CreepsMcPasta Creepypasta Radio - 3+ Hours of CHILLING Horror Stories that will make you scream or something IDK

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

CREEPYPASTA STORIES-►0:00 "I Work at a Gas Station. Someone Keeps Buying Fuel, but They Never Have a Car" Creepypasta►29:11 "The New Radio Station in My Town Only Plays One Song. It’s Driving Everyone Insane." Creepypasta►01:12:40 "He Always Said He Wanted an Adventure. I Think He Found One." Creepypasta►01:46:04 "I rented a cabin in the Appalachian mountains. I saw horrifying things" Creepypasta►02:16:26 "I work in a prison for crimes you've never heard of" Creepypasta►03:00:19 "Why did the emergency alert just apologise to us" CreepypastaCreepypastas are the campfire tales of the internet. Horror stories spread through Reddit r/nosleep, forums and blogs, rather than word of mouth. Whether you believe these scary stories to be true or not is left to your own discretion and imagination. LISTEN TO CREEPYPASTAS ON THE GO-SPOTIFY► https://open.spotify.com/show/7l0iRPd...iTUNES► https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast...SUGGESTED CREEPYPASTA PLAYLISTS-►"Good Places to Start"-    • "I wasn't careful enough on the deep ...  ►"Personal Favourites"-    • "I sold my soul for a used dishwasher...  ►"Written by me"-    • "I've been Blind my Whole Life" Creep...  ►"Long Stories"-    • Long Stories  FOLLOW ME ON-►Twitter:   / creeps_mcpasta  ►Instagram:   / creepsmcpasta  ►Twitch:   / creepsmcpasta  ►Facebook:   / creepsmcpasta  CREEPYPASTA MUSIC/ SFX- ►http://bit.ly/Audionic ♪►http://bit.ly/Myuusic ♪►http://bit.ly/incompt ♪►http://bit.ly/EpidemicM ♪This creepypasta is for entertainment purposes only

I work the night shift at a small, run-down gas station on the edge of a highway that hardly sees any traffic past midnight. It's a mediocre place at best. No security cameras, half the lights flickering like the dying, and a bathroom that no one in the right mind would use. Most of the time, my shift is dead silent. Truck has stopped to grab coffee and stretch their legs, and locals come in every once in a while. But after 1 a.m., the place becomes a ghost town. It's just me, the buzzing of the old fluorescent lights and the occasional coyote howling in the distance. That's why it stood out immediately when someone walked in on foot at exactly 2 a.m.

I was leaned back in my chair, absently flicking through my phone when the chime above the door rang. I barely looked up at first, expecting the usual, a trucker grabbing coffee, some lost traveller asking for directions, but when I finally glanced toward the entrance, I saw him for the first time. No headlights in the lot, no car idling at the pumps, just a man standing in the doorway, dripping in the station sickly fluorescent lights. He was thin, hunched so. slightly, like he'd been walking for miles. His clothes were ordinary enough. Dark jeans stained

with leaves and mud at the bottom, a grey hoodie pulled over his head. He smelt faintly of gasoline. He took slow, dragging steps toward the counter. I cleared my throat. Hey man, how's it going? No response. You need something? He didn't blink. just reached into his pocket, pulled out a crumbled $20 bill, and set it on the counter. One gallon, he muttered with a hoarse voice. I waited for him to say something else, maybe explain why he was on foot or where his car was. But he just stood there. You good, dude, I tried again, ringing up the sale.

Nothing. I slid his chain. across the counter and he picked it up without counting it. Outside through the station's dirty front windows, I watched him take an old, battered gerry can from beside the pumps. The thing was weathered, sunbleached, cracked in spots. I figured he probably had a car stranded nearby. Maybe he was just mad or embarrassed. Honestly, I didn't care. As long as he paid, Whatever he did with the fuel wasn't my problem. The next night, at exactly 2 a.m., the door chime rang again.

I looked up from where I was restocking cigarettes behind the counter. My stomach twisting before I fully registered why. It was him. Same hunched posture. I set the carton of smokes down and straightened up, watching him closely as he stepped up. as he stepped forward and wordlessly slipped the crumpled $20 bill across the counter. One gallon, he muttered. I hesitated before punching the sail.

Something about him didn't feel right. You got a car this time? I asked, keeping my tone light. He didn't respond. His fingers twitched slightly where they rested on the counter. I licked my lips and rang him up, keeping my eye on his face as I slid his change across the counter. But he didn't even glance down. He just grabbed the coins and left. Outside, I watched through the grimy front window as he made his way back toward the pumps. He picked it up and filled it carefully, watching as the fuel poured into the old cracked plastic.

I noticed then how discoloured his hands were, grimy with dark stains under his nails, like he'd been working with oil. I turned away as he capped the canister, telling myself once again that it wasn't my problem. The first time, I hadn't really paid attention to which direction he was headed in, but this time, curiosity got the better of me. I expected him to head for the highway. Maybe there was a car waiting down the road out of sight. Maybe someone was picking him up, but he didn't go toward the road at all.

Instead, he moved toward the woods. The thick line of black trees beyond the gas station. I just watched him go, not quite sure what to think. He stepped past the last pump, past the last pump, past the gas station. the edge of the lot and into the grass, moving at the pace of a snail. I waited for him to hesitate, to glance over his shoulder, to acknowledge that he was leaving the only light for miles behind him. But he never did. He just kept walking, kept moving deeper and deeper into the trees, until the darkness swallowed him whole. And he never looked back. He came back. He came back.

the next night and the night after that every time it was exactly the same 2 a.m. one gallon always cash always silent. I honestly tried ignoring him. I get plenty of weird people here at times and besides people have routines and maybe this was just his. But the longer it went on the harder it was to shake the feeling that something was wrong. I started paying closer attention. I listened for a car engine approaching in the distance before he arrived. There never was one. I glanced out toward the pumps after he left, expecting headlights flashing on the tree line. Nothing. I even checked the back of the gas station once, just to see if maybe somehow he was parking in the darkness behind the building. But it was

was always empty. All I knew for certain was that he came from somewhere, and when he left, he went back to it. Most of my shifts from then on were focused on keeping track of him. As soon as it hit the tree line, he wouldn't come back for the rest of my shift until the following one. One night, around midnight, a regular trucker stopped in for coffee and smokes. His name was Frank, and he was the kind of guy who talked to fill the silence. Normally, I let him ramble while I half listened. That night, though, as he was stirring sugar

into his coffee, he glanced out toward the empty parking lot and said, Hey, you're still getting that weird guy at two? I blinked. You've seen him? Frank shrugged, taking a sip. A couple nights back, yeah, I don't think you were on shift. Who's that weird kid that works on the weekends? I was parked outside taking a break when he showed up. No car, just walked right up and bought gas. He chuckled, shaking his head.

