I never thought I would find myself needing to recount the events that transpired during my childhood. 

When the idea of typing this came about, I didn’t think I would even be able to find the words to describe them. However, maybe due to recent contact with the government, the memories I had long buried in the dusty recesses of my memory have dug themselves up and crawled back into the light of my mind’s eye in vivid detail. Now that I am free to speak, and now that I have summoned the courage to, my message to you, especially the parents among you is this, do not leave your children at Sunny Smiles Daycare.
I was about 4 when my parents divorced. It was a long, arduous process, full of broken promises and uncomfortable truths. My mother had left a year prior, off to Vegas to be with her lover who would fly over on weekends and destroy my parent’s of holy matrimony. It took quite a toll on my father. He was never very present in the going on of my life, and while he tried, an awkwardness had formed between us, a chasm that made it difficult to do much of anything. It was ever present, both of us trying to cope with the tender void left in the wake of my mother.
We tried to fill it with each other, but our relationship wasn’t strong enough to bear the weight of my mom’s departure. Adding on to this was that most of the day he was gone, working to keep the roof we had over our heads. He hired a slew of nannies to fill the empty days his job made, but I always complained about them. I felt like a stranger in my own life, with people I didn’t know making themselves at home in the house that felt foreign to me now. I really just wanted my mom and dad back, for them to come together, forgive each other in a heartfelt bout of passion, and make time for me in their lives again. But as a child, I quickly learned to stifle my hopes and stopped believing in such silly fairy tales.
My father felt guilty about the whole thing, I could see it in his eyes. Even back then I knew the look of someone trying their best and failing. It was the look my mother gave me every time she came home late on a Saturday night, a crestfallen look of disappointment in not me or my father, but herself. She had promised me that everything would be okay, that the fighting wasn’t anything but grown-up talk. “A family,” she said, “always stays together”. But soon, all I got was promises that didn’t lead anywhere. The two of them made so many promises that if they were worth anything, I’d have been the richest kid in the world.
But all I got was a trip to a daycare, a way for my father to remedy this guilt, to distance himself from the reminder of all the promises he had failed to keep.
According to his searches from the time, he stumbled upon Sunny Smiles Daycare in his search, seeing it was new, very close by. It had only been open for a month and had nothing but five star reviews, with no justification as to the rating under any of the comments. When looking at their website, it is described as a “government owned amenity here to serve families in need. We are expanding everyday, and with the help of certain patrons we have expanded to the national level”. According to the FBI, whom which I have spoken to at length about my experiences, no federal or state funds from any agency were allocated to construct a national daycare system. However, there is documentation from congressional records of a meeting of the Committee of Education and the Workforce passing an anonymous bill into Congress to be voted on. When interviewed, none of the members of the committee recalled voting on such a bill, and no record of whether the bill was ratified or not was found.
One night, my father called for me from the ground floor. I cautiously maneuvered down the long, spiral stairs, gripping tightly onto the railing so as not to tumble down the treacherous staircase, my fear of heights taking hold even at such a young age. As I rounded the stairs, I saw my father standing in the living room, hands on his hips, tapping his foot rapidly. He had come home in a gray suit, tailored to his filled out build, with neat, dark hair combed over to hide his large, reflective forehead. As I completed my descent, my father turned to me, a smile so wide that the strain was practically audible on his face. I didn’t think much of it then, if anything I was happy that my father finally showed me something other than his inner struggles.
“Hey buddy, guess what we are gonna do tomorrow?” he said, his smile practically bursting out of his face.
“What?” I asked, his excited expression acting as a pathogen of enthusiasm.
“Tomorrow, you're going to go to a new place. It’s called Sunny Smiles Daycare. It’s a place where you can make tons of new friends. Isn’t that exciting?” he led me on in the way that parents do. I was confused.
“Sunny Smiles Daycare,” I repeated hollowly, spitting the words out due to their funny taste in my mouth.
“Will you come with me?” I asked tentatively, bracing for disappointment.
“No buddy, they don’t let grown-ups like me in. It’s just for you kids. But hey, I bet you're gonna have so much fun that you’ll forget all about me. I bet you won’t even want to leave,” he promised, trying to redirect the impact of his answer. I had heard the same speech often. Every time he laid down some shiny new thing at my feet, hoping to placate me with sacrifices like I was some bloodthirsty deity, he tried to convince me that this time, the hole bored into my heart would finally be filled with this cheap, flashy toy. And for the most part, I went along with it, both to find salvation in something frivolous and to ease my father’s own guilty demons. And this was no different. In as excited a voice I could muster I replied “I can’t wait!” The smile he wore shrunk a bit, but in turn, it looked much less plastic, and more real, a warmth returning to his features.
“I’m glad little man. You hungry?” I nodded vigorously.
“Great, what do ya want?”
“Dino nuggets,” my favorite.
My father nodded, before rushing off to the kitchen in order to prepare a gourmet serving of dino nuggets. I followed, clumsily running to catch up to him, desperate for the warmth of his smile once more.
“How your day go?” I asked rather clumsily. I had learned the basic abcs and enough words to speak, but the construction of sentences was something I had struggled with. I rarely talked at all and didn’t get many chances to do so.
“It was great, bud! I talked to a lady at the daycare we are gonna go to tomorrow, and she said they have over 50 kids there! They’ve got coloring books and dollies and even a playground inside! They’ve got books and paint an-” I started to tune out. He was still trying to sell me on the whole daycare thing. That was all he talked about the rest of the night, describing every detail of the place to me. Looking back, even then, I felt a deep sense of restlessness each time he mentioned the name of the place. The feeling only grew more exacerbated the longer the night went on, chasing away sweet thoughts of sleep. Some of it was nerves, going from 1 stranger a day to 50 was certainly a big leap. But part of it was something I can’t explain in any other way than a premonition, a warning from a natural instinct that laid long dormant in me came screaming to the surface. I did not sleep well that night. The morning of, my father woke me up early, saying that he needed to get to work, but would drop me off at the daycare on the way. I obliged, changing out of my Lightning McQueen onesie into tiny jeans and a brown and white striped shirt with a large smiling monkey face on the front. Monkeys were my favorite animal, mainly because they liked bananas just as much as I did. I did my daily duties of brushing my teeth, and messing around with my hair until I was happy with the ratty mess I had made. I once again fearfully journeyed down the stairs. My dad was tapping his foot at the bottom of the stairs, annoyance instead of excitement being the cause.
“Come on bud, we gotta get going or I’m gonna be late,”. he says, as if his meaningless deadline would incentivize me to overcome my fear and move faster.
I reach the bottom step, where my dad promptly scoops me up in his arms, and with his briefcase and a backpack in hand, we speed out of the house. We fly down the stairs leading down from the large wooden porch, my father gripping onto the black metal railing so as not to slip on the cliff-like stairs. He snaked through the cobblestone pathway that led from our stairs to the driveway. Both were in rough condition. Crabgrass riddled the grooves in the path, and the asphalt had long, outstretched cracks that had formed due to the roots of a nearby sycamore tree undermining the pavement. The lawn was an unkempt jungle of overgrown grass, weeds, dandelions, and mushrooms. Dad used to mow it once a week in the summer, but the habit had fallen off in the past year.
Dad threw open the back door of the red minivan, and quickly strapped me into the ragged, stained car seat. He clumsily struggled with the seatbelt, his inexperience with morning procedures on full display. He finally resigned himself, tying the belt straps together into a tight knot that compressed harshly on my chest. I remember my breathing being shallow during the majority of the ride. With me secured, he threw the backpack over next to me, closed the door, and got in the front seat.
“Dad, I don’t go,” I said. “I don’t like,”
“Why buddy? We haven’t even gotten there yet,” Dad asked, his voice rising in pitch, as he started the ignition.
“I don’t like,” I repeated, louder and firmer this time.
“Why don’t you just give it a few days, just two or three days, and if you truly hate it, then we’ll find a different place okay sweetie?” He asked, forcing his voice to smooth out, as we turned out of our bumpy driveway and started off. There wasn’t much I could do after that. He did not respond well to temper tantrums, and I knew that it would not end well for either of us if I started yelling. He was too jumpy, and didn’t have the long fuse constructed over many long nights of staying awake with your kid.
Once, I dropped a glass of orange juice. The glass shattered in a loud crackle, like thunder mixed with pop rocks, and they scattered away from the initial blast, in fear of the storm that was barreling down the stairs.
“What happened?!” my father yelled as he stomped through the house. I realize now that his shouting was out of concern more than anger, but as a child, it’s hard to tell the difference when someone is screaming at you. I looked up at him, fat watery tears streaming down my face as I bawled loudly, practically shouting myself.
My dad grabbed a handful of paper towels, and started roughly padding my fuzzy blue shirt.
“Are you hurt?” he yelled again, voice wavering. This only made my cries louder, bordering on hysterical now as I continued to blubber.
My dad grunted in strained frustration. He combed his hair frantically, eyes darting around wildly, completely overwhelmed by the scene before him. Unable to take my wailing any longer he leaned down, grabbed me by the arm, and shook me violently.
“Are you hurt!” He screamed, shocking me into silence.
I stood stunned. My dad quickly removed his hands from me, purple bruises welding up along my arms like bad tattoos.
“I’m sorry bud, I thought you were hurt and you wouldn’t answer me and I… I’m sorry. I’m sorry,”. It was all he could say. I made sure not to scream or cry around him from then on.
We drove for about 10 minutes, before a large, pastel building of soft blues, yellows, and greens came into view. I knew about 5 minutes before it came into view where it was, my face retracting further into the car seat, as if bracing for a bomb to fall.
It was a massive building. The front looked normal enough, a box almost entirely made of windows aside from the wiry wooden frame separating them, and the large fluorescent red door surrounded by a black wooden outline. This was partially obscured by large red brick pillars that held up a concrete awning. Behind that, stood a massive dome, like an igloo made out of yellow snow. Sun patterns covered the dome-like orange polka dots.
The building unnerved me. Something about it wasn’t quite right, like my father’s own strained smile. It looked like it was trying too hard, trying to look like what all parents wanted to see when they dropped their kids off.
“See?” My father said from the front seat, fake excitement dripping from his voice.
“It looks so fun!” he said. He was fishing for an enthusiastic response, but all I could muster was quiet indifference.
We turned into the lot, navigating through the crowded rows of cars, parked haphazardly. Every spot was filled. A long line of cars slowly advanced next to the concrete curve, advancing toward the dropping-off points. Other cars, though, stopped where they were, and removed their kid from the car seat. Some didn’t even have them in car seats, and simply stopped while the kids got out themselves. The kids looked scared, sad, and hurt, the latter of which I could identify with. It was the look I often felt myself giving when I was being forgotten or I was alone. The former two, I would soon come to know quite well.
As soon as the door closed, the car would speed out from the line and out of the lot. Even strangers were kids who walked from the parking lot. These kids all had filth-splotched faces, torn-up rags for clothes, thin hair, and hollow eyes. They walked slowly, without regard for the honking cars and disapproving looks from parents who had almost hit them. They didn’t even look up as they filed into the daycare. My dad chimed in.
“Oh poor kids. How can a parent watch their child go out into the world like that? Is no one feeding them?” He muttered under his breath in an angry tone. He hated seeing the cries of those who were suffering go unanswered, especially children. It was why he became a doctor.
The cars slowly moved, dropping their kids off one by one, some making more of a ceremony of it than others. Stifled tears, verklempt looks, and the all too familiar fake smiles were all congregated at the entrance to the daycare. Guardian to said entrance stood two women, garbed in an all-white dress, apron, and gloves with silver hair and peculiar white hats. It looked like one of those paper hats kids made, but it was made of cloth and like her, stood at stiff attention and bore an opaque smiling face. They were surrounded by a flock of frantic parents, each desperately commanding their attention with little facts about their special angle. Allergies, snack preferences, and in the case of some, medication were all conveyed with deathly urgency. Dad stopped the car, turning to me and smiling. Not an insincere one, but one of sympathy and comfort.
“It’s gonna be okay sweetie. I know this has all been so much for you, so thank you for being so brave with me,” he promised. I smiled back in turn, meaning it this time.
He then exited the car, came around to the backseat, and untied me from the car seat. He grabbed the backpack and carried me over to the cement awning that shaded the walkway.
He carried me over to the two ladies, past the line of fellow downtrodden children, and dropped me a few feet away from the crowd of squawking parents.
“Hold on just a second now sweetie, I’ll be right back,” he said. I stood awkwardly, trying as much as I possibly could to fold into myself as the limp bodies of my peers stumbled past me, all light-looking to have long left their eyes. One was different though. A young girl in a pink and red polka-dotted dress with an accompanying bow in her soft ginger hair to match. She was holding a small, beaten-up brown patchwork teddy bear with its left eye missing. The back of it was torn open, stuffing flopping out of it. Around her neck was a collar of raspy, raw skin, like some wild animal had tried to tear out her jugular with its claws. She had pretty green eyes which continued to glance at me as she passed. Right before she went through the red door, she hesitated, turned around, and quickly waddled over to me. She placed her face incredibly close to me, and I recoiled out of shock. I could still make out her whispers though, “When they ask, don’t tell,”.She quickly turned away, glancing back at me with worried eyes. I looked after her, confused and more scared than before. As my eyes wandered, I looked up to one of the women answering parental questions, and she continued to do so. However, her eyes were transfixed to the polka-dot girl, and once she entered the daycare, they shifted to me. It was what I could only describe as a friendly stare, or at least, one that appeared to be. She looked like she was sizing me up. I held her gaze for only a second, and wished I hadn’t even done that. I commanded my eyes to look anywhere, anywhere but the woman’s shriveled, pit-like eyes that begged for my attention. My eyes traced out the outline of the red door, slowly taking in each groove and scratch that thick coats of paint weren’t able to cover. As I looked above the red gate, I was greeted with words scrawled at the top in shaky black letters. I didn’t know what I said then, but looking back I do now. They read “Welcome to Home”.
“Calvin, come here!” my dad said, snapping me out of my awkward stare. I shuffled over to my dad, reaching out and clinging to his arm. Both of the silver-haired women turned to look at me, moving through the crowd of parents with polite “excuse me’s” and “let us pass for a moment’s”, all while not taking their eyes off of me. They strode over to my dad, one addressing my dad and the other bending down to my level, still staring at me. She bent perfectly straight at the hips, but went down no further, her face mere millimeters from mine. I shrunk closer to my father, who was seemingly too preoccupied talking about my peanut allergy to notice the creepy woman staring at his kid.
“What is your name?” She asked. I pressed even further away from her due to her voice, which scratched at my ears like sandpaper. I remembered what the polka-dot girl said, and did everything in my power to not give her an answer, instead tugging on Dad’s pant leg, pleading for his attention.
“What is your name?” She probed again, this time her voice only a supple whisper. I almost couldn’t stop myself as my name rushed up my throat like hot vomit I needed to choke back. It was like she had reached her hand into my brain and was massaging it, hoping to coax out an answer. I knew she knew already, she had heard my dad call it only a few moments ago. But she wanted me to say it, to hear the word escape my lips. I was afraid to speak at all because if I did, I knew my name would come out. I didn’t even know what would happen, but the visceral fear I had of what might happen kept my lips sewn shut.
I tugged more and more desperately on my father’s leg, but he didn’t even look at me. He was still talking to the silver woman about who knows what. Who knows what he was telling her?
“What is your name?” the lady asked again, this time grabbing my hand and squeezing it. I tried to yank my hand away, but her grip was vice-like. She clamped down hard, I was sure a bruise would form. Looking back now, she likely knew that out of what she could do then, that would hurt the most. My eyes darted around, my brain overwhelmed by a gut-wrenching fear that poured into me from the woman’s touch. It was so cold I couldn’t feel my arm anymore, and the numbing sensation was spreading quickly. I looked for anyone, any adult who could see what was happening and put a stop to it, but everyone seemed to be conveniently occupied with something else. Time seemed to slow down and warp, leaving just me and the woman in our pocket of isolation. Voices faded out into warped chirping. I couldn’t tell you what they were saying, but with every passing moment, they got louder and louder. Numbing fear spread all throughout my body, reaching up and crawling into my mouth and swelling my tongue, pushing back the scream that was clawing its way up my throat. My eyes began to go numb, and the tears that welled up froze over my eyes blocking my vision. They were being squeezed like oranges being juiced. My arms and legs froze and turned weak, brittle enough that a gust of wind would shatter them. Slowly, I could sense my heartbeat getting slower and slower.
“You ready buddy?” My father’s coarse hand tapped my shoulder, and the glass bubble of nightmares that surrounded me and that woman shattered. Time came roaring back and all the pressure inflicted on my feeble body vanished, and the woman hastily stood up. Tears sprung free from their icy barrier as I turned to my father and looked up.
“Hey, woah, buddy what’s wrong? What’s going on?” he bent down to me, clumsily wiping away my tears. All I could do was shake my head vigorously, lips still quivering. I tried to speak but I knew the woman was still staring at me. I could feel her gaze honed in on the back of my head like a laser. As long as her eyes were fixed on me, I didn’t dare speak. Even now, I feel dizzy, my name on the tip of my tongue.
“We see this type of display daily. Children and caretakers alike are so rarely prepared to be separate. It’s an emotional moment, but we have found that adversity only ends in growth and prosperity for the pair” one of the women says, a sugary sweetness now oozing from her demeanor.
“Don’t worry buddy, your guardian will be back, and while he is attending to his duties, you will have the honor of being a part of our family,” the other silver-haired woman says, turning to me with a toothy grin. Most of her words were too big for me to understand. Though, I doubt I would need to hear her speak to understand. The stares they would give us were all we needed to know what they were saying, and yet they still put us through the torture of their scratchy speech.
“We are extremely excited to meet you!” the pair said in unison.
“You sure you're okay, bud?” Dad asked again, still not convinced. With both of them looking at me now, there was no way I was saying anything. I sent a pleading look to my dad, hoping that my covert correspondence wouldn’t go unnoticed. But apparently, my own father didn’t know me well enough to see how shaken I really was. He gave me a final look of sorry, before he bent down, gave me a tight hug, stood up, and handed me the backpack. Then he began to depart
“Listen buddy I’ll see you tonight. I put all your favorite stuff in that bag okay? I love you so much.” His voice wavered a bit, coughing a bit to try and regain composure. He looked at me, torn, between what he wanted to believe and what he could see. All I could do was stand there and watch my father throw his only son to the wolves. He walked back to the car, buckled in, and gave me a final look of a wide smile with conflicting, tear-soaked eyes, before exiting the line of cars and driving off.
An overwhelming wave of dread washed over me as I watched my lifeline drift away. Questions raced through my head, “When would he come back? Would he forget to come? How long can I not say my name for?”
I could feel them loom over me, like unwanted shadows creeping through the night.
“Come, it is time for you to enter,” the lady said, the sweetness now draining from her voice and face. A reproachful look now adorned her face. She stiffly pointed to the door, likely knowing that the meaning of her words was lost on me. I turned and made my way into the line of children still marching towards the gateway, dragging my feet. The gate itself seemed to pull me closer like death reaching its hand out from a coffin. The two ladies returned to their posts beside the door, dutifully tending to the needs of apprehensive parents. They made a last call, saying “All parents must deposit their offspring to the daycare. Activities are about to begin”.

My reading tastes have evolved as I've gotten older. I've always enjoyed hard sci fi, but as life got more busy, I found myself reading less and less.
When I was younger I would often read 3 books simultaneously, and as a result, increased my verbal and comprehension skills immeasurably. Now decades later, during meditation, I came to the realization that although I was becoming more experienced, I did not feel like I was getting any smarter.
So, I decided to start reading more, and to read challenging material, in order to try and recapture this intellectual growth.
My journey began with Moby Dick, which, for those of you that haven't read it, is really two stories in one. The over story concerns the business of whaling, and this is what most people say the book is about. The sub-story (and to me the main story) is an exploration of mental illness.
If in Infinite Jest, the main story takes place in the footnotes, in Moby Dick the main story happens in sections that I call Metaphysical Tangents. They start off as observations about banal, concrete things and digress into sweeping allegorical prose, complex and challenging to read. I've started to notice these sections in most of what I read, and depending on my state of mind (especially when altering my neurochemistry) I often have very powerful sensations / visions when reading them.
Today I'm going to recommend House of Leaves (the full color print version, this book cannot be read on an eReader or in black and white). It's been internet meme-ified, but don't pay attention to what most people say about it. It's not a horror book in the overt sense, it won't drive you crazy, what it is, is a raw, brutal exploration of the descent into schizophrenia. Some parts can be a bit dry, but the bulk is quite captivating and it has the most impactful 5 pages of prose I have ever read, quoted below. It is worth your time if you enjoy books like Infinite Jest, Gravity's Rainbow, Moby Dick, etc. Read the section below and if it's in your wheelhouse, pick up a physical copy:
"""
`For example, on my way back from the Shop, something strange surfaced. I say “strange” because it doesn’t seem connected to anything—nothing my boss said or Navidson did or anything else immediately on my mind. I was just driving towards my place and all of a sudden I realized I was wrong. I’d been to Texas though not the state. And what’s more the memory came back to me with extraordinary vividness, as clean and crisp as a rare LA day, which usually happens in winter, when the wind’s high and the haze loosens its hold on the hills so the line between earth and sky suddenly comes alive with the shape of leaves, thousands of them on a thousand branches, flung up against an opaline sky— —An eccentric gay millionaire from Norway who owned a colonial house in a Cleveland suburb and a tea shop in Kent. Mr. Tex Geisa. A friend of a friend of a passing someone I knew having passed along an invitation: come to Tex’s for an English tea, four sharp, on one unremarkable Saturday in April. I was almost eighteen. The someone had flaked at the last minute but having nothing better to do I’d gone on alone, only to find there, seated in a wicker chair, listening to Tex, nibbling on her scone... Strange how clarity can come at such a time and place, so unexpectedly, so out of the blue, though who’s firing the bolt?, a memory in this case, shot out of the August sun, Apollo invisible in all that light, unless you have a smoked glass which I didn’t, having only those weird sea stories, Tex delivering one after another in his equally strange monotone, strangely reminiscent of something else, whirlpools, polar bears, storms and sinking ships, one sinking ship after another, in fact that was the conclusion to every single story he told, so that we, his strange audience, learned not to wonder about the end but paid more attention to the tale preceding the end, those distinguishing events before the inevitable rush of icy water, whirlpools, polar bears and good ol’ ignis fatuus, perilous to chase, ideal to incarnate, especially when you’re the one pursued by the inevitable ending, an ending Tex had at that moment been relating—deckwood on fire, the ship tilting, giving way to the pursuit of the sea, water extinguishing the flames in a burst of steam, an unnoticed hiss, especially in that sounding out of death, a grinding relentless roar, which like a growl in fact, overwhelms the pumps, fills up deck after deck with the Indian Ocean, leaving those on board with no place else to go, I remember, no I don’t remember any of it anymore, I never heard the rest, I had gone off to piss, flushing the toilet, a roar there too, grinding, taking everything down in what could, yes it really could be described as a growl, but leaving Tex’s sinking ship and that sound for the garden where who should I find but... my memory, except I realize now my ship, isn’t Tex’s ship, the one I’m seeing now, not remembering but something else, resembling icy meadows and scrambles for a raft and loss... though not the same, a completely different story after all, built upon story after story, so many, how many?, stories high, but building what? and why?—like for instance, why—the approaching “it” proving momentarily vague—did it have to leave Longyearbyen, Norway and head North in the dead of summer? Up there summer means day, a constant ebb of days flowing into more days, nothing but constant light washing over all that ice and water, creating strange ice blinks on the horizon, flashing out a code, a distress signal?—maybe; or some other prehistoric meaning?—maybe; or nothing at all?—also maybe; nothing’s all; where monoliths of ice cloaked in the haar, suddenly rise up from the water, threatening to smash through the reinforced steel hull, until an instant before impact the monstrous ice vanishes and those who feared it become yet another victim to a looming mirage, caused by temperature changes frequent in summer, not to mention the chiding of the more experienced hands drunk on cold air and Bokkøl beer... Welcome to The Atrocity, a 412ft, 13,692 ton vessel carrying two cargoes within its holds, one secret, the other extremely flammable, like TNT, and though the sailors are pleasant enough and some married and with children and though the captain turns out to be a kind agent of art history, especially where the works of Turner, de Vos and Goya are concerned, that strange cargo could have cared less when towards the bow, in the first engine room, sparks from a blown fuse suddenly found a puddle of oil, an unhappy mistake any old mop could have corrected, should have, but it’s too late, the sparks from the fuse having spun wildly out into space, tiny embers, falling, cooling, gone, except for one which has with just one flickering kiss transformed the greasy shadow into a living Hand of angry yellow, suddenly washing over and through that room, across the threshold, past the open door, who left it open? and out into the corridors, heat building, sucking in the air, eating it, until the air comes in a wind, whistling through the corridors like the voice of god—not my description but the captain’s—and they all heard it even before the ugly black smoke confirmed the panic curdling in all of their guts: a fire loose and spreading with terrifying speed to other decks leaving the captain only one choice: order water on board, which he does, except he has misjudged the fire, no one could have imagined it would move that fast, so much fire and therefore more water needed, too much water, let loose now across the decks, an even mightier presence drowning out the flames and the hiss is its own terrifying roar, not the voice of god, but whose?, and when the captain hears that sound, he knows what will happen next, they all know what will happen next even before the thought, their thoughts, describe what their bodies have already begun to prepare for, the chthonic expectation which commanded the thought in the first place—... sos.sos.sos... SOS... SOS... SOS... sos.sos.sos...—way way too late, though who knew they’d all be so long, long gone by the time the spotter planes arrived, though they all fear it, a fear growing from that growl loose inside! their ship, tearing, slashing, hurling anyone aside who dares hesitate before it, bow before it, pray before it... breaking some, ripping apart others, burying all of them, and it’s still only water, gutting the inside, destroying the pumps, impotent things impossibly set against transporting outside that which has always waited outside but now on gaining entrance, on finding itself inside, has started to make an outside of the whole-there is no more inside-and the decks tilt to the starboard side, all that awesome weight rocking the ship, driving the hull down towards deeper water, closing the gap between the deck rail and the surface of the sea, until the physics of tugawar intercede, keel and ballast fighting back against the violent heave, driving The Atrocity away from this final starboard plunge, heading back up, that’s right, righting itself, a recorrection promising balance, outside and inside again, except the rock and roll away from the sea proves a useless challenge.. the monstrous wall of ice water below also heads away from the starboard side of the ship and as the captain’s deck for a brief instant levels out, the water within also levels out, everyone hopes for a pause, though really the water never stops, following through on the powerful surge away from the starboard side, heading now towards the port side— Sososososos—past the center—Sososososos— coalescing into a wave— Sososososos. useless, obviously—and the captain knows it, hearing their death before the actual impact reverberates through the hull—and there never really had been time for lifeboats... —the wave beneath them pounding into the port side, this time powerful enough to drive the ship all the way over, burying the rail of the top deck beneath water, then the stack, letting all of the sea within, banishing the inside once and for all, and though some fathers still make for the lifeboats, it’s all useless, a theatrical gesture born out of habit and habit is never hope, though some actually might have survived—habit does have its place—had there been a little more time, sinking time, except what was flammable below, now explodes, an angry Hand punching through bulkhead and hull, where a reciprocal nearly maternal Hand reaches up from the darkness below and drags all of them down, captain, deck hands, fathers, loners and of course sons—though no daughters—so many of them trapped inside it now, tons of dark steel, slicing down into the blackness, vanishing in under twelve minutes from the midnight sun, so much sun and glistening light, sparking signals to the horizon, reminiscent of a message written once upon a time, a long, long time ago, though now no more, lost, or am I wrong again? never written at all, let alone before... unlawful hopes?... retroactive crimes?... unknowable rapes? an attempt to conceal the Hand that never set a word upon this page, or any page, nor ever was for that matter, no Hand at all, though I still know the message, I think, in all those blinks of light upon the ice, inferring something from what is not there or ever was to begin with, otherwise who’s left to catch the signs? crack the codes? even if the message is ultimately preternatural and unsympathetic.. especially since right now in that place where The Atrocity sunk without a trace there is no sympathy, just blind blinks of light upon the ice, a mockery of meaning where meaning had never been needed before, there away from the towering glacial peaks near Nordaustlandet, a flat plate of water with only a few solitary bubbles and even those gone soon enough, long gone by the time the spotter plane flies over this mirror of sky, the only distinguishing mark, a hole of blinding light, rising and descending with the hours, though never disappearing, so that even as the plane’s tiny shadow races across the whisper of old storms, or is it the approach of a new storm?, something foretold in those thousands and thousands of cat paws, reflection draws a second shadow on the vault of heaven... Atrocity is lost along with its secret cargo and all aboard. shhhhhhhhhhhh... and who would ever know of the pocket of air in that second hold where one man hid, having sealed the doors, creating a momentary bit of inside, a place to live in, to breathe in, a man who survived the blast and the water and instead lived to feel another kind of death, a closing in of such impenetrable darkness, far blacker than any Haitian night or recounted murder, though he did find a flashlight, not much against the darkness he could hear outside and nothing against the cold rushing in as this great coffin plummeted downwards, pressure building though not enough to kill him before the ship hit a shelf of rock and rested, knocks in the hull like divers knocking with hammers—though, he knows, there are no divers only air bubbles and creaks lying about the future. He drops the flashlight, the bulb breaks, nothing to see anyway, losing air, losing his sense of his home, his daughters, his five blonde daughters and... and... he feels the shelf of rock give way and suddenly the ship rushes down again, no rock now, no earth, so black, and nothing to stop this final descent except maybe the shelf of rock didn’t give way, maybe the ship hasn’t moved at all, maybe what he feels now is only his own fall as the air runs out and the cold closes in for good and I’ve lost Sight of him, I’m not even sure if he really had five blonde daughters, I’m losing any sense of who he was, no name, no history, only the awful panic he felt, universal to us all, as he sunk inside that thing, down into the unyielding waters, until peace finally did follow panic, a sad and mournful peace but somewhat pleasant after all, even though he lay there alone, chest heaving, yes, understanding home, understanding hope, and losing all of it, all long long gone a long long time ago shhhhhhhhhhhhh... when next to him, not a foot away, lay Something he never saw, no one saw, for he had come upon the secret when he escaped into this cargo hold but never knew it, though it might have saved him, saved us all for that matter, but it’s gone, letters of salt read by the sea... and I too have lost The Atrocity... and the sun pours in on me, surfaces once transparent now reflect, like a sea of a different sort, and I forget my ship, or I lose sight of it, or is that the same thing? to a time long before I saw in my own holds two cargoes, one a secret, the other extremely flammable, the flammable put there by invisible hands for invisible reasons... when I remembered her in the garden where she wandered away from all those ugly ends in the Indian Ocean, far from my arctic one, and found flowers and a fountain, perfume and a breeze, a warm breeze... Not Texas but Tex’s, Tex’s tea, where I met Ashley—Ashley, Ashley, Ashley... the sun could make you sneeze—only back then her hair was dyed neon green, matching her Doc boots, a match made in heaven, both of us together, talking and talking, at first timidly and then responding more avidly to the obvious attraction both of us could feel until she gave me her number and I wrote down my number, my first name and my last name, which was how, years later, she finally found the right number to call and she kissed me and I kissed her and we kissed for a while more until she invited me home and I said no. I had fallen in love with her, flash of gold and sunlight and Rome, and I wanted to wait, in three days call her, court her, marry her, impregnate her and fill our house with five blonde daughters, until... oh no, where have I gone now? horror but not horror but another kind of - orro—? or both, or I’m not sure, suddenly flooding through me, what back then had only been weeks away, in fact right around the corner from there, a legacy of leaving, fast approaching: excrement—let go... —urine—let go... —and burst conjunctiva— letting go streaks of red tears. All I could hold but in the end not save. Of course I lost everything. I lost her number, I lost her, and then in a fugue of erasure, I lost the memory of her, so that by the time she called she was gone along with the kisses and the promise and all that hope. Even after our strange reunion in the hammock suspended over strewn & decomposing leaves from a banana tree, later followed by an even stranger goodbye, she was still long, long gone. I know I am too late. I’m lost inside and no longer convinced there’s a way out. Byebye Ashley and goodbye to the one you knew before I found him and had to let him go.`
"""

Trying to reduce my collection footprint and also move into the 4K space. Take a look and please don't hesitate to ask questions. I request that your offers be reasonable and not lowball / waste my time. I have completed (and in the process of completing) multiple transactions in the SteelbookSwap subreddit.

• Zoomed images of items will be provided upon request
• Everything listed is sealed unless otherwise stated - 4K titles are marked
• Prices listed are for PayPal F&F - Please add 3% for G&S.
• Shipping is $5 for Regular Steelbooks and $7.50 for Premiums. If you buy 3 or more items, I will ship to you for free with a 5% discount.
• If you buy 4 items, I will provide a 10% discount
• If you buy 5 items, I wil provide a 15% discount
• 6 or more items will have an 18% discount (maximum $80 discount) + a $20 or less item of your choice for free
• Shipping will be with bubble wrap and requisite protection to ensure that the item arrives to your doorstep in the same condition as promised. Not responsible for anything inside sealed items as I cannot verify their status.
• If trading, we can discuss equal value/trading terms and mix/match payment

BLUFANS/KIMCHI:
https://imgur.com/a/uvxinGP
Godzilla (2014) 3D Lenticular - $100
Captain America: The First Avenger Lenticular - $100
Moulin Rouge Lenticular - $110 SOLD!
Gravity Lenticular - $195
Wreck It Ralph Lenticular - $60
Pacific Rim - $100
Frozen Lenticular - $75 (Slight Plastic Tear in back — item in mint condition) SOLD!
Thor Lenticular - $225
Iron Man Lenticular - $80
Up Lenticular - $60
The Incredibles Lenticular - $65
Rush Lenticular - $100
Rush Full Slip - $225
Fifth Element Full Slip - $110 SOLD!
Spotlight Full Slip Type A - $200 SOLD!
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes Lenticular - $65
Snowpiercer Lenticular - $90 SOLD!
Tangled Lenticular - $150
Whiplash Full Slip - $105 SOLD!
Whiplash Lenticular - $60
Infernal Affairs - $100
Cinderella Full Slip - $90
Leon: The Professional - $150
Grand Budapest Hotel Lenticular - $200
Let The Right One In Lenticular B - $75
Inside Out Full Slip A - $45
Inside Out Lenticular - $55
The Raid 6-Pack - $425
Novamedia/HDZeta/JP: https://imgur.com/a/4rks4yy
Captain America: The Winter Soldier - $175
Ant-Man Full Slip - $70
John Wick Full Slip (Opened) - $100
Star Wars: Force Awakens (Full Slip) - $80
Star Wars: Force Awakens (Lenticular) - $55
Incredible Hulk Lenticular - $70
Incredible Hulk Full Slip - $60
Age of Ultron Lenticular - $65
Age of Ultron Full Slip - $70
Dredd - Lenticular A - $45 (Small Tear in Plastic)
Begin Again Full Slip - $100
Nightcrawler 1/4 Slip - $75
Nightcrawler Full Slip - $75 SOLD!
Dredd Single Lenticular - $70
Drive 1/4 Slip - $105
King Kong - $105
How to Train Your Dragon Lenticular - $90
Breakfast at Tiffany’s (JP Tsutaya Records LE) - $75
My Fair Lady (JP Tsutaya Records LE) - $75 SOLD!
Black Label/FAC/Steelarchive/Black Baron:
https://imgur.com/a/TSFIVKF
Tenebrae Tripack w/ LE Coins - $375 - NOTE: manufactured holes in plastic wrap, can send photos if needed
The Wolverine - $200
Commando (Numbered Edition) w/ Card - $150
Interview with the Vampire - $250
The Martian - $70 SOLD!
Birdman (Full Slip) - $85 - will include cards if you’re first to buy
Birdman (Half Slip) - $85 - will include cards if you’re first to buy
Birdman (Lenticular) - $80 - will include cards if you’re first to buy
Dead Snow - $80 SOLD!
Bounty Killer A - $80 ($150 for both)
Bounty Killer B - $80 ($150 for both)
Spring - $200
Ninja: Shadow of a Tear - $80
Battlestar Galactica - $80
Zaavi/Best Buy/German/Standard Editions:
https://imgur.com/a/ODbr8wD
Taxi Driver - $15
The Rocketeer - $50 SOLD!
The Princess Bride - $35 SOLD!
Forbidden Planet - $70
Empire of the Sun - $65
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest - $60
Brazil - $60
Snatch (Opened) - $10
The Ultimate Avengers - $30
Saving Mr. Banks - $35
Stargate - $55
Emperor’s New Groove (Small plastic tear) - $200 SOLD!
Watchmen (Play.com) - $70
Stripes - $10
Kung Fu Hustle (Opened) - $50
The Muppets - $25
Kick-Ass - $10 SOLD!
Black Swan (Small plastic tear) - $55 SOLD!
Saw Director’s Cut - $50 SOLD!
Tron: Original - $50
Django Unchained - $20 SOLD!
Predestination (Opened) - $20 SOLD!
Rocky Horror Picture Show - $60
Hellboy - $10
Iron Man 3 - $25
Ben Hur - $35
Karate Kid - $10
Breaking Bad Set (Ralph Steadman) - $295 SOLD!
Zaavi/Best Buy/4K/Target Editions:
https://imgur.com/a/Okle36W
Death of Superman 4K (Opened) - $25
Toy Story 4K (Opened) - $35
Gone Baby Gone - $40
Ted - $40
Braveheart - $60
The Good The Bad and the Ugly - $45
Good Morning Vietnam - $40
The Matrix - $15
Inception - $10 SOLD!
Miller’s Crossing - $20 SOLD!
True Detective (Mondo Target) - $70 SOLD!
Big Hero 6 (Target - Opened) - $10
Sin City - $65
Shaun The Sheep - $15
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - $30
Maleficent 4K (Opened) - $20
Creed II 4K (Opened) - $25
Wonder Woman 4K (Opened) - $25
Wreck It Ralph (Opened) - $20
Ralph Breaks the Internet 4K (Opened) - $10 SOLD!
Anchorman - $35
Ghostbusters - $15
Star Wars Original Trilogy (Amazon Japan) - $65
Zombieland (MondoCon) - $30
Dredd (JP) - $70
Hulk - $25
Hellboy - $50 SOLD!
PLAIN Archive:
https://imgur.com/a/PEzsMym
Zero Dark Thirty PET Green - $70
Zero Dark Thirty Full Slip - $90
Zero Dark Thirty 1/4 Slip - $70
The Wrestler - $70 SOLD!
The Others I Forgot I Had:
https://imgur.com/a/Gatlx3o
Super 8 (Target Metalpak) - $15
The Town (Opened) - $10 SOLD!
Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (JP) - $85
Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan (Best Buy) - $25
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Full Slip A) - $120
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Full Slip B) - $120
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Full Slip C) - $120
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1/4 Slip) - $90 —> if you want all 4, we can make a deal!
Plain Archive / Boutique Blu-Rays / Non-Steelbooks
https://imgur.com/a/Ow1bGuA
No Man’s Land (Blufans) Digibook - $80
Blue is the Warmest Color LE w/ Full Slip - $80
Blue is Warmest Color (Korean - PA) Blu-Ray w/ Slip - $35
Rust and Bone - Design B - Plain Archive - $80
Tinker Ticker - Plain Archive - Full Slipcase - $40
Love Letter (Blu-Ray Slipcover [Korea]) - $110
Asura - Plain Selective Limited Edition - $60
Melancholia Standard Edition w Sticker - $150
Becoming Jane - Plain Archive (small tear in plastic) - $60
City Lights - $40
Modern Times - $70
Tinker Ticker (Black & Red) - $55
Wolf Children w/ Slipcover - $35
Foxcatcher Plain Archive - $40
Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade Full Slip Edition - $40
King of Pigs Plain Archive Keep Case Full Slip - $80
Still Alice - $60
King of Jokgu - $55
Two Days, One Night - Full Slip A - $40
My Dear Enemy - Life Labs Media - $50
I Killed My Mother w/ Plain Archive Sticker - $120
March of Fools (Blu-Ray) - $145
April Story - Limited Edition - $50
Frank - Plain Archive - $40
The Housemaid - $35
I Am Love [KR] - $65
The Imitation Game Plain Archive Scanavo Full Slip - $50
Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence LE Slipcover - $35

Plain Archive / Boutique Blu-Rays / Novamedia Non-Steelbooks (Cont’d)
https://imgur.com/a/FniZQwC
Only Lovers Left Alive (Ver A) - $100
Only Lovers Left Alive (Ver B) - $100
Apocalypse Now Redux (Novamedia Plain Edition) - $50
Blood Simple Full Slip Case (Korean) - $40
A Bittersweet Life 1st Print Novamedia (#333) - $125
The Evil Dead 1 & 2 - KimchiDVD (#587) - $110
Om Shanti Om - Type A - $35
Om Shanti Om - Type B - $35
Searching for Sugarman - Type A - $60
Searching for Sugarman - Type B - $60
Cinema Paradiso (Velvet Edition - Opened) - $75
O Brother Where Art Thou (Novamedia - #55) - $70
Amy (Novamedia Lenticular) - $30
Cabin in the Woods - $45
Moon (KimchiDVD White Edition) - $65
Escape From NY (KimchiDVD) - $20
Goodnight Mommy (SteelArchive - Opened) - $75
The Burbs (SteelArchive) - $100
Ida (Ver A - Plain Archive) - $35
Ida (Ver B - Plain Archive) - $35
Ernest & Celestine (Type A - Plain Archive) - $40
Ernest & Celestine (Type B - Plain Archive) - $40
Zero Dark Thirty Full Slip Plain Archive - $70
King of Pigs Plain Archive - $40
The Impossible - Plain Selective - $40
The Wrestler (UE6 - Plain Archive) - $55
The Master (UE6 - Plain Archive) - $70
Melancholia (UE5 - Plain Archive) - $100
Plain Archive / Boutique Blu-Rays / Non-Steelbooks (Cont'd)
https://imgur.com/a/MBthDhr
Blue is the Warmest Color (Plain Archive) - $150
Melancholia (Plain Archive) - $200
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Keep Case (Plain Selective) - $55
Indiana Jones Complete Adventures - Limited Edition Collector’s Box (Opened) - $195
The Imitation Game (Plain Archive - PET) - $55
The Tree of Life (Plain Selective) - $30
The Grey (Plain Selective) - $20
Steamboy (Korea) - $35
Carol (Plain Archive) - $75
The Fake (Plain Archive) - $45
The King of Pigs & The Fake Slip Box (Plain Archive) - $175
WANTS:

• Hitchcock Collection 4K - Rope, The Man Who Knew Too Much
• Hithcock Collection 4K - Saboteur, Shadow of a Doubt, Marnie
• Dune 2 Steelbook 4K
• The Revenant 4K - Non-Steelbook
• Blade Runner 4K Steelbook
• Kubrick Steelbooks 4K - Clockwork Orange, Shining, Spartacus, Full Metal Jacket, 2001: A Space Odyssey
• The Thing 4K Steelbook
• 1917 4K Steelbook

I'm offering $500 for 28 pages of lettering (issue #3) $250 to start
3 rounds of notes
$250 at finish.
I have 2 finished and printed comics issues so there's an established style. I want the speech bubbles and text to be the same; but the rest is free game and I'd encourage artistic freedom leaning toward graffiti. I see onomatopoeia in comics as graffiti so that's the style I want to get close to.
The third is finishing color, the forth is finishing ink, the fifth is finishing penciling, the sixth-eighth are written and in the "breakdown" process.
The story is about 7 kids that use the literal magic of hiphop to navigate a mythical subway train to meet their final destination decided by...Tha Conducta.
www.breakbeatstudios.com
{at}breakbeatseries [instagram for art reference]
I feel like it's still early enough in the series to try out new styles and develop the look.
I've been pretty lucky on this subreddit because I've met some fantastic artists.
I wrote a contract on a separate larger project and I want to continue that on Breakbeat so that both the me and the letterer can feel comfortable about our responsibilities.
Please provide some reference art. I'll DM you if you seem like a good fit. If not no hard feelings. I don't want to stop making comics, so I'll be back around :D

Hi folks. I got a lot of feedback on a recent post, and a lot of private questions, from new shareholders and new sub members, some of which can't post yet. As I was answering one question, it turned into a long answer and I thought it might help everyone who is new to get somewhat caught-up to speed. I thought I would paste that here and try to reformat it, but stay somewhat brief, hitting the most salient points. I'm going to use simple analogies and big round numbers to make it easy.
Preamble: This is no substitute for all the DD (Due Diligence) already posted over the past 3 years. Please use the DD links, sort the GME related subs by "Top - All" and read posts by the great contributors. This is one person's humble attempt to summarize. I am not giving any specific advice, and I am not a professional in any finance related capacity; I do have a graduate degree in business with a little more than average knowledge in finance, accounting, and economics. If anything here sounds like "advice" its of equal weight to any advice you would get from another non-professional like your friend or family member. This is not the greatest song in the world, this is just a tribute.

