Day 2,516

Water runs heavily down the old church walls, pooling around the shins of the silent parishioners whose heads haven't lifted from prayer in days. The vicar is collapsed over the stained pulpit, the water beneath him has long since run clear though the faint metallic tang of blood still lingers in the air around him.

Outside the church the rain pours as if a second flood is coming, not that the parishioners would notice nor care. They are beyond that now, as close to dying as they are to living as they are to drowning in the water that continues to rise around them.

It'll take weeks before they are fully submerged, baptised by death himself and welcomed into a slumber far more peaceful than any they've ever been blessed with before. They will not remember dying, the struggle to raise their heads from prayer as the waters rise so very slowly.

They won't remember the sound of their neighbours struggling to breathe nor their own frantic coughing and gasping against the ripples created by their collective struggle. They won't lift their heads, won't stand up and walk outside, won't even open their eyes and look at each other one final time.

Water runs heavily down the old church walls, pooling inside the indentations made by the feet of a long dead parish. Nobody will visit them when it rains, though they'll be seen hovering in the exact place where they passed. Nobody will know what happened to them.

Only the rain.

Day 2,515

It's all fun and games until someone remember they're supposed to be alive. Then they start shrieking and crying about how it's all unfair and they never should have come here as if that changes a damned thing about this damned place and all our damned bloody souls.

I suppose if I were as young and fresh as them I'd be just as scared, hurt and angry by it all but honestly I've been here for so long that I hardly remember a single person from my living days. I don't even remember waking up here - I just am and I am dead and I am here and that is my life.

Rather, it's my unlife I suppose. It's hard to describe the way I both feel alive and feel lifeless. It's like I'm floating over a haze and occasionally I'll see an opening and there's the most beautiful green field full of flowers. But the haze always comes back and all I see is a grey nothingness.

I wonder if the others see the same as me or if they think we're actually on a boat on the open lake. We're not - we're in the mouth of something vaster and older than the lake, something that roamed here when here was an ocean and its prey was just as vast and ancient.

Now it feeds on us and our memories, drowning the bodies and filtering the souls out to sit in its mouth where it savours us like a fine wine. I remember how I used to be so excited at the though of soon being old enough to drink wine with my parents at their formal dinner parties but I don't remember their faces.

Day 2,514

I only hear her on her favourite gramophone, whispering to me in the pauses between songs as I dance with her lifeless body. I'd always say this would be the last time, just one final dance and then I'd have the closure to bury her like she wanted but at the end of each song she'd beg for one more dance.

It's been seven months of this now and she's finally stopped smelling like death. I know she can't help it, rot gets to us all in the end but Lord how it was difficult to maintain a steady waltz when each movement unleashed that fetid stench from my heart's dearest delight.

Now she has no smell, that or I've lost another of my senses. I don't know and I can't bring myself to care either, I don't care for much now that she's at the point of passing on. A part of me does wonder if she plans to bring me with her - make me dance myself to death like the old fairytales she used to love so much.

Would it be that bad to join her and spend eternity waltzing and staring into her eyes?

It would certainly be better than staring at her limp, decaying neck.

I do hope I pass soon, I'm so very tired of dancing with a corpse.

Day 2,513

We crouched there, me and my sister, staring at each other in the TV's dim flickering light as a voice came through the letterbox - her voice came through the letterbox - begging to be let inside. I let her in about four hours ago when she lifted the letterbox and said she'd left her house keys on her desk as she's done a over dozen times already.

She seemed fine then.

She looked normal.

She was herself.

Until she was at the door again, claiming she'd been attacked by some doglike person who stole her face and suddenly the sister I let inside wasn't quite right. The inconsistencies I previously hadn't noticed now stared at me, mocking my blind trust while she looked just as frightened as I was.

Until my sister's voice was abruptly cut off.

Until her severed tongue was pushed through the letterbox.

Until I couldn't stop myself from screaming til my throat bled.

By then she was long gone, having opened the door and run out, giggling and chattering as a chorus of animal-like laughter and howls followed her down the street and out into the woods. I was frozen there til morning, shaking and gasping for breath as the rising sun steadily illuminated her broken body.

Day 2,512

It was once an art installation turned environmental thought piece turned aquarium that now sat untouched and tucked away in a barely used subway station near the outskirts of the city. The number of visitors it received could be counted on one hand with room to spare, though people didn't go there with the intent of returning anywhere.

