Day 1,820

We leave windchimes in the graveyard to sing the dead to sleep when wind and storms might wake them up. All the sermons are held in sign language - even the hymns aren't said aloud just in case dead ears are especially sensitive that day.

We make bury them face down in their coffins in case they try to dig their way up. Better to let them exhaust themselves nine or ten feet down in the dirt than try to corral them back in after days of tracking down the trail of chaos and viscera they'd leave in their wake.

We set locked gates at random around the place to confuse them if they ever get out. Even in death they still have old habits ingrained into them like having to unlock a door to use it but for the most part they manage to stumble around the gates and out into the world.

As the old saying goes - ain't nothing so stubborn as the bloody dead.

Day 1,819

They call it "The Bloom" and expect all infected to go through its full cycle within a month. There are countless videos and blogs dedicated to romanticising it, to capturing it in all its visceral beauty and some even go so far as to film the cycle's completion - the total consumption of the host.

They can talk about becoming one with the world and shedding their sins with their mortal remains all they want. At the end of the day their bones are undergoing a brief and intense period of growth that rends the body apart as the parasite finally hatches.

I can kind of see why they'd think it's a beautiful thing and all. I mean the way that the rib cage just peels out like a flower meeting the morning and the radius and ulna spread to almost form wings has its own sort of poetry. Doesn't make the end result any less brutal.

Sure as hell doesn't make the parasites any more likeable, even though a whole new subculture sprung up around them and their "transformative enlightenment". These people celebrate their infection and encourage the parasites to develop as quickly as possible.

Now it seems like everywhere I go I see people blooming as the streets writhe with freshly born monsters.

Day 1,818

Of all the things you'd expect to encounter when deep sea fishing, a curved obsidian wall is exactly none of them. It must have been at least seventy feet above the waves and god only knew how far down it went or why it was out there to begin with.

Unfortunately humans are curious creatures and inebriated fishermen are worse still. All it took was a slightly slurred "Dare's ya!" and they steered towards it, wondering if there was an entrance somewhere. Almost two hours later they found one.

It was like a giant had carved a neat slive straight out of the glistening stone and left them with a perfect opening. Someone mentioned treasure and the decision was unanimous - sail for the centre and if there wasn't one then they'd have one hell of a story when they got back.

The turns were sharp and the waves sharper still, as if the very sea itself was trying to slam them into the walls until they were just like the other debris that was scattered all around them. From time-to-time an old fashioned hull stuck up among the waves, cracked figureheads mournfully watching them go.

If they were a little more sober they might have seen the glistening eel-like tail snaking its way through the debris after them. It ducked down occasionally, sometimes lingered right beneath them for a few minutes and it always started to surface when they slowed down at all.

The hours flew by, whatever was posing as the sun remained in its position and the gap they entered through slowly drifted shut. They, of course, cracked open a few more beers and were otherwise none the wiser. The thought of a pile of glistening gold lured them in better than any siren could've hoped to.

At some point they woke up, worriedly realising they'd fallen asleep at some point and their poor ship had been scraping along the walls, being turned by the currents and led further into the labyrinth. The eel-like tail had gotten bolder and now stuck up proudly through the waves, following them with the ease of a predator who is firmly in its own turf.

Terrified at they were when they saw it, they couldn't turn around and sail past it. Their only choice was to carry on and hope the labyrinth had two exits. Of course, as you might have guessed by the term "labyrinth", this was not the case.

By the time the, now hungover, fishermen realised this they'd found the centre.

Or rather - it found them.

Day 1,817

We call them Absentees, strange wispy things that are only ever half-there. They wander without purpose, for the most part, though some spend their days follow those they knew in life and crying out in that garbled whisper shout they are so well known for. 

It's what you become when the world stops looking at you, when everyone turns their backs to you and you are left utterly bereft of any gaze. You fade, slowly but surely, starting with your face and fingertips until it meets in the middle.

By then you appear as little more than a wavering torso and the vaguest suggestion of attached extremities. The worst part is when their voice starts to go and they bump into you, clutching with fingers that aren't really there and begging you for help you can't give.

When they are full Absentees they stop speaking altogether. They cluster together and hum, like that could bring them back to their old selves. It won't but it's nice that they still have hope, misguided and futile as it is. And believe me - it is.

Day 1,816

You tell me I'm more than that, like your words can somehow prevent the virus from running through me.

You tell me I'm more than that as my eyes, ears and nose start to bleed and everything turns hazy.

You scream out that I'm more than that when I have you cornered.


