Day 2,486

A piece of the wall blinked and the intricately patterned paper cracked open to reveal the toothy grin she'd been trying to avoid all these years. In that moment she truly felt that there was nowhere else for her to go, that her only option of escape was to escape life itself and hope the damned thing didn't follow to whatever came after a final breath.

If her lifetime of running had taught her anything, it was how predictable the creature was. Always an eye, a smile and, after a few menacing minutes, hands from the opposite side of whichever room it had managed to squeeze its surprisingly large form into.

Sure as clockwork a sharp crack and a gentle shower of plaster alerted her to the emergence of its hands and she knew it would have already seen to the exits, blocking all save for one so the chase wouldn't end prematurely. They both wanted her to survive but only one of them wanted the chase to carry on to brighter and bolder grounds.

Much as every fibre in her body was begging her to stop, give in and rest for the last time, she ignored it all and took sharp left after sharp right after ducking to avoid the clawed hands trying to sever her Achilles tendon. She would see daylight again and see it skittering about the restaurant behind her, trashing everything in sight until it was certain she had left alive.

Buying her time til it could find her again and it would always find her again,

Day 2,485

When I was a child I used to love sleeping round my friend Lara's house as she lived opposite a toy shop. We'd spend hours plotting a way to sneak in and spend the night surrounded by toys, just playing til the sun came up before sneaking back in time for breakfast. In the mind of a couple seven year old's it was flawless.

Flawless enough for us to try it one night when her parents went to sleep earlier than usual, lulled into a false sense of security by the dozen sleepovers before where we were absolute angels. And so as soon as we heard their gentle snoring, we set out to accomplish the greatest heist a child could manage.

It went great at first - the window we'd slightly propped open with a pamphlet slid back with ease and back then a basic lock was as secure as you could get so soon as we were past that we were golden. I reckon we'd been playing by flashlight for about twenty or thirty minutes when we heard the rear door unlock.

Nobody was supposed to be there after closing and we thought that if we were caught the worst we'd face is jail for the night. Kidnapping or murder never once crossed our minds until we peered out from our hiding place among a pile of teddy bears and saw the shop owner and his son lugging a long black bag inside.

They quickly checked the shutters, making sure nobody could see inside as they propped the bag against a wall and cut it open, revealing a bruised and bleeding man who was barely conscious. We watched for hours as they beat him, asked him questions about his job (truck driver, his family (newlywed, first kid on the way), and his route (dockside, postal centre, indie courier sites).

I honestly don't know if he died then or when they eventually wrapped the bag back up with the same tape they used to wrap up presents at Christmas but as soon as we heard the rear door close we rushed for the open window, scraping our arms and knees as we climbed the shelves to get back outside where we waited til their delivery van had driven away.

True to our plan we made it back and under the covers with a handful of minutes to spare before Lara's parents woke up and began to make breakfast. They assumed we'd spent the night quietly playing and that was why we were so tired. We didn't bother to correct them - in our minds we thought we'd be the ones in trouble and taken to jail, not the shop owner and his son who might have killed a man.

We never talked about that night afterwards and the sleepovers weren't the same without the thrill of planning a daring heist. Eventually we drifted apart as friends and to this day we rarely say more than a passing hello but I know she still thinks about that night - we both do every time we pass the cheerful little shop and catch a glimpse of the freshly painted red walls.

Day 2,484

When I saw it, it looked just like my brother did the day he drowned. It stared at me with his terrified eyes as it pretended to gasp for air, arms frantically waving like it was trying to swim when I could damn well see its mouth a few feet below, wide open and waiting for me to dive in after a ghost.

There were plenty of warnings about it both in the village and all along the lake - the face stealing fish of Abbots Grimpnestle. They were supposed to act as a deterrent, but if anything the act of drawing attention to something that could reach into your mind and bring back the face of a dead loved one overruled all common sense.

At least, it did for me.

I only wanted to see him one last time, to try and reach for him like I never managed to when we were children and the ice closed up over him before I was even halfway back to shore to call for help. Now I could reach down to him and finally have closure.

Sure, I might end up bringing half my family here after me, all hoping to see my face smiling and reaching for them like I was doing for my brother but then we'd all end up in the same place. We'd all have closure, peace and a place for our bodies to rest that won't be dug up to make way for new houses or shops.

