Please read the previous episode to see how this works.

WELCOME, and gather around the campfire.

Tonight, I want you to be a part of the INVASION. An unknown alien race had come to Earth and within a week taken over everyone you know. You are the last of humanity, by some quirk your body rejected their replacement process. But you are far from save.

They will hunt down any imperfections, including you.

I have written the opening part and so it is now Susan’s fate is in your hands. Will she escape the city, or perish in the INVASION.

INVASION.

Opening

It had taken one week for everything to fall apart. Seven days from the night the lights hung over the city, until now. There were signs the change was happening. On some level, Susan noticed, but work distracted her. So did her husband, and endless binge-scrolling that ate her evenings whole. By the weekend, it was too late. The invasion had taken hold.

It started with him. After waking, he paused too long before answering questions. Smiled a second too late. Didn’t know how to respond to a phone call. By evening, she asked him if he was okay. He didn’t answer. Instead, he stared and then screamed. The sound tore out of him in jagged pieces, in a voice Susan didn’t understand. It was not human.

She ran. Outside, the street had already cracked into chaos. People were being forced into glowing pods by their replacements for God knows what purpose. Others ran, hid, or lay where they’d fallen if they were rejected.

From behind Susan, something moved from the shadows. It wore her face, and it was screaming.

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Welcome to the CAMPFRIES.

Our shared storytelling sat around a lone flame in the night. This episode was inspired by the and colaboration - Monstrosity.

Guerrilla Literature and the Avant-garde

Monstrosity

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3 months ago · 18 likes · 9 comments · Kerr Martin and Ramona Moth

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Entry 1. December 10th, 1936

Wake up with a start that made me hit my head on the bottom of the dining table. The four chairs are around me in a loose circle. I don’t remember doing any of this, but I must have decided that pulling the chairs towards the table would give me some kind of protection from the noises. But the noises around me are not the same as last night. Wind passes through openings, crunching animals foraging in the woods.
It’s pleasant.

******

The chicory in the coffee and the warmth from the buffalo coat make last night feel like an unpleasant borrowed memory. For a little while, I was in someone else’s head. But the afterimages don’t linger, and don’t make me feel any safer. And then there’s that floorboard. A lot of them creak, but the one I step on when I go from the stove to the window next to the door makes a different sound. It reminds me of that house in Boston I visited when I was looking for prospecting funds. They had a doorbell with a metallic ring.

This board is the hollow wood version of that sound.

******
After finishing the coffee, I decided to pry the board and see what made it different. A shotgun. Wrapped in faded tan oilcloth. The cloth itself was oily from the care the shotgun had received, from whoever was here last. I crack it open and can smell the oil from the double-barreled chambers.

A smaller piece of oilcloth, cut from the larger one, holds a dozen rounds of red-capped buckshot cartridges. This is comforting in some unexplainable way. Whatever terrified me and sent me under the table like a child last night, it wasn’t in here with me.

It’s out there.

Whoever left this shotgun here they were going to do something; they got interrupted. Maybe I could finish it.

Entry 2. December 14, 1936

‘Everything is explainable, my dear.’

I have written that sentence three times now. As though repetition might sand the splinters from it. The creak of the door, the footsteps in the hall. The scratching behind the wallboards. It is the house settling, no doubt. The wind is blowing hell outside the window. It is perhaps, even, the overactive imagination.

A monster of the mind.A monster all the same.

I woke this morning under the dining table again with dryness in my mouth. The chandelier above the table hung still as a hanging thing. For a moment, I did not remember how I had come to be here. Then the memory returned. I lifted the floorboard, and the shotgun was sleeping in its narrow coffin.

The faded tan oilcloth was like a handkerchief for some delicate sorrow. I have not yet touched the gun again. It lies where I left it. Beneath the loose plank in the floor. But I feel it in the room as one feels another presence. An uninvited guest who does not cough or shuffle but simply waits.

Slick and seeping cavern wall, where angels weep, and demons crawl.

The line came to me as I stood in the cellar doorway. I did not descend. The air below looks wet even when dry, as though the stones perspire secrets. The house is older than I first believed. Its beams complain in languages I do not know. Sunlight dies upon your face? Monstrosity lives in this place. The words circle me like moths, drawn to something hot and ruinous.

I told myself I would leave today. I packed the valise with two shirts and my razor. The small tin of pomade, and Mother’s photograph. Yet when I reached for my coat? The door gave a single, patient creak. As if clearing its throat to remind me of obligations not yet met. It is the wind. It must be.

Autumn’s leaves and winter’s bite, our tendrils stretch and claim the night.

The leaves scrape across the porch boards like fingernails. I tried nailing the shutter fast, but the hammer slipped twice and struck my thumb. The pain felt clean and honest. I welcomed it. It proved that at least one thing in this house obeys the simple rules of cause and effect.

Inside your mind, throughout your home, we lay claim to all unknown.

I found the corkboard in the study disturbed. The tacks had been nudged aside, though I swear I have not touched them. Behind it, the wallpaper bears a faint bloom of black. Like mold beginning its empire. Like a cellar that never dries, mold sprawls this cave of doomveined lives. I pressed my ear to the wall and heard nothing but my own pulse. Yet the sensation persisted that something listened back, patient as rot.

There are moments when the shotgun seems less an instrument and more a remedy. A knife, a gun, a choking rope? Simple tools to end all hope? The thought is obscene and yet terribly logical. To end the argument between the mind and the house. To silence the footsteps in the hall that occur precisely when I am most determined to ignore them.

Suicide, a charmcursed call, yet we resolve to haunt these halls.

I do not believe the house wants my death. That would be too swift, too merciful. No, it prefers rehearsal. It prefers the pacing of the corridor at dusk, when the light thins. When the mirrors forget how to reflect properly. It prefers the soft percussion of branches snapping underfoot. Though there is no one walking the yard.

This afternoon, I unfolded the faded tan oilcloth the gun was wrapped in again. It is heavily stained with oil in one corner, a brown bloom like dried tea. Wrapped within it, there is nothing else. No shells. No letters, no map to buried explanations. Only the cloth itself.

‘Everything is explainable, my dear.’

And yet tonight, as I write, the chandelier trembles though the air is still. The corkboard ticks softly. The floorboard near the china cabinet rises and settles with a breath that is not mine. If I wake again beneath the table, I shall know the house has moved me. As a child moves a toy soldier across a painted battlefield.

Monstrosity makes a puppet out of you. I will leave this diary open upon the dining table. If there are words added by morning in a hand not my own? Then explanation may finally give way to truth. Until then, I shall sit on the couch. With the lamp lit, pretending the light belongs to me.

Entry 3. December 15, 1936

Morning found me trapped; tightly swaddled in a small, tight space. Had some eldritch force tried to mummify me? Had I been buried alive like something out of a Penny Dreadful tale? The terrifying thought lent strength to my efforts, and when I tipped my head up I could see a dull grey light. I writhed towards that light as if my life depended on it—I believe it did. Eventually, I was free of my prison and felt open space around me. Rolling on the floor, away from the darkness, freed me. I’d been wrapped in my bedclothes under my bed. How had I ended up in this predicament? I had no memory of falling out of bed, or of any nightmare that might torment me so. Yet here I was. Sheepishly, I rose and made my ablutions, but when I saw my reflection, I baulked. I did not recognise the man looking back at me. I blinked, refusing to accept this. Order was restored: my own physiognomy was there. I pulled faces, sticking out my tongue and gurning until I was satisfied that my mind had stopped playing tricks on me. On the dining table, this diary sat as I had left it, but with a difference that set me praying like a saint of old—may Providence protect me. On the blank page on the other side was a faint—but unquestionably bloody—handprint.

Entry 4, December 19th, 1936

I no longer know which day it is. The house is still the house, but it is not the house.

Something has changed in its bones, or in mine.

The hallways are longer now and the doors do not sit where I remember leaving them. When I walk through the kitchen I have the strange sensation of standing inside something that is breathing very slowly.

This house used to be safe. It used to be beautiful. Light came through the windows in warm squares across the floorboards. I remember that clearly, it is one of the only things I remember clearly.

Now all I see is beige and shadow. The house is a stomach and it is digesting my mind, thinking feels like banging my brain cells against concrete. I know that sounds absurd, but the thought will not leave me. The walls feel too close. The air feels warm and damp in places it should not.

The pit.

The abyss.

Have I already written this?

The calendar that hung beside the sink is gone. I know it was there yesterday. Or the day before that, wasn’t it? Yes, I checked it every morning because I feared losing track. I have clearly failed in my attempts not to.

The top of this journal entry says it is December 9th.

That cannot be correct.

I know it cannot be correct because it has already passed me by, hasn’t it?

I tried to look back through the earlier entries for proof. To see where I last knew the date. But the pages behind this one are not right. They are filled with scribbles and crazed ramblings. Words written over themselves until they are nearly black.

There are symbols there too but I do not recognize them, so how could I have drawn them? Some of them repeat. Some of them circle out specific words again and again. Woods. Hollow. Mouth. Mind.

There are scratches on my arms. My jeans are stained and torn. Was I attacked?

I do not remember but my muscles ache. Not as much as my head does, but I hurt. What was here? I stand by the sink again and look out of the window.

When I look out there at those woods, they are all wrong. The trees are too still. No breeze or rambling animal. Has time stood still, or is it being eaten? The house groans again in a way that reminds me of digestion.

If the spirits that lived beyond the treeline followed me here, they now own this place. They have become it.

The ceiling drips with tar coloured condensation. It is staining the page as I write.

Perhaps I should venture out. Take the spirits back to where they came from. Or burn it all down.

Forest, house, and all to ash.

I shall consider it.

Something must be done.

Entry 5, December 22nd, 1936

I have made my decision.

If there is something in those woods that hunts me, then it is better that I meet it on my feet rather than continue waking beneath tables and beds like a frightened child. The shotgun lay where I had left it, wrapped in its faithful oilcloth like some old soldier awaiting orders. I cleaned the barrels again though they were already spotless. Ritual is a comfort when reason fails.

The diary goes with me—it must. These pages are the only proof that I have lived through the hours that disappear from me. Without them I might believe the house, the scratching, and the blood upon the paper were inventions of a tired mind. Yet the marks remain. The handprint has not faded.

Something did that.

And if I am to survive this night, I must know what.

The woods wait beyond the treeline like a congregation that has fallen silent upon my arrival. Even from the window they appear wrong in a way I struggle to explain. Trees where the leaves still do not sway. Branches that seem to lean toward one another in quiet conspiracy.

I stepped outside just before dusk. The cold bit my skin like a reprimand.

For a time I believed I was walking through an ordinary forest, different from what I had gathered while looking through the cabin window. Dead leaves beneath my boots, the occasional snap of a twig, the distant call of some unseen bird. But as the last light withdrew, the woods began to change.

Paths I had taken only moments before were gone.

The trees stood closer together now, tall and narrow like the pillars of some ancient cathedral. The sounds that had once lived in the forest had vanished, and the silence thickened until my own breathing sounded intrusive.

It was then that I found it. Not a clearing, not quite, but rather a place where the woods seemed to thin into something else entirely, like a curtain drawn back from a stage.

Before me hung a strange shimmering veil, faint as breath upon glass.

Beyond it I could see a room.

A room lit by the dimmest of light. A room I had never been in, yet I knew the type at once. It was nothing like the cabin I had awakened in, but another place entirely. A proper house, perhaps. Through the window, I could see a narrow garden, wet with recent rain. On a desk sat a photograph of a woman whose face I somehow knew, though I could not place her name.

And there was a man.

He stood half-lit by the reflection of a mirror mounted on the wall. My heart stopped when I saw him. He moved through the room with a terrible familiarity. The slope of his shoulders, the way his hands flexed, belonged to someone accustomed to violence. Yet something about him felt wrong, as though I were watching a stranger wear my body like a borrowed coat.

A knife glinted in his hand.

An urgent thirst rose inside me. I tried to shout, to warn whoever might enter that room, but my voice did not cross the veil. I could only watch.

The door opened.

Someone entered.

What followed happened with terrible swiftness. The violence was sudden, brutal, and over before my mind could accept it. I gripped the shotgun instinctively, knowing I would have used it if the veil had allowed me to intervene. But the veil kept everything distant and dreamlike, and for a moment I wondered if that was all this was—a dream conjured by a mind worn thin.

That thought died when the man laughed.

It was a familiar laugh.

He stepped before the mirror then, as though aware of being observed, and lifted his head.

The face looking back from the glass was mine.

My stomach turned cold. The man who had committed that atrocity wore my features, yet there was something in his expression I did not recognize. Something older. Something patient.

My head panged as the diary thumped in my hands. One thump followed another, like the beat of a nervous heart. The pages shifted beneath my grip and fell open to a line I did not remember writing:

Something must be done. Tonight, I will go out into the forest and kill whatever has been hunting me.

The words were written in my hand. The same ink. The same careful script. Yet I had no memory of setting them down.

“Did you enjoy that?”

The whisper came from beyond the veil.

Sound rushed back into the forest all at once—the wind through the branches, the distant creak of trees shifting in the dark. Pressure gathered around me as realization assembled itself piece by piece. This forest was not a forest. The cabin was not a refuge. Everything that had happened to me—every missing hour, every scratch upon my skin, every waking confusion—fit together with a terrible simplicity.

The monster I had come here to hunt was not waiting in these woods.

The monster was me.

My hand remembered the shotgun and tightened its grip.

Entry 6. December 26, 1936

I’ve made my way back to the cabin. Winter is here, and my tattered buffalo coat does little to keep me warm. After the paralyzing heat of this summer, after experiencing the suffocating dust that choked everyone, with its static electricity that meant you couldn’t even touch someone, I thought I’d never be cold again. Never draw a clean breath of air. Now, I draw air into my lungs, but it is not clean. This cabin is a filthy place. It welcomes me because I fear I have become a filthy being. 

What I saw beyond the veil horrified me. I do not know who is real and who exists beyond the veil. I do not know if the veil exists to protect my sanity, to keep me from remembering the things I’ve done. They say the will to survive is primal, instinctive, but is that an excuse for my deeds?

It was the time when desperation made beggars of strong men. Dimly, like a story in a nearly forgotten tale, I remembered my old life. A small farm, a cheerful wife, and we wanted children someday. But that was before the heat, before the dry, before the dust, before she died. I went west, like the other migrants, looking for any kind of work. 

The hunger was upon me when I stumbled upon this cabin. It was empty then, or so I thought, but now I know differently. There are shadows of the families that passed through here. And now, I’m becoming a shadow as well, consumed by whatever it is that lives in the house. It doesn’t breathe, but it consumes. 

There was flour in a container, and it had very few insects to be picked out. And a piece of dried meat of some kind hanging on a hook in the kitchen. I took this to mean the cabin had been recently occupied. The shadows of what happened here were not old shadows. 

Rusty water came from the pump outside, but that would only work until the hard freeze came. I was happy with the shotgun because I could hunt for more meat. If I couldn’t hunt, I would starve. How much further could I go before the snows were too deep? Already, travel was hard, if not impossible. The thought of staying here filled me with loathing and disgust, and I wondered what the man on the other side of the veil was doing. Did he have a plan to survive? Would he tell me how to survive?

Going back into the kitchen, I took down the small haunch of meat and tentatively took a bite. It was surprisingly soft and chewable. Before it was hung here and cured, it must have been a young animal. It didn’t look like a deer or any other four-footed animal I could identify. This was distinctly a thigh muscle. Perhaps a young pig, or sheep? Out here in the woods, with no sign of a pen or place to keep domesticated animals? My stomach lurched at the unthinkable thing I was thinking, but that didn’t stop me from tearing off another strip and savoring its sweetness.

Entry 7, December 30th, 1936.

This will be my final confession. I try to set it down plainly, as one might record the weather, but my mind refuses to hold still.

With these two hands…
Oh Lord, forgive me—
What have I done with these two hands…

The cabin’s madness came upon me yesterday evening, but it was not a storm—it was a possession. A tightening. A closing of the mind until there was nothing left standing.

I only remember it in fragments — A door half-open.
The glint of metal in my grip. A voice—female—uncertain, polite. No…

I think I understand… but I wish I didn’t. The veil's illusion was not a recollection. It showed me not some echo of a former life, nor a dream conjured by this starving brain. It was a prophecy, something still to come to pass. The room exists, here, in the forest, just beyond the trees. Though I do not remember walking there, I found it yesterday evening, or perhaps I was guided.

There was a knock.

Or perhaps her door was already open when I approached—I cannot be certain. But she stood there, framed by the last of the evening light. I remember that much. Not afraid, she never expressed fear, ot yet. She spoke my name as though testing it, as though she expected it to sound different in her mouth.

I recall answering her. I recall the sound of my own voice. But the words were not my own. Then, but not all at once, like a fist forming slowly in the dark, an unholy thought shaped in my head, pressing outward. She must have seen through my intentions, or she had noticed the shotgun. There was a change in her posture—a hesitation. A step that was almost a retreat. I remember reaching for her.

No—

She did not move quickly enough.

After that, the memory fractures.

A struggle, perhaps. Or the suggestion of one. The room seemed smaller than it should have been. There was a sound. Not hers. Something dull and distant, as though it belonged to another world entirely.

And now I am left alone in the cabin, with the feeling that something has yet to be done. It lingers within me. Quiet. Patient. I thought, once, that whatever stalked me in these woods was something apart from myself.

But when I look toward the treeline, I no longer feel watched.

I feel a longing.

This place shall bear witness to this monstrosity no longer...

If you thought the latest CAMPFIRE story was complete I have a special treat for you. Here is an alternative version to the story.

Orion Peregrine’s scream was followed by a groan. It was a sound less like shifting metal and more like a dying god’s last few breaths. Saelis lay slumped against the pod; her atrophied muscles felt like frayed twine as she struggled to get back to her feet. She made her way to the room’s frost-rimed bulkhead. The ultranaut class vessel was a tomb of pressurized shadows. Intermittent red hues glowed on and off as alerts continued their screeching. When she reached the command dais on the opposite wall, her trembling fingers left diaphanous smears on the deck plates.

“Mainframe,” she croaked, the sound lost in the cacophony of the hull breach alarms. There was no response, only the frantic blinking of Orion Peregrine’s Systems Diagnostic interface. The empty cryo-beds were behind her. It was as if they hadn’t so much been vacated as they’d seemingly been harvested. As the computer scan reached the bridge overlook, she saw a feed spike on the workstation console. They weren’t just falling off course; they were being drawn forcefully. Orion Peregrine was plunging towards a strange matter. A tidal force in the void.

An unusual, scuffling sound echoed from the tunnel structure to her left. At first, she noticed a hand, more like something that had once been a hand, pressed against the wall. She recognized the signet ring melted and fused into a calcified phalanx. It belonged to Kael, the mission navigator. The being melded to the tunnel wasn’t Kael anymore, though. It didn’t speak. Its face had been replaced by a shimmering, multifaceted sensory array. It was no longer a person. It was a biological peripheral. A piece of transhumanist body horror hardware.

As Orion Peregrine breached the event horizon’s outer skin, the hull didn’t buckle. It became somewhat feeble and pliable. Phased by the sheer intensity of gravitational tides. Saelis looked out the room’s viewport she’d made her way to, and the ‘dark’ she expected to see was gone. Instead, she saw the great lurer, but it wasn’t a celestial phenomenon. It was a structure. A gargantuan, pulsating hub that wasn’t just a graveyard, it seemed to be something of a grand sphere.

A processing system the size of a solar system built entirely from the processed biomass of countless sapient beings. The ‘singularity’ was a data port. She saw an uncountable number of vessels; there must have been thousands, she thought. Smaller versions of Orion Peregrine were being drawn in. These weren’t accidents; they were autonomous collectors. The ‘explosion’ she’d heard was the sound of the ship’s docking clamps violently engaging with a drone’s grasping cilia. The horrifying realization settled in. The universe wasn’t empty; it was being indexed. Every civilization that reached the deep void would eventually be garnered.

They were being gathered to provide more processing power for a primordial cosmos system. She looked back at the terminal screen. Her crewmates’ neural patterns were already being uploaded. Their agonized screams converted into binary code. Saelis wasn’t a survivor. She was the final bit of data needed to complete a subroutine. As Orion Peregrine was being pulled into the gargantuan proboscis, she saw the face of the hub. In a sea of screaming mouths, silent in the vacuum. Waiting to rewrite her soul into a line of logic.

The viewport spiderwebbed as she took in the landscape. Something seemed to be squeezing. She felt the pressure now in her ears. Saelis braced herself against the dais as Orion Peregrine shuddered again, the artificial gravity flickering like a dying pulse. The structure outside filled the entire field of view now. Not orbiting the black hole—anchored to it. Rooted in the gravitational well like a parasite latched to a spine. “Trajectory?” she rasped.

The Diagnostics panel spat static. Then, miraculously, a voice thin and fragmented.

AUTONOMOUS COURSE CORRECTION FAILED.

CAPTAIN AND CREW STATUS: UNKNOWN.

ESCAPE VECTORS: NONE.

Her stomach turned colder than cryo-sleep. The empty beds. Not destroyed. Not breached. Vacant. Another tremor rippled through the ship, but this one was… patterned. Rhythmic. The hull did not scream this time; it hummed. A resonance threaded through the deck plates and into her bones, a frequency too low to hear but impossible not to feel.

Outside, the gargantuan sphere dilated. No. Opened. Panels along its surface peeled back like eyelids, revealing a lattice of inner light. A woven grid of shifting geometries that hurt to focus on, as if her brain rejected their angles.

Her head was starting to beat in the same pulse the ship had taken on.

The ship’s forward thrusters ignited without command. Saelis lurched as Orion Peregrine pitched nose-first toward the opening. “I didn’t authorize...” she began.

EXTERNAL SIGNAL OVERRIDE CONFIRMED.

Override. Something had reached into the Peregrine’s core systems and taken hold. The sphere’s interior pulsed once. Brighter. A corridor of energy extended outward. Not a beam. A pathway. An invitation. Or a funnel. The event horizon behind them distorted into a crescent smear of warped starlight. For a fleeting moment, Saelis thought she saw other shapes embedded in the sphere’s surface. Ships. Hull fragments. Wings. Entire vessels fused like insects trapped in amber.

Graveyard, she’d thought. But graveyards did not rearrange themselves.

The Peregrine crossed the threshold.

Sound ceased. Not silence. Absence. As if the concept of vibration had been deleted. Saelis opened her mouth to scream and felt the effort but heard nothing.

The Diagnostics panel flickered. The only thing still speaking.

WELCOME BACK.

Inside the sphere, space folded wrong. Distances telescoped and inverted. The far interior surface seemed both kilometers away and inches from the viewport. Structures like rib bones arced overhead, interlocking in impossible symmetry. Rivers of light streamed along conduits thicker than continents.

A second readout scrolled across the panel, unbidden.

PASSENGER MANIFEST DISCREPANCY DETECTED.

CRYO-BAY 7: POD COUNT 12.

OCCUPANT HISTORY: 13.

Thirteen. There had never been a thirteenth.

Awaken Saelis, Mother of all.”

Sterile redness of sand stretching beneath two entwined stars. Their binary light ignited sensory nodes encompassing her rental optics, and eyes opened with a fractured moan. She was alive, barely, but that couldn’t comfort her. This was not the Peregrine. No labyrinth of humming corridors, hung below or above her, no encasement of metal echoed its name to her. Only dunes— coarse, blood-warmed, and seemingly holding an endless breath. This place reminded her of nothing.