The walls were lined with goliath panes of glass that barely revealed what was swimming within the murky waters. Broken buoys floated about, gently pulsing a dim orange glow that showed the occasional broken fin or bloated finger but the majority of the inhabitants remained unseen.

Informative plaques jutted out from wherever they'd been hastily hammered into, all claiming deep river fish were thriving in the grim water and how their scheduled feeding was at 1500 hours sharp every day. they failed to mention what the food was but the city grew a little quieter each month.

The occasional brave soul will go inside with a flashlight and camera, trying to see exactly what was brought into the heart of the city but all they ever found were missing persons. If they weren't too frightened, they'd report it right away and a few police vans would show up, cause enough of a fuss to make it seem like they were doing something and then leave.

Nobody knew who the creatures had been brought in by, no paper trail led back to their original habitat and nobody important had gone missing so they were just left to rot in the dark. As long as they stayed put and ate whoever was thrown at them then there wasn't anything anyone was willing to do about it.

Day 2,511

It was supposed to have been just a nap, just a short little get-me-through-the-rest-of-the-day-please, just a little more time unconscious enough that the afternoon would feel a little more bearable. However when she woke up it was pitch black and the air felt thick, clumping in the back of her throat and making her every breath a struggle.

She couldn't move, the air weighed her down like a layer of tar being gently poured over her limbs and open mouth. She couldn't even turn her head, the air had tucked her in like the last layer of dirt over a coffin and she began to cry.

No sound came out, it seemed like nothing could get past the air that surrounded her, pressed down on her and gently smothered her. As her eyes blurred with tears that were just as trapped in place as she was, she saw a movement on the ceiling.

She saw something looking up at her with her own eyes before turning away and walking towards the door.

Day 2,510

When I was a kid I used to hate going to the basement of the apartment complex with my mum, not because it was dingy and smelled vaguely mouldy from all the washing machines that were always on the brink of catching fire. I hated the way the floor screamed and I hated the sound of hundreds of tiny souls clawing their way up for air.

It was only after we moved out to a small bungalow closer to the town library that I was able to do a little research and find that before the apartments were there, it was all fields. That was when I realised the scratching and screaming was only rabbits buried alive in their warrens to make way for shitty overpriced rooms.

Sometimes I wonder if every basement is like that, just full of the souls of screaming animals whose last moments were suffocation and fear. Who clawed each other to death for a few precious seconds above the ground before some digger or bulldozer forced them back down into agonising nothingness.

Day 2,509

The almost-him walked around his almost-home as he fought the urge to blink and end this vision. He wanted to see where it would end - he need to see his almost-face. The face that came from every decision he could have made and would have made if he weren't such a gutless coward.

He wanted to see what he would have become but his almost-self refused to turn around. Rage began to bubble up inside him as his mind kept drifting back to her face slowly drifting past the underside of their beloved glass-bottom boat. He needed to face the man that could have saved her and see how much this grief had festered him away.

Day 2,508

The clouds hung low and unsettlingly dark against the stark summer sky. The bodies swaying from unseen ropes beneath them hung lower, gently watering the ground with their blood and tears. It had been several days of them drifting around the town's outskirts, gradually painting a visceral circle that the locals feared to cross.

Within a week they started to run out of food, too scared to go near the edges of the circle and ever fearful of joining the condemned folks up in the clouds who'd taken to softly moaning and weeping. As one week turned into two, the air was constantly filled with the sobbing and begging of the condemned as the townsfolk silently dared each other to be the first to cross the line.

It was a day shy of week three before an elderly man decided he had nothing to lose, grabbed his rifle just in case and took his trunk out on the roads,aiming for the bloodline. He got as far as his front tyres touching it before he leapt out (or was dragged, the stories vary here) and started gasping for air.

He was the first to join the condemned and five hundred or so more would join before the clouds left.

To this day there's still a red line around the town, though time has almost washed out.

To this day when it rains, everyone runs inside in case the condemned are back.

Day 2,507

The woods outside the city have been swarming with them since we had one of the harshest winters on record. They call it a root baby, an unwanted newborn buried beneath a tree that comes back from death to find its mother. Nasty little creatures in my opinion and a thoroughly rotten practice nowadays when every hospital and religious building has a baby box to help fight this problem.

