Day 2,608

When I woke up after having my appendix removed, I was glad to see that there weren't any surgeons or nurses hovering over me. In my drug-addled mind that was the only thing I was concerned about rather than the sleek metal walls around me or the metal gurney I was lying on.

It took me a fair while to come around enough to realise that I wasn't in a recovery room - I was in the morgue, in a drawer, with a toe tag on and judging by the sounds that started coming from somewhere outside, I was no longer alone.

I started to feel the walls around me, jolting when I felt something slide off my stomach and onto the gurney - my phone. Whoever put me in here clearly knew I was still alive and gave me away to call for help. Turning it back on I saw that I had dozens of missed calls and messages from friends and loved ones.

The world had gone to hell while I was under the knife and for all I knew at that point, I was the only one alive. If it hadn't been for Isaac checking the drawers and not immediately shooting me then I'd probably still be stuck in there, mindless and bloodthirsty as the rest of them.

I don't like to think about what might have happened if I hadn't been found. The idea of slowly starving to death in a metal box is scary enough as a theory, let alone as a near miss in real life. To know that pure luck and a stuck trigger is all that stood between me and sudden death isn't reassuring at all.

Still, I'm alive for now. Sure I'm not healing right and might just have the nameless infection that leads to bloodthirst and cannibalism but for now I'm doing okay enough to carry on and help the group survive. I just have to remember to take myself out of here before I lose my mind completely.

Sounds doable to me.

Day 2,607

Its doors were open, pus running down the glass as the train finally succumbed to the same rot that had already taken half the station that month. It made no sense to the outside - all they saw were unnecessary delays and perfectly good trains being left in locked sheds. They didn't see them bleed, didn't hear them cry, didn't feel the warmth leaving their engines for the last time.

This particular train was supposed to be to young to catch the rot and had been kept thoroughly away from all other trains during its journeys across county borders. When the symptoms became too bad to ignore the station workers brought up a theory they'd been keeping quiet for months.

The rot was carried by people all along.

A cull was ordered - every last train taken down and burned before they could begin to show any symptoms. It was nationwide chaos for months before brand new trains were set out - rot-proof and allegedly better than ever. Unkillable and perfect.

They were right about the former, they can't die. So when they catch the rot they carry on until their engines are clogged with blood and their lungs are too clogged with fuel to let them draw the breath to beg for death. Their undying corpses are still strewn about the countryside to this day, wheezing and choking.

Perfectly, and unfortunately, unkillable.

Day 2,606

The first thing I noticed was how its bones jutted through the patches of rot in the skins that covered it, none of which were its own. It shambled across the footpath in front of my house, setting my cameras off, but when I played the footage back the screen was utterly black.

It caught the sound though. All those bones rattling together, rubbing against the skin and further wearing it away, the heavy breathing of something struggling under its own weight. In my mind I called it a poor thing and felt pity for the way it was suffering.

Then it turned down the alley next to my house, its looming spine jutting over the fence and triggering my garden camera just in time to record its unfortunate meeting with a cat. It was over quickly and violently and after a few seconds of quiet crunching, a gnarled hand gently placed a chewed-up little cat skull on top of a half broken femur on its back.

I haven't seen it since but I have noticed an alarming increase in missing cat posters around the area.

Day 2,605

His HUB screen had been displaying the same message for almost three hours - "You are being pursued!". It gave no further explanation, the main HUB portal didn't detect any other organic life signatures other than the few plants he'd brought from home as part of an ongoing zero-g botany experiment.

If it hadn't started to breathe he might never have noticed it at all. It was that sole huff of hot air against the back of his neck that sent him spinning to find the source. The very organic and well camouflaged source that was uninterested in hiding now that its prey knew it was there.

The only luck he had was that it moved so painfully slowly, its slug-like body rippling towards him as its skin seemed to fold over the space in front, using the air itself to gradually propel its mass towards him. It was a few inches away by the time his brain caught up with his fear and sent him running.

The station was one of the smallest in orbit and its only transportation pod was less than halfway back from a resupply trip. Somehow he would have to constantly keep an eye on and avoid the creature chasing him, hoping and doubting that it was the only one on board.

Day 2,604

They shed their forms and the kennel fell silent for the first time in years as everything pretending to be a dog realised it was among friends. The silence carried all through the night and lasted until the first staff entered to feed and take care of the dogs.