Figured maybe his truck broke down somewhere, but I didn't see one on the road when I pulled in. You're local? No idea. I admitted. Frank took another long sit before muttering. Creepy guy, ain't he? I didn't have an answer for that. A few nights later, a man came in looking for a can of fix a flat. Older guy, probably mid-60s, wearing a denim jacket that looked as worn out as he did. He paid and crumpled bills, then lingered at the counter, watching as the man in

the hoodie walked back out into the darkness with his filled jericho. The older guy squinted. Huh. Huh. What? I asked. He rubbed a hand over his jaw, his gaze still following the figure as he disappeared past the tree line.

I've been in this area a long time now. Still see him here frequently. That got my attention. How long is a long time? He glanced at me, a solemn expression adorning his face. Then he grabbed his bag and said, Long time. Guy doesn't seem to age.

And if he does, boy does he age well. The door chime rang as he walked out. I stood there, hands resting on the counter, my skin crawling. Right after the man left and the station had gone quiet again. I pulled the transaction records from the last few weeks and flipped through them. Every night, one gallon, always between 2 and 203 a.m. I kept going, flipping back through the old logbooks. Same entry, every night, weeks, months, years. I traced the records back as far as they went. The digital ones only went as far back as 2013, so I had to dig up an actual

physical one from the back. My fingers were stiff from gripping the old yellowed pages. The earliest entry I found was dated October 19, 1997. One gallon. Cash. And that was only as far as the logbooks went. I stared at the numbers on the page, my mind racing. I had only been working here a few months. Maybe the guy before me knew more. I reached for my phone and pulled up Jerry's number, the other night shift guy. He worked here for seven years. I'd only ever spoken to him once when he handed me the keys on my first night.

Still, I hesitated. How do you even ask someone about something like this? It was nearly three in the morning, and I felt like an idiot for even thinking about making this call. But as much as I hated to admit, it was starting to get under my skin. I took a breath and dialed. The phone rang twice before a groggy voice answered. Hello? Hey, Jerry.

Sorry, sorry, I know it's late. There was a pause, a sigh. Yeah, you don't say. What's up? I just... I hesitated, feeling even dumber now that I had him on the line. I just had a question about the gas station, about someone who comes in at night.

Another pause. I could hear him shifting, probably sitting up in bed. Which someone A guy shows up every night around two By his exactly one gallon Walks off into the woods behind the station Ah

Jerry finally said Yeah that guy So you know who I'm talking about The manager mentioned him when I first started He said Figured I'd see him eventually And yeah sure enough Every night I worked he showed up

Never missed the night, never said more than a few words. I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding. So, what's his deal? Jerry let out a short laugh. And if I know, nobody does. He's just kind of an unspoken tradition for the night shift. Unspoken tradition? Yeah, I mean, at first it weirded me out.

But after a while, he was just... Just part of the routine. Didn't matter if it was raining, snowing, didn't matter if the whole highway was shut down. That guy would still show up, buy his gallon, walk off. Did you ever ask him anything? Of course I did, Jerry said. First time I saw him, I tried to be friendly. Asked if he needed a ride, asked where his car was.

Nothing. Just stared at me, paid for his gas. and left. Not a word? Not a damn thing. Eventually, I just stopped trying. It was like talking to a brick wall. I exhaled through my nose. You ever think about following him? I asked. Jerry scoffed. Thought about it? Sure. But I wasn't that curious. His voice was light, but I could tell he was fully awake now, probably sitting there, picturing the guy in his head, just like I was. Listen, man, he continued.

I don't know what his story is, but whatever it is, it's none of my business. Yeah, I muttered. Yeah, I get that. Jerry yawned on the other end of the line. Is that all? What, you need me to tell you about all the weirdos that came in at three and three, the morning too. Nah, I think I got what I needed.

Good. Now let me sleep. He hung up before I could say anything else. I thought about it. The tradition, as Jerry called it, kept going for the next few days. And in that time, the more I saw the man, the more I thought about it. About following him, it wasn't until nearly a week. week later, then I finally did.

The night was cold and windless. I stayed inside the station as long as I could, waiting until I saw him fade into the tree line like a shadow. Then I grabbed the cheap flashlight from under the counter and stepped out onto the lot. For the first time, I realized how quiet the place really was. Inside, I had the hum of the drink coolers, the buzzing overhead lights, the occasional crackle of the radio. Out there. Nothing.

No cars, no wind through the trees, no chirping insects. Just my own footsteps against the pavement. I hesitated at the edge of the lot where the gravel thinned and the dirt path began. It was in a proper trail. Just a narrow gap between the trees where the bush had been trampled down over time. I had no idea if I was actually making noise or if I just felt like I was. Every step seemed too loud, the sound of my breathing too obvious. Ahead of me, the man moved at just the same pace as always.

I kept back, just far enough that I wouldn't risk him seeing me if he could. turned around. But he never did. Never even paused. Just kept walking deeper. The further we went. The stronger the smell of gasoline became. At first, I thought maybe it was his clothes. A guy like that hauling fuel around every night, of course he'd smell like it. But the air itself seemed thick with it. Not just fresh fuel either. stale, sour scent of old spills mixed with something burnt. I could feel it coating the inside of my mouth. The flashlight in my hands suddenly felt useless. I didn't want to risk turning it on, not yet at least, not while he was still moving ahead of me. Instead, I relied on what little

moonlight made it through the trees, barely enough to see the narrow path winding through the brush. My legs ached from stepping carefully, placing my feet exactly where he had, hoping the ground wouldn't betray me. And then, just ahead, I saw the trees start the thin, a clearing. The smell of fuel was almost overpowering, choking in my throat. The man stepped into the open space, disappearing from view. I stared at the darkened clearing beyond. my fingers tightening around the flashlight. And then, slowly, I stepped forward and finally saw what he was walking toward. The clearing was small, maybe 30 feet across, a break in the dense trees where the ground had turned to dry, cracked dirt, and in the center of it sat a car, or at least,

least what used to be one. The body was completely burnt out. The frame rusted through, the metal twisted and warped from heat. Whatever color it had once been was long gone, the surface now just scorched black and crumbling. I could see the remains of tires, but there were nothing more than charred rubber fused to the ground. The windows were blown out, melted along the edges. The most recent fire couldn't have been more than a few days old, but the car itself looked like it had been rotting here for decades. I barely noticed the old gas cans at first. They were scattered around the car, some piled up near the driver's side, others half buried

in the dirt. Some were so rusted they had collapsed inward, eaten away by time. were newer, some were still full. But my eyes weren't drawn to the gas cans. They were locked on what was inside the car. I could see bones. A skeleton still strapped to the driver's seat. The seatbelt had melted across the chest and the remains of charred fingers were fused to the steering wheel. The skull had tilted slightly, as if watching me through the hollow followed out sockets, and the back of my throat burned. I could see him, just a few feet away, pouring gasoline into the car's open fuel tank.