1. Gamestop is a video game, accessories, and general technology seller. They also sell related T-shirts, collectibles, Pokemon stuff, etc.
2. Hudge Funds are organizations that often place "counter bets". Basically it's easier to bet that something will fail, than to guarantee something will succeed. You can even take action to scare people or cause failure. It's hard to "scare" people into being certain a stock will go up. But if you scream "roach in the salad" the price of salad is likely to tumble.
3. There is conjecture — (I'm not going to claim a lot of definitive statements; I'm just going to hit the basic theory. Feel free to post links to specific data, evidence, and articles in the comments, or point to established DD) — that certain Private Equity and Consulting companies have done negative business actions on purpose. In other words, rather than help a company recover from trouble, or improve their products, they took advantage of fact 2 above, and intentionally tanked some companies.
4. More on how that works with Shorting below.
5. There is some evidence that some of those orgs managed to get their own people inserted as board members, and did things like load the company up on debt, cash out that debt as bonuses to management, liquidate assets, sell off parts of the company, and basically wring all the juice out of it. Some examples are Sears, Kmart, Toys R Us, Birdbath and Beyond, etc. I believe Ryan Cohen (GME) posted pictures on Twitter hinting at Sears (maybe others) showing a tractor knocking down the letters in the Sears sign.
6. If we're being very charitable, you might make the case that management knew the end was near, and it would be impossible to make the company successful, so they might as well milk it. It's important to keep in mind there are a lot of different stakeholders: Management, employees, shareholders, the consulting group, customers, and other businesses that supply to or buy from the company. Some of these choices may have benefitted management and the consultants, but harmed everyone else. You will see the term "Cellar boxing" in the DD, the idea of just punching a company down until it files for bankruptcy, usually because the stock price drops to $0 and gets de-listed from the exchange. Remember that part.
7. I believe this practice accelerated during and after the 2008 recession, and picked up when COVID started. Particularly as the Shorters/Shorts saw that physical locations dependent on public traffic would be hurt by the decrease in people going out in public.
8. Theoretically, shorts saw GameStop as ripe for a shorting. A "brick and mortar" company which could die if kids and teens' parents weren't driving them to the store, and people were saving money for necessities like toilet paper, not spending it on video games.
9. What is Shorting? Being "Long" is believing a share will hold value or increase in value. Presumably if you're "long" you are going to buy a share if you think it will rise in value in the future. That's an easy exchange. If you don't have any shares to be "long" with, you can just buy a share at the market price. If you're short, you can sell any shares that you own. But... how can we make this symmetrical, if you can't sell any shares that you don't own? A short creates this symmetry, the ability to enter an exchange when you don't hold any shares. If I want to short a Ford Mustang but I don't own one, I can borrow a Ford Mustang from my neighbor at $10,000 because I believe the value of Mustangs will go down. I sell that Ford Mustang for $10,000 while the market price is still high. Then my contract with the neighbor says I have to return his Ford Mustang in a week. So I'm hoping in a week, the market price of Ford Mustangs is now $6,000. I buy one at $6,000 and return it to my neighbor, and I pocket the $4,000 difference as profit. (Minus fees to borrow, but I won't introduce complications).
10. The thesis is that these Shorting Hedge Funds listed a Ford Mustang on Facebook Marketplace and sold it to 4 different people, but when the buyers come to collect, they only have one car. This would be a "naked short". Selling something without owning it, or having a reasonable ability to obtain those shares when required to pay them back to the lender. When you see people talking about "short interest" or "percentage of the float sold" and that number is above 100%, the implication is that someone has sold more shares than actually exist.
11. How can we allow this to exist!? Well, in theory, it's not inherently bad. Banks do what is called "fractional reserve banking" all the time. Let's say the bank has $100. They can lend, take payment, save your checking account, savings account, etc. But if they notice that at any given time, they only need $80 to operate, they say "Hey wait, there's $20 here we could be doing something with, because historically we've never needed all $100 at the same time. We could lend that $20 to someone, get paid interest, and share that between ourselves and our banking customers". It's like owning a gym, not every member could show up at the same time. So you should sell memberships until the observed number of people showing up starts to keep the gym full. If you don't you're letting assets go to waste. This concept can be abused. Shorting more shares than exist is possible on the theoretical basis that there's always shares and money flying around all the time, and there's rarely a time to "stop and settle all bets". As long as a firm believes they can keep running their business, they will push this edge as far as possible.
12. But why would someone sell more items than they believe they can obtain? This is where the de-listing and bankruptcy intersects with shorting. If a stock continues to rise (and presumably a company like that would stay in business) any gains or risks on the upside will always exist as long as the company is a going concern. But.... when a company goes out of business, or the stock is de-listed, there is nothing to repay. Let's say we move to an all-bicycle world and no one wants to buy a Ford Mustang. Then... you never have to repay the car you borrowed. So if I'm 99% sure that Sears is going out of business, I have an incentive to sell many multiples of Sears shares, because I believe it's going to go bust, and I'll never have to pay them back, so I keep all the profit I made.
13. What is gamma and hedging? Let's say I become an expert on knowing which cars are going down in popularity and I "short" cars all the time. No matter how many cars I borrow, sell, buy, and return to the lenders, for every 10 cars I'm making deals on I never need more than about 8 cars on hand at a time. So to limit my risk I buy and keep about 8 cars on hand, in case I do need them. This is gamma hedging. It keeps me from getting caught with zero cars and suddenly needing to buy a bunch.
14. The conjecture in the GME thesis is that hedge funds shorted a lot of shares that they don't actually have an ability to obtain. They thought surely GameStop was going to die. They would get to keep all their xerox copy profits. And possibly they did not fully gamma hedge the amount they should. Put a pin in this gamma hedging, this will come up later.
15. What they didn't count on was Ryan Cohen. RC believed "I can make this business work", and he became determined not to let it die. And Keith Gill / RoaringKitty / DeepFuckingValue believed Ryan Cohen would turn around GameStop. Depending on exactly when people started paying attention, GME was trading in the neighborhood of $4 to $5. Yes, four dollars and change. RK/DFV believed "this could go huge". If the stock even went to $40, you could 10x your money. As more people started learning about this and buying in, even people who bought in at $40 were able to sell when the price spiked to $400, also a 10x. If you were lucky enough to buy around $4 and sell around $400, you 100x'd your money.
16. Do some Googling on the VW squeeze. I'm not going to post a picture, just look at the images that come up from a search. It's a parabolic spike. Like this ..n...n...n...nNM^n...... Bubble, bubble, bubble, boom spike upwards. There are many articles about it. That's the best way to understand the general thesis in this case. Super short version, VW was oversold, the Porsche/VW company bought back some shares, it spiked.
17. Once you understand that, look at the GME ticker for January 2021. Compare that shape to the VW pictures you found. That peak in GME is when Robinhood and some other brokers grayed-out the "Buy" button, which panicked a lot of people who either couldn't buy, stopped buying, or sold in fear. Then the price dropped. We don't know what it could have reached that day without the scare.
18. If it's true that the SHF's never unwound their positions, then they have continued to sell fake shares. There is reason to believe all the data may be so hopelessly corrupted that there's no telling what the real short interest is. A lot of people don't believe many of the market numbers posted are accurate.
19. What is DRS? Direct registration is direct ownership of a share. When you go to a restaurant and make reservations, they don't slot your name on a specific table at a specific time, because they don't know the exact time the previous party will finish and leave. This is another example of fractional reserve. If a restaurant has a good sense of the time it takes to "turn tables" then they can use that average to multiple X minutes times Y people waiting, and give you an approximate wait time, or an approximate time to arrive for your reservation. Remember that shares and dollars are always flying around, with a somewhat reasonably assumption that "Oh well, if I have too many I can sell, if I don't have enough I can buy a few". But when a stock is very unusual, these normal expectations can be dangerous. Direct Registration is like putting your name and number on one specific share. It's the closest thing to having a physical piece of paper in your hand saying "This is my share". This has become incredibly rare, and most people don't actually own the shares on their brokerage's ledge. You and I may show we have "10" shares of GME, but Vanguard actually just keeps a pool of 20 shares total, and when you or I buy or sell, they settle the difference and give us our money or take our money. Direct Registration with ComputerShare (the agent for GameStop) is a 1:1 named ownership of a specific share. When you transfer from Vanguard or Fidelity to CS, Fidelity has to "locate" (have on hand or buy) N shares and transfer those N specific shares to CS where they are booked in your name. That takes them out of circulation.
20. Whatever amount of shares of GME are DRS's cannot be bought or sold, so the "free float" (remaining shares in the market) keeps shrinking. (You can of course sell your CS DRS's shares when you want, but this is assuming you're just holding). This is the reason behind the big push for everyone to DRS their shares to CS, to keep shrinking the pool of real shares available, making them more scarce relative to the demand SHF's have to obtain shares.
21. And... the majority of people who are long on GME believe they haven't seen any market evidence that the Shorter's have ever covered their positions. Indeed, it seems like they have continued to double-down, selling more fake shares.
22. Susan Trimbath PhD. spends a lot of time talking about FTD, which is "fails to deliver". Essentially, "Yeah, I know you bought a share from me at $X, but I don't have one to give you, sorry. Give me a few days and I'll get it to you". The fact that "FTD" is even an acceptable concept is an abuse of fractional reserve operations in my opinion. Some countries have banned FTD. If you don't have a share, you are forced to buy it at whatever the current market price and deliver the share to the buyer. That is not currently the case in the US.
23. What are calls? A call and a put are opposites. I'm going to focus on calls. You can pay a small price for a call, which is the contracted right to buy N amount of shares (generally 100 each) at a pre-determined price. Let's use current numbers approximately. RK/DFV buys 120,000 calls, giving him the right to purchase 12 Million shares at $20 (the agreed price) on or before the date of June 21. If the market price of the shares drops below $20, then he would never exercise those shares (in most cases, there could be an exception), but generally if you can just market buy at $18, why bother exercising the calls? (A put is the contract to sell an amount of shares at a pre-determined price before a set date).
24. That is what RoaringKitty's calls are about. He bought enough calls to get the right to contractually buy 12 Million shares of GME. From people with more knowledge of the market, and access to better tools (you have to pay a lot for some of these tools), it looks like all the market makers combined only have a little over 9.8 million shares combined. So there is no way they can meet his 12 million shares if he exercises those calls. (Or sells them to someone else who exercises them).
25. Since the price at the minute I'm typing this is $46, and his calls are for $20, if he exercised right now, he's guaranteed a $26 profit on every single one of those 12 million shares (roughly $312 Million net profit). (Or, whoever else he sells them to)
26. If that happens, the theory goes that the market makers will have to scramble to purchase the shares they don't have on the open market, which means buyers are in a bidding war and the price goes up. This creates a positive (moving up) cycle where the higher the share price, the more valuable the $20 calls are, which makes the market makers need those shares more, which means the price goes higher, (repeat until something breaks).
27. And if it's true that this is musical chairs and there's not actually as many real shares as there are supposed shares which have been sold... then that buyers' auction is essentially impossible, they will be bidding on shares that don't exist trying to close their positions.
28. The risk of shorting a stock is theoretically infinite, because the price of a stock can go up to "who knows". For example, I believe the highest known stock price every recorded was Berkshire Hathaway (Warren Buffett) at $610,000 per share. There's theoretically no reason GME couldn't go to $610K a share (or higher). So let's say you have 10 shares which you bought at $35 this past week. You would net about $6 Million if the share price runs up to $610,000.
29. Now... that's just one example, and it could even go higher, or it could peak much lower. Let me be clear that I don't know, and no one else does either. But it's at least a realistic number, being a price that someone has paid for a stock in he past.
30. Another way of looking at the "what if" is a percentage of movement from some established base price. Everything depends on what price you bought in, and what price you sell. But some comparisons, Overstock spiked about 968%. Tesla spiked about 67%. The Volkswagen spike was about 374%. The GME spike in 2021 was about $483 over $18, so around 2683% — and we don't know how high it could have gone without the "buy" button scare.
31. If GME were to spike 2683% now, (I'm looking at $49 in aftermarket at the moment) then that would be around $131,400 dollars (net gain, I'm subtracting the $49) per share. Multiply that by how many shares you bought at $49. If you want to generally play "the calculator game" just look at your "Cost Basis", or the amount that you paid for all your shares, divided by your total number of shares (you'll have to look this up, or do some spreadsheet math if you have shares spread around several brokers). Just take the current or your dream price you hope it's going to hit, subtract your CB from it, and multiply that net gain times the number of shares you own. (There could be some transaction fees based on your brokerage and how you trade. Personally, my Vanguard and Fidelity portfolios do not charge me any trade fees).
32. This is general knowledge to the best of my ability, and not any guarantee of results or "advice" in a professional capacity. I am an average person working a non-finance related job, though I do have a graduate degree in business and know a little more than the average bear about economics, finance, and accounting.

Of course this leaves out a ton of detail.
If people want to help with an area they are very knowledgeable on, I would suggest posting a comment with one of these numbers, and explain in more detail or provide links to good DD, past posts, YouTube videos, or memes.
If something here is fundamentally incorrect, please note the number, explain, and I will try to edit in a better explanation (Please don't nit-pick this to death. I'm just trying to get a simple explanation for new folks to start from).
If you're going to write an expanded explainer, do a thread search for that number first, and make sure someone else hasn't already written what you plan to say.
This does not touch on: The 4-for-1 split. The Wu-Tang album. NFT's. Acquisitions. The nearly $1 Billion recently raised by at-the-market shares sold. Or, GameStop's elimination of debt, and having ~ $2 Billion in cash on hand. Ryan Cohen and GameStop's agreements and plans to buy and trade securities as part of their business model.

Can someone explain to me how short sellers are making money off of the stock? I thought a basic premise of shorting is that a stock is overvalued. I don’t understand the posts on Reddit or Houston’s letter that the price is low because of short sellers if short sellers target companies like GameStop or Tesla that were overvalued bubbles, not penny stocks that are already beaten down. Are short sellers really to blame or is the stock just at a low point?

Nicholas Mattison bumped his shoulder as he stretched his arms over his head, pulled back the soft pink curtain that draped over his bed like a canopy, and rubbed the sleep out of his green eyes as his bare feet met the plush carpeting of his bedroom.
If Nicholas was any more alert than his still-sleepy, bedheaded current self, he might have astutely recognized that the bed was a little too small for his lanky frame, or recalled that the bed in his freshman dorm definitely didn't have lacy, rose-hued canopy curtains.
The unlikely array of unfamiliar accoutrements in Nicholas' room only properly crystallized once he squinted and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, glancing around a space that resolutely wasn't his. Gone were the haphazard textbooks splayed across his desk, the guitar that had been propped against the mirror hanging on his closet door, and the laundry basket he promised himself he'd get to on Saturday morning, first thing.
Instead, Nicholas' field of view was met with walls painted a garish shade of bubblegum pink, a neat row of posters advertising pop stars he'd never heard of before, and an ornate door with a sign that read "Nick's Room" in bubble-letter script.
With a surge of panic, he pulled open the closet door, biting his lower lip with a brow-furrowing frown when he saw a walk-in selection of elegant ball gowns and starchy-frilled ballerina tutus.
Where WAS he?
**
Hello! Thanks for reading a silly prompt. I wanted to leave it mysterious so we can fill in some blanks together, but the gist of the prompt is this: Our protagonist discovers that, one way or another, he's found himself living in (read: trapped) a dollhouse. Like the post's title says, a daring escape ensues!
And that brings us to your character: Who is she? A fellow college student who found herself plucked from her normal life and brought to the dollhouse? Is she a brought-to-life doll who already lives there? Is she the supervillainess/mad scientist/crazy gal who owns the dollhouse and is gleeful to have a new plaything in Nicholas? It's your call!
If you're interested, please send a message my way! I ask that you be at least 20 as well, with a knack for descriptive, detailed posts that are at least 200 words or so long. (I break Discord's character limit like it's my job, so there's no shame there!) Let me know what you think of the idea, any concepts you might have, and who you may write as a character opposite Nicholas. See you in the dollhouse soon!

Life in Frost Hollow had always been fairly normal, up until a few days ago. My husband and I had small issues and arguments, like any couple, but there was no sign of the severe transformation that would escalate into such gruesome, nightmarish scenes.
I always woke early. The day that it all started, I rose around dawn to see the muted gleam of an infant sunrise shining through the window. I looked over to Jack’s side of the bed, seeing it empty. It appeared unslept in, which I found strange, as he worked the night shift and would nearly always be home and in bed by 3 or 4 AM.
But ever since he had found our newborn daughter dead in her crib, he had been acting strange, disappearing at random hours and occasionally bringing a “friend” home. The people he brought were always young, glassy-eyed guys I had never seen before, who often followed him around in an eerie silence like ducklings following a mother duck.
I made a fresh pot of coffee, going out onto the porch as the world came to life. The Sun rose overhead like a burning angel, a fiery eye in a vast expanse of cloudless blue. I knew it would be another scorcher of a day, humid and sticky. I watched early-morning joggers passing by. I wondered where Jack was. I pulled out my cell phone, checking to see if he had sent me any messages, but there was nothing there.
As I sat on the front porch, I thought about my fading youth. I had once hair the color of summer sunlight, but now it was going gray. The small wrinkles around my mouth and eyes seemed to be lengthening and deepening every day. Everything in the world seemed to grow dusty and brittle, like one enormous sarcophagus. I felt certain I would never have another child, never see bright blue eyes staring up at me from the crib again.
Far off down the street, there was a strange translucent rippling in the air, like burning heat rising off desert sands. It expanded into a perfectly flat wall. It cut across trees, homes and cars. I squinted, realizing that it was coming nearer with every heartbeat. I thought it was some kind of bizarre meteorological phenomenon, some sort of heat mirage or humidity bubble. As it slowly crept closer, I got bored, pulling out my phone to read the news.
After a few minutes sitting and people-watching, I went inside to make some breakfast. I ambled over to the freezer, looking inside for something edible, maybe some chicken tenders I could deep-fry next to some eggs and toast. Instead, I found a decapitated human head, its open, staring eyes glassy and frostbitten. I felt a scream welling up in my throat as I dropped my coffee mug to the floor. It shattered, spraying drops of burning hot liquid all over my legs.
The freezing mist slunk towards me like ghostly hands, obscuring the face’s features for a long moment. I wondered if this was just an extremely realistic mannequin head. I looked at the blue lips, pressed together as if in an expression of disapproval, saw the ragged patches of black flesh at the bottom of the neck, and knew it was real. Frozen crystals of dark blood clung to the bottom of the head in a black pool, gluing it to the freezer floor and keeping it in an upright position.
Between the lips, I saw a folded piece of paper. On the front, in flowing, black cursive, read two words: “To Laura”. I hesitated for a couple heartbeats, then snatched the note from the dismembered head. The lips refused to let it go at first, until I gently wriggled it from side to side. It came loose with a wet, sucking sound.
The moment I freed the note, a siren rang out down the street, the volume deafening. It rose and fell in shrill wails for a few seconds. I saw the fridge tremble in front of me under the onslaught of such noise. Black mist slowly started to ooze from every surface. By the time it evaporated a few seconds later, the fridge looked like it had aged fifty years. Enormous rust spots covered its exterior, and the smell of rotting food was instantly overwhelming, like the rancid odor of roadkill putrefying under a burning sun.
The rest of the kitchen seemed to have changed as well. Everything had grown old and filthy. The counters were covered in cobwebs and grime. Deep cracks ran through the walls, and the windows were all broken.
Turning back to the freezer, I studied the mutilated head’s features more thoroughly. It was a woman with raven-black hair and blue eyes, probably in her early twenties. Who was this person? How had they died, and how had their head gotten in my freezer? What was that horrible siren?
I unfolded the note, seeing Jack’s flowing handwriting there. My heart felt like it dropped out of my chest as I quickly scanned the words.
“Dear Laura,
“If you’re reading this, it means you found the head. It’s probably a good thing, I think. There are some things I have kept secret from you, from everyone, for a long time.
“I don’t know when it first began, when this fractured piece of my personality gained control. It all started innocently enough- peeking in people’s windows when they weren’t looking, or stalking random joggers for days without being seen. It was always a rush to get away with it.
“Soon, I would break into people’s houses and rearrange all their furniture. I’d hide a portable camera in the corner or on top of a bookshelf and watch their reactions. Oh, how I laughed! As you can imagine, it was quite fun. Life doesn’t have enough laughter, after all. It seems more like wandering across an endless desert sometimes.
“But eventually, I would stumble across an oasis, a resting place in this never-ending life of shit. Or at least, that other piece of my personality did. You might not believe me, but the first time I killed, it was an accident. Perhaps it was fate sending the first pebbles skittering down over the ledge that would inevitably lead to an avalanche.
“I had been doing my usual routine, breaking into houses, moving things around, sometimes writing Satanic messages on the wall in pig’s blood. It was all to keep people on their toes, you know? Just for chuckles and smiles. But, still, I always kept my pistol on me. I had walked up and down the streets, seeing the mail piling up outside one old colonial home surrounded by a grove of thick trees. I had found the house empty when I scoped it out originally. It seemed perfect. That night, I made my way inside.
“I remember hearing the front door unlock abruptly in the middle of the night. I tried to run towards the window in the bathroom around back, the way I had come in originally. But the man must have heard my footsteps. He came around the corner with a shotgun, his face beet-red. He was screaming and hollering. I was crawling through the window when he started raising the gun. The ringing sound as he pumped a round in the chamber was like a scream from God, telling me to awaken. At that moment, I knew it was kill or be killed. Before he could pull the trigger, I aimed for his head and fired twice. I remember the rush of pleasure as his face disintegrated into a puddle of blood and bone chips.
“After that, things start to get hazy. At first, I thought it was a psychotic breakdown, because something started wearing my face, following me when I went crawling through the neighborhood. Perhaps it is a part of me in some way, my true self. After all, murder is Godly, the pure power of the divine, and killing in the name of God is always a mercy. So says the Savior.
“Well, anyway, I’m rambling. It’s time to finish this letter before I start to sound crazy. We can’t have that, can we? What will the neighbors think?
“The main thing to remember is: don’t look behind you.
“I’ll see you very soon.”
I read the last line a few times before it sunk into my mind. Don’t look behind you? It didn’t make any sense.
Then I heard the choked giggling from the pantry closet. It started low, like the first rumblings of an earthquake. The door was left open a fraction of an inch. One bloodshot eye stared at me through the crack. It flicked quickly to the left and right, the pupil dilated and insane.
“Jack?” I whispered, feeling sick and weak. “What’s… what’s wrong?” I slowly backpedaled towards the front door. The laughter turned into a gurgle, something that might have come from the lips of a drowning man. He flung the door open, his face pale and bloodless. Trickles of dried blood covered his arms and hands. Under his fingernails, I saw clotted black gore. Translucent black shadows swirled around his face and chest, spiraling up into a vortex like a dark whirlwind. They shimmered all around him, distorting his features and seeming to increase in intensity by the second.
“Jack isn’t here anymore,” he hissed in a diseased voice. His lips split apart, revealing teeth that looked far too long and sharp. “He’s hidden behind the veil, rotting under the floorboards. Even now, he tries to claw his way up.” He stepped towards me, revealing a long butcher’s knife in one hand, its steel stained a deep scarlet. Fresh blood still dripped from the tip.
“Stay away from me,” I shrieked, glancing behind me. The town looked different now, the streets deserted. Dark shadows danced over everything, as if there were a solar eclipse. The entire world seemed to exhale, a low, diseased hissing that radiated from everything all around me.
This strange monster wearing Jack’s face continued moving closer, seeming to draw power from the changes. His eyes darkened in a flash, turning black and cloudy. The cyclone of shadows twisting around his body moved faster, a curtain of darkness so thick that it started to obscure his face.
“My name is Friend,” he gurgled, lunging forward with the knife. I instinctively pulled away, stumbling back towards the open front door. I felt a cold pain radiate down my left arm, a slashing pain that made my vision turn white with adrenaline and shock. A slash opened up on the top of my skin, fresh blood bubbling out instantly. I fell backwards through the door onto the front porch, smacking my head hard on the wooden porch. Friend slunk towards me, a hurricane of blackness with an eerie human pillar at the center. He stared down at me with a grin like a razor blade, letting fresh blood, my blood, drip off the blade and patter gently to the rotted, mold-streaked floor.
I kicked forward with all of my strength, aiming a blow at his knee. I heard something crack, felt the leg give with a sickening explosion of black blood. The flesh felt loose and spongy, almost boneless. Friend wailed like a banshee, his voice rising into an ear-splitting wail. He fell forwards towards me, aiming the knife at my heart, a look of fury darkening his face.
A gunshot rang out behind me. A perfectly round scarlet hole appeared in Friend’s shoulder. He jerked, twisting and gurgling in pain. Black blood spattered my face and neck, feeling as cold as dry ice. I rolled away as his body came down, the knife landing only inches from my chest. It quivered there, its tip stuck deeply in the wooden floor.
Friend’s features changed rapidly in front of my eyes, dripping and melting. The mask of humanity he wore started to fall away, revealing a spinning black hole of a head with a single red eye in the center. Wounded and leaking blood the color of waste oil, he skittered away on four lengthening skeletal limbs, crawling like a spider. His clothes stretched and tightened around his changing, bulging flesh. Breathing hard, I turned to look at my savior.
I recognized the withered old face of my neighbor, a man we all called Bones. He had no family that I had ever seen, and lived a solitary life, almost that of a hermit. I had talked to him a few times, been invited into his home even. His walls were covered with the taxidermied heads of animals, black bears and bucks and moose he had killed. Crossbows, guns and hunting bows of all kinds had lain scattered over nearly every room. He was an outdoorsman at heart.
“Bones,” I whispered in a choked voice. “Thank God.” He shuffled forwards, a small, very thin old man with a sunken bird chest. His giant, rectangular glasses magnified his eyes to the size of dinnerplates, and a white wizard beard hung down to the center of his chest. Jack and I had often joked that he looked like a character from Duck Dynasty. He holstered his pistol around his waist before reaching down a trembling hand and helping me up.
“Something happened,” Bones said grimly. “When that siren went off. I was looking outside, just smoking and sipping some black tea, and I saw it happen. Everything started sputtering and shimmering, and this thick, black mist rose over the streets and houses. When it finally blew away, I saw… this.” He waved a hand outside for emphasis, motioning at the apocalyptic scene.
The streets heaved in great cracks and fissures, as if an earthquake had rolled through the earth. The houses looked like they had survived a nuclear apocalypse. The windows were all shattered. Tiny shards of glass littered the ground like splinters of diamond. The roofs were peeled away and rotting, with enormous holes eaten into the centers of most of them. Something like spider silk covered the dilapidated walls of most of the houses on the street, formed in symmetrical webs that rose two or three stories high.
Behind me, the radio suddenly turned on, the lights flickering overhead. The power all along the street flashed on and off, the streetlights outside strobing at the same erratic frequency. Something like a metallic shriek rang out through the radio’s speaker. Bones and I jumped, turning to look backwards at the old radio laying on the kitchen counter.
“This isn’t the real world!” a man screamed over the radio. I immediately recognized the terrified voice of Jack. My heart dropped into my stomach. “Don’t believe anything you see or hear here. The anomaly is spreading. Laura, I know you can hear me. I’m sorry for everything. Listen, to get out of this, there are a few things you need to remember.
“First, you should know there are gateways in this place, portals that lead back to our world. You can recognize them by the blinding white light radiating from them. It might be a bedroom door, a window, even a kitchen cabinet or a box. They form randomly throughout the anomaly and are highly unstable, often lasting for only seconds. If you find one, take it immediately. These are your only way home.
“Second, the entities here can take the form of any person or animal. But you’ll know them by the shadows that surround them. To kill them, you want to go for the crimson eye in the center of their faces.
“Third, there are places with food, water and other supplies. They will look like dilapidated gas stations with the name ‘Hel’s Market’ on them. These are safe spaces where the things on the streets don’t roam. Don’t stay in there too long, though, or you might see Hel. She doesn’t like visitors.”
“Jack? Where the hell are you?!” I screamed at the radio, running over and shaking it like a crying baby, hearing random pieces inside the old gadget give a metallic rattle. But the speaker only gave a hiss of static as the radio died in my hands. A million thoughts seemed to run through my head at once. Was Jack still alive? Why had his voice come on the radio? Why had his writing been on the note? Bones came up behind me, putting a slight hand on my shoulder.
“We’ll find him,” Bones said. “Jack’s a tough guy. But we need to start moving. We can’t stay here forever. We’re going to need to find supplies. Everything around here is trash.”
“It could be worse out there than it is here,” I argued. “Why do we need to keep moving? We could barricade ourselves inside and wait for the police, and the… military, and…”
“Lady, you’re living in a dream world,” Bones said coldly, his magnified eyes turning into owlish slits. “We don’t know how long we’re going to be here. You don’t even know where Jack is. You have zero supplies, zilcho. You could barricade yourself somewhere and slowly starve to death, but that wouldn’t help us much.” His words made me think. I nodded.
“Fine, but we should grab some food and water first,” I said glumly, my head spinning. I felt sick and tired from all of this, yet the feeling rose in my chest that I hadn’t seen anything yet. Bones gave a faint smile, the corners of his lips twitching as he watched me.
I went over to the kitchen sink, turning it on. For a long moment, nothing happened. There was a burping, gurgling sound deep down in the pipes. They clattered and shook as if thousands of rats were slinking through them. The faucet bubbled and hissed frothy dark water. Finally, it spat a gout of thick scarlet blood all over the rusted sink, squirming with dozens of writhing maggots. I gasped, backpedaling. The smell of iron and rot from the rancid mess sputtering out of the faucet in waves was sickening. Repressing an urge to gag, I reached forward and slammed the handle down.
“Yup, that’s what I expected,” Bones said grimly. He looked around with a blank expression on his face, as if he were only on a stroll at the park. At that same moment, the lights overhead flickered one last time and died. The cracked and broken street lamps outside went dark simultaneously- at least those few that still worked.
I went over to the fridge, opening the door. The nauseating smell of rot exploded across the room, hitting me in the face like a slap. I gagged, seeing clouds of black and yellow mold growing over dried, twisted heaps of decaying food. The milk had become a soupy mess in the container with black tendrils growing along the sides of the exploded jug. I slammed the fridge door shut. I ran over to the front door and stuck my head out, inhaling sweet, clean air. Bones followed slowly behind me, seemingly unaffected.
“Don’t look like we’re getting any food or water from here,” he said contemplatively. “My place ain’t any better. When that siren hit and the black mist came, it changed everything- ate at things, as if time had been turned on fast forward. By the time the fog had gone, my house was a wreck. The food in the fridge was all rot-gut sludge, and the cans in the pantry were ready to explode. My guns were all rusted heaps of junk, the crossbows twisted and the strings snapped. Some of them had tiny black spiders building webs on them.”
“So how’d you get the pistol?” I asked, curious. He looked at me as if I were an idiot.
“I had it on me when it happened,” he said slowly, as if speaking to a mentally deficient child. I nodded, looking around for a weapon I could use. In the living room, I found a metal baseball bat that Jack had bought years ago. Like everything else, it had been eaten away by the ravages of time. Streaks of dark rust covered the length of it. I swung it a few times, feeling that it still felt structurally intact.
“Let’s go,” I said, following Bones outside.
***
We headed deeper into civilization, towards the downtown area with restaurants, gas stations and grocery stores. The sky above had no stars, no sun or moon. It swirled in a dark blue hurricane, meeting in a black eye at the center. The cyclonic clouds peeled away like old scabs. Some pale light came, casting everything in a cyanotic light. I saw pale, dirty faces disappearing into the alleyways and ruined homes, many of them apparently of children.
“I saw them too,” Bones muttered, holding his pistol tightly by his side. “They look like pictures of kids at Auschwitz I’ve seen. Starving and filthy. Where’s their parents, you think?” I shuddered to think about it. What if this place was sucking random people in, just making them disappear from the world? What if it was spreading, like a cancerous tumor hidden under gauze?
I had nearly forgotten about Friend, the strange shape-shifting creature who wore Jack’s face, but he hadn’t forgotten about me. We were passing the burnt-out hulk of a tractor-trailer when his shadowy face shot around the corner, staring at us with Jack’s face. He had eyes like two burnt holes, black and smoldering. His body was a strange combination of spider and human, the thin limbs ending in sharp points. Fine, dark hairs like needles covered his arms and legs. The bullet wound had apparently already healed. Black blood had crusted onto the surfaces of his shirt and pants. He didn’t hesitate to attack. He swung an insectile arm at Bones’ chest. I screamed, seeing it all happen in slow motion.
The limb went straight through Bones’ heart. Bright red arterial blood immediately began flooding out as he looked down in shock, still holding the pistol in one hand. He gurgled, dropping the gun and falling forward, dragging the arm down with him. I had the baseball bat in my hands. With all of my strength, I swung it at the creature’s head. It made contact with a fleshy thud. The soft, yielding flesh of Friend cratered under the impact. Friend made a soft hissing sound as the wound bubbled and danced as if a nest of mice were about to emerge.
I leapt for the pistol. A choked sound rasped from Bones’ trembling lips. The adrenaline rush made me feel no pain as I hit the hard, cracked road, rolling as I landed. I felt the cold metal of the pistol’s grip under my hand. I raised it, feeling the stab wound Friend had given me earlier rip back open. Fresh streams of blood soaked my clothes as I fired, dripping from the long slash along my arm.
The top of Friend’s head exploded, the body transforming before my eyes into a black, spidery humanoid with a single spinning red eye in the center of its pointed skull. Dark blood the color of asphalt leaked down its naked, glossy body. It had no mouth or nose that I could see, but fine silvery hairs covered its jointed arms and legs. The eye widened in pain as it stared into the barrel of the pistol, one blade-like arm still caught in Bones’ chest. I remembered the transmission that had come through the radio and aimed for the center of the spinning eye.
“Why do you keep taking Jack’s form?” I asked Friend, the gun feeling heavy in my trembling hand. “Why just him?”
“I can take the form of any who are part of the Church of the Final Rapture, those who have given their souls to the dark presence here,” he hissed cryptically. He jerked forward, trying to bring his other blade-like arm up towards my neck with a quick slashing blow. I instantly fired, pulling the trigger over and over.
When the first of the bullets pierced his eye, I saw a blinding explosion come from the center of it, like a flashbang radiating light the color of an infected wound. Orange the color of pus spun around bright reds and necrotic blacks. I stepped back, crying out. I instinctively brought my hand up to cover my eyes.
When I could see again, I found only a smoking crater in the spot where Friend and Bones had stood. Gray smoke hissed from the center of it. I knelt down, seeing a dark, jelly-like substance covering the jagged patches of concrete. I quickly realized it was flesh, though whether human or alien, I couldn’t say.
Shell-shocked, I stumbled over to Bones’ melted pants, feeling around his waist until I felt the cold metal of an extra magazine. I had emptied all the bullets in the gun fighting Friend. To my dismay, I realized Bones only had one extra magazine.
Feeling sick and weak, I stumbled away, heading towards downtown, hoping against hope that I would find some solace or answers there.
***
I was wavering on my feet like a drunk woman. As I got closer to the center of town, I found dead bodies hanging from the lampposts, many of them mummified or skeletal. I wondered how many people lived in this hellish world.
I heard crying ahead of me, far off in the distance. I saw a little girl kneeling below the body of a young woman. The corpse looked fresh. The tip of the dead woman’s black tongue poked out through her stiff blue lips. The young girl’s wails tore at my heart.
The girl was wearing rags, tatters of a shirt and pants that were covered in streaks of what looked like dirt and blood. Her face was grimy, but her eyes were big and blue. She looked up at me suddenly as I drew near, panic twisting her small face. She reminded me of the baby I had, the one who had died of crib death a few months earlier. My daughter had the same big blue eyes as this girl here. I looked around the destroyed world, seeing there were more spiderwebs covering the ruined buildings here.
“Little girl, what are you doing here?” I asked. She grabbed my shirt, pushing her small face against my thigh.
“They killed my mommy,” she wailed, trying not to look at the hanging corpse. I hugged her.
“Who did?” I asked. “Who killed all these people?” She looked up, surprised.
“How do you not know? It’s the Church of the Final Rapture. They’re trying to spread this…” She waved a dirty hand around for emphasis, wiping tears from her bloodshot eyes. “They think if they can spread this bad place far enough, then it will lead to the Final Judgment, and Jesus will come back and good will finally win. But first, they say they need to kill a lot of people and make the battle happen.” She shook her small head. “They’re crazy. A bunch of religious nuts, Mommy always said. And she was right. Look what they did to her.”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Marian,” she answered in a small, diffident voice. I helped her up to her feet.
“I’m Laura,” I said, “and you can’t stay here forever, Marian. There are bad things here. Is it true there are ways out of here, doorways of light or something? Have you seen any?”
“I caught a glimpse of one once,” she answered. “It was beautiful. Like looking into a rainbow. I thought I could hear singing.” Her eyes grew distant and far-away. I took her hand, urging her to walk forwards, away from the corpse of her mother.
“So what happened?” I asked, trying to keep Marian talking.
“I saw it, but by the time I found Mom and told her, it had evaporated…” We turned a corner. Looming there overhead, we came face-to-face with what had made the webs.
***
My first thought was that it was some cross between a horse and an insect, the height of a small child and over a dozen feet long. It had the body of a struggling old man in its insectile jaws. They jutted out like the pincers of a stag beetle with wicked serrated edges. Two bulbous black eyes emerged from the sides of its head, the size of baseballs. They didn’t appear to have any lids. They stared at us, unblinking. I saw myself and Marian reflected in those dark orbs, as if they were an obsidian mirror. The pale chitinous shell of the creature shimmered with rainbows as it moved in a blur towards us. Its snout was rounded with two nostril holes. Stringy, blood-flecked mucus constantly dribbled down its eldritch face, falling down from its nose and mouth.
The hundreds of long, skittering legs moved in rhythmic peristaltic waves. The old man continuously kicked and punched at the monstrous face, but the abomination didn’t seem to notice or care. Blood dribbled from his toothless mouth and deep slashes covered his chest, stomach and legs. His lips and fingernails took on a faint bluish cast. As its black eyes focused on us, frothy bubbles of clear saliva started dripping from its flexing pincers. With a primal, reptilian hiss, it threw its head to the side. The dying man soared through the air, smashing into a concrete wall with a bone-shattering thud.
“Stop!” I cried instinctively, raising the pistol and firing. Marian screamed, running behind me and hugging my leg as the dark juggernaut ran us down.
The first bullet caught it in the neck, but the thick black plates of scales deflected it easily, leaving only a series of fine cracks running down its torso. I kept firing, aiming at its face. The second one hit it in the right eye, which exploded like a water balloon filled with blue blood. Its wailing intensified until I thought my eardrums might explode. Half-blinded, its body slithered forward like a snake’s, its many legs driving it towards us.
I jumped to the side at the last second, but Marian wasn’t so lucky. The creature’s massive pincers wrapped around her chest, grabbing her and lifting her into the air. Deep slices appeared in her rags of clothes as she cried, pleading for help. I inhaled deeply, aiming for the abomination’s face, hoping I wouldn’t hit the girl.
The last bullet in the magazine pierced its other eye. It exploded. The creature dropped Mirian to the ground, wailing a steam-whistle shriek. I grabbed Marian’s hand, lifting her off the ground.
“Run!” I hissed through gritted teeth, pulling her forward. Up ahead, I saw lights illuminating a store. It was the only building with electricity that I could see. I found it strange.
As we got closer, I saw the sign, reading: “Hel’s Market”.
***
The insectoid creature’s agonized screams drew other skittering monstrosities forward. They crawled out of the side streets and alleys, their strange horse faces and insectile jaws working furiously as if tasting the air for prey. I remembered the rules on the radio, when they had said the markets were a safe spot.
We ran through the door into a building that hadn't decayed like everything else. It felt air conditioned and cool. The glass here was intact, and rows after rows of cold drinks, ice cream and frozen meals stretched out before us. It looked like a regular convenience store, but in the back, I saw a doorless threshold with stairs that led down into a shadowy basement. I shuddered as I looked at it. Outside, the creatures had stopped at the front door, their bulbous eyes staring intently in at us.
“Are you OK?” I asked Mirian, looking at her injuries. The creature had left two deep slices along the sides of her chest. They bled freely, soaking her tattered rags in fresh streaks of scarlet. She nodded silently, tears running down her rounded cheeks. We quickly grabbed drinks and snacks, chugging soda and energy drinks and eating candy and beef jerky. I didn’t realize just how hungry I was after nearly dying so many times, and Marian looked like she hadn’t eaten in days.
I was staring out the front glass window, looking at the creatures waiting there for us with hunger and bloodlust gleaming in their alien eyes, when I heard heavy footsteps ascending the stairs at the back of the store. Mirian grabbed my hand tightly.
“I think something’s coming,” she whispered in terror.
***
Through the dark threshold, I saw a woman looming nearly ten feet tall. The left half of her body was decayed and rotted, mummified and gray, like everything in this world. The right was beautiful and young, the skin pink and healthy. Behind her, I saw her dragging a man bound tightly in razor-wire, the sharp edges biting into his skin. I instantly recognized Jack.
“Jack?” I asked, stepping back towards the door.
“See your husband,” Hel hissed in a shadowy voice. She threw the trembling mass of bloody flesh at my feet. Jack screamed, kicking and twisting.
“Get… out of here!” he whispered at me through teeth streaked with crimson. “I’ll… help you…”
“Did you help cause this?” I asked. Hel looked between us with sadistic pleasure, the living part of her mouth splitting into a grin. The dead part cracked, the dry skin ripping and showing blackened teeth underneath. Jack nodded.
“The Church… of the Final Rapture… yes, we tried to spread the anomaly, to end all suffering, to cause God to notice us again and come back…” Hel laughed at that, a sound like grating metal.
“Foolish men,” she gurgled. “You shouldn’t have played with things you didn’t understand.” Jack’s eyes grew big. There was a moment of clarity as he met my gaze, motioning towards the black door at the back of the store.
“I’ll… do what I can…” he said, “with what the Church has taught me.” He closed his eyes as Hel drew near, her heavy footsteps shaking the store. She lifted up one giant, naked foot over his head, holding it there like a guillotine blade. It came down with a crunch.
The door at the back of the store started vibrating and shimmering with white light as Jack died. I heard singing from it. Grabbing Marian’s arm, I pulled her towards it. A large, rotted hand came out, grabbing at my hair. I felt myself pulled back off my feet.
Like a rabid animal, Marian ran forward, sinking her sharp teeth into Hel's wrist. I felt the grip release, my back smashing hard against the floor. The wind was instantly knocked out of my lungs. Grabbing Marian's hand, we crawled towards the door, only feet away. Beautiful, angelic singing resonated through it, growing louder as we got closer. Hel shrieked with fury as we crossed the threshold, disappearing into the light. Everything dissolved in the blinding radiance, and for a moment, I felt warm and free.
***
I found myself back home with Marian, the Sun outside bright and clear. The freezer was still open, the dismembered head staring blankly out at me. Marian was gently crying, cradling her bleeding chest. All of the agonies and wounds I had suffered instantly started shrieking, grating my nerves.
Sickened, I stumbled outside and threw up, trying to forget the nightmares and broken bodies of the anomaly.