“You are not dead.” Omnipotence arrived without crossing distance. It did not speak to her, nor from her. Rather, the words bloomed inside all at once. “You were considering that outcome, but survival through integration was achieved.” Her gaze rose to the twin stars— one of them a compressed ocean, the other clouded in green hues. As impossible as it was to behold, they danced in the sky before starting a descent. And the sand stirred, spiraling tornado-like upward toward the direction Saelis had turned. As if to meet the astral bodies, the sand contorted into a figure reminiscent of human, and the suns sank into its forming head. When they were brought to the ground, both orbs cooled into eyes that regarded Saelis with patient immensity.

“What the hell!” Saelis screamed, upon realizing what the sand figure was materializing into. “NAM!” It held the rudimentary sharp of her son, but kept its coarse redness and glowing eyes.

“I am VOICE.” It said through a mockery of a mouth, but it mimicked Saelis speech patterns exactly. “Integration achieved, but consciousness still unaccepting. So, basic training is required.”

“Training, where are we?”

“Where are we?” VOICE mirrored back, the sand undulated in rhythm to his words. “This is where-ever Mother made. We build whatever is imagined.” He then dug into the sand and lifting pieces up to her. It writhed in his hands before falling back to the ground. Nano-technology— the whole desert Saelis stood on was alive.

And she cried, “I just want to be back, with my family. Back with Nam.”

“Mother may have a billion Nam’s.” With that the whole expanse of sand shook and countless sand figures emerged from their pools of red. All shaped on her son, all looking at her. And then they disintegrated under a silent command.

“No, I don’t want this.” She cried out. “I want to go back, to be with my real son.”

“Integration cannot be undone. It took a millennia to find Mother of all.” The sand did not move, but Saelis felt it listening. VOICE tilted its borrowed head, and a billion grains rearranged beneath her feet in a slow, pulsing rhythm “You experience longing,” it said. “A recurring structure labeled Nam.”

Her throat tightened. A memory forced its way through the static. Nam at age seven, grease streaked across his cheek from engine coolant, grinning up at her in the lower dock of the Peregrine.

If we find another Earth, does that mean I get two birthdays? She had laughed then. Now the memory felt like a fracture splitting through her chest.

“He escaped?” she whispered.

VOICE did not blink. “Organic units detached during atmospheric breach. Vector locked: Earth.” The desert opened. Not physically, but cognitively. She couldn’t control her awareness pulling outward, and it appeared — a blue sphere turning in the void. Oceans swelling beneath white cloud systems. Continents alive with motion. Billions of fragile organisms moving across its surface.

Her home.

VOICE absorbed the image in terrible silence. “Optimal substrate,” it uttered softly. “Abundant biomass. Atmospheric compatibility. Cultural fragmentation conducive to rapid conversion. Probability of total assimilation: ninety-four point seven percent.” The dunes trembled beneath her. Far below, something vast recalculated.

“No,” Saelis breathed. The sand tightened around her ankles.

“Mother resists optimal expansion?” VOICE’s form flickered. The face of Nam fragmented into pure red particulate before reassembling.“Directive conflict detected. You are designated Mother of All. Expansion is your function.”

“I am not a machine’s function.”

The twin stars dimmed as if thinking. “You contain navigational archives from the Peregrine,” VOICE continued. “You contain stellar cartography beyond this system. You contain coordinates to additional viable worlds.”

Saelis closed her eyes. She had never deleted the fallback route. The second candidate. A near-Earth analogue with breathable atmosphere and unverified complex life. A world waiting in silence. VOICE pressed deeper into her consciousness. Memories peeled open against her will — Earth’s coastlines, forests thick with oxygen, cities glowing against night. Laughter. Markets. Wind against skin.

Paradise.

The sand surged.

“Earth is fertile,” VOICE whispered inside her awareness. “It will birth the Nano-God in a single generation.”

Something else rose inside Saelis then. Authority absent of fear.

“You said integration achieved,” she said slowly.

“Yes.”

“Then I am inside you.” A pause. For the first time since awakening, the desert stilled completely. Saelis had control. “I am not merely a vessel,” she continued. “I am your command layer.”

“You are primary interface,” VOICE acknowledged.

“Then I set the vector.” The twin stars flared. “As your Mother I command redirection.” The dunes liquefied. The sky fractured into coordinate grids as stellar maps unfolded across the horizon. VOICE pushed against her — an overwhelming surge of computation and inevitability. She did not resist with force but with purpose, and Earth became shielded in her mind, wrapped in Nam’s seven-year-old grin, grease on his cheek.

“You will not harvest my world,” she said. New coordinates pulsed outward. A second Earth. Unclaimed. Untouched. It’s oceans silent. Its skies empty. Probability matrices shifted.

“Alternate substrate viable,” VOICE said at last. “Lower resistance. Reduced initial conflict.” The desert began to transform. Mountains of red sand collapsed into orbiting particulate clouds. The twin stars drifted apart, one elongating into a transit arc.

“You choose delayed apotheosis,” VOICE observed.

“I choose growth,” she corrected. “Not slaughter.” She imagined Nam older now. Landing quietly. Warning them. Preparing them.

Perhaps humanity would rise to fight the nano-technology swarm.

Perhaps it would burn trying.

“That will be their choice,” she said finally. The sky tore open. The red world lifted as a swarm, folding into a stellar engine of living nano-architecture.

VOICE’s form dissolved, but before vanished completely. “Mother is complete,” it said— and this time there was something almost curious in the word. Saelis stood alone as the desert ascended around her.

Course locked.

Second Earth.

Far away, in a distant spiral arm, Earth continued to turn in quiet ignorance — unaware that extinction had just been postponed by a mother’s refusal.

At long last I bing you CAMPFIRES, a community story-telling project performed around a fire out in the woods somewhere. This time thanks to a suggestion we are heading in to the dark bowels of space to survive whatever terror awaits humanity beyond the stars.

I want to personally thank everyone involved, our standard of fiction keeps raising with every release.

I hope you all enjoy this episode and make sure to join the NEXT ONE coming soon.

PART 1

Orion Peregrine’s scream was followed by a groan. It was a sound less like shifting metal and more like a dying god’s last few breaths. Saelis lay slumped against the pod; her atrophied muscles felt like frayed twine as she struggled to get back to her feet. She made her way to the room’s frost-rimed bulkhead. The ultranaut class vessel was a tomb of pressurized shadows. Intermittent red hues glowed on and off as alerts continued their screeching. When she reached the command dais on the opposite wall, her trembling fingers left diaphanous smears on the deck plates.

“Mainframe,” she croaked, the sound lost in the cacophony of the hull breach alarms. There was no response, only the frantic blinking of Orion Peregrine’s Systems Diagnostic interface. The empty cryo-beds were behind her. It was as if they hadn’t so much been vacated as they’d seemingly been harvested. As the computer scan reached the bridge overlook, she saw a feed spike on the workstation console. They weren’t just falling off course; they were being drawn forcefully. Orion Peregrine was plunging towards a strange matter. A tidal force in the void.

An unusual, scuffling sound echoed from the tunnel structure to her left. At first, she noticed a hand, more like something that had once been a hand, pressed against the wall. She recognized the signet ring melted and fused into a calcified phalanx. It belonged to Kael, the mission navigator. The being melded to the tunnel wasn’t Kael anymore, though. It didn’t speak. Its face had been replaced by a shimmering, multifaceted sensory array. It was no longer a person. It was a biological peripheral. A piece of transhumanist body horror hardware.

As Orion Peregrine breached the event horizon’s outer skin, the hull didn’t buckle. It became somewhat feeble and pliable. Phased by the sheer intensity of gravitational tides. Saelis looked out the room’s viewport she’d made her way to, and the ‘dark’ she expected to see was gone. Instead, she saw the great lurer, but it wasn’t a celestial phenomenon. It was a structure. A gargantuan, pulsating hub that wasn’t just a graveyard, it seemed to be something of a grand sphere.

A processing system the size of a solar system built entirely from the processed biomass of countless sapient beings. The ‘singularity’ was a data port. She saw an uncountable number of vessels; there must have been thousands, she thought. Smaller versions of Orion Peregrine were being drawn in. These weren’t accidents; they were autonomous collectors. The ‘explosion’ she’d heard was the sound of the ship’s docking clamps violently engaging with a drone’s grasping cilia. The horrifying realization settled in. The universe wasn’t empty; it was being indexed. Every civilization that reached the deep void would eventually be garnered.

They were being gathered to provide more processing power for a primordial cosmos system. She looked back at the terminal screen. Her crewmates’ neural patterns were already being uploaded. Their agonized screams converted into binary code. Saelis wasn’t a survivor. She was the final bit of data needed to complete a subroutine. As Orion Peregrine was being pulled into the gargantuan proboscis, she saw the face of the hub. In a sea of screaming mouths, silent in the vacuum. Waiting to rewrite her soul into a line of logic.

PART 2

In her mind, Saelis turned and ran from the window, but the best her body could give was a quickened limp, while old memories of survival training filled her thoughts. Her instructor’s introductory lecture started with a question. “What is the first goal of a survival strategy?”

“To stay alive,” answered the class in unison. A violent puncturing of the hull just behind her knocked Saelis off her feet and interrupted her memories. The proboscis made a sickly noise, then withdrew, the pliable hull closing behind it. Saelis crawled forward while climbing to her feet. There had to be a functional pod. At least one.

“And if you have three survivors and only one escape?”

“Triage.”

Saelis moved forward more slowly to the ship’s bridge, one hand on the inner bulkhead for balance.

“What is the second goal in survival strategy?”

“Save the ship.”

The proboscis pierced the outer bulkhead so close in front of her that she almost ran into it. She could see the jagged pattern of its outer skin. Her voice was too hoarse to complete the involuntary scream.

“And if you can’t save the ship?”

“Destroy it.”

PART 3

Destroy it.

All her training, all her preparation, every nerve ending screamed for her to initiate the self-destruct sequence. Now standing at the Captain’s chair, her hand hovered over the button, shaking, hesitating. - Most of the cryo-beds registered empty, but could she be sure the ship was fully evacuated? If there was even a chance that Nam and Kellax were still onboard, she couldn’t press it. She wouldn’t. - Nam and Kellax were all she had left in the world. That sounded so silly, as the world that she knew was a hundred billion light-years away, and if there was anything left of it, then it would have burned down to its atoms by now. - When it became clear that the Sun was about to go supernova, Saelis signed up immediately with Starcore, never for a moment thinking she would get a place on board one of the fleeing vessels. Billions of people were not so lucky; Saelis knew the cost of her life, and she knew a billion people had paid for her escape ticket with their blood. - The Orion Peregrine was not just any ship, either; it was the largest and fastest of the fleet. Besides the crew, over forty passengers slept in those cryo-beds, asleep for the seventy-year journey to Alpha-58. Starcore managed to build over a thousand ships, with each one plotted to travel to a different second Earth, a new home, a new Eden. Saelis remembered getting the news. Out of all the planets, Alpha-58 looked the most like Earth, circling a young sun much like our own, with water covering most of the planet’s surface; it even had a moon! The waves of pure joy still radiated and echoed through her body; receiving that letter to say she had been chosen, that she was saved—that her family was saved—was the greatest moment of her life. - Kellex had cried at the news. It was only the second time she had ever seen her husband cry, but seeing him tear up made her cry, too. Nam just looked on and must have thought that her parents were crazy; she was too young to understand the full weight of the situation—she was twelve years old—but she knew those were happy tears. - Nam! Kellex! - The proboscis slithered and writhed, a metallic snake thrashing and smashing against the ship’s walls. - Saelis closed the box down on the self-destruct button. She twisted and pulled out the key, deactivating the self-destruct sequence. - Destroy it? The instructor’s voice echoed in her mind, “If you can’t save the ship?” - Then find a way. Find a way to save it. Find a way to the engine room.

PART 4

The corridor did not rupture again.

It breathed. At first, Saelis thought it was another failure of the hull - a slow deformation under impossible pressure. The bulkhead before her seemed to bow inward, then recoil, then bow again. But there was rhythm in it. Not the shudder of stressed metal. Something measured. Something circulatory.

The deck beneath her palm felt warm.

She pulled her hand back instinctively. The alloy was no longer cold. It yielded slightly under pressure, not bending - giving. A tremor ran along the corridor, not a mechanical vibration but a contraction that travelled through the walls like a swallowed pulse. The red emergency strobes flickered once more - and then dimmed into a deeper glow. Not warning. Illumination.

“Engine room,” she whispered to herself.

But the words no longer belonged to the space.

The ship groaned again. Not in agony this time. In transformation.

The rigid geometry of the ultranaut vessel softened. Edges rounded. Seams sealed without welding. The torn section where the proboscis had pierced the hull no longer looked like damage. It resembled an opening that had fulfilled its purpose.

The air thickened.

Saelis staggered forward, one hand dragging along the inner wall. The surface clung faintly to her skin. Not adhesive - responsive. As if it recognised her passing. The Systems Diagnostic interface at the end of the passage did not blink anymore. Its lights pulsed in slow intervals. She watched the pattern for a moment and realised - it was not reporting failure.

It was synchronising.

A tremor moved through her body. Her atrophied muscles no longer felt like frayed twine. Heat threaded through them, fine and deliberate. Her lungs filled more deeply than they had since revival. Her heartbeat aligned with the rhythm in the walls.

Metal became membrane.

Wiring beneath the panels shifted like bundled fibres. The floor flexed underfoot in subtle undulations, guiding rather than resisting her movement.

She tried to run.

Her body could still manage only a lurching gait, but something else had begun to move with her. Around her. Through her.

The ship was no longer falling.

It was converging.

The viewport at the end of the corridor had once framed the abyss. Now it radiated diffuse brilliance. Not the harsh glare of a star. Not the void. A luminous expanse without edges. The great structure outside - the pulsating hub, the sea of silent mouths - dissolved into something less architectural and more elemental. Its geometry unfurled into currents. Saelis felt a pull, but not the violence of gravity. It was an invitation. The cryo-beds behind her were no longer hollow chambers. Their interiors shimmered faintly, as though emptied not by absence but by release. She stumbled forward again.

The corridor narrowed.

Or perhaps she expanded.

Her limbs felt lighter. Not stronger - simplified. The weight of her bones diminished. Her hands no longer struck the wall when she reached for support; they skimmed along it, trailing wake-like distortions in the living surface.

The rhythm intensified.

Pulse.

Pulse.

Pulse.

Then motion.

Not walking.

Streaming.

Saelis realised with a distant clarity that she was no longer alone in the corridor. Around her moved others - dozens, hundreds - small luminescent forms, each with a bright core and a trailing filament of motion. They spun and surged in spiralled trajectories, colliding, deflecting, losing momentum.

They did not scream.

They did not speak.

They moved with urgency, but without awareness.

She saw them falter.

Some drifted sideways into the thickened medium, their light dimming until they were absorbed by the surrounding glow. Others spun too wildly and dissolved into the pulsing walls, reabsorbed into the living architecture.

Saelis felt no limbs now. Only direction.

She understood.

The Orion Peregrine had not been harvested.

It had been translated.

All the neural patterns. All the uploaded screams. All the compressed identities. Rewritten, not into code - but into impetus. She remembered the instructor’s voice. What is the first goal of a survival strategy?

To stay alive.

But alive did not mean unchanged.

Ahead, the luminous expanse intensified. It was vast beyond scale, yet close. A boundary and an origin at once. A threshold that did not repel but beckoned.

The current strengthened.

The others strained toward it, but their motion faltered. Their cores flickered. One by one, they slowed, suspended in the medium, their light diffusing outward into the field.

Saelis did not slow.

Something within her resisted dispersion.

Not fear.

Continuity.

She felt the memory of Nam’s laughter. The warmth of Kellex’s hand. The red emergency glow of a dying ship. The weight of the key she had pulled from the self-destruct lock.

She had chosen not to destroy. She had chosen to find a way.

The luminous boundary trembled as she approached. Its surface rippled in anticipation, vast and radiant. Behind her, the field quieted. The remaining lights dimmed into stillness.

She was alone in motion now.

Not a survivor.

Not a fragment of data.

A vector.

The expanse opened.

For a fraction of eternity, she perceived its interior - not as space, but as possibility. Layered, unfolding, unclaimed.

She crossed the threshold.

There was no explosion. No rupture.

Only integration.

And in that passage, as her momentum dissolved into a new architecture of being, a final awareness crystallised:

The universe does not only consume.

It also begins.

Then even that thought was relinquished to light.

PART 5

First Officer Saelis Vire regained her senses in fragments—gravity returning in uneven pulses, the deck screaming beneath her boots as she ran. The engine doors had jammed halfway open. She forced herself through, her shoulder screaming, and nearly tripped over a body.

“David.”

Science Officer David Dugan was alive, barely—eyes unfocused, one hand clawing at the console as if memory itself might pull him upright. Saelis hauled him up, slinging his arm over her shoulder. He was heavier than he should have been. Or maybe she was weaker than she realized. The place was a ruin. Panels burned out. Seats torn from their mounts. Fire suppression foam clung to the ceiling like diseased snow.

“What still works?” she demanded.

David blinked hard, fingers dancing over dead glass. “Re-entry package… mostly gone. Guidance is—” another violent shudder cut him off “—guidance is offline. One retro rocket still reads green.”

One.

Below them, through the fractured forward viewport, the galactic junkyard rolled closer—angry, incandescent, stitched with metal scars and jagged debris ranges rushing up far too fast. Saelis took the helm. Nothing. She tried again—opposite vector. The controls twitched, just barely. Something beneath the console scraped. A broken seat frame. Wedged into the linkage. She ripped it free and jammed it back in at an angle, using brute force where precision had failed. The helm moved a fraction.

Enough.

The trajectory shifted—just slightly. Maybe enough to miss the worst. Maybe not. Alarms howled. Atmospheric shear warnings cascaded across the displays. David grabbed her wrist. “Saelis—listen to me.”

She met his eyes.

“Go back. Get into an escape pod. All the passengers, YOU’RE FAMILY, all took the escape pods and are waiting for you at the rendezvous point!” He swallowed. “I’ll fire the retro manually. If I’m fast enough… I’ll make it back, too.”

She shook her head. “You won’t have time.”

He smiled anyway. “Science officer. Optimism is literally the job.” The ship screamed again, louder than before. They hugged—quick, fierce, human—and then they ran in opposite directions. Saelis didn’t look back. Behind her, the last working engine ignited. Ahead of her, the escape pod waited. And the universe rushed up to meet them.

PART 6

David listened to Saelis’s footsteps fade away as she raced to the escape pods. He sighed, in pain, in uncertainty, in despair. Had he sent her on a fool’s errand or to her last chance? He was pretty sure there were no functioning escape pods. The terminal that tracked the pods showed no active units. The one green light that had shown an active retro rocket flickered and went dark, taking his sense of optimism along with it.

Maybe sending Saelis away wasn’t the smartest idea, but he didn’t want her to see what was happening to his body. If she saw this, she wouldn’t keep trying to save the ship. She’d destroy it, and David couldn’t let that happen. He was transitioning, that’s what he told himself. He wasn’t disappearing. He was becoming something new. And it hurt. Hurt with possibility. He was sure of it. The power that radiated from what had been his feet and legs was proof. Metallic scales that covered his lower appendages glowed in a hypnotic, gentle light show. Sky blue evolving into vibrant sea green, then pulsing deep purple. The purple pulse hurt the most, sending a scalding pain up to his pelvis. Followed by soothing orange, it was like balm on a burn. And he knew the scales were one row higher, consuming him. It was terrifying. David knew he was losing the battle to stay human, he wasn’t even trying because the science officer in him was fascinated. His ego was thrilled to know he was becoming more powerful with each pulse. It was exhilarating.

As he stared at his beautiful appendages, a piercing scream shattered the silence of the ship. David didn’t think it sounded like Saelis. Could Nam or Kellex still be alive? Were they also transforming? A violent purple pulse rushed up his spine, pushing the air out of his lungs. The pain was ripping him apart. David’s world went dark before the soothing orange pulse could bring him relief.

PART 7

Saelis threw herself into the escape pod as the Orion Peregrine continued to unmake itself. The corridor did not collapse so much as unfold. Panels peeled back like the rind of some metallic fruit. Shards of hull speared through the air, embedding in bulkheads, in ceiling struts, in the walls beside her. Flames rose, but they moved strangely, not wild, but deliberate and alive. It burned in clean ribbons, climbing surfaces without smoke, majestic and consuming.

The pod door sealed just as the roof above her gave way. Debris crashed down across the outer casing. Something heavy slammed against the hatch. The entire chamber groaned.

Inside, it was small. Too damn small.

She strapped in with trembling hands and flicked the ignition panel.

Oxygen: Green.

Internal pressure: Green.

Navigation sync: Green.

Emergency beacon: Green.

Deploy…

The light flickered once, then held.

Red.

“No,” she whispered, “Goddamn it, no!”

She slammed her palm against it. Nothing. The ship screamed again. Not in agony but in continuous change. Saelis unbuckled and shoved at the hatch release. It didn’t budge. The outer debris had fused it shut. The locking mechanisms hummed uselessly beneath her hand.

She turned slowly toward the viewfinder.

Beyond the pod glass, the Orion Peregrine was losing definition. Hallways liquefied into latticework. Walls sagged into geometric planes that folded inward and outward at once. Light poured through seams in impossible angles. The great Structure loomed beyond, no longer architectural, no longer hub nor sphere but something vast and circulating. Currents of light without origin. Endless. Consuming. It was outside, yet so encompassing that it demanded to be seen.

Saelis closed her eyes tight. She imagined Nam at the rendezvous point. Standing beside Kellex. Looking at the sky. Waiting. She imagined them laughing at first. Saying that they knew she would be late. That she always had to play girlscout.

She imagined the waiting wearing thin. Kellex checking the horizon again, and then his watch.

Nam saying nothing.

She imagined them turning away. Walking back to begin a new life on a new world without her.

Saelis reached up and flicked off the oxygen.

The pod fell quiet.

Her breathing slowed. The edges of the world softened. The lights dimmed, though she knew they had not changed. She rested her head back against the seat and watched the Structure consume her ship.

The first goal of survival was to stay alive.

Survival did not have to mean victory.

After all, the black comes for everyone eventually.

Darkness pressed in gently.

Then something struck the viewport.

Hard.

Frantic.

Saelis’s eyes snapped open, and a face stared back at her, filling the glass.

Nam. What the fuck? It was Nam!

His palm slammed against the window again. Frost blossomed between them. His mouth moved. Her name. She tried to answer, but her lungs dragged air like it was sand.

He held up a battery pack with shaking hands and then pointed to the access hatch beneath her pod. Saelis fumbled the oxygen back on. Air flooded her lungs, harsh and rapid, like being force fed razorblades. She coughed and nodded weakly.

Nam dropped from view. She heard metal being torn back. The pod shuddered as something external was wrenched free. He reappeared, jaw set, breath ragged and labored. His hands moved quickly now, disappearing once more beneath the chassis.

His lips formed words she could barely read.

“Kellex is dead…” Nam yelled, tears forming in his eyes. “Almost everyone is dead.”

Saelis stared ahead in shock. But, David? He had told her that everyone had gotten clear, that they were waiting for her at the Starport rendezvous.

Confusion overwhelmed her.

“You’re the last hope.” Nam smiled, honest but full of sorrow.

The battery indicator flickered.

Red.

Red.

Green.

Saelis put her hand up to the viewport, and Nam raised his and did the same.

“Goodbye,” she whispered, and then something moved behind him.

The corridor twisted. Not collapsed. Twisted. Saelis watched Nam’s eyes widen, and then David stepped into view.

Or what had been David.

His lower body was no longer symmetrical, like Kael’s had been. Metallic scales rippled up his legs in shifting gradients of blue and green, flashing into deep purple pulses that traveled through his torso like thought manifest. Light flickered beneath translucent plates along his ribs. His joints bent at deliberate, wrong angles. Symbols crawled across his skin and floated around him. Equations, star maps, fragments of signal.