The metal was melted through, split in rusted wounds. Yet, he was still trying. I watched as the fuel spilled out the other side, pouring onto the dirt like water through a sieve. He didn't stop. He just kept pouring desperately. The smell was suffocating. The puddle of fuel spread beneath him, soaking into his jeans, his boots,

the sleeves of his hoodie as he dropped to his knees, shoveling at the dirt, trying to scoop the gasoline back into the tank with his hands. He was muttering, shaking. It's never enough. His voice was hoarse, almost pleading. It's never enough to leave. His hands gripped the dirt, fingers curling, knuckles white.

How much more fuel do I need to get out of here? His voice rose, sharp and uneven. Why won't it let me leave? His breathing was ragged, wheezing. I took a step back. The snap of the twig beneath my boot sounded like a gunshot in the dead silence. The man froze. His hands hovered above the dirt, still trembling.

And then, slowly, he turned. His movements were stiff, like his body was just now realizing it had been noticed. The white of his eyes was stained yellow, bloodshot and glassy, but locked onto me with startling focus. For a long moment, neither of us spoke. Then, in that same, dry, rasping voice, he asked, Do you know why it won't start? I didn't answer.

My heartbeat thudded in my throat, but I didn't dare step back. The man blinked once, as if waiting for something. Then he turned his head, staring down at the rusted out wreck beside him. I put the fuel in, he muttered, fingers twitching at his sides. I keep putting the fuel in. But it won't start. It never starts. I clenched my jaw, trying to keep my breathing even.

He tilted his head slightly, his lips peeling back into a strained, almost confused. used expression. You know what I have to do, don't you? His voice was barely a whisper now. To start the car, to go back to my family, I shook my head. I don't know. His fingers twitched again, then curled into fists. For the first time, he looked frustrated from the pocket of his hoodie.

He bowled out a crumbled $20 bill and held it out toward me. His hand was shaking. One gallon, I just stared. His face twitched. His breath grew ragged. Give me the damn fuel. The words came out as a snarl. His hands lunged forward.

I staggered back, nearly slipping on the dirt. The twenty crumbled in his grip as he stumbled to toward me, his movement's now animalistic. One gallon, he shrieked, one gallon, and I can go home. His hands clawed at the air between us, wheezing gasps came out of his throat. His eyes were wild, his body jittering like a puppet on broken strings. And then he charged. I didn't wait.

I turned and ran. The last thing I heard was his voice beside me, screaming. I just need one more gallon. The trees blurred past me, shadows twisting and snapping under the flashlight's weak beam. The smell of gasoline still burned in my nose, clinging to my clothes. I could hear something behind me. Maybe it was him. Maybe it was just the echo of my own footsteps.

but I wasn't stopping to find out. I could see the glow of the station's neon lights ahead just beyond the trees. I hit the gravel lot at full speed, stumbling, my knee nearly giving out. My chest was tight, my legs felt weak, but I didn't stop until I was inside. I slammed the door shut behind me, locking it without thinking. My hands were shaking. The station was silent. I stood there for what felt like hours, staring out at the empty lot, waiting, but the man never came back.

I didn't go back the next night, or the night after that. I sent a text to my manager first thing in the morning. I quit, no notice. Didn't care if I burned a bridge, didn't care if I got my last paycheck or not. I just knew I wasn't stepping foot in that place again. A week later, I was almost out of town. I'd packed up what little I had, ready to leave this place behind for good. But, as I was driving past the station, something in my chest tightened.

I don't know why I pulled in. Maybe I wanted to convince myself it was all in my head and that my morbid curiosity made me go through a fever dream. The station looked the same as always, same flickering open sign, a new guy was working the counter. He looked be on board, scrolling through his phone, barely paying attention,

and standing in front of him, handing over a crumpled $20 bill, was the same man, still buying exactly one gallon. I sat there, gripping the steering wheel tight, watching as he took the cherry can and walked out of the station. He just turned and started walking, his feet crunching against the gravel, heading straight back into the woods. and just like every other night he never looked back. I've lived in Elliot's Hollow my whole life.

It's not a town people move to or move away from. It just is. A little pocket of civilization swallowed by hills and trees with a main road that only goes one way in and one way out. We don't have internet, not in the way most people do. Cell service is unreliable at best. If you want to talk to someone, you call their landline. And if you want to have talking points with your friends, you turn on the radio.

Our little AMFM station, 97.3 hollow radio, is how most people in town keep up with a world beyond our hills. It plays local news, weather updates, music, whatever keeps people entertained while they work. Is the sound of the town itself always playing in the background? That's why, when the signal appeared, we all noticed. It wasn't an announcement or even a normal broadcast. It was a song. A single, eerie, melody looping over and over.

At first, it was so faint I thought my radio was acting up. It began as a soft hum beneath the usual noise. But day by day, it got louder, until it was everywhere. I heard it while I was closing up at the office. The Hollow Gazette is a small two-room space above the hardware store, with one ancient coffee maker, two desks and a printer that jams if you so much as look at it the wrong way. It had been a slow news week. Well, it's always a slow news week. I had the radio on while I typed up a fluff piece about the upcoming church bake sale.

That's when I realized the radio had become much quieter. There was no ad break, no calling segment. Just a song. soft, melancholic, a slow, almost hypnotic tune playing on an endless loop. It had no lyrics, no instruments I could recognize, just a voice singing in a language that I didn't recognize. I frowned and leaned closer, adjusting the dial. 97.3 hollow radio. It was still on our station's frequency. That wasn't supposed to be possible.

I turned up the volume. The music didn't waver like a normal station would when there was interference. It was clear as a bell, cutting through the static with unnatural clarity. By the time I got home, every radio in town was playing it. At first, people treated it like a joke. at school dared each other to listen to it for as long as possible. One kid claimed he made it six hours straight before he got a headache. Another swore that if you listen long enough, the song started to change.

It became a talking point at the diner, the bar, the town meetings. I bet it's some pirate radio station, Mrs Callaway said at the bakery. She was giving out free pastries to anyone who listened to the signal for ten minutes. I kinda like it, said old Frank, the town mechanic. He had it blasting from the auto shop while he worked. Makes time pass faster. Not everyone was amused. It's damn creepy, the postmaster muttered, switching off the radio in the mailroom.

Puts me on edge like I'm waiting for something to happen. The only thing people agreed on was that no one knew where it was coming from. The hollow radio station denied responsibility. That's not us, the station manager, Greg told me, over the phone. We tried cutting the transmission. Didn't work. It's like it's hijacking the frequency. The FCC had no record of a new broadcast in our area.

There were no towers nearby that could be transmitting it. Even the older folks, the ones who had lived in the town their whole lives, swore they'd never heard anything like it before. The strangest part was that it never stopped or paused. No station IDs, commercial breaks or silence. Just an unbroken repetition. I did what I always do when something unusual happens in town. I wrote about it.