The metallic scent of blood hit them first, followed by the warmth and raw-meat undertones of a butcher's shop midsummer. Still, they went about their routine as normal, all the while feeling distinctly unsettled and unable to name the cause until they saw blood spilling from beneath the back door that led out to the kennels.

It looked like pure, visceral carnage at first - heaps of matted fur thrown into the central walkway, half caught on door handles and cage locks and on every dog bed was an equivalent sized... thing looking up at them with familiar happy eyes and unpleasantly wide smiles as they waited for breakfast to be served.

Day 2,603

There is a sharp pulsing in my forehead, something writhing beneath the skin. It's been there ever since I fainted on a hike in the lake district, steadily growing and always moving. Always whispering to me, warning me about all the monsters I've been surrounding myself with over the years.

At first I thought this was just a concussion, something that would fade as I got better. Only instead of fading it became more coherent and those faint garbled words soon became full sentences soon became rambling monologues about how sharp Sharon's teeth are.

And in her defense, her teeth have always been a little too sharp.

When the pulsing in my forehead began I started to see the monsters around me for their true selves and Sharon's sharp teeth were the most human part of her. I swear I can still feel her thousand eyes staring at me, even after I carved them all out of her and threw them into the river.

The pulsing in my forehead will soon outgrow me, it whispers as much to itself when I'm asleep and its words seep into my dreams where it can't reach me. It's working its way down my face right now, heading for my mouth where it'll break my jaw and be free at last.

What it doesn't yet realise is that the flat has been filling up with carbon monoxide for hours.

Day 2,602

There's a radio station you can only catch on the M6 way up north near the Mossband marsh. It used to be found down by Punnetts Town but over the last six years it's gradually been making its way to somewhere. I always assumed it was a couple of guys broadcasting their show from a car or van but now I know better.

I've seen the signal.

Imagine a bunch of old aerials and whatever's leftover at a butcher's place at the end of a quiet week and make it about four feet tall. Give it the greenest eyes you could possibly imagine and a few perfect radio voices talking to each other.

I didn't get too close, couldn't make myself to get out of my car until it was long gone. Something about the way it walked seemed predatory, that cautious, hunched over gait before a tiger leaps for its prey. It felt safer to watch it go, hearing the voices happily chattering about what books they loved that I'd never be able to find.

Wherever it's going, I want to be as far away as humanly possible.

Day 2,601

I work in a roadside cafe, have done since I was fourteen. It's one of those 'neon cardboard signs for three miles, shipping container in a layby' kinda places lovingly called The Grub Pit. We get a real interesting mix of people, mostly truckers and hangry families but occasionally we'll get the roadsick folk.

They come in usually around three or four in the morning which is when we open - in fact we open around this time just for them, to make sure they're safe or call the police if they aren't. We call them roadsick because that's what it is really, a sickness that draws you to the strangest and deadliest places.

I can spot them a mile away now - their cars are always filthy and they walk like they haven't moved in weeks,which they probably haven't. For some reason they've always been drawn to our spot, specifically the freshwater spring in the field behind us but if they linger long enough we get some food in them.

It's usually their last meal. Most of them will turn up in the burnt out shells of their cars in dead-end towns that don't even have a postal code, let alone a name. They're either alive or somewhat close to it, thanks to us asking the right question and calling the right numbers.

Either way around noon we'd always get a couple of officers showing us an assortment of photos and asking if we'd seen them before and I used to say that we'd always know them but last night was different. Last night they showed  us someone we'd never seen before.

They were definitely roadsick - we could see it in the vacant eyes staring back out of their photograph and the way the officers described an  all-too-familiar burnt wreckage with all the passengers still wearing their seatbelts. They always stop by for the springwater - it's a sign of the roadsickness itself - but these ones bypassed it and went straight to their deaths

 I want to rationalise it and say that everyone's different, even if they share the same affliction but a part of me is scared that this means the end of The Grub Pit's aid. If we don't see them off or send for help before they reach their destination then they might all end up dead in burnt out cars in nameless towns.

A change was in motion and not necessarily for the better.

Day 2,600

Five of us woke up in a warehouse somewhere near the ocean - the entire time we were there I could faintly hear the sea behind the tortured screams of people whose bodies are still being pieced together. I'm the only one out of the five who got to walk away, the others either died or got taken by suits to some unnamed place for further questioning.

I don't think they'll ever see sunlight again.

I should feel something more for them but I'm still trying to process everything that happened that night. From hearing someone downstairs to the sharp pain of a needle hitting the back of my neck to waking up with five amalgamated things who swore they were human to the trials we endured before the authorities came.

