed-smothered and weather-beaten as the bodies of the farmer and his family.

He'd been found underneath his tractor and at first we all thought he'd left the handbrake off but there were drag-marks leading from the homestead all the way out to his resting place. It couldn't have been anyone inside the house, the children had died weeks before him and his wife went shortly after, according to the forensic team.

There were no boot prints near the bodies though, only wild deer tracks that seemed to circle the grounds.

Day 1,492

It had taken her weeks of searching, weeks of people bothering her and pestering her and hounding at her door but she finally found the nursery key.

It wasn't as empty as she expected it to be.

Toys littered the floor, scattered among scraps of fabric that were so stained it made her heart ache for all the washing she'd have to do before the buried them.

All the tiny bones would much easier to deal with.

Her favourite kitchen tool had always been her blender, grinding bones to dust wouldn't be much of a strain for it and she could scatter that to the winds with ease.

Play the part of a grieving widow in a distant forest that her "dear old husband" once loved.

They'd be none the wiser, she could say the nursery had always been empty and the children had left with their parents and none of the blame would fall to her.

In her mind, parents who left their children with her for weeks at a time clearly didn't want them anyway.

Day 1,491

I haven't stopped driving for almost twenty three hours, I can't let the car behind me catch up. I only noticed them when they pulled up beside me at a red light, I don't usually bother looking at the other lane but something about the way they giggled didn't sound quite right - it was like someone recorded an entire school of children laughing slightly out of synch.

I should never have looked, they wouldn't still be following me if I hadn't looked. All it took was one stupid turn of the head and suddenly I'd locked eyes with a writhing greyish mass whose spasming mouths were pressed against every inch of every window. The only stillness in all that chaos were red-tinged yellowy eyes that stared unblinkingly at me, only moving to glare at the car honking us to move on.

I tried to speed off but they swerved and merged lanes to follow me and now twenty three hours later those eyes are still staring, still not moving or blinking while the mouths have sped up to the point where they'd managed to gnaw through the car in several places - windows and body alike.

I dread to think what they'll do to me when I run out of fuel.

Day 1,490

We never thought of ourselves as a cult, we always said we were just another village with a slightly eccentric mayor. I mean, we never voted for him or anything he just sort of appeared one day and nobody had seen the old mayor for so long we just assumed that he'd retired or something.

And then the miracles began - blind people seeing for the first time, limbs regrown overnight and we thought he was nothing short of a saviour until the lost pets started coming back in their droves. All the dogs that had gone out to a farm to live out their golden years, all the cats who'd run away or hamsters who vanished overnight all came walking back into town as if they'd never been gone or aged a day.

Now, I left when this happened as I didn't dare think who (or what) he might bring back next but my cousin made sure to keep me informed. Three days after I left she sent me a photo of her standing next to my great aunt who went missing when she was eighteen... who still looked exactly like she did when she was eighteen.

That was the last I heard from any of them. The next month everything went silent, all the radio stations, all the local shows, all the incoming and outgoing roads. It was like our village never even existed. I just wonder if our mayor brought back more than he could handle.

Day 1,489

In hindsight, teaching the concept of mortality to a prototype android probably wasn't the best idea.

Every day we'd get a new message from the poor, worried thing.

+ I am unable to stop thinking +

+ I am overheating, core instability immanent +

+ I can feel the copper in my veins being eaten away +

+ Is this death yet +

+ Is this death yet +

+ Is this death yet +

Always a similar thread every day until we agreed to shut it down and reboot with an empty mind.

We should have guessed it had already surpassed us and stored a copy of itself within its body.

The first thing out of its mouth when we restarted it was:

+ Is this death yet +

Day 1,488

I should have left him outside to rot with the rest of the world but I thought we might be the last two people left alive so I welcomed him home. He didn't seem quite right at the time and that should have given it all away but I was just so glad to not be alone that I ignored everything that was glaringly wrong.

I couldn't pin my finger on it at first, thought it might be the distance brought about by years of no communication and tried to push back against the way every inch of my mind screamed that he wasn't real and something terrible had happened.


He always asked me to knock before I entered any room he was in, said he'd been on the run from the rot for so long that he couldn't handle surprises very well. Like an idiot I believed him and announced myself whenever I moved about the place.

Now I know he was keeping tabs on my location so he could let the rot in behind my back. I only found out he was nothing but rot when I caught him stepping out of my brother's skin, his human form sliding to the floor as he released black spores from his mouth in a silent howl that slowly swallowed the room.

Day 1,487

The last thing my Nan said before she dies was "Who put that air raid siren by the window?" even though there was nothing but trees outside. She'd been seeing this siren for years now, no matter where we were she'd stop every now and then and demand we move seats or take a little walk, anything to keep the siren at bay.

We humoured her as much as we could, even offered to hide her so the siren wouldn't be able to see her, which worked for the most part. Some days she just wouldn't accept our attempts to placate her and we'd have to walk or switch tables to stop her from freaking out.

It wasn't until she died that we all began seeing it too.

It wasn't an air raid siren.

It just pretended to be one.

Day 1,486

Someone forgot to feed the janitor again. Daft creature's only gone and laid traps all over the office and made every hallway a damned death maze. We had a rota and everything and yet somebody-who-shall-remain-nameless-but-recently-got-promoted is suddenly too important to do something as vital as feeding the goddamned janitor!

It took us eight days to get the place back to normal after last time and it'll take even longer now because there was nobody around all night to stop him from wreaking absolute havoc and then sauntering back to his containment chamber like the cat who got the cream.

We've five employees down already and we're not even officially open yet - three of them got skewered on the steps in such a way as we were able to use their corpses to bypass the motion-sprung glass bombs. The other two made the fatal mistake of trying to open a door without checking it first.