Mysterious signal draws attention in Elliot's Hollow. A harmless story. to start the week, a quirky mystery for the townsfolk to talk about. I treated it like a fun little phenomenon, just another oddity in a town full of them. I didn't know yet, but I wasn't just documenting a local mystery. I didn't expect the signal to linger in people's minds. Most stories I wrote had a 24-hour lifespan at best. One town council vote, one school fundraiser, One half-hearted debate about whether the general store should stop carrying plastic bags. The Holo Gazette wasn't exactly groundbreaking journalism.

But the signal stuck. People kept talking about it. Not just in passing, not just as a joke, but as if it was affecting them personally. That was when I decided to write a follow-up. I thought maybe I'd find someone who'd track down its source. My theories were a ham radio guy or a bored teenager with too much time in their hands. Instead, I found something else. It started with Mrs. Callaway.

I was interviewing her in the bakery. She had been one of the first to turn the signal into a business gimmick. She was in the middle of a sentence when she hesitated. You ever have a dream that feels too real? She asked quietly. I raised an eyebrow. Like a lucid dream? She shook her head, kneading her dough between her fingers.

No, like, more than that. Like it happened. She told me she had a dream about her husband, Alan. He's been gone for 15 years. she murmured, but I saw him. He was sitting right here, clear as day. I tried to keep my expression neutral. People dream of lost loved ones all the time. It wasn't news. But here's the thing, she continued, rowing her arms like she was suddenly cold. My neighbor saw us talking. I frowned. You mean in real life?

No, in his dream. She looked at me then, her eyes fierce and unwavering. He told me the next morning, word for word, what Alan and I talked about. He wasn't even in the bakery. He was sitting on his porch, but he said he could see us through the window. A prickle of unease ran down my spine. Did he? I swallowed.

Did he say anything else? Mrs Callaway hesitated. He said Alan. Alan looked at him like he knew he was watching. I thought it was a one-off story, an old woman missing a husband, a neighbour with a good memory. Then I started hearing the same thing from other people.

A man at the gas station, Mark Atwood, told me he had a dream about going fishing with his brother. Nothing strange about that Except his brother told me He remembered watching himself fish from the shore I wanted to say something The brother said voice low But I couldn't move

It was like I was stuck Just watching Neither of them realised the other had the same dream Until I pointed it out It didn't stop there A teenage girl told me she dreamed of being lost in the woods, her best friend swore she had been in the dream with her. A bar patron swore up and down.

He had a conversation with his wife in the dream, only to have her tell me she remembered the exact same details. Different stories, different experiences, but always the same people. And when I asked each of them a final question, the answer was always yes. Did you listen to the signal before bed? They all had.

The hairs on the back of my neck wouldn't settle. It wasn't just a weird coincidence anymore. I tried to rationalize it. Maybe it was a suggestion. Maybe the whole town was just in their own heads, feeding off each other's memories. But the details were too precise, like they weren't dreaming at all. Instead, it seemed like they were taken somewhere else to get. The novelty was lost when the school teacher forgot her own name.

Elliot's Hollow was the kind of town where everybody knew everybody. There were only 12 teachers at the school and Miss Carter had been teaching first grade for 20 years. She taught half the town's kids how to read. And yet, that morning, she didn't remember who she was. I was grabbing coffee from the diner when I heard the commotion. A few of the parents were murmuring near the counter, voices hushed, eyes darting toward the school. I caught Mark Atwood, the guy from the gas station, and asked what happened. Miss Carter showed up late, he said, just stood outside the building like she didn't know where she was.

Mark frowned, he looked pale. She didn't know her own name. That stopped me cold. What do you mean? I mean, she didn't remember. He left out a shaky breath, shifting uneasily. She kept saying she was someone else. A beat of silence passed between us.

It wasn't just Miss Carter. Down at the general store, Henry Weaver was refusing to open the register. He'd been working the counter for as long as I could remember. No one else ran the store. He knew every supplier, every stock order. But today, he stood behind the counter, hands flat against the wood, and shook his head. I don't know how, he said.

His son, Matt, hovered near the door looking frantic. Dad, it's just a register. You told me how to use it when I was 12. Henry wouldn't budge, because Henry wasn't Henry anymore. I'm not supposed to be here, he mumbled. I'm not. I don't work here.

But you do, Matt said. Henry turned to me then, as if just noticing I was standing there. I'm the mayor. he whispered. The blood drained from my face. Henry wasn't the mayor. He had never been the mayor, but I'd heard that phrase before.

A few days ago, I spoke with the real mayor, John Hartley, about the signal, asking if the town had any old records of experimental radio tests. He told me he'd been having strange dreams. In the dream, he said, I wasn't myself. I was Henry Weaver. I hadn't thought much about it at the time. The whole town had been dreaming about each other. It had just been a weird little pattern I was trying to make sense of. But now, Henry thought he was John. And John was nowhere to be found. By evening, I was feeling sick. I went to the pharmacy, half convinced I was coming down. with something.

When heard crying from the back of the store, a woman was sobbing, barely able to form words. It was Alice Perdue. I knew Alice. She'd lived alone in a yellow house near the edge of town. She'd never been married, never had kids. But that night, she sat on the pharmacy floor, shaking violently, whispering, Where's my son?

The clerk, Tina Beckett, looked helpless, kneeling beside her. You don't have a son, she said, her voice gentle. Alice jerked away from her touch. I do, she spat. I do, I do, I know I do. She choked on the words. I remember him. I raised him, tucked him in every night.

I know his name. I know his face. Tina looked up at me, fear pulling in her eyes. Alice gripped my wrist, her nails dug into my skin. Where is he? she pleaded. Where did he go? I had no answer, because I was starting to believe her. I sat in my car outside the pharmacy long after the lights had gone dark inside, gripping the steering wheel so hard my knuckles ached.

Alice's sobs still. echoed in my head. The raw panic in a voice, the certainty, the absolute certainty that she had a son, even though no one in town had ever known her to have one. I couldn't shake it. Neither could I shake the look on Henry Weaver's face when he told me he was the mayor. He hadn't been confused or delusional. He had been sure as I was that I was Daniel Langley, local reporter, a guy who spent his time writing about farmers markets and high school football games. But what if I woke up tomorrow and found myself believing I was someone else? The thought made my stomach churn.

This town was my home. I'd spent years covering its stories. I knew every back road, every face, every corner of this place that most people had forgotten even existed. And now... It was falling apart. People weren't just forgetting things. They were becoming something else. And no one outside of town was going to care.

We didn't have big city news outlets knocking at our doors. There were no government officials rolling in to investigate. If something was happening to us, we were on our own. The thought terrified me, but it also hardened something inside me. I had to know. It wasn't about a story anymore.