It doesn't matter any more, not now that I can hold his hands again.

Day 2,483

It might not have been human any more but it still had a few human habits drilled into its head, a few common courtesies that it hadn't managed to shake off and it was only these minor social intricacies that meant she'd outlived everyone else in the small countryside hostel.

Everything had seemed so normal during the day, just another quaint little stop somewhere just past the Scottish border on their trip to the warmer beaches on the far south of England. It may have been early in the summer months but it seemed like everybody had the same idea and they were lucky enough to book the last room in the house.

Dinner was uneventful, just some meaty stew and a local brew that tasted as mild as the other but went down easy enough at least. One-by-one the dining room cleared and all the guests trickled away into their rooms for the night. All was quiet, calm and perfectly normal til the sun went down.

Soon as the sun finished setting, the sole member of staff dropped the plates they'd been washing as every bone in their body cracked, shifted and settled into something somewhat human, mostly other. Even their eyes went from a washed out blue to bloodshot grey in a matter of seconds.

The hunt began as the guests gradually awoke to the sounds of screaming cut short and the wet squelch of teeth digging into heavily bleeding flesh. Sunrise was six hours away which was usually more than enough time to clear the hostel ready for fresh guests the next day and fresh meat for the stew.

This was not a usual night unfortunately. This would be the night that someone dared to survive by hiding in locked bathrooms, pretending to be on the phone and pouring drink after drink after drink til the wretched monster was incoherent and sobbing into bloodstained carpets as it tried and failed to complete the hunt.

There would no longer be fresh guests or fresh meat for tomorrow's stew.

Day 2,482

I used to be big into urbex - the creepier and more isolated the place was, the better it was as far as I was concerned. I've been just about everywhere you can go to in this country - schoolhouses, asylums, prisons and even an abandoned village on a remote island out in the Hebrides.

I could have kept going for the rest of my days but the last place we went, we saw something we shouldn't have and I barely made it out alive. You'd think an old shop in the middle of town couldn't possibly be even vaguely dangerous and you'd be wrong.

There were five of us that day - me, Nazim, Taine, Jeannie and Esmae who found the entry point about a few days earlier and begged us to go in there with her. She'd never led us wrong before, we didn't have a single reason not to trust her or suspect the place was dodgy.

It only made their deaths that little bit more tragic.

They climbed in through the damaged corner of a loading bay door round the back, stepping into a smallish storage area that felt ten degrees colder than the outside. It hadn't been five minutes but they already felt ill at ease, eyes trying to peer into every darkened corner for the source of their anxiety.

All they saw at first was a few empty shelving racks roughly pushed to one side and the occasional dead mouse. Nothing that would explain why the air smelled like death and sweat, nothing that would explain why they all felt like they were being watched.

When they found the entrance to the shop floor they assumed the feeling would go away but in the brief moment between opening the door and stepping into the next room, they caught a glimpse of the broken ducts on the ceiling moving. They caught the briefest glimpse of its face.

It was enough to send them sprinting for the loading bay and the presumed safety of the outside without any of them looking up and noticing that the ducts spanned the entirety of the building. It already knew where they were heading and was already waiting to cut them off.

I was the only one who made it out and only because it had its arms and mouth full of my friends.

Day 2,481

It squatted in the corner of the ceiling, limbs splayed and eyes fixed on the terrified family huddling below. They'd been so lively and vibrant before the youngest looked up and screamed at the sight of it. Though this was hardly the first of the family's transgressions it was likely to be their last.

This started several years ago when the newlywed couple moved into the semi-isolated home, having ignored the thousand and one warning signs scattered about the place. From the claw marks around every door handle to the lingering metallic taste in the air to the way that dead flies lined every windowsill to the tiny door in the basement that hadn't been unlocked since the original owners passed away out in the woods.

It was cheap and they were sold as soon as the agent showed them just how little it would take to set them up with a happy family home. Unfortunately this one cost less so they pretended everything was perfect and prayed it would remain so until they were old enough to head to a retirement home instead.

Every year was a countdown to the day their children would pick out a beautiful final home for them and they could leave this moderately cursed place to rot. If the youngest hadn't seen it then they could have lived long enough to go out in their sleep, peaceful and having lived a full life.

