CreepCast - Drumming In The Clouds | CreepCast

Episode Date: December 28, 2025

A giant cloud appears and it begins to emit a low sound. It is not weather. It is not man-made. We do not know what this is. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back to Creepcast. Hey. Hello there. How are you? You're you for a story today? I hope it's a good one. coming from one of you. That's right.

We're reading a creepcast fan story original called There's Drumming in the Clouds. This is kind of cool. I saw this story on the subreddit, but then also I just looked towards the end at the author's note, and it just said that shout out to the homies for the support and help the feedback,

which was LimeTime Live, Rood 3, Dude 3, Teners 1, imperative, um, imperialinective is that author we read. So I thought that was fun. I was like, oh, cool. Imperial invective, yeah, yeah. And I thought that was kind of cool.

So I thought twice off, Isaiah, why don't we just read this one today? Let's read someone. Let's read a story from the homies, a new story. We're going around talking about some stories we were going to read. We were going to talk about one. I don't know what we're going to talk about it. We're not going to talk about. What are you talking about?

What are you talking about? You know. I don't know what you're talking about. You know, the one we were going to do, but we're like, eh, better not. in our subreddit no no no but on our conversation we had before recording oh oh oh oh i don't talk about yeah that one it would be silly if we read that one that one yeah yeah yeah i i understand i see what you're saying now i thought you're talking about the fact that one of the most upvoted like fan made stories in our slash

podcast is a fanfic of us i don't know how i feel about reading fan fiction granted it is a horror story um it's a horror for me at least and it would be I don't know if I could, I feel like it's going to lean sexually, and I don't want someone to write that. I don't want to find out, oh, it's not going to lean. It'll fall into it. There's going to be no lean. I guess it really isn't a little, it isn't the side of a table you can lean into. It's more of a giant pit of despair for sure that you're going to, you're going to fall into.

Regardless, today, this seems kind of fun. There's something drumming in the clouds. I don't know. It's a catchy title. excited to read it and it's being something that came out apparently he wrote it three months ago or here this is your part sorry no it's okay you can you can do my job i don't care um i'm getting paid the same either way so i'm in the union so this story is written by pitiful scream 97 uh he seems to talk a lot in or slash creepcast he also has a couple other stories over on his creepypasta

account including i sleep with my window closed now and a thousand morning people potentially an up-and-comer potentially someone who's cool I'm not seeing it seems like he started writing this year or at least started publishing this year so that's pretty cool to see and looking at the comments on his post on our slash creepcast

you guys have been really supportive of this story which is awesome so we figure this might be a good one to read and if it's awful and terrible well this may be the last thing he ever post given how we react to it so we'll find out no no no no I'm just excited that people are

This is a continuous debate that we've been having is we've gotten so when we announced that we were like, I just post your stories on our subreddit. There's so many submissions. I thought like, oh, yeah, it'll be big at first or people will post a lot, you know, wouldn't know if like when we first announced it. It has not stopped. People write all the time. I fucking love how much people write so much so that I'm wondering if we should just

make like a new subreddit just for stories. That way people, it's just, it's all stories. that way people can also meme and stuff. I don't know. All I know is it's just, it's exciting to see people come in and write and use this as a time to experiment and find their voice creatively.

And I enjoy it. I think it's cool. Yeah, I think it's really awesome to see people coming forward and saying stuff like, oh, well, you know, I watched the podcast and I decide why not post some of these things online and now they're like writing more and people are giving them feedback and stuff like that.

That is very inspiring. And we appreciate you all. That's really neat. Our cold, dead heart. Mm-hmm. Yes. You're a cold, dead heart. I was already warm.

I was already warm. I was already warm. It, okay. Anyway, we're going to go ahead and get into a story, I guess, unless there's anything else you have to. No. I'm stoked. I think that I'm excited to jump in.

You have to say thank you. Now, you were talking about taking my job by describing the author. You now have to say thank you to the people. Thank you. Thank you guys for listening on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. And hopefully if you're, you know, listening to those considers giving us a good review. It does help us out a lot.

And also thank you to our beautiful patrons who support our channel and had to listen through the last story that we read. That was like pulling teeth. Definitely a crash out episode. So we apologize for that. Even though some people like it, they're sadist. I don't know. Go ahead, Isaiah.

Which was the last one we read? Hell I write. Oh, yeah. That's right. Yeah. See, you hate those. They're my most memorable. I love those. All right. Well, without further ado, we're going to get into it. There's drumming in the clouds. Phase one, the arrival. The photograph arrived without explanation. It showed some kind of mass, dark gray and pulsating. It was hovering far above the North Atlantic. It resembled a cyclone, but there was no eye of this storm, no rotation, just layers.

like folds of gauze stacked and suspended. The sky around it was eerily clear. That was the first impossibility. Dr. Mary Finn saw the image at 6.32 a.m. It was forwarded to her personal account from an encrypted ministry server. The subject line read only come in immediately. Dr. Finn arrived at the North Strain Climate Monitoring Facility before sunrise. The conference room was already full, unusual for a Wednesday.

Technicians, military liaisons, two senior meteorologists, and a man from the Department of Anomalous Phenomena, a department that officially didn't exist. No one spoke for the first 10 minutes. They just stared at the image projected on the main wall, still frame from a weather satellite feed. I've never seen a static formation at this altitude before. Mary had said, her eyes locked on the impossible image. How high is this exactly? 68 kilometers.

One of the technicians said adjusting his glasses, she blinked. Mesosphere? Correct. This doesn't make any sense. She murmured to herself, irritated by confusion. One of the meteorologists stood. It's your job to make sense of it, Dr. Finn. When was it first reported? She responded, ignoring the man's tone. It's been there for six hours. It just showed up. Military liaison cleared his throat. Spotted by a satellite over the Atlantic, cross-checked by a second pass.

We thought it might be a weapon debris. It's not. Civil flights are already diverting. Maritime routes, too. On the monitors, numbers scrolled, temperatures, wind speeds, strange depth readings. The mass wasn't moving. Winds tore it at hundreds of kilometers per hour, but it didn't rotate, didn't shear, just remained, and possibly still. This is what every meteorologist deals with every day. Like my local meteorologist, when I'm watching the weather in the morning, this is them in the morning.

frantically running around. They get called into like a government facility and they're like, what is that? It's just like clearly a cloud. What is that? What the hell is this? What is this? That's what they keep saying back in over and over again.

There's generals in the room. Like what makes sense of this? What am I looking at? It's like, well, it's a cumuline nervous, I think. God damn it. Can we kill it? Yeah, can't. Does it bleed?

Can we kill it? Doesn't, does it bleed? I really, I desperately want the, the meteorologist like in my mind now this isn't a government facility it's channel nine news and it's like a local weatherman it's like your local w whatever weather station is there going to be exactly is it going to be a cumulinimbus cloud it's very it's just like it's just moving with all the other clouds it's like oh my god it's getting closer jesus christ I do like the idea of, like, what a movie did this, where there's a cloud.

I'm doing that. Oh, no. Well, alien in the cloud. How, like, the first thing they see is the cloud isn't moving with all the other clouds. It just sets in spot. Kind of reminds me of that. Footage taken by a commercial pilot had gone viral, a band of dark mist stretching from horizon to horizon, bloated and heavy, blotting out the sun. It covered a region roughly the size of North America.

and appear to be growing. Oh, well, in my head, I was like, I could see it taking a while for one cloud to be spotted, but it's the size of a continent. God. You know what? I take it back. If the general's right,

if you walk to do a weather station, they're like, yeah, it's just a cloud. It'd be like, no. No, it's not. The shadow of the cloud cast was immeasurable. On a clear day, the light would dim like a solar eclipse. The sky turned to dull gray. Shadows vanished and birds fell silent.

Some areas experienced perpetual dusk. The night, posing in its darkness. People on the ground began reporting changes. Strange static humming in their teeth, tension headaches and a persistent low pressure in the ears. Online forms exploded. Hashtag the cloud trended within the hour. Dr. Finn kept working.

She had trained herself to remain clinical, pathocical. Still, she couldn't shake the feeling that air in the lab had gone stale. Something was very wrong and not a single thinking brain on the planet could provide answers to the impossible situation. At exactly 9.43 p.m., GMT, the first sound was recorded. A low-frequency thump-thump, deep, distant, then another, two hours apart, then again, and again, thunder. Someone offered, but the radar was clear. Not a single weather system for a thousand kilometers.