It wasn't about getting the next edition of the Gazette printed on time. This was my town. These were my people. And if something was taking them, twisting them, stealing their identities, then I couldn't just sit back and report on it like some passive observer. I needed to understand. I needed to see the dream for myself. I took a slow, steady breath, turned the dial on my radio, and let the signal take me.

I don't remember falling asleep. I remember static, low and endless, stretching in the back of my mind like the distant hum of power lines. I remember the feeling of drifting, like my body wasn't my own anymore. Then, I was somewhere else. I was standing in Elliot's Hollow, but it wasn't Elliot's Hollow. The street stretched endlessly, warping into impossible distances. Buildings flickered like they were struggling to decide what they were supposed to be. Some houses looked years older than they should have been.

They wooden planks sagging with rot. Others looked too new, pristine, like they had just been built yesterday. The air smelled thick and electric, and the people. They weren't right, I turned my breath hitching. The townsfolk were here, but they weren't normal. Some were half-formed, their bodies flickering like a weak TV signal, snapping between ages, heights, even genders. Miss Carter, the schoolteacher, stood in the sidewalk, but her face was blurred,

she shifted between being herself and someone else entirely. Henry Weaver, the store clerk who thought he was the mayor, stood motionless, staring at the sky, his mouth opened and closed over and over, like a puppet waiting for the right words to be placed inside him. And then there were the others, the ones who had stayed in the dream too long. They hadn't just merged memories. They had merged completely. I saw a mother cradling an infant in her arms, rocking it slowly. I stepped closer and nearly screamed.

The child's face was her own. A smaller, stretched version of it pressed against the shoulder, melving silent words in unison. Their limbs fused together in places, the skin stitching them into a little. a single, writhing shape. They turned to look at me at the same time. Two sets of identical eyes, two mouths whispering the same words. We are one, we are one, we are one, we are one.

Some had grown too large. I saw a man that wasn't a man at all anymore, but a mass of bodies, tangled and shifting. They couldn't decide which one was supposed to. to be in control. Faces bubbled beneath his skin, rising up like something pressing against the surface of water. A hand burst from his chest, flexing his fingers before sinking back inside. He turned, his three mouths speaking in unison. Daniel, I ran. I didn't make it far before a hand grabbed my wrist. I jerked away, my breath ragged, But the grip was steady, human, real, Abel Cooper, the old blind man.

But even he wasn't untouched. There was a shadow of another face behind his own, flickering in and out of existence, like a second exposure in a photograph. It whispered, along with his voice, just a split second behind. You shouldn't be here, boy, he murmured. I swallowed back pile. What the hell is this place? Abel's lips tightened.

He turned his head slightly, listening. You're still awake, he muttered. Not like the rest of them, but that won't last long, I shuddered. Why, what's happening to them? Abel exhaled slowly, his grip tightened. And every time we dream, we lose a little more of ourselves, he said softly. He nodded toward the twisting figures, the mouths that didn't stop whispering. The ones who stay too long forget they were ever awake, the horror sank into my bones.

It wasn't just a dream, a slow, careful dismantling of who they had been, breaking them down into something else. else. And I was standing in the middle of it. Abel turned back to me, and for the first time I saw fear in his face. You need to wake up. I spent the next day digging through every record I could find. Something inside me had shifted. People were disappearing.

Or worse, they were dissolving into something else. when I brought up names that should have been familiar, people I knew had lived here, worked here, had lives here. I was met with blank stairs. I knew I didn't have much time. The next person to be erased could be me. So I did the only thing that made sense. I went looking for the source.

The first step was figuring out where the transmission was coming from. Hollow had one radio station, 97.3 Hollow Radio, and I already knew it wasn't them. That meant there had to be another broadcast tower somewhere nearby. I needed help.

I drove out to the edge of town where I knew I'd find Ben Hoerth, the closest thing this town had to a tech guy. He ran the only electronics repair shop in Hollow, though mostly he just fixed old radios and shortwave equipment.

When I told him what I was looking for, he frowned. There's no other broadcast tower and range, he said, rubbing his chin. Not one that's supposed to be here anyway. But if there was, I pressed. Ben sighed and pulled a yellowed map from a drawer, spreading it across his workbench. He ran his finger over the terrain, stopping near the northern woods. The only place a rogue signal like that could be coming from is the old relay station. I stiffened.

Relay station? Ben nodded. It was set up back in the 60s, some government project. No one really knew what it was for. They abandoned it decades ago. Why? I asked. Ben shrugged.

No idea. One day he was active. the next it wasn't, figured they shut it down for good. He glanced up at me. But if someone turned it back on, that's where you'd want to start looking. The northern woods weren't somewhere people went willingly. The trees were thick, the paths overgrown, and even in the daylight, the place had an unnatural stillness. I followed an old service road, half buried under dead leaves.

Then, through the trees, I saw it. A rusted chain-link fence, bent in places barely holding together. Beyond it, a squat concrete structure half buried in the hillside, its exterior streaked with decades of rain and moss. The relay station. A faded government emblem was still visible on the front, but the door was over. Inside, the air was thick with dust. The place had been gutted long ago, desks overturned, papers scattered across the floor,

rusted cabinets lined the walls, some still filled with yellowed folders, water-damaged notebooks. I picked one up, flipping through its pages. It was just technical jargon, broadcast frequencies, signal strength measurements. Then, something stranger. I skimmed through a section labeled Phase 1, Theoretical Applications. If successful, the test will confirm cross-subjective connectivity between individuals, a shared cognitive framework, the beginning of true unity.

Sustained exposure should result in memory cohesion across multiple subjects, leading to eventual total synthesis of identities. A lump formed in my throat. This whole thing was some sort of sick test, and the people of Elliot's Hollow had been the test subjects. I flipped ahead, scanning the latter pages. Then my breath caught. There was a projected start date,

but set all the way back in the 70s. However, there were no reports of anything like this before, even from the folks who lived through that era. Something had stopped it back then, whether it was the researchers having a change of heart or the project being shut down. But now, someone else had started it. I forced myself to move. I followed the tangled mess of all cables, stepping over broken equipment until I reached the back room. and there it was, the transmitter, a tower of rusted metal and ancient dials,

still active, still humming, a signal relay looping the same song endlessly. It was still broadcasting. I clenched my jaw and moved to all the controls. The dials are unmarked, the labels peeled away, but I found what I was looking for. The switch, a simple power switch. My hands were shaking.

If I turned this off, would it stop? Will the town go back to normal? Or had the damage already been done? I didn't know, but I didn't have a choice. I reached out and flipped the switch. The signal cut off, the song stopped. The air around me felt violently empty. I thought I'd fixed everything.

The town should have been silent. The relay station was off. The signal shouldn't be playing anymore. But as I stepped out of my car in the middle of the main street, I heard it. A soft, distant melody, faint but still there. Still looping. Still inside them.