The haze takes over and I drift into a world made of meat. Everywhere I go there's something for me to eat. I barely care that I'm swallowing down yet another person I might have known or someone who might have been able to cure me.

I don't want to be cured now. I used to - back before the virus hit my brain, making everything slow down and everyone smell like the most delicious thing in the universe. Now I realise that I'm better off like this and I wouldn't change it for the world, or whatever will be left of it when I'm done.

If I was still human I'd miss you.

But I'm so much more than that.

Day 1,815

The river had finally dried up, the waterfalls were now less than the occasional sluggish drip and the bones at the bottom of the lake, that had only been rumours up until that point, now felt sunlight for the first time since their deaths. Livestock added to their numbers, desperately trying to suck moisture from dirt and rotting algae and choking on their dry texture.

In short - the area was dying a slow and arid death.

Meadows soon became little more than brown patches of dead grass and clusters of flies buzzing over the moist remains of field mice who'd succumbed far faster than everything else, the lucky little bastards. They didn't have to gaze down into the gaping void where the reservoir once sat, full to the brim a mere two months ago.

There were bones in its depths too, peeping out of the mud and basking in their newfound warmth with the smug ease that tended to surround the long dead. It gave us an idea - the idea - that brought the rain back at long, long last.

Surprisingly people volunteered in droves, not wanting to spend another day thirsty and drenched in their own, undrinkable sweat. We narrowed it down to thirty five people and sent them to the areas where the old bones were clustered.

Just like our ancestors had done some several thousand years earlier, we wet the ground with blood. The rain came back the very next morning and filled our river, our reservoir, our faces running with rivulets of cool, clean water.

We wondered if we would have to do this again in our lifetimes... a part of us hoped so.

Day 1,814

The canopy was so thick he had to use his torch to make sure he was still on the path. It was only supposed to be a ten minute shortcut that would lead him to the fields just outside of town but by his watch he'd been walking for almost an hour and it was only getting darker.

The birdsong had changed at some point, gradually morphing from the standard tweets and trills to something more akin to breathy gasps if mock surprise that sounded so very close by. There was never anything in sight though, not that he could really tell anyway.

Something he prayed was only leaves crunched underfoot which did well to disguise the slightly out-of-time steps that someone else was making behind him. By the time he noticed he felt too afraid to turn around or even attempt to stray from the path to head back.

It was probably safer to keep waking and wait for the canopy to thin out, let in some more light and before he knew it he'd be in town and this would all be a funny story to tell his friends later. Of course, this was thought just before the footsteps behind him started to speed up.

He sped up too, keeping pace with who, or what, ever was behind him. They continued to walk faster and faster and faster until they were both sprinting along a path he could barely see and just as natural light began to shine through from above he looked up and froze.

There was no sky up there, just the path perfectly mirrored.

It was like looking in a pond but the person standing above him was not his reflection.

It wasn't remotely human and it was moving closer still.

Day 1,813

Moving offices is deadly at the best of times and downright lethal for the most part. Luckily for us, management were thoughtful enough to hire contractors to do all the hard work for us and we were able to turn up to the new offices the next day.

The only downside of working with contractors is that they're often too busy or too fresh to the job to know which entities need appeasing, which can be ignored and which ones will just straight up mutilate you for funsies. As a result they lost three of their own and demanded compensation for it.

Management tried to respect their wishes, tried to offer money and blood as per usual but these contractors were... different. They asked us to kill the entity responsible. We refused of course, I mean an office without its entities is too vulnerable to survive.

They persisted - insisted that this was their desired recompense and if we didn't comply then all sorts of legal chaos would be unleashed and we'd be shut down in minutes. We weren't caught between a rock and a hard place so much as we were slowly falling into a swimming pool filled with knives instead of acid.

All we have to do is speak to the entities (which can take weeks depending on the time of year and how much vodka is in the water tank). Whilst speaking to them all we have to figure out what killed who and why without endangering ourselves, or at least endangering as few people as possible.

Then we somehow have to kill it in this dimension and hold its physical form until the contractors arrive.

Simple enough right?

Day 1,812

The creature sat just outside of the light's reach while I cowered as close to the table lamp as possible, ever mindful of my shadow touching the wall to my right. It was far too close to  the creature for comfort but it had me cornered and dawn was several hours away.

I gave up trying to talk to it after couple of hours, all it did was stretch its mouth into an approximation of a grin and tilt its head to one side. It was amused and I'd run out of way to try and distract it already. My only option was to wait it out - I didn't want to die in a damned motel!