Instead their final moments came upon them suddenly and silently, not even leaving them enough time to scream.

Day 2,480

The blood I licked from my lips was no longer mine, I realised as I stared into my own lifeless eyes. I watched myself take one final staggered inhale that cut out halfway and my body gently curled in on itself with a single, steady exhale.

I don't know how long I crouched there, entranced by the minuscule flecks of blood that flew out on that final breath but god it was beautiful. Perhaps in that brief moment I considered myself to be a beautiful creature for the first time.

It would be several months before I stopped double-taking every reflection, before I accepted that this body was now mine and everything I had been before was curled up and rotting a few feet beneath a wild pig I killed to hide myself.

I suppose I'll always think of that body as being more me than my current one.

Day 2,479

I think I died last week.

I normally go about a week before I have to venture into town for groceries and I normally go late enough at night that there's almost nobody around. Nothing personal, just a preference of mine to avoid trouble where I can and if life's taught me anything it's that people cause trouble without a second thought.

So the other night I stopped by the usual gas station for a quick refill before carrying on into town and I couldn't work my arms to pick up the pump - I couldn't even walk more than a foot from the car before my legs hit some kind of barrier and began to hiss and smoke like they were on fire.

Didn't hurt one bit but the shock of the sight made me scream and jump back, hitting the car and setting the damned alarm off. The whole chaos of the scene made the cashier run outside, phone and torch in hand asking who's there and if they need help.

I yelled back that I did, that something was very wrong but he acted like he couldn't hear me, like I wasn't even standing there beside my car just trying to get some damned fuel. He walked right past me and peered into my car windows, asking again if anyone was there, ignoring me again and dialing out for help when he spotted something in the driver's seat.

Couldn't have been me - I was standing right by the car.

By the car - I was by the car whe

I think I died last week...

Day 2,478

The library was slowly sinking into the river, bit and pieces carried downstream like paper in a hurricane. Nobody was going to stop this. Nobody even wanted to consider, no matter how briefly, saving so much as a scrap of carpet from there. No, they were quite content to watch nature banish it from the safe vantage points behind the electrified fencing that surrounded the premises.

A few weeks ago the chain and padlock on the front doors went missing. The next day the doors were found wide open and the surrounding ground was covered in footprints that all led out to the fence. The quiet tension held for a further five days as reporters set up streaming points in the trees, out of sight of the officers patrolling and reinforcing the perimeter.

It happened in the blink of an eye.

The fence decayed and collapsed, the officers aged and died, the road cracked and heaved as trees sprouted through it and the bones all around. If it hadn't been for the hidden streaming points set up in the trees, we might never have known what happened.

It's been quiet again since that day but the cameras are still live, still broadcasting and we are all waiting for the next stage of whatever this event is turning into. Maybe it's already spread like the trees and the towns on the mainland are gone.

I pray we'll never find out.

Day 2,477

Broken hands clutched the side of the wall so hard their knuckles turned white through the blood and the bruising. She couldn't see the rest of the person but she could hear them. Each breath was a forced, staggered inhale and a rattled exhale that made it sound like they were on death's door.

She hated closing the store for exactly this reason - the lingering things that usually kept to the quieter corners f the warehouse that then came out after hours, terrified and starving and more than happy to clear up after the mess they inevitably make if they catch anyone.

It wasn't supposed to be her shift, she generally did everything she possibly could to avoid closing and especially avoid closing alone. Having one of the new recruits was her preferred option - meat to throw at them while she cashed up and closed up for the night.

Was it cruel to use new workers as bait? Sure, but they all sign the same contract with the same waiver on page nine just in case they survive being caught. She once met a former employee who'd survived and every day their heavily scarred face comes into her mind as the afternoon rolls by.

If she was lucky she'd survive but with each passing minute another pair of hands came out to clutch the wall.

Day 2,476

It took her a while to realise why she felt so unsettled that night, why the air felt like everything was holding its breath and hiding away, why she felt like she was being watched. It wasn't the complete lack of stars or clouds in the sky, it wasn't just the silence either.

It was the moon gazing down with sharp pale eyes.