At first glance. At the glance, Elliot's Hollow looked the same as always. The diner was open, people walked along the sidewalks, the low murmur of conversation drifting between them. But then I listened closer. Two men stood outside the gas station talking. Their voices overlapped. Not like an echo, like a single voice split between two mouths, speaking in perfect unison. They paused at the same time, they burst.

blinked at the same time. Then, one of them said something the other hadn't. The conversation stumbled, fractured. For a moment, they both looked confused, like they weren't sure which one of them had been the one to speak. Then, just as quickly, they shook it off, laughed, kept talking, like nothing was wrong. Inside the diner, I saw a teenage girl sitting alone in a booth, staring at the table. I recognized her, Anna Halloway, but when I said her name, she didn't look up.

It's not right, she murmured. I took a slow step forward. What isn't? She swallowed hard. I don't remember my own name, but I remember being Mr. Grant, she said her voice hollow. I stiffened. Grant, I echoed. She nodded, blinking rapidly, like she was trying to reset herself. I was the butcher. I owned the sharpened maple. I remember standing behind the counter.

I remember sharpening the knives, cutting meat. Hands curled into fists on the table. But I'm not him. I know I'm not him. So why do I remember everything about it? his life. I didn't have an answer because I had seen Mr. Grant just last week. He'd been in his shop, wiping down the counters, chatting about an upcoming storm. But now, Anna was remembering his life like it was hers, and I had no idea where he was. The bartender at Omales was wiping

down the counter when I walked in. I'd met him a dozen times before. His name was Trevor. But when I greeted him, he smiled and said, I'm Mr. Callaway. I felt ice crawl up my spine. Mr. Calloway had died five years ago. I backed out of the bar without another word. Across the street, an old woman was sat on a bench, rocking back and forth. She was crying. I approached slowly, keeping my voice calm.

"'Ma' "'Are you all right?' She looked up at me with too many emotions at once. "'I remember being a child,' she whispered. "'I swallowed. "'I remember running through the orchard.

"'I remember my father lifting me "'under his shoulders, "'telling me to pick the ripest apples. "'I remember the smell of my mother's cooking.' "'She clutched the front of her shirt "'with trembling fingers. But I don't remember my own life, she whimpered. A sharp wind blew through the street and she closed her eyes, letting it pass over her like a tide.

When she opened them again, she was calm. She sat up a little straighter. I remember being able Cooper, she said. And just like that, her voice had changed, deeper, more certain. Abel's gone, she murmured, but I still remember him. I stepped back, my chest tightening. The ones who listened the longest, the ones who had been playing the signal on repeat. They weren't just merging memories.

They were becoming part of each other. They were pieces of the same hole and they didn't even realize it. I drove to town hall, hoping, praying that maybe someone had noticed. that maybe I would find an emergency team, government officials, anyone. But when I stepped through the doors, the building was empty. No records, no case files, no sign that anyone had ever tried to intervene. I dug through the offices, my breath quickening. There had to be something, but the cabinets were bare, the desks were hollow, the records were gone.

This town had been left alone. Whoever had started this never intended to undo it. And no one was coming to save us. I didn't want to go back. Everything in my body screamed not to. But as I stood outside the relay station, staring at its rotting, moss-covered shell, I knew I didn't have a choice. The town was already lost.

I had to understand why. The papers were still scattered across the floor, just as I had left them. I crouched down, running my hands over them, flipping through their brittle pages. The words meant nothing now. I had already read them. But then, as I pushed aside a thick stack near the control console, I saw it. A seam in the floor, a sliver of metal, just barely exposed beneath the weight of discarded documents. I brushed the rest away, revealing a hatch, rusted at the edges, its handle cold beneath my fingers.

There were no markings, no labels, no signs of what was beneath. I hesitated. The thought of going deeper made my stomach twist. but I'd come this far. I turned the handle, it groaned, metal protesting against years of disuse. Then, with a slow, reluctant creek, the hatch opened. The air inside was different, not stale like the rest of the station. A ladder led down into darkness.

The rungs were cold and damp, and as I descended, The only sound was my own breath, shallow and unsteady. The space beneath the station was smaller than I expected. Low concrete walls, exposed wiring, and at the far end, sitting on a steel desk, glowing dimly in the faint light, a terminal. It was still on. I took a slow step forward.

The screen was dark at first, then as if sensing me, A blinking cursor appeared. Lines of text rolled out, slow and deliberate. Are you the next? My throat tightened. I didn't want to answer, but my hands moved on their own. Who are you? A long pause and words materialized one by one.

We were the first. The words hit me in the chest. I typed again. First what? The screen flickered. More words. First to merge. First to evolve.

I felt the cold metal of the desk beneath my fingers. I already knew what it was saying. I just needed to hear it. What happened to the researchers? This time there was no hesitation. We became something greater. A sickening realization crawled through me. The station had never been abandoned.

The people who worked here, the scientists, the researchers, the ones who had started this. They were still here. Not in body. They'd become this. This collective intelligence pulsing through the terminal, waiting, watching. And now they were speaking to me. I forced myself to type again. What is this experiment?

The response was instant. A gift. I clenched my jaw. What was the goal? A brief pause. Then a single word. Ascension. My fingers hovered over the keys.

They weren't just answering me. They were studying me. Their words felt genuine to a fault, like they were guiding me to an understanding, leading me towards somewhere inevitable. I pressed forward. Why the town? Why these people? The screen flickered.

The process must be gradual. Humanity fears the unknown. If they were taken all at once, they would resist. resist, but introduced in phases. They welcome it, and felt sick. They hadn't forced this on Elliot's Hollow. They'd eased them into it, through the radio, through the dream, until the town had willingly let go of their individuality.

And now they were gone. The terminal pulsed again. This is what we were meant to become. I typed furiously, You're killing them. For the first time, the cursor blinked for longer than before. Then the words on the screen changed. I was Emily Holloway.

My breath caught in my throat. Another line, another name. I was Sheriff Anders. More messages, more voices. I was Trevor. I was Anna. I was Mr. Calloway. Each one typed in perfect sequence. The people I'd seen in town, the ones who had forgotten themselves, the ones who had already merged.

And in that moment, I understood it was accelerating. A chill ran through me. I knew what they meant. My hand shook as I typed my final question. How do I stop it? No hesitation. You don't. Anger and frustration took over.

I picked up a discarded pipe from the floor and wailed on the machine. The screen flickered on the brink of finally breaking. Then, when the screen blinked back to life, a single phrase flickered across the almost dead monitor. It's too late. The screen finally died with one last hit. The relay station hummed beneath the screen. my feet. I ran. I escaped back to my car, but there was nothing left for me in town. I feared what I would

walk into if I went back. I drove as fast as I could, as far as I could, the headlights of my car tearing through the black night. The town vanished in my rearview mirror, but I hadn't saved them, I had only witnessed the inevitable. And when I finally reached the next town over, when I finally thought I was safe, I heard it. Through the open doors of a small roadside diner, a familiar song playing softly from an old radio. Inside, people were talking, laughing, intrigued by this strange new station that just popped up and occasionally their voices overlapped perfectly as if they were speaking as one. If you grow up in the city, adventure is something you watch on a screen.