Life in Frost Hollow had always been fairly normal, up until a few days ago. My husband and I had small issues and arguments, like any couple, but there was no sign of the severe transformation that would escalate into such gruesome, nightmarish scenes.
I always woke early. The day that it all started, I rose around dawn to see the muted gleam of an infant sunrise shining through the window. I looked over to Jack’s side of the bed, seeing it empty. It appeared unslept in, which I found strange, as he worked the night shift and would nearly always be home and in bed by 3 or 4 AM.
But ever since he had found our newborn daughter dead in her crib, he had been acting strange, disappearing at random hours and occasionally bringing a “friend” home. The people he brought were always young, glassy-eyed guys I had never seen before, who often followed him around in an eerie silence like ducklings following a mother duck.
I made a fresh pot of coffee, going out onto the porch as the world came to life. The Sun rose overhead like a burning angel, a fiery eye in a vast expanse of cloudless blue. I knew it would be another scorcher of a day, humid and sticky. I watched early-morning joggers passing by. I wondered where Jack was. I pulled out my cell phone, checking to see if he had sent me any messages, but there was nothing there.
As I sat on the front porch, I thought about my fading youth. I had once hair the color of summer sunlight, but now it was going gray. The small wrinkles around my mouth and eyes seemed to be lengthening and deepening every day. Everything in the world seemed to grow dusty and brittle, like one enormous sarcophagus. I felt certain I would never have another child, never see bright blue eyes staring up at me from the crib again.
Far off down the street, there was a strange translucent rippling in the air, like burning heat rising off desert sands. It expanded into a perfectly flat wall. It cut across trees, homes and cars. I squinted, realizing that it was coming nearer with every heartbeat. I thought it was some kind of bizarre meteorological phenomenon, some sort of heat mirage or humidity bubble. As it slowly crept closer, I got bored, pulling out my phone to read the news.
After a few minutes sitting and people-watching, I went inside to make some breakfast. I ambled over to the freezer, looking inside for something edible, maybe some chicken tenders I could deep-fry next to some eggs and toast. Instead, I found a decapitated human head, its open, staring eyes glassy and frostbitten. I felt a scream welling up in my throat as I dropped my coffee mug to the floor. It shattered, spraying drops of burning hot liquid all over my legs.
The freezing mist slunk towards me like ghostly hands, obscuring the face’s features for a long moment. I wondered if this was just an extremely realistic mannequin head. I looked at the blue lips, pressed together as if in an expression of disapproval, saw the ragged patches of black flesh at the bottom of the neck, and knew it was real. Frozen crystals of dark blood clung to the bottom of the head in a black pool, gluing it to the freezer floor and keeping it in an upright position.
Between the lips, I saw a folded piece of paper. On the front, in flowing, black cursive, read two words: “To Laura”. I hesitated for a couple heartbeats, then snatched the note from the dismembered head. The lips refused to let it go at first, until I gently wriggled it from side to side. It came loose with a wet, sucking sound.
The moment I freed the note, a siren rang out down the street, the volume deafening. It rose and fell in shrill wails for a few seconds. I saw the fridge tremble in front of me under the onslaught of such noise. Black mist slowly started to ooze from every surface. By the time it evaporated a few seconds later, the fridge looked like it had aged fifty years. Enormous rust spots covered its exterior, and the smell of rotting food was instantly overwhelming, like the rancid odor of roadkill putrefying under a burning sun.
The rest of the kitchen seemed to have changed as well. Everything had grown old and filthy. The counters were covered in cobwebs and grime. Deep cracks ran through the walls, and the windows were all broken.
Turning back to the freezer, I studied the mutilated head’s features more thoroughly. It was a woman with raven-black hair and blue eyes, probably in her early twenties. Who was this person? How had they died, and how had their head gotten in my freezer? What was that horrible siren?
I unfolded the note, seeing Jack’s flowing handwriting there. My heart felt like it dropped out of my chest as I quickly scanned the words.
“Dear Laura,
“If you’re reading this, it means you found the head. It’s probably a good thing, I think. There are some things I have kept secret from you, from everyone, for a long time.
“I don’t know when it first began, when this fractured piece of my personality gained control. It all started innocently enough- peeking in people’s windows when they weren’t looking, or stalking random joggers for days without being seen. It was always a rush to get away with it.
“Soon, I would break into people’s houses and rearrange all their furniture. I’d hide a portable camera in the corner or on top of a bookshelf and watch their reactions. Oh, how I laughed! As you can imagine, it was quite fun. Life doesn’t have enough laughter, after all. It seems more like wandering across an endless desert sometimes.
“But eventually, I would stumble across an oasis, a resting place in this never-ending life of shit. Or at least, that other piece of my personality did. You might not believe me, but the first time I killed, it was an accident. Perhaps it was fate sending the first pebbles skittering down over the ledge that would inevitably lead to an avalanche.
“I had been doing my usual routine, breaking into houses, moving things around, sometimes writing Satanic messages on the wall in pig’s blood. It was all to keep people on their toes, you know? Just for chuckles and smiles. But, still, I always kept my pistol on me. I had walked up and down the streets, seeing the mail piling up outside one old colonial home surrounded by a grove of thick trees. I had found the house empty when I scoped it out originally. It seemed perfect. That night, I made my way inside.
“I remember hearing the front door unlock abruptly in the middle of the night. I tried to run towards the window in the bathroom around back, the way I had come in originally. But the man must have heard my footsteps. He came around the corner with a shotgun, his face beet-red. He was screaming and hollering. I was crawling through the window when he started raising the gun. The ringing sound as he pumped a round in the chamber was like a scream from God, telling me to awaken. At that moment, I knew it was kill or be killed. Before he could pull the trigger, I aimed for his head and fired twice. I remember the rush of pleasure as his face disintegrated into a puddle of blood and bone chips.
“After that, things start to get hazy. At first, I thought it was a psychotic breakdown, because something started wearing my face, following me when I went crawling through the neighborhood. Perhaps it is a part of me in some way, my true self. After all, murder is Godly, the pure power of the divine, and killing in the name of God is always a mercy. So says the Savior.
“Well, anyway, I’m rambling. It’s time to finish this letter before I start to sound crazy. We can’t have that, can we? What will the neighbors think?
“The main thing to remember is: don’t look behind you.
“I’ll see you very soon.”
I read the last line a few times before it sunk into my mind. Don’t look behind you? It didn’t make any sense.
Then I heard the choked giggling from the pantry closet. It started low, like the first rumblings of an earthquake. The door was left open a fraction of an inch. One bloodshot eye stared at me through the crack. It flicked quickly to the left and right, the pupil dilated and insane.
“Jack?” I whispered, feeling sick and weak. “What’s… what’s wrong?” I slowly backpedaled towards the front door. The laughter turned into a gurgle, something that might have come from the lips of a drowning man. He flung the door open, his face pale and bloodless. Trickles of dried blood covered his arms and hands. Under his fingernails, I saw clotted black gore. Translucent black shadows swirled around his face and chest, spiraling up into a vortex like a dark whirlwind. They shimmered all around him, distorting his features and seeming to increase in intensity by the second.
“Jack isn’t here anymore,” he hissed in a diseased voice. His lips split apart, revealing teeth that looked far too long and sharp. “He’s hidden behind the veil, rotting under the floorboards. Even now, he tries to claw his way up.” He stepped towards me, revealing a long butcher’s knife in one hand, its steel stained a deep scarlet. Fresh blood still dripped from the tip.
“Stay away from me,” I shrieked, glancing behind me. The town looked different now, the streets deserted. Dark shadows danced over everything, as if there were a solar eclipse. The entire world seemed to exhale, a low, diseased hissing that radiated from everything all around me.
This strange monster wearing Jack’s face continued moving closer, seeming to draw power from the changes. His eyes darkened in a flash, turning black and cloudy. The cyclone of shadows twisting around his body moved faster, a curtain of darkness so thick that it started to obscure his face.
“My name is Friend,” he gurgled, lunging forward with the knife. I instinctively pulled away, stumbling back towards the open front door. I felt a cold pain radiate down my left arm, a slashing pain that made my vision turn white with adrenaline and shock. A slash opened up on the top of my skin, fresh blood bubbling out instantly. I fell backwards through the door onto the front porch, smacking my head hard on the wooden porch. Friend slunk towards me, a hurricane of blackness with an eerie human pillar at the center. He stared down at me with a grin like a razor blade, letting fresh blood, my blood, drip off the blade and patter gently to the rotted, mold-streaked floor.
I kicked forward with all of my strength, aiming a blow at his knee. I heard something crack, felt the leg give with a sickening explosion of black blood. The flesh felt loose and spongy, almost boneless. Friend wailed like a banshee, his voice rising into an ear-splitting wail. He fell forwards towards me, aiming the knife at my heart, a look of fury darkening his face.
A gunshot rang out behind me. A perfectly round scarlet hole appeared in Friend’s shoulder. He jerked, twisting and gurgling in pain. Black blood spattered my face and neck, feeling as cold as dry ice. I rolled away as his body came down, the knife landing only inches from my chest. It quivered there, its tip stuck deeply in the wooden floor.
Friend’s features changed rapidly in front of my eyes, dripping and melting. The mask of humanity he wore started to fall away, revealing a spinning black hole of a head with a single red eye in the center. Wounded and leaking blood the color of waste oil, he skittered away on four lengthening skeletal limbs, crawling like a spider. His clothes stretched and tightened around his changing, bulging flesh. Breathing hard, I turned to look at my savior.
I recognized the withered old face of my neighbor, a man we all called Bones. He had no family that I had ever seen, and lived a solitary life, almost that of a hermit. I had talked to him a few times, been invited into his home even. His walls were covered with the taxidermied heads of animals, black bears and bucks and moose he had killed. Crossbows, guns and hunting bows of all kinds had lain scattered over nearly every room. He was an outdoorsman at heart.
“Bones,” I whispered in a choked voice. “Thank God.” He shuffled forwards, a small, very thin old man with a sunken bird chest. His giant, rectangular glasses magnified his eyes to the size of dinnerplates, and a white wizard beard hung down to the center of his chest. Jack and I had often joked that he looked like a character from Duck Dynasty. He holstered his pistol around his waist before reaching down a trembling hand and helping me up.
“Something happened,” Bones said grimly. “When that siren went off. I was looking outside, just smoking and sipping some black tea, and I saw it happen. Everything started sputtering and shimmering, and this thick, black mist rose over the streets and houses. When it finally blew away, I saw… this.” He waved a hand outside for emphasis, motioning at the apocalyptic scene.
The streets heaved in great cracks and fissures, as if an earthquake had rolled through the earth. The houses looked like they had survived a nuclear apocalypse. The windows were all shattered. Tiny shards of glass littered the ground like splinters of diamond. The roofs were peeled away and rotting, with enormous holes eaten into the centers of most of them. Something like spider silk covered the dilapidated walls of most of the houses on the street, formed in symmetrical webs that rose two or three stories high.
Behind me, the radio suddenly turned on, the lights flickering overhead. The power all along the street flashed on and off, the streetlights outside strobing at the same erratic frequency. Something like a metallic shriek rang out through the radio’s speaker. Bones and I jumped, turning to look backwards at the old radio laying on the kitchen counter.
“This isn’t the real world!” a man screamed over the radio. I immediately recognized the terrified voice of Jack. My heart dropped into my stomach. “Don’t believe anything you see or hear here. The anomaly is spreading. Laura, I know you can hear me. I’m sorry for everything. Listen, to get out of this, there are a few things you need to remember.
“First, you should know there are gateways in this place, portals that lead back to our world. You can recognize them by the blinding white light radiating from them. It might be a bedroom door, a window, even a kitchen cabinet or a box. They form randomly throughout the anomaly and are highly unstable, often lasting for only seconds. If you find one, take it immediately. These are your only way home.
“Second, the entities here can take the form of any person or animal. But you’ll know them by the shadows that surround them. To kill them, you want to go for the crimson eye in the center of their faces.
“Third, there are places with food, water and other supplies. They will look like dilapidated gas stations with the name ‘Hel’s Market’ on them. These are safe spaces where the things on the streets don’t roam. Don’t stay in there too long, though, or you might see Hel. She doesn’t like visitors.”
“Jack? Where the hell are you?!” I screamed at the radio, running over and shaking it like a crying baby, hearing random pieces inside the old gadget give a metallic rattle. But the speaker only gave a hiss of static as the radio died in my hands. A million thoughts seemed to run through my head at once. Was Jack still alive? Why had his voice come on the radio? Why had his writing been on the note? Bones came up behind me, putting a slight hand on my shoulder.
“We’ll find him,” Bones said. “Jack’s a tough guy. But we need to start moving. We can’t stay here forever. We’re going to need to find supplies. Everything around here is trash.”
“It could be worse out there than it is here,” I argued. “Why do we need to keep moving? We could barricade ourselves inside and wait for the police, and the… military, and…”
“Lady, you’re living in a dream world,” Bones said coldly, his magnified eyes turning into owlish slits. “We don’t know how long we’re going to be here. You don’t even know where Jack is. You have zero supplies, zilcho. You could barricade yourself somewhere and slowly starve to death, but that wouldn’t help us much.” His words made me think. I nodded.
“Fine, but we should grab some food and water first,” I said glumly, my head spinning. I felt sick and tired from all of this, yet the feeling rose in my chest that I hadn’t seen anything yet. Bones gave a faint smile, the corners of his lips twitching as he watched me.
I went over to the kitchen sink, turning it on. For a long moment, nothing happened. There was a burping, gurgling sound deep down in the pipes. They clattered and shook as if thousands of rats were slinking through them. The faucet bubbled and hissed frothy dark water. Finally, it spat a gout of thick scarlet blood all over the rusted sink, squirming with dozens of writhing maggots. I gasped, backpedaling. The smell of iron and rot from the rancid mess sputtering out of the faucet in waves was sickening. Repressing an urge to gag, I reached forward and slammed the handle down.
“Yup, that’s what I expected,” Bones said grimly. He looked around with a blank expression on his face, as if he were only on a stroll at the park. At that same moment, the lights overhead flickered one last time and died. The cracked and broken street lamps outside went dark simultaneously- at least those few that still worked.
I went over to the fridge, opening the door. The nauseating smell of rot exploded across the room, hitting me in the face like a slap. I gagged, seeing clouds of black and yellow mold growing over dried, twisted heaps of decaying food. The milk had become a soupy mess in the container with black tendrils growing along the sides of the exploded jug. I slammed the fridge door shut. I ran over to the front door and stuck my head out, inhaling sweet, clean air. Bones followed slowly behind me, seemingly unaffected.
“Don’t look like we’re getting any food or water from here,” he said contemplatively. “My place ain’t any better. When that siren hit and the black mist came, it changed everything- ate at things, as if time had been turned on fast forward. By the time the fog had gone, my house was a wreck. The food in the fridge was all rot-gut sludge, and the cans in the pantry were ready to explode. My guns were all rusted heaps of junk, the crossbows twisted and the strings snapped. Some of them had tiny black spiders building webs on them.”
“So how’d you get the pistol?” I asked, curious. He looked at me as if I were an idiot.
“I had it on me when it happened,” he said slowly, as if speaking to a mentally deficient child. I nodded, looking around for a weapon I could use. In the living room, I found a metal baseball bat that Jack had bought years ago. Like everything else, it had been eaten away by the ravages of time. Streaks of dark rust covered the length of it. I swung it a few times, feeling that it still felt structurally intact.
“Let’s go,” I said, following Bones outside.
***
We headed deeper into civilization, towards the downtown area with restaurants, gas stations and grocery stores. The sky above had no stars, no sun or moon. It swirled in a dark blue hurricane, meeting in a black eye at the center. The cyclonic clouds peeled away like old scabs. Some pale light came, casting everything in a cyanotic light. I saw pale, dirty faces disappearing into the alleyways and ruined homes, many of them apparently of children.
“I saw them too,” Bones muttered, holding his pistol tightly by his side. “They look like pictures of kids at Auschwitz I’ve seen. Starving and filthy. Where’s their parents, you think?” I shuddered to think about it. What if this place was sucking random people in, just making them disappear from the world? What if it was spreading, like a cancerous tumor hidden under gauze?
I had nearly forgotten about Friend, the strange shape-shifting creature who wore Jack’s face, but he hadn’t forgotten about me. We were passing the burnt-out hulk of a tractor-trailer when his shadowy face shot around the corner, staring at us with Jack’s face. He had eyes like two burnt holes, black and smoldering. His body was a strange combination of spider and human, the thin limbs ending in sharp points. Fine, dark hairs like needles covered his arms and legs. The bullet wound had apparently already healed. Black blood had crusted onto the surfaces of his shirt and pants. He didn’t hesitate to attack. He swung an insectile arm at Bones’ chest. I screamed, seeing it all happen in slow motion.
The limb went straight through Bones’ heart. Bright red arterial blood immediately began flooding out as he looked down in shock, still holding the pistol in one hand. He gurgled, dropping the gun and falling forward, dragging the arm down with him. I had the baseball bat in my hands. With all of my strength, I swung it at the creature’s head. It made contact with a fleshy thud. The soft, yielding flesh of Friend cratered under the impact. Friend made a soft hissing sound as the wound bubbled and danced as if a nest of mice were about to emerge.
I leapt for the pistol. A choked sound rasped from Bones’ trembling lips. The adrenaline rush made me feel no pain as I hit the hard, cracked road, rolling as I landed. I felt the cold metal of the pistol’s grip under my hand. I raised it, feeling the stab wound Friend had given me earlier rip back open. Fresh streams of blood soaked my clothes as I fired, dripping from the long slash along my arm.
The top of Friend’s head exploded, the body transforming before my eyes into a black, spidery humanoid with a single spinning red eye in the center of its pointed skull. Dark blood the color of asphalt leaked down its naked, glossy body. It had no mouth or nose that I could see, but fine silvery hairs covered its jointed arms and legs. The eye widened in pain as it stared into the barrel of the pistol, one blade-like arm still caught in Bones’ chest. I remembered the transmission that had come through the radio and aimed for the center of the spinning eye.
“Why do you keep taking Jack’s form?” I asked Friend, the gun feeling heavy in my trembling hand. “Why just him?”
“I can take the form of any who are part of the Church of the Final Rapture, those who have given their souls to the dark presence here,” he hissed cryptically. He jerked forward, trying to bring his other blade-like arm up towards my neck with a quick slashing blow. I instantly fired, pulling the trigger over and over.
When the first of the bullets pierced his eye, I saw a blinding explosion come from the center of it, like a flashbang radiating light the color of an infected wound. Orange the color of pus spun around bright reds and necrotic blacks. I stepped back, crying out. I instinctively brought my hand up to cover my eyes.
When I could see again, I found only a smoking crater in the spot where Friend and Bones had stood. Gray smoke hissed from the center of it. I knelt down, seeing a dark, jelly-like substance covering the jagged patches of concrete. I quickly realized it was flesh, though whether human or alien, I couldn’t say.
Shell-shocked, I stumbled over to Bones’ melted pants, feeling around his waist until I felt the cold metal of an extra magazine. I had emptied all the bullets in the gun fighting Friend. To my dismay, I realized Bones only had one extra magazine.
Feeling sick and weak, I stumbled away, heading towards downtown, hoping against hope that I would find some solace or answers there.
***
I was wavering on my feet like a drunk woman. As I got closer to the center of town, I found dead bodies hanging from the lampposts, many of them mummified or skeletal. I wondered how many people lived in this hellish world.
I heard crying ahead of me, far off in the distance. I saw a little girl kneeling below the body of a young woman. The corpse looked fresh. The tip of the dead woman’s black tongue poked out through her stiff blue lips. The young girl’s wails tore at my heart.
The girl was wearing rags, tatters of a shirt and pants that were covered in streaks of what looked like dirt and blood. Her face was grimy, but her eyes were big and blue. She looked up at me suddenly as I drew near, panic twisting her small face. She reminded me of the baby I had, the one who had died of crib death a few months earlier. My daughter had the same big blue eyes as this girl here. I looked around the destroyed world, seeing there were more spiderwebs covering the ruined buildings here.
“Little girl, what are you doing here?” I asked. She grabbed my shirt, pushing her small face against my thigh.
“They killed my mommy,” she wailed, trying not to look at the hanging corpse. I hugged her.
“Who did?” I asked. “Who killed all these people?” She looked up, surprised.
“How do you not know? It’s the Church of the Final Rapture. They’re trying to spread this…” She waved a dirty hand around for emphasis, wiping tears from her bloodshot eyes. “They think if they can spread this bad place far enough, then it will lead to the Final Judgment, and Jesus will come back and good will finally win. But first, they say they need to kill a lot of people and make the battle happen.” She shook her small head. “They’re crazy. A bunch of religious nuts, Mommy always said. And she was right. Look what they did to her.”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Marian,” she answered in a small, diffident voice. I helped her up to her feet.
“I’m Laura,” I said, “and you can’t stay here forever, Marian. There are bad things here. Is it true there are ways out of here, doorways of light or something? Have you seen any?”
“I caught a glimpse of one once,” she answered. “It was beautiful. Like looking into a rainbow. I thought I could hear singing.” Her eyes grew distant and far-away. I took her hand, urging her to walk forwards, away from the corpse of her mother.
“So what happened?” I asked, trying to keep Marian talking.
“I saw it, but by the time I found Mom and told her, it had evaporated…” We turned a corner. Looming there overhead, we came face-to-face with what had made the webs.
***
My first thought was that it was some cross between a horse and an insect, the height of a small child and over a dozen feet long. It had the body of a struggling old man in its insectile jaws. They jutted out like the pincers of a stag beetle with wicked serrated edges. Two bulbous black eyes emerged from the sides of its head, the size of baseballs. They didn’t appear to have any lids. They stared at us, unblinking. I saw myself and Marian reflected in those dark orbs, as if they were an obsidian mirror. The pale chitinous shell of the creature shimmered with rainbows as it moved in a blur towards us. Its snout was rounded with two nostril holes. Stringy, blood-flecked mucus constantly dribbled down its eldritch face, falling down from its nose and mouth.
The hundreds of long, skittering legs moved in rhythmic peristaltic waves. The old man continuously kicked and punched at the monstrous face, but the abomination didn’t seem to notice or care. Blood dribbled from his toothless mouth and deep slashes covered his chest, stomach and legs. His lips and fingernails took on a faint bluish cast. As its black eyes focused on us, frothy bubbles of clear saliva started dripping from its flexing pincers. With a primal, reptilian hiss, it threw its head to the side. The dying man soared through the air, smashing into a concrete wall with a bone-shattering thud.
“Stop!” I cried instinctively, raising the pistol and firing. Marian screamed, running behind me and hugging my leg as the dark juggernaut ran us down.
The first bullet caught it in the neck, but the thick black plates of scales deflected it easily, leaving only a series of fine cracks running down its torso. I kept firing, aiming at its face. The second one hit it in the right eye, which exploded like a water balloon filled with blue blood. Its wailing intensified until I thought my eardrums might explode. Half-blinded, its body slithered forward like a snake’s, its many legs driving it towards us.
I jumped to the side at the last second, but Marian wasn’t so lucky. The creature’s massive pincers wrapped around her chest, grabbing her and lifting her into the air. Deep slices appeared in her rags of clothes as she cried, pleading for help. I inhaled deeply, aiming for the abomination’s face, hoping I wouldn’t hit the girl.
The last bullet in the magazine pierced its other eye. It exploded. The creature dropped Mirian to the ground, wailing a steam-whistle shriek. I grabbed Marian’s hand, lifting her off the ground.
“Run!” I hissed through gritted teeth, pulling her forward. Up ahead, I saw lights illuminating a store. It was the only building with electricity that I could see. I found it strange.
As we got closer, I saw the sign, reading: “Hel’s Market”.
***
The insectoid creature’s agonized screams drew other skittering monstrosities forward. They crawled out of the side streets and alleys, their strange horse faces and insectile jaws working furiously as if tasting the air for prey. I remembered the rules on the radio, when they had said the markets were a safe spot.
We ran through the door into a building that hadn't decayed like everything else. It felt air conditioned and cool. The glass here was intact, and rows after rows of cold drinks, ice cream and frozen meals stretched out before us. It looked like a regular convenience store, but in the back, I saw a doorless threshold with stairs that led down into a shadowy basement. I shuddered as I looked at it. Outside, the creatures had stopped at the front door, their bulbous eyes staring intently in at us.
“Are you OK?” I asked Mirian, looking at her injuries. The creature had left two deep slices along the sides of her chest. They bled freely, soaking her tattered rags in fresh streaks of scarlet. She nodded silently, tears running down her rounded cheeks. We quickly grabbed drinks and snacks, chugging soda and energy drinks and eating candy and beef jerky. I didn’t realize just how hungry I was after nearly dying so many times, and Marian looked like she hadn’t eaten in days.
I was staring out the front glass window, looking at the creatures waiting there for us with hunger and bloodlust gleaming in their alien eyes, when I heard heavy footsteps ascending the stairs at the back of the store. Mirian grabbed my hand tightly.
“I think something’s coming,” she whispered in terror.
***
Through the dark threshold, I saw a woman looming nearly ten feet tall. The left half of her body was decayed and rotted, mummified and gray, like everything in this world. The right was beautiful and young, the skin pink and healthy. Behind her, I saw her dragging a man bound tightly in razor-wire, the sharp edges biting into his skin. I instantly recognized Jack.
“Jack?” I asked, stepping back towards the door.
“See your husband,” Hel hissed in a shadowy voice. She threw the trembling mass of bloody flesh at my feet. Jack screamed, kicking and twisting.
“Get… out of here!” he whispered at me through teeth streaked with crimson. “I’ll… help you…”
“Did you help cause this?” I asked. Hel looked between us with sadistic pleasure, the living part of her mouth splitting into a grin. The dead part cracked, the dry skin ripping and showing blackened teeth underneath. Jack nodded.
“The Church… of the Final Rapture… yes, we tried to spread the anomaly, to end all suffering, to cause God to notice us again and come back…” Hel laughed at that, a sound like grating metal.
“Foolish men,” she gurgled. “You shouldn’t have played with things you didn’t understand.” Jack’s eyes grew big. There was a moment of clarity as he met my gaze, motioning towards the black door at the back of the store.
“I’ll… do what I can…” he said, “with what the Church has taught me.” He closed his eyes as Hel drew near, her heavy footsteps shaking the store. She lifted up one giant, naked foot over his head, holding it there like a guillotine blade. It came down with a crunch.
The door at the back of the store started vibrating and shimmering with white light as Jack died. I heard singing from it. Grabbing Marian’s arm, I pulled her towards it. A large, rotted hand came out, grabbing at my hair. I felt myself pulled back off my feet.
Like a rabid animal, Marian ran forward, sinking her sharp teeth into Hel's wrist. I felt the grip release, my back smashing hard against the floor. The wind was instantly knocked out of my lungs. Grabbing Marian's hand, we crawled towards the door, only feet away. Beautiful, angelic singing resonated through it, growing louder as we got closer. Hel shrieked with fury as we crossed the threshold, disappearing into the light. Everything dissolved in the blinding radiance, and for a moment, I felt warm and free.
***
I found myself back home with Marian, the Sun outside bright and clear. The freezer was still open, the dismembered head staring blankly out at me. Marian was gently crying, cradling her bleeding chest. All of the agonies and wounds I had suffered instantly started shrieking, grating my nerves.
Sickened, I stumbled outside and threw up, trying to forget the nightmares and broken bodies of the anomaly.

Life in Frost Hollow had always been fairly normal, up until a few days ago. My husband and I had small issues and arguments, like any couple, but there was no sign of the severe transformation that would escalate into such gruesome, nightmarish scenes.
I always woke early. The day that it all started, I rose around dawn to see the muted gleam of an infant sunrise shining through the window. I looked over to Jack’s side of the bed, seeing it empty. It appeared unslept in, which I found strange, as he worked the night shift and would nearly always be home and in bed by 3 or 4 AM.
But ever since he had found our newborn daughter dead in her crib, he had been acting strange, disappearing at random hours and occasionally bringing a “friend” home. The people he brought were always young, glassy-eyed guys I had never seen before, who often followed him around in an eerie silence like ducklings following a mother duck.
I made a fresh pot of coffee, going out onto the porch as the world came to life. The Sun rose overhead like a burning angel, a fiery eye in a vast expanse of cloudless blue. I knew it would be another scorcher of a day, humid and sticky. I watched early-morning joggers passing by. I wondered where Jack was. I pulled out my cell phone, checking to see if he had sent me any messages, but there was nothing there.
As I sat on the front porch, I thought about my fading youth. I had once hair the color of summer sunlight, but now it was going gray. The small wrinkles around my mouth and eyes seemed to be lengthening and deepening every day. Everything in the world seemed to grow dusty and brittle, like one enormous sarcophagus. I felt certain I would never have another child, never see bright blue eyes staring up at me from the crib again.
Far off down the street, there was a strange translucent rippling in the air, like burning heat rising off desert sands. It expanded into a perfectly flat wall. It cut across trees, homes and cars. I squinted, realizing that it was coming nearer with every heartbeat. I thought it was some kind of bizarre meteorological phenomenon, some sort of heat mirage or humidity bubble. As it slowly crept closer, I got bored, pulling out my phone to read the news.
After a few minutes sitting and people-watching, I went inside to make some breakfast. I ambled over to the freezer, looking inside for something edible, maybe some chicken tenders I could deep-fry next to some eggs and toast. Instead, I found a decapitated human head, its open, staring eyes glassy and frostbitten. I felt a scream welling up in my throat as I dropped my coffee mug to the floor. It shattered, spraying drops of burning hot liquid all over my legs.
The freezing mist slunk towards me like ghostly hands, obscuring the face’s features for a long moment. I wondered if this was just an extremely realistic mannequin head. I looked at the blue lips, pressed together as if in an expression of disapproval, saw the ragged patches of black flesh at the bottom of the neck, and knew it was real. Frozen crystals of dark blood clung to the bottom of the head in a black pool, gluing it to the freezer floor and keeping it in an upright position.
Between the lips, I saw a folded piece of paper. On the front, in flowing, black cursive, read two words: “To Laura”. I hesitated for a couple heartbeats, then snatched the note from the dismembered head. The lips refused to let it go at first, until I gently wriggled it from side to side. It came loose with a wet, sucking sound.
The moment I freed the note, a siren rang out down the street, the volume deafening. It rose and fell in shrill wails for a few seconds. I saw the fridge tremble in front of me under the onslaught of such noise. Black mist slowly started to ooze from every surface. By the time it evaporated a few seconds later, the fridge looked like it had aged fifty years. Enormous rust spots covered its exterior, and the smell of rotting food was instantly overwhelming, like the rancid odor of roadkill putrefying under a burning sun.
The rest of the kitchen seemed to have changed as well. Everything had grown old and filthy. The counters were covered in cobwebs and grime. Deep cracks ran through the walls, and the windows were all broken.
Turning back to the freezer, I studied the mutilated head’s features more thoroughly. It was a woman with raven-black hair and blue eyes, probably in her early twenties. Who was this person? How had they died, and how had their head gotten in my freezer? What was that horrible siren?
I unfolded the note, seeing Jack’s flowing handwriting there. My heart felt like it dropped out of my chest as I quickly scanned the words.
“Dear Laura,
“If you’re reading this, it means you found the head. It’s probably a good thing, I think. There are some things I have kept secret from you, from everyone, for a long time.
“I don’t know when it first began, when this fractured piece of my personality gained control. It all started innocently enough- peeking in people’s windows when they weren’t looking, or stalking random joggers for days without being seen. It was always a rush to get away with it.
“Soon, I would break into people’s houses and rearrange all their furniture. I’d hide a portable camera in the corner or on top of a bookshelf and watch their reactions. Oh, how I laughed! As you can imagine, it was quite fun. Life doesn’t have enough laughter, after all. It seems more like wandering across an endless desert sometimes.
“But eventually, I would stumble across an oasis, a resting place in this never-ending life of shit. Or at least, that other piece of my personality did. You might not believe me, but the first time I killed, it was an accident. Perhaps it was fate sending the first pebbles skittering down over the ledge that would inevitably lead to an avalanche.
“I had been doing my usual routine, breaking into houses, moving things around, sometimes writing Satanic messages on the wall in pig’s blood. It was all to keep people on their toes, you know? Just for chuckles and smiles. But, still, I always kept my pistol on me. I had walked up and down the streets, seeing the mail piling up outside one old colonial home surrounded by a grove of thick trees. I had found the house empty when I scoped it out originally. It seemed perfect. That night, I made my way inside.
“I remember hearing the front door unlock abruptly in the middle of the night. I tried to run towards the window in the bathroom around back, the way I had come in originally. But the man must have heard my footsteps. He came around the corner with a shotgun, his face beet-red. He was screaming and hollering. I was crawling through the window when he started raising the gun. The ringing sound as he pumped a round in the chamber was like a scream from God, telling me to awaken. At that moment, I knew it was kill or be killed. Before he could pull the trigger, I aimed for his head and fired twice. I remember the rush of pleasure as his face disintegrated into a puddle of blood and bone chips.
“After that, things start to get hazy. At first, I thought it was a psychotic breakdown, because something started wearing my face, following me when I went crawling through the neighborhood. Perhaps it is a part of me in some way, my true self. After all, murder is Godly, the pure power of the divine, and killing in the name of God is always a mercy. So says the Savior.
“Well, anyway, I’m rambling. It’s time to finish this letter before I start to sound crazy. We can’t have that, can we? What will the neighbors think?
“The main thing to remember is: don’t look behind you.
“I’ll see you very soon.”
I read the last line a few times before it sunk into my mind. Don’t look behind you? It didn’t make any sense.
Then I heard the choked giggling from the pantry closet. It started low, like the first rumblings of an earthquake. The door was left open a fraction of an inch. One bloodshot eye stared at me through the crack. It flicked quickly to the left and right, the pupil dilated and insane.
“Jack?” I whispered, feeling sick and weak. “What’s… what’s wrong?” I slowly backpedaled towards the front door. The laughter turned into a gurgle, something that might have come from the lips of a drowning man. He flung the door open, his face pale and bloodless. Trickles of dried blood covered his arms and hands. Under his fingernails, I saw clotted black gore. Translucent black shadows swirled around his face and chest, spiraling up into a vortex like a dark whirlwind. They shimmered all around him, distorting his features and seeming to increase in intensity by the second.
“Jack isn’t here anymore,” he hissed in a diseased voice. His lips split apart, revealing teeth that looked far too long and sharp. “He’s hidden behind the veil, rotting under the floorboards. Even now, he tries to claw his way up.” He stepped towards me, revealing a long butcher’s knife in one hand, its steel stained a deep scarlet. Fresh blood still dripped from the tip.
“Stay away from me,” I shrieked, glancing behind me. The town looked different now, the streets deserted. Dark shadows danced over everything, as if there were a solar eclipse. The entire world seemed to exhale, a low, diseased hissing that radiated from everything all around me.
This strange monster wearing Jack’s face continued moving closer, seeming to draw power from the changes. His eyes darkened in a flash, turning black and cloudy. The cyclone of shadows twisting around his body moved faster, a curtain of darkness so thick that it started to obscure his face.
“My name is Friend,” he gurgled, lunging forward with the knife. I instinctively pulled away, stumbling back towards the open front door. I felt a cold pain radiate down my left arm, a slashing pain that made my vision turn white with adrenaline and shock. A slash opened up on the top of my skin, fresh blood bubbling out instantly. I fell backwards through the door onto the front porch, smacking my head hard on the wooden porch. Friend slunk towards me, a hurricane of blackness with an eerie human pillar at the center. He stared down at me with a grin like a razor blade, letting fresh blood, my blood, drip off the blade and patter gently to the rotted, mold-streaked floor.
I kicked forward with all of my strength, aiming a blow at his knee. I heard something crack, felt the leg give with a sickening explosion of black blood. The flesh felt loose and spongy, almost boneless. Friend wailed like a banshee, his voice rising into an ear-splitting wail. He fell forwards towards me, aiming the knife at my heart, a look of fury darkening his face.
A gunshot rang out behind me. A perfectly round scarlet hole appeared in Friend’s shoulder. He jerked, twisting and gurgling in pain. Black blood spattered my face and neck, feeling as cold as dry ice. I rolled away as his body came down, the knife landing only inches from my chest. It quivered there, its tip stuck deeply in the wooden floor.
Friend’s features changed rapidly in front of my eyes, dripping and melting. The mask of humanity he wore started to fall away, revealing a spinning black hole of a head with a single red eye in the center. Wounded and leaking blood the color of waste oil, he skittered away on four lengthening skeletal limbs, crawling like a spider. His clothes stretched and tightened around his changing, bulging flesh. Breathing hard, I turned to look at my savior.
I recognized the withered old face of my neighbor, a man we all called Bones. He had no family that I had ever seen, and lived a solitary life, almost that of a hermit. I had talked to him a few times, been invited into his home even. His walls were covered with the taxidermied heads of animals, black bears and bucks and moose he had killed. Crossbows, guns and hunting bows of all kinds had lain scattered over nearly every room. He was an outdoorsman at heart.
“Bones,” I whispered in a choked voice. “Thank God.” He shuffled forwards, a small, very thin old man with a sunken bird chest. His giant, rectangular glasses magnified his eyes to the size of dinnerplates, and a white wizard beard hung down to the center of his chest. Jack and I had often joked that he looked like a character from Duck Dynasty. He holstered his pistol around his waist before reaching down a trembling hand and helping me up.
“Something happened,” Bones said grimly. “When that siren went off. I was looking outside, just smoking and sipping some black tea, and I saw it happen. Everything started sputtering and shimmering, and this thick, black mist rose over the streets and houses. When it finally blew away, I saw… this.” He waved a hand outside for emphasis, motioning at the apocalyptic scene.
The streets heaved in great cracks and fissures, as if an earthquake had rolled through the earth. The houses looked like they had survived a nuclear apocalypse. The windows were all shattered. Tiny shards of glass littered the ground like splinters of diamond. The roofs were peeled away and rotting, with enormous holes eaten into the centers of most of them. Something like spider silk covered the dilapidated walls of most of the houses on the street, formed in symmetrical webs that rose two or three stories high.
Behind me, the radio suddenly turned on, the lights flickering overhead. The power all along the street flashed on and off, the streetlights outside strobing at the same erratic frequency. Something like a metallic shriek rang out through the radio’s speaker. Bones and I jumped, turning to look backwards at the old radio laying on the kitchen counter.
“This isn’t the real world!” a man screamed over the radio. I immediately recognized the terrified voice of Jack. My heart dropped into my stomach. “Don’t believe anything you see or hear here. The anomaly is spreading. Laura, I know you can hear me. I’m sorry for everything. Listen, to get out of this, there are a few things you need to remember.
“First, you should know there are gateways in this place, portals that lead back to our world. You can recognize them by the blinding white light radiating from them. It might be a bedroom door, a window, even a kitchen cabinet or a box. They form randomly throughout the anomaly and are highly unstable, often lasting for only seconds. If you find one, take it immediately. These are your only way home.
“Second, the entities here can take the form of any person or animal. But you’ll know them by the shadows that surround them. To kill them, you want to go for the crimson eye in the center of their faces.
“Third, there are places with food, water and other supplies. They will look like dilapidated gas stations with the name ‘Hel’s Market’ on them. These are safe spaces where the things on the streets don’t roam. Don’t stay in there too long, though, or you might see Hel. She doesn’t like visitors.”
“Jack? Where the hell are you?!” I screamed at the radio, running over and shaking it like a crying baby, hearing random pieces inside the old gadget give a metallic rattle. But the speaker only gave a hiss of static as the radio died in my hands. A million thoughts seemed to run through my head at once. Was Jack still alive? Why had his voice come on the radio? Why had his writing been on the note? Bones came up behind me, putting a slight hand on my shoulder.
“We’ll find him,” Bones said. “Jack’s a tough guy. But we need to start moving. We can’t stay here forever. We’re going to need to find supplies. Everything around here is trash.”
“It could be worse out there than it is here,” I argued. “Why do we need to keep moving? We could barricade ourselves inside and wait for the police, and the… military, and…”
“Lady, you’re living in a dream world,” Bones said coldly, his magnified eyes turning into owlish slits. “We don’t know how long we’re going to be here. You don’t even know where Jack is. You have zero supplies, zilcho. You could barricade yourself somewhere and slowly starve to death, but that wouldn’t help us much.” His words made me think. I nodded.
“Fine, but we should grab some food and water first,” I said glumly, my head spinning. I felt sick and tired from all of this, yet the feeling rose in my chest that I hadn’t seen anything yet. Bones gave a faint smile, the corners of his lips twitching as he watched me.
I went over to the kitchen sink, turning it on. For a long moment, nothing happened. There was a burping, gurgling sound deep down in the pipes. They clattered and shook as if thousands of rats were slinking through them. The faucet bubbled and hissed frothy dark water. Finally, it spat a gout of thick scarlet blood all over the rusted sink, squirming with dozens of writhing maggots. I gasped, backpedaling. The smell of iron and rot from the rancid mess sputtering out of the faucet in waves was sickening. Repressing an urge to gag, I reached forward and slammed the handle down.
“Yup, that’s what I expected,” Bones said grimly. He looked around with a blank expression on his face, as if he were only on a stroll at the park. At that same moment, the lights overhead flickered one last time and died. The cracked and broken street lamps outside went dark simultaneously- at least those few that still worked.
I went over to the fridge, opening the door. The nauseating smell of rot exploded across the room, hitting me in the face like a slap. I gagged, seeing clouds of black and yellow mold growing over dried, twisted heaps of decaying food. The milk had become a soupy mess in the container with black tendrils growing along the sides of the exploded jug. I slammed the fridge door shut. I ran over to the front door and stuck my head out, inhaling sweet, clean air. Bones followed slowly behind me, seemingly unaffected.
“Don’t look like we’re getting any food or water from here,” he said contemplatively. “My place ain’t any better. When that siren hit and the black mist came, it changed everything- ate at things, as if time had been turned on fast forward. By the time the fog had gone, my house was a wreck. The food in the fridge was all rot-gut sludge, and the cans in the pantry were ready to explode. My guns were all rusted heaps of junk, the crossbows twisted and the strings snapped. Some of them had tiny black spiders building webs on them.”
“So how’d you get the pistol?” I asked, curious. He looked at me as if I were an idiot.
“I had it on me when it happened,” he said slowly, as if speaking to a mentally deficient child. I nodded, looking around for a weapon I could use. In the living room, I found a metal baseball bat that Jack had bought years ago. Like everything else, it had been eaten away by the ravages of time. Streaks of dark rust covered the length of it. I swung it a few times, feeling that it still felt structurally intact.
“Let’s go,” I said, following Bones outside.
***
We headed deeper into civilization, towards the downtown area with restaurants, gas stations and grocery stores. The sky above had no stars, no sun or moon. It swirled in a dark blue hurricane, meeting in a black eye at the center. The cyclonic clouds peeled away like old scabs. Some pale light came, casting everything in a cyanotic light. I saw pale, dirty faces disappearing into the alleyways and ruined homes, many of them apparently of children.
“I saw them too,” Bones muttered, holding his pistol tightly by his side. “They look like pictures of kids at Auschwitz I’ve seen. Starving and filthy. Where’s their parents, you think?” I shuddered to think about it. What if this place was sucking random people in, just making them disappear from the world? What if it was spreading, like a cancerous tumor hidden under gauze?
I had nearly forgotten about Friend, the strange shape-shifting creature who wore Jack’s face, but he hadn’t forgotten about me. We were passing the burnt-out hulk of a tractor-trailer when his shadowy face shot around the corner, staring at us with Jack’s face. He had eyes like two burnt holes, black and smoldering. His body was a strange combination of spider and human, the thin limbs ending in sharp points. Fine, dark hairs like needles covered his arms and legs. The bullet wound had apparently already healed. Black blood had crusted onto the surfaces of his shirt and pants. He didn’t hesitate to attack. He swung an insectile arm at Bones’ chest. I screamed, seeing it all happen in slow motion.
The limb went straight through Bones’ heart. Bright red arterial blood immediately began flooding out as he looked down in shock, still holding the pistol in one hand. He gurgled, dropping the gun and falling forward, dragging the arm down with him. I had the baseball bat in my hands. With all of my strength, I swung it at the creature’s head. It made contact with a fleshy thud. The soft, yielding flesh of Friend cratered under the impact. Friend made a soft hissing sound as the wound bubbled and danced as if a nest of mice were about to emerge.
I leapt for the pistol. A choked sound rasped from Bones’ trembling lips. The adrenaline rush made me feel no pain as I hit the hard, cracked road, rolling as I landed. I felt the cold metal of the pistol’s grip under my hand. I raised it, feeling the stab wound Friend had given me earlier rip back open. Fresh streams of blood soaked my clothes as I fired, dripping from the long slash along my arm.
The top of Friend’s head exploded, the body transforming before my eyes into a black, spidery humanoid with a single spinning red eye in the center of its pointed skull. Dark blood the color of asphalt leaked down its naked, glossy body. It had no mouth or nose that I could see, but fine silvery hairs covered its jointed arms and legs. The eye widened in pain as it stared into the barrel of the pistol, one blade-like arm still caught in Bones’ chest. I remembered the transmission that had come through the radio and aimed for the center of the spinning eye.
“Why do you keep taking Jack’s form?” I asked Friend, the gun feeling heavy in my trembling hand. “Why just him?”
“I can take the form of any who are part of the Church of the Final Rapture, those who have given their souls to the dark presence here,” he hissed cryptically. He jerked forward, trying to bring his other blade-like arm up towards my neck with a quick slashing blow. I instantly fired, pulling the trigger over and over.
When the first of the bullets pierced his eye, I saw a blinding explosion come from the center of it, like a flashbang radiating light the color of an infected wound. Orange the color of pus spun around bright reds and necrotic blacks. I stepped back, crying out. I instinctively brought my hand up to cover my eyes.
When I could see again, I found only a smoking crater in the spot where Friend and Bones had stood. Gray smoke hissed from the center of it. I knelt down, seeing a dark, jelly-like substance covering the jagged patches of concrete. I quickly realized it was flesh, though whether human or alien, I couldn’t say.
Shell-shocked, I stumbled over to Bones’ melted pants, feeling around his waist until I felt the cold metal of an extra magazine. I had emptied all the bullets in the gun fighting Friend. To my dismay, I realized Bones only had one extra magazine.
Feeling sick and weak, I stumbled away, heading towards downtown, hoping against hope that I would find some solace or answers there.
***
I was wavering on my feet like a drunk woman. As I got closer to the center of town, I found dead bodies hanging from the lampposts, many of them mummified or skeletal. I wondered how many people lived in this hellish world.
I heard crying ahead of me, far off in the distance. I saw a little girl kneeling below the body of a young woman. The corpse looked fresh. The tip of the dead woman’s black tongue poked out through her stiff blue lips. The young girl’s wails tore at my heart.
The girl was wearing rags, tatters of a shirt and pants that were covered in streaks of what looked like dirt and blood. Her face was grimy, but her eyes were big and blue. She looked up at me suddenly as I drew near, panic twisting her small face. She reminded me of the baby I had, the one who had died of crib death a few months earlier. My daughter had the same big blue eyes as this girl here. I looked around the destroyed world, seeing there were more spiderwebs covering the ruined buildings here.
“Little girl, what are you doing here?” I asked. She grabbed my shirt, pushing her small face against my thigh.
“They killed my mommy,” she wailed, trying not to look at the hanging corpse. I hugged her.
“Who did?” I asked. “Who killed all these people?” She looked up, surprised.
“How do you not know? It’s the Church of the Final Rapture. They’re trying to spread this…” She waved a dirty hand around for emphasis, wiping tears from her bloodshot eyes. “They think if they can spread this bad place far enough, then it will lead to the Final Judgment, and Jesus will come back and good will finally win. But first, they say they need to kill a lot of people and make the battle happen.” She shook her small head. “They’re crazy. A bunch of religious nuts, Mommy always said. And she was right. Look what they did to her.”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Marian,” she answered in a small, diffident voice. I helped her up to her feet.
“I’m Laura,” I said, “and you can’t stay here forever, Marian. There are bad things here. Is it true there are ways out of here, doorways of light or something? Have you seen any?”
“I caught a glimpse of one once,” she answered. “It was beautiful. Like looking into a rainbow. I thought I could hear singing.” Her eyes grew distant and far-away. I took her hand, urging her to walk forwards, away from the corpse of her mother.
“So what happened?” I asked, trying to keep Marian talking.
“I saw it, but by the time I found Mom and told her, it had evaporated…” We turned a corner. Looming there overhead, we came face-to-face with what had made the webs.
***
My first thought was that it was some cross between a horse and an insect, the height of a small child and over a dozen feet long. It had the body of a struggling old man in its insectile jaws. They jutted out like the pincers of a stag beetle with wicked serrated edges. Two bulbous black eyes emerged from the sides of its head, the size of baseballs. They didn’t appear to have any lids. They stared at us, unblinking. I saw myself and Marian reflected in those dark orbs, as if they were an obsidian mirror. The pale chitinous shell of the creature shimmered with rainbows as it moved in a blur towards us. Its snout was rounded with two nostril holes. Stringy, blood-flecked mucus constantly dribbled down its eldritch face, falling down from its nose and mouth.
The hundreds of long, skittering legs moved in rhythmic peristaltic waves. The old man continuously kicked and punched at the monstrous face, but the abomination didn’t seem to notice or care. Blood dribbled from his toothless mouth and deep slashes covered his chest, stomach and legs. His lips and fingernails took on a faint bluish cast. As its black eyes focused on us, frothy bubbles of clear saliva started dripping from its flexing pincers. With a primal, reptilian hiss, it threw its head to the side. The dying man soared through the air, smashing into a concrete wall with a bone-shattering thud.
“Stop!” I cried instinctively, raising the pistol and firing. Marian screamed, running behind me and hugging my leg as the dark juggernaut ran us down.
The first bullet caught it in the neck, but the thick black plates of scales deflected it easily, leaving only a series of fine cracks running down its torso. I kept firing, aiming at its face. The second one hit it in the right eye, which exploded like a water balloon filled with blue blood. Its wailing intensified until I thought my eardrums might explode. Half-blinded, its body slithered forward like a snake’s, its many legs driving it towards us.
I jumped to the side at the last second, but Marian wasn’t so lucky. The creature’s massive pincers wrapped around her chest, grabbing her and lifting her into the air. Deep slices appeared in her rags of clothes as she cried, pleading for help. I inhaled deeply, aiming for the abomination’s face, hoping I wouldn’t hit the girl.
The last bullet in the magazine pierced its other eye. It exploded. The creature dropped Mirian to the ground, wailing a steam-whistle shriek. I grabbed Marian’s hand, lifting her off the ground.
“Run!” I hissed through gritted teeth, pulling her forward. Up ahead, I saw lights illuminating a store. It was the only building with electricity that I could see. I found it strange.
As we got closer, I saw the sign, reading: “Hel’s Market”.
***
The insectoid creature’s agonized screams drew other skittering monstrosities forward. They crawled out of the side streets and alleys, their strange horse faces and insectile jaws working furiously as if tasting the air for prey. I remembered the rules on the radio, when they had said the markets were a safe spot.
We ran through the door into a building that hadn't decayed like everything else. It felt air conditioned and cool. The glass here was intact, and rows after rows of cold drinks, ice cream and frozen meals stretched out before us. It looked like a regular convenience store, but in the back, I saw a doorless threshold with stairs that led down into a shadowy basement. I shuddered as I looked at it. Outside, the creatures had stopped at the front door, their bulbous eyes staring intently in at us.
“Are you OK?” I asked Mirian, looking at her injuries. The creature had left two deep slices along the sides of her chest. They bled freely, soaking her tattered rags in fresh streaks of scarlet. She nodded silently, tears running down her rounded cheeks. We quickly grabbed drinks and snacks, chugging soda and energy drinks and eating candy and beef jerky. I didn’t realize just how hungry I was after nearly dying so many times, and Marian looked like she hadn’t eaten in days.
I was staring out the front glass window, looking at the creatures waiting there for us with hunger and bloodlust gleaming in their alien eyes, when I heard heavy footsteps ascending the stairs at the back of the store. Mirian grabbed my hand tightly.
“I think something’s coming,” she whispered in terror.
***
Through the dark threshold, I saw a woman looming nearly ten feet tall. The left half of her body was decayed and rotted, mummified and gray, like everything in this world. The right was beautiful and young, the skin pink and healthy. Behind her, I saw her dragging a man bound tightly in razor-wire, the sharp edges biting into his skin. I instantly recognized Jack.
“Jack?” I asked, stepping back towards the door.
“See your husband,” Hel hissed in a shadowy voice. She threw the trembling mass of bloody flesh at my feet. Jack screamed, kicking and twisting.
“Get… out of here!” he whispered at me through teeth streaked with crimson. “I’ll… help you…”
“Did you help cause this?” I asked. Hel looked between us with sadistic pleasure, the living part of her mouth splitting into a grin. The dead part cracked, the dry skin ripping and showing blackened teeth underneath. Jack nodded.
“The Church… of the Final Rapture… yes, we tried to spread the anomaly, to end all suffering, to cause God to notice us again and come back…” Hel laughed at that, a sound like grating metal.
“Foolish men,” she gurgled. “You shouldn’t have played with things you didn’t understand.” Jack’s eyes grew big. There was a moment of clarity as he met my gaze, motioning towards the black door at the back of the store.
“I’ll… do what I can…” he said, “with what the Church has taught me.” He closed his eyes as Hel drew near, her heavy footsteps shaking the store. She lifted up one giant, naked foot over his head, holding it there like a guillotine blade. It came down with a crunch.
The door at the back of the store started vibrating and shimmering with white light as Jack died. I heard singing from it. Grabbing Marian’s arm, I pulled her towards it. A large, rotted hand came out, grabbing at my hair. I felt myself pulled back off my feet.
Like a rabid animal, Marian ran forward, sinking her sharp teeth into Hel's wrist. I felt the grip release, my back smashing hard against the floor. The wind was instantly knocked out of my lungs. Grabbing Marian's hand, we crawled towards the door, only feet away. Beautiful, angelic singing resonated through it, growing louder as we got closer. Hel shrieked with fury as we crossed the threshold, disappearing into the light. Everything dissolved in the blinding radiance, and for a moment, I felt warm and free.
***
I found myself back home with Marian, the Sun outside bright and clear. The freezer was still open, the dismembered head staring blankly out at me. Marian was gently crying, cradling her bleeding chest. All of the agonies and wounds I had suffered instantly started shrieking, grating my nerves.
Sickened, I stumbled outside and threw up, trying to forget the nightmares and broken bodies of the anomaly.