It's hard to break tradition and some people, though they won't say it out loud, would rather bring a root baby into the world than give their child a chance at a happy life with someone else. For whatever reasons they drill into themselves they end up hurting a great many innocent people along the way.

A root baby is blind with skin thick as old bark and twice as gnarled. Their limbs are twisted as the roots that cradled them in death and their screeching cries sound like harsh wind through dry autumn leaves. Just below their eyes and around their tiny little noses are thermal pits, just like the kind you'd find on a snake and, much like a snake, they use it to find their prey.

Like any child, a root baby wants food and warmth. People provide both of those things, whether they want to or not. You can always tell whether it was an animal or a root baby attack - you check if the body's been drained of their blood and hollowed out, skin peeled back and ribs cracked to form a nest for it.

Day 2,506

They say the tunnels beneath the city are to let all the rainwater drain out into the sea, they say that everything drains out into the sea eventually but we're landlocked to the point that most people have only seen the ocean in photos. That and the fact that we barely see rain most months just raised more questions than they were willing to settle.

My cousins and I camped out there once, when the council told us it was too dangerous to go anywhere near the tunnels - called it "flooding season" which we laughed at like the ignorant children we were. Now there's no us, just me and all the questions we never wanted answered like that.

When we got down there with our tents and a small fire kit we expected maybe a little damp from the rain that morning, maybe puddles enough that we'd need to pitch our tents on the walkways rather than the ground and it was just damp at first. I couldn't stand it so I camped at the top of a stairwell and they set up on the ground right below.

We must have spent hours just laughing and throwing bits of food at each other while a faint rumbling built all around us til we couldn't ignore it any more. As the rumbling build to a bone-rattling crescendo we started to hear rushing water amidst it all as the air grew too thick to breathe.

I was barely able to get to the top of the platform before I saw my cousins and their tent swept away into darkness by great swirls of water that left a salty tang in the air and all the things that swam within it snapped and snarled at them til they were too far out of sight.

And then I was left with raging waters filled with beasts the like of which I'd never seen before and prayed I'd never see again. I eventually found them in old textbooks about the Mesozoic era after years of desperately trying to find some kind of answer that didn't make me sound any crazier to the police.

Once upon a time our little landlocked city had been deep underwater and I think it still remembers that.

Day 2,505

You'd assume a theatre that had been abandoned way back in the 1920's would be quiet, dilapidated and somewhat falling entirely to pieces, right? At the very least you'd expect it to be quiet or filled with the subdued tones of nature drifting through broken glass or down from bird nests up in the rafters.

These assumptions would be sensible and grounded in reality but the reality was that as soon as I set foot through the broken door to the boiler room I was met with an intense blast of hot air that knocked me to the ground. Through hazy eyes I swear I saw a man in blood-drenched overalls peering down at me but as my vision cleared, he gradually dissipated.

There were swirling groups of hazy figures flittering in and out of my vision with every blink, every heartbeat that echoed throughout my aching head but they always faded back to nothing in my brief moments of clarity. The sounds they made remained as they walked up to and occasionally right through me, all the while asking who I was and what year it was outside.

A part of me realised it would be best to ignore them in case they mobbed me for information when I showed that I could see them, though I'm certain they knew I could see them with the way my unfocused eyes kept following them. I managed to take a few blurry photos that sort of showed these figures stalking me but they could just as easily be mistaken for a mix of sunlight and shadow.

One thing's for certain though - abandoned rarely means unoccupied.

Day 2,504

I always hated being the one to empty the transportation pods - no matter how careful you are or how slowly you go you'll always get some kind of viscera somewhere and 9 times out of 10 its something foecal. Humans just have to much inside them and the smell doesn't leave you for days.

Still, the pods can't run when they're full and we can't let the general public know that they aren't being transported, they're being cloned and the originals are killed as soon as they appear to be safely on the other side. The world would go crazy and we'd be called monsters for knowingly participating in such a quiet genocide.

They make you use a pod to get to your desk on your first day and after all that paperwork they get you to bring a friend or family member along and teleport them to a fancy lounge. Then after you're both finished with a complimentary meal and your loved one has left they send you down the the lowest levels to empty the pods.

Coming face-to-face with such unmistakably familiar, unmistakably deceased faces breaks you in a way you never quite recover from but by then you're as much a murderer as they are and you've not only killed yourself, you've killed someone you love as well. So you never quit, you just maintain the machines that kill and clone and wonder how much of you is the same as the original.