The thump came again, only minutes apart. It's not where the story's going, I know, but it's funny going off of what you said earlier about it being just a normal cloud. It very clearly has a thunder noise, and the general's like, what is that? What is that? Yeah.

War drums. Call the army. They have a band. There's a band in there. Yeah. Led Zeppelin's in the clouds. God forbid he witnesses a lightning strike. It's shooting at us.

Married sat perfectly still, headset on, watching the sound wave roll across the monitor. It wasn't thunder. It wasn't seismic. It was airborne. High above our heads. Jesus. Whispered a young intern nearby. It's coming from inside the cloud.

By minute. I feel like I have to fucking, I feel like I need to get it out of my system. I can't fucking this up. I mean, you just, like, said the same lines on top of each other for like three minutes. I can't feel like you fuck it up. What's cracking me up is now it's stuck in my head. The idea it's just a normal cloud. And it's like, it's coming from inside the cloud.

And the meteorologist is like, yeah, that sounds thunderworks. It comes from the cloud. Why is it talking by midnight and it's settled into a rhythm, a slow, deep drumming sound. Thumb, thumb, thumb, thumb, thumb. Regular, relentless, as though something far, far above was knocking from the other side of the sky. Almost sounds like a heartbeat with like the double rhythm like that. Project Cerberus Vale, field journal entry. Dr. Maid Finn lead meteorologist.

Classified, level omega. Day 1.11.42 p.m. GMT. The cloud remains stationary. Its scale is beyond measurement. Its thick fog goes far beyond our atmosphere. The sound began tonight. regular pulses low frequency origin of no no but it triangulated within the formation

the collection of all data is incomplete at this time personal note it is not weather it is not manmade you don't know what this is kind of fucking creepy I would you know I kind of think it almost seems like a giant you like whenever there's like a nuclear explosion it almost seems like something like that where it's like it just cast this giant ominous basically just smoke cloud for God knows how long

but for something to be that stationary moving, that'd be fucked up. Well, I made the Nope comparison earlier, but now after the heartbeat thing, it might actually be like a creature in there, you know? Well, I mean, you'd have to, I mean, I don't know. I think that's where it's leaning, but it'd be kind of sick. I love the idea of something floating to, like, that's why I loved about Nope, this idea of something floating there, but you just don't know what it is or just this cloud formation.

Yeah. Totally in disguise. Did you, did you ever read at the mountains of madness? No, but I know of it. Or no, no, I've read out of the mountains of madness. You know how at the end of the story, they fly away in the plane and the giant, like, sail thing

comes out of the city? Yes, yeah. It's kind of like a stereotypical, like Lovecraft creature, but from his description of it, it's like, it's like a ship, almost, like a living, breathing ship the size of a city. I kind of have an image of that,

like a, I forget the author's name, the guy that did the old depictions of hell with like all the weird apt to, abstract images of different demons and stuff like that, but like a creature out of one of those paintings, like something not of our planet hiding in the cloud, or maybe the cloud itself is the thing. That's just what the creature looks like. I'm assuming it's a creature. It could also just be a presence or a ship or something like that. Who knows? Phase two, the sound of God. By morning, the drumming was heard across the entire northern

hemisphere. It was no longer limited to the monitoring stations. People across Europe, the Eastern United States, parts of Western Africa, and even as far as Argentina, reported hearing it. Not just through the air, but through their bodies. Meteorologist is like, again, that's how hearing works. You hear it. In the base of the skull, the hollows of the chest are behind the eyes. The sound was felt just as much as it was heard.

Tire cities reported the vibrations. Hospitals began to fill, not from injury, but from confusion. migraines, tinnitus, bleeding noses, some people began to lose their minds, tormented by a sound they couldn't escape. Others seemed unfazed by the strange phenomenon. A woman in Bordeaux began convulsing and screamed, I hear it, I hear it, before falling unconscious. At 106 a.m., GMT, Dr. Finn watched from the roof of the North Strand facility as the light changed again, Not dimmer, not quite. She struggled to name it.

Shadows had lost their edges. Buildings looked slightly flattened. Colors were muted like the world had been submerged in water. He raised her hand and stared at her palm. Vains like rivers on a map. Her skin was paler than before. The hairs on her arm stood up. The drumming continued.

Dr. Finn? The man from the Department of Anomalous Phenonement pushed through the steel door behind her. My name is Jonas, ma'am. I've been meaning to speak with you. He paused beside her. Eyes turned upward to the dreadful cloud. Swallowed the entire skyline.

Eiding stars moon alike. Quite the view. What can I do for you, Jonas? She asked her tone clipped, unwilling to indulge small talk. I mean, to be fair. Well, yeah, quite the view. It's like, why don't you fuck off? And do you not see this thing coming towards us?

Exactly. That would piss me off. this thing's like eating it's consuming the top half of the planet everyone can hear it in their skull and then a guy from the department of anomalous phenomena kicks open the door and says i need to talk with you quite the view up here quite the deal might as well make a little bit of lighthearted the uh what department is he in oh anomalous i don't know why i thought you said McDonald's phenomena what the fuck

I'm sorry it will be obese brain that Ronald McDonald comes in the secret yeah the only way to stop this cloud is to give it a cheeseburger

that would actually be way more terrifying if she's on top of the she's on top of the roof and she turns around and through the little wire glass you can just see Ronald quite a view up here

I need to talk to you. Why does he sound like what does he have a voice? I don't think he's ever spoke. I think that if he speaks, his voice is so low that if he speaks, children shit their pants. That's what happens.

So he has to remain quiet. Does he ever speak in the media? That hamburger wishes everything he touches would turn to McDonald's cheeseburger? What would Ronald have to say? I swear I've heard him speak. God damn, this burger's tasty. That's what the first.

I don't know, no, I've heard that. And every, in every video, it's just smiling and like a mime. And he's like, there's like a one. I feel like there was like an ad campaign where he's like just giving the shush sign. And I was like, what the fuck is? Yeah, I know, right? Can you imagine what the, what the, I don't like that. You're in the play place.

This is between us now, Billy. You're the play place crawling around. You're in the play place. Also, I love the rock rock reference. The, uh, that's where I've heard that. That's where the voice. That's it. That's what you're thinking of.

rock a video where he's like, what he's in there, Billy? Is that hungry Jacks, Billy? What the fuck? Don't do it. A fuck of a calm down. Starts beating the shit out of the kid. What the fuck are you looking at? That's so good.

What are you there, Billy? Yeah. Got something to say, Billy. All right. Obviously, it's not, it's not McDonald's. Right. All right. Even though I kind of wish it was.

Note for the author. maybe include Ronald McDonald. No, for the author, should have had Ronald McDonald's show up on top. But specifically the rocker-rock version of Ronald McDonald. Yeah, Jonah enters the room and sets down his Blu-ray copy of the founder on the table. You're going to want to see this. This will tell us everything. Okay.

What can I do for you, Jonas? She asked, your tone clipped, I'm willing to indulge small talk. you know who I work for the clown okay she nodded once offering him a cigarette from a nearby empty pack

no thanks I quit fresh air for me can this guy get to the point Jonas I'm gonna need I'm gonna need Jonas I mean it's been I'm gonna say this it's been two lines but it's felt like two years all right Jonas

Jonas you have got to get to the point please the cloud is getting closer. No, thanks. I quit. Only fresh air for me. Behind him, it's just a giant cloud.

He laughed awkwardly as Dr. Finn, litter of smoke. They're relocating me. Opposite side of the world. A counterpart facility in the southern hemisphere. They want simultaneous readings, mere data sets. Honestly,

it feels like I'm just being moved out of the blast zone. The department guy's like, hey, so there's sending me a South America, kind of like an arc. Yeah, there's all kinds of. It's double of every animal and stuff. And I don't know. It seems kind of weird. Yeah. The guy, like he like really likes lemurs.

I don't know if I like him. He paused for a moment. If this thing is global, he keeps growing, we need to know if it behaves the same way everywhere. Otherwise, we're flying blind. Ben studied him. The shadows across his face blurred and trembling in the wrong light. So you'll be chasing the other horizon? Something like that.