Life in Frost Hollow had always been fairly normal, up until a few days ago. My husband and I had small issues and arguments, like any couple, but there was no sign of the severe transformation that would escalate into such gruesome, nightmarish scenes.
I always woke early. The day that it all started, I rose around dawn to see the muted gleam of an infant sunrise shining through the window. I looked over to Jack’s side of the bed, seeing it empty. It appeared unslept in, which I found strange, as he worked the night shift and would nearly always be home and in bed by 3 or 4 AM.
But ever since he had found our newborn daughter dead in her crib, he had been acting strange, disappearing at random hours and occasionally bringing a “friend” home. The people he brought were always young, glassy-eyed guys I had never seen before, who often followed him around in an eerie silence like ducklings following a mother duck.
I made a fresh pot of coffee, going out onto the porch as the world came to life. The Sun rose overhead like a burning angel, a fiery eye in a vast expanse of cloudless blue. I knew it would be another scorcher of a day, humid and sticky. I watched early-morning joggers passing by. I wondered where Jack was. I pulled out my cell phone, checking to see if he had sent me any messages, but there was nothing there.
As I sat on the front porch, I thought about my fading youth. I had once hair the color of summer sunlight, but now it was going gray. The small wrinkles around my mouth and eyes seemed to be lengthening and deepening every day. Everything in the world seemed to grow dusty and brittle, like one enormous sarcophagus. I felt certain I would never have another child, never see bright blue eyes staring up at me from the crib again.
Far off down the street, there was a strange translucent rippling in the air, like burning heat rising off desert sands. It expanded into a perfectly flat wall. It cut across trees, homes and cars. I squinted, realizing that it was coming nearer with every heartbeat. I thought it was some kind of bizarre meteorological phenomenon, some sort of heat mirage or humidity bubble. As it slowly crept closer, I got bored, pulling out my phone to read the news.
After a few minutes sitting and people-watching, I went inside to make some breakfast. I ambled over to the freezer, looking inside for something edible, maybe some chicken tenders I could deep-fry next to some eggs and toast. Instead, I found a decapitated human head, its open, staring eyes glassy and frostbitten. I felt a scream welling up in my throat as I dropped my coffee mug to the floor. It shattered, spraying drops of burning hot liquid all over my legs.
The freezing mist slunk towards me like ghostly hands, obscuring the face’s features for a long moment. I wondered if this was just an extremely realistic mannequin head. I looked at the blue lips, pressed together as if in an expression of disapproval, saw the ragged patches of black flesh at the bottom of the neck, and knew it was real. Frozen crystals of dark blood clung to the bottom of the head in a black pool, gluing it to the freezer floor and keeping it in an upright position.
Between the lips, I saw a folded piece of paper. On the front, in flowing, black cursive, read two words: “To Laura”. I hesitated for a couple heartbeats, then snatched the note from the dismembered head. The lips refused to let it go at first, until I gently wriggled it from side to side. It came loose with a wet, sucking sound.
The moment I freed the note, a siren rang out down the street, the volume deafening. It rose and fell in shrill wails for a few seconds. I saw the fridge tremble in front of me under the onslaught of such noise. Black mist slowly started to ooze from every surface. By the time it evaporated a few seconds later, the fridge looked like it had aged fifty years. Enormous rust spots covered its exterior, and the smell of rotting food was instantly overwhelming, like the rancid odor of roadkill putrefying under a burning sun.
The rest of the kitchen seemed to have changed as well. Everything had grown old and filthy. The counters were covered in cobwebs and grime. Deep cracks ran through the walls, and the windows were all broken.
Turning back to the freezer, I studied the mutilated head’s features more thoroughly. It was a woman with raven-black hair and blue eyes, probably in her early twenties. Who was this person? How had they died, and how had their head gotten in my freezer? What was that horrible siren?
I unfolded the note, seeing Jack’s flowing handwriting there. My heart felt like it dropped out of my chest as I quickly scanned the words.
“Dear Laura,
“If you’re reading this, it means you found the head. It’s probably a good thing, I think. There are some things I have kept secret from you, from everyone, for a long time.
“I don’t know when it first began, when this fractured piece of my personality gained control. It all started innocently enough- peeking in people’s windows when they weren’t looking, or stalking random joggers for days without being seen. It was always a rush to get away with it.
“Soon, I would break into people’s houses and rearrange all their furniture. I’d hide a portable camera in the corner or on top of a bookshelf and watch their reactions. Oh, how I laughed! As you can imagine, it was quite fun. Life doesn’t have enough laughter, after all. It seems more like wandering across an endless desert sometimes.
“But eventually, I would stumble across an oasis, a resting place in this never-ending life of shit. Or at least, that other piece of my personality did. You might not believe me, but the first time I killed, it was an accident. Perhaps it was fate sending the first pebbles skittering down over the ledge that would inevitably lead to an avalanche.
“I had been doing my usual routine, breaking into houses, moving things around, sometimes writing Satanic messages on the wall in pig’s blood. It was all to keep people on their toes, you know? Just for chuckles and smiles. But, still, I always kept my pistol on me. I had walked up and down the streets, seeing the mail piling up outside one old colonial home surrounded by a grove of thick trees. I had found the house empty when I scoped it out originally. It seemed perfect. That night, I made my way inside.
“I remember hearing the front door unlock abruptly in the middle of the night. I tried to run towards the window in the bathroom around back, the way I had come in originally. But the man must have heard my footsteps. He came around the corner with a shotgun, his face beet-red. He was screaming and hollering. I was crawling through the window when he started raising the gun. The ringing sound as he pumped a round in the chamber was like a scream from God, telling me to awaken. At that moment, I knew it was kill or be killed. Before he could pull the trigger, I aimed for his head and fired twice. I remember the rush of pleasure as his face disintegrated into a puddle of blood and bone chips.
“After that, things start to get hazy. At first, I thought it was a psychotic breakdown, because something started wearing my face, following me when I went crawling through the neighborhood. Perhaps it is a part of me in some way, my true self. After all, murder is Godly, the pure power of the divine, and killing in the name of God is always a mercy. So says the Savior.
“Well, anyway, I’m rambling. It’s time to finish this letter before I start to sound crazy. We can’t have that, can we? What will the neighbors think?
“The main thing to remember is: don’t look behind you.
“I’ll see you very soon.”
I read the last line a few times before it sunk into my mind. Don’t look behind you? It didn’t make any sense.
Then I heard the choked giggling from the pantry closet. It started low, like the first rumblings of an earthquake. The door was left open a fraction of an inch. One bloodshot eye stared at me through the crack. It flicked quickly to the left and right, the pupil dilated and insane.
“Jack?” I whispered, feeling sick and weak. “What’s… what’s wrong?” I slowly backpedaled towards the front door. The laughter turned into a gurgle, something that might have come from the lips of a drowning man. He flung the door open, his face pale and bloodless. Trickles of dried blood covered his arms and hands. Under his fingernails, I saw clotted black gore. Translucent black shadows swirled around his face and chest, spiraling up into a vortex like a dark whirlwind. They shimmered all around him, distorting his features and seeming to increase in intensity by the second.
“Jack isn’t here anymore,” he hissed in a diseased voice. His lips split apart, revealing teeth that looked far too long and sharp. “He’s hidden behind the veil, rotting under the floorboards. Even now, he tries to claw his way up.” He stepped towards me, revealing a long butcher’s knife in one hand, its steel stained a deep scarlet. Fresh blood still dripped from the tip.
“Stay away from me,” I shrieked, glancing behind me. The town looked different now, the streets deserted. Dark shadows danced over everything, as if there were a solar eclipse. The entire world seemed to exhale, a low, diseased hissing that radiated from everything all around me.
This strange monster wearing Jack’s face continued moving closer, seeming to draw power from the changes. His eyes darkened in a flash, turning black and cloudy. The cyclone of shadows twisting around his body moved faster, a curtain of darkness so thick that it started to obscure his face.
“My name is Friend,” he gurgled, lunging forward with the knife. I instinctively pulled away, stumbling back towards the open front door. I felt a cold pain radiate down my left arm, a slashing pain that made my vision turn white with adrenaline and shock. A slash opened up on the top of my skin, fresh blood bubbling out instantly. I fell backwards through the door onto the front porch, smacking my head hard on the wooden porch. Friend slunk towards me, a hurricane of blackness with an eerie human pillar at the center. He stared down at me with a grin like a razor blade, letting fresh blood, my blood, drip off the blade and patter gently to the rotted, mold-streaked floor.
I kicked forward with all of my strength, aiming a blow at his knee. I heard something crack, felt the leg give with a sickening explosion of black blood. The flesh felt loose and spongy, almost boneless. Friend wailed like a banshee, his voice rising into an ear-splitting wail. He fell forwards towards me, aiming the knife at my heart, a look of fury darkening his face.
A gunshot rang out behind me. A perfectly round scarlet hole appeared in Friend’s shoulder. He jerked, twisting and gurgling in pain. Black blood spattered my face and neck, feeling as cold as dry ice. I rolled away as his body came down, the knife landing only inches from my chest. It quivered there, its tip stuck deeply in the wooden floor.
Friend’s features changed rapidly in front of my eyes, dripping and melting. The mask of humanity he wore started to fall away, revealing a spinning black hole of a head with a single red eye in the center. Wounded and leaking blood the color of waste oil, he skittered away on four lengthening skeletal limbs, crawling like a spider. His clothes stretched and tightened around his changing, bulging flesh. Breathing hard, I turned to look at my savior.
I recognized the withered old face of my neighbor, a man we all called Bones. He had no family that I had ever seen, and lived a solitary life, almost that of a hermit. I had talked to him a few times, been invited into his home even. His walls were covered with the taxidermied heads of animals, black bears and bucks and moose he had killed. Crossbows, guns and hunting bows of all kinds had lain scattered over nearly every room. He was an outdoorsman at heart.
“Bones,” I whispered in a choked voice. “Thank God.” He shuffled forwards, a small, very thin old man with a sunken bird chest. His giant, rectangular glasses magnified his eyes to the size of dinnerplates, and a white wizard beard hung down to the center of his chest. Jack and I had often joked that he looked like a character from Duck Dynasty. He holstered his pistol around his waist before reaching down a trembling hand and helping me up.
“Something happened,” Bones said grimly. “When that siren went off. I was looking outside, just smoking and sipping some black tea, and I saw it happen. Everything started sputtering and shimmering, and this thick, black mist rose over the streets and houses. When it finally blew away, I saw… this.” He waved a hand outside for emphasis, motioning at the apocalyptic scene.
The streets heaved in great cracks and fissures, as if an earthquake had rolled through the earth. The houses looked like they had survived a nuclear apocalypse. The windows were all shattered. Tiny shards of glass littered the ground like splinters of diamond. The roofs were peeled away and rotting, with enormous holes eaten into the centers of most of them. Something like spider silk covered the dilapidated walls of most of the houses on the street, formed in symmetrical webs that rose two or three stories high.
Behind me, the radio suddenly turned on, the lights flickering overhead. The power all along the street flashed on and off, the streetlights outside strobing at the same erratic frequency. Something like a metallic shriek rang out through the radio’s speaker. Bones and I jumped, turning to look backwards at the old radio laying on the kitchen counter.
“This isn’t the real world!” a man screamed over the radio. I immediately recognized the terrified voice of Jack. My heart dropped into my stomach. “Don’t believe anything you see or hear here. The anomaly is spreading. Laura, I know you can hear me. I’m sorry for everything. Listen, to get out of this, there are a few things you need to remember.
“First, you should know there are gateways in this place, portals that lead back to our world. You can recognize them by the blinding white light radiating from them. It might be a bedroom door, a window, even a kitchen cabinet or a box. They form randomly throughout the anomaly and are highly unstable, often lasting for only seconds. If you find one, take it immediately. These are your only way home.
“Second, the entities here can take the form of any person or animal. But you’ll know them by the shadows that surround them. To kill them, you want to go for the crimson eye in the center of their faces.
“Third, there are places with food, water and other supplies. They will look like dilapidated gas stations with the name ‘Hel’s Market’ on them. These are safe spaces where the things on the streets don’t roam. Don’t stay in there too long, though, or you might see Hel. She doesn’t like visitors.”
“Jack? Where the hell are you?!” I screamed at the radio, running over and shaking it like a crying baby, hearing random pieces inside the old gadget give a metallic rattle. But the speaker only gave a hiss of static as the radio died in my hands. A million thoughts seemed to run through my head at once. Was Jack still alive? Why had his voice come on the radio? Why had his writing been on the note? Bones came up behind me, putting a slight hand on my shoulder.
“We’ll find him,” Bones said. “Jack’s a tough guy. But we need to start moving. We can’t stay here forever. We’re going to need to find supplies. Everything around here is trash.”
“It could be worse out there than it is here,” I argued. “Why do we need to keep moving? We could barricade ourselves inside and wait for the police, and the… military, and…”
“Lady, you’re living in a dream world,” Bones said coldly, his magnified eyes turning into owlish slits. “We don’t know how long we’re going to be here. You don’t even know where Jack is. You have zero supplies, zilcho. You could barricade yourself somewhere and slowly starve to death, but that wouldn’t help us much.” His words made me think. I nodded.
“Fine, but we should grab some food and water first,” I said glumly, my head spinning. I felt sick and tired from all of this, yet the feeling rose in my chest that I hadn’t seen anything yet. Bones gave a faint smile, the corners of his lips twitching as he watched me.
I went over to the kitchen sink, turning it on. For a long moment, nothing happened. There was a burping, gurgling sound deep down in the pipes. They clattered and shook as if thousands of rats were slinking through them. The faucet bubbled and hissed frothy dark water. Finally, it spat a gout of thick scarlet blood all over the rusted sink, squirming with dozens of writhing maggots. I gasped, backpedaling. The smell of iron and rot from the rancid mess sputtering out of the faucet in waves was sickening. Repressing an urge to gag, I reached forward and slammed the handle down.
“Yup, that’s what I expected,” Bones said grimly. He looked around with a blank expression on his face, as if he were only on a stroll at the park. At that same moment, the lights overhead flickered one last time and died. The cracked and broken street lamps outside went dark simultaneously- at least those few that still worked.
I went over to the fridge, opening the door. The nauseating smell of rot exploded across the room, hitting me in the face like a slap. I gagged, seeing clouds of black and yellow mold growing over dried, twisted heaps of decaying food. The milk had become a soupy mess in the container with black tendrils growing along the sides of the exploded jug. I slammed the fridge door shut. I ran over to the front door and stuck my head out, inhaling sweet, clean air. Bones followed slowly behind me, seemingly unaffected.
“Don’t look like we’re getting any food or water from here,” he said contemplatively. “My place ain’t any better. When that siren hit and the black mist came, it changed everything- ate at things, as if time had been turned on fast forward. By the time the fog had gone, my house was a wreck. The food in the fridge was all rot-gut sludge, and the cans in the pantry were ready to explode. My guns were all rusted heaps of junk, the crossbows twisted and the strings snapped. Some of them had tiny black spiders building webs on them.”
“So how’d you get the pistol?” I asked, curious. He looked at me as if I were an idiot.
“I had it on me when it happened,” he said slowly, as if speaking to a mentally deficient child. I nodded, looking around for a weapon I could use. In the living room, I found a metal baseball bat that Jack had bought years ago. Like everything else, it had been eaten away by the ravages of time. Streaks of dark rust covered the length of it. I swung it a few times, feeling that it still felt structurally intact.
“Let’s go,” I said, following Bones outside.
***
We headed deeper into civilization, towards the downtown area with restaurants, gas stations and grocery stores. The sky above had no stars, no sun or moon. It swirled in a dark blue hurricane, meeting in a black eye at the center. The cyclonic clouds peeled away like old scabs. Some pale light came, casting everything in a cyanotic light. I saw pale, dirty faces disappearing into the alleyways and ruined homes, many of them apparently of children.
“I saw them too,” Bones muttered, holding his pistol tightly by his side. “They look like pictures of kids at Auschwitz I’ve seen. Starving and filthy. Where’s their parents, you think?” I shuddered to think about it. What if this place was sucking random people in, just making them disappear from the world? What if it was spreading, like a cancerous tumor hidden under gauze?
I had nearly forgotten about Friend, the strange shape-shifting creature who wore Jack’s face, but he hadn’t forgotten about me. We were passing the burnt-out hulk of a tractor-trailer when his shadowy face shot around the corner, staring at us with Jack’s face. He had eyes like two burnt holes, black and smoldering. His body was a strange combination of spider and human, the thin limbs ending in sharp points. Fine, dark hairs like needles covered his arms and legs. The bullet wound had apparently already healed. Black blood had crusted onto the surfaces of his shirt and pants. He didn’t hesitate to attack. He swung an insectile arm at Bones’ chest. I screamed, seeing it all happen in slow motion.
The limb went straight through Bones’ heart. Bright red arterial blood immediately began flooding out as he looked down in shock, still holding the pistol in one hand. He gurgled, dropping the gun and falling forward, dragging the arm down with him. I had the baseball bat in my hands. With all of my strength, I swung it at the creature’s head. It made contact with a fleshy thud. The soft, yielding flesh of Friend cratered under the impact. Friend made a soft hissing sound as the wound bubbled and danced as if a nest of mice were about to emerge.
I leapt for the pistol. A choked sound rasped from Bones’ trembling lips. The adrenaline rush made me feel no pain as I hit the hard, cracked road, rolling as I landed. I felt the cold metal of the pistol’s grip under my hand. I raised it, feeling the stab wound Friend had given me earlier rip back open. Fresh streams of blood soaked my clothes as I fired, dripping from the long slash along my arm.
The top of Friend’s head exploded, the body transforming before my eyes into a black, spidery humanoid with a single spinning red eye in the center of its pointed skull. Dark blood the color of asphalt leaked down its naked, glossy body. It had no mouth or nose that I could see, but fine silvery hairs covered its jointed arms and legs. The eye widened in pain as it stared into the barrel of the pistol, one blade-like arm still caught in Bones’ chest. I remembered the transmission that had come through the radio and aimed for the center of the spinning eye.
“Why do you keep taking Jack’s form?” I asked Friend, the gun feeling heavy in my trembling hand. “Why just him?”
“I can take the form of any who are part of the Church of the Final Rapture, those who have given their souls to the dark presence here,” he hissed cryptically. He jerked forward, trying to bring his other blade-like arm up towards my neck with a quick slashing blow. I instantly fired, pulling the trigger over and over.
When the first of the bullets pierced his eye, I saw a blinding explosion come from the center of it, like a flashbang radiating light the color of an infected wound. Orange the color of pus spun around bright reds and necrotic blacks. I stepped back, crying out. I instinctively brought my hand up to cover my eyes.
When I could see again, I found only a smoking crater in the spot where Friend and Bones had stood. Gray smoke hissed from the center of it. I knelt down, seeing a dark, jelly-like substance covering the jagged patches of concrete. I quickly realized it was flesh, though whether human or alien, I couldn’t say.
Shell-shocked, I stumbled over to Bones’ melted pants, feeling around his waist until I felt the cold metal of an extra magazine. I had emptied all the bullets in the gun fighting Friend. To my dismay, I realized Bones only had one extra magazine.
Feeling sick and weak, I stumbled away, heading towards downtown, hoping against hope that I would find some solace or answers there.
***
I was wavering on my feet like a drunk woman. As I got closer to the center of town, I found dead bodies hanging from the lampposts, many of them mummified or skeletal. I wondered how many people lived in this hellish world.
I heard crying ahead of me, far off in the distance. I saw a little girl kneeling below the body of a young woman. The corpse looked fresh. The tip of the dead woman’s black tongue poked out through her stiff blue lips. The young girl’s wails tore at my heart.
The girl was wearing rags, tatters of a shirt and pants that were covered in streaks of what looked like dirt and blood. Her face was grimy, but her eyes were big and blue. She looked up at me suddenly as I drew near, panic twisting her small face. She reminded me of the baby I had, the one who had died of crib death a few months earlier. My daughter had the same big blue eyes as this girl here. I looked around the destroyed world, seeing there were more spiderwebs covering the ruined buildings here.
“Little girl, what are you doing here?” I asked. She grabbed my shirt, pushing her small face against my thigh.
“They killed my mommy,” she wailed, trying not to look at the hanging corpse. I hugged her.
“Who did?” I asked. “Who killed all these people?” She looked up, surprised.
“How do you not know? It’s the Church of the Final Rapture. They’re trying to spread this…” She waved a dirty hand around for emphasis, wiping tears from her bloodshot eyes. “They think if they can spread this bad place far enough, then it will lead to the Final Judgment, and Jesus will come back and good will finally win. But first, they say they need to kill a lot of people and make the battle happen.” She shook her small head. “They’re crazy. A bunch of religious nuts, Mommy always said. And she was right. Look what they did to her.”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Marian,” she answered in a small, diffident voice. I helped her up to her feet.
“I’m Laura,” I said, “and you can’t stay here forever, Marian. There are bad things here. Is it true there are ways out of here, doorways of light or something? Have you seen any?”
“I caught a glimpse of one once,” she answered. “It was beautiful. Like looking into a rainbow. I thought I could hear singing.” Her eyes grew distant and far-away. I took her hand, urging her to walk forwards, away from the corpse of her mother.
“So what happened?” I asked, trying to keep Marian talking.
“I saw it, but by the time I found Mom and told her, it had evaporated…” We turned a corner. Looming there overhead, we came face-to-face with what had made the webs.
***
My first thought was that it was some cross between a horse and an insect, the height of a small child and over a dozen feet long. It had the body of a struggling old man in its insectile jaws. They jutted out like the pincers of a stag beetle with wicked serrated edges. Two bulbous black eyes emerged from the sides of its head, the size of baseballs. They didn’t appear to have any lids. They stared at us, unblinking. I saw myself and Marian reflected in those dark orbs, as if they were an obsidian mirror. The pale chitinous shell of the creature shimmered with rainbows as it moved in a blur towards us. Its snout was rounded with two nostril holes. Stringy, blood-flecked mucus constantly dribbled down its eldritch face, falling down from its nose and mouth.
The hundreds of long, skittering legs moved in rhythmic peristaltic waves. The old man continuously kicked and punched at the monstrous face, but the abomination didn’t seem to notice or care. Blood dribbled from his toothless mouth and deep slashes covered his chest, stomach and legs. His lips and fingernails took on a faint bluish cast. As its black eyes focused on us, frothy bubbles of clear saliva started dripping from its flexing pincers. With a primal, reptilian hiss, it threw its head to the side. The dying man soared through the air, smashing into a concrete wall with a bone-shattering thud.
“Stop!” I cried instinctively, raising the pistol and firing. Marian screamed, running behind me and hugging my leg as the dark juggernaut ran us down.
The first bullet caught it in the neck, but the thick black plates of scales deflected it easily, leaving only a series of fine cracks running down its torso. I kept firing, aiming at its face. The second one hit it in the right eye, which exploded like a water balloon filled with blue blood. Its wailing intensified until I thought my eardrums might explode. Half-blinded, its body slithered forward like a snake’s, its many legs driving it towards us.
I jumped to the side at the last second, but Marian wasn’t so lucky. The creature’s massive pincers wrapped around her chest, grabbing her and lifting her into the air. Deep slices appeared in her rags of clothes as she cried, pleading for help. I inhaled deeply, aiming for the abomination’s face, hoping I wouldn’t hit the girl.
The last bullet in the magazine pierced its other eye. It exploded. The creature dropped Mirian to the ground, wailing a steam-whistle shriek. I grabbed Marian’s hand, lifting her off the ground.
“Run!” I hissed through gritted teeth, pulling her forward. Up ahead, I saw lights illuminating a store. It was the only building with electricity that I could see. I found it strange.
As we got closer, I saw the sign, reading: “Hel’s Market”.
***
The insectoid creature’s agonized screams drew other skittering monstrosities forward. They crawled out of the side streets and alleys, their strange horse faces and insectile jaws working furiously as if tasting the air for prey. I remembered the rules on the radio, when they had said the markets were a safe spot.
We ran through the door into a building that hadn't decayed like everything else. It felt air conditioned and cool. The glass here was intact, and rows after rows of cold drinks, ice cream and frozen meals stretched out before us. It looked like a regular convenience store, but in the back, I saw a doorless threshold with stairs that led down into a shadowy basement. I shuddered as I looked at it. Outside, the creatures had stopped at the front door, their bulbous eyes staring intently in at us.
“Are you OK?” I asked Mirian, looking at her injuries. The creature had left two deep slices along the sides of her chest. They bled freely, soaking her tattered rags in fresh streaks of scarlet. She nodded silently, tears running down her rounded cheeks. We quickly grabbed drinks and snacks, chugging soda and energy drinks and eating candy and beef jerky. I didn’t realize just how hungry I was after nearly dying so many times, and Marian looked like she hadn’t eaten in days.
I was staring out the front glass window, looking at the creatures waiting there for us with hunger and bloodlust gleaming in their alien eyes, when I heard heavy footsteps ascending the stairs at the back of the store. Mirian grabbed my hand tightly.
“I think something’s coming,” she whispered in terror.
***
Through the dark threshold, I saw a woman looming nearly ten feet tall. The left half of her body was decayed and rotted, mummified and gray, like everything in this world. The right was beautiful and young, the skin pink and healthy. Behind her, I saw her dragging a man bound tightly in razor-wire, the sharp edges biting into his skin. I instantly recognized Jack.
“Jack?” I asked, stepping back towards the door.
“See your husband,” Hel hissed in a shadowy voice. She threw the trembling mass of bloody flesh at my feet. Jack screamed, kicking and twisting.
“Get… out of here!” he whispered at me through teeth streaked with crimson. “I’ll… help you…”
“Did you help cause this?” I asked. Hel looked between us with sadistic pleasure, the living part of her mouth splitting into a grin. The dead part cracked, the dry skin ripping and showing blackened teeth underneath. Jack nodded.
“The Church… of the Final Rapture… yes, we tried to spread the anomaly, to end all suffering, to cause God to notice us again and come back…” Hel laughed at that, a sound like grating metal.
“Foolish men,” she gurgled. “You shouldn’t have played with things you didn’t understand.” Jack’s eyes grew big. There was a moment of clarity as he met my gaze, motioning towards the black door at the back of the store.
“I’ll… do what I can…” he said, “with what the Church has taught me.” He closed his eyes as Hel drew near, her heavy footsteps shaking the store. She lifted up one giant, naked foot over his head, holding it there like a guillotine blade. It came down with a crunch.
The door at the back of the store started vibrating and shimmering with white light as Jack died. I heard singing from it. Grabbing Marian’s arm, I pulled her towards it. A large, rotted hand came out, grabbing at my hair. I felt myself pulled back off my feet.
Like a rabid animal, Marian ran forward, sinking her sharp teeth into Hel's wrist. I felt the grip release, my back smashing hard against the floor. The wind was instantly knocked out of my lungs. Grabbing Marian's hand, we crawled towards the door, only feet away. Beautiful, angelic singing resonated through it, growing louder as we got closer. Hel shrieked with fury as we crossed the threshold, disappearing into the light. Everything dissolved in the blinding radiance, and for a moment, I felt warm and free.
***
I found myself back home with Marian, the Sun outside bright and clear. The freezer was still open, the dismembered head staring blankly out at me. Marian was gently crying, cradling her bleeding chest. All of the agonies and wounds I had suffered instantly started shrieking, grating my nerves.
Sickened, I stumbled outside and threw up, trying to forget the nightmares and broken bodies of the anomaly.

