Day 2,547

In person he saw them as normal humans but through his camera lens they were only shadows draping themselves over the tables and chairs in his classroom. This meant one of two things, both left an unpleasant feeling in the back of his mind.

These things were as follows:

1. They were not, and had never been, people. He had been hallucinating them as such or they were influencing his mind to perceive them as such and whatever plans they might have among humans, they needed at least him to treat them as normally as possible.

2. They were in fact normal humans and he was losing his damned marbles.

If it were the first he'd begin to wonder just how many others weren't human and if even he was human. He might end up wandering the town with his camera held up like a pair of glasses, enabling him to see hat was truly there and inevitably isolating him from everyone he'd ever known as they all turned out to be nothing more than shadows among man.

If it were the second he might continue to spiral ever outward and away from sanity until he wasn't recognisable as much more than another rambling figure out by the docks, staring out at the sea and swearing all the fish had once been townsfolk.

Day 2,546

Someone was knocking at his window, quick and quiet enough that he might not have noticed them at all if his dog hadn't started to growl and slowly stalk towards the sound. He knew it couldn't be tree branches, not at fifteen storeys high. Couldn't be people either, or so he thought.

The window slid open a crack and his dog sprinted out of the room to cower by the front door. Very faintly, quieter than the knocking, several voices began to whisper let me in, please its so cold and I'm so lost, please say you'll let me stay a while.

He didn't think, didn't even bother to peer through the curtains before he slid his hand across the window and firmly closed it again. He turned the latch and made sure it was locked tight and checked every window in is apartment before risking a look at whatever had gone back to tapping against the glass.

The first words that came to mind were burial pit with the way that the multitude of bodies were twisted and fused by rot. A sharp image appeared in his mind - a family searching for a new home and a cruel village eager for blood to be spilled.

It was almost enough to make him open the window again.

Day 2,545

You can just about see her grin through the melting flesh gradually obscuring more and more of her face as her snow-white skull is bared to the world. Her fingers are limp and facing all the wrong ways as she holds a dripping hand out towards your shaking body.

You extend a hand in kind, not entirely knowing whys as your eyes dart about trying to find the exit among the steam coming from all the pipes she broke to reach you. As her flesh falls to the floor one single finger bone falls into your sweaty open palm and she nods, satisfied, and retreats back into the steam and gloom.

You keep her finger bone safe and close to you at all times as if it were made of gold or diamonds. If anyone else knew about it then they'd surely but two-and-two together, matching the mutilated body that was found the day after you saw her and the finger bone she was missing.

She seemed so very alive when you aw her. So very alive and so very inhuman as she smiled through what must have been agony and no, it wasn't a grimace, there wasn't even the tiniest trace of discomfort on her features. She looked overjoyed like she was sharing a gift.

You dread looking in mirrors just in case you see your face beginning to melt as her gift takes you too.

Day 2,544

There, in the corner of the room, was a tape recorder softly playing my mother's voice begging me to turn around and run. I didn't listen to her of course, never have and never will. Not for a lack of respect mind you, but anger instead. Her mistake led to her becoming trapped in that damned recorder and the thing she unleashed in the process keeps using her to taunt me while it tracks me down.

Bloody nuisance - the both of them.

By now I'm sure she's struck some kind of deal, a me-for-her or my-blood-her-freedom or something along those lines. It'd hardly be the first time I've had to kill whatever she's let loose upon the world with a careless spelling mistake or one slightly crooked glyph.

This time it seems to be a lot smarter than her usual lot. Damn thing's managed to outwit me at almost every turn and tonight was meant to be the end of it. I was supposed to be the first inside the cold war bunker to lay down the traps and use myself as bait but as soon as I entered the main chamber there was mother dearest begging me to run.

Of course she didn't give me enough time to run and instead alerted her creature to my exact location.

I had to crawl through spider-infested air ducts and leg it as soon as I hit the ground.

Bloody thing still managed to get a clawful of my car on the way out.

Day 2,543

The hotel has always been a trap - something that's right where you need it to be, somewhere warm and inviting until you're too far inside and the illusion drops. For me, it was refuge from a nasty storm in a strange new city and the only building with any lights on. I only went in there to wait out the storm for a short while and call a taxi to the hostel I was meant to be staying at.

Peaceful. It all seemed so peaceful at first, so full of life and laughter and dozens of guests all standing around enjoying themselves immensely. None of them could see or hear me. None of them were alive. Still, the lobby felt warm and inviting and I could feel the carpet rolling inwards like a tongue guiding stray food to the back of its throat.