It was feeling the sky bend and bow rhythmically as the colossal creature breathed.

It was the tendrils seeping their way across the streets, retreating when they ensnare something or someone.

It hadn't spotted her yet but she could hear it opening the front door.

Day 2,475

You'd think that working in a small town cinema would be fun, easy and nothing to write home about. You'd think it's only selling tickets and food and a bit of cleaning, maybe watch a cheeky film on your break. You'd think it was a safe place and it should have been. It really should have been.

And I suppose it was until I caught the tail end of something that was never meant for human eyes. It was the last show of the night and I was on clean-up duty. Instead of a normal audience, I stumbled across a crowd of vaguely human-shaped beings all staring at static - no, staring at a figure inside the static.

A figure who looked right at me and told me to get out. Soon as they said that, everyone's head's whipped around, trying to see me in the dark. I hit one of the doors and crept back to hide inside the cleaning cupboard, holding my breath as the audience gradually shifted back to normal human shapes before they went to look for me.

I can't let them know that I saw them staring at the shape inside the static screen - they'd never let me leave here alive. I'd end up the same visceral mess in some nameless scrapyard as Irma did, or rather, as they did to Irma when they heard her talking about it on the phone.

A few of us overheard her telling the mystery recipient about the shape within the static but we thought it was one of those indie artsy films the manager liked to play on the smaller screens. I never thought it was real and I sure as hell never thought I'd get mixed up in something like this.

I'm back at work tomorrow night and I know that more than my coworkers will be expecting me.

Day 2,474

It had been raining for weeks and the car park at the base of his apartment was flooded. They'd been trying to evacuate for several days now but every attempt ended with either loss of equipment or loss of life. There was meant to be another attempt that morning but morning had long since faded into evening and the only life around them was a few seabirds scavenging the remains in the car park.

They were left with two awful choices -stay and die slowly or leave and risk drowning. While neither was particularly appealing most were desperate enough for their freedom that the thought of such a painful death didn't seem nearly as bad as watching everyone else waste away, each dwindling survivor debating when the best time to consider cannibalism might be.

He had been declared the leader of the doomed operation, mostly for the fact that the air mattress they were planning to use as a raft was his and it seemed rude to not put him in charge of everything else. People love a leader, someone to make the best and worst decisions - someone to blame and attack when it all inevitably goes wrong.

He suggested they send scouts ahead, keeping the air mattress tethered so they'd have a much harder time trying to abandon the rest if they found suitable escape routes down the street. As they drifted across the car park, heads almost scraping the ceiling, not once did he stop to consider where all the bodies had gone too or the birds that had been growing fat from the carnage.

The thought might not have crossed his mind at all had it not been for the sudden rippling from one of the far corners that gradually became the wake of something unpleasantly large swimming straight for their fragile raft. By that point they were almost at the exit, so close to fresh air and open sunlight that they kept going, after all when your options are likely death either way then the cause of said death doesn't really matter.

The teeth came from below, snaring the raft and puncturing it with every intent to wreak the same havoc upon them soon after. All the while the apartment tower's remaining survivors fled, dropping the tether and locking the door behind them.

They were dead as soon as they touched the water.

Day 2,473

He was found under the pier, hands bound to his feet with his wife's hair. She still hadn't washed up but there was enough dried blood on his clothing to suggest she'd been murdered on land and he'd been killed by something in the lake. At that point we didn't know too much more and called it a murder suicide so we could close the case.

If only that damned creature hadn't washed ashore.

See, his face was contorted into a grin so wide it literally split the skin on either side of his mouth. We initially assumed it was rigormortis or some kind of post mortem interference until we cut open his head to examine his brain and found it missing. There was a smallish hole towards the back of the skull and when we flipped him and saw there was some kind of large puncture mark on the back of his neck.

Much like a mosquito, something ad dug into the base of his skull and cleared him out completely.

Soon as that creature was brought in by a couple of very confused fishermen, we knew we'd found one of the killers (possibly the sole killer but until the wife's body turns up we'll never know for certain). It would have looked human from enough of a distance and under the water but on land and up close it was anything but.

I doubt I'll ever forget those wide open eyes, the mouth parted slightly like it had been surprised.