Maybe they were behind it all along - pitting a regular guy against their creations to see who'd last the longest only to have it end in a tie. One human and two humanoids splattered with other people's blood and thoroughly traumatised for life.

Mervin and Safia died first - they both were some kind of bird with beaks as flexible as mouths and more teeth than I felt comfortable near. They also had fragile, hollow bird bones that shattered and pierced their internal organs in the first trial.

They tried to fly, still swearing that they were just human, while clumsily flapping towards an open skylight. I still don't know quite how it happened. One second they were nearly there and the next they were falling, hitting the concrete so harshly that we heard their bones shatter.

They died so very slowly.

Joan went next - she was looked kind of like a cow mixed with a lizard and she was so very kind. She sat with Mervin and Safia while they died, held their hands and wept until I helped her up and half carried her to the only viable exit we saw - industrial looking metal doors that were so rusted there were holes all over that we could all easily fit into.

Thing is, while the rest of us were focused on getting the hell out of there I think Joan had already given up. I think her hope died with Safie and Mervin and if we hadn't been so careful then she would have dragged us down with her in that storeroom full of long decayed bodies, some human but mostly alamgalations.

She tried to play her death wish for heroism. Tried to make it seem like she'd take one for the team so that we could survive when all she wanted was to get this over with quicker than the others had. She was so damned fast too - rushing towards  the faint sound of rattling metal and screams while yelling at us to head for safety.

I don't even know what killed her or if she even died. All I can say is this - she ran towards those sounds, we heard her screaming and then everything was quiet and dark until the authorities burst in and pulled us away to safety.

Well, I was safe.

I don't know about the other two, mouse-like and silent the entire time.

I never even got their names.

Day 2,599

She asked if I felt like we were being watched, as if she couldn't see them standing just outside of the torch's pathetic circle of light. They'd been with us ever since we turned off the main street and down the first in what was becoming an endless series of occasionally lit passages.

I think we were underground at some point, I remember hearing traffic pass overheard, I remember feeling the walls around us shudder or maybe we were both shuddering under their unblinking gaze or the sudden sharp chill that filled the air around us. It was hard to say but regardless, we were far from where we needed to be.

Our phone maps showed two completely different areas - hers said we were near the city hall and mine said we were miles out close by the quarry but our eyes and ears said we were nearish to the main street where a burger van had recommended this shortcut to us.

We should have called a taxi, we should have stayed on the main street where it was brightly lit and warmer and we weren't being followed by creatures that look like several stick figures stuck together. I didn't think they wanted to hurt us, not after they'd spent the last two and a half hours following us.

In a way I thought that they were trying to guide us so I started to whisper our hotel's address in the hope that they'd help us get there. In hindsight it was ridiculous and downright dangerous to let unknown things know exactly where we were heading but after a further hour we ended up walking onto the street opposite and felt their gaze turn away as they shambled back into the labyrinth we'd left.

Day 2,598

The wailing clouds are back again and this time it's raining human eyes. Last month it was fingers which was messy and awful enough as it was, of course rain of any visceral sort followed by an intense heatwave only causes every fly in the damned country to swarm here. By the next rainfall there was a layer of dead flies about three inches deep - absolute chaos.

At least with it being autumn at long last, we're unlikely to get another heatwave and be flooded with flies again. I just wish it wasn't eyes. They all look so familiar, so accusatory and sad all at once and I can't possibly be expected to go out to work in this but it's been going on for so many years now that everyone just dons a thick set of waterproof overalls or waders and pretends the rain isn't there.

Shame we can't do something about the smell. Did you know that eyes have a scent? I didn't until I opened the front door to assess the situation and it just hit me like a wet, meaty brick. I can't vomit though, it's bad luck to vomit when the wailing clouds are passing and there's a strong chance you'll pass up something as unpleasant as the rains outside, if not worse.

Hopefully it'll end soon.

Day 2,597

My neighbours haven't been the same since that comet fell in the fields outside our homes. I've seen enough movies to know better than to go out looking for it but their damned kids brought it back and every night after this I've been woken up at 4:32AM on the dot - skin feeling like I'm on fire and everything smelling like ozone.

That's when it crashed, you see, down to the exact second. It doesn't feel like it's something alien as such, it's more like a ghost if anything - the traumatic last moments of its life were crashing through the atmosphere and landing outside.