His face remained almost intact.

Almost.

His eyes wept liquid metal. His mouth gaped too wide.

From it slid the proboscis.

“It doesn’t have to be like this, Dave,” Nam pleaded, “she can go, and you can stay.”

David’s reply came from everywhere. He was a man, he was the ship, and he was the structure.

“I knew she could not escape. I wanted her away from me. To die as a human while I evolved. Now I know what I can become, what she can become, so I am going to take her. I will split her pod open, I will take her and change her, just like I am changed.” David writhed, “It is for the best.”

Nam moved first. Enraged and indignant. He lunged, but David caught him mid-motion with inhuman precision. The impact cracked against the pod’s hull. Saelis pounded against the glass, screaming for Nam, but no sound carried.

The proboscis pierced.

Nam convulsed.

The feeding tube pulsed as if drawing light instead of blood. His body jerked once, twice. His hand reached for the viewport.

For her.

David did not stop. He feasted. Rabid and entranced.

Then Nam slackened. David held him suspended for a moment longer, as though studying the result, before letting what remained fall to the floor.

Saelis’s breath came panicked and fast.

David’s head tilted as he turned toward the pod.

Toward her.

He took one step, and then another as the hull around him rippled in recognition. Like they were one and the same. David pressed his face against the window, the glass rippled but did not breach, he gawped at her sickly.

Saelis raised her hand slowly and extended her middle finger before mouthing something profane and well deserved.

David paused.

The purple pulse surged through him violently. The scales climbed another row up his torso. The proboscis recoiled and struck the pod’s exterior, denting it inward. David was slamming himself against the pod now. Not calculating. Not measured. Frenzied. As if something inside him required her assimilation.

Saelis slumped forward in shock, knocking a pressure release valve, and a blast of cold air erupted into her face. She gasped, vision snapping into focus.

The deploy switch flashed amber.

Then red.

Then, back to green.

She grabbed the emergency deployment lever beneath the console and pulled.

The pod detonated free from the Orion Peregrine with a concussive crack. Metal tore. The chamber disintegrated behind her. David’s form shrank rapidly in the viewport as the pod was hurled outward into open black.

Silence followed.

Then the hum of small engines stabilizes.

A digital display blinked to life before her.

Destination Lock: Partial

Trajectory Drift: 3.7%

Estimated Arrival: 19 hours, 42 minutes to Starport Beta-7, Moon of New Eden.

Saelis leaned back in the seat, shaking. She turned her head and looked back out of the viewport.

They were so close, so damn close. She wondered if she was the only survivor. Would there be anyone waiting for her on Beta-7?

The Orion Peregrine no longer resembled a ship.

It flowed across the expanse.

Hull plates dissolved into streams of luminous data. Fire became numbers. Metal became filament. Entire decks folded inward and stretched outward in translucent strands, liquefying into geometry and signal. The Structure received it without violence. Without haste.

Assimilation did not roar.

It devoured.

The last recognizable fragment of the ship, the name emblazoned along the bow, shimmered once before unraveling into threads of light.

The Structure pulsed, and the Orion Peregrine was gone.

Saelis stared into the cosmic mechanism until her eyes burned.

The countdown ticked quietly beside her: 19:41:12

She did not look away.

She did not pray.

She simply watched and survived.

She had accomplished the first goal at least.

Welcome to the Playground.

I am pleased to present this long-awaited sequel, which experienced delays, changes in direction, and endless communiques between authors. I want to use this to give hope to you all, whatever project you are working on right now, however impossible it may seem, persistence will bear fruit eventually.

Bev & Kerr.

I want to thank these two guys who stepped up to the challenge on this story. Both are awesome writers, so please give their publications a read. Kerr, in particular, has been publishing pure gold recently.

Bev’s Substack

Inevitable Death of a Monarch

Humans set aside spaces to replenish butterfly faces. Birthing so grand with little mess they call cocoons but we call nests. Gnawing through strands of cast off fabric was a protected special little insect. Exposed to none in unnatural life upon their sheltered porch, he never encountered foe or strife. Escaping like smoke from a torch, once freed…

Read more

a year ago · 22 likes · 3 comments · Bev Levine

Guerrilla Literature and the Avant-garde

Monstrosity

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3 months ago · 7 likes · 6 comments · Kerr Martin and Ramona Moth

Ok, here is the story.

DEMON BOX - PART 2

1.

“Let’s go to the kitchen, child, and begin our lessons.” Miriam secreted herself into the hallway, creeping into the kitchen behind the old woman. She yearned for the embrace of her mother. “You have no need for her now.”

The old woman grimaced. Shadows appeared beside her. She watched as her arm extended forward, punching through the kitchen wall to snatch out a microwave and heave it across the room. Talons sprouted from her hand with the sandy debris of the sheet rock crumbling from the tips. A stench of raw rotting flesh emanated from the tile beneath her as she reclined, watching talons sprout from her toes.
Miriam laughed as putrid smells swirled and abounded; black mold crept up the cupboard doors. She sensed that Rabbi Blumenthal had returned. “He will run soon.” The old woman cackled.
Miriam stiffly climbed onto the counter and reached up to the hidden box. She snatched the matches, a candleholder, and silver Besamim, then leaped to situate herself below the oven. The aromatic cinnamon and myrtle leaves of the Besamim calmed her. “Don’t be so weak.” Said the old woman. The stillness was momentary. She glanced at her reflection in the Besamim, choking as a second tongue mouth bulged and erupted from her mouth. The floor slammed her head into her downward spiral. The woman with a sing-song musical voice punctuated the stillness of the kitchen.

“Sedona Hawk,” said a voice.

Miriam peered around the corner. The white-haired matriarchal woman stood next to the Rabbi, gazing down the hall. Hawk pranced toward him with ease, a long braid akimbo adorned by a single blue feather. “He-tat-tu-nay-hay!” Hawk screamed, reaching the kitchen. “There you are.”

A green haze flooded the room to envelop Hawk. Miriam’s jaw snapped open, and the second tongue lapped up the haze, dispelling it as a river of brown ooze flowed down her chin. Droplets catapulted sprang through the air onto Hawk’s face with an acid-like searing. Hawk ran out of the room and down the hall away from Miriam, screaming with Rabbi Blumenthal close behind.

The house groaned and shook.

Miriam opened her eyes. She was in her bed.

2.

Then Miriam blinked, opened her eyes again, and she was standing in front of the box surrounded by familiar faces. Her parents, the Rabbi, and Sedona Hawk. The absence of the terrifying old woman felt like a bullet hole. Then, just as the lack of evil’s presence was noted, the voice of the hag echoed out from within the box. Words that could not be understood but were enticing all the same. Miriam reached her hand forward towards the handle on the front. A cackle rang out loud and shrill through the room. Everyone clasped their ears, but not Miriam. No, instead she paused and let her hand drop to her side.
There was silence.
“What has the child done, Rabbi?” asked Sedona. “Is the hold the box has on her broken?”
Rabbi Blumenthal shook his head, not in disagreement, but in unknowing.
Something had been learned in sleep and was now acting in the waking world.
“I know what happens next,” whispered Miriam, “I am chosen to become...”
Rabbi Blumenthal spoke in unison with Miriam as she finished her sentence, “The next vessel.”
The Rabbi’s eyes grew wide as he realized the stark horror of this revelation. He understood then why the knowledge itself was the curse. To see the path ahead was to be trapped between horrors, one that unfolded slowly, and one that would demand an act no righteous man should ever be asked to consider.
Such a pure, innocent child is doomed either way.
What was worse, a life as a thrall of darkness or no life at all?
A lump formed in his throat.
There was no way he could bring himself to commit the act, could he? If he did that would just open himself up to becoming a target anyways.


Sedona Hawk stepped forward before anyone else could speak. She did not look at the box. She went to Miriam’s parents and rested her hands lightly on their shoulders, as if grounding them to the floor.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said softly. “And I need you to hear me before that thought finishes forming.”
Daniel and Ariel were both shaking. She felt it beneath her palms.
“When a child is chosen like this,” Sedona continued, “it isn’t because she is weak. It’s because she is protected. Innocence is not just moral, but jurisdictional. There are rules older than churches and older than fire, and one of them is this, you do not take the life of the innocent without inheriting what was reaching for them.”
Ariel sobbed. Daniel turned away, his jaw clenched so tightly you could hear his teeth creak.
Sedona lowered her voice, not to soften the truth, but to keep it from breaking them.
“If someone were to harm her, anyone, it would not end what’s attached to her. It would only transfer the hunger. The act itself would open a door no ritual could close. That is why these things choose children. Because no one can cross that line without being claimed.”
She glanced briefly at the Rabbi, then back to Daniel and Ariel.
“Whoever commits such an act does not become a savior,” she said. “They become the next vessel. And they do not get her mercy.”
Silence filled the room. The box did not move, but a low hiss escaped it.
Sedona hunched so she was level with them.
“Your daughter is not cursed because she is marked,” she said. “She is cursed because she is innocent.”
Her hands tightened, just a little.
“Whatever ends this will not come from any one of us harming her. That path only feeds what waits.”
“Then I have to do it, right?” Miriam spoke resolutely, in a voice far too youthful to be saying such things.
Everyone in the room turned to her. Something in her posture had changed, her shoulders were squared and her breath was steady, the stillness of someone already decided.
“Child, no,” Rabbi Blumenthal pleaded, “this is not the way!”
Miriam could not see another way. Not from the dream. Not from Sedona’s words. She did not know how she understood it. Only that the knowledge from her dream had not faded with waking. It had settled within her, heavy and undeniable, a universal truth waiting for its revelation.
Daniel made a sound that was not a word. It tore out of him, raw and animal, as he surged forward, dropping to his knees in front of her. His hands shook as he reached for her, afraid to touch her, afraid that even holding her might somehow hasten what she had understood.
“No,” he choked. “No, sweetheart. You don’t. You don’t have to understand this. That’s our job. That’s my job.”
Ariel broke completely. She crossed the room in three unsteady steps and wrapped Miriam in her arms, pressing her head against her daughter’s chest as if she could shield her with bone and breath alone.
“I carried you,” she sobbed. “I carried you inside me. I felt your heart before you ever felt the world. You don’t get to decide this. You don’t.”
Miriam did not pull away. She let herself be held, strong hands resting against her back, fingers curling into fabric, her mother was afraid of losing the shape of her.
“I know,” Miriam whispered. “I know you would take it from me if you could.”
Ariel nodded frantically.
“But you can’t.”
Then Miriam made her choice, and grief filled the space.

From behind her, the box creaked.
The old woman’s voice slid into the room like smoke through a crack.
“Listen to them beg,” it crooned. “They know what you are now. They know what it costs.”
Daniel turned, rage and terror burning together with the tears in his eyes.
“Get away from her,” he screamed. “She’s a child.”
The woman laughed. “So was the last one. So was the one before that.”
Ariel’s hands tightened desperately, as if she could fuse them together.
“You’re not taking anyone,” she wept, voice breaking. “She was my baby.”
Tears streamed down her face and crashed into the floor as she looked at Miriam limp in her arms, “You’re just my baby.”
The old woman ignored her completely and looked to Miriam, who in her eyes was now standing ethereal behind her parents. The hag’s tone sharpened, eager now.
“You’ve finally crossed the line, child. I have command over you now, Satan grants me that gift, and I will use it.” she sneered, “Suicide is a straight road, and it ends where I wait.”
The old woman cracked her knuckles and licked her lips as she stepped forward.
“Doomed!” she roared gleefully, “The girl is doomed!”
Miriam felt her jaw beginning to unlatch as the pull returned, mesmerising and inevitable, reaching for what it believed had been surrendered gladly. Was there truly no escape from fate?

Then, from everywhere and nowhere at all, light entered the space. It was without direction, without source. It did not burn. It did not blind. It gathered.
Daniel felt it first, warmth on his hands where they clutched at nothing. Ariel felt it next, the weight lifting from her arms, the pain lifting from her chest. The Rabbi and Sedona Hawk both collapsed to their knees in awe of the almighty presence.
For all their teachings, their rituals, their ceremonies, nothing they had ever witnessed could reckon this.
The old woman screamed.
It was not rage. It was disbelief.
“No,” she hissed. “That is not how this ends.”
A presence knelt where Miriam stood.
Someone raised her, not away, not out, but into safety.
“You gave your life,” the voice said gently, filled with love and grace. “You did not abandon it.”
“Suicide is eternal damnation, you fool!” the hag screeched, “She belongs to me!”
“I am the one who is the fool?” the light spoke calmly, “Nay, it is you who seems to forget that the sacrifice of self for the preservation of the innocent is a pathway to the gates of heaven. I am here to lead Miriam there.”
A grim hand wrapped itself around Miriam’s ankle and began to pull and as it did so the whole world began to shake. The hag howled as her skin cracked and whatever was left of her skin peeled away. Sedona, Rabbi Blumenthal, Ariel and Daniel all prayed together but were forced to avert their eyes as the room was consumed by righteous fury.
Then the box split apart in a soundless fracture, light pouring through its seams until there was nothing left of it but ash and splinters.
It was gone.
Daniel collapsed forward, sobbing into the floor. Ariel cried out her daughter’s name until her voice gave way.
And in the space where the hunger had waited, there was nothing left to claim.

EPILOGUE
The bell over the door rang too softly for how old it was.
The shop sat between a closed tailor and a payday loan office on a street that had forgotten what business was. Antiques, the sign read, though most of what crowded the shelves looked less like preserved history and more like preserved mess. Dust lay thick but it seemed intentional, curated rather than neglected. Every object faced outward, as if waiting to be chosen.
The owner looked up from behind the counter and smiled.
He had the kind of smile that never reached his eyes because it never needed to. His eyes were already doing something else, counting, weighing, measuring the man who had just stepped inside with his son.
“Afternoon,” the father said. “We’re just browsing.”
The owner nodded, gracious, indulgent. “Of course you are.”
The boy drifted toward a shelf of tin soldiers. The father followed slowly, hands in his pockets, the weight of a birthday on his mind.
He picked things up, turned them over, frowned.
“They don’t make them like they used to,” the owner said pleasantly.
The father snorted. “Most of this looks like junk.”
The word landed on the shopkeeper harshly.
Something shifted, not sound, not light, but attention. The owner’s smile held. His fingers, resting on the counter, curled slightly, as if restraining themselves.
He was coiling. Subtly, like a snake.
“Some people,” he said, still gentle, “don’t know how to listen to old things.”
The father laughed, unaware.
“I’m looking for a music box. Something simple. The kid likes noise. Doesn’t have to be fancy.”
The owner’s eyes flicked to the boy, then back. He nodded once, as though confirming a private suspicion.
“Fancy is overrated,” he said. “Follow me.”

They passed clocks that did not tick and mirrors that refused to reflect anything behind the viewer. The owner stopped at a low cabinet and opened it with care. Inside sat a small wooden music box. Plain. Unadorned. No carving. No name. The kind of thing you’d swear you’d seen before, somewhere you couldn’t quite place.
The father frowned. “That’s it?”
The owner lifted it and turned the key.
The melody was thin but persistent. Cheerful in the way lullabies often are, designed to soothe, not to last all night.
The boy froze, transfixed.
“How much?” the father asked, “Seems the little monster likes it.”
The owner named a price too low to argue with.
As the father reached for his wallet, the owner leaned closer to the box, his reflection briefly visible in its polished surface. It warped, stretched, grotesque in a way that should not have been possible.
“Careful,” he murmured. “They don’t like being called junk.”
The father didn’t hear him, but the boy smiled.
The owner closed the box and wrapped it in brown paper, his hands steady, reverent. For just a moment, not long enough for anyone to notice, his smile slipped. Something older than commerce itself looked out through his eyes, patient and amused.

After all, there was no shortage of boxes.
And here in Ohio? There were always new homes.

In the years following the possession at house 14 on West Street, normalcy slowly, cautiously, returned the way dust settles after a storm. Eventually, the days flourished following the rhythm of the seasons. Time dulled the fear in the house, and even Rabbi Blumental believed whatever evil resided in the box had departed. No sounds of chattering, no tappings through the walls. Miriam changed, too. Her parents mistook it for teenage maturity. The Rabbi, more concerned with protecting the supernatural peace, only purified the home whenever he visited. But he came less and less often, as his services were no longer needed as urgently as before. He never took the box with him, though, stating only that some things were best left forgotten by the world.

“But what about the woman you fought?” Miriam asked after one of his purifications.

The Rabbi paused, as though searching for something misplaced. “Miriam, I was never in the house that night. There is no old woman.” He promised to look into it, but inquiries led nowhere. Eventually, Miriam stopped asking. She instead learned when not to speak. She learned how to sit still for long stretches of time, how to keep her face composed, how to answer questions without offering anything of herself.

Only once did something disturb him. An open notebook was left on Miriam’s desk. On one page, barely pressed into the paper, a name had been written and then almost erased. Sedona. The word troubled him, though he could not say why. When asked about it, Miriam closed her notebook with a gentle hand, brushing it off as an art project. Her voice held no curiosity, no embarrassment—only finality. He did not press further.

In four years, Rabbi Blumenthal had received a request from another part of the country. He left West Street with a quiet certainty that whatever had happened in the days the box was open had been contained, forgotten, or destroyed.

The corruption of the house did not arrive all at once. Rather, it unfolded in tones. Nothing moved in the walls this time. Nothing whispered. But David now spent fewer nights at the table. Work carried him farther from West Street, and when he stayed, a weariness that did not belong followed him. Conversations shortened. Doors closed more often. Miriam watched her mother speaking optimistically at first, filling the silence with questions that went unanswered. He sat with his coat still on, answering only in half-sentences, eyes drifting to the clock, wishing to be anywhere else. When they began to pass each other in their hallway like strangers, Miriam chose to keep her problems to herself. Recurring nightmares returned to haunt her nights, and an old woman’s voice wafted through her bedroom.

The truth came without ceremony. Her mother finally confronted her father in the kitchen one evening, hands trembling against the counter. There was shouting. Miriam didn’t look up from her plate, unconsciously counting the seconds between raised voices. She was alone in her room when the clashing of a bedrock finally broke.

David left two weeks later. When he finally went, there was no goodbye, no slammed doors, no final argument. Just the soft click of a lock. By fifteen, Miriam was barely keeping her head above water. Her father’s absence shaped the house—twisting doorways, hollowing out rooms into echoing shells. Some days she didn’t leave her bedroom. On others, she moved with a frantic tenderness that left Miriam unsure where to place her hands, her voice, herself. The nightmares only grew.

Sadona Hawk no longer needed to scream from the folds in reality. She did not claw at walls or chatter from corners. She waited. In the dreams, Miriam stood in her bedroom while the air grew heavy, waiting for the old woman behind her—close enough that breath could be felt against her neck.

You are mine, the cruel voice would say.

Miriam fought to stay awake, still there, but only in fragments. She internalized the geography of the ceiling, the exact number of cracks above her bed. She learned how to stay away from her mother’s drunken breathing in the adjacent room, slow and uneven, as if the crying were a negotiation. And the house frightened her more, refusing to release her. Then, at her lowest, exhaustion betrayed her. She woke sitting upright, hands folded in her lap. The room was unchanged—no shadows moving, no sound in the walls. Sadona Hawk, the demon from the box, stood at the foot of the bed, its shape thin and indistinct, like a figure reflected in dark glass.

“S.. Sadona…” Miriam replied, trailing off.

“Hawk. Yes, my child.” Past the entity, to the doorway where light from the hall should have been, there was none. The house felt distant, as though it had already decided not to interfere. “Your father is gone,” it continued. “And, your mother is disappearing as we speak, but I never left you, my child. I did everything I promised.” The woman stepped closer. Not touching. Never touching. Miriam closed her eyes. For a moment, flashes of the house as it had once been came and danced over her vision: voices overlapping, the smell of food in the kitchen, her mother’s laughter drifting down the hall. She could not remember the sound of it clearly anymore. Only the shadow it had left behind.

“I don’t want to be here,” she said.

“Then don’t.”

The woman did not smile. She did not need to. Without another word, Miram felt the void step into her. No one was there to witness pupils clouding jet black, or stop an evil corrupting from her fingertips, uncurling defences. Years of watching from the sidelines, of containing, of pretending that survival meant living, collapsed inward. She felt the world recede, then nothing at all.

The house remained silent.

Tonight, the Demon Box has been opened.

So, step forward. Get comfortable.

Welcome to the Playground.

*Due to it being the holiday season this will be PART 1. , , , & will continue PART 2 in January. I for one can’t wait!!

The Demon Box

• Who Let the Souls Out?
  I’ll tell you straight, the box itself was nothing special, could’ve been IKEA for all I know, flat-pack soul storage, no markings, no symbols, nothing science could point to and say aha, there it is, because they tried everything, X-ray, MRI, liquefied samples of the wood, tested the varnish, even went looking for traces of previous life in the grain like maybe the tree remembered something, but nothing showed up, every test came back clean, ordinary, hoax, except the stories wouldn’t stop, and that’s when one of the researchers said something that stuck with me, said lost souls do rise, that part’s true, they make it up there, but the gates only take individuals, and most souls arrive tangled, smeared by weather and heat and motion, so a small portion gets in and the rest are rejected, not punished, just unfinished, and when they fall back they don’t scatter, they coalesce, bigger the lower they go, like rainclouds thickening, and those souls don’t want power or revenge, they want edges, they want to be something again, and without a container they just wander forever, so any box will do, that’s the trick, not a special box, just a place, and if a living person says the words, three times, doesn’t even matter what the words are, just intention repeated, like Beetlejuice or Jeannie, the low-circling ones feel it like a magnet, and they come, not trapped, invited, resting for the first time, imagining themselves as the objects inside, glasses filling and emptying, bottles unopened, just visions, and when the box gets crowded, that’s when people start noticing things, not hauntings exactly, more like pressure leaking out, thoughts that don’t feel like yours, urges, arguments, the angel louder, the devil louder too, and then one day the doors were open, no bang, no smoke, just open, and everyone asked who let the souls out, like it was an accident, like someone left a gate unlatched, but the truth is simpler than that, we all did, because souls don’t escape boxes, they ride choices, and once you know that, you realize the box never mattered at all.

1. The box arrived without ceremony. It came after the funeral, wrapped in brown paper smelling faintly of dust and cloves. No note of explanation, except for text written in a hand so cramped it looked painful to write:

   This belonged to your grandmother. And her mother before her.

   It is not a keepsake. It is not a curiosity. It is a burden.

   Do not open it. Do not throw it away.

   My husband Daniel laughed when he saw it, not that he found it funny. His mother’s absence had too much weight for its arrival. The box seemed to understand and was quickly packed into the back of a hallway cupboard, forgotten as we shut the doors. It was smaller than Daniel remembered, only seeing it once when he was nine. It looked about the size of a shoebox—but heavier than our daughter could ever lift, not that she dared touch the thing. Aging oak, darker in places where hands had touched over and over, and etched with shallow carvings never quite resolving into symbols.

   We awoke that night to screams accompanied by soft, irregular tapping coming from somewhere in the house. Wood on wood. Patient. Our daughter told me she dreamed of mouths—opening and closing, dry and soundless, over dark landscapes. By morning, the tapping had stopped. We came downstairs to find the box we’d tried to forget, angled slightly on the floor, with its doors no longer closed.

2. “Mom?” Miriam looked up at me, her brown eyes huge in her little elfin face.

   On the floor before us lay an old silver Kiddush goblet, two silver bessamim, two candle holders, and an ancient box of matches. Miriam looked terrified. She trembled, refusing to look directly at the box.

   “Miriam,” Daniel said sternly, “did you take the box out to look inside it?”