Day 2,503

Her voice echoed around the schoolyard "Please help me daddy" followed by sobbing that sounded so much like her that he almost came out from underneath the car to rescue his little girl. Almost. As soon as the Gliwlic realised he wasn't fooled it switched tactics completely, it didn't want to tug at his aching heartstrings anymore, it wanted to rip them out and floss its teeth with them.

It stood up on its seven heavily segmented legs and let loose a thunderous roar that came from deep within its cavernous chest. He felt every bone in his body rattle, his teeth juddering in place as he clenched his jaw and prayed he wasn't drawing its attention. Much as he missed his dear little girl he did not want to join her. Not yet.

After several tense moments of silence he opened his eyes and found himself struggling not to scream as he saw it walking right towards the side of the road where he and several other grieving parents were hidden away under their cars. They'd all received its messages in their lost children's voices all saying a strange man had left them at the school.

Back in his day the Gliwlic was just a schoolyard myth, something to frighten the younger pupils and also instil a fear of strangers in them, to protect them. Now it was very much alive and standing right in front of the car beside his. He hadn't seen its head yet but the stories said it looked like an old gas mask made from the skins of its victims.

He hoped it wasn't true and soon found out just how true it was as the Gliwlic crouched down to meet the gaze of Mrs Breathnach who came for her young Gawain. She was smiling like she'd found him as she gently held onto the outstretched talons of the Gliwlic and maybe she was seeing his face. Maybe that's what the Gliwlic did - it showed you your loved ones one last time.

He waited to see if it would kill her and decided that if the death was quick enough, he'd go next.

Day 2,502

Their eyes had been locked in an intense staring competition for quite some time now, he wanted to check but he knew that it would leap the second his gaze drifted. That's how it killed the accounts manager a few minutes ago and it would have taken him by surprise just the same if he hadn't happened to spot it ducking behind the cubicle a few rows over.

It had gotten closer and closer with every blink, every time he turned behind to see if another was sneaking up behind him and he counted himself lucky that there was only the one who was now clutching the top of the cubicle so hard its knuckles were white.

He could practically hear the blood thrumming through its veins as its eyes narrowed, its maw widened in a horrific mockery of a smile and it began to forcefully exhale. Little puffs of its viscerally rank breath hit his face and made his eyes burn - it was trying to make him blink.

Just that one blink was all it needed, just that brief moment where his attention would be diverted and it would be able to pounce, eviscerate and feast. He felt his eyes well up and tears gently fell from his eyes as he winked each one, always making sure one eye was open and watching the frustration build on its hellish face.

He wondered what would happen first - him having to blink or it losing its patience.

As the sun started to rise, forcing him to squint, he knew this wouldn't take long.

Maybe he gave up, maybe the creature finally snapped - either way it ended in a split second.

Day 2,501

You knew you shouldn't be here, no living person should be here but you had to find her and the voice on the phone gave you this address. The voice sounded so soothingly familiar that you found yourself writing down everything they told you to and hailing the first cab you could find in the hopes that she would be there without even registering where you were heading to.

It used to be a mall back in the 60's, a thriving and bustling place that was closed and sealed off when a local cult barricaded themselves inside and never came back out. Their bodies were never found, nor was anyone who'd been in there with them - it was like they all just vanished into thin air. Just like she had.

It wasn't the kind of incident that anywhere could bounce back from so the owners cut their losses and closed the doors for good a couple of weeks after the police called it unsolvable. You'd heard the urban legends and playground stories about portals in the basement, how it was always night inside, how you could still see the dead cult members in their final hours but none of that scared you as much as thought of losing her for good.

The taxi dropped you off as close as they dared, leaving you a half hour's walk and a concerned driver who said he'd call the police if he hadn't heard from you by morning. You'd either have found her and called him back for a ride or... maybe you wouldn't need a lift at all. It wasn't something you wanted to think about but the closer you got, the more those old playground stories clouded your mind.

You were shaking like a leaf before your hand even touched the door and before you could fully reach for it, another hand shot out from behind you and gripped your wrist so hard you felt your bones creak. The soothingly familiar voice harshly whispered in your ear to not look up and back away slowly.