Whatever it was, it died before it hit the ground but it still felt the impact, if my nightmares are to be taken as hauntings rather than standard bad dreams. My neighbours seem to be worse off than me, judging by how tired they look now and how grey their skin seems - like they're covered in dust or ash.

Makes you wonder how bad the haunting is up close.

Makes me glad I stayed inside.

Day 2,596

The thing about ice fishing was that you never knew what you were pulling up until it was too late to do anything more than drop the line and run, hoping you had enough time to reach the treeline before sharp claws and sharper teeth reached you.

I've pulled up all sorts from angry water rats to half-eaten deer carcasses and I've heard plenty of stories from people who've pulled up worse and lost more than a few fingers in the process. The only story I can actually say is true came from an old one-legged man called Hop.

Small towns are creative like that. They see it and they say it without thinking first. At least old Hop doesn't mind - he's always too concerned about when the ice season will start and how we can all be prepared enough to not suffer for it.

There's always someone injured at best, dead at worst. My great-nanna used to say that the ice is as alive as we are and requires blood to keep it strong enough for us to stand on, strong enough to support life, if you can call half of what's down there alive.

Old Hop swears the ice is alive too, only in a less mystical and kind way. He says it's a kind of primordial entity that feeds on the blood of the suffering, giving us stories and keeping us close with the promise of food and treasure. Like a god almost, only it doesn't need us to worship it, just feed it.

Hop fed it his leg, unwillingly of course. His line came back with what he thought was a dead fish, only it came alive when his warm breath hit its scaly hide and it thrashed about, sending him flying. He landed on his back so hard he still can't walk right some thirty years later and the fish tore his leg off before he could draw another breath to scream.

I'm glad I only pull up dead things and angry rodents, it's about all I can handle. I know someday it'll be my turn to feed the ice and keep us all alive for another year with my sacrifice but I hope I only lose a finger or a toe. I hope it's either small and quick or quick and final - please don't let me suffer.

Day 2,595

It blended in with the pipes at first, all metallic skin and sharp angles and I wouldn't have noticed it if it hadn't been quietly crying and bleeding. I started to walk back to the stairwell, planning on just getting a cab home and avoiding whatever the hell this was, until it whispered

please help me

As soon as I heard this, something seeped into my mind and I felt drawn to it, desperate to be close to it and save it... whatever it was. My feet were rushing towards it before I could quite grasp where I was going and what I was seeing as I got closer and closer to the bleeding pipes.

It had such human eyes. Eyes I felt I'd seen a thousand times before and loved in every lifetime. I felt the presence of billions of me's and them's all with the same eyes and all gazing down on us in the third storey of a rundown car park. Everyone was waiting for me to move.

And I did.

I did as I'd felt myself do in every life we'd ever met in.

I reached for its wounded neck, grasped it tightly and twisted til the crying stopped.

I gave it peace.

I always give it peace.

Day 2,594

The sky was endless void of milky grey swirling above us until it blinked.

Nothing really prepares you for the sight of eyelids spanning beyond the horizon slowly coming together, nor can anything prepare you for the terror that wells up in the back of your throat when you finally notice the pupil staring back down at you, vast and uncaring.

I haven't been able to stop seeing it ever since that night. Whenever I look up at the sky I see its pupil react like it knows that I see it. The eyelids haven't made a reappearance though, and if that's the only positive I can draw from this whole experience then at least it's better than nothing.

The friends who saw it with me - witnessed the sky blink and saw it staring back at us for the first time in their lives - are gone. Nobody's willing to tell me where, nobody's willing to say when they left or if they're still alive. All I know is that out of our group, I'm the only one still here.

Whether they're up in the sky or six feet under - I hope they're out of the sky's sight.

Day 2,593

The children didn't know any better when they brought that sick dog back from the woods. They didn't hear the thousand whispers subtly speaking to them in its staggered breathing and stuttered whimpers. All they knew was that it was hurt and they wanted to help it get better.

And in doing this simple act of kindness, they killed us all.

One-by-one, the lights in each house went out as they walked from the woods to the nearest vet. One-by-one, the people inside fell and began clawing at the shadows clinging to their throats. One-by-one, the children walked with death and by the time their kindness was finished, so were we all.

Day 2,592

I told everyone that I didn't remember what happened the day my brother disappeared. I told them it was too dark to see what happened. I told them lie after lie after lie in the hope that they would stop asking but even now, some thirty years later someone who's read about him in some obscure forum for mysterious cases comes by asks asks me questions.

