Day 2,820

The dappled sunlight burnt every exposed inch of her skin and as her screams grew louder and louder, the crowd standing in the river only stared.

Day 2,819

It opened its mouth, smoke curling out around a trembling exhale as terrified onlookers tried to stay silent in the hopes that the next bullet would be the one to finish it off for good. 

Say 2,818

It would have been a normal, cheerful looking reception desk were it not for the pool of blood seeping slowly from somewhere just behind the glistening white counter. 

Day 2,817

According to the MRI report, it was just a tumour. According to the patient it was his brother. 

Day 2,816

Scrawled on the wall beside my bed, inches above my hiding place, were the words "We Never Left".

Day 2,815

At some point in our childhoods we were all told that our little island home existed on the back of a giant sea creature, a kind of ancient turtle and quite possibly the last one alive. We'd scour the coastlines for signs of the turtle's limbs and check every seaside cave for its head.

We grew out of believing in its existence just in time to watch it die.

Just in time to fight for our lives as the scavengers began to swarm.

Day 2,814

There was a sharp crunch as her jaws clamped down on the side of his neck - I tried to shut my eyes and not look up at them but even with his blood gently falling down onto my face I couldn't do anything other than stare. 

Day 2,813

They were usually found alone, voices whispering and glitching as they crept around the outskirts of civilisation. 

Day 2,812

It was definitely still out there searching for them, they could hear it wailing and snarling somewhere east of the old miner's hut they'd hidden out in. As the night settled further in and the temple dropped further down, they huddled close and wrapped their arms around each other while they still could. 

Day 2,811

The gunshot still echoed throughout the pool ro and, while it staggered, the creature was still alive enough to charge at them again. 

Day 2,810

I was there again in my dream last night, standing in front of the underpass watching my friend getting dragged into the darkness by those skinned dog-like creatures. 

Say 2,809

As the flesh fell away from her face, revealing an almost featureless chitin surface with clusters of teeth where eyes should be, I felt safe for the first time in a long time. Safe enough to let my own fleshmask fall, remove the layers upon layers of binding and padding and false skin - as did she - until we were both in our fullest, truest glory.

Standing amongst our well-worn disguises I felt lighter than air, lighter than light itself.

I felt like we were floating together in a pool of our outside skins. 

I felt her chitin give way beneath my mandibles, felt her blood ooze down my throat and thorax.

I felt whole.

Day 2,808

It happened at church camp, as the worst in life tends to.

I wasn't the one who originally woke up and found the her crouched over Sarah with those incredibly sharp nails embedded in her throat but I was woken up by the screaming. I didn't even see the first killing, too busy being dragged by the other girls as far from the gruesome scene as we could.

That was, until we came to the front doors and realised they were locked.

Our only way out had been sealed by the well-meaning group leaders who were somewhere in the chaos behind us, quite likely dead or dying. We didn't know for sure and didn't want to stick around long enough to find out. We ran to one of the smaller prayer rooms nearby, blocking the door handle with a chair and huddling in the far back to plan our next move.

As the screams in the distance faded, we knew we'd run out of time.

Day 2,807

Its back was covered in a mesh of human bones, interwoven with what appeared to be a rope made from their hair. It wore them like a hermit crab wears a shell, always searching for more cover as it outgrew each new addition in a matter of days.

The island it had been born to had long since been picked clean, nothing remaining save for a few tattered huts and a neat pile of bones that had been too small to be of any use. Anything it could catch had been caught and when it realised this, already on the verge of outgrowing its bones, it took to the waters and began its first search.

Shallow water fisherman came first - it got trapped by their nets and hauled onto their boat. They were added to its shell before sundown. It rested in the lower decks, sleeping off its gluttony til waves faded and the boat came to a graceful, sloping halt on a beach.

It skittered onto the main deck, soaking in the sun's warmth as, in the distance, the sounds of life awoke.