He gave a then smile, but his eyes stayed locked on the sky. I'll stage everything I find. Maybe between the two of us will make sense of it. Her gaze lingered on him a moment longer than she intended. Then he looked back to the cloud. Maybe. Drumming echoed. Low, cavernous.

Endless. Dumb, dum. Thumb. Thumb. Dumb. Boom. It almost seems it's a, it's a giant heartbeat. It's got to be a giant heartbeat.

That's what I think it is. I think it's a heartbeat, yeah. I wish it was just Neil Perk in the clouds doing drum solos. My God. I love the idea because with some of these videos, it's like, I wouldn't be funny if the author watched this episode, but we know the author's going to watch this episode, right? Yeah.

so they're like Hunter and Isaiah are reading my story wow and then they get on and it's like yeah I really wish there's like a guy in the classroom that's what you have to say the most empty brain reaction

content that's okay first off I just want to say we're just the story's kicking off if you haven't expected this by now then you have not been listening to the show very long what happens is you start off you joke around And then as you keep reading, you get more and more bought in. This is just pounding around, all right?

I'm still bought in. I still like the giant idea of a huge cloud with a mysterious, I'm guessing, creature inside of it. All right? And then you have a little moment with Jonas that makes you have a little McDonald's me moment. Why not? This is just how it happens on the show. What if the cloud was grimace? If the cloud was grimace, I would get on my knees and I would start bowing to the story.

And I would say, God bless you. you. He's just like, in the clouds. And that's where Ronald comes out. Ronald's like, Kill it! Kill it!

You have to know that entire. Go ahead. No, no. I was just going to say during that entire dialogue segment, I was thinking that it was Ronald the whole time and I didn't say anything. I was being good.

We can for us and not for the audience, audience, you don't listen to this. For us, if Jonas comes back, it's Ronald McDonald. That's just between us. It would be very funny, though, if Grimmis was in the clouds and Ronald sat there and he's like, you have to shoot it down. You have no idea what he's going to do to the burger supply chain on planet earth. If we don't kill him now.

That's what to say, Billy? Okay. I want to take a quick moment to thank today's sponsor Rocket Money. to spend money, but the hard part is to not spend as much money, especially when you have recurring bills or subscriptions you've completely forgotten about. And I know that budgeting isn't easy, but thankfully Rocket Money is here to help. Rocket Money is an easy-to-use app that helps you save more and manage your money better. With Rocket Money, you can create a customized budget in seconds. And the app keeps track of your spending in

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News anchors read pre-written statements. No questions, no speculation. Authorities are aware of the atmospheric anomaly currently positioned over the Atlantic. remain indoors, limit direct observation of the phenomenon. Further information will be provided when available. Definitely a nice little also I was going to say, and I know it's kind of becoming a bit of a meme, and I don't appreciate it, but it is very lovecraftian. If you look at the cloud, you pretty much go fucking insane. This one is lovecraftian.

You can say that without it being a meme, I think. It's very clearly like something that big, something indescribable, you know, kind of thing. Looking at a beautiful, fluffy cloud and going insane from it, really is a that's fucked up to not be able to look at a beautiful sky if you look up you basically go insane that's kind of crazy that was pretty hot that does get my goat so to speak are you chubbed up in the pants i'm not answering that and no oh i think that means yes the feeds cut off after 90 seconds black screens revealed the concerned reactions of the population social media boiled over with conspiracy, prophecy, and fear.

Viral clip from New York showed commuters frozen in the middle of an intersection, all exiting their vehicles, all staring up at once, dozens of them, like they'd heard a voice. Then some began to cry, others fell to their knees in prayer, all united by the oppression of complete and total helplessness. Government helicopters swarmed beneath a cloud, like flies drawn to the stench of death.

Another clip from a Nigerian cargo ship showed the cloud expanding, spilling outward and curling tendrils, vast sections of dark mists whirled within the cloud, like black sand and clear water. The crew's final log simply read, God has returned to us. 2.42 a.m., Dr. Finn stepped into the soundproof chamber to listen to the unfiltered live feed. She sat in the center of the small white room, strapped on the over-year monitors, and listened Here it was, thumb, the thumb, the thumb, drumming from the cloud. Clear now, more spacious, more thoughtful.

There were pauses between the beats, pauses long enough to create the illusion and it had stopped, before it came again. She felt it deep in her ribcage, her heart sinking to the aerial phenomenon. The drumming had become a presence, not sound alone, but a tidal force pressing against the earth. every beat made her stomach alerge as if something vast was stirring within the planet itself I do love this idea of like a some kind of creature coming into our atmosphere

without us knowing and like formulating or forming like almost like the cloud like if the creature is able to like exude like a gas or something and cover itself like camouflage itself in that way and it's like growing like it's pretty much using as a defense mechanism until it can like

fully unravel that's pretty sweet that's kind of a cool little way of blending in with like natural with like I guess your surroundings like instead of like a like a gecko or something getting on like a branch or whatever

and then blending in with or chameleon whatever blending in with its surroundings it would just be that but just with the sky pretty much yeah it's creepy to imagine that just keeps getting bigger and bigger under our like it went

from nothing to just being the size of North America in one day almost instantly like you didn't see it arrive or anything like that what um they haven't mentioned anyone trying to fly into it or anything yet right like i think they've just been flying around it if i remember or they've just been like flying near it i don't know but i don't think they've gone inside so real real world yeah how long on a clock before the united states military throws some kind of drone into it i was immediately just hits that thing with health storm missiles.

I don't know if they would do missiles, but they'd at least be like Amazon fucking flying a couple fucking drones and see if we can make sense of this thing. Yeah. Surely, right. What would be the most disturbing thing if you flew a drone into a cloud that you would see? I think grimace. I think that'd be pretty,

if grimace was the size of North America, that'd be pretty alarming. That would be pretty alarming. You're not wrong. You were not wrong. Did you see that footage that went around? of that um i think it was over the persian gulf or something one one of the waterways around middle east there was a ufo that was not like an alien like the traditional sense of the

word like we just didn't know what kind of aerial vehicle it was um was like rocketing over the water and we like u.s government sees it instantly shoots a health storm missile at it uh and it just tinks off it like it hits it and just like the missile spins off the side that's not very uh it keeps going that must made that I probably let every other nation be like dude their fucking missiles suck

you should just fucking like we should go in there and just fuck them up their missiles suck and everyone's like no that thing's got to be like an alien or something it's definitely like an alien dude it's definitely power thing whatever I think it's

funny to imagine that there's just a terrified Russian mig pilot in there, like, that got a one in a million, like the missile hit just right off one piece of metal to deflect, and he's in there like, oh my gosh! Can you believe that?

Gourbadosh! Gorbadoge! I was talking to a friend of mine who's in like, does a lot of the secret squirrel letter agency stuff, and he said that he can talk about that one since it leaked in his public info now, but he said when that

came out, like the video of it and everything, every high ranking agency was freaking out over it. They're like, who is this? What is this? How do we kill it? We need a bigger weapon, blah, blah, blah. So again, even funnier to imagine, it's just a really scared Russian pilot that somehow survived. Also, to answer my own question, too, the scariest thing that I think could be in a giant cloud. If you were flying a drone into a giant cloud, if I saw a giant, so the cloud is the size of North America, right? Right.

If it was a giant Italian-American slurping spaghetti, that would be, uh, that might, that might be my greatest fear. So by Italian-American, do you mean like, uh, hey, I'm walking here kind or like, uh, mamma-mea. It could be anything, just an Italian-American. sweaty sweating profusely sweating olive oil everyone's like it's raining olive oil it's because that's the sweat for the italian-american guy he's slurping it up do you have some beef with italians no definitely not no what gives you that idea what no so you fly the drums of the

cloud and he said there he's like he looks his his because he's huge right he says it's is yeah okay that's going to be my next question so he's the size his giant nose turns towards the camera he looks at and he does he's a pretty good he's good that was okay that wasn't an Italian X he's a pretty good

he slurred on the he slurred up this man he's pretty good you're like what are those sounds what are you talking about what and also also after the no specification

I don't think you can say you don't have a problem with the top of this I don't man not at all which also what

what voice is that it's not an Italian accent that's a classic Italian American accent no eat it's a pretty dirty no eat a pretty good

Did you ask that question originally so you could set up an Italian joke? No. Okay. I don't use minor situations like this to further prove that I dislike Italian Americans. That's not what I'm about. You don't have to prove anything to me, buddy. You ain't got to prove to I know. That's not what I'm about.