If it had been so easy then you'd still be on that side of the doors but you heard her banging on the glass and begging you for help. You twisted away from the stranger's grip, barely registering your wrist cracking and breaking from the force as your eyes locked with hers and you threw the doors open to meet with

                teeth

Day 2,500

Water poured down the stone facade of the small church although there was no visible source. The surrounding woods were full of people who'd been foolish enough to drink from it and were now twisted tree-like beings who spent their shortened lives desperately trying to find their way back to drink again i the hope that it might cure them.

They were left so thirsty that they'd often resort to killing anything they came across and draining it dry. You could easily tell where they'd been by the trail of exsanguinated bodies they left behind. Dozens of squirrels, a handful of deer and any hiker who thought the legends were false and were too slow or too stupid to avoid the shambling tree-beasts who had once been so alive and so curious.

There always seemed to be someone trying to find the cursed church, whether they heard about it from someone in the shaded corner of a pub to medieval texts to the desperate search for a cure - there would always be someone for the church to bless with its waters.

Day 2,499

The model town was unveiled right at the beginning of the village's Art Month - perfectly to scale and perfectly detailed including tiny versions of every villager going about their lives. From Mrs Bennett running her fruit and veg stand near the butcher's, to Headmistress Patel ringing her infamous bell in the playground, to Mr Roshe having the cheeky back-of-the-shop ciggie he'd never admit to.

Everyone was there... until they weren't.

At first people thought it was a part of the Art Month, some criticism of the dying smaller villages as their children grew on and moved out to the cities. When Art Month ended and none of the missing folks had come home again and the artist himself had gone missing, the remaining people began to panic.

It was young Laura who first noticed the model of her mummy lying down in spilled paint behind the neighbour's conservatory. Laura was overjoyed!  The child's mind said she'd clearly tripped over a bucket of red paint but she was home now and that was all that mattered.

Only when she found her mummy, the paint wasn't paint and she wasn't breathing. A pattern that would soon replicate itself for every missing person til the last one was found collapsed in a pool of their own blood and the last few inches of the model town's floor had been painted a beautiful, bright red.

Day 2,498

It didn't see us on the bridge, the bright lights and sharp sounds of the city were far more interesting so we stayed crouched down low as several colossal ridged dorsal fins slowly swayed their way towards the shore. I'd always heard that oar fish were where the old tales of sea serpents came from but seeing the real thing in the flesh made me wish it was something as small as an oar fish.

We couldn't see its face from where we were but we were just as deafened by the sheer amount of water that came cascading down as it rose and rose and rose until it towered over everything and even started to lift the bridge we were on. Some people chose to run at that point, darting for either end and right into the chaos of a city trying to escape the inescapable.

A few of us stayed put, huddled towards either side in case it rose up even further and broke the bridge in half, at least the edges would stay standing, or so we hoped. We continued to hope and pray as its head darted down, snatching up dozens of people and throwing them to the back of its mouth before descending on the next terrified cluster.

By the time it was satiated it was morning and the city was silent, the lights dim against the sunlight and the great serpent slowly sunk back down, managing to turn around before heading back out to the sea as if nothing had ever happened. We were left a handful of survivors burdened with guilt and the knowledge that if this was real, what else was out there?

Day 2,497

They arrived just as suddenly as they left, all huddled across the shoreline clutching strange bones in their scarred hands. They all wore the same tattered robes, all colour faded to the same silt-brown and masks over their faces that made them all appear to be screaming.

They neither spoke nor ate, they just stood with their hands outstretched as if they were offering the bones to anyone brave enough to meet them. It only took an hour or so for someone to approach and take a deformed vertebrae, expecting to just walk away without giving anything in return.

He was dead before he hit the ground, his lower jaw now clutched in the same scarred hands he'd carelessly robbed mere seconds ago. The next fool came prepared with a bag of chicken bones from her dinner, offering them and accepting several jagged teeth.

A handful of others made similar trades - fish bones, roadkill and even a taxidermied stag's head over the two days the strange crowd stood on the shoreline. They left some time during the second night, leaving a few footprints just past the tidal point and a child-sized mask that has since been mounted by the shore in case they ever come back for it.

Day 2,496

The skyscrapers appeared overnight, turning the otherwise silent little village into a heaving metropolis. In every window there were always at least two or three figures pacing, flailing or simply staring down at the single storey homes as the occupants inside carried out hushed conversations over old landlines, debating between staying inside, making a break for the outskirts or exploring the new city. Every conversation ended with a brief prayer that they would all still be safe til the next call.