That mouth though. That circular, leechlike mouth full of hollow and serrated teeth matched up with his neck wound perfectly. That creature had killed him and for all we knew the lake was full of them, minus the one we now have in a secured drawer awaiting pickup from some very concerned biologists.

The case is still officially a murder suicide, still officially closed.

And her body still hasn't been found.

Day 2,472

When the body bag sat up and asked me what I was doing, I knew it was going to be one of those days. It used to only happen maybe once in a blue moon when we received remains from the police's morgue per the family's request. Violent deaths never settle easy and when we get them they often refuse to believe that they're dead.

The current body bag situation was known in life as Melissa O'brien and the peaceful remains I was working on was her nine year old daughter Aubrey. Drunk drivers often cause restless corpses, they're either killed too quickly to comprehend or they suffer so immensely that rest isn't possible until their killer is jailed.

There's not always anything we can do - sometimes we manage to comfort them and they slip back into death as easy as a baby falling asleep and sometimes we have to cut in through the back of their necks to remove their vocal chords, sew their mouths shut and pray they don't make a scene at their funeral.

This situation turned into the latter when she unzipped her bag and saw the tiny corpse in my arms.

Day 2,471

Chancellor Windthrope originated the rule that the university's football field should never be left in the dark back in the late 1800's and it's been kept lit ever since. It used to be a series of torches, then gas lanterns and now we have floodlights so intense you can see them from the very outskirts of town.

It absolutely ruins the night sky - it's always dawn in one corner and the university refuses to shut them down stating that old rule as if it was an enforceable common law rather than the mad whims of a dead old man. Apparently half the place's funds are tied into that rule and breaking it forfeits the entire grounds or something but that's just a rumour.

We found out what old Windthrope was protecting us from when a power cut finally severed the floodlight's connection to both the main and backup generators. For once we had a calm night sky until the ground started shaking and the air filled with the sounds of thousands of people begging and screaming.

A plague pit. They built the damned uni on top of a plague pit that had never been visited by a priest, never officially noted down and by the bones that were found in the morning, half the people in there had been buried alive! It's no wonder they caused such a fuss when it gets dark.

They killed seventy six people that night, mostly students but a few staff were dragged back to the pit where their broken bones and bloodied clothes were found among the others. Nowadays the plague can be cured with a simple course of antibiotics that kick it within a fortnight, thank god for it too - anyone the restless dead touched caught the damned thing near instantly.

The rest of the town was put on watch and given the warning symptoms just in case while the uni got to work installing more and more backup generators to ensure it never happened again. Nobody's willing to go too near the field now though, not with the way the ground creaks and the air seems to whisper with the voices of a thousand agony-struck souls.

Day 2,470

It looked like a cluster of dead branches until it started to move, curling and uncurling with all the ease of well oiled hydraulics. In the dim evening light and dense undergrowth it blended in seamlessly to the point where anyone walking would easily miss them.

She'd been busy retying her shoelaces and fallen behind her friends, now distracted in her crouched position by the clusters of dead branches now crawling all around her. Calling for her friends was her first instinct and one that she quickly rejected, not wanting to draw unwanted attention and not knowing exactly what these creatures were capable of.

She reached for her phone instead, moving slow as molasses off a spoon and praying they didn't notice. Her fingers flew across the keypad as she desperately tried to reach her friends and get them to turn back for her, claiming she was hurt and needed their help - it wasn't entirely untrue either.

Instead of typing back, she heard them call out for her and head towards her current hiding place, completely unaware that they were walking among monsters. She tried to tell them to be quiet but they were too worried, too busy calling out to glance at their phones and see her frantic messages.

 She didn't see how it happened. She only heard them scream, heard meat tearing and and several thuds as their bodies dropped. The dead branches nearby all scuttled off towards the carnage, leaving her free to run the other way.

She did not look back. 

Day 2,469

I woke up a few seconds before the bus hit the water, the impact drove my head against the window and I heard something crack before everything went dark. When I woke up again I saw dark shapes moving about in the water outside, unable to properly see what they were through the spiderweb fracturing of the glass.

It still felt like we were falling, even though I could clearly see the riverbed through the windscreen, and everything started to spin whenever I tried to move my head. I ended up lying down with my head tilted so I could see part of the aisle still, not that there was anyone in my line of sight.