If it hadn't been for the puddle of blood I stepped in, the illusion wouldn't have broken til it was too late for me to do anything more than complete my eternal reservation. I felt the cold liquid splash up my leg and nearly screamed when I saw just how much of it was on the carpet and walls - the hotel was a messy eater.

I ran faster than I'd ever run in my entire life, I ran til my lungs were burning and my legs collapsed under me. I sat there for a good while, drenched and alone and in the literal blink of an eye the convenience store beside me became the hotel - doors wide open, staff trying to usher me inside.

I barely managed to pick myself up and walk away but I know if I'd stayed a moment longer they would have come out and dragged me inside. I've seen it a few times since then, always just when I really need a place to stay and I've managed to outwit it every time so far.

All it'll take is one small slip-up though, one mistake and I'll end up checking in for good.

Day 2,542

She leant against her hallway mirror and fell, passing through the glass like an open doorway, falling backwards into a near-perfect mimicry of her home. Everything looked exactly the same at first glance though the more she looked, the more differences she noticed. Namely the stained gun just beside her foot and bullet casings scattered about like confetti.

It was clear that someone was in the process of clearing up the aftermath of something she didn't want to think about. Between the stains on and beneath the gun, between the half-hearted attempts at brushing the casings into neat little piles, between her home and this was a deep, unnerving, unpleasant feeling that dripped down her spine like melting ice.

She wondered who'd been fighting in the home - she didn't want to think of it as hers, she couldn't think of it as hers in case she started accepting her current circumstance as a new reality. She wondered who'd won and where they went. Were they close by and watching her, waiting for her guard to drop so they could grab the gun and finish the job or was she the only living thing around?

Besides her own pounding heartbeat she realised she'd been hearing a moist, metallic scraping sound coming from her - the -  kitchen. Her hands grabbed the gun and loaded it before she could fully comprehend what she was doing. The cold weight of it felt comfortable and eerily familiar, like she'd always held it.

She walked into her kitchen just in time to see a scrap of flesh fall into an industrial-sized meat grinder, a scrap of flesh with a very familiar tattoo. The same one she got at the local pier when she was seventeen. Beneath the grinder was a perfectly circular hole where her crushed meat fell into, something further below was chewing contentedly.

A sudden sound behind her took her completely by surprise - she turned and shot and could only stare as she saw herself armed with a kitchen knife dripping with someone's fresh blood as she staggered back but did not die. She fired again and again and again until she saw herself fall to the ground for good, the light in her eyes fading to glassy nothingness.

That same nothingness seemed to seep into her as she dragged her corpse to the meat grinder, panting and struggling and eventually throwing herself inside. Once again she heard a sound behind her - a loud thud. She realised she left the gun in the hallway, eyes darting around the kitchen til she spotted the knife, still slick and more importantly, close by.

She grabbed it and quietly ran into the dining room, intent on sneaking behind the intruder.

Perpetuating the cycle without even realising it, without even caring about it.

Feeding the creature beneath the kitchen forever.

Day 2,541

He spent his entire life complaining that there was never enough time, never enough silence and never enough stillness. It wasn't til his death that we found out why he'd always been so fixated on these things, why he lived and died in the attic that he forbid us from ever entering.

When we saw his research, the subjects he'd used and caught our first glimpses of all the things he'd been protecting us from, we desperately wished he'd let us help him. At first I didn't know why he refused to trust us but that quickly changed when a few cousins came to our home late at night, asking questions about things we'd only ever seen in his old notebooks.

They may have been our cousin's bodes but they were being worn like a fresh puppeteer wears a character - sloppy, uncoordinated and saying all the wrong things at the wrong times. They'd finish our sentences before we could, having come close enough to grasp at the edges of our minds just his journals warned they would.

His attic was the only place their powers couldn't reach and so we made it our new home, leaving the rest of the estate to fall into their hands until we could figure out a way to expand the protections he'd put into place - picking up his research with the fervour of zealots.

It's been thirty-odd years since then and we''re not closer than he was.

Day 2,540

The evening settles in as daylight fades to the harsh neons of a city that never cared for the nature it crushes to make way for progress. The workers, the dreamers and everything in between hold their collective breaths until the clocks strike 8pm and the sun is declared dead until morning.

It's a strange little ritual of theirs and one founded on the blood of the forest that had been there for aeons before they dug it out and filled the wound in the earth with concrete and steel rebar. In a way it was a moment of mourning for everything that was there and everyone who's blood is carved into the foundations of their little world.

