Day 2,001

It smiled at us. We thought it was friendly.

It laughed at our jokes. We thought it could understand us.

It played games with us. We thought it was a child.


We thought it was a child right up to the point where it opened its eyes and opened its eyes again, showing us everything we'd lived through so far and everything we were yet to experience. I didn't know my eight year old self could handle so much pain until I look back and remember what I have to look forward to.


In three days time it'll be the end of the world. The thing we thought was a child will be all grown up and ready to tear our dimension in half to let its parents come through. There'll be more of them than we could ever hope to handle and they'll all have so much to show us.


Out of all of us who met the thing when it was a child, I'm the last one standing. Most of us lost it in the first week after we saw everything. Some held out til a month, then a year, then ten years and now I'm trying to hold out for two more days.


Just two.

I refuse to be there when it ends everything I've ever known and loved.

It's showed me what to expect and I'd rather leave the party early.

Day 2,000

This is it - the end of it all and the moment where you realise that everything was connected all along.

Every place described, every snarling creature, every person born and killed, every single thing occurred on the same wretched world. A world once full of thriving people, where monsters were just stories and badly edited photographs. Somewhere far away enough to be unbelievable yet too close for comfort.

Everything took a sharp turn for the worse when beings from beyond the stars, beyond our dimension, turned their eyes to the little planet and thought it would make a good nursery. They settled their infant abominations anywhere they could and watched them hatch and wreak havoc on the unsuspecting humans.


From the surface swarming with the restless dead, where our own mythology was turned against us, to the citadels we dug to escape, where we were found again, to the very stars themselves where we were followed still - nowhere was safe and nothing would be okay again.


Now the stories are coming to an end - all that's left of the world are monsters, spawn of the great stars. They'll be maturing soon, now that all the prey is gone and they've fed on everything humanity had to offer, leaving us dead or worse.


Now the end is here and we are not.

Day 1,999

The roads were as dead as ever, not a single other car in sight for the last hour or so and no movement outside save for a flock of birds they saw just before the border with Chawbrook. Since then the only movement they'd seen was wind blowing through the trees, ruffling the moss... and the dark shapes roaming the ever-present sheer drop to their left where the rest of the country used to be.

Now it was nothing but mist, mass graves and monsters who'd help you just as quick as they'd harm you. Now they drove beside it and hoped that their small car was too insignificant and too fast to be of any interest to the multitude of eyes and teeth that was mere metres away.

Occasionally the cliff on their right would split into another road that looked like it led to somewhere bright, sunny and safe but the navigator display was full of danger symbols all around them and the driver refused to leave the safety of the narrow road.

The younger ones started to feel like prisoners and whispered to themselves about opening a window and leaping out to head down the other paths alone. They reckoned there would be other humans holed up somewhere and they might be less afraid than the ones they were travelling with.

As the car turned yet another corner it came to a screeching halt as something jumped down from high up the cliff and landed just in front of them. It was young enough that it hadn't settled on a proper physical form and floated about as a collection of unsettling pieces instead.

It gently placed its hands/claws/mouths on the bonnet, tilted its head/beak/eyes and called for help.

Day 1,998

She travelled through the air like a swarm of flies, thrumming and flickering and heading straight for the freshest meat. At first we were all horrified, terrified and fleeing for the proverbial hills in the hopes that she would just latch onto someone and kill them but she didn't.

The girl herself was fairly harmless and the worst she did was hold your hand and stare up at you with the eyes she no longer had. It was disconcerting and a little gross but eventually she'd let go and leave just as suddenly as she appeared and all you had to show for it was the lingering feeling that you'd just lost your child.

Nobody recognised her, or if they did they were keeping that to themselves. She didn't match any of the photos of missing children from the county or even the country. She was a little mystery that left you with more than just a little heartache.

It was only after the eighth death that we connected the dots and realised that she wasn't killing anyone. She might not even know she was doing it but she was leaving everyone she touched with a mark on their bones that set them up as a target for something much bigger, much older and much hungrier than her.

We called it her dog but nobody knew what shape it actually was. The closest anyone's ever come to seeing it are brief glimpses caught on CCTV, an alleged photo from a victim, little flickers of fur and scales in the corner of your eyes before someone collapses into a pile of their own blood and intestines.