The window to my left was closed and the curtains were drawn but I could just about make out the milky blue of another creature's eye watching me, unable to get any closer but so very willing to try. It liked to tap on the glass at random, drawing my gaze from the creature in front which would pretend to shuffle closer.

Bastards - the pair of them! At least the others had the decency to go away after they'd killed the other guests, dragging their bodies off somewhere out in the street. I wondered if I'd find their bodies out there when this was all over, assuming I survived.

Judging by the hissing and growling from the one outside, the sun was starting to come up. The creature in front of me wasn't as concerned. I doubt it knew that I planned to yank the curtain open as soon as the sun was up enough to have driven the other one away.

I hoped it would kill the damn thing and I'd be able to leg it out of the house or to a neighbours house or even to the roof. Anywhere but that damned corner sounded like a great idea at the time. Anywhere was safer and anywhere was safer and anywhere was safer and anywhere was...

I woke up in my bed, just before 2AM, just before I remember the first muffled screams coming from the other rooms. Before my feet had even touched the floor the screams began and all the same events came back to repeat themselves once more and dawn was so close and so far.

I don't remember us all dying but there are bullet holes all around us now and the motel looks so much older, so dilapidated and decayed. We'd been reliving that night for longer than any of us could say and it was wearing our patience thin.

I don't know when I started thinking of the creatures and myself as "we" and "us" but that's what it came to. The one in front of me even nodded when I started to vent my frustrations at being trapped like this, which may have ended in me screaming that I just wanted to die already...

That was when it spoke and asked me to step forward and end the cycle.

I don't think it remembers that we tried that before.

We've tried so many things before and none of them worked.

Day 1,811

The gladiator looked around the stadium at the roaring crowd, unaware that all of their feet were fused together, unaware that the crowd was one being and unaware that winning their favour would not end well for him. Still, he strode about encouraging them all to cheer for him and hoped he might live to see another day for his efforts.

The lions they released shortly afterwards had other ideas.

It was longer than he anticipated, far bloodier than he'd imagined and over in about ten minutes. The last thing he saw was eight reddened jaws snarling above him,fighting at each other for more of his meat while the world faded to darkness and all the pain flowed out of his broken body.

Then he woke up in the stands.

The strangers beside him wore the faces of other gladiators who'd met their end before him but their bodies didn't look entirely human. In fact, they looked like someone had taken the description of a human and wrapped it in enough colourful material to hide the fact that they'd left out most of the details that made their creations look believably human.

Things like shoulder blades and clavicles and the correct amount of joints in their fingers and the way their arms bent too far and not far enough as they tried to applaud the fighting below. As the world came further into focus he noticed hows his body was much the same as theirs, much less like the body he woke up with that morning.

He glanced down, hoping to see his own feet and instead seeing a river of flesh joining him to the crowd.

Day 1,810

We've learnt to leave the mountains alone. Digging there isn't just asking for trouble - it's asking for something utterly untouched by the sun to come and shred your skin like wet paper. Trust me, I've seen too many construction workers come in piece-by-piece with tales taller than any heap of rock could ever hope to be.

And yet, their bodies are covered in the proof of these creature's existence. Great chunks of flesh torn straight off, teeth caught up in jagged wounds, blurred photos and videos from their mandatory bodycams. In spite of this, the fools who owned the rights to build a tunnel insisted It Could Be Done And It Would Be Done... Eventually.

The news used to harp on about another unfortunate "accident" causing "delays" and doing everything they possibly could to pin the blame onto the workers and not the paper pushers sitting many miles away working out how many people they could afford to throw to the monsters before it cut into their profit.

All it took was one of the creatures getting loose and they had the whole county shut down for three months while it was hunted down. They tried to put it in a zoo which lasted for all of nine hours before the sedatives wore off and it dug straight through the concrete floor and headed towards the mountains again.

At least, we assume it headed there. Enough tremors were picked up by local seismometers that we can tell it went mountainwards... ish. There margin of error it about fifty miles wide and full of non-stop construction work for a new town that's in the works.

It's been smooth sailing so far but we're all holding our breaths, waiting for them to dig just a little too deep and come face-to-face with something as old as the earth itself and twice as gluttonous. For all we know they've met it already.

They have been awfully quiet these past few days.

Day 1,809

The first question that came to mind when we found the vault some forty metres below the surface wasn't "who built this?".Instead we wondered "why is it locked from the inside?". We wondered how long it had been down here and why the hinges weren't as rusty as the iron drenched dirt all around it.