Okay. Hey, that's not what I'm about. He's a pretty good. And then he says, and then he has the thing. He has a giant, he's a giant pepper cracker, whatever. He does, he did, more pepper. And the people are screaming, ah, because they're getting pepper at her eyes. Ah!

He does, more pepper. Tell me when you do dope. Tell me when you don't stop. Is what he says, just like that. Who is this an attack on? Who are you targeting with this? Tell me when to a storm. You did he's a pretty good.

You run the drone to his eye. Oh. He frowns at you. He's wiping his hand. He's wiping his hand on his eye. He quickly gets his bowl spaghetti back. Good one, man. It's a long day.

All right. It's okay, buddy. We'll get through this. Me and here. It's all right. We'll get there. We'll get there. Then it shifted.

The sound broke free of rhythm. A single, elongated groan, wet and guttural, poured from the cloud it rippled across the slurbed spaghetti dude sorry

it it rippled it rippled across the atmosphere like thick viscous viscous it's a pretty good

eat shut up shut up I was, I was, I psyched myself out waiting on you to say that when I started reading. It rippled across the atmosphere like thick, viscous liquid, sloshing into every crag or crevice it could find. Grounded cell vibrating under the sonic pressure. It was enormous, impossible, something malignant, something so vast that its moan reshaped the sky. The pitch was almost beyond.

hearing, subsonic yet torturously present, low, dragging, reverberating with the weight of mass she could not comprehend. The groan slithered and pulsed with the wet crack of muscle tearing, send you stretching, a predator yawning across the heavens. Her chest heaved, her stomach twisted, her fingers tingled with the pressure of sound. Her mind screamed against the comprehension. The noise was alive, shapeless yet aware. It hung in the room like a storm that could devour everything, pausing only to let its presence

sink further into her bones before dragging itself back into a wet, shuddering growl. She ripped the headphones off, trembling, sweat, prickling across her skin. The chamber was silent, but not really. The sound lingered, imprinted on her ribs and skull, crawling through her blood. Was that a voice? The intern monitoring the signal turned to her, Palin crying. No, it wasn't a voice. Then what was it?

She stood slowly and left the room without speaking another word. The drumming resumed as normal. Project Cerberus Vale, field journal entry, Dr. Mary Finn, lead meteorologist, classified level omega, day 2, 317 AM GMT. Cloud remains stationary. Estimated diameter now exceeds 5,000 kilometers. Audio patterns continue, rhythmic, biological, possibly vocal. Global symptoms reported, neurological disruption, auditory hallucinations, emotional volatility,

mass hysteria, thousands of casualties across different countries, burst eardrums and internal hemorrhaging, public unrest increasing, governmental control deteriorating, a plan was initiated to obtain a visual of the sound source. Jonas team ran three lighter sweeps from orbit from a U-2 spy plane and from a modified weather balloon. Orbital scan returned no depth readings, not zero, just nothing, as if struck open air for a thousand meters, then refused to return. Plain scan, logged one frame of internal structure, looked like bone. A moment later, the image glitched, reloaded, and showed a perfect sphere the size of mountain and static. What?

can we run that back one more time playing can you get another picture please look like bone it glitched nothing was there so we just said fuck it never mind balloon well it kind of looked like blown but then the picture finished and it was actually just a sphere the size of a mountain which is perfectly reasonable given the condition balloon feed 20 minutes of telemetry before loss of signal internal layers visible fibrous twitching Once again, I'm going to need a clarification on that, Mr. Balloon. Final frame, a shape in the center, spindled, bowl-like, covered in Parmesan and Marinera. Spindled, elongated, symmetrical, but wrong. Our analysts ran it through the edge detection software. The results were disturbing. It resembled a face, but only when you didn't look at it directly. The convergence of lines folds and textures that formed something odd.

One technician collapsed during image review. She said she felt like he could see her. I saw it too, just once. It didn't scare me. It just made me feel ashamed. We've locked the files. Project code server's veil. Access, visual AI system only.

No human review permitted, effective immediately. Personal note, Jonas agrees. There's something in there. He's gone south into the dark. I don't know when I'll see him again I think it's stretching I like that entry a lot I like to mention that it's like fibers in there

like they get close to it and it looks like these long like veins and arteries and stuff something I did think about when I look at it I feel ashamed and the mention of it looks like a face but when you don't look directly at it

I don't think this is where the story's going but this would be a cool way to write like the appearance of an angel, right, on Earth. Because they can be theoretically any size, right? And they have, like, unlimited

powers. So perhaps when, like, judgment day comes and they come to destroy the earth, they're the size of the planet, right? This giant structure that stretches over it. I don't think that's where it's going, but that could be a cool interpretation. It could also tie into, like, the boat off Africa saying God has returned

and stuff like that. Yeah. All right. Phase three, the arms. Dr. Finn jolted from her sleep, her phone vibrating on the steel table. She had passed out at her desk. Overworked and exhausted, she grabbed her phone. The screen read Jonas, DAP. Finn? Jonas's voice came sharp, urgent. Are you seen the last readings? Her pulse quickened. The cloud had been behaving differently. The drumming was heavier, more insistent. Thumb-thum, Thumb-thumb-thum. I'm watching.

It's intense. But nothing new yet. Thumb-thumb-thum-thum-thum. Intense? Intense doesn't cover this. There's sonic pulses. Every monitoring station on every continent. They're aligning.

The underside of the cloud, it's splitting along a straight vertical seam. The satellites caught it just before it closed again. A seam? Thumb-thum-thum-thum. Like, it's preparing to open, and I don't mean metaphorically. The voice dropped. urgent there's a pattern in the pulses rhythm's building and i don't know how else to say this the drumming it's a fucking heartbeat married it's getting faster you need to be ready something is happening

whatever you do don't go outside whatever happens next it's not just a sound it's alive thumb thumb thumb she felt it in her chest before she could reply a vibration deep in bone and blood, the wet resonance of something enormous stirring. Jonas, I... Stay calm. Lock yourself in. Go to the bunker now. The monitors are there.

You can observe. Whatever you do, do not fucking step outside. Then the line went dead. A heartbeat later, across the northern hemisphere, a vertical fracture tore through the sky like a wound. It widened with deliberate slowness. Layers of mist peeled back in fleshy folds. Shadows deepened, bending the space around it.

A deafening, sticky, squelch, like tearing flesh echoed across the hemisphere. Behind it was a darkness that seemed to breathe vast and unfathomable, a darkness that bent perception. No camera could capture it. No eye on the planet was built to perceive such a biblical event. Without tremor or trumpet, cloud opened. I like that without tremor or trumpet. That calls back to the whole biblical rapture in time. kind of imagery. What lay inside was not lightless, but unknowable. Some said it was a mouth.

Some said it was a wound. And from it came the sound again. Louder now. Clearer. Something wet and vast and pulsing. Something impossible. Not breathing. Mawing. Across the world, people looked up in unison. Some screamed. Some dropped to their knees. Others stood still and walked. watched, transfixed, as the first of the arms descended. Long, tapering limbs like serpents. Oily, black, glistening, emerging from the wound in the sky in slow spirals. Some were miles long, others' kilometers. They swam through the air like they were underwater. Languid, elegant, hypnotic. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands. They moved across the sky like a nest of worms poured through a funnel, coiling, searching.

One by one, the arms reached down into the earth, slithering through cities across oceans over fields. It didn't take long for the first to be taken. A man in Tokyo screamed as an arm squirmed its way around him. His fingers dug into the strange meat as the grip around his waist tightened, pulling him skyward. His cry split the morning air. In a European city, a young couple ran through the streets hand in hand,

The woman tripped, an arm twisted around her ankle. Her boyfriend tried to pull her free. The arm retracted, twisting her upward with such force that his hands tore away from hers. He fell back on his back, begging only for the arm to return for him. This is sick, dude. Like the giant shape, these hands come down and grab. This feels very Edo. If it reminds me of Hellstar Remina, the one about the giant, the planet.

that like shows up and people like panic try to sacrifice someone to it the doomsday planet yeah yeah i love the idea of like a rapture almost but it's like the arms of this entity swallow you up comes down like tongues and pulls you towards its mouth in a venezuelan village a mother was snatched from her courtyard her young daughter clung desperately to her leg screaming for her mother to come back down her tiny hands gripped her mother's ankle in desperation to save her but the child's fingers cannot hold. They were ripped upward, hundreds of feet in a matter of seconds. Her mother's body ascended, twisting elegantly like a dancer in mid-air. Gravity did not forgive the child. She fell, limbs flailing, hair whipping across her face, gliding with the unforgiving earth.