Nobody has the heart to stop her - who could turn away a small child asking to hold your hand?

Day 1,997

I didn't have to turn around to know it was still following me, the snow hissed as it met the burning creature that dragged itself after me with the slow persistence of a seasoned predator. If it caught up to me I'd be victim number seven and the council would only use it as an excuse to triple the police's presence in the area.

They hadn't been able to stop it so far but they had managed to set fire to it and run away which was more than I was able to with twenty-something inches of snow covering the whole town and a constant trickle of snow still falling. It was only going to get worse but at least the creature was struggling too.

All I had to do was get to the station, lead it inside and lose it before making my way back out and head home before it realised I'd given it the slip. Unfortunately the bloody cowards had locked the doors, leaving me to try and circle round the car park and try somewhere else.

The scrapyard wasn't too much further and they rarely locked their doors, in fact with the weather this bad they'd be more likely to let me into one of the cabins. It'll either buy me enough time to climb out a window or another body to throw to the creature while I make a break for it.

They're somewhere further down the road, that much I remember but it's getting harder to think and harder still to keep walking while the snow keeps coming and the creature's still dragging itself behind me closer, closer and closer and the neon scrap sign should be visible any moment now.

Any moment now.

Any moment...

Day 1,996

Where wolves go, stories follow.  Therefore if just so happen to find yourself in a country not known for its wolves or tales of wolves and you find yourself hearing their soulful howls when you are in the middle of an otherwise quite pleasant stroll through the woods, please consider the following.

It is unlikely that the creature you are hearing is a wolf.

In fact the chances of you hearing an actual wolf during daylight hours are slim to none due to their preference for hunting at dawn and dusk but that's besides the point. The point is that you are hearing the sound of a creature that is most certainly not what it should be and it sounds closer than you'd like.

It sounds close enough that you should be able to see it by now and yet you are surrounded by nothing more than trees. Trees that almost seem to breathe out when the howling picks up as if they might be the source which should be impossible and yet...


And yet the day is already so full of improbables and unlikelies that the trees might as well howl.

They might as well untuck their roots and sidle closer to you the second your back is turned.

They might as well wrap those same roots around your ankles and draw you into the soil.


It was going to be that sort of a day anyway.

Day 1,995

The sky was aflame and the fields were full of scarecrows, all walking towards the cities with as much purpose as the burning air. Back then we knew so little we thought it was the end of the world and not the beginning, we thought we'd all die but now we know we were never truly born until that day.

At least that's what the government teaches us while we carry on the same lives we led before but under a deep red sky and with strange straw men among us. They don't speak, don't even think they can, but we don't speak to them just in case. I'd rather not think about what they might say.

There's a lot that's better left unexplored and unquestioned and the scarecrows are all of that. The burning sky is somewhat explainable as a permanent change in atmospheric pressure which was probably caused when an unnamed country detonated the mother of all bombs deep in the ocean.

We felt the shockwaves for days and the radiation has been reaching us in slow but steady increments. Maybe it brought the scarecrows to life, maybe they were alive to begin with and we just pretended we made them to protect our crops.

All we know now is that we are all born as new people under the burning sky and we are all as full of life as we are riddles with open sores, hair loss and blood dripping from somewhere on our bodies which are all gifts, not a curse or symptom of radiation sickness.

It's kinder to believe we are all just born than likely to live less than a year.

At least when we're gone, the scarecrows will inherit the earth.

I doubt they'd do a worse job than we ever did.

Day 1,994

They never looked the same twice, always a new grotesque creature of equal or greater wretchedness to the last and yet always recognisable as the same one you saw last week. Didn't matter if it had eight heads, intestines for arms or if it just vomited half-formed infants left, right and centre, you knew you'd seen it before and it remembered you just as well.

The funny thing about the human brain is that when we see something incomprehensible our minds tend to fill in the blanks with the closest thing we can think of. Makes dealing with creatures that have no set form a little easier, though their forms generally seem to get worse each time.