The few who dared to venture outside were often accosted the second they closed their doors, damn near immediately confronted with people-shaped beings who talked like they'd learnt the language from piecing together whatever fragmented media was broadcast out into the endless nothing of the stars. These half-garbled attempts at speech always seemed to meet in either a swift, violent end of the villager or their disappearance. It was hard to say which silence hurt more - the deaths they saw or those they imagined.

At the peak of the city's chaos each house was surrounded by an oceanic crowd of the people-shaped beings and all of them were trying to politely break in. They would push against windows, turn door handles, stick their hands and arms through letterboxes and they were all met with terrified defiance. It came to a head when they successfully broke into three houses whose screams cut off into a disturbingly sharp silence.

At that point it seemed as though the end was truly in sight for the whole village, doomed to die at the hands of an inhuman mob until those who had invaded the three houses returned. They were covered in blood and unsmiling as the crowd parted around them and followed their lead back into the skyscrapers.

What happened next was something the surviving residents described as a haze being lifted, a veil removed, a weight thrown back up into the sky where it belonged as the world turned vague and they all lost consciousness. When they awoke, the skyscrapers had gone and the broken homes were spotless and vacant as if the murders never happened.

To this day there is only one skyscraper in the village, standing out sorely against the gentle hills as a monument to the dead they never found. Sometimes another village will report that they too have been struck by the phenomenon and another skyscraper is born to mourn their lost.

Sometimes the horizon is full of tall buildings and even though the hills are vast, they still feel surrounded.

Day 2,495

'How are we doing today?' the monotonous voice asked from age-worn speakers as the unhearing subject in the chamber below continued to pace between two small sections of the wall where it had heard a mouse scurrying along the pipes. It was drawn to light, warmth and the scent of blood, none of which the voice provided and thus it went unnoticed.

Every day the voice would ask a series of questions meant to gauge the mood of the subject and the stage of Zombieism they were currently experiencing. This particular subject used to be known as Rania when she was alive, a biochemistry student who volunteered for the program which ended up causing the complete and utter annihilation of humanity just a few dozen meters above her test chamber.

As she slowly succumbed in a stable and heavily controlled environment, outside her friends and family tore each other to shreds as the disease raged like a wildfire in July. By the time she was at the final stage and had officially died, everyone she'd ever loved had been shambling after birds and rodents for months.

Still, every day the computerised voice asked 'How are we doing today?' as it scanned the room for changes in temperature and temperament before powering down to conserve its dwindling power supply as the grids went offline one-by-one and no human came along to switch on the back-up generator.

It would die long before Rania finished decomposing, still pacing after the mouse in the walls as she fell apart.

Day 2,494

It was 35 minutes shore-to-shore over the River Twybrach and the ferry hadn't missed a day since the awful storm of  '32 but today was...different. Today fog clung to every surface, it crept around window sills and door frames forming patterns almost like it had hands.

Today the fog had come down from the mountains to feed and it wouldn't leave unsatiated.

It took them slowly, starting by luring individuals farther away from each other before swallowing them whole and ending with the ferry and all who tried to escape aboard her. None of them ever stood a chance at escape but it amused the fog to see them try.

On the other side of the shore people stared out into a hazy mist, not once considering that it was steadily consuming every living being on the other side. It wouldn't be anybody's first though at all, in fact most of the staring at their neighbour's demise were wondering why the ferry was running late on such still waters.

When the fog was done, the town was as empty as the wind echoing through otherwise silent streets. It descended back up to the mountains, leaving nothing in its wake but the faint sounds of hopeless sobbing and a few teardrops that quickly evaporated in the dazzling sunlight.

Day 2,493

The last time I saw him we were seventeen and he drove us out to this old mining town that was only empty shells and graffiti and broken tarmac. We must have spent hours there but it felt like no time at all until it was suddenly sunset and we both lay down in the middle of the road to watch the stars.

I must have dozed off and dozed deeply cause when I woke up it was sunrise, he was gone and I was lying in his blood. The stark red trail led back to his car so of course I decided to run to the closest house and climb up the broken rafters to hide up in the roof.