Accidents happen. This is an unavoidable fact of life as well we all know but accidents on that scale couldn't be anything less than karmic rebellion against the so-called progress of mankind. Dozens died each day until the city was named and then the world around them turned eerily quiet as if contemplating this latest offence.

They never saw it coming - a swarm of beetles so vast it covered the midday sky for three hours and anyone unfortunate enough to be outside or even near an open window was reduced to bones and bloodied clothes in a matter of minutes.

Just when the survivor's thought they might be safe, a second round emerged. Then a third and a fourth and a fifth until there were less than a handful left alive. The clocks struck 8pm and they waited for the final wave to finish them off.

It still hasn't come but the city holds its breath every evening until the clocks cry 8pm and they resume their lives, pretending not to be afraid of every dark cloud or insect they see along the way. The city will need to expand soon and the world around it chitters with anticipation. 

Day 2,539

Blood falls from somewhere up in the canopy, pittering against the ground and staining his clothes as he sprints away from the skeletal hands tearing their way towards him through the undergrowth. His friends are nearby, unseen and only gasping for breath further out in the dark.

He hopes they are his friends but a part of him is screaming that they already died and theirs is the blood on his clothes, falling from the canopy and slicking the ground beneath his feet as he chases their frantic footsteps with his own. At first he wanted to catch up to them - any one of them - now he keeps an even pace behind them and prays they don't realise this before they hit the car park.

Luckily he was the one that drove them there, he had his keys clutched between his knuckles and as the trees begin to thin out, he slows down even further and veers away from the others. He crouches behind an oak tree and tries not to vocalise his terror as he sees bear-like creatures wearing the skins of his friends.

They look around the clearing for him, not realising where he was watching them, not smelling him through all the blood on his clothes and all the blood gently trickling from the fresh skins around them. Were they more cunning they would have faked walking away and hidden near the car instead.

Tonight the stars were in his favour as the creatures walk back into the forest, completely missing his shuddering form. He waits as long as he dare and runs as quietly as he can, hands shaking so badly he drops the keys again and again and again and surely they must have heard him by now?

He doesn't see them standing behind the car until his foot hits the floor and the car shrieks away from it all. His friends will not be found, the blood on his clothing only makes him appear to be the culprit as much as he claims it was a bear or bears.

He will not be believed but he will survive and that in itself is a happy ending.

Day 2,538

The world is quiet here. Quiet and emptier than all the coffins in the churchyard where even the dead got up and walked away with the living, leaving me behind. It's a day that I've decided to name The Calling, as to who or what called everyone and everything away, I still don't know.

Occasionally I'll see the shadow of a bird fly over but they sky is always barren. Sometimes I'll see the shadow of a person following me when there's no physical body in sight. These are such things as I've grown used to and, dare I say, fond of in my own way.

They're all the company I'll get so I name them and speak to them as the soar overhead and run up to me before disappearing like they were nothing more than dust in my eye. They don't like to be seen and it's made me concerned as to what they plan to do if they manage to get too close.

Will these alleged shadows rise up and drag me down?

Will they steal my own shadow away and leave me truly alone?

Do they even mean me any harm or are they just as lost as I am in this new world?

Day 2,537

I finished work later than usual - a bachelorette party crashed in fifteen minutes before closing and caused a scene for about half an hour before staggering away into the night. The others did the bare minimum and ran home fast as they could which left little ol' me to cash out and close up. Again.

My last job of the day was taking the trash out which is where I saw it. At first I thought there were a couple of cats or racoons in the dumpster with all the scrabbling and growling I was hearing, nothing too weird but enough to keep me cautious. The last thing I needed was a rabies scare after that nightmare of a shift.

I did what I usually did to scare pests out of the dumpster - hit it with a broom handle as far back as possible just in case something leapt out. And it did. And it was not even remotely like a cat or a racoon. And it was a lot bigger than I was prepared to deal with.

Mouths. It was just a cluster of mouths in a vaguely humanoid shape, all chewing whatever they'd found in the dumpster. A striped tail dangled out from one of the mouths so I guess I was at least a little bit right about a racoon problem. One mouth in the leg-region vomited out a familiar looking bridal sash which is when I ran back inside to call the cops.

Nothing and nobody was found - the whole bachelorette party vanished and all I could say was exactly what I saw. Luckily it showed up on the CCTV feed but as far as I know it didn't make it any further than the missing persons reports and management still won't talk about it.