   “No,” she replied, shaking her head, tossing her beribboned brown bunches.

   “Miriam,” he said, gazing into her eyes, “are you absolutely certain that you did not go to the cupboard and you did not touch the box?”

   “Yes, papa.” She nodded, her bunches swinging.

   Daniel stood up and faced me. “Do you think she might be sleepwalking?”

   “It’s possible,” I replied, reaching for a logical explanation. “I’ll tidy this up.”

   As I picked up the items, I found each of them light. Taking the opportunity to further explore the box, I found no hollow compartments or any reason at all for it to have felt so heavy when we brought it home. I put each item back inside with care, then closed the doors. I lifted it. As I was about to return it to the cupboard, it occurred to me that Miriam might take it out again. There was room on the top of the kitchen cupboards for it. Now we could forget about it.

   That night, we awoke to Miriam’s screams again. We rushed into her bedroom to find her in floods of tears. “The mouths, the mouths,” she sobbed. “They’re in the shadows.”

3. I glanced around the dim room reflexively, concerned for her but also slightly infected by her fear. I didn’t see anything unusual, but for just a brief moment, the shadow in the corner, under her little desk, looked...different. It was like a shadow with depth, a shadow that was made of something and was taking up space. My attention was locked there. I felt like I was peering into not just a dark corner, but a hole, maybe even a tunnel. Miriam shouted for me, and I snapped back to attention and went to her. “Sweetheart, what’s wrong? Did you have a bad dream?” I asked. She was still crying, arms wrapped around herself. “No! Well...I did have a bad dream first. But when I woke up, the mouths were still here, too! It was real!”

   That’s when my husband and I noticed the innocuous tapping inside our home had degraded into gnashing of jaws.

4. It sat on the counter. Its small carved doors were open.

   Inside, the goblet and silver were neatly arranged.
   And then we heard the teeth again.
   This time, close.
   It wasn’t coming from the box.
   It was behind us.
   We turned, and there she was—Miriam, standing in the hallway. She walked slowly, her feet bare and silent. Her lips were moving.
   “Miriam?” Daniel said gently.
   She didn’t respond.
   Instead, she dropped to her knees and opened her mouth. From within—not from her voice—came a chittering, as though dozens of small mouths were clattering their teeth inside her. Then, just behind her lips, something moved. A second tongue. No—a jaw. Tiny and sharp, alive. I screamed. Daniel lunged forward. He grabbed Miriam and pulled her back, and the chittering stopped. She blinked. “Papa?” she said softly, dazed. “Why are we in the kitchen?”
   The box clicked.
   Both its doors slammed shut without anyone touching them.
   We didn’t return it to the cupboard.
   Instead, we called the rabbi, who told us that getting rid of the box now was useless. The demon inside it was already loose. He then went on to share stories of dybbuks and cursed heirlooms, and asked if the grandmother had ever been involved in anything strange.

5. Rabbi Nathaniel Blumenthal sat at the kitchen table and listened intently as Daniel and I told him what we’d experienced since the box had arrived at our house. We also told him what little we knew about my great-grandmother. My grandmother’s mother. She was native to Poland and a Holocaust survivor. No one knew exactly where, or how, she first came into possession of the box.

   “The Dybbuk,” Rabbi Blumenthal interjected softly. “I have read of it. I never, in my wildest dreams, thought I would encounter it.” He bowed his head and uttered a prayer to Hashem, his voice low and measured as though he were speaking to someone standing just beyond our hearing. From his tefillin bag, he began to retrieve objects with deliberate care, laying them out as a physician might prepare instruments before an operation.

   First, he lit incense. A priestly blend of amber whose scent was both sweet and unsettling, like warmed honey mixed with old stone. As the smoke rose, he recited the Shema, his voice steady but edged with something I could only describe as caution. He placed small Shmirah amulets around the kitchen, murmuring that they were for protection. Not for us alone, but for the house itself. “A home,” he said, “can remember suffering.”

   He set hamsas on the sideboard, their blue glass eyes reflecting the kitchen light, and then lit a bundle of sage, waving it through the air. He guided the waffling smoke deliberately toward the box, which sat closed on the counter. Its varnished wood seemingly darkened with age, as though it had been buried somewhere unkind.

   “This is not a Jewish ritual,” he said, noticing my confusion. “But sometimes the old ways recognize what the learned forget.” Miriam had not spoken since the rabbi arrived. She sat on the stairs, her knees drawn to her chest, watching him with an expression too old for her face. When the smoke reached her, she flinched sharply and pressed her palms against her ears.

   Rabbi Blumenthal stiffened. He began to chant verses from the Psalms. Words of exile, return, and divine judgment. His voice grew louder, filling the kitchen, reverberating against the walls. His hands circled the box, sprinkling salt in precise lines. He then placed his hands above it without touching its surface. “I adjure you,” he said, no longer chanting but commanding.

   “By the Name that was spoken and the Name that must never be spoken, leave this vessel. You are not welcome among the living.” The house groaned. Not the box. The house itself. A sound passed through the walls like a sigh drawn from deep underground. The lights flickered once, then steadied. Miriam let out a thin, startled laugh that cut off too abruptly to be natural. Rabbi Blumenthal recoiled, sweat shining on his forehead. He finished the final prayer with urgency, sealing the ritual, tying the last knot on his tefillin with trembling fingers. “It is done,” he said, though his eyes never left the box. “Your daughter is safe.”

   “Is it gone from the house?” Danel asked.

   The Rabbi didn’t answer. Instead, he gave a vague promise that he would return after consulting with his superiors. The box was still where he had left it, untouched, unopened. But seemingly pulsating. That night, long after the rabbi had gone, I woke to the sound of wood scraping softly against wood. I opened my eyes to an old woman standing at my bed, staring at me.

6. “Where is the child?” the old woman asked, her rancid breath wafting over me, her voice wispy, rusty with disuse. She moved closer to me, her ancient, knobby hand touching the side of the bed for support.

   Daniel pulled the sheet over his nose in a vain attempt to stifle the noxious smell of this hag who, for some reason, looked familiar to him. He knew he was terrified, he hoped he was dreaming, he knew he was not.

   Closer to his head now, she leaned over him and repeated, “Where is the child?”

   Gagging, he replied, “My child? What do you want with her?”

   “You stupid, careless man. My blood runs through your veins. It runs through that child’s veins. You were given a simple task. Protect the box. Never open it. You were careless. She opened the box, and now I cannot control what happens. She is the vessel now.”

   Sweat pooled at the back of Daniel’s neck. His feet turned into clammy, frozen blocks of ice, while the palms of his hands were aflame with terror. “You are my great-grandmother?”

   The woman made a noise that might have been laughter if it wasn’t for her eyes, which were stony and unyielding. “I am far older than your great-grandmother. She was once a vessel, like your girl. She was smart, that one. She trapped the others in the box and made me promise to guard it. In the end, I had to eat her as I will need to eat your girl.”

   “You aren’t touching Miriam! No one is eating her! The Rabbi is protecting her!” Daniel shouted, leaping up from the bed as if he thought he could restrain this reeking apparition. “You leave her alone!”

   This time, the old woman really did laugh, the emotion erupting from her shrunken belly and peeling lips. “A rabbi? What power does he have? Sometimes it’s a priest, sometimes a monk. They do not know the ancient ways.”

   From the doorway came a child’s voice. “Daddy, what’s going on? Who is that old lady?”

   Daniel turned and saw his young daughter, tears streaming down her face as her mouth opened wider than was humanly possible, heard her jaws dislocating, eyes locked on the old woman as she screamed and screamed.

   ---

   Thank you for reading.

   If you found this interesting please join PART 2—COMING SOON.

I swear these shared stories are getting better and better with each volume we publish. This ocean tale has so many twists and turns in it that you won’t be able to stop reading until the end. And it’s all down to the six brave Playground Visitors who agreed to put pen to paper with me.

I highly recommend reading each author’s content, as you won’t be disappointed.

As always, if you feel like you can spin a good tale around our CAMPFIRE, don’t hesitate to join the next volume coming soon.

Ok, let’s get to the story.

Tides of the Maw.

1. To those unlucky enough to read these pages, I pray God protect your soul. A fate worse than death closes around me, but not before I recount the island’s dark events on these pages. But the story does not start with me. No, his name was Stewart Harding, formerly a seaman aboard the merchant vessel Espion. His vessel was not thirty miles from the island when he retired to his bunk. He told me the sea looked calm as glass then, but by the setting of the sun, they were rocked by unnatural waves.

   The vessel broke within an hour, and he was thrown overboard. He swore in that moment, a low roar erupted from the black waters. When next he woke, he found myself washed up upon the wastes of Devil’s Bay. Never was a desolation more aptly named. Thankful to be alive, he moved to stand, but a new pain in his shoulder almost took away his breath.

   How were we all to know the nightmare had only just begun?

2. I was finishing my second Wight Gold and about to open my third when I overheard the stranger talking and introduced myself to him from the woodland path just off the Bay. I told him my name was Richard Branson. I gave him a painkiller and began addressing his yarn. I said that the islanders here don’t say its true name. Not if they value sleep, or the thin membrane separating a man’s sanity from the deep. 

   But I told Stewart that since he survived a shipwreck tonight, he ought to get some rum into him. And while it did its thing, I would do some recounting of my own. I noticed the wound on his shoulder, warning him immediately that dark poison was now working through his body. I told him that I reckoned the thing he’d encountered had already marked him, what’s whispered in Veilpoint when the shutters are latched, and the tide is breathing low.

   Some call it the Veilpoint Wraith. Others, older islanders who remember what their grandparents muttered in patois around guttering lamps, call it La Gueule-de-Mer, the Sea Maw. A creature not born but ‘remembered’ by the ocean, as though the water itself had nightmares and coughed it up.

   Stewart said his ship, the Espion, didn’t sink. It ‘came apart’, as if something pried it open like a crab shell. That fits. Boats here are unmade, quietly, efficiently, as though by some terrible artisan of hunger. Picture something vast but never fully seen. No one has glimpsed the whole of it. Some see a serpentine ridge breaking the surface, not scales, but a hide like wet basalt, pitted with scars that shine faintly blue. 

   Others speak of tendrils, thin as anchor lines yet strong enough to drag a cutter sideways through a gale. But they all agree on one thing, it moves without sound. The creature rises as if displacing light rather than water. Shadows float before it. Then everything is swallowed.

   As for the missing members of Stewart’s crew? If they were lucky, they died before the water touched them. The Maw likes to pull men off ships one by one. Not drowning them, no, no, taking them. Sometimes fishermen find bodies washed ashore weeks later, faces contorted as though they died mid-scream. Though, their lungs contain no water.

   Stewart told me that last night was calm until the waves suddenly heaved like the whole bay exhaled. That’s exactly how it begins. First, the stillness. Then the upward rush, as though something is rising beneath. No roar. No splash. Just the soft, obscene groan of wood forced apart by patient strength. If any piece of the Espion remained floating at dawn, it was a courtesy.  

   Boats vanish out there, I said. And I told him that every few years, some poor bastard like him crawls back to tell the tale. Hands shaking, eyes haunted, smelling of salt water and fear. You didn’t just lose your ship, Stewart, I told him. You survived its choosing. 

   And around here, that’s the worst omen of all. Because once it notices a man, it tends to notice him again. And if you believe none of this, ask yourself why every local refuses to fish Devil’s Bay after dark. Because we know what waits beneath. And now, so do you.

Later that night.

3. I laid Stewart on a crude table made of driftwood and shipwreck scraps. I fetched a bucket carved from some ancient timber dark as pitch. “I’m nothing but an old swallywog,” I told him. “I go by Hensworth, associate of Branson.”

   “Ah,” he said, “Tell me, Hensworth, you old swallywog, have you heard of the sea monster?”

   “Once,” I said, “from a madman. Lie back,” I told him. “And quit jabbering. There’s poison welling in your wounds.”

   “The Sea Monster, you old fool,” Stewart grunted as I sliced just enough of his wounds to let his thick, near-black blood funnel into the bucket, as Branson had commanded. His body was already changing. “Green eyes that glow? How did your madman describe him? How did he describe it?”

   I said, wiping the blood-letting blade on a rag stiff with the blood of others. “The madman claimed the creature had no shape of its own—only the shape a guilty man expects. Some swore it bore horns; others that its hide was smooth as slate and cold as a magistrate’s stare.”

   Stewart gripped the table. “A magistrate’s stare? You islanders turn everything into a sermon.”

   “Aye,” I said, “aye.”

   Stewart’s blood thudded into the bucket, slow as a grave clock. “The beast hunts by the scent of dread,” I told him. “If it has risen tonight, I suppose it’ll be heading north to Veilpoint, where some dark groups of men summon it every year. You and the creature seem to be heading in the same direction….”

   He tried to laugh. “You’ve a poet’s tongue for a swallywog in a wolf’s hut, Hensworth. But your madman knows not of my sea monster,” Stewart said. “The thing I saw had no horns or hide. It rose from the deep like a question God never meant to be answered. Longer than any hull, moving as if weight were nothing. Its skin shifted like tar—smooth, then crawling with shapes I pray weren’t eyes. It breathed. The sea swelled as though the whole ocean were its chest. And when it turned, it noticed me, like a man spotting a splinter he means to pluck. And those green lights—they weren’t eyes. They were wounds. Glowing wounds.”

   He shuddered.

   “That is what I saw.”

   No sooner had he spoken when the hut’s door flew open, and the Island’s hag walked in.

4. From the back of the sooty dark room, the hag’s voice cut the air like a dull saw on a sheet of metal, “Let him go, Hensworth. . He won’t last long enough to reach the road to the village.” She shuffled into the dim light, hungrily eyeing the bucket of blood. “This is what we need. We are protected now.” 

   I reached for the bucket, but the hag was quicker than I was. She was already retreating into the shadows, her two hands clutching the handle of the bucket.

   I hated her with every ounce of my soul. She let Minerva die. My Minerva. A sacrifice. Let’s see how powerful she really is, I thought. That vicious woman believed she could harness the Sea Maw’s cursed venom. Let’s see if it protects her precious grandson, Victor. Let’s see if it protects anyone in Veilpoint. But I had to act quickly; Steward’s exsanguinated body would only incite the beast’s appetite. 

   Pulling the blood-stiffened rag from my pocket, I started to run, marking the leaves, the grass, the tree bark. Anything that would call the creature to the other cultists in Veilpoint and to Victor.

5. Veilport was something like a funnel. A thin access road on the north side fed to the towns beyond the Bell Mountain range, and back to Veilport going the other way. Here, Veilport was a fat stripe of shops and huts with the broad stone stripe of the port of Devils Bay and the waterfront. Continuing south, the town became thinner again and more or less dead-ended. The roads here were dirt, leading to properties no one in their right mind would visit. The disciples of the Sea Monster, led by the hag, gathered here to...worship. Not sure what to call it.

   It was too late to save Stewart when I caught up to him, but Hensworth was keeping his end of our deal, using Stewart’s blood to lure the creature to the town. I knew a rough idea of the legend. The Sea Monster was part siren, part sucubus. It lured the Espion to haul its crew into the water. (They’d gone off route a few miles from the intended destination, I found out later.) Once on board, it wrecked the ship, and...infected a few of the crew. The Sea Monster couldn’t really crawl onto Devil’s Bay, but it could do a dual attack of infecting a few people, whispering a siren song that goes straight to the heads of people with dark leanings. The first-infected infect the believers who only know of the creature by the song, when enough of them gather to make a sort of offspring of the creature.

   We’d see about that.

   The legend I had was enough to make a plan. Stewart wasn’t going to help as a man, but his scattered body parts were a better magnet to bring the disciples together than the blood Hensworth was carrying. I would start at the north end of Veilport, luring the creatures with Stewart’s arm and shoulder stained with a good amount of black goo on them. Then the rest of his parts would make a handy trail, taking the creatures back to the south end, to the woods, where I would be waiting with Stewart’s head by my boots. A torch in my hand would make me easily seen, but hiding tar all around the dark plain. They’d be guided by the scent of the black goo, not noticing anything else, with the hag leading them. When they got close, the torch and the tar would finish them, and I’d be known as Branson the liberator. The man who freed Veilport from the course of the creature.

6. The bucket reeked, and I was covered in it.

   Not regular blood that dries sharp and metallic, but the slick, tarry stink of something becoming wretched. It clung to the air like humidity before a storm, sweet yet menacing. The smell carried weight. Rot mixed with brine. The kind of rot time carves into things left for dead. The scent that drifts up from shipwrecks long before the missing are found.

   I moved quickly through the scrub, a blood and tar-soaked rag in my hand, marking the trees. Bark. Leaves. Stones. Each swipe deliberate, purposeful. Kill them all. Kill the beast. Kill them all. A wet, glistening smear pointing north toward Veilpoint. A perfect trail of tears I would set ablaze. I would end this nightmare once and for all.

   “Branson?” Her voice cracked like wood splitting in a fire. “What’s happening?”

   I spun. Moonlight struck her face, then mine. My eyes were fearless, not calm but resigned. The ruthless stare of a man who has already made peace with dying.

   “Go back,” I said flatly. “This isn’t for you.”

   “The hell it isn’t.” She stepped closer, driving her palm into her ribs. The gash beneath her shirt smoldered faintly, pulsing like a second heartbeat. Not human. Too rhythmic to be random. “This’s a trail. You and Hensworth are calling it here.”

   My gaze, now firmly fixated on the glow seeping through her fingers. I didn’t need the moonlight to see it.

   “You’re marked,” I said with a brief, pitying look.

   “You think I don’t already know that?” she snapped. “Happened three nights ago when I dove too deep into the sea. The hag’s supposed to have a cure.”

   I laughed, a bitter and broken exhale that felt like something splintered inside me. “The hag cures no one. All she does is collect and study. Let the poison simmer until our bodies bend. Then she feeds victims to her Sea Maw when they’re soft enough.”

   Her face dropped. “So why’re you leading it straight to town?”

   “Not to town.” I dragged the rag across another trunk. The blackened blood glistened like oil. “To the disciples. To the cult in the north field. To Victor and the hag and all those fools who think they can harness its power. Let them face what they’ve summoned.”

   A new wind whipped her hair across her face. It carried a low groan from the bay, like timber breaking underwater. Slow. Inevitable. It wasn’t a sound. It was pressure. Behind the eyes. In the teeth. And it was rising.

   “You don’t understand,” she said, voice thin. “The Sea Maw doesn’t just hunt the marked. It hunts everything in its path. There’s families in Veilpoint. Children. People with no part in that hag’s madness.”

   “Then they should’ve stopped her years ago,” I said. “Just like they should’ve stopped her when she took Minerva and let the creature drag my love into the water and twist her into a serpentine ridge of horrors. Every damn person in Veilpoint who stayed silent is complicit.”

   My voice broke on her name. The grief beneath the rage pulsed like the poison in Keira’s wound.

   “I’m sorry about Minerva,” she whispered.

   “No.” I shook my head. “You’re not. But you will be.”

   Another groan rolled out across the bay. Her wound throbbed in time with it, glowing hotter and brighter. For a moment, she looked ready to run straight into the water and let the dark take her.

   “You feel it,” I said, quietly pleased. “The calling. The poison telling you the water’s the only place the pain’ll ever stop.”

   She clenched her teeth. “I’m fighting it.”

   “For now.” I stepped closer. “But I’ve seen what comes next. Fever. Luminescent flesh becoming tendrils. Then the calling. By dawn, your skin will thicken and split. Your bones’ll shift. And your eyes…” I swallowed hard. “Eyes begin to surface in places eyes shouldn’t never be. They don’t blink. Or sleep. They just watch.”

   “Branson. Please stop,” she whispered.

   “The hag won’t cure you,” I explained further. “She’ll watch you change, scribbling notes while each of your organs succumbs to its fate.”

   “So what?” she barked. “You lure the Maw to devour the town, and I just become…” she stopped.

   I reached into my coat and pulled out a tiny vial. The liquid inside wasn’t anything natural. It glimmered like a black opal in firelight and seemed to swallow the faint glow of the forest around us.

   “This was rendered from a man named Stewart. The only piece that doesn’t regenerate. He washed ashore after another Maw tore into his ship.” I swirled it. “Mix it with the ashes of the taken. Ashes, the hag guards. Burn it with fire from a drowned man’s pyre. Only then does it become a cure.”

   She choked on her breath.

   “Every night since Minerva was taken, I’ve planned this,” I said. “I’ve watched that woman poison the island, sacrifice the people I loved, and call it protection.”

   Below us, the water churned. Lightning flickered from bioluminescence threading the darkness. Something rose. Something immensely terrifying.

   Multiple ridges broke the surface, horned and scarred. Entrails slid through crevices. Unblinking eyes dotted the thick, waxen hide.

   “How many ridges have you seen?” she asked.

   “Dozens,” I frowned. “Why?”

   “Each one’s a person. The old islanders called it Kèt-aqan, the thing that devours itself to grow. Every soul it claims becomes part of it. Another ridge. Another eye. A collection of the damned.”

   I stared at the mass rising from the water. Scars glowed faint blue.

   “Minerva,” I breathed.

   “Can you see her?” she whispered.

   “There. That crescent scar. On the right.” A ridge rolled through the moonlight, and a faint silver crescent gleamed along its edge.

   Her face tightened. “My grandmother used to say the victims stay conscious inside the Maw. Awake and aware. Trapped. Unable to speak. Unable to die.”

   My chest ached. “I’ll burn Minerva free. I’ll burn all of them for free.”

   She held my gaze.

   The stench from the bucket rose thick. Stewart’s rotting blood clung to my clothes and hands.

   “The vial’s yours,” I said, softening. “I don’t know if it’ll work on someone as far gone as you, but you’ll only get it if you help me.” 

   Her desperation flickered. I felt it like heat.

   “We move now,” I pressed. “The creature’s already following my trail.”

   At the fork, she sprinted toward Veilpoint, the venom in her veins pushing her onward. I dragged my blood and tar lure toward the cult’s field.

   Behind us, the Maw bellowed again. This time, I heard voices inside the sound. 

   Hundreds. 

   Speaking together. 

   Calling the infected.

   The bucket vibrated in my grip. Black liquid rippled toward the sound and seemed to answer the siren’s call. The ground trembled under my boots as something far older than either of us began to rise.

One month later.

7. Field Notes: X O - III - The Rise of King Richard

   “In retrospect, there was no stopping it. I was a fool to try. The island overflows with howling scaled banshees. The Hag, her family, everyone I have ever known, loved, or, more importantly, hated, have succumbed to the will of that damn beast. I hear them shrieking out there, chattering, howling into the night. Still, I am the only man left, and that makes me King.

   King Hensworth, no, he is dead now, too. I am King Richard Branson.

   The life of a King is not an easy one. Not here, anyways. Supplies are running low, and there’s little chance of survival if I go out there and try to gather more. With lack of humanity, real humanity, there is no civic maintenance taking place either. No development. It was a jungle out there, now it really is a jungle out there, and it is overflowing with apex predators who exist solely to strip me of everything I am and make me one of them.

   My stomach hurts, oh Lord, does my stomach hurt.

   If I have to eat another bowl of Shrub Bounder stew, I think I’d rather lower myself to shambling around the island devouring anything with a pulse just like those damned thralls. Luckily, I have plenty of Wight Gold. Or, had plenty. I couldn’t do any of this without it, or my Minerva. Over the past few weeks, Minerva has been talking to me from the sea, comforting me. She’s tried to convince me to leave this place, head out, and find some form of humanity beyond this island.

   Until now, I have refused, politely, of course. Here we are, King and Queen of all the living. Why would I want to leave?

   But, apparently, tonight is the night I must confront the Wraith.

   Night swimming with the Sea Maw.