I'd only been there for maybe a handful of minutes before the first one came staggering onto the road looking like bearskin draped over raw bones, still trailing blood and holding a paid of familiar hands in its own mutilated ones. Over the course of the day five more came and went, all holding pieces of him that sent daggers of grief into me every single time.

I crept back to the car as sundown and drove it til tears blurred my eyes and I nearly crashed into an oncoming truck. I leapt out and begged for help, lucky that he was a nice man and drove me to the closest police station to report what I ended up calling a bear attack to keep it believable.

He wasn't found past the bloodstain.

Day 2,492

In my younger days I'd spent the summer picking up odd jobs, we all did back then. It was always something off a flyer or noticeboard, always cash in hand and always far more hassle than it paid to be. For the most part I found myself mowing lawns and looking after pets for a few days so when I saw that notice for a pool cleaner I jumped at the chance for something new.

I wasn't expecting to walk through a beautifully kept garden and nearly walk into a pool that was so disgustingly green it blended in perfectly with the grass. The owners had been an elderly couple who stopped taking care of the pool when their daughter went missing - their friend made sure to enforce just how much she loved that pool so I had to clean it to perfection.

They provided me with everything I'd need so it wasn't the end of the world, just an mild nightmare and a hell of a lot of hard work for the day. I followed the guidebook that was tucked into the pool vacuum, starting with skimming everything off the top and working my way down.

I remember hearing people whispering a lot inside the house, almost like stage whispering but I couldn't quite make out what they said. All I knew was that something in the pool was starting to come to the surface and it stank worse than anything I'd ever smelled before.

It started as a vague dark shape that billowed about so I figured that maybe a deer had gotten caught in a tarp and the elderly owners didn't notice somehow or maybe they used to dump trash here but neither made sense with how desperately their friend kept saying they loved the pool like their daughter.

When my brush nudged the edge of it I could sort of see how it had been caught on some rope so I angled the brush and twisted to bring enough of the rope up to cut the object free. If it wasn't for the unmistakable patterned dress she was wearing I never would have known what I'd pulled up.

Understandably I freaked out and ran up to the house to use their phone but I'd barely made it ten steps before a couple of officers came barging into me, tackled me to the ground and told me I was under arrest fur suspected murder. As they were taking me away I saw even more cars appear and officers flood the place, the owners were still nowhere in sight.

They accepted my explanation when I gave them the flyer, back in those days it was very much a 'take me at my word and with whatever proof is in my pockets' kind of deal. They let me go and I never took a summer job again, never found out who killed her either or where her parents went.

The papers were strangely silent on the whole thing...

Day 2,491

The city wakes up, breathes deeply and ignores the rot below that chokes the inhabitants. Their deaths and subsequent decay continue to fuel it so nothing is done to end the rot, only the bare minimum required to stop it from reaching the surface.

As the old saying goes: out of sight, out of mind. So it went that the rot coexisted alongside progress and the city thrived from the surface and up to the very limits of the sky while mere feet below ground the world was a mesh of strained ligaments patched together with rope and hair in a million desperate attempts to hold everything together.

It was bound to collapse sooner or later, as all rotting things do. The warning signs had been so violently apparent for so long that they'd long since faded away like red flags through rose-tinted glasses. Everything was fine on the surface while everyone below had long since evacuated.

Rats flee a sinking ship and so the subterranean workers fled the sinking city as the sewers filled with its pus and its veins ruptured in great rivers of clotting blood that swept their life's work deeper and deeper and still the world above drank champagne and laughed like the world could never end.

It happened overnight. A colossal roaring as the ground gave way like a dry twig underfoot and every beautiful, glistening tower fell into the stagnant fluid-filled chasms that had kept it afloat for hundreds of years. By noon there was only a vast lake of rot surrounded by the bones of the city and those who called it home until the very end.

Day 2,490

Last week I felt the overwhelming need to go back to my childhood town and visit the park again. I hadn't done this for about seven years, not since I finally gave up on finding my best friend. We were meant to meet there first thing on a Saturday morning but seventeen years later and she still hasn't shown.

Part of me feels guilty for not showing up earlier, for not seeing where she went and being the sole reason why she was out alone in the first place. I know her family haven't forgiven me for it all these years later, I know I haven't forgiven me either.

I'd never felt such a strong urge to go back there before, like she was calling for me all those miles away and I ended up driving there at 4 in the morning. Found myself pulling into the car park nearby and watching the sun rise over fresh graffiti and well-worn swings that we used to sit on for hours on end.