They moved me to the midday rush and doubled my pay to keep me quiet.

It hasn't changed anything though, not for me and not for that monster.

All it means is we're now targets and losing staff every damn day.

Day 2,536

A great coastal storm washed the old shipwreck ashore and the crew suffocated again as dry air met water-logged lungs and parched gills. They were found a day or so later, bloated and grey as though they'd died a few hours ago rather than half a century.

It was the kind of case that made the news for all of a day before being taken over by some other shiny new mystery that wasn't quite as visually visceral. The crew were autopsied, the ship  thoroughly examined and eventually sunk a few miles offshore to become a new reef while the crew were cremated and buried en masse.

As soon as their ashes met with the earth it began to rain, and not just your usual storm either. As inland as the graveyard was, the rain was as salty as the sea that killed them and set the sky smelling like it had back when they were alive and voyaging. The unnatural rain didn't let up until the whole graveyard was so flooded it looked like more like a bay than a place of rest.

Day 2,535

The carpet pulsed and twitched underfoot, the booze she'd spilled on it seeming to make it too drowsy and uncoordinated to properly throw her off balance and into one of its stomach rooms. She wasn't much better herself, having only discovered the little trick when she'd dropped her first drink in shock at discovering her husband's corpse dissolving into their honeymoon bed.

Now she was staggering around the hotel resort, taking a swig from any drink she found and pouring the rest onto the floor to keep the building as dazed and easily distracted as she was slowly becoming. Her goal was the reception desk where she hoped she'd find a real phone and not one of the lures she kept hearing inside the stomach rooms she passed.

No matter how normal and inviting they seemed, no matter how comfy the beds looked or how fresh the room service food just over the threshold smelled, she could still smell the acidic decay lingering beneath it all. And she knew better than to try the emergency phones in the hallway after the first one she picked up vomited something boiling that burnt the carpet and made the entire hallway tremble in agony.

But all she had to do was get to reception, use the phone and report a murder. The police would come, she'd give a vague description of a killer and they'd either find her husband's body or join him but she would be outside and alive and that mattered more to her. He would have wanted her to survive.

Did the hotel ever have a reception or did her husband just have the keys with him? Had he planned for her to die instead? Had he planned to die himself? Were they both tricked into coming here to feed whatever creature more the disguise of a hotel?  Were the staff even human?

Soon as she got to reception she'd have her answers.

If she could only find it.

Day 2,534

I used to only see her in my dreams, her body shriveled, limp and hovering like a month-old helium balloon. What I remembered most was the look in her eyes, that cold accusatory glare like I'd done something unspeakable to her and I couldn't understand why she hated me so much until I saw her face in the local newspaper.

They were running a story on the anniversary of her death and appealing for witnesses. Seeing her looking so alive, so happy and normal sent such a sharp bolt of panic and guilt through me that I collapsed, heaving and sobbing as I slowly remembered her and how I left her to die.

We were such close friends back then, we'd spend every free moment together in the woods that separated our houses. In those days your parents happily sent you out into the world and expected you to come home a little worn around the edges. Our parents didn't even know we were friends - they still don't.

It happened one evening when we were about to head back for dinner and got distracted by a deer that ran past us. She wanted to run after it so we did, thoughtless and carefree as children are until a shot rang out and sent us scampering in the opposite direction.

Right into a bunch of old bear traps.

The first caught her ankle, then as she fell one crushed her knee, then her hand, then her arm, then her stomach and finally her throat. She tried to speak but only blood came out and I ran away like I didn't even know her. She was found by the same man who shot the deer we'd been chasing and he was charged with her murder by careless trap placement.

Every night since she appeared in my dreams somewhere, slowly distorting in my memories til she was nothing but a monster. Seeing her old school photo though, seeing her as my childhood best friend again broke my heart like nothing else could.

I know she'll be back to see me when I sleep tonight and I think this time will be the last.

Day 2,533

It was nice watching the stars fall from the sky with you. Even after one struck you dead right next to me, it was still better than being alone or crushed in the panicking stampedes of the cities. You were right to drive us all the way out here, where there was nothing but us, the sky and the faint screams of our world being beaten to death one star at a time.

I hoped we'd be taken out at the same time, that the heat from the fallen star would be so intense it would fuse our very souls together into an inseparable mass of just Us. It didn't happen, obviously. Like a handful of others I was lucky enough to survive but what a mess we've been left with.

Thousands of nuclear plants were left unmanned and we knew we didn't stand a hope in hell of figuring out how to stop them from melting down so we didn't try. We went to wherever we felt safest and waited for death to find us before the fallout began.