Day 2,806

There comes a time in a child's life when they will be invited to another child's birthday party at some jungle themed playhouse that always smells of pee, always serves their fries lukewarm and always has at least two screaming children somewhere.

Last time I went to one of these I found myself and the birthday boy fighting for our lives against a writhing mass of limbs that had once been several dozen children. A part of us instinctively knew that if it touched us we would become a part of it so we spent our 2 hours playing hide and seek with it.

We managed to escape to the dining area dull of grownups a handful of times, gasping for breath and trying to tell them what we'd seen only to be told that we were imagining it. They gave us water and told us that they didn't pay for 2 hours of us yelling at them.

We were sent back to join the others in running for our lives again and again and again. I lost the birth boy, it's been so long now that I can't even remember his name but I'll never forget his face as it merged with the rest of the children. 

Day 2,805

The "Me" that I see in the mirror is now wearing a wolf's face - freshly cut, blood dripping down his throat and staining our favourite pyjamas. Behind him I can make out barely-breathing bundles on the floor that break the painful silence with their whimpering and wet gasping.

When the last one falls silent, my mirror self begins to walk away and I, his reflection, walk as well. Our footsteps echoe in unison, though I can only catch glimpses of him in the myriad of reflective surfaces around the house.

He is leading us outside and away from our kills.

Day 2,804

They were gone when we got back from our supply run and after several hours we eventually found them in a clearing by the foot of the mountain, holding hands in a circle around the carcass of something so freshly killed we could see steam rising from the gaping holes in its sides.

We stood just within the treeline trying to figure out what they'd found. If it had once been human then there were rites to be read and an honest burial to arrange. For anything else there were matches and the liquor we brewed for just such an occasion.

I wasn't the one to try and catch their attention - that unfortunately honour belonged to my cousin Charlie. They never were the sharpest tool in the shed but they were the sharpest shooter at least.

One brief holler had the supply group's heads snapping to look at us in one sudden motion, swift as releasing an arrow. I swear I heard their necks break, a few flopping to one side as we realised that they'd stumbled into a progenitor. 

Charlie was the first to realise his mistake and take aim to stop them from advancing on us. The rest of us joined in and filled the air with a cacophony of slaughter til the supply group were dead and the progenitor was even less recognisable as a formerly living being.

We hoped the next supply run would go smoother.

Day 2,803

When I was seven I remember crossing my back yard early in the morning, when a fog so dense I couldn't even see my hand inches away from my face swept in out of nowhere and surrounded me in an ocean of haze.

I remember the grass turning to wet tiles and looking up to see somewhere that looked like my grandparent's kitchen but... off. The faces smiling at me from the family photos weren't my family and the scale seemed far more vast somehow. As if I was seeing this room for the first time rather than walking into somewhere that I considered more home than the house my parents took me back to most days.

Their radio played from the living room, something crackling with low violin notes that they would have listened to while reading the day's papers. The sound of chewing filled the gaps in the song, making my heart pick up til both it and the music came to a crescendo that had me biting back a scream with every pulsing note.

My eyes darted to the back door, ajar in an inviting way that my grandparent's would never allow. 

"Keep the draft and the world out where it's meant to be."

A phrase they were fond of saying whenever my parent's tried to linger by the door for a moment too long. A phrase that drew me closer and closer to the door til I took a quick, gasped breath and darted through. The second I moved, the chewing and the music stopped, the jarring silence only spurring me to move faster.

I felt like I ran forever, though I still made it to school at the same time, having seemingly run the whole way from home to the crossing by the main doors. I tried to casually ask a friend if they'd seen me on their walk up, only to end up blurting everything out in one long sentence that ended in deep, stomach-cramping sobs.

Day 2,802

The sound of weeping drew closer as he came to the sinking realisation that he forgot to lock the back door. 

Day 2,801

Its skin seemed to ripple in the wind like old bedsheets out on the now empty washing line it stood behind. Her first thought was to call it a memory left within the sheets she'd gotten for an absolute steal just that morning. They'd washed just fine, any minor stain lifting til they practically shone in the sun.