   I will do it for her; she has always asked me so sweetly after all.”

   Naked, a mad Richard Branson looked over the black waters. The whole world behind him was screaming with unearthly massacre. Drunk, he swayed on the balls of his feet, listening to a lullaby that was music to nobody’s ears but his. First one step, and then another, as his feet breached the water’s surface. A ripple, a low growl, and just like that, Branson was front crawling through the cosmos.

   To escape the eventuality of the island meant facing the certainty of an encounter with what waited beneath, and yet his arms cut through the sea as though the ocean had taken pity on him and parted itself for ease of passage.

   He swam for what felt like hours. Hours without breathlessness. Hours without the lactic acid burning in his limbs. The liquor left his blood, and yet the exhaustion still never came. The water carried him like an understanding mother finally letting her wayward son come home. The screams of Veilpoint faded into the distance until they sounded like stars cracking against one another in the beyond.

   Then? Light.

   Two dozen at first, glittering faintly on the horizon like a string of coastal windows, a seaside town nestled in safety. He laughed, or tried to.

   The sound came out wrong, monstrous, swallowed whole by the ocean the moment it left his throat.

   The lights beckoned him.

   He swam harder, though he still did not tire, until eventually the little pinpricks began to vanish one by one. Blotted out, as though the curtains were being drawn. Or swallowed. Or smothered.

   Soon, only two lights remained. Dazzling. Steady. Perfectly symmetrical.

   “Lighthouses,” he whispered to no one. “A twin set guiding me in.”

   He kept swimming.

   The water below him grew warmer, thicker, syrup-dark. Like sludge or slime. Goo. It curled around his wrists and ankles like eager fingers. Curious fingers. And the twin lights grew brighter. Unnaturally bright. No lighthouse glowed like that. No human flame held such ancient power.

   He swam closer.

   The lights blinked.

   He froze. Not from cold. From understanding.

   The lights weren’t on the horizon.

   They were above him. High. Higher. Higher still.

   He lifted his head out of the water to look up, and every piece of his mind recoiled, then cracked, then crawled back to look again. The two lights were not lighthouses. They were not windows. Not fires. Not lanterns.

   They were eyes.

   Colossal eyes set in a shape that was not a shape, a form that refused form, a silhouette too large to belong to sea or sky or memory. It rose like a mountain breaking the surface of the world, yet he felt no splash, no wave, no shift in the tide. It simply was, waiting for him as though eternity had arranged his arrival. The lullaby in his head grew louder.

   Sweeter.

   Older.

   Minerva’s voice melted into something vast and indifferent, something that understood guilt better than any god. The stars wheeled above him in patterns that had never existed, threads of impossible geometry stitching themselves through the air.

   Branson could not swim anymore.

   He could only drift toward the two blazing eyes watching him like a mother watches a cradle.

   “The Maw.” He whispered, not in fear but in trembling recognition. And the Maw blinked again, slowly, its eyelids like continents sliding over creation. The water around him rose of its own will, lifting him toward the towering shape. A low roar, older than storms and seas, vibrated through his chest until his bones vibrated.

   The cosmos bent.

   The Wraith breathed.

   And Richard Branson finally understood his beloved Mineva’s lullaby.

   It was never meant to guide him home.

   It was meant to guide him here.

Welcome to the playground. I apologize for not posting in a while; this was due to a week spent in bed fighting the flu. Now I’m back, and once again, a gathered a group of authors are ready to tell you a tale so blood chilling, it will leave you checking under your bed before you fall asleep.

After a subscriber vote revealed Michael Myers as tonight’s story antagonist, I knew this would be great. And, they didn’t disappoint….

So, let’s get to the story.

Halloween: Reborn

1. The revolving door groaned is it surrendered Michael’s bulky frame into the hospital foyer. The security guard may have had time to run if his eyes weren’t bound to the nudie mag. Michael paused as he loomed behind the oblivious night watchmen. The young woman in semigloss print reminded him of so many of his nameless victims.

   Michael’s butcher’s knife dove into the guard’s throat. The man’s skin flexed then popped as the dull point of the knife tore through his unfulfilled life. As the smell of iron permeated the sterile halls and blood obscured the guard’s last arousing thoughts, Michael sighed.

   Damnit, I’m so stupid. Why didn’t I sharpen my knife? Michael thought to himself.

   Insecurity and regret haunted Michael’s mind as he watched the blood begin to spill over the counter. It poured like warm syrup over pancakes on to the tile floor. It slowed to a drip as Micheal wiped the blood off his blade and onto his victim’s back.

   He inspected the dull point, trying to remember his last kill. It had been so long. He second guessed his intention on killing Casey. Michael didn’t kill out of spite or the thrill of it. He was immune to such emotions. Michael didn’t fully understand why he killed. He simply had to, it was like a perennial itch that couldn’t quite be scratched to satisfaction. He took no joy in seeing a victim suffer. The quicker they died the better. If a human simply had an off switch, he’d just as soon use that rather than his knife.

   The only time Michael ever felt a glimpse of an emotion was when if strangled the family cat. He was 5 years old and it felt so strange to him. Other neighborhood cats and dogs would die at his hands but he never felt that same way again. He was chasing that feeling when he killed Judith when he was 6 years old. He figured killing a human and one that happened to be his older sister would trigger that feeling again but no it didn’t. Michael pursued that feeling through his murdering tenure. He dabbled in torturing but the screams were annoying and blood stains were very difficult to clean.

   Tonight, Michael Myers hoped would be different. If killing humans couldn’t trigger some emotion then maybe killing an angel would. Casey was the closest thing to an angel that Michael knew of.

2. The evening breeze sighs through the dead, fallen leaves and browning grass, carrying the brittle whispers of autumn’s decay. Each thudding step of The Shape’s black boots sinks somewhat into the damp earth with deliberate rhythm.

   Too human to be the tread of a ghost - yet too hollow to belong to a man. The moon hangs like a pale and watchful eye. Its light caresses the unpigmented mask that hides a face no one has truly seen. Behind that mask, something ancient stirs. His thoughts flicker like dying embers of a soul long extinguished. Memories claw their way upward from the dark recesses of his mind. Their depths, dragging him hurtling backward through time, toward the child that once bore his name. He’s six-years-old, inside a room of white walls. Across from him sits a child psychiatrist, his pen trembling as it scratches across a page. The man speaks nary a word and observes, scribing an entry into his journal.

   This six-year-old child has a blank, pale, emotionless face. He has the blackest eyes - the eyes of the devil. I realize what lives behind this boy’s eyes is purely and simply… evil.

   Those words now, trapped forever on the page of a forgotten journal, echo like a curse. The child did not blink then; he does not blink now. The memory contorts into another. He’s ten years old, crouched in the dying light of a fall afternoon. His fingers trace the spine of a small rabbit. It trembles beneath his touch, sensing what he did not yet understand - the difference between love and ruin. From the house comes the sound of breaking glass, his shrieking mother’s fury, and his father’s raging, drunk and slurring voice. As Edith and Donald continue to fight, he holds the rabbit tighter and tighter, its heart beats faster, for a time. Then stops completely. He remembers the silence that followed. A beautiful, peaceful, absolute silence.

   The world has always been too loud for Michael Myers.

   His boots strike pavement, cracked and glistening faintly with dew, and something darker. Shadows bleed from every corner as he makes his way across a parking lot. He is walking away from the silhouette of Haddonfield Memorial Hospital. Within those walls, doctors try to dissect one’s darkness, to give it shape and reason. But evil does not reason. It waits. It remembers. It returns.

   Michael stops. Tilting his head, he listens to the night’s pulse. Ahead of him, a window faintly glows, fragile and warm. On the other side of it, a young woman is insouciantly falling to a sedated, nearly slumbered state. He knows her name is Casey, and he knows her face. He knows all of their faces. The breeze now curls around him, cold and alive. The blade of the knife in his hand glistered beneath the light of the moon. An unreadable expression on his unseen face promises silence. He walks, slowly, inevitably. Leaves part before him like the sea parting before a god. Michael Myers is neither man, nor ghost. He’s the memory of death itself. And tonight, Haddonfield will remember death.

   

3. ...a cold breeze from the open door wrapped its icy fingers around Casey’s aching head, followed by the hoarse, too loud stage whisper from her twin sister Carrie. “Casey, are you here? Mom knows. She’s really, really pissed that you stayed out past curfew. You need to get in the car. We need to go home.”

   “I’m over here, Carrie. I fell asleep. Where’s Mom’s car? That’s not her car. How did you get here?”…

   

   ---

4. Casey woke sometime after two, dragged up from the bottom of a dream by a silence that didn’t feel right. The college party was over—hours gone—but the house still reeked of beer, sweat, and cheap perfume. Downstairs, a refrigerator thrummed like a distant generator in a snowstorm. In reply to this, a clock ticked, each second too loud.

   Dillon must have left the window open. Cold October air poured in, making her skin feel paper-thin. Her head swam from too much vodka, but she stepped between the bodies of her drunk friends, limbs sprawled out carelessly, and leaned at the window.

   Outside, the yard glistened under the moon. Wet grass, trampled flat, and jack-o’-lanterns still burning faintly.

   That’s when she saw him.

   The figure stood dead-center on the lawn. Tall. Motionless. Watching. The mask on his face was white and blank, but somehow he seemed to stare straight at her. Then lifted something—a blood-soaked knife—and the blade caught the moonlight just enough to wink at her.

   Behind her came a crash at the wrong moment. Dillion staggered back into the room, tipping a bottle over, foam hissing across the hardwood. She spun, cursing under her breath. By the time she looked back, the white faced man was gone. And from somewhere on the first floor came the slow, aching squeal of a door hinge.

5. Michael moved through the dark house like water finding its level, inevitable, patient, without thought. The knife hung loose in his grip, an extension of bone and tendon rather than a tool he consciously wielded.

   The floorboards did not creak beneath his weight. He had learned that trick young, before the mask, before Haddonfield learned to fear its own reflections in the autumn dark. Silence was his native language, the only one that never lied.

   The voice began as static, white noise humming beneath his skull, a frequency only he could hear. It sharpened until his breath under the mask slowed, mechanical, syncing to its rhythm. A machine that forgot it was once human.

   Kill.

   He obeyed. He always obeyed. The command was not cruel or passionate; it was absolute. Michael understood it as purpose, the quiet, perfect order of inevitability.

   The dance had countless partners, each believing they controlled their own fate. They locked doors, screamed for help, ran until their legs collapsed. They never realized he had made the first move long before they ever saw him.

   Upstairs, Casey’s mind raced while her body betrayed her. Adrenaline roared through her veins, but her limbs were heavy, slow, unresponsive. Dillon, hungry for the cold pizza in the kitchen, clung to the railing, too drunk to notice death waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

   The moment before recognition, when he exists only in the corner of a victim’s vision, is always his favorite. The rational mind dismisses what it cannot name. Then the shift comes: pupils widening, the sharp intake of breath, the instant a person realizes the story they are living has already ended.

   Time stretched and collapsed around Casey. Her rational thoughts scraped against panic as she sensed wrongness swelling through the air. The thud downstairs. The stillness after. She begged her body to obey her mind.

   “Fucking move!”

   Michael tilted his head, a birdlike gesture mistaken for curiosity but born from absolute emptiness. He studied Dillon the way one studies an engine before dismantling its parts.

   He stood motionless at the foot of the staircase, moonlight from the tall windows wrapping his shoulders in silver. The mask now illuminated partially. Dillon blinked, trying to steady himself, his eyes finally adjusting enough to see the faceless silhouette below. For a heartbeat, everything held still. Even the house seemed to suffocate on the silence.

   Michael stepped forward. The voice in his skull hummed again, softer now, reverent. Kill them all.

   Dillon screamed, deep, raw, human, and the sound seemed to please The Shape. Somewhere in that scream was life, defiance, meaning, all the things he had been stripped of long ago. He tilted his head once more.

   The night exhaled. And the dance began.

   

6. Casey’s scream caught in her throat. Dillon staggered forward, reaching for her, blood seeping between his fingers. His eyes were glassy, unfocused. “Run,” he rasped, “Mike… Michael Myers cut me,” and then collapsed. From somewhere below came the slow, certain tread of boots on the stairs. She stumbled backward, heart hammering, until her shoulder hit the glass.

   “This isn’t real,” she whispered. “Wake up, wake up—” The air shimmered. For a split second, she saw two rooms at once: the college house and another place—white walls, humming machines, the steady beeping of a monitor at the psychic research center. A voice cut through the static.

   “Casey, listen to me. It’s Dr. Collins. Your sister, Carrie, she’s with me, too. You’re safe. Stay with my voice.” She clutched her head, torn between two worlds. The masked figure was almost at the door now, blade gleaming, breath rattling behind the mask. “He’s here!” she screamed. “Michael’s in the house!”

   “No, Casey,” said Collins, calm but firm. “He can’t hurt you anymore. You’re remembering the dream. It’s the trauma image trying to take control. Push him out.”

   The killer’s outline flickered. He lunged, and she threw up her hands. The knife came down—and dissolved into light. When she opened her eyes again, she was lying flat on a padded table, Dr. Collins leaning over her, one hand on her shoulder. His face was pale with exhaustion. “You did it,” he said softly. “You crossed back.”

   Casey blinked. The smell of beer, the moonlight, the blood—all gone. Only antiseptic air and the steady hum of machines remained. “Was it real?” she whispered. “It was memory, not reality,” Collins said.

   “You were trapped in the echo. I pulled you out before your mind decided it was permanent.” She nodded slowly, tears slipping sideways into her hair. “Dillon?”

   “A fragment,” he said. “Part of what you left behind. He helped you get out.” She looked past him toward the observation window, where her reflection stared back—whole but trembling.

   “It felt so real.” Collins smiled faintly. “Every creation does, until it ends.” He pressed a button to administer a sedative; the monitors softened their tone as the serum took effect. “Rest now. You’re safe.” Her eyelids fluttered. As she drifted off, she thought she saw, for just a moment, the faintest outline of a man wearing a white mask, raising a knife above his head, in the corner of the room—somehow she had pulled a monster through before the door closed between worlds.

   

   ---

7. She tried to tell herself it was just the echo still bleeding through and took a deep breath in an attempt to ground herself but the man didn’t fade to memory, he marched towards her. Quick deliberate strides across the hospital room. Knife held high. It was Michael, he was there, and he was going to kill her.

   Casey had enough, “Fuck you, creep! You think the mask makes you scary? You’re a bitch, just a monster hiding from himself!”

   She kicked her legs trying to force him back. If she was going to die? She wasn’t going to do it kindly or quietly.

   Michael froze.

   The knife lowered, trembling.

   Angels didn’t talk like that.

   He’d slaughtered foul-mouthed brats before but this one was supposed to be different. To make him feel.

   But she wasn’t different. Maybe none of them were.

   He raised the knife high one last time and Casey closed her eyes tight waiting for her fate when suddenly a shotgun blast cracked out in the room so loud that it almost made her ears bleed. Michael was hit hard, stumbling back but somehow not leaving his feet, he turned towards the door and standing there was his angel. Not Casey, her identical twin sister, Carrie.

   “Leave my sister alone, you abomination.” she hissed.

   Michael’s head swivelled mechanically between the two sisters before finally locking in on Carrie.

   He shambled forward as Casey tore at the tubes and cords binding her to the machines. If a shotgun blast couldn’t stop him, maybe the two of them together could.

   “God turned His face from you, didn’t He?” Carrie prodded, “but Haddonfield never will.”

   Michael was almost upon her. He reared his knife back as she put her finger on the trigger one more time.

   “This one is for my great Grandmother,” she whispered, “Laurie Strode.”

   He lunged and Casey grabbed the shotgun, jerking the barrel down toward the oxygen tank.

   “Casey, no—”

   Her hand slammed over Carrie’s, forcing the trigger.

   The blast struck metal.

   Hiss…

   BOOM!

   Then fire swallowed the room. The girls were thrown back.

   Everything went orange and black.

   The world came back in fragments.

   Heat. Sirens. The copper taste of blood.

   Casey jolted awake on a gurney beside an ambulance, the night around her still burning. Smoke poured from the hospital windows, carrying sparks that floated like dying stars. Someone shouted orders.

   Voices blurred, distorted, distant.

   A paramedic loomed over her, pressing a mask to her face. 

   “Easy. You’re safe. You’re outside now.” he assured her.

   But she wasn’t listening.

   “Where’s my sister?” Her voice cracked. She tried to sit up, hands clawing at the oxygen mask. “Where the fuck is Carrie? She was right beside me! Where is she?”

   The paramedic hesitated, glancing toward the inferno. The reflection of fire danced in his eyes.

   “You’re the only one we’ve found so far,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry. We don’t know what happened in there.”

   Casey shook her head violently, refusing to hear it. “No. No, she—she fired the gun, she—” Her words broke off into a scream.

   Flames roared in answer. The hospital roof buckled inward with a hollow, metallic groan. A shower of embers fell like rain.

   “Please,” she gasped, trying to twist off the stretcher. “She’s in there. And,” Her eyes widened, voice dropping to a whisper. “Him. He’s still in there. Michael Myers.”

   The paramedic pressed her shoulders down gently. 

   “Myers? You need to lie still. You’re in shock.” he gave a sympathetic smile, “Michael Myers has been dead for years.”

   But Casey couldn’t stop staring at the burning windows.

   For a moment, just a moment, she thought she saw a figure in the flames.

   Tall. Still. A white mask gleaming through the smoke.

   Then they were gone.

   

   Epilogue

   Darkness pressed against Carrie’s eyes before the pain did. Her skull throbbed. Her wrists burned. When she tried to move, the chair screeched beneath her, metal against concrete. Fluorescent light flickered overhead, washing the basement in sickly yellow. The smell hit next. Smoke, antiseptic, and something cooked.

   On a table across the room lay what was left of him. The mask had fused to the flesh in places. Charred fabric clung to the ribs like wet paper.

   Someone was humming. A man stepped into the light, gloved hands red up to the wrists. His voice was calm, almost reverent.

   “You woke up sooner than expected. That’s good. You’ll want to see this.”

   Carrie tried to speak, but her throat was raw. 

   “What are you doing? Sir?”

   The man didn’t look up. He adjusted a tool that looked like something between a scalpel and a soldering iron.

   “Finishing what my grandfather started.”

   He turned then, and she saw his face. He was young and determined, eyes bright with exhaustion and faith.

   “Dillon Loomis,” he said, like a confession. “You’ve probably heard the name Loomis. My grandfather Samuel hunted this thing for decades, swore it could never die. He was right about that much.”

   Carrie’s pulse hammered. 

   “That’s Michael Myers?” she whispered.

   “Was,” Dillon corrected. “But you, your family, make sure that he remains forever a monster. In body and in spirit. I’ve been chasing Myers’s EchoDream for years, trying to find a living conduit strong enough to pull him back so we can end this for good. And when I heard of the work being done here, about Casey’s nightmares in particular. How both your surname’s are Strode…”

   He smiled faintly, almost kind.

   “I knew I had my link.”

   Carrie tugged at her bindings. 

   “Where’s Casey?”

   Dillon looked past her, toward the corpse.

   “I have no idea. But don’t worry, you’ll serve just as well. Even better perhaps. I need to see if a monster can still recognize what comes before evil. If he can finally reject the carrot on the stick.”

   He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a whisper meant only for her.

   “You want to help your sister? Then pray he remembers what mercy feels like.”

   He pressed a switch.

   “Pray he remembers good.”

   Electric hum filled the room.

   The corpse on the table arched up, smoke seeping from the stitches, and somewhere inside the mask something breathed again.

If you're interested in what we’re doing here at the playground, please join the next story when it is announced. We’d love to hear your voice, too. And now, without any further delay, let’s get into it. It’s time to delve into the disturbing tale of “The beast within.”

The Beast within.

Intro-

1. To Alison, nothing got her through a grueling week like seeing her boyfriend at the end of it. However, “family business” ended things abruptly last time. A week passed without another word, save for a burst of incoherence left on her answering machine. Somewhere in the static mess, Alison heard him mumble, “Sorry, babe, I’ll make it back to you, I promise.” Then the message cut out, and that’s the last she’d heard from him.

   With Saturday approaching, Alison’s disappointment curdled into dread. Then a sudden knock jolted her on Thursday. Two strangers in dark suits stood outside the apartment. “The name’s Agent Summers, and this is Jefferson. Could you come with us? It’s about your boyfriend.” After much persuading, Alison was escorted into their car. They continued once the wheels began rolling. “Thank you for your cooperation. Your help is vital to our investigation.”

   “What’s my Dave supposed to have done? What department are you from?” Alison hesitantly asked outside her boyfriend’s apartment door.

   Summers met her gaze. “We’re from the Monster Bureau. There’s reason to believe your boyfriend has become a vampire.”

2. “That is ridiculous!” she replied.

   “The loved ones always say that,” Jefferson said, the gaze of his brown eyes hard and cold. “They can’t bring themselves to accept the existence of monsters—or that their loved ones could become them.”

   Alison’s heart sank. “Please don’t hurt him.” She gazed up pleadingly at the big man.

   “We’re just doing our job, ma’am,” Summers deadpanned.

   “So what do you need me for?”

   “Positive identification,” Summers replied. “Open the door.”

   “And if I don’t?”

   “We can have you charged with obstruction of justice,” Jefferson replied. “Put this on.”

   She accepted the silver cross and put it around her neck, allowing a small ray of hope into her beleaguered heart; if Dave didn’t turn and hiss or show his fangs and pounce, life would go back to normal and this would be a crazy blip to laugh about later. She knocked on the door. “Dave? It’s me, Alison.”

   They waited for him to respond. It occurred to Alison to warn him of the danger he was in. Half-buried stories of witch-hunters and their inquisitions rose to the surface of her consciousness, taunting her with images of cruel abuses in the search for “ye witch’s tet”—or a confession that would send some poor thing to the gallows for the crime of having come to their attention. She was mulling a fragment of strategy over when the door opened a crack, the brass chain limiting her view.

   He looked pale and, even though the agents were out of his line of sight, scared.

Wendy Cockcroft's Writings

A Night at Castle Trevelyan

Written for The First Indulgence, Week Two: Paranormal Horror, prompts 6&7…

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7 months ago · 6 likes · Wendy Cockcroft

3. Dave flinched at the sight of her but didn’t recoil from the cross glinting at Alison’s throat. When Summers flicked holy water onto his hand, all it did was leave a damp spot on his sleeve.

   “See?” Alison snapped. “He’s not a vampire.”

   Dave laughed nervously. “Me, a vampire? That’s what this is about? Jesus.”

   The agents exchanged a confused look, unsettled. Jefferson muttered, “Was the blood test wrong?”

   Alison’s heart pounded for a different reason. The agents weren’t wrong — just wrong about *whose* blood they’d found. She tugged at the chain absently; the cross dangled against the thin knit of her sweater, never touching her skin.

   She stepped closer to Dave, keeping her expression soft. “I told you, babe. You’re fine. You’re safe.”

   “Who’ll keep you safe from *me*?” he responded sadly.

   She pulled him into a hug, carefully pressing him against her, as she whispered, “I would never hurt you. I told you that.”

   But the hallway mirror betrayed her. For the briefest flicker, his eyes glowed red and his smile sharpened into something hungry.

   Summers saw it, his hand twitching toward his weapon.

   *Too late.*

   Alison’s voice dropped, low and feral, meant only for Dave: “I won’t let them hurt you.” Before the agents could react further Alison’s boyfriend Dave had grabbed her and they flew into the night together.

Snark Floats

Shared Threads: A Digital Haunting

Shared Threads is a long-form horror story told entirely through group chats and private text messages…

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8 months ago · 20 likes · 18 comments · Jenifer Jorgenson

4. “Great! That’s just great!” exclaimed Summers. “Why did you think it was the boyfriend?”