Life in Frost Hollow had always been fairly normal, up until a few days ago. My husband and I had small issues and arguments, like any couple, but there was no sign of the severe transformation that would escalate into such gruesome, nightmarish scenes.
I always woke early. The day that it all started, I rose around dawn to see the muted gleam of an infant sunrise shining through the window. I looked over to Jack’s side of the bed, seeing it empty. It appeared unslept in, which I found strange, as he worked the night shift and would nearly always be home and in bed by 3 or 4 AM.
But ever since he had found our newborn daughter dead in her crib, he had been acting strange, disappearing at random hours and occasionally bringing a “friend” home. The people he brought were always young, glassy-eyed guys I had never seen before, who often followed him around in an eerie silence like ducklings following a mother duck.
I made a fresh pot of coffee, going out onto the porch as the world came to life. The Sun rose overhead like a burning angel, a fiery eye in a vast expanse of cloudless blue. I knew it would be another scorcher of a day, humid and sticky. I watched early-morning joggers passing by. I wondered where Jack was. I pulled out my cell phone, checking to see if he had sent me any messages, but there was nothing there.
As I sat on the front porch, I thought about my fading youth. I had once hair the color of summer sunlight, but now it was going gray. The small wrinkles around my mouth and eyes seemed to be lengthening and deepening every day. Everything in the world seemed to grow dusty and brittle, like one enormous sarcophagus. I felt certain I would never have another child, never see bright blue eyes staring up at me from the crib again.
Far off down the street, there was a strange translucent rippling in the air, like burning heat rising off desert sands. It expanded into a perfectly flat wall. It cut across trees, homes and cars. I squinted, realizing that it was coming nearer with every heartbeat. I thought it was some kind of bizarre meteorological phenomenon, some sort of heat mirage or humidity bubble. As it slowly crept closer, I got bored, pulling out my phone to read the news.
After a few minutes sitting and people-watching, I went inside to make some breakfast. I ambled over to the freezer, looking inside for something edible, maybe some chicken tenders I could deep-fry next to some eggs and toast. Instead, I found a decapitated human head, its open, staring eyes glassy and frostbitten. I felt a scream welling up in my throat as I dropped my coffee mug to the floor. It shattered, spraying drops of burning hot liquid all over my legs.
The freezing mist slunk towards me like ghostly hands, obscuring the face’s features for a long moment. I wondered if this was just an extremely realistic mannequin head. I looked at the blue lips, pressed together as if in an expression of disapproval, saw the ragged patches of black flesh at the bottom of the neck, and knew it was real. Frozen crystals of dark blood clung to the bottom of the head in a black pool, gluing it to the freezer floor and keeping it in an upright position.
Between the lips, I saw a folded piece of paper. On the front, in flowing, black cursive, read two words: “To Laura”. I hesitated for a couple heartbeats, then snatched the note from the dismembered head. The lips refused to let it go at first, until I gently wriggled it from side to side. It came loose with a wet, sucking sound.
The moment I freed the note, a siren rang out down the street, the volume deafening. It rose and fell in shrill wails for a few seconds. I saw the fridge tremble in front of me under the onslaught of such noise. Black mist slowly started to ooze from every surface. By the time it evaporated a few seconds later, the fridge looked like it had aged fifty years. Enormous rust spots covered its exterior, and the smell of rotting food was instantly overwhelming, like the rancid odor of roadkill putrefying under a burning sun.
The rest of the kitchen seemed to have changed as well. Everything had grown old and filthy. The counters were covered in cobwebs and grime. Deep cracks ran through the walls, and the windows were all broken.
Turning back to the freezer, I studied the mutilated head’s features more thoroughly. It was a woman with raven-black hair and blue eyes, probably in her early twenties. Who was this person? How had they died, and how had their head gotten in my freezer? What was that horrible siren?
I unfolded the note, seeing Jack’s flowing handwriting there. My heart felt like it dropped out of my chest as I quickly scanned the words.
“Dear Laura,
“If you’re reading this, it means you found the head. It’s probably a good thing, I think. There are some things I have kept secret from you, from everyone, for a long time.
“I don’t know when it first began, when this fractured piece of my personality gained control. It all started innocently enough- peeking in people’s windows when they weren’t looking, or stalking random joggers for days without being seen. It was always a rush to get away with it.
“Soon, I would break into people’s houses and rearrange all their furniture. I’d hide a portable camera in the corner or on top of a bookshelf and watch their reactions. Oh, how I laughed! As you can imagine, it was quite fun. Life doesn’t have enough laughter, after all. It seems more like wandering across an endless desert sometimes.
“But eventually, I would stumble across an oasis, a resting place in this never-ending life of shit. Or at least, that other piece of my personality did. You might not believe me, but the first time I killed, it was an accident. Perhaps it was fate sending the first pebbles skittering down over the ledge that would inevitably lead to an avalanche.
“I had been doing my usual routine, breaking into houses, moving things around, sometimes writing Satanic messages on the wall in pig’s blood. It was all to keep people on their toes, you know? Just for chuckles and smiles. But, still, I always kept my pistol on me. I had walked up and down the streets, seeing the mail piling up outside one old colonial home surrounded by a grove of thick trees. I had found the house empty when I scoped it out originally. It seemed perfect. That night, I made my way inside.
“I remember hearing the front door unlock abruptly in the middle of the night. I tried to run towards the window in the bathroom around back, the way I had come in originally. But the man must have heard my footsteps. He came around the corner with a shotgun, his face beet-red. He was screaming and hollering. I was crawling through the window when he started raising the gun. The ringing sound as he pumped a round in the chamber was like a scream from God, telling me to awaken. At that moment, I knew it was kill or be killed. Before he could pull the trigger, I aimed for his head and fired twice. I remember the rush of pleasure as his face disintegrated into a puddle of blood and bone chips.
“After that, things start to get hazy. At first, I thought it was a psychotic breakdown, because something started wearing my face, following me when I went crawling through the neighborhood. Perhaps it is a part of me in some way, my true self. After all, murder is Godly, the pure power of the divine, and killing in the name of God is always a mercy. So says the Savior.
“Well, anyway, I’m rambling. It’s time to finish this letter before I start to sound crazy. We can’t have that, can we? What will the neighbors think?
“The main thing to remember is: don’t look behind you.
“I’ll see you very soon.”
I read the last line a few times before it sunk into my mind. Don’t look behind you? It didn’t make any sense.
Then I heard the choked giggling from the pantry closet. It started low, like the first rumblings of an earthquake. The door was left open a fraction of an inch. One bloodshot eye stared at me through the crack. It flicked quickly to the left and right, the pupil dilated and insane.
“Jack?” I whispered, feeling sick and weak. “What’s… what’s wrong?” I slowly backpedaled towards the front door. The laughter turned into a gurgle, something that might have come from the lips of a drowning man. He flung the door open, his face pale and bloodless. Trickles of dried blood covered his arms and hands. Under his fingernails, I saw clotted black gore. Translucent black shadows swirled around his face and chest, spiraling up into a vortex like a dark whirlwind. They shimmered all around him, distorting his features and seeming to increase in intensity by the second.
“Jack isn’t here anymore,” he hissed in a diseased voice. His lips split apart, revealing teeth that looked far too long and sharp. “He’s hidden behind the veil, rotting under the floorboards. Even now, he tries to claw his way up.” He stepped towards me, revealing a long butcher’s knife in one hand, its steel stained a deep scarlet. Fresh blood still dripped from the tip.
“Stay away from me,” I shrieked, glancing behind me. The town looked different now, the streets deserted. Dark shadows danced over everything, as if there were a solar eclipse. The entire world seemed to exhale, a low, diseased hissing that radiated from everything all around me.
This strange monster wearing Jack’s face continued moving closer, seeming to draw power from the changes. His eyes darkened in a flash, turning black and cloudy. The cyclone of shadows twisting around his body moved faster, a curtain of darkness so thick that it started to obscure his face.
“My name is Friend,” he gurgled, lunging forward with the knife. I instinctively pulled away, stumbling back towards the open front door. I felt a cold pain radiate down my left arm, a slashing pain that made my vision turn white with adrenaline and shock. A slash opened up on the top of my skin, fresh blood bubbling out instantly. I fell backwards through the door onto the front porch, smacking my head hard on the wooden porch. Friend slunk towards me, a hurricane of blackness with an eerie human pillar at the center. He stared down at me with a grin like a razor blade, letting fresh blood, my blood, drip off the blade and patter gently to the rotted, mold-streaked floor.
I kicked forward with all of my strength, aiming a blow at his knee. I heard something crack, felt the leg give with a sickening explosion of black blood. The flesh felt loose and spongy, almost boneless. Friend wailed like a banshee, his voice rising into an ear-splitting wail. He fell forwards towards me, aiming the knife at my heart, a look of fury darkening his face.
A gunshot rang out behind me. A perfectly round scarlet hole appeared in Friend’s shoulder. He jerked, twisting and gurgling in pain. Black blood spattered my face and neck, feeling as cold as dry ice. I rolled away as his body came down, the knife landing only inches from my chest. It quivered there, its tip stuck deeply in the wooden floor.
Friend’s features changed rapidly in front of my eyes, dripping and melting. The mask of humanity he wore started to fall away, revealing a spinning black hole of a head with a single red eye in the center. Wounded and leaking blood the color of waste oil, he skittered away on four lengthening skeletal limbs, crawling like a spider. His clothes stretched and tightened around his changing, bulging flesh. Breathing hard, I turned to look at my savior.
I recognized the withered old face of my neighbor, a man we all called Bones. He had no family that I had ever seen, and lived a solitary life, almost that of a hermit. I had talked to him a few times, been invited into his home even. His walls were covered with the taxidermied heads of animals, black bears and bucks and moose he had killed. Crossbows, guns and hunting bows of all kinds had lain scattered over nearly every room. He was an outdoorsman at heart.
“Bones,” I whispered in a choked voice. “Thank God.” He shuffled forwards, a small, very thin old man with a sunken bird chest. His giant, rectangular glasses magnified his eyes to the size of dinnerplates, and a white wizard beard hung down to the center of his chest. Jack and I had often joked that he looked like a character from Duck Dynasty. He holstered his pistol around his waist before reaching down a trembling hand and helping me up.
“Something happened,” Bones said grimly. “When that siren went off. I was looking outside, just smoking and sipping some black tea, and I saw it happen. Everything started sputtering and shimmering, and this thick, black mist rose over the streets and houses. When it finally blew away, I saw… this.” He waved a hand outside for emphasis, motioning at the apocalyptic scene.
The streets heaved in great cracks and fissures, as if an earthquake had rolled through the earth. The houses looked like they had survived a nuclear apocalypse. The windows were all shattered. Tiny shards of glass littered the ground like splinters of diamond. The roofs were peeled away and rotting, with enormous holes eaten into the centers of most of them. Something like spider silk covered the dilapidated walls of most of the houses on the street, formed in symmetrical webs that rose two or three stories high.
Behind me, the radio suddenly turned on, the lights flickering overhead. The power all along the street flashed on and off, the streetlights outside strobing at the same erratic frequency. Something like a metallic shriek rang out through the radio’s speaker. Bones and I jumped, turning to look backwards at the old radio laying on the kitchen counter.
“This isn’t the real world!” a man screamed over the radio. I immediately recognized the terrified voice of Jack. My heart dropped into my stomach. “Don’t believe anything you see or hear here. The anomaly is spreading. Laura, I know you can hear me. I’m sorry for everything. Listen, to get out of this, there are a few things you need to remember.
“First, you should know there are gateways in this place, portals that lead back to our world. You can recognize them by the blinding white light radiating from them. It might be a bedroom door, a window, even a kitchen cabinet or a box. They form randomly throughout the anomaly and are highly unstable, often lasting for only seconds. If you find one, take it immediately. These are your only way home.
“Second, the entities here can take the form of any person or animal. But you’ll know them by the shadows that surround them. To kill them, you want to go for the crimson eye in the center of their faces.
“Third, there are places with food, water and other supplies. They will look like dilapidated gas stations with the name ‘Hel’s Market’ on them. These are safe spaces where the things on the streets don’t roam. Don’t stay in there too long, though, or you might see Hel. She doesn’t like visitors.”
“Jack? Where the hell are you?!” I screamed at the radio, running over and shaking it like a crying baby, hearing random pieces inside the old gadget give a metallic rattle. But the speaker only gave a hiss of static as the radio died in my hands. A million thoughts seemed to run through my head at once. Was Jack still alive? Why had his voice come on the radio? Why had his writing been on the note? Bones came up behind me, putting a slight hand on my shoulder.
“We’ll find him,” Bones said. “Jack’s a tough guy. But we need to start moving. We can’t stay here forever. We’re going to need to find supplies. Everything around here is trash.”
“It could be worse out there than it is here,” I argued. “Why do we need to keep moving? We could barricade ourselves inside and wait for the police, and the… military, and…”
“Lady, you’re living in a dream world,” Bones said coldly, his magnified eyes turning into owlish slits. “We don’t know how long we’re going to be here. You don’t even know where Jack is. You have zero supplies, zilcho. You could barricade yourself somewhere and slowly starve to death, but that wouldn’t help us much.” His words made me think. I nodded.
“Fine, but we should grab some food and water first,” I said glumly, my head spinning. I felt sick and tired from all of this, yet the feeling rose in my chest that I hadn’t seen anything yet. Bones gave a faint smile, the corners of his lips twitching as he watched me.
I went over to the kitchen sink, turning it on. For a long moment, nothing happened. There was a burping, gurgling sound deep down in the pipes. They clattered and shook as if thousands of rats were slinking through them. The faucet bubbled and hissed frothy dark water. Finally, it spat a gout of thick scarlet blood all over the rusted sink, squirming with dozens of writhing maggots. I gasped, backpedaling. The smell of iron and rot from the rancid mess sputtering out of the faucet in waves was sickening. Repressing an urge to gag, I reached forward and slammed the handle down.
“Yup, that’s what I expected,” Bones said grimly. He looked around with a blank expression on his face, as if he were only on a stroll at the park. At that same moment, the lights overhead flickered one last time and died. The cracked and broken street lamps outside went dark simultaneously- at least those few that still worked.
I went over to the fridge, opening the door. The nauseating smell of rot exploded across the room, hitting me in the face like a slap. I gagged, seeing clouds of black and yellow mold growing over dried, twisted heaps of decaying food. The milk had become a soupy mess in the container with black tendrils growing along the sides of the exploded jug. I slammed the fridge door shut. I ran over to the front door and stuck my head out, inhaling sweet, clean air. Bones followed slowly behind me, seemingly unaffected.
“Don’t look like we’re getting any food or water from here,” he said contemplatively. “My place ain’t any better. When that siren hit and the black mist came, it changed everything- ate at things, as if time had been turned on fast forward. By the time the fog had gone, my house was a wreck. The food in the fridge was all rot-gut sludge, and the cans in the pantry were ready to explode. My guns were all rusted heaps of junk, the crossbows twisted and the strings snapped. Some of them had tiny black spiders building webs on them.”
“So how’d you get the pistol?” I asked, curious. He looked at me as if I were an idiot.
“I had it on me when it happened,” he said slowly, as if speaking to a mentally deficient child. I nodded, looking around for a weapon I could use. In the living room, I found a metal baseball bat that Jack had bought years ago. Like everything else, it had been eaten away by the ravages of time. Streaks of dark rust covered the length of it. I swung it a few times, feeling that it still felt structurally intact.
“Let’s go,” I said, following Bones outside.
***
We headed deeper into civilization, towards the downtown area with restaurants, gas stations and grocery stores. The sky above had no stars, no sun or moon. It swirled in a dark blue hurricane, meeting in a black eye at the center. The cyclonic clouds peeled away like old scabs. Some pale light came, casting everything in a cyanotic light. I saw pale, dirty faces disappearing into the alleyways and ruined homes, many of them apparently of children.
“I saw them too,” Bones muttered, holding his pistol tightly by his side. “They look like pictures of kids at Auschwitz I’ve seen. Starving and filthy. Where’s their parents, you think?” I shuddered to think about it. What if this place was sucking random people in, just making them disappear from the world? What if it was spreading, like a cancerous tumor hidden under gauze?
I had nearly forgotten about Friend, the strange shape-shifting creature who wore Jack’s face, but he hadn’t forgotten about me. We were passing the burnt-out hulk of a tractor-trailer when his shadowy face shot around the corner, staring at us with Jack’s face. He had eyes like two burnt holes, black and smoldering. His body was a strange combination of spider and human, the thin limbs ending in sharp points. Fine, dark hairs like needles covered his arms and legs. The bullet wound had apparently already healed. Black blood had crusted onto the surfaces of his shirt and pants. He didn’t hesitate to attack. He swung an insectile arm at Bones’ chest. I screamed, seeing it all happen in slow motion.
The limb went straight through Bones’ heart. Bright red arterial blood immediately began flooding out as he looked down in shock, still holding the pistol in one hand. He gurgled, dropping the gun and falling forward, dragging the arm down with him. I had the baseball bat in my hands. With all of my strength, I swung it at the creature’s head. It made contact with a fleshy thud. The soft, yielding flesh of Friend cratered under the impact. Friend made a soft hissing sound as the wound bubbled and danced as if a nest of mice were about to emerge.
I leapt for the pistol. A choked sound rasped from Bones’ trembling lips. The adrenaline rush made me feel no pain as I hit the hard, cracked road, rolling as I landed. I felt the cold metal of the pistol’s grip under my hand. I raised it, feeling the stab wound Friend had given me earlier rip back open. Fresh streams of blood soaked my clothes as I fired, dripping from the long slash along my arm.
The top of Friend’s head exploded, the body transforming before my eyes into a black, spidery humanoid with a single spinning red eye in the center of its pointed skull. Dark blood the color of asphalt leaked down its naked, glossy body. It had no mouth or nose that I could see, but fine silvery hairs covered its jointed arms and legs. The eye widened in pain as it stared into the barrel of the pistol, one blade-like arm still caught in Bones’ chest. I remembered the transmission that had come through the radio and aimed for the center of the spinning eye.
“Why do you keep taking Jack’s form?” I asked Friend, the gun feeling heavy in my trembling hand. “Why just him?”
“I can take the form of any who are part of the Church of the Final Rapture, those who have given their souls to the dark presence here,” he hissed cryptically. He jerked forward, trying to bring his other blade-like arm up towards my neck with a quick slashing blow. I instantly fired, pulling the trigger over and over.
When the first of the bullets pierced his eye, I saw a blinding explosion come from the center of it, like a flashbang radiating light the color of an infected wound. Orange the color of pus spun around bright reds and necrotic blacks. I stepped back, crying out. I instinctively brought my hand up to cover my eyes.
When I could see again, I found only a smoking crater in the spot where Friend and Bones had stood. Gray smoke hissed from the center of it. I knelt down, seeing a dark, jelly-like substance covering the jagged patches of concrete. I quickly realized it was flesh, though whether human or alien, I couldn’t say.
Shell-shocked, I stumbled over to Bones’ melted pants, feeling around his waist until I felt the cold metal of an extra magazine. I had emptied all the bullets in the gun fighting Friend. To my dismay, I realized Bones only had one extra magazine.
Feeling sick and weak, I stumbled away, heading towards downtown, hoping against hope that I would find some solace or answers there.
***
I was wavering on my feet like a drunk woman. As I got closer to the center of town, I found dead bodies hanging from the lampposts, many of them mummified or skeletal. I wondered how many people lived in this hellish world.
I heard crying ahead of me, far off in the distance. I saw a little girl kneeling below the body of a young woman. The corpse looked fresh. The tip of the dead woman’s black tongue poked out through her stiff blue lips. The young girl’s wails tore at my heart.
The girl was wearing rags, tatters of a shirt and pants that were covered in streaks of what looked like dirt and blood. Her face was grimy, but her eyes were big and blue. She looked up at me suddenly as I drew near, panic twisting her small face. She reminded me of the baby I had, the one who had died of crib death a few months earlier. My daughter had the same big blue eyes as this girl here. I looked around the destroyed world, seeing there were more spiderwebs covering the ruined buildings here.
“Little girl, what are you doing here?” I asked. She grabbed my shirt, pushing her small face against my thigh.
“They killed my mommy,” she wailed, trying not to look at the hanging corpse. I hugged her.
“Who did?” I asked. “Who killed all these people?” She looked up, surprised.
“How do you not know? It’s the Church of the Final Rapture. They’re trying to spread this…” She waved a dirty hand around for emphasis, wiping tears from her bloodshot eyes. “They think if they can spread this bad place far enough, then it will lead to the Final Judgment, and Jesus will come back and good will finally win. But first, they say they need to kill a lot of people and make the battle happen.” She shook her small head. “They’re crazy. A bunch of religious nuts, Mommy always said. And she was right. Look what they did to her.”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Marian,” she answered in a small, diffident voice. I helped her up to her feet.
“I’m Laura,” I said, “and you can’t stay here forever, Marian. There are bad things here. Is it true there are ways out of here, doorways of light or something? Have you seen any?”
“I caught a glimpse of one once,” she answered. “It was beautiful. Like looking into a rainbow. I thought I could hear singing.” Her eyes grew distant and far-away. I took her hand, urging her to walk forwards, away from the corpse of her mother.
“So what happened?” I asked, trying to keep Marian talking.
“I saw it, but by the time I found Mom and told her, it had evaporated…” We turned a corner. Looming there overhead, we came face-to-face with what had made the webs.
***
My first thought was that it was some cross between a horse and an insect, the height of a small child and over a dozen feet long. It had the body of a struggling old man in its insectile jaws. They jutted out like the pincers of a stag beetle with wicked serrated edges. Two bulbous black eyes emerged from the sides of its head, the size of baseballs. They didn’t appear to have any lids. They stared at us, unblinking. I saw myself and Marian reflected in those dark orbs, as if they were an obsidian mirror. The pale chitinous shell of the creature shimmered with rainbows as it moved in a blur towards us. Its snout was rounded with two nostril holes. Stringy, blood-flecked mucus constantly dribbled down its eldritch face, falling down from its nose and mouth.
The hundreds of long, skittering legs moved in rhythmic peristaltic waves. The old man continuously kicked and punched at the monstrous face, but the abomination didn’t seem to notice or care. Blood dribbled from his toothless mouth and deep slashes covered his chest, stomach and legs. His lips and fingernails took on a faint bluish cast. As its black eyes focused on us, frothy bubbles of clear saliva started dripping from its flexing pincers. With a primal, reptilian hiss, it threw its head to the side. The dying man soared through the air, smashing into a concrete wall with a bone-shattering thud.
“Stop!” I cried instinctively, raising the pistol and firing. Marian screamed, running behind me and hugging my leg as the dark juggernaut ran us down.
The first bullet caught it in the neck, but the thick black plates of scales deflected it easily, leaving only a series of fine cracks running down its torso. I kept firing, aiming at its face. The second one hit it in the right eye, which exploded like a water balloon filled with blue blood. Its wailing intensified until I thought my eardrums might explode. Half-blinded, its body slithered forward like a snake’s, its many legs driving it towards us.
I jumped to the side at the last second, but Marian wasn’t so lucky. The creature’s massive pincers wrapped around her chest, grabbing her and lifting her into the air. Deep slices appeared in her rags of clothes as she cried, pleading for help. I inhaled deeply, aiming for the abomination’s face, hoping I wouldn’t hit the girl.
The last bullet in the magazine pierced its other eye. It exploded. The creature dropped Mirian to the ground, wailing a steam-whistle shriek. I grabbed Marian’s hand, lifting her off the ground.
“Run!” I hissed through gritted teeth, pulling her forward. Up ahead, I saw lights illuminating a store. It was the only building with electricity that I could see. I found it strange.
As we got closer, I saw the sign, reading: “Hel’s Market”.
***
The insectoid creature’s agonized screams drew other skittering monstrosities forward. They crawled out of the side streets and alleys, their strange horse faces and insectile jaws working furiously as if tasting the air for prey. I remembered the rules on the radio, when they had said the markets were a safe spot.
We ran through the door into a building that hadn't decayed like everything else. It felt air conditioned and cool. The glass here was intact, and rows after rows of cold drinks, ice cream and frozen meals stretched out before us. It looked like a regular convenience store, but in the back, I saw a doorless threshold with stairs that led down into a shadowy basement. I shuddered as I looked at it. Outside, the creatures had stopped at the front door, their bulbous eyes staring intently in at us.
“Are you OK?” I asked Mirian, looking at her injuries. The creature had left two deep slices along the sides of her chest. They bled freely, soaking her tattered rags in fresh streaks of scarlet. She nodded silently, tears running down her rounded cheeks. We quickly grabbed drinks and snacks, chugging soda and energy drinks and eating candy and beef jerky. I didn’t realize just how hungry I was after nearly dying so many times, and Marian looked like she hadn’t eaten in days.
I was staring out the front glass window, looking at the creatures waiting there for us with hunger and bloodlust gleaming in their alien eyes, when I heard heavy footsteps ascending the stairs at the back of the store. Mirian grabbed my hand tightly.
“I think something’s coming,” she whispered in terror.
***
Through the dark threshold, I saw a woman looming nearly ten feet tall. The left half of her body was decayed and rotted, mummified and gray, like everything in this world. The right was beautiful and young, the skin pink and healthy. Behind her, I saw her dragging a man bound tightly in razor-wire, the sharp edges biting into his skin. I instantly recognized Jack.
“Jack?” I asked, stepping back towards the door.
“See your husband,” Hel hissed in a shadowy voice. She threw the trembling mass of bloody flesh at my feet. Jack screamed, kicking and twisting.
“Get… out of here!” he whispered at me through teeth streaked with crimson. “I’ll… help you…”
“Did you help cause this?” I asked. Hel looked between us with sadistic pleasure, the living part of her mouth splitting into a grin. The dead part cracked, the dry skin ripping and showing blackened teeth underneath. Jack nodded.
“The Church… of the Final Rapture… yes, we tried to spread the anomaly, to end all suffering, to cause God to notice us again and come back…” Hel laughed at that, a sound like grating metal.
“Foolish men,” she gurgled. “You shouldn’t have played with things you didn’t understand.” Jack’s eyes grew big. There was a moment of clarity as he met my gaze, motioning towards the black door at the back of the store.
“I’ll… do what I can…” he said, “with what the Church has taught me.” He closed his eyes as Hel drew near, her heavy footsteps shaking the store. She lifted up one giant, naked foot over his head, holding it there like a guillotine blade. It came down with a crunch.
The door at the back of the store started vibrating and shimmering with white light as Jack died. I heard singing from it. Grabbing Marian’s arm, I pulled her towards it. A large, rotted hand came out, grabbing at my hair. I felt myself pulled back off my feet.
Like a rabid animal, Marian ran forward, sinking her sharp teeth into Hel's wrist. I felt the grip release, my back smashing hard against the floor. The wind was instantly knocked out of my lungs. Grabbing Marian's hand, we crawled towards the door, only feet away. Beautiful, angelic singing resonated through it, growing louder as we got closer. Hel shrieked with fury as we crossed the threshold, disappearing into the light. Everything dissolved in the blinding radiance, and for a moment, I felt warm and free.
***
I found myself back home with Marian, the Sun outside bright and clear. The freezer was still open, the dismembered head staring blankly out at me. Marian was gently crying, cradling her bleeding chest. All of the agonies and wounds I had suffered instantly started shrieking, grating my nerves.
Sickened, I stumbled outside and threw up, trying to forget the nightmares and broken bodies of the anomaly.

Life in Frost Hollow had always been fairly normal, up until a few days ago. My husband and I had small issues and arguments, like any couple, but there was no sign of the severe transformation that would escalate into such gruesome, nightmarish scenes.
I always woke early. The day that it all started, I rose around dawn to see the muted gleam of an infant sunrise shining through the window. I looked over to Jack’s side of the bed, seeing it empty. It appeared unslept in, which I found strange, as he worked the night shift and would nearly always be home and in bed by 3 or 4 AM.
But ever since he had found our newborn daughter dead in her crib, he had been acting strange, disappearing at random hours and occasionally bringing a “friend” home. The people he brought were always young, glassy-eyed guys I had never seen before, who often followed him around in an eerie silence like ducklings following a mother duck.
I made a fresh pot of coffee, going out onto the porch as the world came to life. The Sun rose overhead like a burning angel, a fiery eye in a vast expanse of cloudless blue. I knew it would be another scorcher of a day, humid and sticky. I watched early-morning joggers passing by. I wondered where Jack was. I pulled out my cell phone, checking to see if he had sent me any messages, but there was nothing there.
As I sat on the front porch, I thought about my fading youth. I had once hair the color of summer sunlight, but now it was going gray. The small wrinkles around my mouth and eyes seemed to be lengthening and deepening every day. Everything in the world seemed to grow dusty and brittle, like one enormous sarcophagus. I felt certain I would never have another child, never see bright blue eyes staring up at me from the crib again.
Far off down the street, there was a strange translucent rippling in the air, like burning heat rising off desert sands. It expanded into a perfectly flat wall. It cut across trees, homes and cars. I squinted, realizing that it was coming nearer with every heartbeat. I thought it was some kind of bizarre meteorological phenomenon, some sort of heat mirage or humidity bubble. As it slowly crept closer, I got bored, pulling out my phone to read the news.
After a few minutes sitting and people-watching, I went inside to make some breakfast. I ambled over to the freezer, looking inside for something edible, maybe some chicken tenders I could deep-fry next to some eggs and toast. Instead, I found a decapitated human head, its open, staring eyes glassy and frostbitten. I felt a scream welling up in my throat as I dropped my coffee mug to the floor. It shattered, spraying drops of burning hot liquid all over my legs.
The freezing mist slunk towards me like ghostly hands, obscuring the face’s features for a long moment. I wondered if this was just an extremely realistic mannequin head. I looked at the blue lips, pressed together as if in an expression of disapproval, saw the ragged patches of black flesh at the bottom of the neck, and knew it was real. Frozen crystals of dark blood clung to the bottom of the head in a black pool, gluing it to the freezer floor and keeping it in an upright position.
Between the lips, I saw a folded piece of paper. On the front, in flowing, black cursive, read two words: “To Laura”. I hesitated for a couple heartbeats, then snatched the note from the dismembered head. The lips refused to let it go at first, until I gently wriggled it from side to side. It came loose with a wet, sucking sound.
The moment I freed the note, a siren rang out down the street, the volume deafening. It rose and fell in shrill wails for a few seconds. I saw the fridge tremble in front of me under the onslaught of such noise. Black mist slowly started to ooze from every surface. By the time it evaporated a few seconds later, the fridge looked like it had aged fifty years. Enormous rust spots covered its exterior, and the smell of rotting food was instantly overwhelming, like the rancid odor of roadkill putrefying under a burning sun.
The rest of the kitchen seemed to have changed as well. Everything had grown old and filthy. The counters were covered in cobwebs and grime. Deep cracks ran through the walls, and the windows were all broken.
Turning back to the freezer, I studied the mutilated head’s features more thoroughly. It was a woman with raven-black hair and blue eyes, probably in her early twenties. Who was this person? How had they died, and how had their head gotten in my freezer? What was that horrible siren?
I unfolded the note, seeing Jack’s flowing handwriting there. My heart felt like it dropped out of my chest as I quickly scanned the words.
“Dear Laura,
“If you’re reading this, it means you found the head. It’s probably a good thing, I think. There are some things I have kept secret from you, from everyone, for a long time.
“I don’t know when it first began, when this fractured piece of my personality gained control. It all started innocently enough- peeking in people’s windows when they weren’t looking, or stalking random joggers for days without being seen. It was always a rush to get away with it.
“Soon, I would break into people’s houses and rearrange all their furniture. I’d hide a portable camera in the corner or on top of a bookshelf and watch their reactions. Oh, how I laughed! As you can imagine, it was quite fun. Life doesn’t have enough laughter, after all. It seems more like wandering across an endless desert sometimes.
“But eventually, I would stumble across an oasis, a resting place in this never-ending life of shit. Or at least, that other piece of my personality did. You might not believe me, but the first time I killed, it was an accident. Perhaps it was fate sending the first pebbles skittering down over the ledge that would inevitably lead to an avalanche.
“I had been doing my usual routine, breaking into houses, moving things around, sometimes writing Satanic messages on the wall in pig’s blood. It was all to keep people on their toes, you know? Just for chuckles and smiles. But, still, I always kept my pistol on me. I had walked up and down the streets, seeing the mail piling up outside one old colonial home surrounded by a grove of thick trees. I had found the house empty when I scoped it out originally. It seemed perfect. That night, I made my way inside.
“I remember hearing the front door unlock abruptly in the middle of the night. I tried to run towards the window in the bathroom around back, the way I had come in originally. But the man must have heard my footsteps. He came around the corner with a shotgun, his face beet-red. He was screaming and hollering. I was crawling through the window when he started raising the gun. The ringing sound as he pumped a round in the chamber was like a scream from God, telling me to awaken. At that moment, I knew it was kill or be killed. Before he could pull the trigger, I aimed for his head and fired twice. I remember the rush of pleasure as his face disintegrated into a puddle of blood and bone chips.
“After that, things start to get hazy. At first, I thought it was a psychotic breakdown, because something started wearing my face, following me when I went crawling through the neighborhood. Perhaps it is a part of me in some way, my true self. After all, murder is Godly, the pure power of the divine, and killing in the name of God is always a mercy. So says the Savior.
“Well, anyway, I’m rambling. It’s time to finish this letter before I start to sound crazy. We can’t have that, can we? What will the neighbors think?
“The main thing to remember is: don’t look behind you.
“I’ll see you very soon.”
I read the last line a few times before it sunk into my mind. Don’t look behind you? It didn’t make any sense.
Then I heard the choked giggling from the pantry closet. It started low, like the first rumblings of an earthquake. The door was left open a fraction of an inch. One bloodshot eye stared at me through the crack. It flicked quickly to the left and right, the pupil dilated and insane.
“Jack?” I whispered, feeling sick and weak. “What’s… what’s wrong?” I slowly backpedaled towards the front door. The laughter turned into a gurgle, something that might have come from the lips of a drowning man. He flung the door open, his face pale and bloodless. Trickles of dried blood covered his arms and hands. Under his fingernails, I saw clotted black gore. Translucent black shadows swirled around his face and chest, spiraling up into a vortex like a dark whirlwind. They shimmered all around him, distorting his features and seeming to increase in intensity by the second.
“Jack isn’t here anymore,” he hissed in a diseased voice. His lips split apart, revealing teeth that looked far too long and sharp. “He’s hidden behind the veil, rotting under the floorboards. Even now, he tries to claw his way up.” He stepped towards me, revealing a long butcher’s knife in one hand, its steel stained a deep scarlet. Fresh blood still dripped from the tip.
“Stay away from me,” I shrieked, glancing behind me. The town looked different now, the streets deserted. Dark shadows danced over everything, as if there were a solar eclipse. The entire world seemed to exhale, a low, diseased hissing that radiated from everything all around me.
This strange monster wearing Jack’s face continued moving closer, seeming to draw power from the changes. His eyes darkened in a flash, turning black and cloudy. The cyclone of shadows twisting around his body moved faster, a curtain of darkness so thick that it started to obscure his face.
“My name is Friend,” he gurgled, lunging forward with the knife. I instinctively pulled away, stumbling back towards the open front door. I felt a cold pain radiate down my left arm, a slashing pain that made my vision turn white with adrenaline and shock. A slash opened up on the top of my skin, fresh blood bubbling out instantly. I fell backwards through the door onto the front porch, smacking my head hard on the wooden porch. Friend slunk towards me, a hurricane of blackness with an eerie human pillar at the center. He stared down at me with a grin like a razor blade, letting fresh blood, my blood, drip off the blade and patter gently to the rotted, mold-streaked floor.
I kicked forward with all of my strength, aiming a blow at his knee. I heard something crack, felt the leg give with a sickening explosion of black blood. The flesh felt loose and spongy, almost boneless. Friend wailed like a banshee, his voice rising into an ear-splitting wail. He fell forwards towards me, aiming the knife at my heart, a look of fury darkening his face.
A gunshot rang out behind me. A perfectly round scarlet hole appeared in Friend’s shoulder. He jerked, twisting and gurgling in pain. Black blood spattered my face and neck, feeling as cold as dry ice. I rolled away as his body came down, the knife landing only inches from my chest. It quivered there, its tip stuck deeply in the wooden floor.
Friend’s features changed rapidly in front of my eyes, dripping and melting. The mask of humanity he wore started to fall away, revealing a spinning black hole of a head with a single red eye in the center. Wounded and leaking blood the color of waste oil, he skittered away on four lengthening skeletal limbs, crawling like a spider. His clothes stretched and tightened around his changing, bulging flesh. Breathing hard, I turned to look at my savior.
I recognized the withered old face of my neighbor, a man we all called Bones. He had no family that I had ever seen, and lived a solitary life, almost that of a hermit. I had talked to him a few times, been invited into his home even. His walls were covered with the taxidermied heads of animals, black bears and bucks and moose he had killed. Crossbows, guns and hunting bows of all kinds had lain scattered over nearly every room. He was an outdoorsman at heart.
“Bones,” I whispered in a choked voice. “Thank God.” He shuffled forwards, a small, very thin old man with a sunken bird chest. His giant, rectangular glasses magnified his eyes to the size of dinnerplates, and a white wizard beard hung down to the center of his chest. Jack and I had often joked that he looked like a character from Duck Dynasty. He holstered his pistol around his waist before reaching down a trembling hand and helping me up.
“Something happened,” Bones said grimly. “When that siren went off. I was looking outside, just smoking and sipping some black tea, and I saw it happen. Everything started sputtering and shimmering, and this thick, black mist rose over the streets and houses. When it finally blew away, I saw… this.” He waved a hand outside for emphasis, motioning at the apocalyptic scene.
The streets heaved in great cracks and fissures, as if an earthquake had rolled through the earth. The houses looked like they had survived a nuclear apocalypse. The windows were all shattered. Tiny shards of glass littered the ground like splinters of diamond. The roofs were peeled away and rotting, with enormous holes eaten into the centers of most of them. Something like spider silk covered the dilapidated walls of most of the houses on the street, formed in symmetrical webs that rose two or three stories high.
Behind me, the radio suddenly turned on, the lights flickering overhead. The power all along the street flashed on and off, the streetlights outside strobing at the same erratic frequency. Something like a metallic shriek rang out through the radio’s speaker. Bones and I jumped, turning to look backwards at the old radio laying on the kitchen counter.
“This isn’t the real world!” a man screamed over the radio. I immediately recognized the terrified voice of Jack. My heart dropped into my stomach. “Don’t believe anything you see or hear here. The anomaly is spreading. Laura, I know you can hear me. I’m sorry for everything. Listen, to get out of this, there are a few things you need to remember.
“First, you should know there are gateways in this place, portals that lead back to our world. You can recognize them by the blinding white light radiating from them. It might be a bedroom door, a window, even a kitchen cabinet or a box. They form randomly throughout the anomaly and are highly unstable, often lasting for only seconds. If you find one, take it immediately. These are your only way home.
“Second, the entities here can take the form of any person or animal. But you’ll know them by the shadows that surround them. To kill them, you want to go for the crimson eye in the center of their faces.
“Third, there are places with food, water and other supplies. They will look like dilapidated gas stations with the name ‘Hel’s Market’ on them. These are safe spaces where the things on the streets don’t roam. Don’t stay in there too long, though, or you might see Hel. She doesn’t like visitors.”
“Jack? Where the hell are you?!” I screamed at the radio, running over and shaking it like a crying baby, hearing random pieces inside the old gadget give a metallic rattle. But the speaker only gave a hiss of static as the radio died in my hands. A million thoughts seemed to run through my head at once. Was Jack still alive? Why had his voice come on the radio? Why had his writing been on the note? Bones came up behind me, putting a slight hand on my shoulder.
“We’ll find him,” Bones said. “Jack’s a tough guy. But we need to start moving. We can’t stay here forever. We’re going to need to find supplies. Everything around here is trash.”
“It could be worse out there than it is here,” I argued. “Why do we need to keep moving? We could barricade ourselves inside and wait for the police, and the… military, and…”
“Lady, you’re living in a dream world,” Bones said coldly, his magnified eyes turning into owlish slits. “We don’t know how long we’re going to be here. You don’t even know where Jack is. You have zero supplies, zilcho. You could barricade yourself somewhere and slowly starve to death, but that wouldn’t help us much.” His words made me think. I nodded.
“Fine, but we should grab some food and water first,” I said glumly, my head spinning. I felt sick and tired from all of this, yet the feeling rose in my chest that I hadn’t seen anything yet. Bones gave a faint smile, the corners of his lips twitching as he watched me.
I went over to the kitchen sink, turning it on. For a long moment, nothing happened. There was a burping, gurgling sound deep down in the pipes. They clattered and shook as if thousands of rats were slinking through them. The faucet bubbled and hissed frothy dark water. Finally, it spat a gout of thick scarlet blood all over the rusted sink, squirming with dozens of writhing maggots. I gasped, backpedaling. The smell of iron and rot from the rancid mess sputtering out of the faucet in waves was sickening. Repressing an urge to gag, I reached forward and slammed the handle down.
“Yup, that’s what I expected,” Bones said grimly. He looked around with a blank expression on his face, as if he were only on a stroll at the park. At that same moment, the lights overhead flickered one last time and died. The cracked and broken street lamps outside went dark simultaneously- at least those few that still worked.
I went over to the fridge, opening the door. The nauseating smell of rot exploded across the room, hitting me in the face like a slap. I gagged, seeing clouds of black and yellow mold growing over dried, twisted heaps of decaying food. The milk had become a soupy mess in the container with black tendrils growing along the sides of the exploded jug. I slammed the fridge door shut. I ran over to the front door and stuck my head out, inhaling sweet, clean air. Bones followed slowly behind me, seemingly unaffected.
“Don’t look like we’re getting any food or water from here,” he said contemplatively. “My place ain’t any better. When that siren hit and the black mist came, it changed everything- ate at things, as if time had been turned on fast forward. By the time the fog had gone, my house was a wreck. The food in the fridge was all rot-gut sludge, and the cans in the pantry were ready to explode. My guns were all rusted heaps of junk, the crossbows twisted and the strings snapped. Some of them had tiny black spiders building webs on them.”
“So how’d you get the pistol?” I asked, curious. He looked at me as if I were an idiot.
“I had it on me when it happened,” he said slowly, as if speaking to a mentally deficient child. I nodded, looking around for a weapon I could use. In the living room, I found a metal baseball bat that Jack had bought years ago. Like everything else, it had been eaten away by the ravages of time. Streaks of dark rust covered the length of it. I swung it a few times, feeling that it still felt structurally intact.
“Let’s go,” I said, following Bones outside.
***
We headed deeper into civilization, towards the downtown area with restaurants, gas stations and grocery stores. The sky above had no stars, no sun or moon. It swirled in a dark blue hurricane, meeting in a black eye at the center. The cyclonic clouds peeled away like old scabs. Some pale light came, casting everything in a cyanotic light. I saw pale, dirty faces disappearing into the alleyways and ruined homes, many of them apparently of children.
“I saw them too,” Bones muttered, holding his pistol tightly by his side. “They look like pictures of kids at Auschwitz I’ve seen. Starving and filthy. Where’s their parents, you think?” I shuddered to think about it. What if this place was sucking random people in, just making them disappear from the world? What if it was spreading, like a cancerous tumor hidden under gauze?
I had nearly forgotten about Friend, the strange shape-shifting creature who wore Jack’s face, but he hadn’t forgotten about me. We were passing the burnt-out hulk of a tractor-trailer when his shadowy face shot around the corner, staring at us with Jack’s face. He had eyes like two burnt holes, black and smoldering. His body was a strange combination of spider and human, the thin limbs ending in sharp points. Fine, dark hairs like needles covered his arms and legs. The bullet wound had apparently already healed. Black blood had crusted onto the surfaces of his shirt and pants. He didn’t hesitate to attack. He swung an insectile arm at Bones’ chest. I screamed, seeing it all happen in slow motion.
The limb went straight through Bones’ heart. Bright red arterial blood immediately began flooding out as he looked down in shock, still holding the pistol in one hand. He gurgled, dropping the gun and falling forward, dragging the arm down with him. I had the baseball bat in my hands. With all of my strength, I swung it at the creature’s head. It made contact with a fleshy thud. The soft, yielding flesh of Friend cratered under the impact. Friend made a soft hissing sound as the wound bubbled and danced as if a nest of mice were about to emerge.
I leapt for the pistol. A choked sound rasped from Bones’ trembling lips. The adrenaline rush made me feel no pain as I hit the hard, cracked road, rolling as I landed. I felt the cold metal of the pistol’s grip under my hand. I raised it, feeling the stab wound Friend had given me earlier rip back open. Fresh streams of blood soaked my clothes as I fired, dripping from the long slash along my arm.
The top of Friend’s head exploded, the body transforming before my eyes into a black, spidery humanoid with a single spinning red eye in the center of its pointed skull. Dark blood the color of asphalt leaked down its naked, glossy body. It had no mouth or nose that I could see, but fine silvery hairs covered its jointed arms and legs. The eye widened in pain as it stared into the barrel of the pistol, one blade-like arm still caught in Bones’ chest. I remembered the transmission that had come through the radio and aimed for the center of the spinning eye.
“Why do you keep taking Jack’s form?” I asked Friend, the gun feeling heavy in my trembling hand. “Why just him?”
“I can take the form of any who are part of the Church of the Final Rapture, those who have given their souls to the dark presence here,” he hissed cryptically. He jerked forward, trying to bring his other blade-like arm up towards my neck with a quick slashing blow. I instantly fired, pulling the trigger over and over.
When the first of the bullets pierced his eye, I saw a blinding explosion come from the center of it, like a flashbang radiating light the color of an infected wound. Orange the color of pus spun around bright reds and necrotic blacks. I stepped back, crying out. I instinctively brought my hand up to cover my eyes.
When I could see again, I found only a smoking crater in the spot where Friend and Bones had stood. Gray smoke hissed from the center of it. I knelt down, seeing a dark, jelly-like substance covering the jagged patches of concrete. I quickly realized it was flesh, though whether human or alien, I couldn’t say.
Shell-shocked, I stumbled over to Bones’ melted pants, feeling around his waist until I felt the cold metal of an extra magazine. I had emptied all the bullets in the gun fighting Friend. To my dismay, I realized Bones only had one extra magazine.
Feeling sick and weak, I stumbled away, heading towards downtown, hoping against hope that I would find some solace or answers there.
***
I was wavering on my feet like a drunk woman. As I got closer to the center of town, I found dead bodies hanging from the lampposts, many of them mummified or skeletal. I wondered how many people lived in this hellish world.
I heard crying ahead of me, far off in the distance. I saw a little girl kneeling below the body of a young woman. The corpse looked fresh. The tip of the dead woman’s black tongue poked out through her stiff blue lips. The young girl’s wails tore at my heart.
The girl was wearing rags, tatters of a shirt and pants that were covered in streaks of what looked like dirt and blood. Her face was grimy, but her eyes were big and blue. She looked up at me suddenly as I drew near, panic twisting her small face. She reminded me of the baby I had, the one who had died of crib death a few months earlier. My daughter had the same big blue eyes as this girl here. I looked around the destroyed world, seeing there were more spiderwebs covering the ruined buildings here.
“Little girl, what are you doing here?” I asked. She grabbed my shirt, pushing her small face against my thigh.
“They killed my mommy,” she wailed, trying not to look at the hanging corpse. I hugged her.
“Who did?” I asked. “Who killed all these people?” She looked up, surprised.
“How do you not know? It’s the Church of the Final Rapture. They’re trying to spread this…” She waved a dirty hand around for emphasis, wiping tears from her bloodshot eyes. “They think if they can spread this bad place far enough, then it will lead to the Final Judgment, and Jesus will come back and good will finally win. But first, they say they need to kill a lot of people and make the battle happen.” She shook her small head. “They’re crazy. A bunch of religious nuts, Mommy always said. And she was right. Look what they did to her.”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Marian,” she answered in a small, diffident voice. I helped her up to her feet.
“I’m Laura,” I said, “and you can’t stay here forever, Marian. There are bad things here. Is it true there are ways out of here, doorways of light or something? Have you seen any?”
“I caught a glimpse of one once,” she answered. “It was beautiful. Like looking into a rainbow. I thought I could hear singing.” Her eyes grew distant and far-away. I took her hand, urging her to walk forwards, away from the corpse of her mother.
“So what happened?” I asked, trying to keep Marian talking.
“I saw it, but by the time I found Mom and told her, it had evaporated…” We turned a corner. Looming there overhead, we came face-to-face with what had made the webs.
***
My first thought was that it was some cross between a horse and an insect, the height of a small child and over a dozen feet long. It had the body of a struggling old man in its insectile jaws. They jutted out like the pincers of a stag beetle with wicked serrated edges. Two bulbous black eyes emerged from the sides of its head, the size of baseballs. They didn’t appear to have any lids. They stared at us, unblinking. I saw myself and Marian reflected in those dark orbs, as if they were an obsidian mirror. The pale chitinous shell of the creature shimmered with rainbows as it moved in a blur towards us. Its snout was rounded with two nostril holes. Stringy, blood-flecked mucus constantly dribbled down its eldritch face, falling down from its nose and mouth.
The hundreds of long, skittering legs moved in rhythmic peristaltic waves. The old man continuously kicked and punched at the monstrous face, but the abomination didn’t seem to notice or care. Blood dribbled from his toothless mouth and deep slashes covered his chest, stomach and legs. His lips and fingernails took on a faint bluish cast. As its black eyes focused on us, frothy bubbles of clear saliva started dripping from its flexing pincers. With a primal, reptilian hiss, it threw its head to the side. The dying man soared through the air, smashing into a concrete wall with a bone-shattering thud.
“Stop!” I cried instinctively, raising the pistol and firing. Marian screamed, running behind me and hugging my leg as the dark juggernaut ran us down.
The first bullet caught it in the neck, but the thick black plates of scales deflected it easily, leaving only a series of fine cracks running down its torso. I kept firing, aiming at its face. The second one hit it in the right eye, which exploded like a water balloon filled with blue blood. Its wailing intensified until I thought my eardrums might explode. Half-blinded, its body slithered forward like a snake’s, its many legs driving it towards us.
I jumped to the side at the last second, but Marian wasn’t so lucky. The creature’s massive pincers wrapped around her chest, grabbing her and lifting her into the air. Deep slices appeared in her rags of clothes as she cried, pleading for help. I inhaled deeply, aiming for the abomination’s face, hoping I wouldn’t hit the girl.
The last bullet in the magazine pierced its other eye. It exploded. The creature dropped Mirian to the ground, wailing a steam-whistle shriek. I grabbed Marian’s hand, lifting her off the ground.
“Run!” I hissed through gritted teeth, pulling her forward. Up ahead, I saw lights illuminating a store. It was the only building with electricity that I could see. I found it strange.
As we got closer, I saw the sign, reading: “Hel’s Market”.
***
The insectoid creature’s agonized screams drew other skittering monstrosities forward. They crawled out of the side streets and alleys, their strange horse faces and insectile jaws working furiously as if tasting the air for prey. I remembered the rules on the radio, when they had said the markets were a safe spot.
We ran through the door into a building that hadn't decayed like everything else. It felt air conditioned and cool. The glass here was intact, and rows after rows of cold drinks, ice cream and frozen meals stretched out before us. It looked like a regular convenience store, but in the back, I saw a doorless threshold with stairs that led down into a shadowy basement. I shuddered as I looked at it. Outside, the creatures had stopped at the front door, their bulbous eyes staring intently in at us.
“Are you OK?” I asked Mirian, looking at her injuries. The creature had left two deep slices along the sides of her chest. They bled freely, soaking her tattered rags in fresh streaks of scarlet. She nodded silently, tears running down her rounded cheeks. We quickly grabbed drinks and snacks, chugging soda and energy drinks and eating candy and beef jerky. I didn’t realize just how hungry I was after nearly dying so many times, and Marian looked like she hadn’t eaten in days.
I was staring out the front glass window, looking at the creatures waiting there for us with hunger and bloodlust gleaming in their alien eyes, when I heard heavy footsteps ascending the stairs at the back of the store. Mirian grabbed my hand tightly.
“I think something’s coming,” she whispered in terror.
***
Through the dark threshold, I saw a woman looming nearly ten feet tall. The left half of her body was decayed and rotted, mummified and gray, like everything in this world. The right was beautiful and young, the skin pink and healthy. Behind her, I saw her dragging a man bound tightly in razor-wire, the sharp edges biting into his skin. I instantly recognized Jack.
“Jack?” I asked, stepping back towards the door.
“See your husband,” Hel hissed in a shadowy voice. She threw the trembling mass of bloody flesh at my feet. Jack screamed, kicking and twisting.
“Get… out of here!” he whispered at me through teeth streaked with crimson. “I’ll… help you…”
“Did you help cause this?” I asked. Hel looked between us with sadistic pleasure, the living part of her mouth splitting into a grin. The dead part cracked, the dry skin ripping and showing blackened teeth underneath. Jack nodded.
“The Church… of the Final Rapture… yes, we tried to spread the anomaly, to end all suffering, to cause God to notice us again and come back…” Hel laughed at that, a sound like grating metal.
“Foolish men,” she gurgled. “You shouldn’t have played with things you didn’t understand.” Jack’s eyes grew big. There was a moment of clarity as he met my gaze, motioning towards the black door at the back of the store.
“I’ll… do what I can…” he said, “with what the Church has taught me.” He closed his eyes as Hel drew near, her heavy footsteps shaking the store. She lifted up one giant, naked foot over his head, holding it there like a guillotine blade. It came down with a crunch.
The door at the back of the store started vibrating and shimmering with white light as Jack died. I heard singing from it. Grabbing Marian’s arm, I pulled her towards it. A large, rotted hand came out, grabbing at my hair. I felt myself pulled back off my feet.
Like a rabid animal, Marian ran forward, sinking her sharp teeth into Hel's wrist. I felt the grip release, my back smashing hard against the floor. The wind was instantly knocked out of my lungs. Grabbing Marian's hand, we crawled towards the door, only feet away. Beautiful, angelic singing resonated through it, growing louder as we got closer. Hel shrieked with fury as we crossed the threshold, disappearing into the light. Everything dissolved in the blinding radiance, and for a moment, I felt warm and free.
***
I found myself back home with Marian, the Sun outside bright and clear. The freezer was still open, the dismembered head staring blankly out at me. Marian was gently crying, cradling her bleeding chest. All of the agonies and wounds I had suffered instantly started shrieking, grating my nerves.
Sickened, I stumbled outside and threw up, trying to forget the nightmares and broken bodies of the anomaly.