The sickening thump echoed across the village. Some were taken screaming. Others laughed, lifted as if ascending into a dark ecstasy. Cultus, convinced of divine favor threw themselves towards the putrid appendages arms outstretched their voices raised in hymns or chance of joy begging for rapture the arms took only a few of them with the same cold precision pulling them upward as their ecstasy transformed into terror mid-flight that's also a terrifying notion that as it's pulling you up even people that wanted to be taken by and have this realization yeah post-up clarity kind of thing yeah yeah i guess in the way of like they're crazed and they think that they want this and then as soon as it starts happening they're like oh shit wait

never mind kind of thing the view from halfway down across continents people fought clawed resisted but it was futile each arm performed the same ritual one human at a time spiraling upward towards the yawning darkness then returning to the earth for its next selection cities became theaters of chaos streets emptied in seconds traffic snarled installed windows rattled under the of thousands being drawn skyward as humanity unleashed below. Parents clawed for their children. Children screamed for their parents. People tried to leap from balconies, bridges, and rooftops,

only to be grabbed midfall. The last moments had tangled damps of limbs and terror. In remote fields, farmers and herders watched as the arms swept across the horizon. Livestock scattered, terrified. The ground shaking under the thrumming resonance of the arms. One farmer caught a glimpse of his wife being lifted, screaming, crying his name. He tried to run, the arm retracted, and she was gone, leaving him kneeling in mud, screaming into the indifferent sky. Over the first 12 hours, over 40 million were gone, more than the entire

population of Canada. By 48 hours, estimates climbed past 90 million, entire nations devoured by the sky. Children, the elderly, the healthy, the sick, criminals, priests, lovers, the lost. The arms move like a living tide, slow but inexorable, elegant in motion but grotesque and function. Each human was treated as a singular prize, twisted upward toward the infinite. Process horrifyingly meticulous. Dr. Finn watched from the bunker as the monitors flared with the screams of abductions. Faces contorted in panic, joy, or disbelief. She could hear them through the cameras, screams and prayer that layered upon one another like a living symphony of terror. The arms paused briefly over cities, observing, coiling and uncoiling. Their thick veins pulsate

seemed to savor the fear. Then, with chilling patience, they selected again, dragging the living toward the maw. Over the 57 hours, the northern hemisphere emptied in a religiously lit-less, mechanical, almost ritualistic harvest. Every arm returned repeatedly to the sky's wound. Each human plucked and lifted, until the air was thick with echoes of terror and awe. By the final hour, Dr. Finn could only stare at the screens, numb. The arms paused at last, holding their harvest aloft for a long, silent moment, as if counting, observing, savoring.

Then they began the slow, deliberate retreat. one by one, carrying their captives towards the unknowable darkness that had given them form. Over four hours, the sky had closed and survivors emerged from false shelters. The world was left in silence, only the sound of the drums remained. Thumb, thumb, thumb, the thumb. Project Cerberus Vale, field journal entry, Dr. Marede Fan, lead meteorologist, classified level omega. Day 3, 11.11 p.m. GMT. The formation opened. An aperture as to diameter is 3,000 kilometers across. Arms, tongues, merged thousands.

Movement suggests intelligence, not random. Selection appeared non-biological. We can't predict it. I watched them be taken. God forgive me. We tried everything. Interference, signal jamming, sonic weapons, Russia sent a nuke. To hell with the aftermath of that.

It didn't go off. It was just swallowed by the cloud. The arms are not affected. The world is hollow. The monitors lie dead. Their screens froze with faces I will never forget. Even the saved recordings failed to convey the scale of what happened. The arms, the screams, the sounds that followed.

Entire populations take the precision of a surgeon. The cruelty of a predator. The indifference of an animal. Ninety million. More. Perhaps a hundred million. I can't be certain. The northern hemisphere is a graveyard.

with no corpses, and yet the sky is calm, deceptively calm. The wound has closed. The drum, it continues. Always beneath everything, a low, insistent pulse that will not be ignored. Personally, I don't know what to do next. Every theory, every model, every calculation is meaningless against this. We are observers of an event. We are its remnants.

Survivors only in technical sense. every other way we are gone there's nothing to fight nothing to flee only to record only to bear witness and i will till the end what else is there to do i really love that segment that was thick yeah that whole last hand is coming down and pulling everyone up yeah that was very uh engaging i have a couple thoughts after like i'm i'm curious after like i want to finish the story to see how it wraps up before i like start asking questions but yeah i mean that that was a great way to like cement you know, I guess just the action of the story, this big, mass event, a really fun way to do a rapture, by the way, and a cool, you know, like, we see that a lot, but that's a fun

way of having like kind of a, uh, doomsday event or a rapture or cleansing, taking kind of what we know or predictions of what we think will happen and using that, uh, against us in a fun way. So, yeah, this episode sponsored by Cash app. Some of us on this podcast have been scammed. Not going to go into who exactly, but. We're furious. They were tricked into giving sensitive information and then locked out of their account.

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that's money that's cash app that's cash app that's going to spit up all the bones and stuff. Excellent. One month and 14 days passed. No arms, no movement from the sky. Cloud remained, hanging impossibly still above the Atlantic like a wound that refused to heal. Most nations had abandoned any attempt to engage with it. Some still broadcast official statements, hollow, robotic reassurances, but no one listened. The world had been held in place, breathless, afraid to look up, held hostage by our new god. Cities, went dark. Markets crashed. Faiths fractured. People starved. Millions gathered in open fields begging to be taken. Millions took their own lives in the face of the inevitable. Others locked

the doors and prayed to be forgotten. Dr. Maureed Finn stayed. She slept inside the bunker beneath the North Strain Climate Facility. She hadn't left in weeks. The others were gone. Some taken when the arms descended. Some fled. Some too broken to continue. She kept her notes, her logs, her rituals of data and control, but every day it grew harder to believe that any of it mattered. Bin's console crackled life at 358 a.m. The signal was faint, washed in static, but the voice on the other end was unmistakable. Finn? Jonas said, quick and hushed, like he was afraid of the sound itself might carry.

Tell me you're awake. I'm awake. Her voice was brittle, syllables clipped. She had been awake for days. What is it? I've been tracking something. Pressure readings from the South Atlantic buoy network. They're tanking. Not a storm, not a current shift. It's like the air itself is leaking.

You've said that before. This is different. His breath was uneven. Shaky. The drop isn't local. It's global. Everything is bleeding toward the cloud. Not winds.

Everything. It's pulling like it's... Like it's... He stopped himself and said it anyway. Like it's inhaling. Phinnick sailed through. knows. We don't know what it's doing.

I do know. It's hungry. It's patient, but... A low laugh broke out that wasn't joy. Christ. I can't believe we're still pretending this is about data. This is about survival, Jonas. She said, doubt in her own words.

Is it? There was pause before he spoke again. We're all dead anyway. It's just a matter of time before it gets hungry again. And when it does... He trailed off, static filling the gap. You've seen the fields You see the ones begging for it to take them

That's not living That's meat waiting to be picked up Stop Why You with the truth married There's no stopping it There's no bargaining We're not even ants to it

Ants get noticed before they're stepped on Or sorry, this thing He stopped abruptly The next sound of sharp hiss in the line Jonas Silence she waited another three seconds and set the receiver down her fingers trembling against the console she clasped her hands together lowered her head and for the first time in her life she began to pray

she waited nothing at exactly 4.17 a.m. one month and 14 days since the cloud arrived the sky opened again no warning no signal just a sudden shifting of the clouds center. Folds, drawing back, parting like lips peeled open by invisible hands. The drumming was constant, but this time something new came. The sound began low, wet, rolling, like a cauldron of bile tipping somewhere beyond the stratosphere. Pressure dropped, the wind died, then came a vast guttural exhalation that seemed to surge from the planet's core and shattered the sky above. A noise like the entire sky dry heaving, viscous and flim soaked. The kind of sound that makes the stomach knot before the ears understand.