We postponed all further work on the newest underground line and became fixated on the vault, hoping that it might contain treasure and wondering how and why it had come to be. Whatever was inside was making the ground tremble faintly and that drove our curiosity to a frenzy of haphazard attempts to open the door.

Of all the things we tried to get it open with, the only one that worked was simply knocking. Granted we found this out when we testing the best spots to place a little bit of C4 on but the firm knock we received right back meant that not only was something in the vault - something intelligent was in the vault and it was very much alive.

Barely five minutes later the hinges began to groan, the earth all around us shook and threatened to cave in and the door finally opened. It may have only been by a fraction but it was enough for us to catch glimpses of the inside and the occupants therein.

It took us a while to figure out what they were. Every record says they died out during the apocalypse that had birthed us all. I mean, there was no way they'd survive on the surface nowadays, what with their lack of scales, fairly blunt teeth, only five digits on each hand and their eyes... those strange colourful eyes that showed so much white around them.

We figured it's be safer if we forced the door shut and re-buried them.

Let humanity come back out when it's all settled down a bit more.

Give the poor things a fighting chance and all.

Day 1,808

It was nearly impossible to tell what was alive and what was dead. Staying still was a risk nobody wanted to take and one that meant something was likely to grab at your legs, pulling you into the chaos that lurked inches below the remnants of molten metal and melted bodies.

The Powers That Be stopped playing at war and let hell rain down, leaving the world a lot quieter, a lot smaller and leaving the surviving few to tiptoe across it all so as not to disturb the broken, undying people who were close enough to burn but far away enough to survive.

It was hard to say what they wanted, their vocal chords were as warped and distorted as their bodies as the ground as the world itself for the most part. They used to huddle together, trying to recuperate but mostly just dying in each other's arms.

Now they hide, they blend in with broken wires and bodies of those who were to weak to carry on and they wait for other survivors like trapdoor spiders, clawing at anything that triggers their alarms and stripping it to bare bones within minutes.

On the surface the world was dead but those scant few inches below were teeming with a whole new culture.

Day 1,807

Last night I dreamt I met a dog with a human mouth and no paws. Its legs ended in bloody stumps but it still tried to writhe over to me, all the while just muttering "You're forgetting her and him and me" over and over and over until the words all slurred together as the blood loss overwhelmed it.


Last week I dreamt of you and me sitting upstairs on a double decker bus, right at the front. The rain was coming down so hard it looked like we were driving through a constant waterfall. You had my aunt's head in your lap and you kept asking me for a hair brush but all I had were pockets full of grave dirt.


Last month I dreamt the sun finally woke up, its light fading as it opened its mouth to speak to us all and ask us why we hadn't moved on yet. It spoke like we'd all been dead for centuries, too stubborn or stupid to know that everything had ended and there was no point in us keeping it waiting.

Day 1,806

She woke up to find her containment unit had been breached, glass scattered around her like transparent rose petals, biting into her just enough that she realised it couldn't possibly be a dream. The faint breeze carried through the broken walls carried the distant scent of rotting meat which could only mean that the lowest levels had been compromised.

Sitting up, she started taking note of her surroundings, still keeping low enough that she'd be harder to spot from outside the unit. With her green uniform and hijab, she blended in fairly well with the towering plants all around her - originally meant to be a slight against her own lack of height but now her unlikely saviour.

When she was finally upright she noticed that some of the glass remained intact enough that someone had left her a message. Or rather, they'd left her a single word: "Survive" hastily scrawled in what appeared to be blood and fresh blood at that judging by the faint dripping noise coming from jut behind the broken wall.

The units were meant to keep them all safely behind three inches of bulletproof glass with enough plants inside to maintain a reasonable oxygen level while the rest of the base was sent into a vacuum state. It should have asphyxiated the worst of the lower levels - the ones most likely to harm a human. Seems that something didn't quite pan out with that though.

Before she had a chance to figure out what had gone wrong, she started seeing movement coming from the containers all around her. A few others appeared to be fine, dazed but otherwise moving normally. Most weren't moving in any way a human body should be able to and judging by the cracks and pops coming from their containers - they weren't in control any more.

Day 1,805

You were still catching your breath under the old pier when it ran past your hiding place. The rest of the pack were off in the distance, their howls echoing around the seafront seemed so much louder now that all the screaming had stopped. You hoped you weren't the last one left.

They'd been hiding on a cargo ship, hundreds of them all crammed together in metal containers  - all set loose at once just after the Viscount Arms had finished celebrating its 8th year in business. It was well-timed, people were too full of booze to do much more than flail, collapse and be devoured.