Life in Frost Hollow had always been fairly normal, up until a few days ago. My husband and I had small issues and arguments, like any couple, but there was no sign of the severe transformation that would escalate into such gruesome, nightmarish scenes.
I always woke early. The day that it all started, I rose around dawn to see the muted gleam of an infant sunrise shining through the window. I looked over to Jack’s side of the bed, seeing it empty. It appeared unslept in, which I found strange, as he worked the night shift and would nearly always be home and in bed by 3 or 4 AM.
But ever since he had found our newborn daughter dead in her crib, he had been acting strange, disappearing at random hours and occasionally bringing a “friend” home. The people he brought were always young, glassy-eyed guys I had never seen before, who often followed him around in an eerie silence like ducklings following a mother duck.
I made a fresh pot of coffee, going out onto the porch as the world came to life. The Sun rose overhead like a burning angel, a fiery eye in a vast expanse of cloudless blue. I knew it would be another scorcher of a day, humid and sticky. I watched early-morning joggers passing by. I wondered where Jack was. I pulled out my cell phone, checking to see if he had sent me any messages, but there was nothing there.
As I sat on the front porch, I thought about my fading youth. I had once hair the color of summer sunlight, but now it was going gray. The small wrinkles around my mouth and eyes seemed to be lengthening and deepening every day. Everything in the world seemed to grow dusty and brittle, like one enormous sarcophagus. I felt certain I would never have another child, never see bright blue eyes staring up at me from the crib again.
Far off down the street, there was a strange translucent rippling in the air, like burning heat rising off desert sands. It expanded into a perfectly flat wall. It cut across trees, homes and cars. I squinted, realizing that it was coming nearer with every heartbeat. I thought it was some kind of bizarre meteorological phenomenon, some sort of heat mirage or humidity bubble. As it slowly crept closer, I got bored, pulling out my phone to read the news.
After a few minutes sitting and people-watching, I went inside to make some breakfast. I ambled over to the freezer, looking inside for something edible, maybe some chicken tenders I could deep-fry next to some eggs and toast. Instead, I found a decapitated human head, its open, staring eyes glassy and frostbitten. I felt a scream welling up in my throat as I dropped my coffee mug to the floor. It shattered, spraying drops of burning hot liquid all over my legs.
The freezing mist slunk towards me like ghostly hands, obscuring the face’s features for a long moment. I wondered if this was just an extremely realistic mannequin head. I looked at the blue lips, pressed together as if in an expression of disapproval, saw the ragged patches of black flesh at the bottom of the neck, and knew it was real. Frozen crystals of dark blood clung to the bottom of the head in a black pool, gluing it to the freezer floor and keeping it in an upright position.
Between the lips, I saw a folded piece of paper. On the front, in flowing, black cursive, read two words: “To Laura”. I hesitated for a couple heartbeats, then snatched the note from the dismembered head. The lips refused to let it go at first, until I gently wriggled it from side to side. It came loose with a wet, sucking sound.
The moment I freed the note, a siren rang out down the street, the volume deafening. It rose and fell in shrill wails for a few seconds. I saw the fridge tremble in front of me under the onslaught of such noise. Black mist slowly started to ooze from every surface. By the time it evaporated a few seconds later, the fridge looked like it had aged fifty years. Enormous rust spots covered its exterior, and the smell of rotting food was instantly overwhelming, like the rancid odor of roadkill putrefying under a burning sun.
The rest of the kitchen seemed to have changed as well. Everything had grown old and filthy. The counters were covered in cobwebs and grime. Deep cracks ran through the walls, and the windows were all broken.
Turning back to the freezer, I studied the mutilated head’s features more thoroughly. It was a woman with raven-black hair and blue eyes, probably in her early twenties. Who was this person? How had they died, and how had their head gotten in my freezer? What was that horrible siren?
I unfolded the note, seeing Jack’s flowing handwriting there. My heart felt like it dropped out of my chest as I quickly scanned the words.
“Dear Laura,
“If you’re reading this, it means you found the head. It’s probably a good thing, I think. There are some things I have kept secret from you, from everyone, for a long time.
“I don’t know when it first began, when this fractured piece of my personality gained control. It all started innocently enough- peeking in people’s windows when they weren’t looking, or stalking random joggers for days without being seen. It was always a rush to get away with it.
“Soon, I would break into people’s houses and rearrange all their furniture. I’d hide a portable camera in the corner or on top of a bookshelf and watch their reactions. Oh, how I laughed! As you can imagine, it was quite fun. Life doesn’t have enough laughter, after all. It seems more like wandering across an endless desert sometimes.
“But eventually, I would stumble across an oasis, a resting place in this never-ending life of shit. Or at least, that other piece of my personality did. You might not believe me, but the first time I killed, it was an accident. Perhaps it was fate sending the first pebbles skittering down over the ledge that would inevitably lead to an avalanche.
“I had been doing my usual routine, breaking into houses, moving things around, sometimes writing Satanic messages on the wall in pig’s blood. It was all to keep people on their toes, you know? Just for chuckles and smiles. But, still, I always kept my pistol on me. I had walked up and down the streets, seeing the mail piling up outside one old colonial home surrounded by a grove of thick trees. I had found the house empty when I scoped it out originally. It seemed perfect. That night, I made my way inside.
“I remember hearing the front door unlock abruptly in the middle of the night. I tried to run towards the window in the bathroom around back, the way I had come in originally. But the man must have heard my footsteps. He came around the corner with a shotgun, his face beet-red. He was screaming and hollering. I was crawling through the window when he started raising the gun. The ringing sound as he pumped a round in the chamber was like a scream from God, telling me to awaken. At that moment, I knew it was kill or be killed. Before he could pull the trigger, I aimed for his head and fired twice. I remember the rush of pleasure as his face disintegrated into a puddle of blood and bone chips.
“After that, things start to get hazy. At first, I thought it was a psychotic breakdown, because something started wearing my face, following me when I went crawling through the neighborhood. Perhaps it is a part of me in some way, my true self. After all, murder is Godly, the pure power of the divine, and killing in the name of God is always a mercy. So says the Savior.
“Well, anyway, I’m rambling. It’s time to finish this letter before I start to sound crazy. We can’t have that, can we? What will the neighbors think?
“The main thing to remember is: don’t look behind you.
“I’ll see you very soon.”
I read the last line a few times before it sunk into my mind. Don’t look behind you? It didn’t make any sense.
Then I heard the choked giggling from the pantry closet. It started low, like the first rumblings of an earthquake. The door was left open a fraction of an inch. One bloodshot eye stared at me through the crack. It flicked quickly to the left and right, the pupil dilated and insane.
“Jack?” I whispered, feeling sick and weak. “What’s… what’s wrong?” I slowly backpedaled towards the front door. The laughter turned into a gurgle, something that might have come from the lips of a drowning man. He flung the door open, his face pale and bloodless. Trickles of dried blood covered his arms and hands. Under his fingernails, I saw clotted black gore. Translucent black shadows swirled around his face and chest, spiraling up into a vortex like a dark whirlwind. They shimmered all around him, distorting his features and seeming to increase in intensity by the second.
“Jack isn’t here anymore,” he hissed in a diseased voice. His lips split apart, revealing teeth that looked far too long and sharp. “He’s hidden behind the veil, rotting under the floorboards. Even now, he tries to claw his way up.” He stepped towards me, revealing a long butcher’s knife in one hand, its steel stained a deep scarlet. Fresh blood still dripped from the tip.
“Stay away from me,” I shrieked, glancing behind me. The town looked different now, the streets deserted. Dark shadows danced over everything, as if there were a solar eclipse. The entire world seemed to exhale, a low, diseased hissing that radiated from everything all around me.
This strange monster wearing Jack’s face continued moving closer, seeming to draw power from the changes. His eyes darkened in a flash, turning black and cloudy. The cyclone of shadows twisting around his body moved faster, a curtain of darkness so thick that it started to obscure his face.
“My name is Friend,” he gurgled, lunging forward with the knife. I instinctively pulled away, stumbling back towards the open front door. I felt a cold pain radiate down my left arm, a slashing pain that made my vision turn white with adrenaline and shock. A slash opened up on the top of my skin, fresh blood bubbling out instantly. I fell backwards through the door onto the front porch, smacking my head hard on the wooden porch. Friend slunk towards me, a hurricane of blackness with an eerie human pillar at the center. He stared down at me with a grin like a razor blade, letting fresh blood, my blood, drip off the blade and patter gently to the rotted, mold-streaked floor.
I kicked forward with all of my strength, aiming a blow at his knee. I heard something crack, felt the leg give with a sickening explosion of black blood. The flesh felt loose and spongy, almost boneless. Friend wailed like a banshee, his voice rising into an ear-splitting wail. He fell forwards towards me, aiming the knife at my heart, a look of fury darkening his face.
A gunshot rang out behind me. A perfectly round scarlet hole appeared in Friend’s shoulder. He jerked, twisting and gurgling in pain. Black blood spattered my face and neck, feeling as cold as dry ice. I rolled away as his body came down, the knife landing only inches from my chest. It quivered there, its tip stuck deeply in the wooden floor.
Friend’s features changed rapidly in front of my eyes, dripping and melting. The mask of humanity he wore started to fall away, revealing a spinning black hole of a head with a single red eye in the center. Wounded and leaking blood the color of waste oil, he skittered away on four lengthening skeletal limbs, crawling like a spider. His clothes stretched and tightened around his changing, bulging flesh. Breathing hard, I turned to look at my savior.
I recognized the withered old face of my neighbor, a man we all called Bones. He had no family that I had ever seen, and lived a solitary life, almost that of a hermit. I had talked to him a few times, been invited into his home even. His walls were covered with the taxidermied heads of animals, black bears and bucks and moose he had killed. Crossbows, guns and hunting bows of all kinds had lain scattered over nearly every room. He was an outdoorsman at heart.
“Bones,” I whispered in a choked voice. “Thank God.” He shuffled forwards, a small, very thin old man with a sunken bird chest. His giant, rectangular glasses magnified his eyes to the size of dinnerplates, and a white wizard beard hung down to the center of his chest. Jack and I had often joked that he looked like a character from Duck Dynasty. He holstered his pistol around his waist before reaching down a trembling hand and helping me up.
“Something happened,” Bones said grimly. “When that siren went off. I was looking outside, just smoking and sipping some black tea, and I saw it happen. Everything started sputtering and shimmering, and this thick, black mist rose over the streets and houses. When it finally blew away, I saw… this.” He waved a hand outside for emphasis, motioning at the apocalyptic scene.
The streets heaved in great cracks and fissures, as if an earthquake had rolled through the earth. The houses looked like they had survived a nuclear apocalypse. The windows were all shattered. Tiny shards of glass littered the ground like splinters of diamond. The roofs were peeled away and rotting, with enormous holes eaten into the centers of most of them. Something like spider silk covered the dilapidated walls of most of the houses on the street, formed in symmetrical webs that rose two or three stories high.
Behind me, the radio suddenly turned on, the lights flickering overhead. The power all along the street flashed on and off, the streetlights outside strobing at the same erratic frequency. Something like a metallic shriek rang out through the radio’s speaker. Bones and I jumped, turning to look backwards at the old radio laying on the kitchen counter.
“This isn’t the real world!” a man screamed over the radio. I immediately recognized the terrified voice of Jack. My heart dropped into my stomach. “Don’t believe anything you see or hear here. The anomaly is spreading. Laura, I know you can hear me. I’m sorry for everything. Listen, to get out of this, there are a few things you need to remember.
“First, you should know there are gateways in this place, portals that lead back to our world. You can recognize them by the blinding white light radiating from them. It might be a bedroom door, a window, even a kitchen cabinet or a box. They form randomly throughout the anomaly and are highly unstable, often lasting for only seconds. If you find one, take it immediately. These are your only way home.
“Second, the entities here can take the form of any person or animal. But you’ll know them by the shadows that surround them. To kill them, you want to go for the crimson eye in the center of their faces.
“Third, there are places with food, water and other supplies. They will look like dilapidated gas stations with the name ‘Hel’s Market’ on them. These are safe spaces where the things on the streets don’t roam. Don’t stay in there too long, though, or you might see Hel. She doesn’t like visitors.”
“Jack? Where the hell are you?!” I screamed at the radio, running over and shaking it like a crying baby, hearing random pieces inside the old gadget give a metallic rattle. But the speaker only gave a hiss of static as the radio died in my hands. A million thoughts seemed to run through my head at once. Was Jack still alive? Why had his voice come on the radio? Why had his writing been on the note? Bones came up behind me, putting a slight hand on my shoulder.
“We’ll find him,” Bones said. “Jack’s a tough guy. But we need to start moving. We can’t stay here forever. We’re going to need to find supplies. Everything around here is trash.”
“It could be worse out there than it is here,” I argued. “Why do we need to keep moving? We could barricade ourselves inside and wait for the police, and the… military, and…”
“Lady, you’re living in a dream world,” Bones said coldly, his magnified eyes turning into owlish slits. “We don’t know how long we’re going to be here. You don’t even know where Jack is. You have zero supplies, zilcho. You could barricade yourself somewhere and slowly starve to death, but that wouldn’t help us much.” His words made me think. I nodded.
“Fine, but we should grab some food and water first,” I said glumly, my head spinning. I felt sick and tired from all of this, yet the feeling rose in my chest that I hadn’t seen anything yet. Bones gave a faint smile, the corners of his lips twitching as he watched me.
I went over to the kitchen sink, turning it on. For a long moment, nothing happened. There was a burping, gurgling sound deep down in the pipes. They clattered and shook as if thousands of rats were slinking through them. The faucet bubbled and hissed frothy dark water. Finally, it spat a gout of thick scarlet blood all over the rusted sink, squirming with dozens of writhing maggots. I gasped, backpedaling. The smell of iron and rot from the rancid mess sputtering out of the faucet in waves was sickening. Repressing an urge to gag, I reached forward and slammed the handle down.
“Yup, that’s what I expected,” Bones said grimly. He looked around with a blank expression on his face, as if he were only on a stroll at the park. At that same moment, the lights overhead flickered one last time and died. The cracked and broken street lamps outside went dark simultaneously- at least those few that still worked.
I went over to the fridge, opening the door. The nauseating smell of rot exploded across the room, hitting me in the face like a slap. I gagged, seeing clouds of black and yellow mold growing over dried, twisted heaps of decaying food. The milk had become a soupy mess in the container with black tendrils growing along the sides of the exploded jug. I slammed the fridge door shut. I ran over to the front door and stuck my head out, inhaling sweet, clean air. Bones followed slowly behind me, seemingly unaffected.
“Don’t look like we’re getting any food or water from here,” he said contemplatively. “My place ain’t any better. When that siren hit and the black mist came, it changed everything- ate at things, as if time had been turned on fast forward. By the time the fog had gone, my house was a wreck. The food in the fridge was all rot-gut sludge, and the cans in the pantry were ready to explode. My guns were all rusted heaps of junk, the crossbows twisted and the strings snapped. Some of them had tiny black spiders building webs on them.”
“So how’d you get the pistol?” I asked, curious. He looked at me as if I were an idiot.
“I had it on me when it happened,” he said slowly, as if speaking to a mentally deficient child. I nodded, looking around for a weapon I could use. In the living room, I found a metal baseball bat that Jack had bought years ago. Like everything else, it had been eaten away by the ravages of time. Streaks of dark rust covered the length of it. I swung it a few times, feeling that it still felt structurally intact.
“Let’s go,” I said, following Bones outside.
***
We headed deeper into civilization, towards the downtown area with restaurants, gas stations and grocery stores. The sky above had no stars, no sun or moon. It swirled in a dark blue hurricane, meeting in a black eye at the center. The cyclonic clouds peeled away like old scabs. Some pale light came, casting everything in a cyanotic light. I saw pale, dirty faces disappearing into the alleyways and ruined homes, many of them apparently of children.
“I saw them too,” Bones muttered, holding his pistol tightly by his side. “They look like pictures of kids at Auschwitz I’ve seen. Starving and filthy. Where’s their parents, you think?” I shuddered to think about it. What if this place was sucking random people in, just making them disappear from the world? What if it was spreading, like a cancerous tumor hidden under gauze?
I had nearly forgotten about Friend, the strange shape-shifting creature who wore Jack’s face, but he hadn’t forgotten about me. We were passing the burnt-out hulk of a tractor-trailer when his shadowy face shot around the corner, staring at us with Jack’s face. He had eyes like two burnt holes, black and smoldering. His body was a strange combination of spider and human, the thin limbs ending in sharp points. Fine, dark hairs like needles covered his arms and legs. The bullet wound had apparently already healed. Black blood had crusted onto the surfaces of his shirt and pants. He didn’t hesitate to attack. He swung an insectile arm at Bones’ chest. I screamed, seeing it all happen in slow motion.
The limb went straight through Bones’ heart. Bright red arterial blood immediately began flooding out as he looked down in shock, still holding the pistol in one hand. He gurgled, dropping the gun and falling forward, dragging the arm down with him. I had the baseball bat in my hands. With all of my strength, I swung it at the creature’s head. It made contact with a fleshy thud. The soft, yielding flesh of Friend cratered under the impact. Friend made a soft hissing sound as the wound bubbled and danced as if a nest of mice were about to emerge.
I leapt for the pistol. A choked sound rasped from Bones’ trembling lips. The adrenaline rush made me feel no pain as I hit the hard, cracked road, rolling as I landed. I felt the cold metal of the pistol’s grip under my hand. I raised it, feeling the stab wound Friend had given me earlier rip back open. Fresh streams of blood soaked my clothes as I fired, dripping from the long slash along my arm.
The top of Friend’s head exploded, the body transforming before my eyes into a black, spidery humanoid with a single spinning red eye in the center of its pointed skull. Dark blood the color of asphalt leaked down its naked, glossy body. It had no mouth or nose that I could see, but fine silvery hairs covered its jointed arms and legs. The eye widened in pain as it stared into the barrel of the pistol, one blade-like arm still caught in Bones’ chest. I remembered the transmission that had come through the radio and aimed for the center of the spinning eye.
“Why do you keep taking Jack’s form?” I asked Friend, the gun feeling heavy in my trembling hand. “Why just him?”
“I can take the form of any who are part of the Church of the Final Rapture, those who have given their souls to the dark presence here,” he hissed cryptically. He jerked forward, trying to bring his other blade-like arm up towards my neck with a quick slashing blow. I instantly fired, pulling the trigger over and over.
When the first of the bullets pierced his eye, I saw a blinding explosion come from the center of it, like a flashbang radiating light the color of an infected wound. Orange the color of pus spun around bright reds and necrotic blacks. I stepped back, crying out. I instinctively brought my hand up to cover my eyes.
When I could see again, I found only a smoking crater in the spot where Friend and Bones had stood. Gray smoke hissed from the center of it. I knelt down, seeing a dark, jelly-like substance covering the jagged patches of concrete. I quickly realized it was flesh, though whether human or alien, I couldn’t say.
Shell-shocked, I stumbled over to Bones’ melted pants, feeling around his waist until I felt the cold metal of an extra magazine. I had emptied all the bullets in the gun fighting Friend. To my dismay, I realized Bones only had one extra magazine.
Feeling sick and weak, I stumbled away, heading towards downtown, hoping against hope that I would find some solace or answers there.
***
I was wavering on my feet like a drunk woman. As I got closer to the center of town, I found dead bodies hanging from the lampposts, many of them mummified or skeletal. I wondered how many people lived in this hellish world.
I heard crying ahead of me, far off in the distance. I saw a little girl kneeling below the body of a young woman. The corpse looked fresh. The tip of the dead woman’s black tongue poked out through her stiff blue lips. The young girl’s wails tore at my heart.
The girl was wearing rags, tatters of a shirt and pants that were covered in streaks of what looked like dirt and blood. Her face was grimy, but her eyes were big and blue. She looked up at me suddenly as I drew near, panic twisting her small face. She reminded me of the baby I had, the one who had died of crib death a few months earlier. My daughter had the same big blue eyes as this girl here. I looked around the destroyed world, seeing there were more spiderwebs covering the ruined buildings here.
“Little girl, what are you doing here?” I asked. She grabbed my shirt, pushing her small face against my thigh.
“They killed my mommy,” she wailed, trying not to look at the hanging corpse. I hugged her.
“Who did?” I asked. “Who killed all these people?” She looked up, surprised.
“How do you not know? It’s the Church of the Final Rapture. They’re trying to spread this…” She waved a dirty hand around for emphasis, wiping tears from her bloodshot eyes. “They think if they can spread this bad place far enough, then it will lead to the Final Judgment, and Jesus will come back and good will finally win. But first, they say they need to kill a lot of people and make the battle happen.” She shook her small head. “They’re crazy. A bunch of religious nuts, Mommy always said. And she was right. Look what they did to her.”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Marian,” she answered in a small, diffident voice. I helped her up to her feet.
“I’m Laura,” I said, “and you can’t stay here forever, Marian. There are bad things here. Is it true there are ways out of here, doorways of light or something? Have you seen any?”
“I caught a glimpse of one once,” she answered. “It was beautiful. Like looking into a rainbow. I thought I could hear singing.” Her eyes grew distant and far-away. I took her hand, urging her to walk forwards, away from the corpse of her mother.
“So what happened?” I asked, trying to keep Marian talking.
“I saw it, but by the time I found Mom and told her, it had evaporated…” We turned a corner. Looming there overhead, we came face-to-face with what had made the webs.
***
My first thought was that it was some cross between a horse and an insect, the height of a small child and over a dozen feet long. It had the body of a struggling old man in its insectile jaws. They jutted out like the pincers of a stag beetle with wicked serrated edges. Two bulbous black eyes emerged from the sides of its head, the size of baseballs. They didn’t appear to have any lids. They stared at us, unblinking. I saw myself and Marian reflected in those dark orbs, as if they were an obsidian mirror. The pale chitinous shell of the creature shimmered with rainbows as it moved in a blur towards us. Its snout was rounded with two nostril holes. Stringy, blood-flecked mucus constantly dribbled down its eldritch face, falling down from its nose and mouth.
The hundreds of long, skittering legs moved in rhythmic peristaltic waves. The old man continuously kicked and punched at the monstrous face, but the abomination didn’t seem to notice or care. Blood dribbled from his toothless mouth and deep slashes covered his chest, stomach and legs. His lips and fingernails took on a faint bluish cast. As its black eyes focused on us, frothy bubbles of clear saliva started dripping from its flexing pincers. With a primal, reptilian hiss, it threw its head to the side. The dying man soared through the air, smashing into a concrete wall with a bone-shattering thud.
“Stop!” I cried instinctively, raising the pistol and firing. Marian screamed, running behind me and hugging my leg as the dark juggernaut ran us down.
The first bullet caught it in the neck, but the thick black plates of scales deflected it easily, leaving only a series of fine cracks running down its torso. I kept firing, aiming at its face. The second one hit it in the right eye, which exploded like a water balloon filled with blue blood. Its wailing intensified until I thought my eardrums might explode. Half-blinded, its body slithered forward like a snake’s, its many legs driving it towards us.
I jumped to the side at the last second, but Marian wasn’t so lucky. The creature’s massive pincers wrapped around her chest, grabbing her and lifting her into the air. Deep slices appeared in her rags of clothes as she cried, pleading for help. I inhaled deeply, aiming for the abomination’s face, hoping I wouldn’t hit the girl.
The last bullet in the magazine pierced its other eye. It exploded. The creature dropped Mirian to the ground, wailing a steam-whistle shriek. I grabbed Marian’s hand, lifting her off the ground.
“Run!” I hissed through gritted teeth, pulling her forward. Up ahead, I saw lights illuminating a store. It was the only building with electricity that I could see. I found it strange.
As we got closer, I saw the sign, reading: “Hel’s Market”.
***
The insectoid creature’s agonized screams drew other skittering monstrosities forward. They crawled out of the side streets and alleys, their strange horse faces and insectile jaws working furiously as if tasting the air for prey. I remembered the rules on the radio, when they had said the markets were a safe spot.
We ran through the door into a building that hadn't decayed like everything else. It felt air conditioned and cool. The glass here was intact, and rows after rows of cold drinks, ice cream and frozen meals stretched out before us. It looked like a regular convenience store, but in the back, I saw a doorless threshold with stairs that led down into a shadowy basement. I shuddered as I looked at it. Outside, the creatures had stopped at the front door, their bulbous eyes staring intently in at us.
“Are you OK?” I asked Mirian, looking at her injuries. The creature had left two deep slices along the sides of her chest. They bled freely, soaking her tattered rags in fresh streaks of scarlet. She nodded silently, tears running down her rounded cheeks. We quickly grabbed drinks and snacks, chugging soda and energy drinks and eating candy and beef jerky. I didn’t realize just how hungry I was after nearly dying so many times, and Marian looked like she hadn’t eaten in days.
I was staring out the front glass window, looking at the creatures waiting there for us with hunger and bloodlust gleaming in their alien eyes, when I heard heavy footsteps ascending the stairs at the back of the store. Mirian grabbed my hand tightly.
“I think something’s coming,” she whispered in terror.
***
Through the dark threshold, I saw a woman looming nearly ten feet tall. The left half of her body was decayed and rotted, mummified and gray, like everything in this world. The right was beautiful and young, the skin pink and healthy. Behind her, I saw her dragging a man bound tightly in razor-wire, the sharp edges biting into his skin. I instantly recognized Jack.
“Jack?” I asked, stepping back towards the door.
“See your husband,” Hel hissed in a shadowy voice. She threw the trembling mass of bloody flesh at my feet. Jack screamed, kicking and twisting.
“Get… out of here!” he whispered at me through teeth streaked with crimson. “I’ll… help you…”
“Did you help cause this?” I asked. Hel looked between us with sadistic pleasure, the living part of her mouth splitting into a grin. The dead part cracked, the dry skin ripping and showing blackened teeth underneath. Jack nodded.
“The Church… of the Final Rapture… yes, we tried to spread the anomaly, to end all suffering, to cause God to notice us again and come back…” Hel laughed at that, a sound like grating metal.
“Foolish men,” she gurgled. “You shouldn’t have played with things you didn’t understand.” Jack’s eyes grew big. There was a moment of clarity as he met my gaze, motioning towards the black door at the back of the store.
“I’ll… do what I can…” he said, “with what the Church has taught me.” He closed his eyes as Hel drew near, her heavy footsteps shaking the store. She lifted up one giant, naked foot over his head, holding it there like a guillotine blade. It came down with a crunch.
The door at the back of the store started vibrating and shimmering with white light as Jack died. I heard singing from it. Grabbing Marian’s arm, I pulled her towards it. A large, rotted hand came out, grabbing at my hair. I felt myself pulled back off my feet.
Like a rabid animal, Marian ran forward, sinking her sharp teeth into Hel's wrist. I felt the grip release, my back smashing hard against the floor. The wind was instantly knocked out of my lungs. Grabbing Marian's hand, we crawled towards the door, only feet away. Beautiful, angelic singing resonated through it, growing louder as we got closer. Hel shrieked with fury as we crossed the threshold, disappearing into the light. Everything dissolved in the blinding radiance, and for a moment, I felt warm and free.
***
I found myself back home with Marian, the Sun outside bright and clear. The freezer was still open, the dismembered head staring blankly out at me. Marian was gently crying, cradling her bleeding chest. All of the agonies and wounds I had suffered instantly started shrieking, grating my nerves.
Sickened, I stumbled outside and threw up, trying to forget the nightmares and broken bodies of the anomaly.

Life in Frost Hollow had always been fairly normal, up until a few days ago. My husband and I had small issues and arguments, like any couple, but there was no sign of the severe transformation that would escalate into such gruesome, nightmarish scenes.
I always woke early. The day that it all started, I rose around dawn to see the muted gleam of an infant sunrise shining through the window. I looked over to Jack’s side of the bed, seeing it empty. It appeared unslept in, which I found strange, as he worked the night shift and would nearly always be home and in bed by 3 or 4 AM.
But ever since he had found our newborn daughter dead in her crib, he had been acting strange, disappearing at random hours and occasionally bringing a “friend” home. The people he brought were always young, glassy-eyed guys I had never seen before, who often followed him around in an eerie silence like ducklings following a mother duck.
I made a fresh pot of coffee, going out onto the porch as the world came to life. The Sun rose overhead like a burning angel, a fiery eye in a vast expanse of cloudless blue. I knew it would be another scorcher of a day, humid and sticky. I watched early-morning joggers passing by. I wondered where Jack was. I pulled out my cell phone, checking to see if he had sent me any messages, but there was nothing there.
As I sat on the front porch, I thought about my fading youth. I had once hair the color of summer sunlight, but now it was going gray. The small wrinkles around my mouth and eyes seemed to be lengthening and deepening every day. Everything in the world seemed to grow dusty and brittle, like one enormous sarcophagus. I felt certain I would never have another child, never see bright blue eyes staring up at me from the crib again.
Far off down the street, there was a strange translucent rippling in the air, like burning heat rising off desert sands. It expanded into a perfectly flat wall. It cut across trees, homes and cars. I squinted, realizing that it was coming nearer with every heartbeat. I thought it was some kind of bizarre meteorological phenomenon, some sort of heat mirage or humidity bubble. As it slowly crept closer, I got bored, pulling out my phone to read the news.
After a few minutes sitting and people-watching, I went inside to make some breakfast. I ambled over to the freezer, looking inside for something edible, maybe some chicken tenders I could deep-fry next to some eggs and toast. Instead, I found a decapitated human head, its open, staring eyes glassy and frostbitten. I felt a scream welling up in my throat as I dropped my coffee mug to the floor. It shattered, spraying drops of burning hot liquid all over my legs.
The freezing mist slunk towards me like ghostly hands, obscuring the face’s features for a long moment. I wondered if this was just an extremely realistic mannequin head. I looked at the blue lips, pressed together as if in an expression of disapproval, saw the ragged patches of black flesh at the bottom of the neck, and knew it was real. Frozen crystals of dark blood clung to the bottom of the head in a black pool, gluing it to the freezer floor and keeping it in an upright position.
Between the lips, I saw a folded piece of paper. On the front, in flowing, black cursive, read two words: “To Laura”. I hesitated for a couple heartbeats, then snatched the note from the dismembered head. The lips refused to let it go at first, until I gently wriggled it from side to side. It came loose with a wet, sucking sound.
The moment I freed the note, a siren rang out down the street, the volume deafening. It rose and fell in shrill wails for a few seconds. I saw the fridge tremble in front of me under the onslaught of such noise. Black mist slowly started to ooze from every surface. By the time it evaporated a few seconds later, the fridge looked like it had aged fifty years. Enormous rust spots covered its exterior, and the smell of rotting food was instantly overwhelming, like the rancid odor of roadkill putrefying under a burning sun.
The rest of the kitchen seemed to have changed as well. Everything had grown old and filthy. The counters were covered in cobwebs and grime. Deep cracks ran through the walls, and the windows were all broken.
Turning back to the freezer, I studied the mutilated head’s features more thoroughly. It was a woman with raven-black hair and blue eyes, probably in her early twenties. Who was this person? How had they died, and how had their head gotten in my freezer? What was that horrible siren?
I unfolded the note, seeing Jack’s flowing handwriting there. My heart felt like it dropped out of my chest as I quickly scanned the words.
“Dear Laura,
“If you’re reading this, it means you found the head. It’s probably a good thing, I think. There are some things I have kept secret from you, from everyone, for a long time.
“I don’t know when it first began, when this fractured piece of my personality gained control. It all started innocently enough- peeking in people’s windows when they weren’t looking, or stalking random joggers for days without being seen. It was always a rush to get away with it.
“Soon, I would break into people’s houses and rearrange all their furniture. I’d hide a portable camera in the corner or on top of a bookshelf and watch their reactions. Oh, how I laughed! As you can imagine, it was quite fun. Life doesn’t have enough laughter, after all. It seems more like wandering across an endless desert sometimes.
“But eventually, I would stumble across an oasis, a resting place in this never-ending life of shit. Or at least, that other piece of my personality did. You might not believe me, but the first time I killed, it was an accident. Perhaps it was fate sending the first pebbles skittering down over the ledge that would inevitably lead to an avalanche.
“I had been doing my usual routine, breaking into houses, moving things around, sometimes writing Satanic messages on the wall in pig’s blood. It was all to keep people on their toes, you know? Just for chuckles and smiles. But, still, I always kept my pistol on me. I had walked up and down the streets, seeing the mail piling up outside one old colonial home surrounded by a grove of thick trees. I had found the house empty when I scoped it out originally. It seemed perfect. That night, I made my way inside.
“I remember hearing the front door unlock abruptly in the middle of the night. I tried to run towards the window in the bathroom around back, the way I had come in originally. But the man must have heard my footsteps. He came around the corner with a shotgun, his face beet-red. He was screaming and hollering. I was crawling through the window when he started raising the gun. The ringing sound as he pumped a round in the chamber was like a scream from God, telling me to awaken. At that moment, I knew it was kill or be killed. Before he could pull the trigger, I aimed for his head and fired twice. I remember the rush of pleasure as his face disintegrated into a puddle of blood and bone chips.
“After that, things start to get hazy. At first, I thought it was a psychotic breakdown, because something started wearing my face, following me when I went crawling through the neighborhood. Perhaps it is a part of me in some way, my true self. After all, murder is Godly, the pure power of the divine, and killing in the name of God is always a mercy. So says the Savior.
“Well, anyway, I’m rambling. It’s time to finish this letter before I start to sound crazy. We can’t have that, can we? What will the neighbors think?
“The main thing to remember is: don’t look behind you.
“I’ll see you very soon.”
I read the last line a few times before it sunk into my mind. Don’t look behind you? It didn’t make any sense.
Then I heard the choked giggling from the pantry closet. It started low, like the first rumblings of an earthquake. The door was left open a fraction of an inch. One bloodshot eye stared at me through the crack. It flicked quickly to the left and right, the pupil dilated and insane.
“Jack?” I whispered, feeling sick and weak. “What’s… what’s wrong?” I slowly backpedaled towards the front door. The laughter turned into a gurgle, something that might have come from the lips of a drowning man. He flung the door open, his face pale and bloodless. Trickles of dried blood covered his arms and hands. Under his fingernails, I saw clotted black gore. Translucent black shadows swirled around his face and chest, spiraling up into a vortex like a dark whirlwind. They shimmered all around him, distorting his features and seeming to increase in intensity by the second.
“Jack isn’t here anymore,” he hissed in a diseased voice. His lips split apart, revealing teeth that looked far too long and sharp. “He’s hidden behind the veil, rotting under the floorboards. Even now, he tries to claw his way up.” He stepped towards me, revealing a long butcher’s knife in one hand, its steel stained a deep scarlet. Fresh blood still dripped from the tip.
“Stay away from me,” I shrieked, glancing behind me. The town looked different now, the streets deserted. Dark shadows danced over everything, as if there were a solar eclipse. The entire world seemed to exhale, a low, diseased hissing that radiated from everything all around me.
This strange monster wearing Jack’s face continued moving closer, seeming to draw power from the changes. His eyes darkened in a flash, turning black and cloudy. The cyclone of shadows twisting around his body moved faster, a curtain of darkness so thick that it started to obscure his face.
“My name is Friend,” he gurgled, lunging forward with the knife. I instinctively pulled away, stumbling back towards the open front door. I felt a cold pain radiate down my left arm, a slashing pain that made my vision turn white with adrenaline and shock. A slash opened up on the top of my skin, fresh blood bubbling out instantly. I fell backwards through the door onto the front porch, smacking my head hard on the wooden porch. Friend slunk towards me, a hurricane of blackness with an eerie human pillar at the center. He stared down at me with a grin like a razor blade, letting fresh blood, my blood, drip off the blade and patter gently to the rotted, mold-streaked floor.
I kicked forward with all of my strength, aiming a blow at his knee. I heard something crack, felt the leg give with a sickening explosion of black blood. The flesh felt loose and spongy, almost boneless. Friend wailed like a banshee, his voice rising into an ear-splitting wail. He fell forwards towards me, aiming the knife at my heart, a look of fury darkening his face.
A gunshot rang out behind me. A perfectly round scarlet hole appeared in Friend’s shoulder. He jerked, twisting and gurgling in pain. Black blood spattered my face and neck, feeling as cold as dry ice. I rolled away as his body came down, the knife landing only inches from my chest. It quivered there, its tip stuck deeply in the wooden floor.
Friend’s features changed rapidly in front of my eyes, dripping and melting. The mask of humanity he wore started to fall away, revealing a spinning black hole of a head with a single red eye in the center. Wounded and leaking blood the color of waste oil, he skittered away on four lengthening skeletal limbs, crawling like a spider. His clothes stretched and tightened around his changing, bulging flesh. Breathing hard, I turned to look at my savior.
I recognized the withered old face of my neighbor, a man we all called Bones. He had no family that I had ever seen, and lived a solitary life, almost that of a hermit. I had talked to him a few times, been invited into his home even. His walls were covered with the taxidermied heads of animals, black bears and bucks and moose he had killed. Crossbows, guns and hunting bows of all kinds had lain scattered over nearly every room. He was an outdoorsman at heart.
“Bones,” I whispered in a choked voice. “Thank God.” He shuffled forwards, a small, very thin old man with a sunken bird chest. His giant, rectangular glasses magnified his eyes to the size of dinnerplates, and a white wizard beard hung down to the center of his chest. Jack and I had often joked that he looked like a character from Duck Dynasty. He holstered his pistol around his waist before reaching down a trembling hand and helping me up.
“Something happened,” Bones said grimly. “When that siren went off. I was looking outside, just smoking and sipping some black tea, and I saw it happen. Everything started sputtering and shimmering, and this thick, black mist rose over the streets and houses. When it finally blew away, I saw… this.” He waved a hand outside for emphasis, motioning at the apocalyptic scene.
The streets heaved in great cracks and fissures, as if an earthquake had rolled through the earth. The houses looked like they had survived a nuclear apocalypse. The windows were all shattered. Tiny shards of glass littered the ground like splinters of diamond. The roofs were peeled away and rotting, with enormous holes eaten into the centers of most of them. Something like spider silk covered the dilapidated walls of most of the houses on the street, formed in symmetrical webs that rose two or three stories high.
Behind me, the radio suddenly turned on, the lights flickering overhead. The power all along the street flashed on and off, the streetlights outside strobing at the same erratic frequency. Something like a metallic shriek rang out through the radio’s speaker. Bones and I jumped, turning to look backwards at the old radio laying on the kitchen counter.
“This isn’t the real world!” a man screamed over the radio. I immediately recognized the terrified voice of Jack. My heart dropped into my stomach. “Don’t believe anything you see or hear here. The anomaly is spreading. Laura, I know you can hear me. I’m sorry for everything. Listen, to get out of this, there are a few things you need to remember.
“First, you should know there are gateways in this place, portals that lead back to our world. You can recognize them by the blinding white light radiating from them. It might be a bedroom door, a window, even a kitchen cabinet or a box. They form randomly throughout the anomaly and are highly unstable, often lasting for only seconds. If you find one, take it immediately. These are your only way home.
“Second, the entities here can take the form of any person or animal. But you’ll know them by the shadows that surround them. To kill them, you want to go for the crimson eye in the center of their faces.
“Third, there are places with food, water and other supplies. They will look like dilapidated gas stations with the name ‘Hel’s Market’ on them. These are safe spaces where the things on the streets don’t roam. Don’t stay in there too long, though, or you might see Hel. She doesn’t like visitors.”
“Jack? Where the hell are you?!” I screamed at the radio, running over and shaking it like a crying baby, hearing random pieces inside the old gadget give a metallic rattle. But the speaker only gave a hiss of static as the radio died in my hands. A million thoughts seemed to run through my head at once. Was Jack still alive? Why had his voice come on the radio? Why had his writing been on the note? Bones came up behind me, putting a slight hand on my shoulder.
“We’ll find him,” Bones said. “Jack’s a tough guy. But we need to start moving. We can’t stay here forever. We’re going to need to find supplies. Everything around here is trash.”
“It could be worse out there than it is here,” I argued. “Why do we need to keep moving? We could barricade ourselves inside and wait for the police, and the… military, and…”
“Lady, you’re living in a dream world,” Bones said coldly, his magnified eyes turning into owlish slits. “We don’t know how long we’re going to be here. You don’t even know where Jack is. You have zero supplies, zilcho. You could barricade yourself somewhere and slowly starve to death, but that wouldn’t help us much.” His words made me think. I nodded.
“Fine, but we should grab some food and water first,” I said glumly, my head spinning. I felt sick and tired from all of this, yet the feeling rose in my chest that I hadn’t seen anything yet. Bones gave a faint smile, the corners of his lips twitching as he watched me.
I went over to the kitchen sink, turning it on. For a long moment, nothing happened. There was a burping, gurgling sound deep down in the pipes. They clattered and shook as if thousands of rats were slinking through them. The faucet bubbled and hissed frothy dark water. Finally, it spat a gout of thick scarlet blood all over the rusted sink, squirming with dozens of writhing maggots. I gasped, backpedaling. The smell of iron and rot from the rancid mess sputtering out of the faucet in waves was sickening. Repressing an urge to gag, I reached forward and slammed the handle down.
“Yup, that’s what I expected,” Bones said grimly. He looked around with a blank expression on his face, as if he were only on a stroll at the park. At that same moment, the lights overhead flickered one last time and died. The cracked and broken street lamps outside went dark simultaneously- at least those few that still worked.
I went over to the fridge, opening the door. The nauseating smell of rot exploded across the room, hitting me in the face like a slap. I gagged, seeing clouds of black and yellow mold growing over dried, twisted heaps of decaying food. The milk had become a soupy mess in the container with black tendrils growing along the sides of the exploded jug. I slammed the fridge door shut. I ran over to the front door and stuck my head out, inhaling sweet, clean air. Bones followed slowly behind me, seemingly unaffected.
“Don’t look like we’re getting any food or water from here,” he said contemplatively. “My place ain’t any better. When that siren hit and the black mist came, it changed everything- ate at things, as if time had been turned on fast forward. By the time the fog had gone, my house was a wreck. The food in the fridge was all rot-gut sludge, and the cans in the pantry were ready to explode. My guns were all rusted heaps of junk, the crossbows twisted and the strings snapped. Some of them had tiny black spiders building webs on them.”
“So how’d you get the pistol?” I asked, curious. He looked at me as if I were an idiot.
“I had it on me when it happened,” he said slowly, as if speaking to a mentally deficient child. I nodded, looking around for a weapon I could use. In the living room, I found a metal baseball bat that Jack had bought years ago. Like everything else, it had been eaten away by the ravages of time. Streaks of dark rust covered the length of it. I swung it a few times, feeling that it still felt structurally intact.
“Let’s go,” I said, following Bones outside.
***
We headed deeper into civilization, towards the downtown area with restaurants, gas stations and grocery stores. The sky above had no stars, no sun or moon. It swirled in a dark blue hurricane, meeting in a black eye at the center. The cyclonic clouds peeled away like old scabs. Some pale light came, casting everything in a cyanotic light. I saw pale, dirty faces disappearing into the alleyways and ruined homes, many of them apparently of children.
“I saw them too,” Bones muttered, holding his pistol tightly by his side. “They look like pictures of kids at Auschwitz I’ve seen. Starving and filthy. Where’s their parents, you think?” I shuddered to think about it. What if this place was sucking random people in, just making them disappear from the world? What if it was spreading, like a cancerous tumor hidden under gauze?
I had nearly forgotten about Friend, the strange shape-shifting creature who wore Jack’s face, but he hadn’t forgotten about me. We were passing the burnt-out hulk of a tractor-trailer when his shadowy face shot around the corner, staring at us with Jack’s face. He had eyes like two burnt holes, black and smoldering. His body was a strange combination of spider and human, the thin limbs ending in sharp points. Fine, dark hairs like needles covered his arms and legs. The bullet wound had apparently already healed. Black blood had crusted onto the surfaces of his shirt and pants. He didn’t hesitate to attack. He swung an insectile arm at Bones’ chest. I screamed, seeing it all happen in slow motion.
The limb went straight through Bones’ heart. Bright red arterial blood immediately began flooding out as he looked down in shock, still holding the pistol in one hand. He gurgled, dropping the gun and falling forward, dragging the arm down with him. I had the baseball bat in my hands. With all of my strength, I swung it at the creature’s head. It made contact with a fleshy thud. The soft, yielding flesh of Friend cratered under the impact. Friend made a soft hissing sound as the wound bubbled and danced as if a nest of mice were about to emerge.
I leapt for the pistol. A choked sound rasped from Bones’ trembling lips. The adrenaline rush made me feel no pain as I hit the hard, cracked road, rolling as I landed. I felt the cold metal of the pistol’s grip under my hand. I raised it, feeling the stab wound Friend had given me earlier rip back open. Fresh streams of blood soaked my clothes as I fired, dripping from the long slash along my arm.
The top of Friend’s head exploded, the body transforming before my eyes into a black, spidery humanoid with a single spinning red eye in the center of its pointed skull. Dark blood the color of asphalt leaked down its naked, glossy body. It had no mouth or nose that I could see, but fine silvery hairs covered its jointed arms and legs. The eye widened in pain as it stared into the barrel of the pistol, one blade-like arm still caught in Bones’ chest. I remembered the transmission that had come through the radio and aimed for the center of the spinning eye.
“Why do you keep taking Jack’s form?” I asked Friend, the gun feeling heavy in my trembling hand. “Why just him?”
“I can take the form of any who are part of the Church of the Final Rapture, those who have given their souls to the dark presence here,” he hissed cryptically. He jerked forward, trying to bring his other blade-like arm up towards my neck with a quick slashing blow. I instantly fired, pulling the trigger over and over.
When the first of the bullets pierced his eye, I saw a blinding explosion come from the center of it, like a flashbang radiating light the color of an infected wound. Orange the color of pus spun around bright reds and necrotic blacks. I stepped back, crying out. I instinctively brought my hand up to cover my eyes.
When I could see again, I found only a smoking crater in the spot where Friend and Bones had stood. Gray smoke hissed from the center of it. I knelt down, seeing a dark, jelly-like substance covering the jagged patches of concrete. I quickly realized it was flesh, though whether human or alien, I couldn’t say.
Shell-shocked, I stumbled over to Bones’ melted pants, feeling around his waist until I felt the cold metal of an extra magazine. I had emptied all the bullets in the gun fighting Friend. To my dismay, I realized Bones only had one extra magazine.
Feeling sick and weak, I stumbled away, heading towards downtown, hoping against hope that I would find some solace or answers there.
***
I was wavering on my feet like a drunk woman. As I got closer to the center of town, I found dead bodies hanging from the lampposts, many of them mummified or skeletal. I wondered how many people lived in this hellish world.
I heard crying ahead of me, far off in the distance. I saw a little girl kneeling below the body of a young woman. The corpse looked fresh. The tip of the dead woman’s black tongue poked out through her stiff blue lips. The young girl’s wails tore at my heart.
The girl was wearing rags, tatters of a shirt and pants that were covered in streaks of what looked like dirt and blood. Her face was grimy, but her eyes were big and blue. She looked up at me suddenly as I drew near, panic twisting her small face. She reminded me of the baby I had, the one who had died of crib death a few months earlier. My daughter had the same big blue eyes as this girl here. I looked around the destroyed world, seeing there were more spiderwebs covering the ruined buildings here.
“Little girl, what are you doing here?” I asked. She grabbed my shirt, pushing her small face against my thigh.
“They killed my mommy,” she wailed, trying not to look at the hanging corpse. I hugged her.
“Who did?” I asked. “Who killed all these people?” She looked up, surprised.
“How do you not know? It’s the Church of the Final Rapture. They’re trying to spread this…” She waved a dirty hand around for emphasis, wiping tears from her bloodshot eyes. “They think if they can spread this bad place far enough, then it will lead to the Final Judgment, and Jesus will come back and good will finally win. But first, they say they need to kill a lot of people and make the battle happen.” She shook her small head. “They’re crazy. A bunch of religious nuts, Mommy always said. And she was right. Look what they did to her.”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Marian,” she answered in a small, diffident voice. I helped her up to her feet.
“I’m Laura,” I said, “and you can’t stay here forever, Marian. There are bad things here. Is it true there are ways out of here, doorways of light or something? Have you seen any?”
“I caught a glimpse of one once,” she answered. “It was beautiful. Like looking into a rainbow. I thought I could hear singing.” Her eyes grew distant and far-away. I took her hand, urging her to walk forwards, away from the corpse of her mother.
“So what happened?” I asked, trying to keep Marian talking.
“I saw it, but by the time I found Mom and told her, it had evaporated…” We turned a corner. Looming there overhead, we came face-to-face with what had made the webs.
***
My first thought was that it was some cross between a horse and an insect, the height of a small child and over a dozen feet long. It had the body of a struggling old man in its insectile jaws. They jutted out like the pincers of a stag beetle with wicked serrated edges. Two bulbous black eyes emerged from the sides of its head, the size of baseballs. They didn’t appear to have any lids. They stared at us, unblinking. I saw myself and Marian reflected in those dark orbs, as if they were an obsidian mirror. The pale chitinous shell of the creature shimmered with rainbows as it moved in a blur towards us. Its snout was rounded with two nostril holes. Stringy, blood-flecked mucus constantly dribbled down its eldritch face, falling down from its nose and mouth.
The hundreds of long, skittering legs moved in rhythmic peristaltic waves. The old man continuously kicked and punched at the monstrous face, but the abomination didn’t seem to notice or care. Blood dribbled from his toothless mouth and deep slashes covered his chest, stomach and legs. His lips and fingernails took on a faint bluish cast. As its black eyes focused on us, frothy bubbles of clear saliva started dripping from its flexing pincers. With a primal, reptilian hiss, it threw its head to the side. The dying man soared through the air, smashing into a concrete wall with a bone-shattering thud.
“Stop!” I cried instinctively, raising the pistol and firing. Marian screamed, running behind me and hugging my leg as the dark juggernaut ran us down.
The first bullet caught it in the neck, but the thick black plates of scales deflected it easily, leaving only a series of fine cracks running down its torso. I kept firing, aiming at its face. The second one hit it in the right eye, which exploded like a water balloon filled with blue blood. Its wailing intensified until I thought my eardrums might explode. Half-blinded, its body slithered forward like a snake’s, its many legs driving it towards us.
I jumped to the side at the last second, but Marian wasn’t so lucky. The creature’s massive pincers wrapped around her chest, grabbing her and lifting her into the air. Deep slices appeared in her rags of clothes as she cried, pleading for help. I inhaled deeply, aiming for the abomination’s face, hoping I wouldn’t hit the girl.
The last bullet in the magazine pierced its other eye. It exploded. The creature dropped Mirian to the ground, wailing a steam-whistle shriek. I grabbed Marian’s hand, lifting her off the ground.
“Run!” I hissed through gritted teeth, pulling her forward. Up ahead, I saw lights illuminating a store. It was the only building with electricity that I could see. I found it strange.
As we got closer, I saw the sign, reading: “Hel’s Market”.
***
The insectoid creature’s agonized screams drew other skittering monstrosities forward. They crawled out of the side streets and alleys, their strange horse faces and insectile jaws working furiously as if tasting the air for prey. I remembered the rules on the radio, when they had said the markets were a safe spot.
We ran through the door into a building that hadn't decayed like everything else. It felt air conditioned and cool. The glass here was intact, and rows after rows of cold drinks, ice cream and frozen meals stretched out before us. It looked like a regular convenience store, but in the back, I saw a doorless threshold with stairs that led down into a shadowy basement. I shuddered as I looked at it. Outside, the creatures had stopped at the front door, their bulbous eyes staring intently in at us.
“Are you OK?” I asked Mirian, looking at her injuries. The creature had left two deep slices along the sides of her chest. They bled freely, soaking her tattered rags in fresh streaks of scarlet. She nodded silently, tears running down her rounded cheeks. We quickly grabbed drinks and snacks, chugging soda and energy drinks and eating candy and beef jerky. I didn’t realize just how hungry I was after nearly dying so many times, and Marian looked like she hadn’t eaten in days.
I was staring out the front glass window, looking at the creatures waiting there for us with hunger and bloodlust gleaming in their alien eyes, when I heard heavy footsteps ascending the stairs at the back of the store. Mirian grabbed my hand tightly.
“I think something’s coming,” she whispered in terror.
***
Through the dark threshold, I saw a woman looming nearly ten feet tall. The left half of her body was decayed and rotted, mummified and gray, like everything in this world. The right was beautiful and young, the skin pink and healthy. Behind her, I saw her dragging a man bound tightly in razor-wire, the sharp edges biting into his skin. I instantly recognized Jack.
“Jack?” I asked, stepping back towards the door.
“See your husband,” Hel hissed in a shadowy voice. She threw the trembling mass of bloody flesh at my feet. Jack screamed, kicking and twisting.
“Get… out of here!” he whispered at me through teeth streaked with crimson. “I’ll… help you…”
“Did you help cause this?” I asked. Hel looked between us with sadistic pleasure, the living part of her mouth splitting into a grin. The dead part cracked, the dry skin ripping and showing blackened teeth underneath. Jack nodded.
“The Church… of the Final Rapture… yes, we tried to spread the anomaly, to end all suffering, to cause God to notice us again and come back…” Hel laughed at that, a sound like grating metal.
“Foolish men,” she gurgled. “You shouldn’t have played with things you didn’t understand.” Jack’s eyes grew big. There was a moment of clarity as he met my gaze, motioning towards the black door at the back of the store.
“I’ll… do what I can…” he said, “with what the Church has taught me.” He closed his eyes as Hel drew near, her heavy footsteps shaking the store. She lifted up one giant, naked foot over his head, holding it there like a guillotine blade. It came down with a crunch.
The door at the back of the store started vibrating and shimmering with white light as Jack died. I heard singing from it. Grabbing Marian’s arm, I pulled her towards it. A large, rotted hand came out, grabbing at my hair. I felt myself pulled back off my feet.
Like a rabid animal, Marian ran forward, sinking her sharp teeth into Hel's wrist. I felt the grip release, my back smashing hard against the floor. The wind was instantly knocked out of my lungs. Grabbing Marian's hand, we crawled towards the door, only feet away. Beautiful, angelic singing resonated through it, growing louder as we got closer. Hel shrieked with fury as we crossed the threshold, disappearing into the light. Everything dissolved in the blinding radiance, and for a moment, I felt warm and free.
***
I found myself back home with Marian, the Sun outside bright and clear. The freezer was still open, the dismembered head staring blankly out at me. Marian was gently crying, cradling her bleeding chest. All of the agonies and wounds I had suffered instantly started shrieking, grating my nerves.
Sickened, I stumbled outside and threw up, trying to forget the nightmares and broken bodies of the anomaly.