So I went back to you, head caved in and oozing maggots but still the man I love.

Day 2,532

I didn't hear it breathing until I'd blocked the cabin door with an old dresser and set up my tent for the night. At first I thought the floor was starting to collapse but I quickly realised that it was far slower and more rhythmic than that.

Somewhere between the floor and the old wooden foundations was enough space for something to squeeze itself into. Somewhere below me was something far larger than me, something whose gentle sleep-breathing was enough to make the floorboards bend and bow.

And I'd set up a tent on top of it.

By then it was far too dark for me to try and hike elsewhere, the paths too muddy for me to want to risk a broken neck just yet. Instead I carefully stowed my tent again, moving slow as the dead and making as little noise as possible before gently hooking a rope up into the rafters where I planned to tie myself into a corner for the night.

It hadn't even been ten minutes since I'd finished rigging a hammock high up in the ceiling before one corner of the floor was lifted away and a human, but unpleasantly elongated, hand began to reach out and feel around as if it knew I'd been there.

I swear I held my breath the whole night watching it methodically lift each corner of the flooring before lifting one side completely up like a trapdoor. It sent the old dresser hurtling to the back of the cabin as it heaved itself through the door and out into the dark and rainy night.

I don't know when or even if it came back that night. I must have dozed off at some point and only woke up when the sun shone through a few cracks in the ceiling and hit my tired eyes. Though the floorboards looked crooked, they looked still enough that I assumed I was alone and made an exit.

I don't know what possessed me to look back but I regret it immensely.

There, squatting on the roof mere inches from where I'd been sleeping, was the creature in its entirety.

It was like someone melted a bear and poured them onto a stretched-out skeleton.

And it waved at me before lifting the roof and climbing back inside.

Day 2,531

For minutes (Or was it hours or days? Time hadn't felt real for so long now...) the only thing he could see in the pitch black nothingness where his street used to be was the lamppost just in front of the park he'd spent most of his childhood summers in. Of course there were no children there now, not at this hour, though this hour seemed to have been the present long enough for him to grow a beard.

He absentmindedly ran his fingers through the new beard he'd always had as he continued to walk towards the light, the only thing in the miasmic, swirling nothing he left behind with every step. Somehow every step felt like it took hours, the air was becoming thicker and thicker until his lungs felt like they were two sacks of water and his vision became hazy all the while the lamppost still shone.

Only now it was finally closer and a figure was pacing within the small confines of its glow.

A hauntingly familiar figure, one he hadn't seen since they buried him - closed casket of course.

And there he thought caving the bastard's head in would delay everything, give him time to run.

There was nothing but time now.

Time and the dead man waiting for him.

If only he could make it to that damned light.

Day 2,530

 For every step I took, it took three and it made sure I could hear how close it was getting. It was still below me on the staircase, somewhere a couple of floors down but well within earshot and gaining ground fast. In daylight or among friends I wouldn't have cared that there was someone below us also heading for the highest floor of the car park but during the evening and all alone - something about that triple step made me afraid.

I started skipping stairs, trying to make it sound like I was walking normally so it wouldn't know that I was distancing us again. I held my keys like knives between my knuckles and kept to the centre of the stairs in case it tried to grab my ankles in passing. I clutched my dead phone so I could pretend to call for help if it came too close.

Whether luck was on my side or it just wanted to prolong the chase, I made it to the topmost floor alone and sprinted to my car. I'd barely made it to the driver's side before I heard the stairway door open and those skittering little triple steps came sprinting towards me.

I slammed myself inside, locked the doors and hit the ignition, headlights suddenly blaring into life just in time to illuminate the creature in front of me. It was like a 9 foot tall calf and a human fetus had been melted together and covered in dirt, those baleful milky eyes stared out from its bulbous head and I quickly realised that it wasn't capable of moving much.

It wasn't what had been following me. Sharp movement to my left spurred me into action as I sped out of there, scraping the walls and nearly breaking through the barriers on my way out. I glanced back one final time to see what looked like a heap of limbs waving at me from the exit.

Day 2,529

The first time I saw a dead person up close was when I was twelve and I'd been roped into helping my grandparents replace their dining room carpet. I remember how their house had always smelled sickly sweet in a way that made me feel anxious but according to my dad it had always been like that, he'd been smelling that strange odour all his life and thought nothing of it.