I remember distantly thinking how strange it was that a bus full of people was suddenly reduced to nobody but me and how there was no water leaking through the glass that continued to break beneath my head. If it wasn't for the searing pain and dizziness whenever I tried to move I would have assumed I was dreaming.

Dreaming would explain the hands that pressed against the glass from the outside, hands that I was convinced belonged to the missing passengers who were now trying to save me from their fate. It would have been easy to call it a hallucination if they hadn't found handprints on the other side of the windows when they eventually managed to recover the bus.

Nobody quite knows how I managed to survive down there long enough to be recovered but they did find everyone else. They never left, I was just too concussed to see properly but they'd all died either on impact or shortly after, leaving me the sole survivor.

I'm still convinced that they're out there in the water and that they kept me alive.

I just don't know why.

Day 2,468

It wasn't alive, it shouldn't have been able to move at all let alone offer her an open-mouthed smile full of discoloured teeth as she walked by her late aunt's flower shop. They found her face down in a pool of her own blood, surrounded by broken glass and carefully arranged flowers - all golden like a halo.

The police didn't manage to find where the broken glass used to slit her throat came from but there was blood on her seven foot tall teddy bear's paws. The same bear that was locked in a staring contest with her niece, the thin glass separating them quietly creaking as the teddy pushed against it with both stained paws.

She couldn't have moved if she'd wanted to. Not with how intensely it stared at her through powder blue eyes that always reminded her of her grandfather's watery gaze. He vanished a short while after arguing with her aunt and uncle, sending them the teddy as an apology and never being seen again.

All those years of wondering why it gave her that creeping feeling of familiarity now suddenly snapping into place as she uttered a near silent "Grandpa?". Her breath gently fogged the glass that no longer creaked as arms were lowered and the head began to nod.

She told the police that when she'd gone to sort through her late aunt's belongings she noticed an awful smell coming from inside the bear and wondered if the murderer had stashed their weapon inside it. What they found instead were human remains, fairly well preserved too.

His eyes had been wide open all this time and finally he could be laid to rest.

Day 2,467

The hospital floor was full of multi-coloured lines meant to lead you to the right ward - red for radiation, green for gastronomy, blue for blood tests etcetera. The sole purpose of these lines was to stop people from wandering between wards and potentially spreading sickness and it almost worked.

But she'd been following the grey line for about an hour now, all the rooms around her were locked, the lights seemed to be getting more spaced apart and the grey was transitioning into black. She had no idea what it meant but seeing that the singular line split into dozens of branches that ran into every side room didn't inspire confidence.

Peering through the windows as she passed, she either saw swirling emptiness or hauntingly familiar shuddering shapes that all bore an unsettling resemblance to someone she knew. When she came across a door with her name on it she immediately tried the handle, only to find it locked.

The polite sound of someone clearing their throat behind her made her turn to see that the blank wall was now a reception area with an immense warm shape crammed behind the desk. Its name tag read 'Barbara' and it told her that she needed to wait to be seen. Helpless to think of a reason to leave, she sat on an uncomfortably warm chair and began her wait.

A small window behind Barbara showed the sun rising and setting about eight times before a faceless figure wearing a lab coat and holding a clipboard emerged from the door bearing her name and calling her to enter. The chair whispered a faint "goodbye" as she left and she failed to suppress a shudder.

The room she was led into looked exactly like her bedroom and a great wave of exhaustion hit her - she was out before her head could even hit the pillow, waking up fifteen hours later in her own home, car parked outside and utterly convinced that she'd dreamt it all up. Until she saw a copy of her results on the kitchen counter.

Day 2,466

I was sitting on the picnic bench by the lakeside when I saw it staring at me from a few miles out, occasionally ducking under the larger waves but still gently floating towards me. Honestly I thought it was a prank at first, one of those 'make a fake monster and film people's fear' kind of deals but the closer it got the more real it looked until it started having to lift itself up on the lake-bed and walk towards me instead.

Imagine a whale and make it roughly the size of a cow, give it front facing green eyes and skin that writhed like maggots in jello - don't forget a mouth that stretches halfway down its neckless body and fins that end in thick birdlike claws. Imagine it staring at you so intently you forget to breathe - you forget to blink until it exhales and the sheer stench of it forces you into movement again.