Lord knows how many people have lost their resolve, sanity or life to their inability to adapt and gloss over the parts of the creatures that never seem to settle. You know, the parts that make your brain vibrate and your teeth feel like toffee if you stare for too long though its always so hard to look away.

It's also a risky move to lose sight of them. One minute they're eating a bird several metres away and the next they have their multitude of squid-like appendages wrapped around you, barbs digging in and jaws unhinging and rotating to better fit you in one bite.

On the bright side, the last couple of times you survived your encounter and only lost eight fingers.

Day 1,993

All my clothes are stained pink from the wash and my baby has been awfully silent for the past five hours.

The birds outside are humming the same dirge we played when we buried my grandmother.

Something with fins the size of my torso occasionally surfaces in my little pond... I miss my goldfish.

Everything I drink tastes like iron and I'm too afraid to check the mirrors so I only drink tomato juice.

My neighbour's skin has finally re-emerged, now hung from his flagpole like he always wanted.

The construction-in-progress sign whispers "follow the diversion", the old road sign begs me to go home.



Somewhere in all of this I remember where I left the baby and how his little fists couldn't break the glass.

I remember to place fresh flowers on her grave and hear the birds thank me in her voice.

I remember to leave a plate of diced meat by the water and pretend I don't see the hands that reach for it.

I remember where the meat came from and how bitter it is to eat the evidence.

I remember another neighbour who asked too many questions and I make a note to pay them a visit.

I remember the best place to hide what I cannot consume and pray the signs will keep my secret.



My husband will ask me how my day has been and where the baby is.

I'll bring out the neighbour's child and hope he doesn't care enough to notice.

I did promise it wouldn't happen again and he hates it when I have to lie.

Day 1,992

There haven't been trees in the city centre for over three hundred years and yet we hear the wind brush through unseen branches every night. I've always found it unsettling while the rest of my family either pretend to not hear it or say its relaxing, like being in the middle of a peaceful forest.

None of them have seen the shapes of bodies hanging from the streetlights or heard necks snap as they drop from the ghosts of the gallows that were here long before our little apartment. If I'm quiet enough I can watch the crowds gather and see the dead men beg for mercy before they fall.

I used to do this every night but last time someone in the crowd turned around and saw me. Their mouth gaped wide with a shriek I couldn't hear and they all stared at me, slowly walking away from the gallows as the hanging man wept with joy and faded into nothingness.

Now I can't look out any window at night without seeing their faces pressed so tightly against the glass that I can't see anything past them. I don't even want to know what will happen when I eventually need to go out at night but I have a feeling I'll replace the man I freed.

Day 1,991

You want to know what the worst thing about a ghost is?

They can't be killed - they have to choose to die and what damned being actually wants to die?

Not them.


It's my job to kill them and in my fifty-something years I've not even managed to put a dent in one. I just persuade them to leave and offer them better and brighter haunting grounds. Not that my clients know, of course. In their eyes I'm a saint sent by the church to banish evil spirits and free them from their perceived sins and hidden crimes.


Did you know most ghosts are actually the remnants of intense emotions like anger, lust or fear?


I've lost count of all the times a man has asked me to rid his home of some cursed object or poltergeist and I find he's lost three children by beating them to death and his wife's grief won't let them move on or their fear rots away at their little souls until they're just bundles of instinct lashing out to protect themselves.

Those are the worst ones. The ones who lose all ability to be reasoned with by anything other than the one person they remember trusting, if they remember anything at all. Sometimes all I can do is burn the house and salt the ground to lock them there and declare it consecrated ground so the living stay away.

Day 1,990

The boy should have been dead, I mean he sure as hell looked dead. His hands were that mottled bluish corpsey colour you see on true crime shows and possibly-illegal forums. This and the huge chunk missing from the front of his head and the way his rotting brain just seeped sluggishly down his stained and swollen face was also a bit of a giveaway that he was a tad... not alive.

He seemed fine though, not talkative and not exactly stable on his feet but happy enough to take my hand in his cold, squishy, wriggly-beneath-the-surface hand and lead me to a board game that was dusty enough to have been set up many years ago.