You were a designated driver, the last one standing... well, crouching behind a pile of old deck chairs under the pier while creatures that looked like a squid lost a fight to eight sharks and a bear patrolled the once vibrant seaside town.

It was like they knew you were alive, might even be able to smell your fear or something. Either way, your hiding place was precarious at best and a death sentence at worst. If you could dart between hiding places and get to your car you might have been able to survive.

But fear had you in the palm of its hand, left you dashing between piles of rotting furniture and old fishing equipment instead of making progress and heading towards the town. It was only a matter of time before you'd be spotted and you knew that.

Maybe a part of you didn't want to survive while everyone else was dead?

Maybe you'd be better off joining them instead of trying to explain to the world what had happened?

The howls were growing closer by the minute and your time slowly ran out.

Day 1,804

They've turned the old morgue into one of those "Humanistic Reclamation Centres". I mean replacing parts of yourself with something from a dead person is fine when it's organ donation but skin grafting to have someone else's tattoo embedded onto your own body? That's getting into distinctly creepy territory from whence there is no return.

Everyone and their nan is getting Frankensteined and the government is just sitting back and struggling to come up with ways to legislate and profit off of the entire thing. I'd say worse about it but I got a better set of eyes from a kid who'd fallen onto a road... at least the official report says he fell.

There's a lot more of those now. People are wary about receiving compliments in case someone tries to do something about it and the next thing they know that award winning smile is on someone else's face and the rest of you is being divvied up for the rest of the town.

I'd say we're like vultures but vultures have a reason to scavenge that isn't purely cosmetic.

Day 1,803

Vampires are the end result of leeches deciding they want to be people-shaped. They look the part too - no visible eyes, just parts of their head that are more light sensitive, heavily segmented skin that makes them look like something from a worm's nightmare and, of course, the infamous mouth.

Did you know they have three sets of jaws in their weird, puckered looking mouths? They can pierce the skin of a hippo like it was made of mashed potato so it's no wonder that they make people a little nervous. That and their tendency to start leaning towards you if you stop near them.

They can't necessarily help it, they're attracted to heat and fear makes people awfully hot under the collar. The more they panic, the more they sweat and you'd better believe a vampire can taste that salt in the air, jaws clicking together like they're savouring the scent of a fine perfume.

At least the old stories got one thing right - they hate garlic. It's one of those overwhelmingly strong odours that sends them packing in seconds, unfortunately it has a similar effect on people but it solves half the problem... sort of.

Vampires leave us be for the most part. They prefer to feed on animals or consenting adults or whatever won't try to sue them for getting within half a mile of their personal space. There's always a few that prefer the old ways, stalking about at night and leaving shrivelled husks in their wake.

After all, they can eat up to five times their body weight in a single sitting.

Day 1,802

They saw other cars in the distance but theirs was the only one with the doors still closed and all the lights off. They even made sure to park up for the night behind the roadside hedges, barely within the boundaries of some farmer's fields. Better to risk the wrath of a human than be caught out by the things that run alongside cars at night.

The faint sounds of rain and singing insects lulled across the hours, occasionally disrupted by a cut-off scream from someone who wasn't as cautious as they were. Once upon a time they actively went out and searched for people in need - pulling the ungrateful and ignorant from the jaws of creatures who were supposed to be extinct.

It got tiring after a while. People began to expect help and only got themselves in worse and worse situations until they set free something that should have died like the rest of its kind. The same something that's been tailing them for almost five years and across nineteen countries.

They reckon they'll either run out of supplies, gas or patience and then it'll be lights-on-doors-open for them too. But it wasn't that night. That night they were tucked away where headlights couldn't reach them and the creature couldn't see them.

That night, for once, they were safe.

Day 1,801

I used to work as a plumber, you know. Not the most pleasant of jobs but the pay made it almost worthwhile. Never had a problem I couldn't fix in an hour or two, never had a client cause me more hassle than their pipes until I got a call from the gym on the other side of town.

I don't normally go that far out, it's someone else's turf and I don't want any more trouble than I already have but they sounded pretty desperate and the guys that work that area weren't answering any of my calls. I figured 'what the heck' and drove over the next evening.

The staff were nice enough, nervous but I assumed they were just concerned about the clogged pipes in the locker room. They said one of the clients might have tried to shove one of the small hand towels down a drain which made absolutely no sense but I just nodded my head and walked right into danger.

First thing I noticed was that all the tiles were red, total contrast to the neutral tones of the rest of the place. That and the tang of iron in the air, made me wonder if there was a mineral deposit leak somewhere, maybe a collapsed pipe even.