Truth is I was there, I saw it all and not one moment of it can be explained so I never tried to explain it, I just tried to forget. There are some things in life that you'll never truly forget though - like your first kiss, your favourite food or the way the rain fell in a thick sheet like a waterfall right in front of us.

Dozens of grey, bloated little hands reached out from the edge or the rainfall, their faces too distorted by the rain for me to see if they were actually human. I don't think they were,I think they were like a mushroom - lots of little shoots on the surface but just beneath it's all one gigantic lifeform.

My brother thought he recognised a face behind the rainfall,thought he heard them calling out for help when all I heard was a susurration, a ceaseless murmuring that set my hair on edge. Before I could stop him, he reached out just enough that they could all grab him, curling in on him like a hedgehog in reverse - hands becoming spikes that punctured everywhere they could before pulling him behind the rainfall.

All that was left of him was a boot, a few drops of blood and a mystery that still haunts me to this day.

Day 2,591

She was the last thing I saw as I was falling. Her body still twitching in the final moments of her short littlelife and if I'd cut the rope shorter she might not have caught her legs on the stool and continued to struggle for air for so long. She was cruel like that.

I was kind, I was giving us both a way out - her with the rope and myself with the drop but my plans have never gone quite right my whole life. They either live to describe me to another officer or they take so long to die that I feel guilty for being so incompetent in their dying hour.

This was supposed to be my one success - a plan without fail and two nice, quick deaths but no. I couldn't get the length of the rope right or push the stool far enough away or the drop wasn't quite long enough or I didn't land right and now we're both twitching and gasping.

Her for air and me as blood from my punctured lungs fills my throat.

At least we're gasping together.

That's nice.

Day 2,590

Whatever was triggering the doorbell camera was somewhat human-shaped and had the greenest eyes I'd ever seen on a living being. The way it staggered past the door before doubling back to stare at it reminded me of a ragdoll, or a child practicing at being grown-up.

I almost didn't think it was malicious, maybe poorly socialised but not dangerous. That was before it started leaving gifts for us. I'd play the footage back in the morning and see it leave crumpled dead birds on the door, gnarled clawed hands gesturing between the door and the dead bird repeatedly - it wanted us to know that this was an offering.

Usually it came around 3 or 4 in the morning but it decided to pay us a visit at 9PM sharp. My daughter nearly opened the door, if I hadn't reminded her to check the camera first then I just... I don't want to think about what might have happened but I doubt she'd still be here.

There is was, this time it had what had recently been two cats, again broken and tangled together. I know it heard us moving - its head was darting about all over the place. It was excited and stayed there for almost an hour waiting forus to open the door and receive this last gift.

When it became clear that we weren't coming it curled its arms to its chest and slowly left with its gift.

We haven't seen it clearly since but we know it's still in the area.

We've seen its gifts strung in the trees outside our home.

Day 2,589

No matter how many times they cleaned the oil off the beach, there would always be more the next morning and the shoreline would be strewn with writhing, dying things. The air stank of petroleum and decay and there was nothing more they felt they could do other than clean the spill, care for whatever looked like it stood a chance of seeing the next sunrise and kindly kill the rest.

None of this sat well with them, most volunteers barely lasted a week while the veterans all began having the same dream of a triple-headed guillemot and a sky raining nothing but thick oil that silently smothered them until morning. It took them a while to realise that, despite the area being famous for them roosting all along the cliff-sides, there hadn't been a single one turn up with the other dying birds.

In fact, their nests were soon found so utterly barren it seemed downright impossible that they'd ever nested there at all in the last thirty years, let alone the last few months. Their absence and the constant tide of oil must have a connection, the volunteers reasoned, they must or what else is there?

Surely this can't all be for nothing?

Day 2,588

As long as there has been fire, there has been flesh to be burned upon it, she reasoned. So this too was fine, was an act of nature and a continuation of the normal cycles of the world. This flesh must be burned, no matter how badly it screams otherwise.

The flesh in question probably had a name and probably gave that name to her when they met in the bar a couple of house ago but it didn't matter. It was forgotten as soon as it was spoken in favour of luring - no, that wasn't right - persuading the flesh to join the pyre and sing with the rest of nature.

And how it sung, how loudly they all sung together. A perfect cacophony of weeping, screaming, roaring, crackling and singing. Some day someone else would have the same realisation as her and then it would be her turn to join the pyre.