I've never moved so carefully in my life, not sure if the creature was capable of moving as quickly on land as it did through the water and not wanting to find out. I was on my bike before it had fully emerged and ready to tear away the second it looked like it might want to charge at me but the moment never came.

It just lay there, half in the water and half propped on those monstrous fins, eyes locked with mine all the while. It could have been minutes or hours but it began to retreat, I thought that it got bored and felt relief pulling me down into the handlebars when I felt the gentle, rhythmic warmth of something very large breathing down my back.

Day 2,465

The car crept along the narrow country lanes, headlights off and following maps that had been etched into skin during the scant daylight hours. They couldn't afford to be seen by the Hlæw that still patrolled the quieter areas between cities, hurling their bodies on top of anything that moved and ejecting spines coated in a deadly neurotoxin - drinking bleach would be a quicker and kinder way to go.

Still, travelling at night became the safest option when the electrified fences that used to contain the Hlæw broke down. Sure some folks will claim vandalism by gangs who now profit from safely transporting goods and people alike while others say the Hlæw broke it themselves and they deserve to be free.

The rest of the country just wants to survive the night journeys and see their loved ones again so they carve maps into their flesh, they spend their nights crossing the labyrinthine backroads and they spend their days hiding underneath the car seats, holding their breath and praying the Hlæw move on.

The road behind is paved with the wrecked cars and half-dissolved corpses of everyone who's failed.

Day 2,464

I stood by the car door listening to the sounds of several people walking towards me and seeing nothing but an empty parking lot. The snow covered ground was only disturbed by my footprints and a few old tire tracks that were already filling in as the weather stubbornly refused to improve.

As far as I could tell, I was surrounded and they were all whispering vague descriptions of me to each other though I still couldn't see anyone or anything aside from the few cars still parked. They each took one single step forward that should have put them within arm's reach of me.

I felt gentle puffs of warm air as one of the invisible things leaned towards me, getting close enough to my face that all I could feel was them breathing against my skin. Two words were quietly whispered against my cheek "not tonight" and the warmth retreated.

They all retreated, footsteps getting farther and farther away until I felt like I was alone again, until I felt like I could move enough to head into my apartment. I still felt unseen eyes watching me but the only footsteps I heard were my own so I wrongly assumed that I was alone.

I maintained that assumption til I tried to close my front door and a frostbitten hand reached around to stop it.

Day 2,463

Wet chewing filled his ears as he slowly regained consciousness in time to see a child's blood-soaked thumb pop out his friend's eye and stuff it into an already overflowing mouth. The air smelled so strongly of iron and death that he started to vomit, forcing it down and praying the feasting children didn't notice the convulsions.

A loud thump from the hallway caught their attention, sending them into a frenzy of skittering limbs and blood-frothed mouths as they dashed towards it. He barely had enough time to get to the nearest broken window and fall out of it, landing with enough force to finally jolt the campfire dinner right out of him and all over his hands as he crouched, heaving, panting and desperately listening to see if he was alone.

The children's excited screeching rang sharply through the otherwise deathly silence of the night - one of the adults must have come back with newer meat. This was good for him, it brought him time enough to hopefully make it back to camp and the trail to the carp park.

Mouthing a quick prayer and checking his surroundings, he set off in the vague direction of the camp site.

Day 2,462

The new housing estate had officially been abandoned for five years but everyone in the surrounding area knew it was still very much inhabited. They weren't human in the slightest but they didn't cause much trouble most of the time, at least not enough for anyone to trouble themselves by reporting it.

Not that they would be believed, not in an official capacity anyway. The authorities had all been told to only acknowledge any human presence in the estate and nothing else existed there. Of course this lack of authoritarian presence only made it the perfect place for vanishings to occur.

It wasn't just runaways living with monstrous beings, it was bodies tied up and left for something else to clean up for their own sake, it was unwanted infants placed on decaying doorsteps to be raised among the inhuman or eaten alive depending on the individual.

The estate wasn't on any map or road sign, as far as the rest of the county was aware it didn't exist. Its neighbours made sure to keep it that way, keep the occupants inside their homes and hope they just vanish as the houses continue their gradual decay.

