Kehidupan Kirei berubah saat kedua orang tuanya meninggal. Ia bekerja di sebuah perusahaan yang ternyata atasannya adalah seseorang yang mencampakannya 7 tahun yang lalu. Dia berkata jika dia ingin kembali ke 7 tahun yang lalu dan ingin mencintai Kirei lagi. Di lain sisi seorang pria misterius yang terlihat berbahaya memasuki kehidupan Kirei dan selalu menarik perhatiannya. Disaat semua orang berkata untuk menjauhi pria misterius itu. Namun sebaliknya, pikiran Kirei selalu dipenuhi oleh pria itu. Read more

Aku berlari sekuat tenaga untuk menyelamatkan adik kembarku agar tidak tertabrak truk. Namun, begitu membuka mata, kami sudah berada di dunia yang berbeda tanpa terluka sedikit pun. Ini adalah dunia fantasi dengan sistem Pemerintahan Kerajaan yang dipimpin oleh seorang Raja Tiran. Berdasarkan kepercayaan mereka, jika ada yang datang dari dunia lain, maka orang tersebut adalah Saintess. Akan tetapi, Saintess yang dipercayai hanya ada satu orang. Karena kamu bukan Saintess. Aku akan membunuhmu di sini. Ada pesan terakhir? ucap Raja sambil menarik pedangnya ke arahku. Read more

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.

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.

Hays dili jud ko mahimutang akong iring kay nakatakas pag ka kadlawn 😢
Kani akong iring naa ni sa pikas compound nag puyo unya kay namalhin naman mi diri sa lain nga compound pero tapad ra, ako ra sila paga adtuon sa old namo nga house kay naa paman ddto among old na balay. Ako gisuwayan if mauyon ba diri sa new house,karon kay ako gisuwayan ug pagawas sa cage, nabug.nuan nuon sa iring na stray na diri na nipuyo sa new house nya nidagan palayo. i know sala nako kay ngano ako gipagawas pero naluoy rako niya kay ganahan jud siya mugawas 😢 Nangita ko niya ron but wala jud mugawas na. Nakasuway na ba mo nga inyong iring nawala then nibalik ra? By the way, sa banawa area ni likod sa one pavillon if naa moy makit.an orange tabby cat pls DM me 🙏

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