Life in Frost Hollow had always been fairly normal, up until a few days ago. My husband and I had small issues and arguments, like any couple, but there was no sign of the severe transformation that would escalate into such gruesome, nightmarish scenes.
I always woke early. The day that it all started, I rose around dawn to see the muted gleam of an infant sunrise shining through the window. I looked over to Jack’s side of the bed, seeing it empty. It appeared unslept in, which I found strange, as he worked the night shift and would nearly always be home and in bed by 3 or 4 AM.
But ever since he had found our newborn daughter dead in her crib, he had been acting strange, disappearing at random hours and occasionally bringing a “friend” home. The people he brought were always young, glassy-eyed guys I had never seen before, who often followed him around in an eerie silence like ducklings following a mother duck.
I made a fresh pot of coffee, going out onto the porch as the world came to life. The Sun rose overhead like a burning angel, a fiery eye in a vast expanse of cloudless blue. I knew it would be another scorcher of a day, humid and sticky. I watched early-morning joggers passing by. I wondered where Jack was. I pulled out my cell phone, checking to see if he had sent me any messages, but there was nothing there.
As I sat on the front porch, I thought about my fading youth. I had once hair the color of summer sunlight, but now it was going gray. The small wrinkles around my mouth and eyes seemed to be lengthening and deepening every day. Everything in the world seemed to grow dusty and brittle, like one enormous sarcophagus. I felt certain I would never have another child, never see bright blue eyes staring up at me from the crib again.
Far off down the street, there was a strange translucent rippling in the air, like burning heat rising off desert sands. It expanded into a perfectly flat wall. It cut across trees, homes and cars. I squinted, realizing that it was coming nearer with every heartbeat. I thought it was some kind of bizarre meteorological phenomenon, some sort of heat mirage or humidity bubble. As it slowly crept closer, I got bored, pulling out my phone to read the news.
After a few minutes sitting and people-watching, I went inside to make some breakfast. I ambled over to the freezer, looking inside for something edible, maybe some chicken tenders I could deep-fry next to some eggs and toast. Instead, I found a decapitated human head, its open, staring eyes glassy and frostbitten. I felt a scream welling up in my throat as I dropped my coffee mug to the floor. It shattered, spraying drops of burning hot liquid all over my legs.
The freezing mist slunk towards me like ghostly hands, obscuring the face’s features for a long moment. I wondered if this was just an extremely realistic mannequin head. I looked at the blue lips, pressed together as if in an expression of disapproval, saw the ragged patches of black flesh at the bottom of the neck, and knew it was real. Frozen crystals of dark blood clung to the bottom of the head in a black pool, gluing it to the freezer floor and keeping it in an upright position.
Between the lips, I saw a folded piece of paper. On the front, in flowing, black cursive, read two words: “To Laura”. I hesitated for a couple heartbeats, then snatched the note from the dismembered head. The lips refused to let it go at first, until I gently wriggled it from side to side. It came loose with a wet, sucking sound.
The moment I freed the note, a siren rang out down the street, the volume deafening. It rose and fell in shrill wails for a few seconds. I saw the fridge tremble in front of me under the onslaught of such noise. Black mist slowly started to ooze from every surface. By the time it evaporated a few seconds later, the fridge looked like it had aged fifty years. Enormous rust spots covered its exterior, and the smell of rotting food was instantly overwhelming, like the rancid odor of roadkill putrefying under a burning sun.
The rest of the kitchen seemed to have changed as well. Everything had grown old and filthy. The counters were covered in cobwebs and grime. Deep cracks ran through the walls, and the windows were all broken.
Turning back to the freezer, I studied the mutilated head’s features more thoroughly. It was a woman with raven-black hair and blue eyes, probably in her early twenties. Who was this person? How had they died, and how had their head gotten in my freezer? What was that horrible siren?
I unfolded the note, seeing Jack’s flowing handwriting there. My heart felt like it dropped out of my chest as I quickly scanned the words.
“Dear Laura,
“If you’re reading this, it means you found the head. It’s probably a good thing, I think. There are some things I have kept secret from you, from everyone, for a long time.
“I don’t know when it first began, when this fractured piece of my personality gained control. It all started innocently enough- peeking in people’s windows when they weren’t looking, or stalking random joggers for days without being seen. It was always a rush to get away with it.
“Soon, I would break into people’s houses and rearrange all their furniture. I’d hide a portable camera in the corner or on top of a bookshelf and watch their reactions. Oh, how I laughed! As you can imagine, it was quite fun. Life doesn’t have enough laughter, after all. It seems more like wandering across an endless desert sometimes.
“But eventually, I would stumble across an oasis, a resting place in this never-ending life of shit. Or at least, that other piece of my personality did. You might not believe me, but the first time I killed, it was an accident. Perhaps it was fate sending the first pebbles skittering down over the ledge that would inevitably lead to an avalanche.
“I had been doing my usual routine, breaking into houses, moving things around, sometimes writing Satanic messages on the wall in pig’s blood. It was all to keep people on their toes, you know? Just for chuckles and smiles. But, still, I always kept my pistol on me. I had walked up and down the streets, seeing the mail piling up outside one old colonial home surrounded by a grove of thick trees. I had found the house empty when I scoped it out originally. It seemed perfect. That night, I made my way inside.
“I remember hearing the front door unlock abruptly in the middle of the night. I tried to run towards the window in the bathroom around back, the way I had come in originally. But the man must have heard my footsteps. He came around the corner with a shotgun, his face beet-red. He was screaming and hollering. I was crawling through the window when he started raising the gun. The ringing sound as he pumped a round in the chamber was like a scream from God, telling me to awaken. At that moment, I knew it was kill or be killed. Before he could pull the trigger, I aimed for his head and fired twice. I remember the rush of pleasure as his face disintegrated into a puddle of blood and bone chips.
“After that, things start to get hazy. At first, I thought it was a psychotic breakdown, because something started wearing my face, following me when I went crawling through the neighborhood. Perhaps it is a part of me in some way, my true self. After all, murder is Godly, the pure power of the divine, and killing in the name of God is always a mercy. So says the Savior.
“Well, anyway, I’m rambling. It’s time to finish this letter before I start to sound crazy. We can’t have that, can we? What will the neighbors think?
“The main thing to remember is: don’t look behind you.
“I’ll see you very soon.”
I read the last line a few times before it sunk into my mind. Don’t look behind you? It didn’t make any sense.
Then I heard the choked giggling from the pantry closet. It started low, like the first rumblings of an earthquake. The door was left open a fraction of an inch. One bloodshot eye stared at me through the crack. It flicked quickly to the left and right, the pupil dilated and insane.
“Jack?” I whispered, feeling sick and weak. “What’s… what’s wrong?” I slowly backpedaled towards the front door. The laughter turned into a gurgle, something that might have come from the lips of a drowning man. He flung the door open, his face pale and bloodless. Trickles of dried blood covered his arms and hands. Under his fingernails, I saw clotted black gore. Translucent black shadows swirled around his face and chest, spiraling up into a vortex like a dark whirlwind. They shimmered all around him, distorting his features and seeming to increase in intensity by the second.
“Jack isn’t here anymore,” he hissed in a diseased voice. His lips split apart, revealing teeth that looked far too long and sharp. “He’s hidden behind the veil, rotting under the floorboards. Even now, he tries to claw his way up.” He stepped towards me, revealing a long butcher’s knife in one hand, its steel stained a deep scarlet. Fresh blood still dripped from the tip.
“Stay away from me,” I shrieked, glancing behind me. The town looked different now, the streets deserted. Dark shadows danced over everything, as if there were a solar eclipse. The entire world seemed to exhale, a low, diseased hissing that radiated from everything all around me.
This strange monster wearing Jack’s face continued moving closer, seeming to draw power from the changes. His eyes darkened in a flash, turning black and cloudy. The cyclone of shadows twisting around his body moved faster, a curtain of darkness so thick that it started to obscure his face.
“My name is Friend,” he gurgled, lunging forward with the knife. I instinctively pulled away, stumbling back towards the open front door. I felt a cold pain radiate down my left arm, a slashing pain that made my vision turn white with adrenaline and shock. A slash opened up on the top of my skin, fresh blood bubbling out instantly. I fell backwards through the door onto the front porch, smacking my head hard on the wooden porch. Friend slunk towards me, a hurricane of blackness with an eerie human pillar at the center. He stared down at me with a grin like a razor blade, letting fresh blood, my blood, drip off the blade and patter gently to the rotted, mold-streaked floor.
I kicked forward with all of my strength, aiming a blow at his knee. I heard something crack, felt the leg give with a sickening explosion of black blood. The flesh felt loose and spongy, almost boneless. Friend wailed like a banshee, his voice rising into an ear-splitting wail. He fell forwards towards me, aiming the knife at my heart, a look of fury darkening his face.
A gunshot rang out behind me. A perfectly round scarlet hole appeared in Friend’s shoulder. He jerked, twisting and gurgling in pain. Black blood spattered my face and neck, feeling as cold as dry ice. I rolled away as his body came down, the knife landing only inches from my chest. It quivered there, its tip stuck deeply in the wooden floor.
Friend’s features changed rapidly in front of my eyes, dripping and melting. The mask of humanity he wore started to fall away, revealing a spinning black hole of a head with a single red eye in the center. Wounded and leaking blood the color of waste oil, he skittered away on four lengthening skeletal limbs, crawling like a spider. His clothes stretched and tightened around his changing, bulging flesh. Breathing hard, I turned to look at my savior.
I recognized the withered old face of my neighbor, a man we all called Bones. He had no family that I had ever seen, and lived a solitary life, almost that of a hermit. I had talked to him a few times, been invited into his home even. His walls were covered with the taxidermied heads of animals, black bears and bucks and moose he had killed. Crossbows, guns and hunting bows of all kinds had lain scattered over nearly every room. He was an outdoorsman at heart.
“Bones,” I whispered in a choked voice. “Thank God.” He shuffled forwards, a small, very thin old man with a sunken bird chest. His giant, rectangular glasses magnified his eyes to the size of dinnerplates, and a white wizard beard hung down to the center of his chest. Jack and I had often joked that he looked like a character from Duck Dynasty. He holstered his pistol around his waist before reaching down a trembling hand and helping me up.
“Something happened,” Bones said grimly. “When that siren went off. I was looking outside, just smoking and sipping some black tea, and I saw it happen. Everything started sputtering and shimmering, and this thick, black mist rose over the streets and houses. When it finally blew away, I saw… this.” He waved a hand outside for emphasis, motioning at the apocalyptic scene.
The streets heaved in great cracks and fissures, as if an earthquake had rolled through the earth. The houses looked like they had survived a nuclear apocalypse. The windows were all shattered. Tiny shards of glass littered the ground like splinters of diamond. The roofs were peeled away and rotting, with enormous holes eaten into the centers of most of them. Something like spider silk covered the dilapidated walls of most of the houses on the street, formed in symmetrical webs that rose two or three stories high.
Behind me, the radio suddenly turned on, the lights flickering overhead. The power all along the street flashed on and off, the streetlights outside strobing at the same erratic frequency. Something like a metallic shriek rang out through the radio’s speaker. Bones and I jumped, turning to look backwards at the old radio laying on the kitchen counter.
“This isn’t the real world!” a man screamed over the radio. I immediately recognized the terrified voice of Jack. My heart dropped into my stomach. “Don’t believe anything you see or hear here. The anomaly is spreading. Laura, I know you can hear me. I’m sorry for everything. Listen, to get out of this, there are a few things you need to remember.
“First, you should know there are gateways in this place, portals that lead back to our world. You can recognize them by the blinding white light radiating from them. It might be a bedroom door, a window, even a kitchen cabinet or a box. They form randomly throughout the anomaly and are highly unstable, often lasting for only seconds. If you find one, take it immediately. These are your only way home.
“Second, the entities here can take the form of any person or animal. But you’ll know them by the shadows that surround them. To kill them, you want to go for the crimson eye in the center of their faces.
“Third, there are places with food, water and other supplies. They will look like dilapidated gas stations with the name ‘Hel’s Market’ on them. These are safe spaces where the things on the streets don’t roam. Don’t stay in there too long, though, or you might see Hel. She doesn’t like visitors.”
“Jack? Where the hell are you?!” I screamed at the radio, running over and shaking it like a crying baby, hearing random pieces inside the old gadget give a metallic rattle. But the speaker only gave a hiss of static as the radio died in my hands. A million thoughts seemed to run through my head at once. Was Jack still alive? Why had his voice come on the radio? Why had his writing been on the note? Bones came up behind me, putting a slight hand on my shoulder.
“We’ll find him,” Bones said. “Jack’s a tough guy. But we need to start moving. We can’t stay here forever. We’re going to need to find supplies. Everything around here is trash.”
“It could be worse out there than it is here,” I argued. “Why do we need to keep moving? We could barricade ourselves inside and wait for the police, and the… military, and…”
“Lady, you’re living in a dream world,” Bones said coldly, his magnified eyes turning into owlish slits. “We don’t know how long we’re going to be here. You don’t even know where Jack is. You have zero supplies, zilcho. You could barricade yourself somewhere and slowly starve to death, but that wouldn’t help us much.” His words made me think. I nodded.
“Fine, but we should grab some food and water first,” I said glumly, my head spinning. I felt sick and tired from all of this, yet the feeling rose in my chest that I hadn’t seen anything yet. Bones gave a faint smile, the corners of his lips twitching as he watched me.
I went over to the kitchen sink, turning it on. For a long moment, nothing happened. There was a burping, gurgling sound deep down in the pipes. They clattered and shook as if thousands of rats were slinking through them. The faucet bubbled and hissed frothy dark water. Finally, it spat a gout of thick scarlet blood all over the rusted sink, squirming with dozens of writhing maggots. I gasped, backpedaling. The smell of iron and rot from the rancid mess sputtering out of the faucet in waves was sickening. Repressing an urge to gag, I reached forward and slammed the handle down.
“Yup, that’s what I expected,” Bones said grimly. He looked around with a blank expression on his face, as if he were only on a stroll at the park. At that same moment, the lights overhead flickered one last time and died. The cracked and broken street lamps outside went dark simultaneously- at least those few that still worked.
I went over to the fridge, opening the door. The nauseating smell of rot exploded across the room, hitting me in the face like a slap. I gagged, seeing clouds of black and yellow mold growing over dried, twisted heaps of decaying food. The milk had become a soupy mess in the container with black tendrils growing along the sides of the exploded jug. I slammed the fridge door shut. I ran over to the front door and stuck my head out, inhaling sweet, clean air. Bones followed slowly behind me, seemingly unaffected.
“Don’t look like we’re getting any food or water from here,” he said contemplatively. “My place ain’t any better. When that siren hit and the black mist came, it changed everything- ate at things, as if time had been turned on fast forward. By the time the fog had gone, my house was a wreck. The food in the fridge was all rot-gut sludge, and the cans in the pantry were ready to explode. My guns were all rusted heaps of junk, the crossbows twisted and the strings snapped. Some of them had tiny black spiders building webs on them.”
“So how’d you get the pistol?” I asked, curious. He looked at me as if I were an idiot.
“I had it on me when it happened,” he said slowly, as if speaking to a mentally deficient child. I nodded, looking around for a weapon I could use. In the living room, I found a metal baseball bat that Jack had bought years ago. Like everything else, it had been eaten away by the ravages of time. Streaks of dark rust covered the length of it. I swung it a few times, feeling that it still felt structurally intact.
“Let’s go,” I said, following Bones outside.
***
We headed deeper into civilization, towards the downtown area with restaurants, gas stations and grocery stores. The sky above had no stars, no sun or moon. It swirled in a dark blue hurricane, meeting in a black eye at the center. The cyclonic clouds peeled away like old scabs. Some pale light came, casting everything in a cyanotic light. I saw pale, dirty faces disappearing into the alleyways and ruined homes, many of them apparently of children.
“I saw them too,” Bones muttered, holding his pistol tightly by his side. “They look like pictures of kids at Auschwitz I’ve seen. Starving and filthy. Where’s their parents, you think?” I shuddered to think about it. What if this place was sucking random people in, just making them disappear from the world? What if it was spreading, like a cancerous tumor hidden under gauze?
I had nearly forgotten about Friend, the strange shape-shifting creature who wore Jack’s face, but he hadn’t forgotten about me. We were passing the burnt-out hulk of a tractor-trailer when his shadowy face shot around the corner, staring at us with Jack’s face. He had eyes like two burnt holes, black and smoldering. His body was a strange combination of spider and human, the thin limbs ending in sharp points. Fine, dark hairs like needles covered his arms and legs. The bullet wound had apparently already healed. Black blood had crusted onto the surfaces of his shirt and pants. He didn’t hesitate to attack. He swung an insectile arm at Bones’ chest. I screamed, seeing it all happen in slow motion.
The limb went straight through Bones’ heart. Bright red arterial blood immediately began flooding out as he looked down in shock, still holding the pistol in one hand. He gurgled, dropping the gun and falling forward, dragging the arm down with him. I had the baseball bat in my hands. With all of my strength, I swung it at the creature’s head. It made contact with a fleshy thud. The soft, yielding flesh of Friend cratered under the impact. Friend made a soft hissing sound as the wound bubbled and danced as if a nest of mice were about to emerge.
I leapt for the pistol. A choked sound rasped from Bones’ trembling lips. The adrenaline rush made me feel no pain as I hit the hard, cracked road, rolling as I landed. I felt the cold metal of the pistol’s grip under my hand. I raised it, feeling the stab wound Friend had given me earlier rip back open. Fresh streams of blood soaked my clothes as I fired, dripping from the long slash along my arm.
The top of Friend’s head exploded, the body transforming before my eyes into a black, spidery humanoid with a single spinning red eye in the center of its pointed skull. Dark blood the color of asphalt leaked down its naked, glossy body. It had no mouth or nose that I could see, but fine silvery hairs covered its jointed arms and legs. The eye widened in pain as it stared into the barrel of the pistol, one blade-like arm still caught in Bones’ chest. I remembered the transmission that had come through the radio and aimed for the center of the spinning eye.
“Why do you keep taking Jack’s form?” I asked Friend, the gun feeling heavy in my trembling hand. “Why just him?”
“I can take the form of any who are part of the Church of the Final Rapture, those who have given their souls to the dark presence here,” he hissed cryptically. He jerked forward, trying to bring his other blade-like arm up towards my neck with a quick slashing blow. I instantly fired, pulling the trigger over and over.
When the first of the bullets pierced his eye, I saw a blinding explosion come from the center of it, like a flashbang radiating light the color of an infected wound. Orange the color of pus spun around bright reds and necrotic blacks. I stepped back, crying out. I instinctively brought my hand up to cover my eyes.
When I could see again, I found only a smoking crater in the spot where Friend and Bones had stood. Gray smoke hissed from the center of it. I knelt down, seeing a dark, jelly-like substance covering the jagged patches of concrete. I quickly realized it was flesh, though whether human or alien, I couldn’t say.
Shell-shocked, I stumbled over to Bones’ melted pants, feeling around his waist until I felt the cold metal of an extra magazine. I had emptied all the bullets in the gun fighting Friend. To my dismay, I realized Bones only had one extra magazine.
Feeling sick and weak, I stumbled away, heading towards downtown, hoping against hope that I would find some solace or answers there.
***
I was wavering on my feet like a drunk woman. As I got closer to the center of town, I found dead bodies hanging from the lampposts, many of them mummified or skeletal. I wondered how many people lived in this hellish world.
I heard crying ahead of me, far off in the distance. I saw a little girl kneeling below the body of a young woman. The corpse looked fresh. The tip of the dead woman’s black tongue poked out through her stiff blue lips. The young girl’s wails tore at my heart.
The girl was wearing rags, tatters of a shirt and pants that were covered in streaks of what looked like dirt and blood. Her face was grimy, but her eyes were big and blue. She looked up at me suddenly as I drew near, panic twisting her small face. She reminded me of the baby I had, the one who had died of crib death a few months earlier. My daughter had the same big blue eyes as this girl here. I looked around the destroyed world, seeing there were more spiderwebs covering the ruined buildings here.
“Little girl, what are you doing here?” I asked. She grabbed my shirt, pushing her small face against my thigh.
“They killed my mommy,” she wailed, trying not to look at the hanging corpse. I hugged her.
“Who did?” I asked. “Who killed all these people?” She looked up, surprised.
“How do you not know? It’s the Church of the Final Rapture. They’re trying to spread this…” She waved a dirty hand around for emphasis, wiping tears from her bloodshot eyes. “They think if they can spread this bad place far enough, then it will lead to the Final Judgment, and Jesus will come back and good will finally win. But first, they say they need to kill a lot of people and make the battle happen.” She shook her small head. “They’re crazy. A bunch of religious nuts, Mommy always said. And she was right. Look what they did to her.”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Marian,” she answered in a small, diffident voice. I helped her up to her feet.
“I’m Laura,” I said, “and you can’t stay here forever, Marian. There are bad things here. Is it true there are ways out of here, doorways of light or something? Have you seen any?”
“I caught a glimpse of one once,” she answered. “It was beautiful. Like looking into a rainbow. I thought I could hear singing.” Her eyes grew distant and far-away. I took her hand, urging her to walk forwards, away from the corpse of her mother.
“So what happened?” I asked, trying to keep Marian talking.
“I saw it, but by the time I found Mom and told her, it had evaporated…” We turned a corner. Looming there overhead, we came face-to-face with what had made the webs.
***
My first thought was that it was some cross between a horse and an insect, the height of a small child and over a dozen feet long. It had the body of a struggling old man in its insectile jaws. They jutted out like the pincers of a stag beetle with wicked serrated edges. Two bulbous black eyes emerged from the sides of its head, the size of baseballs. They didn’t appear to have any lids. They stared at us, unblinking. I saw myself and Marian reflected in those dark orbs, as if they were an obsidian mirror. The pale chitinous shell of the creature shimmered with rainbows as it moved in a blur towards us. Its snout was rounded with two nostril holes. Stringy, blood-flecked mucus constantly dribbled down its eldritch face, falling down from its nose and mouth.
The hundreds of long, skittering legs moved in rhythmic peristaltic waves. The old man continuously kicked and punched at the monstrous face, but the abomination didn’t seem to notice or care. Blood dribbled from his toothless mouth and deep slashes covered his chest, stomach and legs. His lips and fingernails took on a faint bluish cast. As its black eyes focused on us, frothy bubbles of clear saliva started dripping from its flexing pincers. With a primal, reptilian hiss, it threw its head to the side. The dying man soared through the air, smashing into a concrete wall with a bone-shattering thud.
“Stop!” I cried instinctively, raising the pistol and firing. Marian screamed, running behind me and hugging my leg as the dark juggernaut ran us down.
The first bullet caught it in the neck, but the thick black plates of scales deflected it easily, leaving only a series of fine cracks running down its torso. I kept firing, aiming at its face. The second one hit it in the right eye, which exploded like a water balloon filled with blue blood. Its wailing intensified until I thought my eardrums might explode. Half-blinded, its body slithered forward like a snake’s, its many legs driving it towards us.
I jumped to the side at the last second, but Marian wasn’t so lucky. The creature’s massive pincers wrapped around her chest, grabbing her and lifting her into the air. Deep slices appeared in her rags of clothes as she cried, pleading for help. I inhaled deeply, aiming for the abomination’s face, hoping I wouldn’t hit the girl.
The last bullet in the magazine pierced its other eye. It exploded. The creature dropped Mirian to the ground, wailing a steam-whistle shriek. I grabbed Marian’s hand, lifting her off the ground.
“Run!” I hissed through gritted teeth, pulling her forward. Up ahead, I saw lights illuminating a store. It was the only building with electricity that I could see. I found it strange.
As we got closer, I saw the sign, reading: “Hel’s Market”.
***
The insectoid creature’s agonized screams drew other skittering monstrosities forward. They crawled out of the side streets and alleys, their strange horse faces and insectile jaws working furiously as if tasting the air for prey. I remembered the rules on the radio, when they had said the markets were a safe spot.
We ran through the door into a building that hadn't decayed like everything else. It felt air conditioned and cool. The glass here was intact, and rows after rows of cold drinks, ice cream and frozen meals stretched out before us. It looked like a regular convenience store, but in the back, I saw a doorless threshold with stairs that led down into a shadowy basement. I shuddered as I looked at it. Outside, the creatures had stopped at the front door, their bulbous eyes staring intently in at us.
“Are you OK?” I asked Mirian, looking at her injuries. The creature had left two deep slices along the sides of her chest. They bled freely, soaking her tattered rags in fresh streaks of scarlet. She nodded silently, tears running down her rounded cheeks. We quickly grabbed drinks and snacks, chugging soda and energy drinks and eating candy and beef jerky. I didn’t realize just how hungry I was after nearly dying so many times, and Marian looked like she hadn’t eaten in days.
I was staring out the front glass window, looking at the creatures waiting there for us with hunger and bloodlust gleaming in their alien eyes, when I heard heavy footsteps ascending the stairs at the back of the store. Mirian grabbed my hand tightly.
“I think something’s coming,” she whispered in terror.
***
Through the dark threshold, I saw a woman looming nearly ten feet tall. The left half of her body was decayed and rotted, mummified and gray, like everything in this world. The right was beautiful and young, the skin pink and healthy. Behind her, I saw her dragging a man bound tightly in razor-wire, the sharp edges biting into his skin. I instantly recognized Jack.
“Jack?” I asked, stepping back towards the door.
“See your husband,” Hel hissed in a shadowy voice. She threw the trembling mass of bloody flesh at my feet. Jack screamed, kicking and twisting.
“Get… out of here!” he whispered at me through teeth streaked with crimson. “I’ll… help you…”
“Did you help cause this?” I asked. Hel looked between us with sadistic pleasure, the living part of her mouth splitting into a grin. The dead part cracked, the dry skin ripping and showing blackened teeth underneath. Jack nodded.
“The Church… of the Final Rapture… yes, we tried to spread the anomaly, to end all suffering, to cause God to notice us again and come back…” Hel laughed at that, a sound like grating metal.
“Foolish men,” she gurgled. “You shouldn’t have played with things you didn’t understand.” Jack’s eyes grew big. There was a moment of clarity as he met my gaze, motioning towards the black door at the back of the store.
“I’ll… do what I can…” he said, “with what the Church has taught me.” He closed his eyes as Hel drew near, her heavy footsteps shaking the store. She lifted up one giant, naked foot over his head, holding it there like a guillotine blade. It came down with a crunch.
The door at the back of the store started vibrating and shimmering with white light as Jack died. I heard singing from it. Grabbing Marian’s arm, I pulled her towards it. A large, rotted hand came out, grabbing at my hair. I felt myself pulled back off my feet.
Like a rabid animal, Marian ran forward, sinking her sharp teeth into Hel's wrist. I felt the grip release, my back smashing hard against the floor. The wind was instantly knocked out of my lungs. Grabbing Marian's hand, we crawled towards the door, only feet away. Beautiful, angelic singing resonated through it, growing louder as we got closer. Hel shrieked with fury as we crossed the threshold, disappearing into the light. Everything dissolved in the blinding radiance, and for a moment, I felt warm and free.
***
I found myself back home with Marian, the Sun outside bright and clear. The freezer was still open, the dismembered head staring blankly out at me. Marian was gently crying, cradling her bleeding chest. All of the agonies and wounds I had suffered instantly started shrieking, grating my nerves.
Sickened, I stumbled outside and threw up, trying to forget the nightmares and broken bodies of the anomaly.