The carpet was stuck down so tight we had to call in a couple of uncles for backup, the previous homeowners really didn't want anybody ripping it up and as soon as we'd managed to free the corners, we found out why. All underlays get stained over time with spilled drinks or vomit but this was different.

There, right in the middle of the underlay was clearly the outline of a body. All the material around it was stained like they'd been left to bleed out real slow. Of course we called the police soon as we'd recovered from our shock and much to my grandparent's dismay - they didn't want to bring anybody in, they just wanted the new carpet rolled on top and begged us to forget what we saw.

There's honestly no way to prepare yourself for the sudden realisation that your dear grandparents likely killed someone and hid the body beneath the same floors you'd walked across your whole life. When they saw that we'd realised they didn't bother to run or fight, they just sat down in the kitchen with a mug of tea and waited for the cops to arrive.

When the underlay was removed sure enough there they were - mostly paper-thin skin stretched over bones but there nonetheless. First corpse I ever saw and it was my great great grandma. They killed her before she could remove them from her will, before she could add a sudden death or disappearance clause, before she could tell the world that they'd killed before and would readily do so again.

They paid off their mortgage with the blood-drenched inheritance and never bothered to check how much she'd bled before rolling that dense carpet over her still-warm body and leaving the house til the worst of the rotting was done with.

Day 2,528

I don't remember waking up here or falling asleep or anything other than the perpetual present.

Time passes different here, I see an orb in the sky and it is not the sun, though it beats down on me til my eyes feel like coal seared into my skull. My sweat sting the open cuts all across my body that I know were made by someone else but I can't remember their name or face.

I feel the salt breeze of an ocean that died here millions of years ago and all the souls that called it home brush past me on their way out. I wonder if they will sweep me away on the dying tide and carry me out to the afterness of eternity. I winder if this will hurt more than the great light above.

Day 2,527

I've been walking behind myself for quite some time now. Both the me that I am and the me that I follow are desperately trying to go unnoticed and hide how afraid we are but I know how I walk when I'm scared.

I keep trying to close the gap, to reach out and turn the other person around and see myself, see what point in time this me is or if I've managed to accidentally intrude into another dimension and find a totally different me.

We aren't that different from each other of course but the little things are there and they stand out time like the spines of a cactus. I spend a few minutes trying to figure out where I missed these changes in my own life. 

The other me is a fraction taller and I wonder if this is purely chance or a missed opportunity on my part. They are also effortlessly faster, either used to this chase or perhaps into the sports I detested in my own life. 

The other me is also missing a finger on their left hand and I cannot recollect any event in my own life that might have caused this. Maybe it has something to do with the scar snaking it's way down the back of their neck.

I am inches away from myself, barely managing to grasp their shoulder and spin them around only for them to shatter and fall to the ground as broken glass and blood.

I am left alone. 

Day 2,526

Her phone had been buzzing non-stop for thirty minutes saying there was motion at the front door while she stood there staring out at her empty front yard wondering what could possibly be triggering the sensors. She ruled out insects and couldn't see any faulty wiring so she switched it off and shut the door, disabling notifications and making a mental note to call an electrician in the morning.

She was about halfway up the stairs when she heard a faint noise from inside the bathroom. Figuring a cat must have locked themself in there again she went to free the little pest only to freeze in front of the door when she heard the noise so much more clearly - laughter.

Her house keys were a few paces away so she silently grabbed them, unlocked the taser and flung the door open, ready to beat the life out of whoever was stupid enough to break into her home only to come face-to-inhuman face with some kind of living shadow.

Well, most of it appeared to be shadows that faded when the hallway light hit but its eyes and mouth were wide open and on the inside of the glass. It stared at her with something akin to a smile stretched across where its face should be only without the boundaries of a face its mouth just continued to stretch til it hit the walls.

She flicked the bathroom light on and watched it jolt back, now staring at her with eyes and mouth outside of the glass, waiting in front of the window and triggering the motion sensors with lazy swipes of its arms. Assuming that was the end of it, she turned the light off and leapt back as its eyes and mouth passed through the window like it wasn't even there.

Her trembling hand barely managed to turn the light back on before it was inches away from her,now forced back outside where it began to pace. She sped around the house flicking every light switch on and watching as it tried, failed and became increasingly frustrated with her attempts to stop it from entering her home.

She spent the rest of the night patrolling and making sure every light was on while it circled with her, staring her down at every opportunity and triggering the motion alarms when she least expected it. By the time morning came she was practically asleep on her feet,assuming it was all over and ready to go to sleep.

Soon as her head hit the pillow she heard that faint laughter and felt warm breath against the back of her neck.