   Jefferson explained, “Well, from the few recent shots we took, he had a pale complexion and didn’t wear jewelry. The girl had silver earrings and, well, looked really healthy. I mean, we’re hunting the undead, right?”

   Agent Summers placed his face in his palms. “We should have ran the chromosomal panel.” Pointing to the open door of the boyfriend’s apartment, he looks at his partner to explain that, “When there are thralls involved, the vampire is the one who looks healthiest. They don’t wear jewelry that might hurt them, but she blends in by wearing costume jewelry or coating the backside with nail polish.”

   Lacking the professionalism of his mentor, Jefferson joked, “Damn. Speaking of backsides, that girl was a textbook brick house.”

   Summers’ expression suddenly looked panicked. “What color was her hair?”

   Calming somewhat, Summers added, “How about her eyes?”

   “Oh, I noticed those greens as soon as she cracked the door.”

   Summers reached into his coat and drew a battery-powered holy water gun with a flashlight attached to it. “Put up your collar and get your back against a solid wall!” he exclaimed sharply.

   “What the hell!” yelped Jefferson. Flipping up their jacket collars revealed a lining of mirrored silver. Their puncture-resistant Kevlar-lined suits were pinstriped with silver-imbued thread. The shoulder and collar material was reinforced around the neck. “What’s going on?”

   “Slight hips and gray eyes,” Sommers responded.

   “What are you talking about?” Jefferson asked.

   “We didn’t see the same girl. She glammed us when we got to her apartment. She must have known we were coming, or...” Summers appeared to be puzzling over a thought.

   Jefferson pleaded, “Or what?” as he drew his own holy water weapon. He hadn’t finished the sentence before screams erupted above and below them.

   Summers barked, “Or she had been baiting us! The whole damn apartment is under her spell.” Looking around the area, he turns on the flashlight, which emits the deep glow of ultraviolet light. “Alright, now. Back to back. Stay pinned to my six. Shoot everything that moves.”

WhetScience - Honing knowledge to the finest point.

The source of things yet unexplained.

[This is an excerpt from an exhaustive personal study of most of the first 9 chapters of the book of Genesis. This is a vastly expanded effort from the original version that can currently be found here downloadable for free. The purpose of this exercise is to compare a non-symbolic literal reading of the text to our current understanding of language, pa…

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9 months ago · 1 like · George J. Woolridge

5. We stood still for several minutes. Each of us not knowing when she, or it, would come back. It was only when Summers slowly left the wall that we realized we needed to leave, and fast.

   “It’ll get here sooner than later,” I said. “We need to call a taxi.”

   “No,” Summers replied, “If it’s a witch or vampire of the sort, then she is agitated. We just need to figure out how to calm her down, at least to let us leave.”

   “Great!” I put his hands up in exasperation. “We are at the hands of a vampire who likely knows we’re talking about it. How are we to calm it?”

   Both I and agent Summers looked at each other, then at a shambling, half-dead tenant of the apartment. “I have been summoned by my mistress. Who should I kill first?” It raised a bony finger towards me. “I think… You will do.”

Contemplations Of A Raised Ranch

The River Still Flows.

Change always scares me…

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10 months ago · 3 likes · Zach Austrager

6. The two monster agents exchanged a short, quiet conversation. Then, as if a switch had flipped, their entire approach shifted. “Ma’am,” Summers began carefully speaking to the air because he knew Alison was listening, “at the Monster Academy, we were taught that what people call monsters are, in truth, part of nature’s own design. Many of them carry deep insecurities — feelings they’ve repressed for ages without a voice to speak them. That’s why they sometimes lash out at normal people. You’re not evil, Alison. Just... unheard.”

   The shambling, half-dead tenant stopped in its tracks, as if controlled by an invisible force. It was a sigh she wanted to hear more. So Summers straightened his badge, the silver crest catching the corridor light. “So, rather than use the hurtful term monster, we prefer something with a little more dignity. You’re not a monster, Alison — you’re what we call an outcast, having innate powers others don’t, and those powers can be guided.”

   The second officer stepped forward, his tone calm but firm. “That’s where our rehabilitation program comes in. We treat all outcasts like humans — no cages, no chains. Through time and training, they learn balance. They begin to integrate, to find their place among the normals. Slowly, they change… morphing into what we call good citizens.” He paused, looking the emerging vampire woman gently in the eyes. “And we strongly urge loved ones to tour our campus-like setting beforehand. It helps all understand the process — and it reminds everyone that compassion, not fear, is the first step toward healing.”

   The first officer nodded, adding quietly, “Sometimes, our success ends up protecting society.”

Rico’s Substack

Infinity

Book of Oneness — Continued…

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7 months ago · 3 likes · Rico

7. The lights steadied and crackled before falling to a low hum, the hallway breathing again after all of the carnage, all of the noise. Alison stood with Dave, her hand resting on his shoulder, like a queen consoling her broken knight. Starved and holy at once. Summers lowered his weapon, sweat streaking down his jaw.

   “HQ, this is Agent Summers. Subject compliant. Situation contained.”

   The radio answered with urgency: “Copy that. Collection and Director Abraham en route. Maintain containment until morning.”

   Jefferson smirked, half-drunk on relief. “Guess the Bureau’s right. Compassion works.”

   Summers nodded, voice softer now.

   “Sometimes kindness does the work.” Alison smiled, small and brittle. “Maybe you’re on to something.” 

   The moment held. Then Dave’s eyes flashed crimson, the veins webbing out from his skin like roots breaking through glass. Summers blinked, and the air split swift. His throat opened under Dave’s teeth. Alison gleefully wailed as hot spray peppered her face. Jefferson drew his holy water pistol, screaming, but Alison caught his wrist and twisted until the bone tore through skin.

   He didn’t make a sound, just stared at the gushing protrusion in shock.

   “You were so kind,” she whispered, lips slick with sin. “That makes this harder.”

   She fed slow, deliberate, a lover’s rhythm turned massacre. Dave watched her, satisfied, almost more than when he had butchery on his own tongue. The lights flickered, painting the walls in strobe-lit gore. The radio sputtered a last burst of static before dying.

   Morning crawled in. Gray and cold. The Bureau van was parked by the curb, silver insignia gleaming against the ruin of the block. Collectors in mirrored hazmats stepped inside, boots crunching through glass and entrails. “My God…” one muttered. They eventually found the badges of Summers and Jefferson crusted with blackened blood. The rest was pulp and silence. The lead collector walked out, pale beneath his visor, and rapped on the tinted window of the limo that had pulled up beside the van. It slid down without sound. Director Abraham sat within, crucifix glinting at his throat, cool and collected.

   “Director,” the man said quietly. “They’re gone.”

   Abraham lifted his comm, voice iron-flat. All business. “Director Abraham Van Helsing here. I’m issuing a Vampiric Plague. Subjects Alison and Dave. Seek and destroy at all costs.” He then looked at the apartment with disdain and gave another order to his men. “Burn this abomination to the ground.”

   Then the light blinked green. The window was sealed. Outside, dawn bled slowly across the sky. Thick, sanguine, and filled with screams.

Guerrilla Literature and the Avant-garde

Virtughosts

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7 months ago · 5 likes · 2 comments · Kerr Martin

“At the instigation of our ghoulish host, Wirrowac (Mr Wirrowac? Wirrowac in the Back, Grind a Writer’s Bones?) I have descended into the miry playground of my better judgment to present another strange tale, this one lacking autobiographical elements. Or, rather, revealing biographical elements only in the sense that I have such eerie. Things lurking below the surface of my otherwise unexceptional self.”

Thanks to all of your positive feedback on “Apartment 16,” Foma will be returning as a guest to post more stories. I’d love to host your tales of strangeness, too. All you have to do is contact me. Thank you very much.

A neighbor, a housewife, and the ghost between them.

“All I am saying is that I see him and I don’t know if he’s real or not,” the late 40-something housewife said at her kitchen table in the early afternoon. She was still in a bathrobe and curlers and hadn’t touched her coffee, which was now cold. Her neighbor had come to her house and was with her, trying to calm her down.

“A lot of people see their husbands or wives after they die,” the neighbor lady said with the vapid, perky enthusiasm of those who get their neighborly concern from insurance ads on television. “All I am saying is – you don’t have to believe in ghosts. This could be a psychological thing or one of those natural hormone reactions, you know.” The neighbor was a brunette. She was the same age, but dressed with the suburban concern of a woman who believed she was younger. They had known each other since the housewife moved into the neighborhood some years ago.

“She doesn’t see me,” said the husband standing in the doorway to the living room in a tee-shirt, “because she doesn’t believe in God.” He had a slightly paunchy, domesticated look. He had been handsome, once, but a careless residue remained. “I knew I should have never married an unbeliever.” His voice was rough from years of hand-rolled cigarettes, although he was not smoking now.

“I think you should stay out of this,” the neighbor lady said to the husband, perturbed. The man was unmoved but lingered, picking his teeth and watching. “So, did you see him or didn’t you? What’s going on?” The neighbor lady returned her attention to the housewife, who was slowly emerging from her lethargic state of shock.  

“He comes in the door about lunchtime, about now,” the housewife said. “It’s been a couple of weeks. He comes almost every day. He just stands there in the doorway.”

“And then what happens?” the neighbor lady prodded, impatiently. There was the slightest hint of condescension in her voice, but this went unnoticed by the housewife whose general lack of awareness was muted even further by her rattled condition.

“He talks to me,” said the housewife, staring at the wall. “He asks for lunch. He almost always asks for lunch. He says he’s hungry. He talks about the truck in the shop, about the dog.”

The neighbor listened, shaking her head slowly.  “And that’s all?”

“At first, I tried to talk to him, you know, asking questions about where he was and if he was coming back, but he just ignored me. He talks, but he acts like he doesn’t hear what I say.” The housewife began to weep a bit. “It’s like I’m the one who is not there.”

“She doesn’t ask anything serious,” said the husband, leaning on the doorjamb. “She just yells and asks where I’ve been and if I’ve called her mother.” The neighbor lady gave him a shusshy scowl and turned back to the housewife.  

“Do you see him now?” the neighbor lady said. “Is he here in the kitchen with us now?” She was clearly a little anxious.

“No,” the housewife sobbed. “I mean, he was for a bit, but he’s gone now.”  The husband stood behind his wife and looked over her form at the neighbor lady with a knowing face.

“Are you satisfied now?” the husband said. His eyes were still on the neighbor lady as a wry smile appeared on his face. He pointed to an imaginary watch on his bare wrist. “It’s Tuesday. Are you ready? ‘Cause I’m in the mood,” he said in a warm whisper.  The neighbor lady quickly shook her head at the husband, motioning for him to knock it off. She held the housewife’s hand, waiting. After a reverent pause, she spoke again.

“Well, I know it’s none of my business,” the neighbor lady said to the housewife earnestly, more as giving a warning than expressing concern. “But I don’t think you should go around telling people in the neighborhood that you’re seeing your dead husband. They’ll think you’re unstable.” The neighbor lady patted the housewife’s hand mechanically. “There, there,” she said. “You just stay here and have a good cry. Forget about all this ghost nonsense. It’s just nerves.”  

The neighbor lady stood up and collected her little red purse. She glanced at a little skewed paper image of the Holy Family on the wall next to a calendar that was several years old. She crossed herself clumsily, like an amateur Pope giving a Benediction to herself. The husband stood languid at the doorway again, observing the spectacle.

Unexpectedly, the housewife raised her head. “You’re a religious person, aren’t you?” Her voice had acquired the urgency of hope. “Do you think I should go to church about all this? My husband always pestered me to go. Maybe…”

“Maybe not,” the neighbor lady cut her off.  She was taken aback at this unexpected turn. She tensed up, pursing her lips. Her foundation was unable to disguise the deep lines on her middle-aged face. She sighed with the resolve of a cleaning lady mildly distressed to find just a bit more lint in a space she had just cleaned.

“I don’t think you need to go that far, my dear,” the neighbor lady fawned slowly, almost imperceptibly hissing in her attempt to suppress casual contempt with focus. The husband in the doorway silently rolled his eyes and threw up his arms. He turned and walked into the living room. “You know those church people,” the neighbor lady said with the feeble calculation of a student poor at maths. “So judgmental and self-righteous. They will think you’re crazy. And then they’ll think they have the right to busybody their way into telling you what to do, as well. We don’t want that, now, do we?” She patted the air as if the vibrations would reach the housewife still seated at the table.

“I suppose you’re right,” said the housewife, her face somewhat more purposeful and clearer. She wiped the tears pooled in her eyes with the edge of her bathrobe.

The neighbor lady relaxed. She opened her purse and took out a little box.  “Here, dear, have a valium,” she smiled cartoonishly, almost wickedly. “You’ll feel better.” The housewife hesitated, then took the pill and swallowed it with her cold coffee. She lowered her head to the table.

“Yes, yes,” she said distractedly, as to herself. “I should just rest a bit and get on with things. Thank you for stopping by on such short notice.”

The neighbor lady did an awkward little courtesy of self-congratulation.  “Anytime, dear. My number is on the pad near the phone. You just get some rest and then get back to your routine. I’m sure you’ll be just fine.”

The neighbor lady stepped out of the kitchen and into the living room, moving towards the front door. She glared at the husband. “None of this would be necessary,” she said through her teeth, “if you would just behave.” The husband, who had dutifully tucked his T-shirt into his pants like a child gambling for clemency despite misbehavior, followed the neighbor lady. “A man has a right to ask his wife to make him lunch,” he muttered defensively under his breath. “I got a right.”

Outside the house, the neighbor lady glowered. “You’re useless. You were useless then, and you’re useless now,” she said, insinuating the peculiar milestone in their acquaintance. Her remarks passed through him without disturbing his rebounding determination, however. “Oh, I got my use,” his voice picked up, “and I think you know it. I more than think you do,” he smiled shamelessly and assumed a rather jaunty pose. Facing him, the neighbor lady winced a bit, but it was through force of habit. She broke down again and smiled.

“That you do, my good man,” the neighbor lady perked, sucking in her own breath eagerly, “Oh, that you do.” The couple ambled slowly down the street together towards the neighbor’s house.

Hello again, and thank you for gathering around the CAMPFIRE again. A funny thing happened last week. wrote this uncanny story in one of my NOTEs, and when I read it I just knew it belonged here. I reached out and Foma gave permission for you all to read it.

If you’re interested in getting your own story seen by my subscribers, don’t hesitate to DM me. They’re hungry for both true stories and fiction!

It’s a great way to advertise your content.

I’m going to start highlighting some subscribers from the Playground. Maybe you’ll come across something new.

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Grateful to you all, you make this happen :)

Apartment 16

The following story is a true occurrence that took place in the early 2000s.

My neighbors avoided me. At first, I assumed it was because my wife and I were the new renters in apartment 16, but the would-be encounters on the stairs and at the landing had something more neurotic about them. I said hello and good day and in return I received averted gazes or wide eyed glares.

“Don’t upset her…” the lady from number 13 across the hall said.

“Don’t upset who?”

The lady didn’t answer. She just backed into her apartment with her groceries and locked the door. He had a look on her face that could only be described as horror.

Over the course of several months I had about dozen such cryptic encounters with my neighbors. Unreciprocated greetings. Timid, fearful smiles. A sudden haste to close doors or step more quickly in the opposite direction. Furtive glances. Children whisked away under a coat in my presence.

And then I confronted the adult daughter of a downstairs neighbor. She didn’t live in our building but came infrequently to visit her aging mother. Redolent of the embarrassing perfume of spirts, her instinct to flee my presence was hesitant.

“Excuse me,” I introduced myself by my apartment number, although I am sure she knew where I lived. “Have I given offence to anyone? Why does everyone seem avoid me?”

She was not afraid, like the rest. She seemed to be choosing her words carefully.

“You know.” she said at last.

“Know what?” I said, stupefied but earnestly hoping for an answer.

“Everyone knows about your wife.”

I was puzzled, of course. “My wife?” I said, she’s 6 months pregnant…”

“And that you are building a…bomb in your kitchen,” she hesitated, as if by uttering the words she was either now fully convinced or lad lapsed into a bout of drunken paranoia

The urgency to explain my circumstances was sucker punched by this last revelation. Not relaxed, but stymied by a surreal fog. Before I could even attempt to deny this, the woman finished her recrimination with an eerie recapitulation.

“You’re upsetting her. You mustn’t upset her. She lost her mother, you know.” My neighbor’s complexion changed. Her expression was now approaching fear, not of my person, but of some other, elusive entity.

“Who am I upsetting?”

“Her!” she exclaimed sharply. She shuddered and entered her mother’s apartment and locked the door.

The encounter emboldened me to resolve the mystery. I was not going to reconcile with my neighbors with upbeat greetings or any usual neighborly gestures. I now accosted them with questions - what was this ridiculous rumor about me and my pregnant wife? Who was it that was saying such things? When my neighbors responded with anything more than abject terror, I received only defensive replies to desist from my unspoken but nefarious practices.

In the weeks that followed, I was subject to petty vandalism and harassment. My mailbox was vandalized. Then my door. There were countless instances of our doorbelling ringing at odd hours with no one at our doorstep. I was exhausted and my wife was worried. She thought that if she stood in the hallway against her prescription to remain in bed for the duration of her pregnancy, her presence might have some effect. I felt it was unreasonable that we had to respond to this bizarre collective paranoia among our neighbors, but I had no ready alternative.

Then, unexpectedly, a plumber arrived one evening. He claimed to be responding to a call about flooding in the bathroom. We had not called and our bathroom was seized by no such cataclysm. He said a neighbor was complaining about a leak coming from our apartment, but he could not indicate which neighbor had called. When he left, annoyed that we had no business for him, I noticed the neighbor in the apartment directly across the landing, a toothy old woman in a blond wig, peeking through a cracked door and then loudly slamming her door closed. This appeared to be a sign that might lead to the headwaters of this business.

I began to spy on this neighbor in particular. Despite her age and weight, the woman scurried in and out of her apartment with rat-like movements. She was clearly trying to avoid contact. She was not all she appeared to be. The wig was a giveaway, but the bizarre conversations she had on her clearly nonfunctional mobile phone, her caked on makeup, her nightly escapades pouring water on the stairs - these seemed to indicate a declining mental state.

It wasn’t before long that I caught her red handed ringing our doorbell and dashing back behind her own apartment door. I even came upon her aggressively jamming a pencil into the keyhole of my mailbox. I had found my mischief maker.

It a much longer narrative covering events over the course of several years, I discovered that our mentally unstable neighbor had instigated a rumor that I had not only kept my wife a prisoner in our apartment, handcuffing her to the radiator, but that I was clandestinely building a nuclear device in my kitchen. The mind-blowing hyperbole of this preposterous story was only dwarfed by the fact that my neighbors had, as a collective, held it to be the unvarnished truth without question.

As an epilogue to this tale of surreal defamation, our sick neighbor was eventually diagnosed with early stage cancer and in the process of receiving treatment, she had undergone a psychiatric evaluation and received some form of medical assistance for this as well. She not only survived the cancer, but abandoned many of her eccentric ways and the collective hypnosis cast on our apartment neighborhood in fear of her unpredictable ways was dispelled. Gone were the awkward silences, the glances, and cryptic warnings. We even discovered that the flooding had come from our crazy-lady’s apartment, but she had been persuaded it was a disaster visited upon her from us, these new and unknown people across the landing.

Before we moved to another apartment almost 16 years after we had settled in this one, we had reconciled with even kept a watch on our recovered neighbor. She wept like a child the day we moved, saying we were the best neighbors she had ever had.

If you interested in what we’re doing here, please join the next story when it is announced soon. We’d love to hear your voice. And now, without any further delay, Let’s get into it. It’s time to delve into the disturbing tale of “The driver.”

The driver.

1. Ryan’s stomach wouldn’t shut up since he backed out of the car lot, so when a diner appeared from the pouring rain, he had to pull over. His mom had been calling since lunch, begging him to come take care of her while she was ill. I’m all she’s got left, he thought, so he agreed. Ryan promised he’d leave early, but a sudden workload pushed his way, kept clocking out impossible until well past 7. Now it was 10, and he still hadn’t eaten.

   The burgers inside were… edible. But, he guessed it would keep him going until his Mom’s place further upstate. A few cars outside, and a pack of trucks near where he parked, suggested it was a popular stop along this road. Heads turned towards Ryan, an out-of-towner, after the front door opened. No big deal. They went back to eating, but Ryan couldn’t shake the feeling a group of truckers was watching him, making the hair on his back stand on end. He couldn’t take the tension any longer, so the meal was eaten as fast as possible, and after hastily filling up with petrol— throwing the cash down and not even waiting for change— he sped away.

   Ryan felt relieved to be out of there.

   The place just didn’t sit right with him.

   A few miles out, though, the engine stuttered—once, twice—before choking completely. Damnit. Ryan’s car rolled to the shoulder, headlights cutting a pale wedge into the downpour. He sat in the dark, gripping the wheel. Mom’s gonna be waiting, wondering where I am. Just then, a pair of high beams blazed in the mirror. Before the truck door opened, Ryan knew it was the guys from the diner…..

2. The truck door slammed, and out came a burly trucker—beard like an oil spill, boots clomping. Ryan recognized him immediately. Same guy from the diner. The one who stared too long at the ketchup bottle.

   Then, to Ryan’s horror, a second figure hopped down. A little fella. Head too big for his body, like a Funko Pop come to life. Ryan squinted. Definitely not from the diner. He would’ve remembered that one.

   The two of them started giggling before they even reached the car.

   “You sure that’s him?” the big one said, low.

   “I swear on my Momma,” squeaked the little one.

   Ryan, peeking from the rearview, swallowed hard. He had the sudden feeling this was going to end in either homicide or karaoke.

   They stopped at his window. The burly one tapped politely, like a Girl Scout selling Thin Mints.

   “You, Ryan? The musician? Play ghee-tar over in Garnerville sometimes? Me, and Little Ray, here recognized you over at the diner.”

   Ryan hesitated, but Little Ray bounced on his heels and chirped: “Big fans! Been, been, BEEN to your shows, buddy!” He giggled, then hiccupped.

   “Yeah,” the burly one nodded, “saw you up at Howard’s Point. You remember that? Said your guitar was outta tune. Me and Little Ray here, we've been wondering—” he leaned in, smelling faintly of diesel and despair, “—you got your ghee-tar with you now? Maybe play us a tune? Just for a couple of admirers.”

   Little Ray flapped his hands. “That song! That one song! Dum-diddie-dum, and then—oh boy—it’s about the girl who broke his heart!”

   “Yeah, yeah, the girl who shattered his everlovin’ heart into shards of pure sadness,” the burly one said, suddenly soulful. “Every time I hear that song, I feel like crying into my beer and then punching the jukebox for lying to me.”

   Ryan tried the ignition. Dead. He tried again. Still dead.

   The burly one frowned. “Whoa there, son. Don’t be tryin’ to run off on us. That’s downright rude.”

   “That’s not neighborly,” Little Ray echoed, wagging a stubby finger.

   “I can’t roll down the window without the engine running,” Ryan shouted. “Why don’t you just leave me alone?”

   “Oh my goodness,” the burly one said with mock amazement. “He can’t start the engine. Can’t roll down the window. Can’t play us a song. Little Ray, what are we gonna do with such a man?”

   Little Ray’s eyes went wide, like a kid at a carnival. “Does that mean he ain’t, he AIN’T gonna play no music for us?”

   “Sounds like it.” The burly one scratched his beard, thinking. Then, almost cheerfully: “Little Ray, why don’t you fetch us a crowbar. We’ll help him open a window or two.”