A single, cataclysmic guttural bellow that cracked windows on every continent and shattered the upper atmosphere. The ground shook, tides recoiled, and birds fell from the sky. It wasn't just sound. It was force. A pressure wave of wet breath and raw heat, like an open furnace filled. with rotting flesh. It swept the globe within minutes. People clutched their heads and screamed as their ears bled.

Animals bolted and dropped dead mid-run. Birds fell in flux. Machines died. Satellites blinked out. Those at the epicenter could only scream as the force burst them into nothingness. And the smell. Stinched so vast, so cellular, soaked through walls. It crawled into lungs and stayed there.

The taste of spoiled meat and copper. People vomited, others tore their flesh, trying to escape it. Most were dead in seconds, and then came the blood. From deep within the beast, beyond the gauze, folds of mist, something ruptured. A pressure valve? A gullet? A wound? No one knows. A tidal wave of thick arterial blood expelled with such volume and speed that it fell like monsoon rain over half the globe. Red soaked the the ocean and rivers, red splashed across rooftops and deserts and jungles, half the earth painted in blood. It steamed where it landed, hot and thick, and it reeked of iron and something sweet, something wrong. Some said they heard whispers in the rain. The clouds peeled back, and for the first

and only time, Bean was seen, truly seen. For exactly 93 seconds, the sky was clear. Not in fragments, not distorted, it filled the sky. It was the sky. It shaped, defied thought, impossibly symmetrical, yet shifting as though the universe itself was trying and failing to remember it. Its surface was a chaos of textures, pinkish-gray membranes that pulsed with a rhythm older than time, bone-plate ridges spiraling in geometries our minds cannot hold, and spindled nerves that writhed like lightning frozen mid-strike. Each wrinkle, each twitch, seemed to hum with awareness,

as if the cosmos itself had been stitched into its flesh, its face, or what passed for one, stared down through a million lidless, goat-like eyes. Some were as vast as mountains. Some flickered like dying stars, all simultaneously seen and knowing.

Our thoughts recoiled, our vision trembled, and yet we could not look away. And then it did something impossible. It smiled, no teeth, no lips, no gesture that humans could recognize. Just a slow, dreadful unfurling of facial tissue, an imitation of something it had only ever observed in our species, a suggestion of amusement aimed at the futility of existence. The motion folded in on itself in ways that should have torn it apart, yet held.

We felt it not just in our eyes, but in our blood. and our marrow at the corners of thought we didn't know existed. Then the sky swallowed itself once more. The memory lingered. Shapes impossible to describe etched themselves into our minds. Geometry that should not exist haunted our dreams, and the faint, impossible smile echoed in every shadow we have ever crossed again. Silence fell.

Not peace, but silence. And then nothing. No arms, no sound. Just the repetition of fear. felt through the drum of the cloud, the wind returning at last. The stench never faded, never fully gone. The red rain soaked into everything. No government spoke publicly again after that. People stopped going outside. Entire towns were found empty. Dead. Others worshipped. Others killed themselves. The world...

Project Cerberus Bell, Dr. Marine Finn, classified day 45, 702 a.m. It belched. I don't know how else to describe it. It expelled something vast and foul into our atmosphere, not an attack, not a gesture of dominance, a function, a bodily function. Like I forgot we were here. The sound, I cannot put it into words. I felt it in the roots of my teeth.

and the gaps between cells it broke something in the sky and the smell the smell is still here clinging to the vents to my skin it soaked its way into the bunker the blood is everywhere we've confirmed it's organic human and something else for 93 seconds it let us see it i don't think we were supposed to but i don't think it cares i haven't slept since i don't believe anyone is left to read this, but I'm still writing. There's no scientific language left for what's happening. This is not an anomaly. This is a presence. This is an extinction event. This is such an

interesting, like you see this impossible thing, again, similar to Hellstar, and it's not really like there's some, oh, how do we beat it, or how do we survive, or not even like an I am legend, like this is the last person riding to valiantly hold the line for

humanity. It's just like, yeah, so this thing's going to end the world. And that's it. That's all you get. Yeah. It's what's going to happen. A hopeless kind, which I mean for an extinction event, that's what it should feel like, which I will give the story a lot of credit for, is that it feels utterly hopeless. And I think that like it's conveyed really well in the doctor, too. It also like, like, like yes, insert joke, Lefcraftian, uh, in cosmic horror and whatnot. But it is cosmic horror in the way most people overlook. Because a lot of the time, people just focus on the aesthetic of it, because that's like what Lovecraft talked about and stuff,

like things that are hard to describe the imagery of it. But more so, cosmic horror is the idea, which I got into it, some of my most recent YouTube videos. I'm not going to rehash the same points. But it's more often the concept of something that either we can't perceive or a thing that doesn't care to perceive us, right? The analogy I used in my video was a fish understanding a license plate. Like, imagine what a bug, what a beetle would think of a computer, right?

It would have no, if a beetle was able to understand, it would come across like electricity and servers and, you know, interfaces and all these things that are so far beyond its understanding because it's finding something that doesn't care about Beatles, right? So scale that up, humanity has a creature that comes across it, that uses us as a food source. But like she says, it forgot we were there. Like it belched and the belched annihilated people. It destroyed millions. It destroyed part of the earth.

But it's just it doesn't care about us. Why would it care about us? We're like smaller than ants to it. It's no different from bacteria that are on the floor as you walk through a room. I like that horror, the idea of like things that have a disregard for humanity. Yeah. Even like the people that are religiously worshipping it, it's almost like there is a comfort in worshiping something this powerful because then at least it's like, well, even if it kills me, even if it ruins me, I still mattered. Like it still cares about me to some degree rather than being totally disregarded. Like even in world religions, you may not have a say in the end of the world, but you were at least a part of it. It at least knew about you to some degree. But to have something in the world, that doesn't even consider your existence, that's terrifying. I think it's hard for humans to comprehend that, too,

with just like the level of consciousness we have and stuff. Yeah. And how we disregard things that have like a lower self, like sense of consciousness and everything. Yeah, it puts the shoe on the other foot. Yeah. It like turns, you know, where we are to them. Because there's never been,

other than like the cosmos, which we're just like kind of tapping into. As far as we've seen, there's never been something discovered. or something built, so to speak, that hasn't had humanity in mind, right? Like, even if we see an image of some far-off galaxy, it's like, well, we built the camera that took the picture. Or if we, you know, every invention that's ever been made was by humans for humans or

like in relation to humans or whatever. But to come across something that we are completely inconsequential to, that's terrifying. It's never happened to us before, right? I think that's where, like, cosmic war really shines. in instances like this. Phase 5, afterbirth, it began to harden. Not all at once, but gradually, day by day, as the blood congealed under heat and rain,

the bright red stains that had covered oceans, cities, forests, darkened, thickened with reddish clots, then it began to bond. What had first been described as organic blood now revealed itself to be something more, a precursor, a fluid waiting to become. On the 15th day after the belch, the first major surface scan from what remained of the LEO satellites returned images

of a continuous sheet forming across the Atlantic Basin. Fibrous, pale, rigid in places, like cooled wax spread over the surface of the earth. At first, it seemed like sediment or ice. But it flexed. Beneath solar radiation, it tightened. Beneath a lunar light, it swelled. Seismic equipment registered subtle movement, microscopic contractions, as if breathing through the crust.

The red had become pink gray. The pink gray was becoming skin, a skin that now stretched uninterrupted from Portugal to the eastern edge of the Caribbean. The scientists who remained debated this transformation in hushed mechanical tones. No conclusions were reached. There was no baseline. no comparative models. But Dr. Mareed Finn understood this was not an invasion.