Day 2,525

The sky is red here inside the church, inside the caverns, inside the valley. We sit and stare up at the sunless heavens, bathing in vermilion and watching strange shadows on the walls watch us right back. There is an uneasy truce that we don't talk about, there is a history that we don't teach and battles we won't name.

The sky is red as it peers through jagged cracks where the caverns once had a ceiling and gleaming against the drenched walls. The source comes from somewhere deep below, deeper than the homes of the strange shadows, deeper than any human has ever gone to and returned from. We miss them and leave them as nameless as the old wars they fought.

The sky is red and we are all the more glad for it. We are surrounded by the uncaring warmth of a goliath being far beyond such petty concepts as gender and personhood. It does not know we exist and we are all the more safe for it, like bacteria on the foot of an elephant we thrive in its ignorance and pray the rains don't come.

Day 2,524

When I was a child I was terrified of going downstairs at night to the point that I used to barricade myself in my room each night by pushing my dresser against the door. Every morning I'd wake up in the back garden, finding that my dresser had been thrown across my room and all my clothes arranged into the word

RUN

My parents got annoyed by this within a week of it starting but by the end of that first month they were just as scared as I was. They'd stayed up and seen what was moving my dresser, placing me in the garden and making that same word out of my clothing. And the bastards wouldn't even tell me who or what it was.

I had to find out for myself a few years later by taking caffeine tablets and narcolepsy meds I ordered slightly illegally online. I had to see what was going on - I wanted answers more than anything I'd ever wanted in my whole life. I should have run away the first time.

Day 2,523

His skin hung from his face like old wallpaper, peeling off in visceral stips that slowly oozed down his shoulders and heavily stained shirt. The woolen green gloves he wore were so soaked that they glistened and dripped red onto the sun-cracked dirt. He didn't seem to notice.

His eyes were as red as a roaring fire and glazed over as a corpse's but he did breathe, albeit staggered and irregular. I'd never been more glad for the dark tint on the caravan's windows as I was when I saw him standing right outside, staring at the neighbouring caravan while he seemed to slowly fall apart.

I jumped when they opened their door, completely unaware of the strange and gruesome figure waiting for them just out of sight. They headed for their car without a care in the world as he staggered towards them. It was sheer luck that he was so slow and they were clearly running a little late as their wheels tore gravel right out of there.

He stood where their cr had been for about half an hour I think - long enough to leave a puddle of blood and fallen skin - before wandering away through the dozen or so rows of caravans. When my neighbours got back I quietly ushered them into my home and told them about him and how he waited for them.

They seemed like such a normal pair before this, just your average retired couple living out the rest of their days in a holiday park by the sea. Only they said this was the fifteenth park they'd lived in and the eight country they'd moved to in as many years of being followed by him.

By their son.

Day 2,522

The cruise liner was sinking and we were so far from land we might as well have been at Point Nemo. Sabotage was whispered among the crew and the word slowly made its way back to us frightened passengers. I wanted to say we were calm and collected but we were anything but.

We outnumbered the crew who either locked themselves away behind thick safety doors deep in the hull or found themselves rounded up and held hostage in the dinner hall. I didn't take part in any of the interrogations, never had the stomach for that kind of violence but Lord how their screams echoed.

I'm honestly glad that the captain managed to barricade herself and a couple of other crew members in the bridge or we would have steered into nothingness and sunk for good. For all we knew we were doing just that and if it hadn't been for her calm rationale we'd all be dead.

Seventy were dead when the coastguard briefly boarded, surveyed the carnage and sped back to shore for as much backup as they could possibly gather. All crew members who hadn't survived the interrogations led by other passengers who didn't even bother to take their bodies down to the ship's morgue - they were just left to rot among the living.

Day 2,521

We stopped hanging out along the waterfront when the tide was low after the first suitcase washed up. I wasn't the one who opened it but I was close enough to vomit at the absolute stench they unleashed. It's amazing how little of a body needs to be present for so little time to accumulate that much odour.

It's been weeks and I swear I still smell it like the damned thing is following me, which it is.

One-by-one everybody who was there for the opening has gone missing - starting with the forensics team, their morticians, the police and my friends. Far as I know I'm the last one left and judging by how strong the smell is, it won't be too long before I find out where they've all been taken to.

Day 2,520

My old boss always told me to leave the overhead light on in the loading bay. He never said why, only that if we let the light go out while we were closing then we'd better have our worldly affairs in order. He was a strange soul like that, always with the old saying and never explaining a damned thing unless he absolutely had to.