And now she had company.

Company was what she hoped it was - someone kind who'd maybe spent their final peaceful hours in their lifelong bed and passed with a smile on their face as their loved ones sat beside them. Somehow the smile stretched just a little too long on its face for her to feel the same comfort she had imagined.

At least it wasn't moving closer, though it wasn't moving any further away either. It was simply floating like a sheet hung out to dry, staring and smiling and tilting its head as if it was expecting more of a reaction than her present wary confusion. 

As the wind drifted across its skin, its mouth would lift and drop in an unsettling series of snarls and grimaces that slowly turned her wariness to concern. She debated calling a priest but squashed that thought promptly. There wasn't a chance that she'd be able to explain what she was seeing, let alone the assumption that anyone else would be able to see the same thing, let alone the assumption that they would know how to... was "fix" the right word?

Was it something she needed to fix or did it need to be put to rest?

Could it be put to rest?

As the sun began to dip and the wind picked up, she wondered what it would do while she slept.

Day 2,800

They said it'd be as easy as falling asleep, that I'd wake up and be in the same server as the rest of my family, that I wouldn't even notice the transfer taking place.

They were so very wrong. 

I know they've kept my life support on for now, the pain thrumming through my veins with each steady beat of my heart tells me that much. The staggered, almost twitching, movements of everyone I meet tells me that they're somewhat alive as well. Or as alive as you can call this.

I haven't found my family yet, not even a single trace of the "familial mindscapes" I was promised - everywhere I'd ever been all gently and seamlessly merged around everyone else's in a sort of neighbourhood of our pasts. This is very much not that.

Everything looks like it's made of plastic, texture and scripting hastily thrown about as if it would make the place feel more realistic and less... unnerving. The server's "little helpers" were the worst of it. It's like they took every uncanny stereotype and crammed it into a handful of people-shaped inquisitors whose sole purpose seemed to be to glide amongst the glitching humans and occasionally swarm one person until they screamed that they were content.

My days, though it could have been years at this point, were nothing more than a continuous trudge in the direction I picked when I first "woke up" here. The monotony is only ever briefly interrupted by someone screaming "I am content!" and even then, the screams are beginning to feel like a background hum.

I should have opted for death.

Day 2,799

It came from the swamp behind the cathedral, bloated corpse-like arms raised high as it called itself a god. Maybe a thousand years ago someone would have believed it and a cult would have formed to care for and worship it but our modern townsfolk handcuffed it and shipped it away instead.

Now I'm not saying that the river's running dry because it isn't there but it's one hell of a coincidence. and one that I dare say a fair few others are noticing. A cult might not be forming but concerned naturalists are arguing to put the damned thing back where it came from before the environment is dealt with irreparable damage.

The government is arguing back, saying it's dangerous and needs to be studied but I reckon they've already killed and dissected it. Hence the river dying alongside it's own god. Makes you wonder how many dead rivers have a god of their own lying dried out on a sterile table somewhere far away.

Day 2,798

The air above the forest was hazy and as the trees began to decay under its breath, she wished she'd joined them sooner. Each footstep sent the world into a frenzied earthquake-state, the damage already dealt by military and militant civilians alike only injuring it and destabilising its chaotic footsteps.

The poor thing, and yes she still felt some pity for it after hearing its cries of agony and its present whimpers, as it staggered deeper inland. She reckoned it must be trying to escape from humans and the pain they'd inflicted on it but surely it realised that it was hurting the world around it?

Surely it could see all the dying animals around and beneath it?

She was miles away from its head but she saw the saline ponds left behind by its tears.

Day 2,797

The lights turned off one-by-one as they slowly succumbed and within a week the ship was a dark, silent mausoleum. As it drifted past riverside towns and cities a silence fell over them too as the fish feeding from scraps of decaying human flesh were caught and fed to the unknowingly damned.