I wanted to run for the damned hills to be honest with you but he looked so hopeful I found myself taking a seat on the floor and rolling the dice. Snakes and ladders is a game as old as time, I swear, and it looked like it was the boy's favourite by the way he jolted and grinned with every move either of us made.

Meanwhile downstairs, two bodies were slumped in the living room, clutching each other against whatever had torn them to shreds. They were just as rotten as the boy so I reckon they all died around the same time but somehow the boy was still alive and kicking.

I tried to look happy when he got to a ladder, wondering how he'd react if I won. Would he get angry, kill me and stick me on the sofa with dear old mum and dad or would I be allowed to go downstairs and leave? I couldn't tell at that point, I just kept praying for his good mood to stay, no matter the outcome.

In the end I won by a single space and he made the first sound I'd heard from him all evening. A harsh shrieking cry that echoed around the otherwise bare room and left my ears ringing. He ran away in that strange half-scuttle-half-lunge movement he'd first ambushed me with and I found myself alone, save for the sound of him heading into the attic.

I took my chance and fled as quietly as I could, barely reaching my car at the end of their driveway by the time he got to the front door. In one hand he clutched the doorframe and in the other a board game - Cluedo. He waved the box at me, showing how varying photos of his parents had replaced all of the characters.

A part of me felt pity for him - he was just a child and he only wanted someone to play games with. In the end I drove away and he ran after me until he tripped and broke one of his legs. I caught a glimpse of him trying to run with bone jutting out and falling further and further behind.

I lost him long before I hit the highway but I still wonder if he's running after me to play one more game.

Day 1,989

Its howls always began as snarls, crescendoed to a deep growl and ended in a hiss as sharp as the air rushing from the punctured lungs of its unfortunate prey. For decades it was feared and loathed and hunted to the ends of the island with no mercy and a steadily growing body-count until there was a survivor.

As small as it may have been, the island boasted five campsites that used to be booked solid all summer and then the creature dug itself out from the foundations of a newly built house and the slaughter began. Of course the end of their peaceful island life would be because some daft mainlander called them superstitious instead of right.

Shame it's in poor taste to gloat to the dead but that didn't stop smug looks silently floating about the pubs and quiet corners of the workplace. They never thought they'd be next - the creature was as much a part of the island as they were and it couldn't possibly hate them after all these years, right?

Turns out hate fades slower than all the scars they left it and all the bones they broke when they decided that a child should hold all of their sins until sin itself died. It seemed like a logical thing to do back then and it slid into legend long before the thought of guilt entered their minds.

Then the new house came and private contractors from the mainland broke into the chamber they buried it in and set it loose upon them all. After it had its fill in the house it headed straight for the closest campsite, slowly circling the island one kill at a time again and again and again until someone survived long enough to ideo the attack.

Funny how all it took to regain their mercy was a recording of its howl played in reverse.

That lone word that it cried forced them to remember that it was, and always would be, a child.

A child crying "Sorry" all those years, frightened and hungry and not knowing any other way to be.

Day 1,988

When we first turned our eyes to the stars we saw that they twinkled in and out of view, not quite realising that something vast was moving between them and us. We were gleefully ignorant about the beings that slowly reached for us across the cosmos.

With the creation of the first telescope we caught glimpses of things moving between the stars and thought we were seeing a god. In a way we were right - they were beings of unimaginable scale and power, for their sheer size rather than miraculous abilities.

The better our creations, the more we saw and the less we wanted to see. By the 21st century we finally caught their eye... literally. It must have been ten times the size of the largest star we'd ever seen - VY Canis Majoris - and it was staring right at us with the same fear we all felt at that moment.

We wouldn't see the full ramifications of our actions for almost three thousand years after when it had left our side of the cosmos and moved on to whatever other world attracted its attention without acknowledging its colossal existence.

For the first time in humanity's memory all the stars shone brightly and not a single one twinkled.

Day 1,987

You see a lot of strange things as the harbour master in a small coastal village - mostly mutated fish, strange scars that almost seem to glow in the evening's dim light and stranger tales of impossible creatures. Whatever the oddity of the day may be, you could always trust that the crew were probably mostly still human or at least human adjacent.