This was not a divine punishment. This was gestation. Earth, or what remained of it, was being blanketed in something alive. Not absorbed, not consumed, prepared. And then, at 8.46 p.m.

on the 46th day, the cloud moved. It shifted without sound, without storm, without effort. Not blown, not carried, not pulled by gravity, it simply drifted, as if an unseen cord had been cut, as if the process in the West had reached some threshold. It took six hours to traverse the ocean, six hours of silence. People in Asia and Australia watched an approach,

the spiraling gauze blotting out the sky, as if it was swallowing at whole. They had seen the videos, they knew what would come. Still, they would. watched. Some hoped it would pass. It didn't. At 2.17 local time, the cloud settled above the Indian Ocean. The sky began to open again, and the arms began their terrible descent. Project Cerberus Vale, Dr. Maureen, classified. Day 46, 1144 p.m. Serberus Vale, final transmission. The blood is not inert. It is a matrix, a forming tissue. something between placenta and a cocoon still soft in parts but solidifying already three quarters of the Atlantic sea floor is covered in a single sheet our instruments can't

pierce it it's warm it pulses every seven minutes it is alive the cloud has moved to the Indian Ocean the initial science suggests the process is starting again the same pattern same altitude same shape same silence I believe this is the reproductive behavior a life cycle this thing or system or entity is using the atmosphere to sew itself it does not need us it does not hear us does not need us we were not chosen we were not rejected we were incidentally present what we thought was anomaly was a phase a part of something older larger maybe a million years old maybe eternal it doesn't matter what matters is what's being left behind a blanket a membrane

a womb stretched across the earth there is no rescue coming there's no top of the food chain there is only the shape behind the clouds and what it leaves in its wake I am writing this from a world already half covered in skin already half dead

tomorrow I will step outside and feel it for myself I want to know if it responds I want to know if it knows I'm here that that's so hard I love that she's come to the point that it's it's meaningless like the world's

going to end one way or the other but that last line about I want to know if it knows I'm here goes back to what I was saying it's like at least if you worship it you can be a part right at least you you weren't just an incident an accident

it feels like one last ditch effort of having some kind of conclusion to this that it like that it mattered to you in a way like kind of just a bit of a selfish desire to be like I need I need it to know that I was here whatever you know

I mattered I'm a person I exist yeah it's a desperate it's like fighting I mean the reference people make with most cosmic stuff is like it's a it's a god figure right it's like yelling out at God

you know a desperation to be known to exist that your existence mattered in the face of something that doesn't care it'd be like if the bug in your house like the way a bug feels about you is indifferent to you if If your ladybug refers to you as some deity or some devil or something,

it doesn't matter because you don't think about it. It's like a desperation to need to be known, need to be seen. So finally, phase six, final breath. The surface of the planet is no longer visible. A thick, swirling fog blankets every inhospitable continent, every ocean, rising miles into the sky. It doesn't move with the wind. ignores the weather, simply clings, dense, luminous, and unnaturally still. Satellite feeds, what few remain, show the same impossible formations of Earth's surface.

Layered mist, spiraling but unmoving, no rotation, no eye, just folds, just gauze, stacked and suspended. Jonas no longer checks the time. He has it for days. his oxygen mask kisses its final shallow breaths each one thinner than the last the generators have gone silent the lights burn only and intermittent flickers casting the facility in a pulse of dim goes like hues every room is empty everyone else is dead jonas lies flat on the cold concrete floor cheek pressed against it one hand spread wide as if to hold the earth steady his lips move forming the soundless words, but he stops. He doesn't need words. He needs to listen. Thumb, thumb, thumb, thumb, thumb.

A heartbeat. It was in the cloud. It was in the sky. Now it's here. Beneath his bones, inside the crust, deep in the dark belly of the world. Jonas let out a broken laugh that cracked into a sob. His eyes glistened, unfocused, staring at the ceiling as if he could see through it to the sky above.

There are two of them now, he whispers, barely audible. The fog outside pulses with a faint internal light, not lightning, not fire, something vascular, something alive, his throat tightens, his chest is heavy. The hiss of his mask is a thin trickle of air, barely enough to maintain hope, pulls it away as it fall beside him. The silence rushes in. He smiles, weak and delirious, teeth streaked with blood from biting his tongue raw in his sleep. We were the womb. Jonas had never been a religious man. Used to scoff at prayer, a ritual.

But now, on the floor of a dying world, the last man standing, a gun trembling in his hand, he moused the words anyway. Fragments of hymns, half-remembered psalms, apologies to no one. Turns the gun on himself, comforted by the realization it will all be over soon. The fog above glows brighter, its folds pulsing with rhythm, like veins, like lungs. Jonas closes his eyes, the weight of suffocation pressing him into the floor. His last thought is not of escape, not of resistance, only awe. Far beyond Earth, the silence of space, Earth's cloud drifts on, searching for the

the next world the earth excels its final breath and becomes something new man how sick was that it's not that it was hard to get bought in it was just like how many times have we seen a thing where it's like doctors doing into a log of some kind right and then we were getting into this part with a lot of a lot of love a lot of love crafty and things which is like the tentacles all that kind stuff right that we see a lot and with with lovecrafty and monster stuff that just kind of goes hand in hand um but i feel like it really picked up and i feel like i was like really cemented in when after the the rapture part but then when you find out that it kind of feels like this rapture in time thing is actually a creature coming prepping a planet to become basically itself like to think

that creature is another planet right it feeds off a planet yeah and it molds and shifts and then it flies away and kind of does the same thing. So almost like these prophecies that were man-made were true and that this rapture was coming, but it just means something completely different, which I think is cool. It was about it, yeah. I'm curious what you think, though, of this idea of, do you think you could have done this without having the, like, kind of stereotypical lovecraftian? And not to say stereotypical, because I wouldn't say that, like, I mean, like, it ventures

off into some fun stuff with, like, you see the eyes and you see, like, it's smiling. it doesn't really have like a face it's just muscle tissue that it's mimicking and then it understands and it's like expressing emotion in that way but could it be done in a way where it doesn't have this like i don't know like the very stereotypical lovecraftian like you know the tentacle type thing and people going mad are insane is that something that's like inherently necessary when tackling these like very large existential like leaps and bounds that kind of goes hands at hand with lovecraft, you know? I think if you're describing a creature the size of the earth that is going to be the death of everyone, I think you kind of got to mention people go insane because I feel like any rationality would go right out the window, right?

like I think so I guess it's just that before it seems like the story led that it's like you look at it and you go insane almost like there was like a mystical property to it versus the inevitability of like oh this I'm going to die that leaves you insane to me those are two different things I think like no matter what you definitely do go insane but I guess there was like a mysticism to that before where it's like if you even looked at it it was so appalling that you went insane. you know, that's very, that's like a very lovecraft thing. Yeah, I don't think it's the look of it. They go and say, no, granted, it would be terrifying to see a creature that big, right, the size of the sky. That would probably be alarming, especially if it was shapes that, like, you can't really, like, it's something, the way it's described as like it's a mist or a fog around the earth. I like the idea that when it's over the earth, it's like, things are just a different color. It's not even on the same realm of existence that we are entirely. we just kind of see glimpses of it.

So I feel like that's certainly imagery that would make you like go mad, but I feel like it's more so the impending doom of humanity. You know, whatever religion you follow doesn't matter. Whatever connections you made with your life doesn't matter.

I feel like that's where the insanity comes in more so. Maybe not necessarily insanity, but panic would maybe be a bit more fitting, you know? No, I mean, I think that doesn't make sense. Just that they become so desperate. I guess it was, it's just before it was like, don't go out and don't look at it. I'm just, it was just a, it's a very standard lovecraftian thing. I don't know.