A news report was made, assuming there was an aquatic flu and, rather than attributing the deaths to the ship's crew, they assumed that the crew were victims themselves and not the cause or source of several thousand deaths. The report fizzled out within a week, and a handful of days afterwards the ship finally reached the ocean.

The dying began en masse in a matter of hours after it started to sink a few miles from the coast, feeding the shoals as the shoals in turn fed the land which fed back into the cycle of death as worms and plants feasted on decomposing bodies, carrying the death into the heart of the country as humanity simmered down, down and further down into the cycle.

Day 2,796

I don't remember feeling much when I tore through his throat - relief maybe? A joy of sorts. Definitely not shock or repulsion as I felt his feeble cartilage crumple as his blood slid down my throat like a finely aged wine. A part of my mind gleefully thought of him as little more than an overly complicated juice box.

This neither helped nor hindered my killing but it was a brief distraction from the way he frantically clawed at my skin before slowly asphyxiating gracefully in my arms. As I continued to feed on his blood, I pulled the nail kit out of my rear pocket and began to extract any potential DNA he might have swiped in his struggle.

It wouldn't lead back to me of course, not when my death date was some hundred odd years before they started using DNA as evidence. There was no record of me in the living world and people would only assume some weirdo serial killer was using a poor corpse's DNA to hide himself instead of assuming the not-quite corpse was out having herself a fairly nice time.

Still, when I was done with him I'd need to grab my keys and carry on to my new apartment a few states over.

Same cycle, new feeding grounds and not a snowball's chance in hell of being caught.

The undead lifestyle suits me rather well, if I do say so myself.

And I do.

Day 2,795

It was so dark I didn't realise how close it was until I bumped right into it, peering up as its featureless face slowly split to reveal dozens of rows of  jagged teeth. I felt a scream trying to burst through my frozen fear and clenched my mouth shut, not wanting to break the silence. It couldn't see, that much I knew from the way it was using its insectoid limbs to prod at the ground and walls of the narrow street.

There was no way I could pass it by, no doorways nearby to duck into and no chance that it didn't know I was there. The skin around its teeth twitched in time to the stuttering of each of my terrified breaths, it was so close I could smell the rancid meat lingering on its own breath and felt vomit rising up my throat.

With a painfully loud swallow I forced it back down, only for it to surge back up as it let out an excited exhale far too close to my face. As I blinked back tears and prepared for the worst, a shriek cut through the air and it tore off back down the street, chasing after the sudden sound.

I made it back home, collapsing as soon as I locked the door and I haven't been out at night since.

I can't rely on a fluke like that again, can't risk my life like that again.

Can't bear to open the windows when the scent of its breath is so very near.

Day 2,794

It looked so human in our headlights and when we got out of the car. It talked like it was a scared young woman, knowing that we'd find it harder to just leave it and drive away from her. It lured us to a secluded clearing, begging for us to help her find her son.

After several hours of finding nothing and gradually losing sight of my husband and the not-woman as they followed the cries of someone that I couldn't hear, I heard my husband start screaming. I tried to find him - really I did - but it was already so late and so dark and I was so very lost that I had no other choice but to try and find the car and call for help.

We were so far from anywhere that it took several hours for the police to arrive, not that they were any help. They never found him, just his footprints in the mud by the river along with large paw tracks. They figured he'd been caught off guard by a mountain lion, completely ignoring me telling them about the woman who lured us out into the woods.

The woman who I keep seeing around town wearing my husband's jacket.

The woman who vanishes when I try to follow her.

The woman who isn't a human.

Day 2,793

He raised a hand to liquid dripping from his nose, flinching as it came back coated with black ichor.

In spite of every precaution, in spite of every body burned and every half hour dedicated to scrubbing his body raw - the contagion had found a way inside. He was acutely aware of its progression, how nosebleeds meant it would be the lesser cranial strain that would leave him a stick-thin and heavily bruised pile of trembling bones as it ate him away from within.