And then the crew of the Never My Love II came back from a three month research trip out to Addermoor Island. They looked, sounded and spoke like the crew did before they left but all of them were wearing thick, soaking wet scarves in the middle of November and their eyes were blown so wide they were dark as coals.

When we tried to take their scarves off, just for a joke at first, but they were outraged and howled at us for attacking them. Before we could so much as think of the word sorry they'd all leapt back onto the boat and took off back out to sea.

We didn't hear from them for almost five years and when they finally returned they were barely recognizable.

Save for their scarves.

Day 1,986

When they opened you up they were expecting to find blood and meat and bones.

You gave them wires and titanium and radio chatter where a heartbeat once was.


Always be one step ahead of the butchers, that's what your mother used to say.

They got to her before she could become a meatless mimic like you.


She'd spent all her time making sure you were perfect enough to live like a fleshed being but never die.

Every time a butcher tried to gut you, you hated her that little bit more.

Day 1,985

As you head into town you find all the traffic lights frozen and the streetlights are broken. The sky is filled with strange constellations and the town is dimly lit by those amber dots at every junction. The SatNav knows where you want to go and tells you to switch off your headlights - you need not trust anything else.

And just like that your world narrows down to the harsh light of the map and the faint orange glow that almost seems to be chasing you through deserted street after deserted street after... after shadows moving in ways shadows aren't supposed to move.

They flow in behind you, trying to grab the rear bumper and pry the gas cap off and open the boot and you find yourself speeding up more than you should in a residential area that feels familiar and alien all at once. As soon as you slow to turn at the next junction, the shadows seem to flow up and over you.

The SatNav tells you to keep going, to take a left here and the third exit at a roundabout you can't see because there are shadows swarming your car and you hope and pray that the doors are locked. They should be locked but then again the streetlights should be on and there should be other people.

All you can do is drive and hope that you reach your destination before the shadows finally reach you.

Day 1,984

Outside amidst the first storm of the year, an old sentient war machine yowled at the sky and clawed at the burnt earth as if in doing so it would find its purpose. Anything that could run had already fled for the horizon and those that couldn't either hid or buried themselves, hoping and praying it would leave before it reached them.

As dirt and dismembered corpses were tossed about in the harsh wind and harsher rain, two people shared a pot of tea in the belly of a similar metal beast that succumbed to the elements several decades ago. They didn't speak, they barely moved and every now-and-then they glanced at the hatch as the one-sided battle outside gently rocked their makeshift home.

Glasses and One Eye had survived the existential crises of defunct war machines before and with any luck they hoped to do so once more. It was the main downside of creating weapons that were capable of cunning, they were also capable of questioning their place in the universe when there were no more battles to win and no other machines to conquer.

One Eye once wondered aloud if they might be the last two people alive. Glasses smacked them upside their head for saying something so utterly absurd, though they'd both been thinking it since they stumbled across another massacre point.

Outside their silent anguish and anxious tea-sipping, the war machine stopped beating the earth and wept.

Day 1,983

You stood there, eyes locked with something that shouldn't have been able to exist, something that was very much alive and something you knew would open the fragile glass door that seperated you as soon as your back was turned. Suddenly your friends seemed years away, though they were only a few doors down.

They were the ones who asked you to join them in exploring the local "murder house" - a long abandoned Edwardian house some two hours from civilisation. They were the ones who said you'd get amazing shots of all the old furniture that had been left behind by an unnamed celebrity who died there and definitely had a secret cellar where he killed his groupies.

So far all you'd found was the thing staring at you through the sliding glass doors of the conservatory. You knew they were unlocked - that's how you all got in and you'd barely begun taking photos of the decaying plants when you heard the door slide open and saw it starting to creep inside.

Instinct took the reins and hurled your body forward to slide the door shut with a firm thud. Unfortunately it now meant that you were the only thing stopping it from coming in and it looked so much stronger than you.

It tilted its head from side-to-side as if it was weighing up the pros and cons of barging its way past you - or through you - to get to the others. You held up the only object in your possession, a tiny compact camera, like it could deter the absolute powerhouse of a creature in front of you.