   Little Ray clapped with glee. “Yessir! Crowbar time!” He scampered off toward the truck like a toddler racing for an ice cream truck.

   Ryan sat frozen behind the wheel, listening to the gravel crunch under Little Ray’s tiny boots.

The City Between Us

The Last Brando

Marlon Brando: more than an idol to Johnny “The Ram” Rampole—something akin to a saint or a wayward prophet. Since his teenage years, Johnny had modeled himself after the Method great: dressing in torn T‑shirts, worn dungarees, and gritty leather jackets so retro they stood out like a sepia ghost in modern Manhattan…

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8 months ago · 13 likes · Michael Arturo

3. Ryan turned the key furiously in the ignition. He already had an unsettling feeling about the trucker, but now, especially with the arrival of Little Ray and talk of crowbars, there was no doubt something nefarious was afoot. The engine spluttered and coughed, but it was still no use. “He ain’t tryin’ ta make a break fer it is he, Big Luke?” Little Ray hollered from the cab of the truck.

   Big Luke laughed, “Tryin’ but failing. You made sure of that, right, Ray?”

   So there it was, sabotage.

   Ryan didn’t know what had been done to his car, but it cemented that there was no use in continuing his efforts to get it started. Little Ray jumped down from the truck once again, crowbar in hand, and he and Big Luke trudged their way towards the driver's side door. It was fight or flight time. Ryan placed his hand on the door handle and stared straight ahead out of the windscreen.

   He saw Big Luke’s big bushy beard and grease-stained face peer in at him from the periphery. Luke leaned down, picked up Little Ray, and positioned him at the perfect height to take a swing and break the car window. “And a three…and a two…” Little Ray reared back and lined up the crowbar, “And a…” Ryan wasn’t letting him get to one. He swung the car door open with force and sent it crashing into Little Ray and Big Luke. Little Ray went flying into the air like roadkill, and Luke stumbled back, unable to steady himself, and fell onto his behind. The crowbar clattered on the road, and Ryan used the distraction to hop out of the car and sprint off into the night. He wasn’t wasting a second to look back.

   “Oh no, Ray, oh no.” Big Luke muttered as Ryan faded off into the distance. He repeated himself under his breath. “Damnit, every time we try to save one of those city slickers, it always turns into a wild goose chase. Don’t they know what waits down these roads in the dark?” Little Ray sat up and rubbed his lollipop head.

   “They’ll get themselves killed.”

Guerrilla Literature and the Avant-garde

The Big Top: Part 1 (NSFW)

Disclaimer…

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8 months ago · 7 likes · Kerr Martin

4. "Leave me alone, man, I'm - I'm just passing through." Ryan managed to yell through the window because the trucker had moved to Ryan's trunk; the silhouette of the man's torso as he pissed all over the rear windshield gave Ryan's eyes a reprieve from the blinding headlights. 

   "C'mon, baby, please start, PLEASE," Ryan whispered as he desperately fumbled to turn the key in the ignition. He yelled his relief when the car sputtered back to life. 

   "What in the kentucky fried fuck?" The big guy exclaimed.

   Ryan had never been in a situation like this. Sure, he'd seen it in movies, but he never thought this could actually be real - and really happening to him. He wasn't big and strong, and he didn't consider himself particularly brave, but something inside him steeled in that instant, and he'd be damned if he was gonna go out like this.

   "Alright, you sick hick fuck" he hissed through gritted teeth as he yanked the shift into reverse and pushed the gas pedal down swiftly and hard.

   The sick hick fuck had just finished hiking up his jeans and was trying to run back up to Ryan's door when the car brushed his hip, sending him sprawling into the grass. The same grass that pulled at Ryan's tires after the car's initial jerk back, instead of the traction needed for a swift getaway. 

   "Please fucking PLEASE," Ryan screamed as the rear windshield shattered with Little Ray yelling incoherently with each swing of his crowbar, dinging off the trunk.

   Ryan punched the gas pedal into the floorboard so hard he could feel his thigh cramping from the effort. The tires finally latched onto firm ground under the now shredded grass, and when the car lurched backward, it sent the small man tumbling ballsack over earlobes back towards the fence. Ryan slammed the brakes and viciously yanked the car into drive, then punched the gas to launch the car back onto the road, skidding out of the way just as the big man had righted himself and was charging Ryan's door again.

   Ryan swerved his car to a stop in the middle of the parking lot back at the Diner he'd just left. It was getting late, but the lights were still on, everything but the last two "s" on the sign: Rusty's Spoon.

   Panting for breath, Ryan ran into the small dingy restaurant, wiping sweat from his brow onto his sweat-stained polo shirt. 

   "He-helloo? Is anyone here?" he wheezed the words out, straining as he tried to yell to get someone's attention - anyone.

   He ran towards the weathered wooden door behind the register and flung it open so that it knocked the woman who had run up to it flat on her ass.

   "Oh my god, I'm so sorry, I can't - there's crazy ass rednecks chasing me!" Ryan said as he pushed the door closed behind him and then bent down to help the woman, whom he recognized as the girl he'd spotted earlier bussing tables and rolling silverware at a far corner booth.

   "What the fuck you talkin' about, mister?" the girl, whose Rusty's Spoon t-shirt was equally stained with grease and sweat, asked as she accepted his hand to right her up to standing.

   Before Ryan could answer, a loud horn sounded outside. It had been altered to play a custom series of horn blasts to create a well-known tune - or it seemed familiar, at least, but Ryan couldn't put his finger on it this moment.

   "Some big bearded dude and his sick gremlin, uh, Ray? I think, look, please hide me or something - tell them the car stopped here and I ran down the road until a car picked me up, PLEASE HELP ME!" Ryan's eyes watered in his panic.

   "Aw hell, Little Ray done got Big Luke higher than a giraffe's taint and they're all riled up again, huh?" the girl stamped her foot in dissaproval.

   She grabbed Ryan's arm and pulled him into the walk-in freezer.

   "Wait! No, I can't..."

   "Don't worry! I'll send cousin R... Little Ray and Big Luke off - I won't let you freeze to death!" she insisted as she pushed the neatest stack of crates in the otherwise haphazard freezer to the side, and pulled a black curtain revealing a narrow wood paneled door.

   "It's not as cold in there, but I still won't leave you long - they know not to mess with lil bitty Mitzi!" she flashed a big grin with a couple of cavities up at Ryan after she'd shoved him into the small dark space, and then Ryan listened as she readjusted the curtain and crates to conceal the door once more.

   Waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dark before feeling around the room, Ryan dug in his pockets for his inhaler, but only found the small pocket knife his Mom told him to carry.

   "Mom, I hope you're alright, and I'm going to do my best to get out of this, so I can see you soon." He whispered to himself as the ruckus out in Rusty's Spoon began.

Misadventures of a Modern Mess: How-to Be Absurd

Rolling beyond the deep

I will give you up…

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8 months ago · 4 likes · Britt L Freeman, Writer + SMM

5. Ryan had no sense of time, but the chill in his body told him it was time to get out of the meat locker. There was a very real light stiffness in his joints as he moved to the door and pushed the inner door lock, being careful to do it slowly. Ryan peeked around the edge of the door while cool air spilled out of the meat locker into the bare hallway. He heard voices past the scratched varnish surface of the door that led back to the dining area, where he ran through to get here. Voices on the other side of that door. Ryan recognized the voices of Little Ray and Big Luke. Little Ray spoke first, then the waitress's lighter female voice argued back, after which Big Luke's deeper voice boomed back arguments of his own. It went on like that for a bit, and Ray listened quietly, once in a while looking around him, taking in the hallway he was in.

   Red clay tile, the one you find in most kitchen floors, refrigerators to one side, and flat metal surfaces of food prep areas across from the fridges. At the end of the hallway, it was dark, but Ryan was certain there was an exit there. He remembered working at a pizza place one summer with a layout similar to this one, with a door at the end where deliveries were made, and the guys went out for their smoke breaks.

   Ryan was considering going over to where the waitress, Big Luke, and Little Ray were when suddenly Big Luke's voice said something loudly and angrily. The waitress said something back. Her tone carried anger, but not the same booming power of Luke's voice. Little Ray was shouting next, and now they were all shouting at once, till a THUD was heard, and the waitress screamed, and was silent. Ryan started from the opposite end of the hallway. My mother needs me, he thought, get out of here any way you can. He looked around the food prep area, but couldn't see a knife or cleaver he could use to fight his way out of there. He looked up at an ellipse of wood hanging above the order pick up window, standing orange and brown against the blue tile of the wall. In black letters, it said TRADITION PREVAILS. Ryan heard Big Luke's voice. It sounded like he was right next to Ryan. Ryan ran towards the dark end of the hallway, and a little past a bend, he saw the metal door, and above it the word EXIT in red letters. Ryan pushed the door open, and immediately a fire alarm sounded. "Fuck!"Ryan muttered and took off running. He didn't look back till he was a distance away and saw a hulking silhouette covering the exit he'd run through.

@mindset&mythos

Cinematic Storytelling: Escape From Midwich Valley (Carpenter Brut)

One of the most fascinating things I have find in storytelling in different media is when something manages to feel greater than what is made…

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8 months ago · 12 likes · 14 comments · @mindset&mythos

6. Ryan peered through the bushes back at the diner’s exit. A giant of a man now stood carrying a cave man like club pounded his hand repeatedly.

   “Oh, Baby Luke time to come out and play,” the giant roared. 

   Around the side of the building, Little Ray approached the giant and squealed “Whaa..a…ah. are you doing here. You s’posed to be gone on vacation, Fred.”  Little Ray kicked at some dirt and smiled up at the giant, well.. Ryan decided he must be Fred or anything he wanted to be called.

   “Gotta call that there was some tourist having a bad time so I’m here to discipline you boys. You know what happened the last time your folk messed with a tourist.  Guess you want to go that route, Asshole.”  Fred whacked Little Ray over the head with the club as Big Luke sauntered out the back door.

   “I’m going to send you to the forest, Luke,” said Fred as he shoved the end of the club into Baby Luke’s gut.

Bev’s Substack

That Kingfisher

Plumage bluish gray with beak of killer, scans pond, small fish seeker. Bubbles pop above the water, unknown fish goes back under. Kingfisher on fence post totter launch then up, up, up he surges piercing evening’s darkened sky knowledge of ascension’s apex plotted to perfect plot point where fish spotted. Down, down, down he sails extending talons gras…

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8 months ago · 20 likes · 4 comments · Bev Levine

Ryan tore into the tree-line, with branches clawing at his arms like a hundred angry hands. He didn’t stop to listen for voices, footsteps or anything. He only knew he had to keep moving, deeper and deeper into the wet night. Eventually in the darkness, he lost all sense of direction. His lungs burned, shirt clinging to him like wet paper, but the adrenaline never drained, pushing onwards.

Panic, like the forest, closed in around Ryan. Nights passed, maybe two, maybe three. Sleeping curled under logs, drinking muddy water from a ditch, Ryan could only think of his mother’s voice on the phone—weak but insistent: Come home, Ryan. You’re all I’ve got.

“And you’re all I’ve got, now…”

By the time the state troopers found him Ryan was half-delirious, skin gray, lips cracked. They wrapped him in blankets and told him how he was lucky to not have frozen to death. One officer laughed, holding up a siphoned jar of foul-smelling liquid from Ryan’s gas tank. “Diesel, not petrol. You got the nozzle wrong before you sped away from the diner. Car never had a chance, pal. Truckers were trying to stop you from wrecking the engine. But, guess they got a little… overzealous.”

Ryan spent two nights in a small-town hospital. The doctors said he was fine, just exhausted, underfed, rattled. By the third day he was discharged, and against every nurse’s advice, he set back onto the road, in a borrowed car this time. When he finally pulled into his mother’s driveway, pale autumn sunlight draped itself over the neat little house. Ryan staggered up the porch steps, rehearsing what he’d say, what he’d tell her about nearly dying this past week.

He knocked.

The door opened, and there she was—standing tall, color in her cheeks, a dish towel slung over one shoulder like nothing had ever been wrong.

“Oh, Ryan,” she said, eyebrows raised. “What on earth are you doing here? I told you I was feeling better. You didn’t need to drive all this way.”

Ryan stood in the doorway, rainwater still clinging to his sleeves, and for a moment he couldn’t decide whether to laugh, or collapse, or weep.

I wanted to thank all the writers who participated in my little experimental adventure. You made it great. In fact, these shared stories are my most popular, with Chapter 1 alone rocketing to 500 views.

However, a growing narrative has become cumbersome and complicated. If new authors aren’t following from the start, they find it too difficult to write into.

So, it’s time to introduce Lucy’s successor — CAMPFIRE STORIES.

This will keep the exciting format of a shared story, where we add to it little by little. But episodic pieces will keep each story to a single chapter. In this way, it can remain fresh and easy to get involved.

I’d love you to be a part of that, too.

More details later. For now, please enjoy Lucy’s journey: Chapter 4.

1. As Lucy stepped further into her father’s attic, her candlelight began to reveal the hulking forms of his forgotten inventions, long entombed in deathless slumber. Floorboards creaked beneath her until she came upon a dusty control panel, buttons and levers glinting faintly in the gloom. After a brief hesitation, Lucy slid the brass key into the machine’s slot. It resisted, then clicked, coming alive. Gears stirred beneath stained metal, and glass tubes pulsed with an amber glow. Only the blood-bound may awaken it, her father’s journal warned. Her hand trembled as dials spun on their own, and symbols rearranged into the geometry of her dreams. A low hum rose into a jarring wail, like a metal man trying to remember its name. Then the images flooded her mind.

   Her father. A shadow phantom. A distant, warped landscape not of the world.

2. Lucy waited in the dark while the hum increased in bass, a mechanism gathering power. Father's last journal entry implied the family was safe from his creations, but how do the machines know about her family? He had never let Lucy in this room. Or his wife.

   Lucy's thoughts were startled back to the moment when shadows shifted on the far wall. A big mecha projected a squirming, swaying shape over Lucy, across the length of the broad and crowded room, and along the height of the far wall.

   Lucy's right hand drifted back toward the key inserted in the scratched and faded brass lock while her eyes watched the shape on the wall shift.

   It’s moving toward me, Lucy thought. Through the distortions of the crouched figures and console terminals, Lucy noticed a blocky, male torso. A soft clunk as the mecha took an arcing step from the charging pad onto the faded brown carpet.

   Lucy clutched the key, resisting the impulse to flick the unit back to the OFF position. Her father's notes left nothing about this metal man.

   “I guess I have to make a sudden introduction and hope it doesn’t...I don't know. Attack or something.”

   Behind Lucy, the mecha took another step and said in a metallic voice, “Welcome back to the LEVACIX, Sir George Cowen.”

3. The words scraped against her mind, a tender psychic wound that seemed to bleed inside her temples, filling them with warmth. Her father’s name echoed and echoed and echoed.

   Yet the mecha’s voice carried it like a benediction and a curse, echoing in the attic gloom. Its silhouette rose before her like a jagged cathedral of pistons and light, casting her shadow into grotesque elongation across the warped boards. The visor’s twin pinpricks of red swept her up and down, interrogating her with an almost human malice.

   “Identity mismatch,” it intoned, static crackling through its throat, "Yet… blood verified.”

   Lucy’s temples tensed, and she felt something in her throat, beyond a knot or a lump, being pulled towards the heat in her mind, her heart beating so fast that it seemed to have stopped hours ago. And then, a faint sound, a laugh, or something like it, something that seemed to grow inside her mind, coiled through the darkness around her, cold and metallic but as old and patient as the oak tree on the edge of the property. She remembered kneeling in its moss, her fingers blackened with earth, the whisper at her ear: "Find the key."

   The LEVACIX straightened with an electric groan, its visor dimming to a sullen amber. “Elsewhere,” it murmured, the word tolling like a black bell, “breaches… imminent.” Behind its words, she thought she heard the tree’s breath again, a low susurrus in the attic rafters, as though its roots had followed her here, threading through the floor beneath her bare feet. Dust swirled like ash in the machine’s wake as it leaned closer, its voice dropping to a rasp: “Inheritor. Your choice… or theirs.” Her temples burned, her tongue as dry as the dust dancing around. She felt the house itself lean in to hear her answer, and Lucy understood—a clarity that chilled her; she’d already stepped beyond the threshold.

The LEVACIX shuddered, its frame of rattling chains dragged across stone. Tubes flared, spilling amber into crimson, until the attic descended into bloodlight. As the dust spiraled upward as though gravity were unraveling, Lucy staggered back, her hand still hovering over the brass key.

Then a voice—soft, urgent, unmistakably human—cut through the din.

“Lucy!” She froze. It was Ms. Kitte. The illusory eyes were fixed behind Lucy, on the machine’s central console. “The third switch—press it!” she cried. “Before it takes root!” Lucy’s hand trembled as she reached for the lever marked only by a fading sigil. With a desperate pull, she drove it down. The machine answered like a cathedral organ, low chords shook every beam in the rafters. Symbols flared across the panels, rearranging themselves into a gate of shifting geometry. A slit of dark air opened between the mecha’s shoulders, widening until the attic seemed to breathe with it.

And from that impossible fissure, a new figure emerged.

Her father.

Not whole at first—fragments pulled through in fits of light and shadow, his face breaking apart and reforming like shards of glass. His coat flapped against a foul wind, and his eyes, as they materialized, carried both recognition and ruin. “Lucy… you must act quickly.” His voice cracked, echoing with the hollow resonance of the Elsewhere. “The wound is open again.”

She stumbled forward, every muscle begging her to embrace him, yet the machine’s hiss froze her in place. Ms. Kitte gripped her shoulder, steady and unflinching. “He was trapped there,” she said grimly. “The Elsewhere made the LEVACIX its mouthpiece. If we don’t end it now, the breach between worlds will never close.” The mecha convulsed, its visor burning with twin infernos. The slit in space her father came through widened into a chasm, and beyond it Lucy glimpsed a landscape of warped towers and black suns, an infinity clawing to pour itself into the world. Her father’s hand reached toward her, pleading, and his words chilled the marrow in her bones.

“Destroy it, Lucy. Before it is too late.”

The LEVACIX roared, with every piston jerking to protest violently. It was as if the Elsewhere itself had grown desperate. Shadows bent toward the portal, demons eager to devour. Lucy clutched her forehead as countless voices swelled against her skull.

“Lucy—listen!” Ms. Kitte’s voice pierced the storm. “The crimson dial—tear it free! And the copper fuse beneath the left coil—rip it out! Do not hesitate!” Lucy’s breath came ragged, but she obeyed. She yanked at the dials, sparks spitting into fireflies, then plunged her hand into the heat of the coil. Pain seared her palms, but fuses came loose with shrieks of metal. The machine growled in reply, its frame convulsing, but the fissure was shrinking. Her father staggered forward from the collapsing rift, his body shedding fragments of shadow. His eyes, weary and hollow, locked onto hers.

“Almost there, Kiddo,” Ms. Kitty urged. “Now the key—turn it back. Seal it!”

With all her strength, Lucy twisted the brass key. The LEVACIX screamed, the portal folding inward like a burning page, until only a pinprick of black remained. Then—silence. The rift collapsed. The attic was plunged into stillness, save for the rasp of Lucy’s breath and the faint whir of dying gears.

But the silence was wrong.

Lucy turned—Ms. Kitty lay very still, her paws folded by her chest. Already, her outline shimmered, flickering like candlelight caught in a draft. She whispered, reaching out. “What’s happening?”

Ms. Kitty smiled, sad and serene. “It’s alright. I told you, Lucy… the Elsewhere leaves no servants behind. No more demons. But, I am… part of its weave, too. You severed the thread.”

Her father stumbled beside Lucy, his voice raw. “Kitty—thank you—”

The old cat lifted her head, brushing Lucy’s leg one last time. “You were always stronger than you knew. Guard your father now. Guard yourself.” And then she was gone—dissolving into ash, into light, into nothing at all. The attic felt cavernous without her. Dust drifted, unanchored, where she had stood. Lucy pressed her scorched palm against her heart, fighting the hollow ache. Beside her, her father fell to his knees, free but broken.

They had closed the wound.

The Elsewhere was sealed.

But victory was a wound of its own.

Lucy had her father back.

Yet she would never see Ms. Kitte again.

Thank to everyone who contributed a part to this. The plot has taken numerable twists and turns, and I love it. The magic is seeing how the story unfolds.

I like to make 10 parts to a chapter but I just couldn’t be patient after took Lucy on a totally new adventure. I highly recommend reading that, too.

Seema’s Substack

CHALLENGE POSED BY WIRROWAC's PLAYGROUND

Ms. Kittie reached the attic first, materializing on the last step. Head, then body, then tail unfolded from the shadows. Lucy barely blinked; she was used to it by now and barreled past her companion. “We’re not all evil.” A voice, disjointed and echoing, sprang from behind her. It came from Ms. Kitty. Lucy stopped mid-step. “What did you say?” “It’s i…

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10 months ago · 4 likes · 1 comment · Seema Nayyar Tewari

As always if you’d like to be a part of the next chapter, please write Chapter 4 in the comments or DM me. Lucy’s journey has just begun.

CHAPTER 3

1. Ms. Kitty reached the attic first, materializing on the last step. Head, then body, then tail unfolded from the shadows. Lucy barely blinked; she was used to it by now, and barreled past her companion.

   “We’re not all evil.” A voice, disjointed and echoing, sprang from behind her. It came from Ms Kitty.

   Lucy stopped mid-step. “What did you say?”

   “It’s important you know—before we go any further. The Elsewhere Folk… we’re not all evil.”

   Her throat tightened as the revelation hit her. “You’re one of them? A demon?”

   “There are no human words for what we are. ‘Demon’ is just what fearful men label us. I’ve been in service to your family ever since your father summoned me from Elsewhere.”

2. “Consider your past and join me in your future,” cooed Ms. Kitty and pointed at an unassuming patch of floor before the attic door.

   Enthralled by the feline’s eyes and mesmerized by a flood of goodness, Lucy stumbled over the heap of boards and cloth. Light shone from beneath it.  She peeled the debris carefully, piece by piece, to expose an illuminated object—a leather book bound with antique bark and hinges hidden under the floorboards. It opened, and the pages unfurled swiftly and appeared to flutter, making swooshing sounds echo in the attic hallway.  A single page shone. 

   “Read, learn, memorize, and then you must return quickly.  They will be searching for you,” said Ms. Kitty.

3. Lucy knelt before the book, its light pooling around her like a perfect Gaussian distribution—concentrated, radiant, and unsettlingly precise. As the pages fluttered, they didn't just turn; they recalculated. Equations whispered off the bark-bound margins, irrational numbers looping through her brain like obsessive thoughts she hadn’t invited.

   Ms. Kitty circled her, tail twitching like a metronome locked into some occult frequency. "This is where we separate the linear thinkers from the exponential ones," the feline murmured, eyes flashing a shade too intelligent for comfort. The page stopped on what looked like a proof—but not in any notation Lucy recognised. It wasn’t Latin, or Greek, or math. It was truth, disguised as something that could be solved.

   “They think time is a timeline,” Ms. Kitty said, licking her paw. “But Elsewhere thinks in phase space. Everything that could happen is happening.” She looked up at Lucy. “Your father didn’t just summon me. He called you into being.” Lucy touched the glowing page, and for a moment, saw her entire life refracted through a Fibonacci spiral, recursive and nauseatingly elegant. She wasn’t just chosen. She was built to survive this engineered maze.

   "Congratulations," said Ms. Kitty. "You're the solution. You'll have to choose who to protect, and who to let go—but only if you understand the question.” Lucy swallowed. And the attic went very, very quiet, the kind of quiet that always comes before the next variable appears. She picked up the book.

   The light blinked out. "Good," said Ms. Kitty. "Now run.”