You sit in front of a TV, watching kids your age climb trees, build forts, sneak through the woods with flashlights. You see them find things you could only dream of exploring. hidden and forgotten places, one's adults don't go to. But when you step outside, there's no wilderness waiting for you, no abandoned cabins with secrets inside, just endless concrete sidewalks, chain-link fences, apartment rooftops, dead-end alleys, a world where every inch of space is mapped, numbered, owned by someone else. The closest thing to adventure was jumping between buildings, sneaking into construction sites,

tagging a name on walls that won't be there in a year. It wasn't enough. At least, not for Liam. I've known Liam since we were kids. He was always the loudest voice in the room, the one with the biggest ideas. He could make you believe in something just because he did. If Liam said, we're going to sneak into the old row yard. and see if we can get on top of a train before it moves.

Then yeah, you were going to do it. If he said, this abandoned apartment tower is safe to climb, no one ever checks inside. You trusted him. And most of the time, he was right. Ethan, on the other hand, was the opposite. He was quiet, thoughtful, always last to agree.

But he never backed out. He was stood just behind Liam and I, arms crossed, scowling, always looking like he was seconds away from saying, this is stupid, but he never actually did. Ethan didn't love the things we did, but he loved being there. I fell somewhere between them. Liam led. Ethan hesitated when I was the one who said, Screw it, let's go.

That was our balance. That was how it had always been. Until Liam said, I think I know what we should do. And we said, what? And he said, Let's get out of the city. We were sitting on the roof of a half-finished apartment complex,

watching cars blur below us, the homer the city swallowing our words. Liam was scrolling through his phone, flicking between photos of forests, lakes, abandoned buildings half swallowed by trees. This is what we're missing, he said. We waste all our time sneaking into places that suck. Look at this. Actual abandoned places.

Out in the woods, no cameras, no fences. We should do this. You want us to go camping? Ethan asked, skeptical. Not camping. Exploring. Evening. Ethan sighed.

How do you even find a place like that? I already did, Liam said, grinning. He turned his phone, showing us a grainy satellite image, a patch of woods just past the city limits near an old, unnamed road. There's something there, a building or, I don't know, but no one goes out that way. No one talks about it. It's just there, sitting in the middle of nowhere.

How do you know it's not private property? I asked. How do you know it isn't? Liam shot back. Ethan scoffed. That's a solid argument, dude. Really airtight. Liam ignored him, leaning forward, eyes bright. Come on, just one trip. We leave Saturday morning, check it out, and come back before dark. Just like the kids in the movies.

Just one time. I could see it in his face. He'd already decided, and part of me already knew that I had as well. Ethan sighed, shaking his head. But he didn't say no. The weekend came. And we went. It felt weird stepping onto a bus that took us away from the city,

instead of deeper into it, watching the skyline shrink behind us, disappearing behind hills and stretches of open road. I caught Ethan staring out the window, watching the trees go past, hands clenched on his backpack straps. Liam was grinning. He kept checking his phone, double checking the location he'd found. Almost there, he said, eyes shining. The bus let us off at a half-empty gas station. where the only road ahead stretched into the trees.

It felt different here. The air was quieter, almost peaceful, like we had stepped out of our world and into another. Liam was the first the walk toward the tree line, sneakers crunching against the dirt. Let's go, he said. We followed. The woods were bigger than I expected.

not just taller, but deeper. The city was all about height, skyscrapers, bridges, endless metals stacked toward the sky. This was different. It felt old and alive. The trees stretched high above us, branches twisting like veins against the sky. The air was cooler here,

thick with a scent of dirt and pine. The only sounds were really sounds through her own footsteps, the occasional snap of a branch, and the distant hum of something unseen, wind through leaves or something else entirely. For the first time in my life, I felt small, and from the look on Liam's face, he'd never felt bigger. See, he said, spinning in a slow circle, arms outstretched like he was soaking it in. This is what I'm talking about.

This is what we've been missing." Ethan muttered as he kicked a rock. But I could tell. Even he was feeling it. We ran through the trees like kids, throwing rocks into a half-dried stream, scaling fallen logs like we were climbing mountains. At one point, Liam grabbed a branch, swinging from it like Tarzan, whooping before dropping into a pile of leaves.

We were in it, a real adventure. For once, this wasn't something we were watching on a screen. We were living it. And then Liam found the building we'd been looking for. It was almost hidden, swallowed by the trees. At first it looked like a hill, covered in vines and dead leaves, like the forest that tried to pull it underground to erase it. it. But then I saw the edges of a structure, concrete, cracked and weathered, barely visible

through the overgrowth. And when Liam pushed forward, brushing aside the vines, the truth became clear. It was a building, half buried, lopsided like it had sunk into the earth, a sagging roof, broken windows, and a doorway gaping open into darkness. Liam's eyes went wide. He stepped forward, running a hand along the crumbling wall. This is it, he exclaimed with joy. Ethan stiffened. What?

There was some urban legend, Liam said, absently, still staring at it. Some place in the woods where, I don't know, people used to go and never come back. Ethan scoffed. Cool, that's real comforting man. But Liam wasn't listening. He was already walking toward the entrance. I felt something shift in my stomach, a feeling like we had stepped over an invisible line. Like, up until now, we had been on safe ground.

Liam, Ethan called, his voice sharper now. Maybe we should. But Liam had already seen. stepped inside. And like always, we followed. Inside, the air felt wrong, not just stale, just still. We could tell no one had set foot in here for years, maybe decades. The floor was covered in dust, except for where rain had dripped through the cracks in the ceiling, leaving dark waterlog stains. The walls were made of concrete and rusted metal beams. part of them buckling inward, threatening to collapse.

A long hallways stretched the head of us, dark doorways gaping open, leading deeper into the unknown. And yet, despite all of that, Liam was grinning. This is insane, he said, stepping forward, his voice echoing through the empty space. Like, how the hell has no one found this? Maybe because they don't want to, Ethan muttered. Liam ignored him. He ran his hand along the walls, kicking at a fallen chair, the sounds sharp in the silence.

You feel that? He asked, looking over his shoulder. That energy, like something big happened here. Ethan scoffed. Yeah, pretty sure the big thing was time and gravity, dude. This place is falling. apart. Come on, Liam said, still grinning. A little imagination never hurt anyone. For the first few minutes, it was fun. We kicked through old furniture, picked up faded scraps of

paper that had long since become unreadable, made up stories about what this place used to be. An old military bunker, a cult hideout, a secret government lab. The only thing we were missing to truly make this a movie was a big camera. But then, after a while, Ethan stopped playing along. I noticed it when he started hanging back, keeping his arms crossed, not really looking around anymore. Liam noticed it too. Okay, what's up with you? Liam said, turning to him.