Fear made your sweaty fingers slip and hit the flash button right as it lowered its head down to your level and in an instant the light went off, it threw its head back with a thunderous hiss and backed away. It didn't go far but just far enough for you to lock the sliding door and run to find your friends, assuming they were still alive and there were no other creatures waiting further inside...

Day 1,982

They lived deep beneath the floorboards, or so they told me, deep enough to feel the pulse of the world and certainly too deep for little girls like me to try and dig up. Still I tried to reach them, my little under-friends as I called them.

They first started speaking to me after my parents had gotten into a worse argument than usual that ended in one of the neighbours smashing the kitchen window and threatening to call the police on them. I was hiding in a large cardboard box that was also my wardrobe when I saw one of the floorboards lift up and a withered arm poke out.

There were beady amber eyes further down in the dark that spotted me and the arm withdrew, gently bringing the floorboard back down. I thought that was the end of it until the board just in front of me lifted up and I was properly introduced to my first and closest under-friend.

Names didn't mean anything to them and they refused to even hear mine but somehow we always knew who was speaking to who. In hindsight the little cloud of spores they released whenever they opened their mouths might also have something to do with the mild telepathy...

Regardless, we were friends and they held my hand through countless sleepless nights of loud arguments and thrown objects until one day they decided to take action. They told me that friends helped each other and that they wanted to help me.

All I had to do was close my eyes and wait for them in the living room. And I did. I heard a few faint thumps around me and felt something splash against me cheek but I assumed the ceiling was leaking again. One of them held my hand and led me outside where the police found me about forty minutes later.

I was covered in someone else's blood and the house behind me was eerily silent. I didn't find out whose blood it was until I was old enough to ask for the file and read the full story. Read how my parents managed to brutally murder each other with their bare hands.

I knew it was a lie though. My under-friends said they'd help me and they killed my parents. Sure I went to much nicer foster parents who went on to adopt me but I have a debt hanging over my head. I don't know when they'll ask to collect but I know they will.

Because friends help each other and the floorboards in my new apartment are starting to move.

Day 1,981

They might have been cows once, or maybe deer. It was hard to tell when they were just vague cloudish shaped things that tore up the ground with unseen jaws and let it drop, like they were trying to eat but couldn't stay solid for long enough to. To make matters worse, they travelled in a herd of several thousand.

It's not a bad sight, per se, just unnerving. You'd think they'd stop at night or during bad weather like tye would have when they were alive but, whatever they are, they seem to realise that nothing really affects them and nothing can stop them either... not that we'd know what to try.

The main theory is that they came from the famine lands, thousands of bare acres where a combination of bad weather and several generations using harsh insecticides killed the land beyond repair. Few could afford to move out of the area and fewer still were reluctant to sell their livestock.

Nobody wants to come forward with any kind of death toll but the roaming ghosts of their actions speak for themselves in their silent, perpetual hunger. Maybe they'll stop when they reach the ocean or maybe they'll stop when they finally circle back around to where it all began.

All we can say for sure is that they can't be stopped.

Day 1,980

The aqueduct was clogged with all manner of corpses and bio-scrap that the old Blackbarrow factory spewed out at regular intervals. Once upon a time our town used to come together every Thursday to clear the bodies from water and let all the hazardous slurry drain downstream to be someone else's problem but now we just let it clog and avoid planting anything on the grounds below.

It overruns whenever there's rain but there still seem to be enough gaps between the bodies for some water to flow. Cleaning it out comes up every single town meeting but everyone ends up agreeing that it's too far gone for us to manage now and nobody wants to try asking the factory to reroute its waste disposal after the carnage they sent out last time.

So we just let it all pile up and clear whatever falls down but only if it doesn't move about. Anything with a pulse isn't our problem and if it has any sense it won't make itself our problem neither. All else is more meat and meat-like things for us to burn, bury or biodegrade and scatter to feed the crops.

Day 1,979

They were lost and fearful little things once, many years ago when the lighthouses were still in use and our shores were safe. Their fragile bodies washed ashore and rotted away to a thousand tiny bones for centuries and we never thought anything of it, after all who knows how many fish were caught by the ebb and flow of the tides?