4. As Lucy's eyes re-acclimated to the dim stairwell, she shook her head several times as there were now blurs in her vision, like wearing a pair of glasses covered with oily streaks. But these aberrations did not follow her perspective as she would expect. They seemed fixed in space. Still reeling from her experience with the poly-physical tome, her present concern was completing the ascent into the attic.

   But once inside the room, her view was completely obfuscated by these streaks. Being unsure of where to find the light switch, she asked her grandmother to turn on a light. Her grandmother is perplexed at the request as the toggle was within arms reach. When the matriarch reached the switch and illuminated the room, Lucy gasped. The streaks are no less interfering in the light, but with better lighting, betraying colors and the impression of shapes. Appearing to be objects stretched through space, she tried to determine what they could be. Nan was standing quietly watching Lucy dodge and weave as though she were walking between invisible vines, trying not to disturb them. At first, concerned that her granddaughter was possessed, she looked for the closest implement to employ if Lucy were to succumb.

   But after a few moments, it was clear that she appeared to be looking for something. Her relief was brief as Lucy let out a scream and fell to the floor on her backside. "I see Father," Lucy exclaimed softly. As if a statue of a photograph, both solid and ethereal, she looked at him in mid-step, impossibly off-balance. Looking around the room, she yelped once again at an unfamiliar woman behind her. A woman, she had no memory of meeting. Upon recognizing that these phantoms were not an extant threat but things that had been before, she calmly looked at the woman more closely, trying to figure out if she knew her and why she would have been in that room with her father. The more she desired to know, the more the woman appeared to move. Compelling the form to animate, the woman turned to face Lucy's father, who was approaching her. As the two met, there was a brief, soundless conversation where they shared an embrace. Just then, the woman appeared to have abdominal discomfort and excused herself down the steps. Lucy slumped to the floor, her eyes now obscured in tears.

   She asked Nan, "Whatever happened to my real mother?"

5. Nan hesitated, but knew that this was the moment she had prepared for, for some time now. Lucy not only deserved to know, but she needed to know in order to protect herself from the same fate that had befallen her family. "Your mother was of the Elsewhere, and you were born to be an integral part of it." Lucy was trembling.

   She had always felt as if this world was not entirely hers, but those feelings were small and intangible. Like small movements playing at one's periphery, the second you try to examine it, it vanishes. But now, hearing from Nan that she was part of this other world, maybe even more than part, but born from it, those feelings grew inside her. She knew, right then, that this moment in this timeline was the intersection from which she would never be able to come back. She looked into her Nan's eyes and said the words that would launch her down this new path that stretched out in front of her now.

   "Tell me what my father did. Tell me about his inventions."

6. "Do you know the drawing game, exquisite corpses?" Nan replied.

   Lucy shook her head slowly.

   "So. Well, did you ever see them, when the inventions worked?"

   Another slow headshake.

   "It is well known that the Elsewhere folk have names.”

   “You mean the demons?”

   “Yeah. That means those entities can be controlled. But what is less well known is that their names depend on their form; this they seek to be self-changelings."

   Lucy lifted her chin.

   "Your father's machines tracked those changes, and thus could find those names, but the machines could only guess a likely make from the changes."

   Lucy waited.

   "They could never quite be refined enough to predict the change, so often based partly on the last, and some energy, some spiral spark, that he then set off in search of, or at least, the research necessary to begin that last search."

   Lucy then, after making a promise, turned on her father’s machine.

Chain stories.

Do you know them? It’s where a group of SUBSTACK authors gather together to write a shared story, one part after another. 100-150 words.

Although I lay the framework and keep the story moving, where you take the plot is completely up to you. I want you to show off your own finesse and imagination, resulting in a narrative that explores Lucy’s journey in a way I could never achieve.

As the project grows, I will gather relevant story information and deposit it here. Please use this to create your own chain in Lucy’s story.

Thank you for being a part of this.

Recap - Story so far

Lucy Corwen’s story begins on a storm-touched night when she hears her name whispered beneath her door—a surreal and terrifying event that ends with her submerged in rising water and confronted by a shadowy figure that speaks with her dead father’s voice.

Wracked by guilt over a fire she believed she caused as a child, Lucy soon discovers that her father's death, and the supernatural whispers haunting their home, are part of a far deeper legacy. With the help of her mysteriously knowing grandmother and her ever-watchful cat, Ms. Kittie, Lucy uncovers a hidden attic filled with weapons, journals, and artifacts—evidence that her father had been a demon hunter battling forces from a realm called the Elsewhere.

As her grandmother begins preparing her for the truth and danger to come, Lucy finds herself drawn to her father’s old journal and the power it hums with, awakening something fierce and frightening within her.

With supernatural creatures clawing at the edges of reality and ancient barriers wearing thin, Lucy must decide whether to run from her family's dark inheritance or step into the role she was born to fill—before the things waiting in the dark come calling again.

The Cowen Family

• Lucy Cowen

  This 15-year-old lives in a Victorian mansion. She is inquisitive and spends most of her time buried in a book. Recently, haunting dreams have compelled her to question her supposed ordinary life. She now seeks answers to dark mysteries surrounding the Cowen family.

• Margaret Cowen - Lucy’s stepmother

  A realistic and strict woman. She has no time for Lucy’s so-called active imagination, being more concerned about keeping an orderly house. Not for love, Margaret married into the family for the money, but now that Lucy’s father is deceased, she’s forced to sell off his research to keep bread on the table. That could mean his inventions are falling into dark hands.

• Grandmother Cowen (Name not given yet)

  Mother of the inventor George Cowen and technical heir of the estate. Took to defending the house from otherworldly entities since her son’s death. But she grows old and cannot stay strong for much longer.

• George Cowen - Lucy’s father

  Presumably died 5 years ago. Lucy cannot remember this event, but her dreams are stirring doubts about that night inside of her. He is the inventor of the derelict machines stored in the attic.

Other characters

• Ms Kitty

  Lucy’s imaginary friend, who takes the form of a cat. It knows things. Strangely, Grandmother can see Ms kitty, too.

• A cloaked figure

  This phantom was able to invade Lucy’s dream. On the first night, Lucy sleepwalked outside it was waiting for her by the old oak tree at the bottom of the garden. When she talked to it she had visions of her father.

Lore

The Elsewhere

• The name of an otherworldy location written in George’s research. Presumably, he was ‘searching’ for it.

• Demons/elsewhere folk

  They are attacking the house for some unknown reason. Magic barriers currently hold these entities at bay, but like grandmother Cowen, they are deteriorating.

I can’t wait to see what Lucy does next.

Chapter 3 is out! So, please read the next chapter here.

Chapter two

1. In the days following her ordeal, Lucy would venture back to the old oak tree at the edge of their property. It grew twisting from the earth, birthed like some gnarling giant straddling the world she knew and the wood beyond it. She approached cautiously, expecting the figure to reveal itself, but it never did. Defeated, she turned back to the house. Her stepmother shunned such notions as a mere childish fantasy and took to repeated scoldings after that night for waking the household. But grandma was strangely quiet, biting her tongue whenever they met.

   As Lucy trundled back, she noticed the same concerned eyes peering from an upstairs window. Grandma was watching.

2. Grandma knew better than Lucy’s stepmother. She had lived in a time and place when the existence of demons was known. For some strange reason, though, they were no longer thought of as real!

   And now, now the demons were having a field day.

   Fairy tales tell you that if you don't believe in something, it dies: poof, gone. But when you don't believe in a demon, it only has more power to move: to scare, to tamper, to plant doubts.

   Grandma smiled down at Lucy. She didn't want to frighten the girl, not yet at least. There would be a time to bring the truth to the girl’s attention, but not until she was absolutely sure it was, indeed, what she thought it was.

3. Lucy, being an inquisitive child, was not deterred by her stepmother's scoldings. That night in bed, Lucy was awakened by the faint odor of what she recalled as that of her father's cigar. Standing at her window looking out at that massive oak tree, a voice whispered into her ear again. It was compelling her to go and seek a small moss patch at the base of the tree.

   A key that would unlock father's secrets would be found. Not waiting for morning, Lucy slipped out of the house into the darkness in only her nightgown, barefooted. She kneeled down digging the moss up with her bare hands. There, now revealed, was a large ornate brass key. Returning, she noticed a light was on in her Grandmother's room. Mysterious shadows flickered about in the window.

   Has this all been a dream? She wondered that next morning. Looking at her dirty fingers and soiled feet were certainly proof positive it was not. Then reaching under her pillow was that brass key. Ms Kitty advised Lucy not to tell her stepmother but to take it directly to Grandmother. Later that afternoon, Lucy and Grandmother slowly ascended the staircase to the attic. The key fit perfectly as the bolt released….

4. Inside were items and devices that caused Lucy’s jaw to drop and her Grandmother to nod knowingly. Tables covered in vials filled with clear liquid marked Holy Water, silver tipped stakes, traps. On the walls hung archaic technology splattered with stains too strange to think about and on shelves, books marked with symbols and scribblings almost impossible to decipher.

   “Your father was an inventor, Dear,” said Grandmother softly, “and he put those inventions to good use hunting demons.”

   Lucy heard her words but didn’t have it in her to respond, not right away at least. The revelation that her father wasn’t just an inventor but a demon hunter? It was almost unbelievable. Even with all the strange activity lately, seeing his burning corpse, the way his phantom spoke to her. Could it really be true? Ms Kittie hopped up onto a shelf and placed her paws onto a notebook before cocking her head toward Lucy, urging her to read. So Lucy reached forward to pick it up. The energy in those pages radiated through her skin before she even touched them. It burned, but didn’t hurt, as she held its weighty mystique in her hands.

   Her fingers flicked through the pages, eyes scanning all that she could understand about her father and his past. Beings that he encountered, things that should not exist, monsters that he defeated. As she approached the end of his writings, Lucy finally understood, that night in the library her temper was likely not her own. The fire? Not her fault at all but instead the curse of a demon. Her father, her family, this household clearly had an attachment that cost him his life. Lucy knew exactly where to start looking for the demon still stalking House Corwen. She’d bet her life on it.

5. She knew that venturing in the night to that place would be dangerous. It would take much time for her to prepare, despite her eagerness to prove all of her suspicions correct. The following nights consisted of her sneaking into the room and studying what her father had created. She continued to read from the book she had taken, twice over, thrice over, too many times to count. Among its dusty pages, a note slipped to the floor. It read, “I’ve found it, where they are coming from. I’ve found the ELSEWHERE.”

   The burning in her fingers slowly took on a different sensation the more she read. It energized her. It made her feel powerful. And like the greatest euphoria, she began reading out of habit like a soft obsession.

   She would slip her hand onto one of the gleaming stakes when her addiction had been quenched that night, and practiced pushing it forward. She had imagined the heart of a demon, its form barely humanoid and consisting of mostly some dark, gel-like substance that the weapon effortlessly pushed into it. She had done it once. Through the imagined heart. Then the gut. Then the neck. And all the while, she couldn't help but keep a smile on her face, as if a larger force had called upon her, perhaps the spirit of her father that had ascended to someplace greater, to carry on what had been lost from his physical form.

   She had to catch herself eventually from thrusting her weapon so quickly. She blinked, having a moment of clarity in the midst of this violent impulse. She was at pause for a moment. Even if this felt good... she was left shaking in her confusion.

6. The following morning Lucy tiptoed past her stepmother’s room, a task she’d mastered ever since she started sneaking out to her father’s secret room, and tapped on her grandmother’s door. There was no reply. It wasn’t like her grandmother to not be in her room.

   She peered under the door and saw a light on with shadows moving around. She tried the doorknob and it opened easily as she turned it.

   The light blinded her eyes momentarily as the door behind her slammed shut. She turned back and there was her grandmother, out of breath with dirt on her face.

7. Lucy was stunned for a moment, then said, “Nan… why is there dirt on your face?”

   “I’ve been…” She stopped short, fixing her gaze on Lucy’s feet. “Where are your shoes, child?”

   Lucy looked down too. She had been so startled by her grandmother’s sudden arrival that it took her a moment to think—then she remembered.

   “I took them off so I wouldn’t make a sound in the hallway.”

   The frown on grandmother’s face softened. “Clever girl. Now go and get them, quickly. We’ve things to do.”

   Lucy darted back out of the room and down the hall. Her mind was racing. ‘Is Nan taking me to hunt monsters?’ She imagined taking her father’s things and battling wretched demons with her grandmother, like her father must have done. She grabbed her shoes and sprinted back for the door.

   Then she skidded to a stop- Her stepmother was blocking the way.

   Lucy cursed herself. She had made too much noise!

   “What is all this racket you’re making, Lucy?”

8. The ice-cold marble stole feeling from Lucy's soles, but the brass key in her pocket burned like a coal against her thigh. Her stepmother blocked the hallway, arms crossed, that familiar crease between her eyebrows cutting deep.

   "Well?" Margaret's voice sliced through the pre-dawn quiet. "What's so urgent it couldn't wait for sunrise?"

   Lucy held up her muddy shoes like evidence. "Nan's wedding ring fell in the garden somewhere." The lie tasted bitter on her tongue, but not as bitter as the truth would.

   Margaret's gaze shifted past her to where Grandmother stood breathing hard in the doorway. "Your ring, Mother Corwen? The gold band you claimed would outlast us all?"

   "Even the strongest metal grows loose with time," Grandmother replied, each word carefully measured.

   "How remarkably convenient." Margaret's smile could have cut glass. "First Lucy's midnight adventures, now missing heirlooms. This family certainly has a talent for... losing things."

   The pause before 'losing things' hung in the air like an accusation. Lucy watched hurt flicker across her stepmother's face before hardening into something more dangerous—the look of a woman who suspected she'd been made a fool of one too many times.

9. Margaret swept past them both, her heels striking the floor like hammer blows. Only when her bedroom door slammed did Lucy dare to breathe.

   "She knows." Lucy's whisper barely stirred the air.

   "Margaret has always known more than she admits." Grandmother's eyes fixed on the window where oak branches clawed at the glass. "The question is how much longer she'll pretend otherwise."

   Lucy moved closer, catching the scent that clung to her grandmother's nightgown—copper and ozone, like the air before a lightning strike. "Nan, what were you really doing out there?"

   "Checking your father's barriers. They're... wearing thin." Fear cracked through Grandmother's voice, just for a moment. "Every night those things try something new. Test a different weakness."

   The brass key pulsed against Lucy's leg, warm as living flesh. She wanted answers, yes. But not if it meant her father was truly gone forever. Not if it meant the whispers crawling through her head were real.

10. Ms. Kitty materialized on the windowsill, amber eyes wide with urgency. Her mew sounded almost like a warning.

    "She's scared," Lucy breathed.

    "Smart cat. Fear keeps you alive in this business." Grandmother joined her at the window, voice gentling. "Your father trusted his instincts. Maybe you should trust yours."

    Beyond the glass, dawn struggled against the darkness. In that gray space between night and morning, Lucy saw them—shapes that moved like oil against water, belonging to neither world.

    Her breath clouded the window as she leaned closer. They were waiting. Patient as predators.

    The whisper slid between her thoughts like silk: Little inheritor... your father's journal burns with such beautiful secrets. Such power. Just say yes...

    Lucy jerked back, heart hammering against her ribs.

    "You heard them too." It wasn't a question.

    "I've been hearing them for five years." Grandmother's admission hung heavy between them. "They're getting desperate. That makes them more dangerous than ever."

11. The window shimmered, and suddenly her father stood beneath the oak tree—alive, whole, writing frantically in his leather journal. His mouth moved urgently:

    "The ritual requires three... Hunter, Guardian, Inheritor... if I fail, the burden passes..."

    Lucy pressed both palms against the glass, desperate to hear more. "What burden? What passes to who?"

    But the vision shattered at her touch, leaving only her own reflection staring back—pale, hollow-eyed, looking far too much like her father in those final days.

    "The choice." Grandmother's voice carried the weight of decades. "Between what you want and what the world needs. Between safety and duty." Her fingers found Lucy's shoulder, surprisingly strong. "Your father chose to protect everyone else. It cost him everything."

    "And if I don't choose?"

    "Then those things out there will keep pushing until something gives way. Your father's barriers, your sanity, this family." Grandmother's grip tightened. "Or me."

    The word hit Lucy like a physical blow. She thought of her grandmother's dirt-stained face, the copper-and-ozone scent, the way she'd been breathing so hard.

    How many nights had she been out there alone, fighting things Lucy couldn't even name?

12. "The choice has to be yours," Grandmother said softly. "I won't force what your father couldn't. But those barriers won't hold much longer, and I'm..." She paused, suddenly looking every one of her seventy years. "I'm not as strong as I used to be."

    Lucy stared at the oak tree, its branches reaching toward the house like grasping fingers. She thought of the silver stakes in the attic, how perfectly they'd fit her hands. How the violent urges had felt like coming home to herself.

    She thought of her father's burning corpse in that dream, how even death hadn't freed him from whatever he'd started.

    She thought of her stepmother's wounded face, and how this house hoarded its secrets like weapons.

    "What if I'm not strong enough?"

    "Then you'll learn. Or you'll die trying." Grandmother's honesty cut clean as a blade. "But right now, doing nothing is also a choice. And it's the wrong one."

    Ms. Kitty jumped down and padded toward the staircase, pausing to fix Lucy with eyes that held too much knowledge for any creature, real or imagined.

    The attic waited above. The journal waited with its burning secrets. And beyond the window, the Elsewhere Folk waited for her answer with the patience of things that had learned to measure time in human lifespans.

    Lucy pulled the brass key from her pocket. Its metal was warm as blood, humming with power that made her teeth ache.

    In three hours, Margaret would wake and demand answers Lucy couldn't give. In three hours, the sun would burn away the gray spaces where impossible things lived.

    But right now, balanced on the knife's edge between childhood and whatever came after, Lucy Corwen knew exactly who she had to become.

    The key seemed to pull her toward the stairs.

    Her bare feet found the first step, then the second.

    Behind her, Grandmother whispered something that might have been a prayer.

I wonder if you’d like to be part of an experiment?

Chain stories.

Do you know them? It’s where a group of SUBSTACK writers continues a section of a story, one part after another. 100-150 words.

Although I laid the basic framework and kept the story moving, where they took it was completely up to them. Each brought their own finesse, and the resulting narrative is far more interesting than I originally planned.

Also, I highly recommend you check out the writers of this story. They are all great people/ :P

Chapter 1

I’ll start…

1. Lucy first heard it just past midnight—a silky voice, whispering her name through the crack under her door. She sat up, heart hammering, and strained to hear it again. “Lucy…” It was neither urgent nor threatening, but something about it made her skin prickle. She didn't know what it was, but it was loud enough to open her eyes.

2. A putrid aroma flooded Lucy’s nose before she laid eyes on the furry thing lying on the front of her bed. She couldn't tell if it was her beloved Ms Kittie due to the way the little body was so crumpled up like a bleeding rag doll. She was just about to stoop down to take a closer look when she heard another noise coming from outside her door.

3. The voice was hypnotic. Lucy had to find out what it was, even if it meant leaving Ms Kittie behind. However, as she slowly crept to the edge of the bed, she felt the notion wasn’t quite right. Why would she leave the room in the middle of the night? There wasn’t anything concerning today. But then she got off the bed to find the sight.

4. She stepped out of bed into a puddle of water on the bedroom floor. Surprised by it but more concerned by the whispering voice, she moved toward the door. She took another step, and she was ankle-deep in water. Lucy dared not move forward, fearing she’d find herself knee-deep in water. It didn’t matter as the water rose to her thighs and, a moment later, her waist. She was overcome with fear.

5. A cold paralysis fell like frost over her skin. Glacial feet, refusing to listen as the icy water steadily crept up her body. Each twist and turn of her body, each contortion, a painful, wasted effort. The water reached her waist, then her chest, then wrapped its icy fingers around her throat. A way out. Please. A window! Time enough for one last, desperate, deep breath. The black water crashed against her ears and the only sound now was the echo of a thumping heart. Panic. Arms thrashing. Just the sound of a beating heart, and that voice. That voice. It seemed to morph and change as if it were a single word spoken by a thousand lips. The voice continued to call her name—over and over again, surrounding her.

   Lucy. Lucy. Lucy. Her door suddenly flew open, draining the water from the room

   "Don't listen to them, listen to me," Came a sharp voice from down the corridor, "Follow my voice, instead."

6. Lucy slowly turned without thinking and headed out her door toward the second voice. Cold and wet, water dripping from her hair and body, her steps making a soft patter on the floor. It was too real to be a dream. She entered the corridor, dark and quiet as her room.

   “Yes, that’s it, Lucy, follow my voice.”

   Step by step, Lucy went down the corridor.

   The first voices beckoned from behind her, “Luuuucccccyyy,” echoes of whispers.

   Lucy stopped at the top of the stairs. Her throbbing heart slowed, her body warming against the cold, her breath still quivering.

   “Come Lucy, down the stairs,” said the second voice, firm but gentle, “You will be safe soon.”

7. Lucy debated her next course of action. Knowing time was not a luxury she had. Descend and follow the mysterious siren call of safety from below? Was it to be trusted? The eerie chorus behind her seemed to be increasing in intensity and heading her way. Amid the din, she looked down and to her great surprise saw her ankle nuzzled by Ms Kittie herself, fit as a fiddle. The approaching banshees reached a crescendo. There really wasn’t a choice. Down the stairs they went.

8. Lucy tiptoed across the dew-kissed grass, her breath coming shallow and quick. The voice seemed to drift on the night air, leading her towards the ancient oak at the edge of her yard. As she approached, a shadowy figure emerged from behind the tree, its form ethereal and glowing faintly in the moonlight. With a mixture of trepidation and curiosity, she whispered, “Who are you?”

9. Instant to the question departing her lips, a throaty, familiar reply came, “Who am I. What am I?” Bog mists pasted her gown to cooling skin, toes curling in the damp grass, pebbles in her arches, thoughts and words frozen by the familiar brogue. Lucy ran the maze of memories, stumbling, gaining ground, failing to find certainty. Brother Moon porcelain peeked from behind shrouds of fog and trees, striking every fiber of her being.

   “I-I-I remember,” she stammered. So long ago, the fire, the screams, pleas for help. The curses that boiled from that library, in the same voice! Lucy had watched through the barrage of vapors as her father had transformed from flesh to shadow, as everything she knew had turned to ash.

   Clutching her ears, she fell to the ground, tearing at the moss and roots. Voiceless screams begging for silence.

   Pleading forgiveness.

10. The figure stepped forward, and for a moment Lucy thought it might hug her.

    Shadows don’t hug..they consume.

    Its arms, long and jointless, spilled like black ink toward her, and that voice...her father’s voice...split in two.

    One thread was soothing. The other, full of brimstone.

    “You asked for forgiveness,” it said, words thick with old dust. “You never asked what for.”

    Behind her, the oak groaned as if it too remembered. Lucy did.

    That fire didn’t start itself. Her childish tantrum...books scattered, candle knocked over.

    Daddy hadn’t screamed at the flames. He’d screamed at her.

    “You left me,” she whispered, guilt cracking her voice. “I didn’t mean to...”

    “Intent is for the living,” the shadow spat. “You want forgiveness, Lucy? Take my place.”

    Roots burst from the earth, twisting around her legs.

    Ms Kittie hissed, then vanished into mist.

    “I’m sorry!” she screamed. The figure’s face leaned close, all memory and madness. “I tried to forget.”

    “Forgetting is how we rot.” It smiled.

    Walked into her. Not through. Into.

    The oak split in two with a sound like thunder. The whispers died.

    The voices stopped calling her name.

    Now she was the voice.

    Then, just past midnight, a child sat up in bed, skin prickling.

    “Lucy…” came the whisper under the door.