Of course we ended up finding out the hard way as you tend to in this line of work. So it went that one night we were due one of those 'storm of the century' weather fronts and had been due the damned thing for almost a week so we figured it was business as usual.

The wind was tearing at our hair and clothes, clouds were screaming across the sky and a bolt of lightening just so happened to strike down the powerlines, leaving us in the screaming dark. Our first thoughts were to call our families and check if they were alright, completely ignoring the loading bay door slowly opening from the outside.

By the time I noticed I was the last one left and a clawed hand the size of a small truck was dragging a pair of legs outside into the storm. I don't know why it didn't kill me too - maybe the four other guys were enough, maybe it couldn't kill you if you noticed it, maybe it just didn't feel like killing me as well.

Either way I quit in the morning, found a desk job on the other side of town and never looked back.

Day 2,519

Did I ever tell you about the time I stayed in the wrong hotel and nearly died?

I got the last two letters of the postcode wrong and thought it was the right travel inn, even if the colours looked slightly off and the staff seemed slightly off and the whole place looked like something out of the titanic's lobby rather than a cheapish hotel chain.

Still, I was exhausted and they seemed to find my booking just fine so I took the moist keycard and left. Thinking back on it, everything there was a little damp to the touch and the carpet felt like it was swaying underneath my feet but I assumed it was all in my head and I'd be fine in the morning.

I woke up to the headboard creaking as the ceiling pushed down on it, the floor utterly drenched and the whole room smelling like decaying meat. I barely managed to grab my suitcase and run, completely forgetting about my shoes as I ran down to the lobby - vaguely remembering you don't use elevators in an emergency and a collapsing room seemed like an emergency,

Only when I reached the lobby it was flooding and the staff were just standing there. As I got closer I saw that the water around them didn't look right, their lower legs and feet didn't look right - they looked like they were being held up by a thick stalk and the word "Anglerfish" came to mind.

It all clicked right then and there - they weren't human and the hotel wasn't a building. It was all a lure and I was on the verge of being consumed by a nine storey tall creature that spoke english well enough to make casual conversation. I had to run.

If you've ever tried running on wet sand you'll know what it felt like when I ran the length of the lobby to reach the front doors that seemed to peel out of the way before I could touch them. It knew that I knew it was alive and it clearly didn't want food that fought.

I must have spent the rest of the night wandering around barefoot and drenched, passing out somewhere along the line as I woke up in a nearby park with a concerned stranger and a couple of officers standing over me. I played it off as a drunken night gone too far and let them help me to the airport.

To this day I haven't been able to find that travel inn again - there isn't even a building where it used to be.

I wonder if I scared it off and made it move on to another dark street to trick another tired traveller.

I wonder how long its been doing this for and how many others like it are out there.

I hope I never find out.

Day 2,518

I first saw it in the dungeons - a series of corridors at uni that overlook one of the lesser-used underground car parks. It reminded me of those old bronze statues in museums only more organic and so distorted it took me a good while to realise that it had been based on a human.

It popped up all over the campus - from the fields out back to the nearby lake to the gymnasium but mostly the underground car parks. We all thought it was some weird installation from the art department but none of the students owned up to it and after seeing it walk by itself, I know they had nothing to do with it.

Sometimes it's gone for a few days, I reckon it goes out to the woods to hunt when the campus rabbits are too fast. Hikers and campers are a slower kind of human after all and people always seem to go missing when it isn't around. I don't want to mention my theories to anyone I know though, not til I have proof.

I mean if people took me at my word I'm sure we'd have the damned thing captive by now, what with all the times I've seen it hunkered over the smallish corpse of something. Just last night I saw it walking around wearing the scarf of a young man who hasn't been seen for three days now.

Day 2,517

The sun will set soon, you say to me as you shield your face from the glaring sky. We know we won't make it til morning, the ground beneath us is already trembling and the dust that had settled over all the bodies is gently tossed up into the air.

We know we won't make it til morning so we try and make the most of our final hours but in the end and in the face of our certain death we find ourselves sitting in silence. Everything we want to say seems trivial and trying to crack a joke just feels like swallowing needles.

We know we won't make it til morning so we watch the sun settle one last time as the trembling ground splits open, bodies falling into the same starving chasms that will soon swallow us down too. The world blurs and it takes me a few minutes to realise that I'm crying.

But it's okay - so are you.

We know we won't make it til morning but we still hold hands and hope we meet again somehow.