They said I'd be alone down there but I saw a pair of unhealthily pale feet poking out from one of the shower cubicles, red running down them in little rivers. I hoped it was just soap but the stench of iron confirmed my fears and, like a sensible coward, I went running back upstairs.

First person I found was one of the reception ladies off to the break room and she didn't bat an eyelid when she told me that was the clogged cubicle. I asked her to repeat what she said next, thinking I's misheard but no - she just looked at me like I was an imbecile and told me the shower had bitten off more than it could chew.

The showers needed meat every now and then to feed into the boiler and generator that kept the whole building up and running. They were some kind of lesser demon that the owners had harnessed into cost-cutting tools and now one of them had indigestion.

This was way out of my league, my knowledge, my paygrade and yet I found myself back down there trying to claw my way through an ungodly amount of viscera so I could unscrew the drain and get my vacuum right in there to get rid of the rest of the poos bastard who'd come to lose weight and lost their life instead.

Day 1,800

The last fleshy remnants of my body rotted away so long ago that if it weren't for my internal photo-memory bank, I wouldn't know what I looked like as a human. Not that it really matters much nowadays but my sentimentality has yet to fade as most of the unnecessary feelings have.

Back when I was new to upgrades, or 'bio-hacking' as we used to call it, I had the sense to engrave my exo-layer and embed coloured resin so I'd always have some colour to me that wasn't gunmetal grey or factory silver. I wanted to stand out and pretend I was becoming better and not just... different.

I still miss things, you know. Little things like how long it took to open my eyes in the morning or how satisfying it was to crack my knuckles or what a sneeze felt like. Thanks to a couple of upgradesI installed early on I have no difficulty waking up, no air bubbles between my joints to misalign them and a nose that serves as decoration more than a sensory organ.

My parents told me I'd gone too far when I had my scalp reinforced and my hair replaced with wifi generating strands or fibreoptic-style cabling. They told me they barely recognised me and that was before I'd even considered an exo-layer or organ replacement (bio organs are just too unreliable and, quite frankly, more hassle than they're worth).

I've outlived them. I've outlived almost all of my blood family and my first friends and most of the people I grew up with. They either couldn't or wouldn't keep up with all the upgrades that were rolling out for next-to-nothing.

If I still had regret I might have more of an issue with this but that has no place in our society. Why bother breaking the law when you barely spend any time in the physical world at all? Everything is done in the V-World and bodies are just back-up forms for when the global network needs to do maintenance.

It's only a matter of time before the final upgrade is released and we can burn our bodies once and for all.

Day 1,799

It was a city built on a city built on a city built on a city built on bones.

Allegedly.

Nobody had been deep enough to see the bones and come back alive. Some say that when you're that far down you start to forget what your life was before you went off in search of the city's end. You lose your way and your sense of self, slowly crumbling until you're as much a part of the foundations as all the other bones.

Others don't believe the city ever ends, its just one derelict nightmare of a building stacked on another - all the way to the centre of the world and maybe even out the other side. They say that people don;t go missing down there, they're just on the other side of the city.

So far on the other side that we'd happily class them as dead but nonetheless, they exist in some way. It comforts their families to think that they aren't dead as we would know it. Personally I'd rather be dead than wander the depths of the city for eternity but to each their own.

It's becoming a rite of passage to try and find the city's end. A rite that has a death count somewhere in the mid hundreds, not that the council would advertise that. Attempting to find the end is what brings us all together to watch the entrances to the depths and wait for something to come back out again.

Day 1,798

We tell our children not to go near the forest at night because people do drugs there and it isn't safe. We tell them it's only called Ghost Woods because of the sound the wind makes when it blows through the tree branches. We tell them they can't play hide-and-seek in there because they might get abducted.

We should have just told them the truth.

They should have been told about all the other children whose souls can't find any peace. They've been there since the first mothers threw their unwanted babies into the pond to be swept away down, deep deep down the underground river that runs through the entire town.

Those poor little children wait for their mothers to come back but they get so bored. They ask our children, our living breathing children, to come down to the pond to play with them. Most aren't seen again but my sister was one of the unlucky ones who managed to claw her way back out.

The mothers stay inside - too guilty to rest, too loyal to leave and all too eager to point out unruly behaviour that could be so easily corrected by a quick trip to the woods and back... back alone. It's like they sometimes forget that they're murderers and that their children have never stopped looking for them.

I saw a reunion once.