There at the top of the jungle gym I saw the silhouette of a young girl waving at me before jumping off and running away towards the docks. I'd say I don't know what possessed me but I'm fairly sure it was her and she was finally ready to show me where her body's been all this time.

She led me beneath a fenced-off jetty and drifted into a hole in the rocks where I saw something pale peering back at me. One anonymous tip-off from a nearby payphone later and the police arrived, moved the rocks about and found her tiny bones.

I didn't stick around long enough to see them take her away, I prefer to remember her as she was.

I haven't felt the need to go back there again and, god willing she can now rest, I won't be returning.

Day 2,489

I used to work at a body farm - one of those research facilities that studied decomposition in using donated human remains. Only that articular facility was a little ahead of the rest, a little less known and a whole lot more fucked up than anything else I'd ever experienced.

The only reason I'm breaking the NDA is because they've had a van parked outside my apartment for the last five days so I know I don't have much time left. I shouldn't really be so surprised that they're here for me - ethics can't exist in a place like that.

I quit working there almost a month ago, still haven't found another job and I don't think they'll let me live long enough to anyway. It was all so standard at first, when they only let me work in a small section of woodland and the mock-up house within the borders.

Over time my hard work was noticed and they moved me to a few other areas like a model car park, lakeside, insect beds - the place was way more extensive than the lobby let on. It only got bad when they started using "Stage 0" corpses.

We class decay in five Stages from Stage 1 (autolysis) to Stage 5 (skeletonised) and at Stage 0 they weren't just fresh.

They were still alive.

We were told they were criminals on death row and that they chose to be a part of this pilot scheme. We were told to just set them up like we do with the Stage 1 bodies and study the onset of death as well as the following decay. We were told this was all government approved, all above board.

I believed them til the next Stage 0 they brought in was seven years old.

Everyone had been trying their best to treat the Stage 0's like they were already dead - no talking, no feeding just observing them til they were of no further scientific use. I don't know how in the hell they expected us to ignore a child crying out for their mommy as we tied him up, buried him shallowly and walked away.

I know he would have died eventually but I couldn't take it any longer, I went back there after hours and blocked his breathing tube while he slept. I quit the next day stating a need for a change in career and waited to see what they would do.

I'm still waiting but I won't be for much longer.

They just entered the ground floor.

They'll be with me soon.

Day 2,488

They'd set their alarms for 4AM to watch the sunrise from the balcony - the only reason they chose a starboard cabin in the first place. They didn't see the fishing boat at first, too busy staring at the beautiful hues dancing across the sky til that unfortunate little shape drew their eyes down.

The misfortune was about to begin.

There was no way they could have known at the time but as soon as that boat changed course to meet with their cruise liner, they were all as good as dead. Of course at the time they just thought the fishermen might need help and alerted the closest staff member to send a line down and help them board.

They might as well have killed the crew themselves.

It had scarcely been a minute since the first fisherman had boarded before first blood was drawn and teeth sunk into terrified flesh. The decks were bathed in blood within the hour and by the end of the day the whole ship had fallen into silence and the last body had fallen to the floor.

Some would wake up from this and join the others aboard the fishing boat, most would remain dead.

By the time the cruise liner eventually drifted into port, they'd been missing for nine years and while the blood had all dried, the flesh removed by ravenous seabirds and the bones thrown about by tumultuous waves, there was too little left for anyone to say what had gone wrong.

All they had were the final logs that vaguely mentioned a fishing boat in distress and then nothing.

Day 2,487

Plants were slowly swallowing the factory, giving him almost enough cover to hide from the worker drones that had been searching for him for little over a year now. They were supposed to give up after thirty days, according to the scrawled messages he'd read in the countless secret caches that other escaped employees had left behind.

They hadn't anticipated an update.

Corporate decided that every worker was precious enough to happily waste a small army's worth of drones hunting them down so that they can return to their scheduled lives. Gradually over the months he'd managed to catch one or two of them off guard and reduce the army to a small squadron but it still wasn't safe for him to venture out into the open.

So he fled from one outdated and abandoned to the next, never staying for more than a few hours and only sleeping enough to keep on going. He could take the day off when the drones did, his own little joke to make light of the otherwise bleak situation.

You found humour wherever you could and prayed it'd help you see another day.