And how she would sing.

Day 2,587

We've been travelling through the tunnels beneath the city subway for so long now that we'll never find the way out again, but at least that means nobody will find us for a very long time. By then my progeny will have finished developing, my flesh and the flesh I am travelling with will be their sustenance for many months to come.

Like wasps upon spiders,my progeny were delivered to me via a greater being from the skies. I won't liken myself to any religious figures, I am not bringing light and peace into this world - I am going to be a mother to something glorious and terrible.

I need to become as lost as possible, sustain the progeny for as long as possible.

Give our lives to keep them satiated until they suffocate down here.

The world isn't ready for so many of them at once.

Say 2,586

All things need to breathe, even the dead apparently. Damned coffin-filler wouldn't stop shaking and clawing at the lid til I'd cut air holes in the sides, hid them so that the handles would cover them just in case anyone tried to look too closely.

I know she's dead though, I embalmed her myself - I stitched her up better than the butchers who autopsied her and for some reason she still wants air. Her half-eaten heart is in a jar in the precinct and she's happy to move until she gets a bit of breeze blowing through the coffin.

God only knows how she'll act when they try to bury her but as I say to the rest of the team - when they're out of the door they're out of our hands. Soon as she's loaded into the hearse she is no longer my problem regardless off the fuss she'll put up when the dirt comes piling in.

I do have to wonder what she'll do when she eventually claws her way to the surface.

Day 2,585

We didn't ask why the abattoir never sent any meat out, we just kept sending cattle in and loading crates of something warm onto the unmarked boats and lorries that came to collect every evening without fail. Most of the village works in the abattoir or the nearby farms, we're all connected to it but we don't know a damned thing about it.

The people who work inside aren't from here, they arrive in busses every morning and leave in them every night. Not one of them sets foot outside during the shifts nor says a word to those of us who work close as they'll let us - in the loading bays, the docks and maintaining the grounds without so much as a toe set inside.

Now most folks will happily go their entire lives never wanting to see the inside of such a place but when an entire village's livelihood is based around a place that won't let them know what they're exporting then imaginations run wilder than the dogs they set to patrol with us.

I, like the nine generations before me, could have gone my whole life not knowing more than the next person but one of the damned apprentices only went and dropped his half of the crate. Sent the whole thing crashing off the loading bay and splintering on the concrete floor.

Remembering much after that is a struggle. I know I saw something far more alive than what comes out of an abattoir ought to be but trying to remember the shape or sound of it makes my thoughts buzz right through my teeth. Hurts something fierce too.

As for what happened after, all I can say is that the interior workers came out with a fresh crate, jammed it back in and sealed it shut. We were given £200 each to keep quiet and carry on which we did, albeit quieter than we'd ever been and all pondering in our minds about what we're a part of.

Nothing's changed since then. We all clock in, stack crates til there's enough to fill the lorries and then let them carry the warm crates full of unnatural life away to places we don't want to think about to do things we can't even begin to imagine. For all we know we're killing thousands of people with every crate we don't burn.

All I know for sure is that I pity the next person to break a rate and see them with naked eyes.

Day 2,584

It was the only streetlight for miles around but ever since that stray dog was pulled up into its glaring light, we've preferred to walk in the dark. We used to shine torches and phone lights until it started to move, to follow us, trying to pull us in as well.

Now we walk in the dark, wearing soft shoes and praying it won't hear us.

Day 2,583

Blood and stale ichor flowed through the wires of that old house, slowly spreading through shared pipes and infecting the entire neighbourhood. Both the old house and the current owners did not live as such, they existed - they survived and loathed every second they were aware enough to know that they hadn't died yet.

The walls ached and eggshell paint festered into blister-red around the sockets and doorways. The house was rejecting itself, fighting and tearing itself apart from the inside as it desperately tried to not be. It only succeeded in making itself somewhat uninhabitable.

The ground beneath the windowsills is wet with pus and from a distance it looks like the house is crying. Nothing grows on the ground around the house, it won't let anything grow - poisons the soil with leaking pipes til everything is as dead as it wishes to be - as they wish to be.

The owner dies long before their house, body so stuck to the carpets that they were cut out and loaded into the ambulance with a shroud already at their back. They say the house screamed that day - officially it was a spontaneous and violent gas leak but we all heard it and know better.

The house is nos a half-deflated mass of wet bricks and dark blood, moans lost in the wind.