A mother who finally found her child again by the fountain in the town centre. The water comes from the same underground river that carries their little souls all over the place and the council have just finished building a walkway above it for tourists.

The mother leapt out of an open window, rushing towards her child.

Her child did not move.

All the others began to swarm.

Day 1,797

This place doesn't feel real.

The people don't feel real.

Not even the rain feels real.


You know what does feel real though? All the dead animals that line the roads first thing in the morning.


I never used to see them as a kid, my parents made sure I got up after the street cleaners had been but one Christmas morning I beat them to it and saw flashes of red along the path out front. I thought it was presents, thought that there was something for me at the end of the road but instead it was a family of cats - kittens and all - gutted and spread out.

Didn't tell me parents what I'd seen either, some strange little part of me thought I'd get blamed for it. Of course now I know that everyone else knows what does this and everyone else is afraid of it. Don't get me wrong, I'm scared too but I'm at least trying to find its weaknesses.

After that first day I started making a note of what was being killed and how many. It took five years before the pattern emerged - a cycle of working its way through the entire animal order from insect larvae to bird to cat and dog and eventually ending up with a human.

But the two week gap between the murder of a person and the roadsided being covered in a thin layer of insects makes me think it goes higher than us. Goes beyond the physicality of a person and kills some aspect of reality itself. It takes away the very thing that tethers us to the rest of the world and leaves us to float in a haze of death and disorder while it picks its next victim.


I'm going to try and break the cycle - kill its prey before it can and see what it does.

Either it finds a back-up, like replacing sparrows with starlings... or I die and the cycle shortens.

I've got enough rat poison to kill a town and enough mice in cages to line the roads.

I'll strike first and, with any luck, strike last.

Day 1,796

Mother.

It towered over her by a good nine feet, chitinous segments of its skin forming and reforming, thirty-eight eyes blinking and moving independently, limbs twitching with its unnatural stillness. A creature designed by her team and made to tear through armies like a hot knife through butter.

Remnants of viscera from the last few tests and fresh blood from her unfortunate teammates who didn't run as fast as she did, who she'd pushed into its path and brutally lashed out at in order to reach the emergency switch that would seal the lab deep underground and stop it from escaping.

 And it just called her mother.

Were it not for the still-warm bodies of her coworkers strewn across the floor she might have protested but in that moment she knew who it really resembled. She didn't know how long the attachment would last but it meant she might just survive this long enough to initiate the doomsday protocol.

She smiled and held out her hand, praying it wouldn't notice her type in the code that would kill them both.

Day 1,795

When you're alone on the observation deck, when the others have gone to their sleeping pods and you say you'll be just a minute longer, when they're all unconscious and the station's AI is on standby - then and only then the stars sing to you.

The first time it happened you thought you'd left the radio on somewhere but it sounded like nothing you'd ever heard before mixed with everything you'd heard before. It was coming from outside... from the jet black void of space... and it said your name.

Over the course of the next few months the stars learnt more than just your name. They learnt the whole crew's names and started talking to you in that sing-songish voice that was a culmination of every voice you'd ever heard rolled into one unique voice.

It was almost a year before the stars started showing themselves. Those faint little blips of twinkling light started coming closer. They didn't show up on the radar and the rest of the crew couldn't see them but their painful light soon filled every single window.

You didn't have much of a choice really. It hurt so much to see their light everywhere you went that going blind was nothing short of ecstatic relief. Still, the stars sing to you and call you by name. Only now they aren't outside any more and the crew are getting quieter and quieter.

When was the last time you spoke to any of them?

Day 1,794

"One day that town'll swallow us whole," my grandad used to say. He was never a big fan of the constant expansion of the neighbouring town that seemed to come closer to our village every single day. Of course the older people complained about losing their touristic charm and their higher property value but it all fell on the unhearing, inhuman ears of the town council.

I was fifteen when our village was declared an estate of the town and our historic wooden post was replaced with a steel road sign that directed drivers to the main body of the town itself. We weren't causing enough hassle to warrant the town's attention at that point but when we did we regretted it instantly.

It started with small things like adding our old village name to the road sign, removing all mentions of the town from the village website and starting an online campaign to have our independence declared again. This stirred a few hairs but town was still focussed on its expansion and our territory had already been claimed. As far as it cared - we'd already lost.

When we banded together with a couple of farmsteads that were next in line, we started becoming a nuisance  and the town began to fight harder. Taxes were raised, house prices dropped and towering blocks of flats were sent in overnight to surround us and remind us that we were insignificant.