Now we know better. We know that there were survivors who lived to adulthood and found their way back to the shore once more to see where their kin had gone and found nothing but us.

They assumed the worst and we paid dearly for it. 

Day 1,978

His skin weighs heavy against your own, imperfect and too loose in places but he was the closest fit among all the others. Killing one was something you never thought you'd have to do and the memory presses down on you heavier than the body you carried away to skin.

You couldn't bear to do the same to the others so you left them down there, deep in the mines that were supposed to be safe from the chaos that overran the rest of the world but they forgot to account for one thing in their months of preparation.

They never figured that one of their own would want to escape so badly.

You'd only been down there for five days before you wanted to beat them all to death for a thousand little annoyances that slowly but surely began to overwhelm you. You held out for six months- a paragon of patience if ever there was one - and quietly snapped whilst everyone else slept.

They woke up tied together and surrounded by unstable rocks that look like they'd topple with the slightest touch - and they would, you made sure of that. Over the months you measured yourself against them to find the best one to cover your own skin with.

The chaos above had culminated in a new society that wore the skins of their closest kin, hiding their actual face against their daily atrocities. You knew it would be a bloodied hellscape the moment you left the mines but anything was better than one more second with them.

You couldn't feel the warmth of the sun through his skin - you couldn't remove all the meat properly and, in spite of your best efforts, he was starting to smell. It would probably make you stand out against the other, more experienced murderers but someone might teach you to be better.

You'd find a new group and remain until they drove you to kill just like the last group had...

Day 1,977

The bath was full when she got home and the warped figure of her mother lounged inside it, just as bullet-ridden and hateful as she remembered. As those milk white eyes turned their baleful gaze towards her, it was like her childhood never left.

A bloated hand was raised and one blue-tinged finger beckoned her to the bath and back to the last memory she had of her mother trying to end them both with what little life she had left as the tub overflowed with diluted blood. 

Day 1,976

Mist rose up over the riverbanks and spilled onto the crowded road. People shivered in their sleep, hunched together inside their cars as if that would help them fend off the chill that seeped in through the air vents and barely open windows and stole what little warmth remained.

By dawn they would all be dead and their cars would be little more than rust and rubber. They were already starting rot around the edges, allowing more of the mist in and more of their heat out.

A few woke up with enough time to check their surroundings and start their cars. They drove up onto the paths and fled as fast as they could, leaving the sleeping to join the already dead. There was nothing else they could have done. 

Day 1,975

It was a year of change, of growth and of fire. The council always had a penchant for burning what they dubbed "nuisance buildings" which were usually of mild historic significance, barely in use or not-quite dilapidated enough to demolish for no reason.

The old kennels down by the new housing estate were a combination of the three. All it took was a little whisper here and there and a couple of letters stating their concerns for the health of their children when mangy mongrels were so close to their precious, fragile offspring.

The first attempt didn't work. The hired arsonist was found outside, clutching a half-empty jerry can and weeping. There were no casualties that day, nor for the next three months as hired hand after hired hand all collapsed into piles of excelerant and tears.

It didn't succeed until the council themselves left their chambers for the first time in centuries. It would have been cause for great concern if they hadn't made their intentions so blatantly obvious. They weren't out for human blood - they only wanted the kennels gone and they were done hiding behind their constituents.

The kennels may have been barely used but they had never been used for housing dogs, only dog-like things and their shapeless puppies. It was safer to keep them locked away until they fully developed sentience and the ability to be reasoned with.

Nobody knew what would happen if someone were to try and burn them to death. Normally a few dozen iron stakes did the trick but fire was something they never even considered, not when those baleful dozen eyes stared out from behind heavyset horned brows and a tiny voice came from deep beneath asking them if they wanted to cuddle.

The councillors had never been involved with the kennels nor the creatures they housed. All they cared for was the expansion of their territory and they were being prevented - nothing angered them more than an obstacle in their way and nothing pleased them more than a raging inferno of their own creation.

While they celebrated their latest act of violence, the smouldering remains of the burnt kennels pulled themselves together and began to walk. Logic and reason were sent up with the smoke and ash of their former selves. All that remained was instinct and pain.

Together, the dogs marched for town hall.