A few town meetings had suggested speeding up the decay by breaking anything and everything they could, by forcing the inhuman inhabitants out and away from them but it was always met with a resounding "where else would they go?" and there was never a good answer for that.

Day 2,461

It's hard to say what they were before they were strung up on the gallows down by the beach. Without an autopsy to at least confirm their species they're just meat gathering flies and the families of the thousands of missing folk are only left with empty platitudes and empty coffins.

Sometimes one of the missing will turn up, well some of them will. Strung up to high heavens and butchered like a calf on Sunday but present enough to fill a grave and bury their families sorrows with them. Not everybody gets the same grace around here.

It still isn't known exactly what takes the missing and what makes them into those formless heaps all tied up and left to rot on the shoreline. People have left cameras set up all over the place, even had drones flying patrols non-stop for a year but the footage always cuts just as the meat arrives.

So far only three have been foolish enough to wait for the meat to arrive in person and they've been found the next day all trussed up and strung up under the sky and over the sand. The expected meat arrives the next day and is always inhuman, like the being behind this has a pattern or a plan.

They say a dead man's eyes hold the image of their killer, maybe that's why we've yet to find meat with a head.

Day 2,460

She only seems to exist in the split-second after you blink, always hanging from the warehouse ceiling and always smiling down on us. The older lads called her Mary and claimed that seeing her was a sign of good luck, of easy hauls and plenty of staff so nobody would go home unpaid or in pain.

I used to think so too, before I knew better. Before I saw her drop from the ceiling and crush one of the new guys - he'd always been vocally against any mention of her and kept trying to persuade management to call in a priest or whoever to get rid of her. I reckon she took personal offence to that.

It was the first time I got to see her clearly instead of those fragmented snippets between blinks. She was far less human than I thought. Her body seemed to be made entirely of the cabling we used to supply power to the tool sheds, her hair was a tangled mess covered in congealed fluids that kept it sticking bolt upright like she was still hanging up there.

The worst of it was her face - the kindly smile everyone else claimed to see was nowhere to be found among the widely unhinged jaw and rows upon rows of jagged teeth that shut over the new guy's head with a disgustingly wet snap. She scooped up his body and dragged him back up to the ceiling again.

If I told the others what I saw they'd never believe me, I'd just end up making myself a target for her next meal She's back up there as usual now, faintly smiling down upon us all but her eyes keep lingering on me and she follows me around, not that the others have noticed.

That or they know better than to make eye contact with a dead man.

Day 2,459

The world is slowly emptying, bit by bit and piece by piece it fades and all we do is watch as the night sky is gradually and gracefully consumed by the nothingness. We hope that when our time comes it won't be painful. We hope that the nothing will treat us kinder than we've treated ourselves.

We hope it comes before realisation and despair sink in.

It won't be much longer, we are told by people who've been studying the nothingness ever since we caught a glimpse of a not-so-distant star fading into its embrace. They say that all the signs are there and we should start to see the outer worlds vanish one-by-one any day now.

We know our time is rushing to meet us - last night metal signs appeared on every beach in the world.

They were all eighteen feet tall and nearly thirty feet wide, all saying exactly the same thing:

The only other thing is nothing.

Day 2,458

Clusters of crucifixes stuck out against the fresh green foliage of spring, thankfully they were empty. This wouldn't last - it rarely did around here. There was always something to be caught and strung up in appeasement of the faceless, nameless god who'd been influencing the county for a decade or so.

Last month it was nothing but deer - antlers torn fresh from the kill and bound to the wood with fur until the oak was stained so red that no storm would ever wash it clean. Apparently this meant something, some great omen for the rest of the year culminating in a bountiful harvest and long lives for all.

The season before it was birds of all kinds and to this day I'm still finding stray feathers stuck to the walls with dried viscera - I don't care to find out exactly what. I just scrub the walls and wait to find more as soon as I turn around. There always seems to be something I've missed.

Still, it's not as bad as the first season. The first season demanded us to give over our own as the god had given his own. I'll never forget just how quickly our friends and neighbours turned against us, running away with clumps of bloody hair and flesh torn fresh and all nailed to the crucifixes to bring the sun back.

That summer was the most glorious of them all.