So we fought fire with fire and struck at the heart of the town - the council chambers. With the help of the farmstead's equipment we managed to play dead whilst digging to their innermost sanctum. We caught them while they were sleeping off their last feast, blood glistening and fresh and spread all over their laminate flooring as a hazard against intruders.

But we came prepared. We came with bleach and cement and enough complex forms to distract them if they woke up before we'd finished sealing them in for good... which they did when someone's trainer slid across the floor with a hideous screech that jolted the councillors into action and cost us eight lives.

Still, by the time we were out of there the majority of the councillors were deep into the forms -  ticking meaningless boxes, correcting spelling errors and drawing perfect sigils as we finished closing our entrance back up and collapsing the tunnel behind us.

Without its mind, the town couldn't absorb any other settlements, couldn't pass any more laws to us and couldn't stop us from banishing it back to its original boundaries. We haven't stopped it altogether, the sounds of drilling have been almost non-stop for weeks and we know they'll free the council soon enough.

They won't be so kind this time - they'll just eat us whole, spit out our bones and charge us for it.

Day 1,793

You can only see her when a door is cracked open slightly, soon as it opens enough for a head to fit though - she's gone. There aren't too many theories about how she came to be or who she is because her body was found some fifty odd years ago.

She'd been trying to get back into her house after forgetting her key. Her kid was still inside, screaming for his mummy and causing absolute chaos while she tried to break the door down. Somehow the kid had managed to put the chain across just as she'd gotten her head through, leaving her stuck and gradually choking.

We don't know why she appears all over town but we've seen her enough times to know she's mostly harmless. The only thing that seems to set her off is children crying, makes her go absolutely batshit and claw at your door until you open it enough for her to see that the child isn't hers.

I wonder if she shows up at every door because she's trying to find him, not that she would. He was taken to his grandparent's place in the town over and hasn't come near his childhood home once. Maybe if he did, she'd see that he's fine and leave but until then we're stuck glimpsing her bloated and contorted face whenever we open a door.

Day 1,792

I've been seeing the same dog, or rather dog-shaped thing, every time I put my glasses on.

It's just the glasses too, contacts are just the same as they've always been.


Day in, day out, doesn't matter to it.

Damned thing is always somewhere nearby and getting closer every day.


Sometimes people walk through it like the dog isn't even there.

They end up in the obituaries the next day.


I'll end up the same way too, you know.

Ripped apart and left to rot, lungs and feet missing so my soul can't move from my death-spot.


I don't quite know how I know that but I just do.

And the dog is always closer and closer and closer still.


And it's running out of patience at long last, I know I'll have to start running and soon.

I can hear it padding around my house at night, outside the classroom this morning.


It sounded so far away - thought I had enough time but when I put the glasses on it was right in front of me.

There must have been two of them all along.

Day 1,791

I don't remember much about my imaginary friend but I do know he came out of the flooded basement to play hide & seek and then never left. I used to think it was so unfair that his mum never came to tell him to go to dinner or to take baths.

It took me years to realise he didn't have a mum but I never cared that he didn't have a face. Kids are funny like that - horror doesn't sit with them like it does for adults. They don't know what is and isn't  scary like we do and as such I spent most of my childhood days narrowly avoiding death at the hands of an "imaginary" friend.

He was always real to me and now I know he was just straight up real. It seems impossible that he could be real let alone an actual living, breathing creature that shared my home with me. Considering he was mostly made up of long arms with strangely circular palms that covered his thousands of eyes.

I don't know if he was light sensitive or pretending that his hunting was a game.

Either way I survived and made sure that when I had a kid we didn't have a basement.

Turns out he appears in closets too.

Day 1,790

I always joked that my bloodline would end with me because I didn't want kids. Now I'm ending it because I can't bear to read about any more deaths that I know they caused. There's simply no other way - they all have to die and me along with them just to be on the safe side.

We are monsters wearing humanity like a favourite jumper. When summer comes we put it away and when autumn is here we slip back into it as if it never left. I used to think we just looked like monsters, that appearance was all that separated us from humans but when my older sister turned nineteen she was taught otherwise and had the foresight to warn me.

I watched over the next few years as she struggled between the guilt of killing innocent people and the enjoyment of embracing everything we were born to be. She'd come back to the summer cabin just as bloodsoaked and hysteric as the rest of the family, telling me I'd understand when I'm older and she was right.

My first hunt it meant to be tomorrow night so everyone will sleep through the day.

I'll be kinder to them than they ever were to their victims.

They'll go out in their sleep.

I'll try to join them.