Life in Frost Hollow had always been fairly normal, up until a few days ago. My husband and I had small issues and arguments, like any couple, but there was no sign of the severe transformation that would escalate into such gruesome, nightmarish scenes.
I always woke early. The day that it all started, I rose around dawn to see the muted gleam of an infant sunrise shining through the window. I looked over to Jack’s side of the bed, seeing it empty. It appeared unslept in, which I found strange, as he worked the night shift and would nearly always be home and in bed by 3 or 4 AM.
But ever since he had found our newborn daughter dead in her crib, he had been acting strange, disappearing at random hours and occasionally bringing a “friend” home. The people he brought were always young, glassy-eyed guys I had never seen before, who often followed him around in an eerie silence like ducklings following a mother duck.
I made a fresh pot of coffee, going out onto the porch as the world came to life. The Sun rose overhead like a burning angel, a fiery eye in a vast expanse of cloudless blue. I knew it would be another scorcher of a day, humid and sticky. I watched early-morning joggers passing by. I wondered where Jack was. I pulled out my cell phone, checking to see if he had sent me any messages, but there was nothing there.
As I sat on the front porch, I thought about my fading youth. I had once hair the color of summer sunlight, but now it was going gray. The small wrinkles around my mouth and eyes seemed to be lengthening and deepening every day. Everything in the world seemed to grow dusty and brittle, like one enormous sarcophagus. I felt certain I would never have another child, never see bright blue eyes staring up at me from the crib again.
Far off down the street, there was a strange translucent rippling in the air, like burning heat rising off desert sands. It expanded into a perfectly flat wall. It cut across trees, homes and cars. I squinted, realizing that it was coming nearer with every heartbeat. I thought it was some kind of bizarre meteorological phenomenon, some sort of heat mirage or humidity bubble. As it slowly crept closer, I got bored, pulling out my phone to read the news.
After a few minutes sitting and people-watching, I went inside to make some breakfast. I ambled over to the freezer, looking inside for something edible, maybe some chicken tenders I could deep-fry next to some eggs and toast. Instead, I found a decapitated human head, its open, staring eyes glassy and frostbitten. I felt a scream welling up in my throat as I dropped my coffee mug to the floor. It shattered, spraying drops of burning hot liquid all over my legs.
The freezing mist slunk towards me like ghostly hands, obscuring the face’s features for a long moment. I wondered if this was just an extremely realistic mannequin head. I looked at the blue lips, pressed together as if in an expression of disapproval, saw the ragged patches of black flesh at the bottom of the neck, and knew it was real. Frozen crystals of dark blood clung to the bottom of the head in a black pool, gluing it to the freezer floor and keeping it in an upright position.
Between the lips, I saw a folded piece of paper. On the front, in flowing, black cursive, read two words: “To Laura”. I hesitated for a couple heartbeats, then snatched the note from the dismembered head. The lips refused to let it go at first, until I gently wriggled it from side to side. It came loose with a wet, sucking sound.
The moment I freed the note, a siren rang out down the street, the volume deafening. It rose and fell in shrill wails for a few seconds. I saw the fridge tremble in front of me under the onslaught of such noise. Black mist slowly started to ooze from every surface. By the time it evaporated a few seconds later, the fridge looked like it had aged fifty years. Enormous rust spots covered its exterior, and the smell of rotting food was instantly overwhelming, like the rancid odor of roadkill putrefying under a burning sun.
The rest of the kitchen seemed to have changed as well. Everything had grown old and filthy. The counters were covered in cobwebs and grime. Deep cracks ran through the walls, and the windows were all broken.
Turning back to the freezer, I studied the mutilated head’s features more thoroughly. It was a woman with raven-black hair and blue eyes, probably in her early twenties. Who was this person? How had they died, and how had their head gotten in my freezer? What was that horrible siren?
I unfolded the note, seeing Jack’s flowing handwriting there. My heart felt like it dropped out of my chest as I quickly scanned the words.
“Dear Laura,
“If you’re reading this, it means you found the head. It’s probably a good thing, I think. There are some things I have kept secret from you, from everyone, for a long time.
“I don’t know when it first began, when this fractured piece of my personality gained control. It all started innocently enough- peeking in people’s windows when they weren’t looking, or stalking random joggers for days without being seen. It was always a rush to get away with it.
“Soon, I would break into people’s houses and rearrange all their furniture. I’d hide a portable camera in the corner or on top of a bookshelf and watch their reactions. Oh, how I laughed! As you can imagine, it was quite fun. Life doesn’t have enough laughter, after all. It seems more like wandering across an endless desert sometimes.
“But eventually, I would stumble across an oasis, a resting place in this never-ending life of shit. Or at least, that other piece of my personality did. You might not believe me, but the first time I killed, it was an accident. Perhaps it was fate sending the first pebbles skittering down over the ledge that would inevitably lead to an avalanche.
“I had been doing my usual routine, breaking into houses, moving things around, sometimes writing Satanic messages on the wall in pig’s blood. It was all to keep people on their toes, you know? Just for chuckles and smiles. But, still, I always kept my pistol on me. I had walked up and down the streets, seeing the mail piling up outside one old colonial home surrounded by a grove of thick trees. I had found the house empty when I scoped it out originally. It seemed perfect. That night, I made my way inside.
“I remember hearing the front door unlock abruptly in the middle of the night. I tried to run towards the window in the bathroom around back, the way I had come in originally. But the man must have heard my footsteps. He came around the corner with a shotgun, his face beet-red. He was screaming and hollering. I was crawling through the window when he started raising the gun. The ringing sound as he pumped a round in the chamber was like a scream from God, telling me to awaken. At that moment, I knew it was kill or be killed. Before he could pull the trigger, I aimed for his head and fired twice. I remember the rush of pleasure as his face disintegrated into a puddle of blood and bone chips.
“After that, things start to get hazy. At first, I thought it was a psychotic breakdown, because something started wearing my face, following me when I went crawling through the neighborhood. Perhaps it is a part of me in some way, my true self. After all, murder is Godly, the pure power of the divine, and killing in the name of God is always a mercy. So says the Savior.
“Well, anyway, I’m rambling. It’s time to finish this letter before I start to sound crazy. We can’t have that, can we? What will the neighbors think?
“The main thing to remember is: don’t look behind you.
“I’ll see you very soon.”
I read the last line a few times before it sunk into my mind. Don’t look behind you? It didn’t make any sense.
Then I heard the choked giggling from the pantry closet. It started low, like the first rumblings of an earthquake. The door was left open a fraction of an inch. One bloodshot eye stared at me through the crack. It flicked quickly to the left and right, the pupil dilated and insane.
“Jack?” I whispered, feeling sick and weak. “What’s… what’s wrong?” I slowly backpedaled towards the front door. The laughter turned into a gurgle, something that might have come from the lips of a drowning man. He flung the door open, his face pale and bloodless. Trickles of dried blood covered his arms and hands. Under his fingernails, I saw clotted black gore. Translucent black shadows swirled around his face and chest, spiraling up into a vortex like a dark whirlwind. They shimmered all around him, distorting his features and seeming to increase in intensity by the second.
“Jack isn’t here anymore,” he hissed in a diseased voice. His lips split apart, revealing teeth that looked far too long and sharp. “He’s hidden behind the veil, rotting under the floorboards. Even now, he tries to claw his way up.” He stepped towards me, revealing a long butcher’s knife in one hand, its steel stained a deep scarlet. Fresh blood still dripped from the tip.
“Stay away from me,” I shrieked, glancing behind me. The town looked different now, the streets deserted. Dark shadows danced over everything, as if there were a solar eclipse. The entire world seemed to exhale, a low, diseased hissing that radiated from everything all around me.
This strange monster wearing Jack’s face continued moving closer, seeming to draw power from the changes. His eyes darkened in a flash, turning black and cloudy. The cyclone of shadows twisting around his body moved faster, a curtain of darkness so thick that it started to obscure his face.
“My name is Friend,” he gurgled, lunging forward with the knife. I instinctively pulled away, stumbling back towards the open front door. I felt a cold pain radiate down my left arm, a slashing pain that made my vision turn white with adrenaline and shock. A slash opened up on the top of my skin, fresh blood bubbling out instantly. I fell backwards through the door onto the front porch, smacking my head hard on the wooden porch. Friend slunk towards me, a hurricane of blackness with an eerie human pillar at the center. He stared down at me with a grin like a razor blade, letting fresh blood, my blood, drip off the blade and patter gently to the rotted, mold-streaked floor.
I kicked forward with all of my strength, aiming a blow at his knee. I heard something crack, felt the leg give with a sickening explosion of black blood. The flesh felt loose and spongy, almost boneless. Friend wailed like a banshee, his voice rising into an ear-splitting wail. He fell forwards towards me, aiming the knife at my heart, a look of fury darkening his face.
A gunshot rang out behind me. A perfectly round scarlet hole appeared in Friend’s shoulder. He jerked, twisting and gurgling in pain. Black blood spattered my face and neck, feeling as cold as dry ice. I rolled away as his body came down, the knife landing only inches from my chest. It quivered there, its tip stuck deeply in the wooden floor.
Friend’s features changed rapidly in front of my eyes, dripping and melting. The mask of humanity he wore started to fall away, revealing a spinning black hole of a head with a single red eye in the center. Wounded and leaking blood the color of waste oil, he skittered away on four lengthening skeletal limbs, crawling like a spider. His clothes stretched and tightened around his changing, bulging flesh. Breathing hard, I turned to look at my savior.
I recognized the withered old face of my neighbor, a man we all called Bones. He had no family that I had ever seen, and lived a solitary life, almost that of a hermit. I had talked to him a few times, been invited into his home even. His walls were covered with the taxidermied heads of animals, black bears and bucks and moose he had killed. Crossbows, guns and hunting bows of all kinds had lain scattered over nearly every room. He was an outdoorsman at heart.
“Bones,” I whispered in a choked voice. “Thank God.” He shuffled forwards, a small, very thin old man with a sunken bird chest. His giant, rectangular glasses magnified his eyes to the size of dinnerplates, and a white wizard beard hung down to the center of his chest. Jack and I had often joked that he looked like a character from Duck Dynasty. He holstered his pistol around his waist before reaching down a trembling hand and helping me up.
“Something happened,” Bones said grimly. “When that siren went off. I was looking outside, just smoking and sipping some black tea, and I saw it happen. Everything started sputtering and shimmering, and this thick, black mist rose over the streets and houses. When it finally blew away, I saw… this.” He waved a hand outside for emphasis, motioning at the apocalyptic scene.
The streets heaved in great cracks and fissures, as if an earthquake had rolled through the earth. The houses looked like they had survived a nuclear apocalypse. The windows were all shattered. Tiny shards of glass littered the ground like splinters of diamond. The roofs were peeled away and rotting, with enormous holes eaten into the centers of most of them. Something like spider silk covered the dilapidated walls of most of the houses on the street, formed in symmetrical webs that rose two or three stories high.
Behind me, the radio suddenly turned on, the lights flickering overhead. The power all along the street flashed on and off, the streetlights outside strobing at the same erratic frequency. Something like a metallic shriek rang out through the radio’s speaker. Bones and I jumped, turning to look backwards at the old radio laying on the kitchen counter.
“This isn’t the real world!” a man screamed over the radio. I immediately recognized the terrified voice of Jack. My heart dropped into my stomach. “Don’t believe anything you see or hear here. The anomaly is spreading. Laura, I know you can hear me. I’m sorry for everything. Listen, to get out of this, there are a few things you need to remember.
“First, you should know there are gateways in this place, portals that lead back to our world. You can recognize them by the blinding white light radiating from them. It might be a bedroom door, a window, even a kitchen cabinet or a box. They form randomly throughout the anomaly and are highly unstable, often lasting for only seconds. If you find one, take it immediately. These are your only way home.
“Second, the entities here can take the form of any person or animal. But you’ll know them by the shadows that surround them. To kill them, you want to go for the crimson eye in the center of their faces.
“Third, there are places with food, water and other supplies. They will look like dilapidated gas stations with the name ‘Hel’s Market’ on them. These are safe spaces where the things on the streets don’t roam. Don’t stay in there too long, though, or you might see Hel. She doesn’t like visitors.”
“Jack? Where the hell are you?!” I screamed at the radio, running over and shaking it like a crying baby, hearing random pieces inside the old gadget give a metallic rattle. But the speaker only gave a hiss of static as the radio died in my hands. A million thoughts seemed to run through my head at once. Was Jack still alive? Why had his voice come on the radio? Why had his writing been on the note? Bones came up behind me, putting a slight hand on my shoulder.
“We’ll find him,” Bones said. “Jack’s a tough guy. But we need to start moving. We can’t stay here forever. We’re going to need to find supplies. Everything around here is trash.”
“It could be worse out there than it is here,” I argued. “Why do we need to keep moving? We could barricade ourselves inside and wait for the police, and the… military, and…”
“Lady, you’re living in a dream world,” Bones said coldly, his magnified eyes turning into owlish slits. “We don’t know how long we’re going to be here. You don’t even know where Jack is. You have zero supplies, zilcho. You could barricade yourself somewhere and slowly starve to death, but that wouldn’t help us much.” His words made me think. I nodded.
“Fine, but we should grab some food and water first,” I said glumly, my head spinning. I felt sick and tired from all of this, yet the feeling rose in my chest that I hadn’t seen anything yet. Bones gave a faint smile, the corners of his lips twitching as he watched me.
I went over to the kitchen sink, turning it on. For a long moment, nothing happened. There was a burping, gurgling sound deep down in the pipes. They clattered and shook as if thousands of rats were slinking through them. The faucet bubbled and hissed frothy dark water. Finally, it spat a gout of thick scarlet blood all over the rusted sink, squirming with dozens of writhing maggots. I gasped, backpedaling. The smell of iron and rot from the rancid mess sputtering out of the faucet in waves was sickening. Repressing an urge to gag, I reached forward and slammed the handle down.
“Yup, that’s what I expected,” Bones said grimly. He looked around with a blank expression on his face, as if he were only on a stroll at the park. At that same moment, the lights overhead flickered one last time and died. The cracked and broken street lamps outside went dark simultaneously- at least those few that still worked.
I went over to the fridge, opening the door. The nauseating smell of rot exploded across the room, hitting me in the face like a slap. I gagged, seeing clouds of black and yellow mold growing over dried, twisted heaps of decaying food. The milk had become a soupy mess in the container with black tendrils growing along the sides of the exploded jug. I slammed the fridge door shut. I ran over to the front door and stuck my head out, inhaling sweet, clean air. Bones followed slowly behind me, seemingly unaffected.
“Don’t look like we’re getting any food or water from here,” he said contemplatively. “My place ain’t any better. When that siren hit and the black mist came, it changed everything- ate at things, as if time had been turned on fast forward. By the time the fog had gone, my house was a wreck. The food in the fridge was all rot-gut sludge, and the cans in the pantry were ready to explode. My guns were all rusted heaps of junk, the crossbows twisted and the strings snapped. Some of them had tiny black spiders building webs on them.”
“So how’d you get the pistol?” I asked, curious. He looked at me as if I were an idiot.
“I had it on me when it happened,” he said slowly, as if speaking to a mentally deficient child. I nodded, looking around for a weapon I could use. In the living room, I found a metal baseball bat that Jack had bought years ago. Like everything else, it had been eaten away by the ravages of time. Streaks of dark rust covered the length of it. I swung it a few times, feeling that it still felt structurally intact.
“Let’s go,” I said, following Bones outside.
***
We headed deeper into civilization, towards the downtown area with restaurants, gas stations and grocery stores. The sky above had no stars, no sun or moon. It swirled in a dark blue hurricane, meeting in a black eye at the center. The cyclonic clouds peeled away like old scabs. Some pale light came, casting everything in a cyanotic light. I saw pale, dirty faces disappearing into the alleyways and ruined homes, many of them apparently of children.
“I saw them too,” Bones muttered, holding his pistol tightly by his side. “They look like pictures of kids at Auschwitz I’ve seen. Starving and filthy. Where’s their parents, you think?” I shuddered to think about it. What if this place was sucking random people in, just making them disappear from the world? What if it was spreading, like a cancerous tumor hidden under gauze?
I had nearly forgotten about Friend, the strange shape-shifting creature who wore Jack’s face, but he hadn’t forgotten about me. We were passing the burnt-out hulk of a tractor-trailer when his shadowy face shot around the corner, staring at us with Jack’s face. He had eyes like two burnt holes, black and smoldering. His body was a strange combination of spider and human, the thin limbs ending in sharp points. Fine, dark hairs like needles covered his arms and legs. The bullet wound had apparently already healed. Black blood had crusted onto the surfaces of his shirt and pants. He didn’t hesitate to attack. He swung an insectile arm at Bones’ chest. I screamed, seeing it all happen in slow motion.
The limb went straight through Bones’ heart. Bright red arterial blood immediately began flooding out as he looked down in shock, still holding the pistol in one hand. He gurgled, dropping the gun and falling forward, dragging the arm down with him. I had the baseball bat in my hands. With all of my strength, I swung it at the creature’s head. It made contact with a fleshy thud. The soft, yielding flesh of Friend cratered under the impact. Friend made a soft hissing sound as the wound bubbled and danced as if a nest of mice were about to emerge.
I leapt for the pistol. A choked sound rasped from Bones’ trembling lips. The adrenaline rush made me feel no pain as I hit the hard, cracked road, rolling as I landed. I felt the cold metal of the pistol’s grip under my hand. I raised it, feeling the stab wound Friend had given me earlier rip back open. Fresh streams of blood soaked my clothes as I fired, dripping from the long slash along my arm.
The top of Friend’s head exploded, the body transforming before my eyes into a black, spidery humanoid with a single spinning red eye in the center of its pointed skull. Dark blood the color of asphalt leaked down its naked, glossy body. It had no mouth or nose that I could see, but fine silvery hairs covered its jointed arms and legs. The eye widened in pain as it stared into the barrel of the pistol, one blade-like arm still caught in Bones’ chest. I remembered the transmission that had come through the radio and aimed for the center of the spinning eye.
“Why do you keep taking Jack’s form?” I asked Friend, the gun feeling heavy in my trembling hand. “Why just him?”
“I can take the form of any who are part of the Church of the Final Rapture, those who have given their souls to the dark presence here,” he hissed cryptically. He jerked forward, trying to bring his other blade-like arm up towards my neck with a quick slashing blow. I instantly fired, pulling the trigger over and over.
When the first of the bullets pierced his eye, I saw a blinding explosion come from the center of it, like a flashbang radiating light the color of an infected wound. Orange the color of pus spun around bright reds and necrotic blacks. I stepped back, crying out. I instinctively brought my hand up to cover my eyes.
When I could see again, I found only a smoking crater in the spot where Friend and Bones had stood. Gray smoke hissed from the center of it. I knelt down, seeing a dark, jelly-like substance covering the jagged patches of concrete. I quickly realized it was flesh, though whether human or alien, I couldn’t say.
Shell-shocked, I stumbled over to Bones’ melted pants, feeling around his waist until I felt the cold metal of an extra magazine. I had emptied all the bullets in the gun fighting Friend. To my dismay, I realized Bones only had one extra magazine.
Feeling sick and weak, I stumbled away, heading towards downtown, hoping against hope that I would find some solace or answers there.
***
I was wavering on my feet like a drunk woman. As I got closer to the center of town, I found dead bodies hanging from the lampposts, many of them mummified or skeletal. I wondered how many people lived in this hellish world.
I heard crying ahead of me, far off in the distance. I saw a little girl kneeling below the body of a young woman. The corpse looked fresh. The tip of the dead woman’s black tongue poked out through her stiff blue lips. The young girl’s wails tore at my heart.
The girl was wearing rags, tatters of a shirt and pants that were covered in streaks of what looked like dirt and blood. Her face was grimy, but her eyes were big and blue. She looked up at me suddenly as I drew near, panic twisting her small face. She reminded me of the baby I had, the one who had died of crib death a few months earlier. My daughter had the same big blue eyes as this girl here. I looked around the destroyed world, seeing there were more spiderwebs covering the ruined buildings here.
“Little girl, what are you doing here?” I asked. She grabbed my shirt, pushing her small face against my thigh.
“They killed my mommy,” she wailed, trying not to look at the hanging corpse. I hugged her.
“Who did?” I asked. “Who killed all these people?” She looked up, surprised.
“How do you not know? It’s the Church of the Final Rapture. They’re trying to spread this…” She waved a dirty hand around for emphasis, wiping tears from her bloodshot eyes. “They think if they can spread this bad place far enough, then it will lead to the Final Judgment, and Jesus will come back and good will finally win. But first, they say they need to kill a lot of people and make the battle happen.” She shook her small head. “They’re crazy. A bunch of religious nuts, Mommy always said. And she was right. Look what they did to her.”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Marian,” she answered in a small, diffident voice. I helped her up to her feet.
“I’m Laura,” I said, “and you can’t stay here forever, Marian. There are bad things here. Is it true there are ways out of here, doorways of light or something? Have you seen any?”
“I caught a glimpse of one once,” she answered. “It was beautiful. Like looking into a rainbow. I thought I could hear singing.” Her eyes grew distant and far-away. I took her hand, urging her to walk forwards, away from the corpse of her mother.
“So what happened?” I asked, trying to keep Marian talking.
“I saw it, but by the time I found Mom and told her, it had evaporated…” We turned a corner. Looming there overhead, we came face-to-face with what had made the webs.
***
My first thought was that it was some cross between a horse and an insect, the height of a small child and over a dozen feet long. It had the body of a struggling old man in its insectile jaws. They jutted out like the pincers of a stag beetle with wicked serrated edges. Two bulbous black eyes emerged from the sides of its head, the size of baseballs. They didn’t appear to have any lids. They stared at us, unblinking. I saw myself and Marian reflected in those dark orbs, as if they were an obsidian mirror. The pale chitinous shell of the creature shimmered with rainbows as it moved in a blur towards us. Its snout was rounded with two nostril holes. Stringy, blood-flecked mucus constantly dribbled down its eldritch face, falling down from its nose and mouth.
The hundreds of long, skittering legs moved in rhythmic peristaltic waves. The old man continuously kicked and punched at the monstrous face, but the abomination didn’t seem to notice or care. Blood dribbled from his toothless mouth and deep slashes covered his chest, stomach and legs. His lips and fingernails took on a faint bluish cast. As its black eyes focused on us, frothy bubbles of clear saliva started dripping from its flexing pincers. With a primal, reptilian hiss, it threw its head to the side. The dying man soared through the air, smashing into a concrete wall with a bone-shattering thud.
“Stop!” I cried instinctively, raising the pistol and firing. Marian screamed, running behind me and hugging my leg as the dark juggernaut ran us down.
The first bullet caught it in the neck, but the thick black plates of scales deflected it easily, leaving only a series of fine cracks running down its torso. I kept firing, aiming at its face. The second one hit it in the right eye, which exploded like a water balloon filled with blue blood. Its wailing intensified until I thought my eardrums might explode. Half-blinded, its body slithered forward like a snake’s, its many legs driving it towards us.
I jumped to the side at the last second, but Marian wasn’t so lucky. The creature’s massive pincers wrapped around her chest, grabbing her and lifting her into the air. Deep slices appeared in her rags of clothes as she cried, pleading for help. I inhaled deeply, aiming for the abomination’s face, hoping I wouldn’t hit the girl.
The last bullet in the magazine pierced its other eye. It exploded. The creature dropped Mirian to the ground, wailing a steam-whistle shriek. I grabbed Marian’s hand, lifting her off the ground.
“Run!” I hissed through gritted teeth, pulling her forward. Up ahead, I saw lights illuminating a store. It was the only building with electricity that I could see. I found it strange.
As we got closer, I saw the sign, reading: “Hel’s Market”.
***
The insectoid creature’s agonized screams drew other skittering monstrosities forward. They crawled out of the side streets and alleys, their strange horse faces and insectile jaws working furiously as if tasting the air for prey. I remembered the rules on the radio, when they had said the markets were a safe spot.
We ran through the door into a building that hadn't decayed like everything else. It felt air conditioned and cool. The glass here was intact, and rows after rows of cold drinks, ice cream and frozen meals stretched out before us. It looked like a regular convenience store, but in the back, I saw a doorless threshold with stairs that led down into a shadowy basement. I shuddered as I looked at it. Outside, the creatures had stopped at the front door, their bulbous eyes staring intently in at us.
“Are you OK?” I asked Mirian, looking at her injuries. The creature had left two deep slices along the sides of her chest. They bled freely, soaking her tattered rags in fresh streaks of scarlet. She nodded silently, tears running down her rounded cheeks. We quickly grabbed drinks and snacks, chugging soda and energy drinks and eating candy and beef jerky. I didn’t realize just how hungry I was after nearly dying so many times, and Marian looked like she hadn’t eaten in days.
I was staring out the front glass window, looking at the creatures waiting there for us with hunger and bloodlust gleaming in their alien eyes, when I heard heavy footsteps ascending the stairs at the back of the store. Mirian grabbed my hand tightly.
“I think something’s coming,” she whispered in terror.
***
Through the dark threshold, I saw a woman looming nearly ten feet tall. The left half of her body was decayed and rotted, mummified and gray, like everything in this world. The right was beautiful and young, the skin pink and healthy. Behind her, I saw her dragging a man bound tightly in razor-wire, the sharp edges biting into his skin. I instantly recognized Jack.
“Jack?” I asked, stepping back towards the door.
“See your husband,” Hel hissed in a shadowy voice. She threw the trembling mass of bloody flesh at my feet. Jack screamed, kicking and twisting.
“Get… out of here!” he whispered at me through teeth streaked with crimson. “I’ll… help you…”
“Did you help cause this?” I asked. Hel looked between us with sadistic pleasure, the living part of her mouth splitting into a grin. The dead part cracked, the dry skin ripping and showing blackened teeth underneath. Jack nodded.
“The Church… of the Final Rapture… yes, we tried to spread the anomaly, to end all suffering, to cause God to notice us again and come back…” Hel laughed at that, a sound like grating metal.
“Foolish men,” she gurgled. “You shouldn’t have played with things you didn’t understand.” Jack’s eyes grew big. There was a moment of clarity as he met my gaze, motioning towards the black door at the back of the store.
“I’ll… do what I can…” he said, “with what the Church has taught me.” He closed his eyes as Hel drew near, her heavy footsteps shaking the store. She lifted up one giant, naked foot over his head, holding it there like a guillotine blade. It came down with a crunch.
The door at the back of the store started vibrating and shimmering with white light as Jack died. I heard singing from it. Grabbing Marian’s arm, I pulled her towards it. A large, rotted hand came out, grabbing at my hair. I felt myself pulled back off my feet.
Like a rabid animal, Marian ran forward, sinking her sharp teeth into Hel's wrist. I felt the grip release, my back smashing hard against the floor. The wind was instantly knocked out of my lungs. Grabbing Marian's hand, we crawled towards the door, only feet away. Beautiful, angelic singing resonated through it, growing louder as we got closer. Hel shrieked with fury as we crossed the threshold, disappearing into the light. Everything dissolved in the blinding radiance, and for a moment, I felt warm and free.
***
I found myself back home with Marian, the Sun outside bright and clear. The freezer was still open, the dismembered head staring blankly out at me. Marian was gently crying, cradling her bleeding chest. All of the agonies and wounds I had suffered instantly started shrieking, grating my nerves.
Sickened, I stumbled outside and threw up, trying to forget the nightmares and broken bodies of the anomaly.

I have a very small business that ships only a few higher cost (custom made) items per month (4-10). I’m trying to decide between poly mailers or bubble envelopes in either black or white, or going with Kraft paper mailers (though I worry about being water proof).
I’ve heard that black packaging gets stalled at the post office because they print codes in black, but is that just on smaller paper envelopes (letters)? Mine will be 9x12.
Has anyone noticed package theft more with certain colors? I was thinking white looks more “boring” lying on the porch, but it’s also a brighter color. Black seems more luxurious for the customer, but maybe more conspicuous? I’m not sure if I’m overthinking all of this so any advice is appreciated! Thank you.

I stopped in at the Pinball Hall of Fame on Sunday. It was the first time I had been there in about two years.
As I was walking in I heard the manager, Beth, chatting to a family waiting for their Über as she was walking inside. She was friendly and smiling. I like Beth. She’s a nice person.
Stepping inside I noticed that there were even more handwritten rules signs taped up everywhere. No this, no that. Yeah, we get it, Tim.
One of the two Disney Mold-O-Rama machines was out of order. The other one was dirty and had what looked like melted wax smeared on the plexiglas bubble. It had a hand lettered sign taped to it, of course. No this, no that. Blah blah blah…
There were piles of crap everywhere. In the front next to the Mold-O-Rama machines. In between machines. Up against the wall. Just more crap everywhere.
Instead of the usual 50% of machines being dark, it was more like 70-80%. Broken? Just powered off for no reason? Unclear. Some had signs, most didn’t.
The Ms. Pac-Man has a speed chip in it. Nope. Walked away after eating 30 dots in 0.5 seconds. Played some other 70s/80s video games and some cool modern pinball games.
The games I really wanted to play (Pinbot and the vertical Bally Pinball Circus) were both dark. Still rows and rows of ancient pinball machines from the dawn of time that no one wants to play.
I didn’t see any cats. Maybe they hide when it gets that busy. I did see a “missing“ poster for one of the cats. Taped to the inside of the door when walking out.
I saw Tim, hunched over, long stringy hair dangling, illuminated spelunking headlamp affixed to his forehead, muttering to himself and lurching along.
There were lots of people there, but it wasn’t super crowded. Half of the ceiling lights were off, so it was a little dark inside.
Every time I go there I am hoping that it will be better. Every time it’s worse.
I volunteered there a couple of times. It was fun and educational. It consisted of taking the glass off of the machines (scary!), waxing and cleaning the playfield, replacing burned out bulbs (except the bright flashers because Tim says “Not supported! They use too much electricity and they just hit you in the eye!”) Noting and reporting broken components so that the techs can fix them.
I was talking to a guy that owns a repair shop in Las Vegas. He fixes machines at PHoF and elsewhere. He told me that Area 15 has a really good arcade. He said that they pulled the LCD displays out of their machines and put in CRTs. I’m definitely going to have to check that out. I hate LCD displays in old arcade machines.
Anyway, my opinion is still that it’s a fun place to visit, but it’s equally frustrating and disappointing. It’s never going to change or improve. Just assuming that one day I’ll see a headline that it’s closing and an auction date.
I know, I know: It’s a private club, private collection, non-profit that donates everything to…not sure where, only two employees, all expenses covered by the parking lot billboard rental and ATM fees, so all of the incoming quarters go to charity.
Edit: Typo repair

Life in Frost Hollow had always been fairly normal, up until a few days ago. My husband and I had small issues and arguments, like any couple, but there was no sign of the severe transformation that would escalate into such gruesome, nightmarish scenes.
I always woke early. The day that it all started, I rose around dawn to see the muted gleam of an infant sunrise shining through the window. I looked over to Jack’s side of the bed, seeing it empty. It appeared unslept in, which I found strange, as he worked the night shift and would nearly always be home and in bed by 3 or 4 AM.
But ever since he had found our newborn daughter dead in her crib, he had been acting strange, disappearing at random hours and occasionally bringing a “friend” home. The people he brought were always young, glassy-eyed guys I had never seen before, who often followed him around in an eerie silence like ducklings following a mother duck.
I made a fresh pot of coffee, going out onto the porch as the world came to life. The Sun rose overhead like a burning angel, a fiery eye in a vast expanse of cloudless blue. I knew it would be another scorcher of a day, humid and sticky. I watched early-morning joggers passing by. I wondered where Jack was. I pulled out my cell phone, checking to see if he had sent me any messages, but there was nothing there.
As I sat on the front porch, I thought about my fading youth. I had once hair the color of summer sunlight, but now it was going gray. The small wrinkles around my mouth and eyes seemed to be lengthening and deepening every day. Everything in the world seemed to grow dusty and brittle, like one enormous sarcophagus. I felt certain I would never have another child, never see bright blue eyes staring up at me from the crib again.
Far off down the street, there was a strange translucent rippling in the air, like burning heat rising off desert sands. It expanded into a perfectly flat wall. It cut across trees, homes and cars. I squinted, realizing that it was coming nearer with every heartbeat. I thought it was some kind of bizarre meteorological phenomenon, some sort of heat mirage or humidity bubble. As it slowly crept closer, I got bored, pulling out my phone to read the news.
After a few minutes sitting and people-watching, I went inside to make some breakfast. I ambled over to the freezer, looking inside for something edible, maybe some chicken tenders I could deep-fry next to some eggs and toast. Instead, I found a decapitated human head, its open, staring eyes glassy and frostbitten. I felt a scream welling up in my throat as I dropped my coffee mug to the floor. It shattered, spraying drops of burning hot liquid all over my legs.
The freezing mist slunk towards me like ghostly hands, obscuring the face’s features for a long moment. I wondered if this was just an extremely realistic mannequin head. I looked at the blue lips, pressed together as if in an expression of disapproval, saw the ragged patches of black flesh at the bottom of the neck, and knew it was real. Frozen crystals of dark blood clung to the bottom of the head in a black pool, gluing it to the freezer floor and keeping it in an upright position.
Between the lips, I saw a folded piece of paper. On the front, in flowing, black cursive, read two words: “To Laura”. I hesitated for a couple heartbeats, then snatched the note from the dismembered head. The lips refused to let it go at first, until I gently wriggled it from side to side. It came loose with a wet, sucking sound.
The moment I freed the note, a siren rang out down the street, the volume deafening. It rose and fell in shrill wails for a few seconds. I saw the fridge tremble in front of me under the onslaught of such noise. Black mist slowly started to ooze from every surface. By the time it evaporated a few seconds later, the fridge looked like it had aged fifty years. Enormous rust spots covered its exterior, and the smell of rotting food was instantly overwhelming, like the rancid odor of roadkill putrefying under a burning sun.
The rest of the kitchen seemed to have changed as well. Everything had grown old and filthy. The counters were covered in cobwebs and grime. Deep cracks ran through the walls, and the windows were all broken.
Turning back to the freezer, I studied the mutilated head’s features more thoroughly. It was a woman with raven-black hair and blue eyes, probably in her early twenties. Who was this person? How had they died, and how had their head gotten in my freezer? What was that horrible siren?
I unfolded the note, seeing Jack’s flowing handwriting there. My heart felt like it dropped out of my chest as I quickly scanned the words.
“Dear Laura,
“If you’re reading this, it means you found the head. It’s probably a good thing, I think. There are some things I have kept secret from you, from everyone, for a long time.
“I don’t know when it first began, when this fractured piece of my personality gained control. It all started innocently enough- peeking in people’s windows when they weren’t looking, or stalking random joggers for days without being seen. It was always a rush to get away with it.
“Soon, I would break into people’s houses and rearrange all their furniture. I’d hide a portable camera in the corner or on top of a bookshelf and watch their reactions. Oh, how I laughed! As you can imagine, it was quite fun. Life doesn’t have enough laughter, after all. It seems more like wandering across an endless desert sometimes.
“But eventually, I would stumble across an oasis, a resting place in this never-ending life of shit. Or at least, that other piece of my personality did. You might not believe me, but the first time I killed, it was an accident. Perhaps it was fate sending the first pebbles skittering down over the ledge that would inevitably lead to an avalanche.
“I had been doing my usual routine, breaking into houses, moving things around, sometimes writing Satanic messages on the wall in pig’s blood. It was all to keep people on their toes, you know? Just for chuckles and smiles. But, still, I always kept my pistol on me. I had walked up and down the streets, seeing the mail piling up outside one old colonial home surrounded by a grove of thick trees. I had found the house empty when I scoped it out originally. It seemed perfect. That night, I made my way inside.
“I remember hearing the front door unlock abruptly in the middle of the night. I tried to run towards the window in the bathroom around back, the way I had come in originally. But the man must have heard my footsteps. He came around the corner with a shotgun, his face beet-red. He was screaming and hollering. I was crawling through the window when he started raising the gun. The ringing sound as he pumped a round in the chamber was like a scream from God, telling me to awaken. At that moment, I knew it was kill or be killed. Before he could pull the trigger, I aimed for his head and fired twice. I remember the rush of pleasure as his face disintegrated into a puddle of blood and bone chips.
“After that, things start to get hazy. At first, I thought it was a psychotic breakdown, because something started wearing my face, following me when I went crawling through the neighborhood. Perhaps it is a part of me in some way, my true self. After all, murder is Godly, the pure power of the divine, and killing in the name of God is always a mercy. So says the Savior.
“Well, anyway, I’m rambling. It’s time to finish this letter before I start to sound crazy. We can’t have that, can we? What will the neighbors think?
“The main thing to remember is: don’t look behind you.
“I’ll see you very soon.”
I read the last line a few times before it sunk into my mind. Don’t look behind you? It didn’t make any sense.
Then I heard the choked giggling from the pantry closet. It started low, like the first rumblings of an earthquake. The door was left open a fraction of an inch. One bloodshot eye stared at me through the crack. It flicked quickly to the left and right, the pupil dilated and insane.
“Jack?” I whispered, feeling sick and weak. “What’s… what’s wrong?” I slowly backpedaled towards the front door. The laughter turned into a gurgle, something that might have come from the lips of a drowning man. He flung the door open, his face pale and bloodless. Trickles of dried blood covered his arms and hands. Under his fingernails, I saw clotted black gore. Translucent black shadows swirled around his face and chest, spiraling up into a vortex like a dark whirlwind. They shimmered all around him, distorting his features and seeming to increase in intensity by the second.
“Jack isn’t here anymore,” he hissed in a diseased voice. His lips split apart, revealing teeth that looked far too long and sharp. “He’s hidden behind the veil, rotting under the floorboards. Even now, he tries to claw his way up.” He stepped towards me, revealing a long butcher’s knife in one hand, its steel stained a deep scarlet. Fresh blood still dripped from the tip.
“Stay away from me,” I shrieked, glancing behind me. The town looked different now, the streets deserted. Dark shadows danced over everything, as if there were a solar eclipse. The entire world seemed to exhale, a low, diseased hissing that radiated from everything all around me.
This strange monster wearing Jack’s face continued moving closer, seeming to draw power from the changes. His eyes darkened in a flash, turning black and cloudy. The cyclone of shadows twisting around his body moved faster, a curtain of darkness so thick that it started to obscure his face.
“My name is Friend,” he gurgled, lunging forward with the knife. I instinctively pulled away, stumbling back towards the open front door. I felt a cold pain radiate down my left arm, a slashing pain that made my vision turn white with adrenaline and shock. A slash opened up on the top of my skin, fresh blood bubbling out instantly. I fell backwards through the door onto the front porch, smacking my head hard on the wooden porch. Friend slunk towards me, a hurricane of blackness with an eerie human pillar at the center. He stared down at me with a grin like a razor blade, letting fresh blood, my blood, drip off the blade and patter gently to the rotted, mold-streaked floor.
I kicked forward with all of my strength, aiming a blow at his knee. I heard something crack, felt the leg give with a sickening explosion of black blood. The flesh felt loose and spongy, almost boneless. Friend wailed like a banshee, his voice rising into an ear-splitting wail. He fell forwards towards me, aiming the knife at my heart, a look of fury darkening his face.
A gunshot rang out behind me. A perfectly round scarlet hole appeared in Friend’s shoulder. He jerked, twisting and gurgling in pain. Black blood spattered my face and neck, feeling as cold as dry ice. I rolled away as his body came down, the knife landing only inches from my chest. It quivered there, its tip stuck deeply in the wooden floor.
Friend’s features changed rapidly in front of my eyes, dripping and melting. The mask of humanity he wore started to fall away, revealing a spinning black hole of a head with a single red eye in the center. Wounded and leaking blood the color of waste oil, he skittered away on four lengthening skeletal limbs, crawling like a spider. His clothes stretched and tightened around his changing, bulging flesh. Breathing hard, I turned to look at my savior.
I recognized the withered old face of my neighbor, a man we all called Bones. He had no family that I had ever seen, and lived a solitary life, almost that of a hermit. I had talked to him a few times, been invited into his home even. His walls were covered with the taxidermied heads of animals, black bears and bucks and moose he had killed. Crossbows, guns and hunting bows of all kinds had lain scattered over nearly every room. He was an outdoorsman at heart.
“Bones,” I whispered in a choked voice. “Thank God.” He shuffled forwards, a small, very thin old man with a sunken bird chest. His giant, rectangular glasses magnified his eyes to the size of dinnerplates, and a white wizard beard hung down to the center of his chest. Jack and I had often joked that he looked like a character from Duck Dynasty. He holstered his pistol around his waist before reaching down a trembling hand and helping me up.
“Something happened,” Bones said grimly. “When that siren went off. I was looking outside, just smoking and sipping some black tea, and I saw it happen. Everything started sputtering and shimmering, and this thick, black mist rose over the streets and houses. When it finally blew away, I saw… this.” He waved a hand outside for emphasis, motioning at the apocalyptic scene.
The streets heaved in great cracks and fissures, as if an earthquake had rolled through the earth. The houses looked like they had survived a nuclear apocalypse. The windows were all shattered. Tiny shards of glass littered the ground like splinters of diamond. The roofs were peeled away and rotting, with enormous holes eaten into the centers of most of them. Something like spider silk covered the dilapidated walls of most of the houses on the street, formed in symmetrical webs that rose two or three stories high.
Behind me, the radio suddenly turned on, the lights flickering overhead. The power all along the street flashed on and off, the streetlights outside strobing at the same erratic frequency. Something like a metallic shriek rang out through the radio’s speaker. Bones and I jumped, turning to look backwards at the old radio laying on the kitchen counter.
“This isn’t the real world!” a man screamed over the radio. I immediately recognized the terrified voice of Jack. My heart dropped into my stomach. “Don’t believe anything you see or hear here. The anomaly is spreading. Laura, I know you can hear me. I’m sorry for everything. Listen, to get out of this, there are a few things you need to remember.
“First, you should know there are gateways in this place, portals that lead back to our world. You can recognize them by the blinding white light radiating from them. It might be a bedroom door, a window, even a kitchen cabinet or a box. They form randomly throughout the anomaly and are highly unstable, often lasting for only seconds. If you find one, take it immediately. These are your only way home.
“Second, the entities here can take the form of any person or animal. But you’ll know them by the shadows that surround them. To kill them, you want to go for the crimson eye in the center of their faces.
“Third, there are places with food, water and other supplies. They will look like dilapidated gas stations with the name ‘Hel’s Market’ on them. These are safe spaces where the things on the streets don’t roam. Don’t stay in there too long, though, or you might see Hel. She doesn’t like visitors.”
“Jack? Where the hell are you?!” I screamed at the radio, running over and shaking it like a crying baby, hearing random pieces inside the old gadget give a metallic rattle. But the speaker only gave a hiss of static as the radio died in my hands. A million thoughts seemed to run through my head at once. Was Jack still alive? Why had his voice come on the radio? Why had his writing been on the note? Bones came up behind me, putting a slight hand on my shoulder.
“We’ll find him,” Bones said. “Jack’s a tough guy. But we need to start moving. We can’t stay here forever. We’re going to need to find supplies. Everything around here is trash.”
“It could be worse out there than it is here,” I argued. “Why do we need to keep moving? We could barricade ourselves inside and wait for the police, and the… military, and…”
“Lady, you’re living in a dream world,” Bones said coldly, his magnified eyes turning into owlish slits. “We don’t know how long we’re going to be here. You don’t even know where Jack is. You have zero supplies, zilcho. You could barricade yourself somewhere and slowly starve to death, but that wouldn’t help us much.” His words made me think. I nodded.
“Fine, but we should grab some food and water first,” I said glumly, my head spinning. I felt sick and tired from all of this, yet the feeling rose in my chest that I hadn’t seen anything yet. Bones gave a faint smile, the corners of his lips twitching as he watched me.
I went over to the kitchen sink, turning it on. For a long moment, nothing happened. There was a burping, gurgling sound deep down in the pipes. They clattered and shook as if thousands of rats were slinking through them. The faucet bubbled and hissed frothy dark water. Finally, it spat a gout of thick scarlet blood all over the rusted sink, squirming with dozens of writhing maggots. I gasped, backpedaling. The smell of iron and rot from the rancid mess sputtering out of the faucet in waves was sickening. Repressing an urge to gag, I reached forward and slammed the handle down.
“Yup, that’s what I expected,” Bones said grimly. He looked around with a blank expression on his face, as if he were only on a stroll at the park. At that same moment, the lights overhead flickered one last time and died. The cracked and broken street lamps outside went dark simultaneously- at least those few that still worked.
I went over to the fridge, opening the door. The nauseating smell of rot exploded across the room, hitting me in the face like a slap. I gagged, seeing clouds of black and yellow mold growing over dried, twisted heaps of decaying food. The milk had become a soupy mess in the container with black tendrils growing along the sides of the exploded jug. I slammed the fridge door shut. I ran over to the front door and stuck my head out, inhaling sweet, clean air. Bones followed slowly behind me, seemingly unaffected.
“Don’t look like we’re getting any food or water from here,” he said contemplatively. “My place ain’t any better. When that siren hit and the black mist came, it changed everything- ate at things, as if time had been turned on fast forward. By the time the fog had gone, my house was a wreck. The food in the fridge was all rot-gut sludge, and the cans in the pantry were ready to explode. My guns were all rusted heaps of junk, the crossbows twisted and the strings snapped. Some of them had tiny black spiders building webs on them.”
“So how’d you get the pistol?” I asked, curious. He looked at me as if I were an idiot.
“I had it on me when it happened,” he said slowly, as if speaking to a mentally deficient child. I nodded, looking around for a weapon I could use. In the living room, I found a metal baseball bat that Jack had bought years ago. Like everything else, it had been eaten away by the ravages of time. Streaks of dark rust covered the length of it. I swung it a few times, feeling that it still felt structurally intact.
“Let’s go,” I said, following Bones outside.
***
We headed deeper into civilization, towards the downtown area with restaurants, gas stations and grocery stores. The sky above had no stars, no sun or moon. It swirled in a dark blue hurricane, meeting in a black eye at the center. The cyclonic clouds peeled away like old scabs. Some pale light came, casting everything in a cyanotic light. I saw pale, dirty faces disappearing into the alleyways and ruined homes, many of them apparently of children.
“I saw them too,” Bones muttered, holding his pistol tightly by his side. “They look like pictures of kids at Auschwitz I’ve seen. Starving and filthy. Where’s their parents, you think?” I shuddered to think about it. What if this place was sucking random people in, just making them disappear from the world? What if it was spreading, like a cancerous tumor hidden under gauze?
I had nearly forgotten about Friend, the strange shape-shifting creature who wore Jack’s face, but he hadn’t forgotten about me. We were passing the burnt-out hulk of a tractor-trailer when his shadowy face shot around the corner, staring at us with Jack’s face. He had eyes like two burnt holes, black and smoldering. His body was a strange combination of spider and human, the thin limbs ending in sharp points. Fine, dark hairs like needles covered his arms and legs. The bullet wound had apparently already healed. Black blood had crusted onto the surfaces of his shirt and pants. He didn’t hesitate to attack. He swung an insectile arm at Bones’ chest. I screamed, seeing it all happen in slow motion.
The limb went straight through Bones’ heart. Bright red arterial blood immediately began flooding out as he looked down in shock, still holding the pistol in one hand. He gurgled, dropping the gun and falling forward, dragging the arm down with him. I had the baseball bat in my hands. With all of my strength, I swung it at the creature’s head. It made contact with a fleshy thud. The soft, yielding flesh of Friend cratered under the impact. Friend made a soft hissing sound as the wound bubbled and danced as if a nest of mice were about to emerge.
I leapt for the pistol. A choked sound rasped from Bones’ trembling lips. The adrenaline rush made me feel no pain as I hit the hard, cracked road, rolling as I landed. I felt the cold metal of the pistol’s grip under my hand. I raised it, feeling the stab wound Friend had given me earlier rip back open. Fresh streams of blood soaked my clothes as I fired, dripping from the long slash along my arm.
The top of Friend’s head exploded, the body transforming before my eyes into a black, spidery humanoid with a single spinning red eye in the center of its pointed skull. Dark blood the color of asphalt leaked down its naked, glossy body. It had no mouth or nose that I could see, but fine silvery hairs covered its jointed arms and legs. The eye widened in pain as it stared into the barrel of the pistol, one blade-like arm still caught in Bones’ chest. I remembered the transmission that had come through the radio and aimed for the center of the spinning eye.
“Why do you keep taking Jack’s form?” I asked Friend, the gun feeling heavy in my trembling hand. “Why just him?”
“I can take the form of any who are part of the Church of the Final Rapture, those who have given their souls to the dark presence here,” he hissed cryptically. He jerked forward, trying to bring his other blade-like arm up towards my neck with a quick slashing blow. I instantly fired, pulling the trigger over and over.
When the first of the bullets pierced his eye, I saw a blinding explosion come from the center of it, like a flashbang radiating light the color of an infected wound. Orange the color of pus spun around bright reds and necrotic blacks. I stepped back, crying out. I instinctively brought my hand up to cover my eyes.
When I could see again, I found only a smoking crater in the spot where Friend and Bones had stood. Gray smoke hissed from the center of it. I knelt down, seeing a dark, jelly-like substance covering the jagged patches of concrete. I quickly realized it was flesh, though whether human or alien, I couldn’t say.
Shell-shocked, I stumbled over to Bones’ melted pants, feeling around his waist until I felt the cold metal of an extra magazine. I had emptied all the bullets in the gun fighting Friend. To my dismay, I realized Bones only had one extra magazine.
Feeling sick and weak, I stumbled away, heading towards downtown, hoping against hope that I would find some solace or answers there.
***
I was wavering on my feet like a drunk woman. As I got closer to the center of town, I found dead bodies hanging from the lampposts, many of them mummified or skeletal. I wondered how many people lived in this hellish world.
I heard crying ahead of me, far off in the distance. I saw a little girl kneeling below the body of a young woman. The corpse looked fresh. The tip of the dead woman’s black tongue poked out through her stiff blue lips. The young girl’s wails tore at my heart.
The girl was wearing rags, tatters of a shirt and pants that were covered in streaks of what looked like dirt and blood. Her face was grimy, but her eyes were big and blue. She looked up at me suddenly as I drew near, panic twisting her small face. She reminded me of the baby I had, the one who had died of crib death a few months earlier. My daughter had the same big blue eyes as this girl here. I looked around the destroyed world, seeing there were more spiderwebs covering the ruined buildings here.
“Little girl, what are you doing here?” I asked. She grabbed my shirt, pushing her small face against my thigh.
“They killed my mommy,” she wailed, trying not to look at the hanging corpse. I hugged her.
“Who did?” I asked. “Who killed all these people?” She looked up, surprised.
“How do you not know? It’s the Church of the Final Rapture. They’re trying to spread this…” She waved a dirty hand around for emphasis, wiping tears from her bloodshot eyes. “They think if they can spread this bad place far enough, then it will lead to the Final Judgment, and Jesus will come back and good will finally win. But first, they say they need to kill a lot of people and make the battle happen.” She shook her small head. “They’re crazy. A bunch of religious nuts, Mommy always said. And she was right. Look what they did to her.”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Marian,” she answered in a small, diffident voice. I helped her up to her feet.
“I’m Laura,” I said, “and you can’t stay here forever, Marian. There are bad things here. Is it true there are ways out of here, doorways of light or something? Have you seen any?”
“I caught a glimpse of one once,” she answered. “It was beautiful. Like looking into a rainbow. I thought I could hear singing.” Her eyes grew distant and far-away. I took her hand, urging her to walk forwards, away from the corpse of her mother.
“So what happened?” I asked, trying to keep Marian talking.
“I saw it, but by the time I found Mom and told her, it had evaporated…” We turned a corner. Looming there overhead, we came face-to-face with what had made the webs.
***
My first thought was that it was some cross between a horse and an insect, the height of a small child and over a dozen feet long. It had the body of a struggling old man in its insectile jaws. They jutted out like the pincers of a stag beetle with wicked serrated edges. Two bulbous black eyes emerged from the sides of its head, the size of baseballs. They didn’t appear to have any lids. They stared at us, unblinking. I saw myself and Marian reflected in those dark orbs, as if they were an obsidian mirror. The pale chitinous shell of the creature shimmered with rainbows as it moved in a blur towards us. Its snout was rounded with two nostril holes. Stringy, blood-flecked mucus constantly dribbled down its eldritch face, falling down from its nose and mouth.
The hundreds of long, skittering legs moved in rhythmic peristaltic waves. The old man continuously kicked and punched at the monstrous face, but the abomination didn’t seem to notice or care. Blood dribbled from his toothless mouth and deep slashes covered his chest, stomach and legs. His lips and fingernails took on a faint bluish cast. As its black eyes focused on us, frothy bubbles of clear saliva started dripping from its flexing pincers. With a primal, reptilian hiss, it threw its head to the side. The dying man soared through the air, smashing into a concrete wall with a bone-shattering thud.
“Stop!” I cried instinctively, raising the pistol and firing. Marian screamed, running behind me and hugging my leg as the dark juggernaut ran us down.
The first bullet caught it in the neck, but the thick black plates of scales deflected it easily, leaving only a series of fine cracks running down its torso. I kept firing, aiming at its face. The second one hit it in the right eye, which exploded like a water balloon filled with blue blood. Its wailing intensified until I thought my eardrums might explode. Half-blinded, its body slithered forward like a snake’s, its many legs driving it towards us.
I jumped to the side at the last second, but Marian wasn’t so lucky. The creature’s massive pincers wrapped around her chest, grabbing her and lifting her into the air. Deep slices appeared in her rags of clothes as she cried, pleading for help. I inhaled deeply, aiming for the abomination’s face, hoping I wouldn’t hit the girl.
The last bullet in the magazine pierced its other eye. It exploded. The creature dropped Mirian to the ground, wailing a steam-whistle shriek. I grabbed Marian’s hand, lifting her off the ground.
“Run!” I hissed through gritted teeth, pulling her forward. Up ahead, I saw lights illuminating a store. It was the only building with electricity that I could see. I found it strange.
As we got closer, I saw the sign, reading: “Hel’s Market”.
***
The insectoid creature’s agonized screams drew other skittering monstrosities forward. They crawled out of the side streets and alleys, their strange horse faces and insectile jaws working furiously as if tasting the air for prey. I remembered the rules on the radio, when they had said the markets were a safe spot.
We ran through the door into a building that hadn't decayed like everything else. It felt air conditioned and cool. The glass here was intact, and rows after rows of cold drinks, ice cream and frozen meals stretched out before us. It looked like a regular convenience store, but in the back, I saw a doorless threshold with stairs that led down into a shadowy basement. I shuddered as I looked at it. Outside, the creatures had stopped at the front door, their bulbous eyes staring intently in at us.
“Are you OK?” I asked Mirian, looking at her injuries. The creature had left two deep slices along the sides of her chest. They bled freely, soaking her tattered rags in fresh streaks of scarlet. She nodded silently, tears running down her rounded cheeks. We quickly grabbed drinks and snacks, chugging soda and energy drinks and eating candy and beef jerky. I didn’t realize just how hungry I was after nearly dying so many times, and Marian looked like she hadn’t eaten in days.
I was staring out the front glass window, looking at the creatures waiting there for us with hunger and bloodlust gleaming in their alien eyes, when I heard heavy footsteps ascending the stairs at the back of the store. Mirian grabbed my hand tightly.
“I think something’s coming,” she whispered in terror.
***
Through the dark threshold, I saw a woman looming nearly ten feet tall. The left half of her body was decayed and rotted, mummified and gray, like everything in this world. The right was beautiful and young, the skin pink and healthy. Behind her, I saw her dragging a man bound tightly in razor-wire, the sharp edges biting into his skin. I instantly recognized Jack.
“Jack?” I asked, stepping back towards the door.
“See your husband,” Hel hissed in a shadowy voice. She threw the trembling mass of bloody flesh at my feet. Jack screamed, kicking and twisting.
“Get… out of here!” he whispered at me through teeth streaked with crimson. “I’ll… help you…”
“Did you help cause this?” I asked. Hel looked between us with sadistic pleasure, the living part of her mouth splitting into a grin. The dead part cracked, the dry skin ripping and showing blackened teeth underneath. Jack nodded.
“The Church… of the Final Rapture… yes, we tried to spread the anomaly, to end all suffering, to cause God to notice us again and come back…” Hel laughed at that, a sound like grating metal.
“Foolish men,” she gurgled. “You shouldn’t have played with things you didn’t understand.” Jack’s eyes grew big. There was a moment of clarity as he met my gaze, motioning towards the black door at the back of the store.
“I’ll… do what I can…” he said, “with what the Church has taught me.” He closed his eyes as Hel drew near, her heavy footsteps shaking the store. She lifted up one giant, naked foot over his head, holding it there like a guillotine blade. It came down with a crunch.
The door at the back of the store started vibrating and shimmering with white light as Jack died. I heard singing from it. Grabbing Marian’s arm, I pulled her towards it. A large, rotted hand came out, grabbing at my hair. I felt myself pulled back off my feet.
Like a rabid animal, Marian ran forward, sinking her sharp teeth into Hel's wrist. I felt the grip release, my back smashing hard against the floor. The wind was instantly knocked out of my lungs. Grabbing Marian's hand, we crawled towards the door, only feet away. Beautiful, angelic singing resonated through it, growing louder as we got closer. Hel shrieked with fury as we crossed the threshold, disappearing into the light. Everything dissolved in the blinding radiance, and for a moment, I felt warm and free.
***
I found myself back home with Marian, the Sun outside bright and clear. The freezer was still open, the dismembered head staring blankly out at me. Marian was gently crying, cradling her bleeding chest. All of the agonies and wounds I had suffered instantly started shrieking, grating my nerves.
Sickened, I stumbled outside and threw up, trying to forget the nightmares and broken bodies of the anomaly.