This place doesn't feel real.
The people don't feel real.
Not even the rain feels real.
You know what does feel real though? All the dead animals that line the roads first thing in the morning.
I never used to see them as a kid, my parents made sure I got up after the street cleaners had been but one Christmas morning I beat them to it and saw flashes of red along the path out front. I thought it was presents, thought that there was something for me at the end of the road but instead it was a family of cats - kittens and all - gutted and spread out.
Didn't tell me parents what I'd seen either, some strange little part of me thought I'd get blamed for it. Of course now I know that everyone else knows what does this and everyone else is afraid of it. Don't get me wrong, I'm scared too but I'm at least trying to find its weaknesses.
After that first day I started making a note of what was being killed and how many. It took five years before the pattern emerged - a cycle of working its way through the entire animal order from insect larvae to bird to cat and dog and eventually ending up with a human.
But the two week gap between the murder of a person and the roadsided being covered in a thin layer of insects makes me think it goes higher than us. Goes beyond the physicality of a person and kills some aspect of reality itself. It takes away the very thing that tethers us to the rest of the world and leaves us to float in a haze of death and disorder while it picks its next victim.
I'm going to try and break the cycle - kill its prey before it can and see what it does.
Either it finds a back-up, like replacing sparrows with starlings... or I die and the cycle shortens.
I've got enough rat poison to kill a town and enough mice in cages to line the roads.
I'll strike first and, with any luck, strike last.
The people don't feel real.
Not even the rain feels real.
You know what does feel real though? All the dead animals that line the roads first thing in the morning.
I never used to see them as a kid, my parents made sure I got up after the street cleaners had been but one Christmas morning I beat them to it and saw flashes of red along the path out front. I thought it was presents, thought that there was something for me at the end of the road but instead it was a family of cats - kittens and all - gutted and spread out.
Didn't tell me parents what I'd seen either, some strange little part of me thought I'd get blamed for it. Of course now I know that everyone else knows what does this and everyone else is afraid of it. Don't get me wrong, I'm scared too but I'm at least trying to find its weaknesses.
After that first day I started making a note of what was being killed and how many. It took five years before the pattern emerged - a cycle of working its way through the entire animal order from insect larvae to bird to cat and dog and eventually ending up with a human.
But the two week gap between the murder of a person and the roadsided being covered in a thin layer of insects makes me think it goes higher than us. Goes beyond the physicality of a person and kills some aspect of reality itself. It takes away the very thing that tethers us to the rest of the world and leaves us to float in a haze of death and disorder while it picks its next victim.
I'm going to try and break the cycle - kill its prey before it can and see what it does.
Either it finds a back-up, like replacing sparrows with starlings... or I die and the cycle shortens.
I've got enough rat poison to kill a town and enough mice in cages to line the roads.
I'll strike first and, with any luck, strike last.
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