Day 2,582

It wasn't a maze, mazes were more complex, full of wrong turns and traps and a dozen other lost souls trying to find the exit again among an ocean of hedges that shifted ever so slightly in the corners of your eyes. Mazes were meant to keep you inside.

This was a labyrinth - one path to the centre, one winding route with no backwards glances or hidden passageways in false walls, one last goodbye to the rest of the world as your world shrinks until it is lovingly encased between two walls and a dirt floor.

How long has it been?

Weeks?

Days?

Thirty seven minutes?

Time meant as much as a glass of water to a whale, so utterly insignificant in the face of the neverending that surrounds you both - one a limitless ocean, the other a limitless period of perfect solitude. You almost wished you were surrounded by rolling waves instead of gently curving walls.

Almost.

The heart was coming soon, hurrying towards you on rapid yet timid little feet and you were not prepared - could not ever be prepared to meet it at the end, the centre of it all. Grey hair flickers in the corners of your eyes and you become aware that you have aged considerably along the way.

Nevermind though - the end is just around the corner.

Always just around the corner.

Always close by.

Day 2,581

It started out as a small bump on my wall, paler than the rest of the paint and oddly warm to the touch. I pokeed, prodded and even tried to pry it off with a small kitchen knife, only to hear a faint scream come from the other side of the wall as blood trickled down the cut I'd made.

It was organic, that much I could safely say. It was organic and it was bigger than the day before, in fact over the course of the next week or so it grew and grew and grew until it was undeniably a knee. A few dozen centimeters above it were the beginnings of yet more bumps with ridges along one side and a smoother surface on top.

A hand was coming.

Before the month was up the wall had developed one leg that appeared to be mid-step, perfectly still and receptive to both touch and temperature. Above it was most of one arm and half a hand. Beside it was the beginnings of the other leg and right above it all was a series of indents that I knew would end up being its face.

I managed to move out before then, forfeiting an unpleasant amount of cash to terminate the lease early but it was worth it to not see what would eventually break free from the wall and stumble into the rest of the bedroom, the house - the town.

The next person to move in vanished before the end of the week and while the guilt hits me like a suckerpunch every time I think about knowingly letting another person move into its path, I know the estate agents saw it when we were signing the paperwork and all they did was shrug.

They went missing two days ago so I don't doubt that I'll be next.

Day 2,580

It was the maggots that led us to her, face down and barely visible among them. We believed she'd been dying for months, gradually rotting away from the inside til all that was left of her was a thin layer of flesh and the swarm of maggots that spilled out with every bump, scrape or nick against her delicate skin. 

Whether she was in denial or whether she was just  electrical impulses piloting a meatsuit, we'd never know for sure. All we could say was that she either couldn't or didn't want to seek medical assistance and eventually made her way into an old water trough in the woods some thirty miles out of town.

Funny thing though, a dozen eye witnesses had seen her stumbling about bleeding maggots that very morning.

I don't doubt she'll be seen around the area for years to come.

Cases like this - people like this - don't die easy.

Day 2,579

Have you ever stopped and realised that a jellyfish is like a spider's web without the spider? How those delicate-looking tendrils are just mindless cells shooting venom into complex living things before hauling them in and dissolving them until they too are mindless cells.

The things I've been seeing in the clouds over the old crop fields are just like jellyfish drifting in air currents and hauling up whole herds of cows to poison and dissolve. Monstrous and mindless is one hell of a combination - one that can't even be scared off or reasoned with.

Best we've been able to do is monitor the wind direction and move the cattle accordingly, letting them graze on whatever else we can find and leaving the crop fields to return to the wild again. Maybe this is nature's way of telling us we're taking too much and leaving too little.

Maybe the world's changing and we're slipping down to the bottom of the food chain.

Day 2,578

We were plenty used to oddities washing ashore after a rough tide but if I hadn't seen this thing with my own eyes, I'd have said it was entirely beyond belief. I mean, sure we've all heard the stories about merfolk and sirens luring sailors to their deaths but they were only ever that.

It was eerily human from a distance. Then as you walk closer you begin to realise the sheer scale of it and how easily you'd fit into its mouth and Lord that mouth was a nightmare in itself. One of the students neatly described it as being "like a shark on crack".

I'm almost glad that just the head and neck washed up but it terrifies me to think that there's bigger things out there that can swallow the whole body of something whose head is the size of a double decker bus. Lord knows where they took it or what they'll do with it, I just hope its kin don't come around.