I mean, like the love, to me, if I had any criticism for the story, was that the weakest part was just the lovecraftian nature of the beast itself. Everything else was so fun. You're talking about the physical appearance. Yes. Yes. Yeah. That's kind of here and or there. I think it would probably be a bit stronger if you just left the physical appearance of it

as the mention that it's like a shape. And then when it gets closer to the ground, things are a different color. I feel like that's more effective than the giant shapes in the sky. The different colors impactful. I like that idea. That's just like a hue that's placed over everything. The story I think does well with what it's trying to achieve, which is basically like re-identifying what a rapture is and i think like it feels like even the

ending is the earth becomes impregnated and becomes its own entity if you looked at the creature like a sperm cell going into the earth like a womb and that was the mass event is like a thing hitting the earth and like impregnates the earth in that way and then it like spores out or does something i feel like that would have been a really fun way to go about it because really like i said the only criticism is that we get a lot of like similar imagery and things granted like you were saying very uh junji ito of the guy being like the rapture isn't just people floating up into a light it's tentacles coming down and grabbing people i think that's fun and like the way that it went and it is you get all these different people on earth and different scenarios was really fun and horrifying i just don't know and this is just me as like feedback or just like you know food for thought obviously it's like after reading the story it's easy to make these it's easy to make these it's easy to to say these things but just wondering if if that could have been or like you know for future work if it's working looking at ways of like there's a traditional way of this of doing this lovecraftian thing how do you continuously flip it on its head you know how do you do a lovecraftian thing

where there is no tentacles where there is no kind of like thing where people are like I look at it and I go completely mad which these are all things I love but I'm just wondering because the idea is so cool that I'm wondering could it have just been a thing where it's like out in the cosmos almost like a sperm cell hits you know the earth like a meteor like a meteor hitting earth is actually like an alien I don't think it's necessarily like a sperm and egg metaphor as much

as it is like a bacterial thing almost I mean it doesn't have to be I'm just saying in my rendition if you had to do this thing of like earth regrowing I'm just saying it like that's another kind of unknown kind of thing of it's like an asteroid hitting earth is an asteroid hitting the earth and causing like a cataclysmic

event is something very similar to what we're doing here, which is just like an end of time things that was just like it wasn't even planned. It just happened because you were there. You know, it just happened because like it, there was no divine intervention of why it hit your planet. You were just in a way. And to me, that also taps into that like, you know, meaning the, almost like the very nihilistic view of like life as we know it and like humans trying to.

comprehend like a larger part of the story that they're a part of which is like nothing you know i think well i yeah i think you can do you can certainly do it without like the standard visuals like hell star remina as an example of one that's just a planet that eats other planets but there's also uh like the the thing i just covered on the main channel that which gave chase you never see any visual there it's just a creature that's implied to be beneath or above the ice maybe that like it's not even called a creature just a presence that like towards people's memories but you never see anything of it um and i do want to say i give props to the author too for describing the creature and that kind of thing i think that like an easy way out a lot of the

time is that you do get that thing that you don't ever see it and you kind of like lean on the person's imagination which is effective because you can never be disappointed because you're kind of like making the own, you're making your own visual that satisfies you in your head, but I do have a lot of respect for people who do put themselves out there. And they're like, this is what I think would be the creepiest, weirdest thing. Or like, this is what I think is the most intriguing aspect visually. When, when he was describing the clouds broke open and it was like a series of shapes and stuff that were symmetrical, but not right and stuff like that, I was almost imagining like a kaleidoscope. Yeah. And like as the kaleidoscope is moving, you can see different, like,

bones and stuff appear and then disappear and stuff like that like it's here but it's not here that's what made me whenever you said the angel appearing that's kind of what i like when i think of like a kaleidoscope it almost has that kind of like heavenly vibe to it just the way that it's like twisting and you know just the shape conveying it's almost beautiful you know yeah um the millions of eyes too that also leans back on angel imagery i'm trying to see if the day count had anything to do with like revelation but the days of revelation are what mentioned is like 70 weeks that's like the imagery people use so i didn't really see that well what i found too is after you said that i thought something similar was like well maybe this

is kind of like a it does have like a almost like a biblical aspect to it but it's kind of fun because then it completely disregards it in the same way that like the people in the story start to disregard that too where they're just like oh this has no meaning like there's no kind of like there's no grand planned any of this. I enjoyed that the futility kind of fell into our lap as well. It's like the reader with the characters. Yeah, the idea of like it starts out. It starts out just like maybe we can figure it out.

Maybe we can. There's not really like you figure it out from descriptions, but there's not really explanation given to it. I imagine this is like some parasite, some giant creature that its life cycle is just going to a planet and impregnating the earth with like, it's offspring, then moving on to another planet, almost like the way a, is it a bot fly that plants their eggs on, or a grabber fly or whatever, it plants its eggs on other things?

Like it just comes to a planet, lays it and goes, which implies there could be a whole other world of these creatures that size. Or maybe these things are the small parasites to something much larger. We're a speck of a speck. Like, again, it gets into the cosmic idea of humanity's unimportance in the universe, which is something we're very unfamiliar with, which I think is cool and where a lot of the fear comes from. But I liked a lot of the individual moments. I like the idea of Jonas being the last man standing. I think that's a cool idea.

It reminded me of Soma at the end of that game where it's one person alone at the bottom of the ocean being kept alive by machines. It's like the last person of the planet killing themselves before this planet becomes whatever it's going to be next, another one of these parasite things, perhaps. The idea, too, that the idea,

The idea, too, that the planet probably was just flying by and then it noticed that there was life in our planet and then it needed that life to reproduce is fun because it also means that because that creature is flying around, there was other planets with life that spawned itself. It's just kind of like an even, I don't know, like that cycle is just interesting to where you think about it and you're like, oh, fuck, it probably fed off somebody else. you know like we're not alone in this universe and stuff and like it's all just it's it's just so fucking hopeless or like it you know it's just people like you just don't even comprehend these things i don't know it's a big big existential questions which are which is just really fun but it's just a fun visual fun story really well written too i just want to say there's a lot of great little segments of like yeah beautiful beautiful uh descriptions and just like the the flow of ideas and

like I said descriptions and stuff it was just really really nice I really like a lot of the imagery I really love a lot of the references to the rapture and stuff not just because it's me but also because I just think

that's a fun tie in between the two and I also really dug like pretty much all the descriptors for stuff like the hands coming down or the belch and stuff I thought those were sick honestly if I had one critique for the whole story

The only thing that I'm like, yeah, you could have done without that is the mention of the anomalous agency or whatever. That didn't really come up anywhere. And I think it's cooler if he's just like another meteorologist or another scientist because it's not like that anomalous group offered any deeper insight into what was happening here. So it didn't really come up anywhere. So I think it's cooler if humanity is even more unprepared. And he's just in the, I don't know, the weather service or something like that.

Other than that, I think it was a stellar story with great writing, and I really love the creature. I love how futile everything was. I like how inventive the creature is. It's like a giant bacteria or mold that lays over the earth and pulls everyone up and reproduces. It was sick. I really loved it.

Again, this author, Pitiful Scream, 97, has two more stories. I sleep with my window closed down, a thousand morning people. We'll have his stuff linked in the description. Be sure to support him because he deserves it. And of course, Pitiful Scream, thank you for posting in our slash creepcast

it means a lot if I had any critique I don't think I have any critique I think just subjective thoughts kind of going off what you're saying just to tie it up to is I like and this is just a personal preference I kind of I like when stories don't go like the giant government route whatever like I know we were joking

about like the meteorologist thing but it would be kind of cool if it was just like this is just a single person like this is just somebody in a field where it's like they can still see this anomaly happening and they don't comprehend it there's no way that we'll ever comprehend it so like having them be scientist too feels not irrelevant but just like you know because having them be scientist helps them be like

trying to make under make sense of everything but i still think you can do that with like a smaller just like a yeah i don't know if that makes sense that's just but that's once again it's just subjective that's just me being like oh my personal preference so who gives a fuck but that's just the one thought i had um otherwise it was awesome man yeah i appreciate you writing and thank you for posting it to the Creepcast subreddit. We'll leave a link in the description as well to that post. And if you guys want to write stuff, fucking put it up on the server, man. And please, please for the love of God, keep writing.

Yes. If you're this good, like one month in, oh my gosh, dude. Yeah. And that's the thing too is like, I mean, every story you're right, you're just going to figure more and more stuff, more and more stuff out about what you enjoy and like ways that you wish you could take stories. So this is another opportunity as well to just tell people, write things. Be upset with what you wrote and just continue to write and use this hopefully as like just an experience just to be creative and make something fucking cool because your story is something we want to read.

So until next time, guys, thank you so much to our audio listeners. If you're listening right now on Spotify or Apple Podcast, thanks for giving us a good rating there. And also thank you to our patrons. We appreciate you. And we will see you guys in the next one. you guys later yeah it's real shame that Hunter you guys getting here right now but he's telling

me on my headset that he thinks this story is stupid and he hates all of you for uploading stories to a creepcaster are you sure are you sure you want me to tell everyone that okay yeah he says he says he doesn't appreciate you he says that you're awful he says that you should get a life

or a job and more importantly get out of his and also he hates is mother and wife. Yeah, bye. I don't know. You know,

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