Rushing to his instruments, as he fondly called them, he extracted a few vials of blood, three slides of the fresh ichor and set about determining a timeline for his demise. If he prepared enough he could at least die in the comfort of his own office, not deliriously wandering by the river like most of his former patients seemed to be drawn to.

Perhaps he'd feel the call of the river himself, he pondered as he watched his healthy red and white cells being torn asunder by the contagion. Perhaps he could save himself the trouble of wandering in delirium by setting himself up on a boat or floating platform - a final test that he could record for future doctors to use in their own search for a cure.

It felt like a better option than simply succumbing.

Day 2,792

Ivy clung to the walls of the old house like the drowning man clings to the closest water-bloated corpse in the hope that he might float with it long enough to survive. The walls themselves were held up by the ivy as much as they held the ivy them up, the two in a symbiotic relationship that would end as soon as one collapsed.

The ivy and walls were observed by a long dead man who couldn't stomach the thought of leaving it all behind. He'd grown up here, climbing the walls when they were fit to be climbed and residing within them as his family had done for the last five generations. It would have been six but as soon as he passed, his will had been contested and tossed about between vulture-like cousins many times removed and in the end they chose to let the house rot rather than lose it to a lesser relation.

If he'd been alive enough to have a say, he would have torn it down himself and spared everyone the trouble - spared himself the heartache of seeing his life, and whatever worldly possessions were deemed worthless, all fall to ruin against the harsh storms that hadn't ceased since his passing.

It felt like an omen, like the world itself had decided that this was as good as his afterlife would be.

That until he was able to let go, all he would see it decay.

That he would outlive even the stones.

Day 2,791

It hadn't grown so much as it has sprouted overnight, limbs of bark and bones perfectly enmeshed within the concrete wall as the foundations below hummed to its erratic pulse. Management closed down the basement after the rest of the apartment tower nagged them enough but that was all they did.

We were left to live with walls that whispered and the same twisted face in our dreams. A few residents called in a pest control team who took one look and ran out screaming. Several pest control companies later, it seemed that us residents weren't seeing what everyone else was.

They'd stagger up the basement stairs, sobbing and begging for all the eyes to disappear but what we were seeing didn't even have a head. It was just a torso, handless arms and footless legs in an almost peaceful repose within the concrete. No masses of eyes, no million voices calling our names - absolutely nothing like the non-residents were describing.

I don't quite know when we started to think of it as a friend, to think of ourselves as Residents with a capital "R" and everyone else as a Non-Resident, people who couldn't see what was really there and recognise it as a friend like we did.

Slowly but surely we've all begun to turn our lives inwards, to disown the Non-Residents and focus on our friend. After a while, our phones will turn silent and the banging on the doors will cease and it'll just be us and our friend, happy to sit and listen to nothing but soothing whispers as the walls cover our skin.

Day 2,790

I wasn't yet born when humanity abandoned all land for the safety of the seas, desperately stampeding over each other to reach anything that seemed like it would float. Longevity of the crafts was far from anyone's minds in favour of the animalistic need to survive.

It's said that we left the streets covered in a meter deep layer of broken bodies but none of us dare to ask the older generations. There's something hurtful and haunted in their eyes that says just how truthful this is and how brutal they had to be to outlast it all.

We haven't seen the land ourselves but we grew up hearing tales of the forests and mountains, of how still and silent the ground was and how dry the dirt felt. It's all lost to us now, nobody wants to risk their lives to check and see if the multitude of chasms have stopped sprouting limbs and maws.

It's safer out at sea, where the ground is too far below for anything to reach up for us and where all we have to fear is that which swims below. Our vessel is blessedly too small to draw their attention, too small to make us worth attacking, too small for us to remain for much longer.

Like a hermit crab, we are outgrowing our shell and need to move on but we haven't seen another ship for years. I overheard a couple of the elders mentioning a radio message, encrypted and claiming the land is safe to return to. They'd planned to head back til a new message came through.

It simply said "They can speak. Boats unsafe."