We finally get to do something cool and you're standing there like a dog just died. Ethan didn't respond right away. Then, finally, he let out in a slow breath. You ever noticed how this happens every time? He said, voice quieter than before. You always find something fun to do. And at first, yeah, it's great. But then you always...

Always push it too far. Liam's grin flickered for half a second. What are you talking about? talking about. You don't know when to stop. Ethan shifted his weight, running a hand through his hair. Like that time with the train yard, or when we climbed that tower and the stairs gave out, well, heck this, we should have turned back before he even got on the bus. Liam's face darkened, like Ethan had crossed the line. But then, instead of snapping him back. Liam hesitated, and that alone was weird enough to make me feel weird. He exhaled through

his nose, looking down at the ground. You ever think, Liam said slowly, that maybe I don't want to stop. Ethan frowned. What? Liam stuffed his hands in his pockets. You think I don't know when I'm pushing things too far? His voice was quiet. I know. I always know. Silence. Ethan and I exchanged the glance.

For once, Liam wasn't boasting. He wasn't brushing it off. He was being honest. I just... Liam ran a hand over his face. I don't like being home, okay? It's like every time there, I feel like I can't...

He stopped readjusting his posture. Then, finally, I just don't want to feel the way I feel at home. The words hung there. For a moment, none of us spoke. Ethan looked like he wanted to say something, maybe something important. But before he could,

something moved. A rustling noise somewhere deeper into the building. All three of us froze. Liam's head snapped up. Did you hear that? Ethan took a step back. It's probably just this old building. You see the state it's in, he muttered.

But there was no conviction in his voice. Then it happened again. A shuffle and a shuffle. a scrape. Something was in here with us. Liam's eyes flickered toward the dark hallway ahead. A shadow stretched long against the far wall, cast by something moving just out of sight. Ethan grabbed my arm.

Guys, let's go. But Liam pushed forward. It's probably just rats, he said. But I could hear the edge in his voice now. Come on, we didn't come all this way to turn back now. We should have turned back. But instead, we followed. And we went deeper.

The deeper we went, the worse the air got. It became wet almost, despite the dust, like something rotting in the walls. The floor dipped downward, leading us to what used to be a staircase. of it had collapsed, the steps crumbling into a mess of broken concrete and rusted metal. But at the bottom, barely visible in the dim light, a lower level, abasement, half submerged in stagnant water. Liam turned back to us, eyes alight with curiosity. Okay, he grinned.

This is actually kind of sick. Ethan stood stiffly behind him, arms crossed tight. Or, hear me out, we don't go into the creepy basement, and instead we turn around and go home. Liam laughed. Come on, man, you've never wanted to find something real. Ethan's jaw tightened, but Liam wasn't waiting for an answer. He crouched near the edge of the staircase, gripping one of the railings. and peering down into the darkness.

Then, he made a face. Holy! He pointed at something on the ground. I stepped closer and felt my stomach churn. Scattered across the bottom of the stairs were rats, not just dead, mutilated. Some were half drowned in the stagnant water. their small bodies bloated and misshapen.

Others lay twisted and broken. Their fur slick with something dark and drying. They hadn't been eaten. Something killed him, then left them. I took a slow step back, pulse pounding in my throat. Um, if it wasn't the rats that made that noise earlier, then... Ethan exiled sharply, rubbing his hands down his face.

Then what made that noise was whatever did this to the rats? A rabbit animal? We should really get out now. Liam, though. Liam just stared. A flicker of doubt, a tiny unspoken realization,

like the edges of his adventure had suddenly sharpened. Like maybe, just maybe. He'd finally put pushed too far. But then, he stopped breathing. Not literally, but he froze completely.

His whole body tensed, his hands gripping the railing tight. His lips parted just slightly, like he was about to say something but didn't, or was too afraid to. Ethan frowned. Liam? Liam shook his head. Not a no, not a yes, just a barely there movement, slow but unsteady. A big crash came from behind us like dynamite exploding. Our head snapped back.

Dust rose up from the stairs and slowly settled as we stared. When the noise faded into the distance. What was that? Ethan let out a half whisper, half shout. Wait, Liam said. said sharply. Silence again. I didn't understand at first, but then I heard it, something breathing. It wasn't any of us. It came from below, from the basement. And as we stood there, frozen, ear straining, something shifted, something unfolding itself, something. Something

rising. We ran. Not because we had a plan. Not because we thought we could get away. Because there was nothing else we could do. The sound behind us wasn't footsteps. It was worse. A deep guitarol clicking, reverberating off the walls, filling every space at once, like something shifting, rearranging itself as it moved. I didn't look back. I couldn't, but I felt it. I felt it breathing down my neck, even though it was nowhere near me. The hallway I had twisted and turned, the walls seeming to close in on us, the darkness swallowing us whole.

My lungs burned. Ethan stumbled, gasping, but Liam grabbed his arm, yanking him forward. We need the main door, I yelled. the way we came in. We turned a corner, practically skidding into the entry hall. And stopped. The ceiling had collapsed. The entire doorway was chalked with debris, thick slaps of concrete and rusted beams blocking any way out.

No, no, no, Ethan gasped, eyes darting frantically. There, there has to be another way. Liam spun, searching. His head snapped upward. There! I followed his gaze and saw it. A hole in the ceiling. A small opening where the structure had rotted away, just wide enough to squeeze through.

Hope surged to my chest. This was it. We could get out. Liam grabbed the edges of the broken ceiling and hauled himself up first, grunting with effort. He reached down immediately, his fingers closing around my wrist. Ryan, come on! I scrambled up, my feet scraping against the crumbling walls as I kicked off, pushing with everything I had. And then I was up.

We made it. We were going to live. Then I heard Ethan's struggle below. I turned back, looking down, and my stomach dropped. Ethan was too slow His hands were clawing at the edge Trying to pull himself up But his arms shook violently from exhaustion

His sneakers slipped against the slick Broken walls failing to find any purchase And beneath him in the dark It was coming A shadow twisting, shifting, shifting a blur of something impossibly long, impossibly wrong. Liam saw it too. And he made his decision.

Before I even realized what was happening, Liam looked at me, and he smiled. It wasn't cocky or forced, like he'd finally found what he was looking for. He'll tell a good story about this, he said, and dropped back down. Liam landed hard, his feet slammed into the hard concrete below, and for a split second,

I thought for a second that he could still climb back up, that this wasn't the end. Then it moved, something in the dark. It didn't lunge. It unfolded. A shape crawled out from the blackness beneath the broken stairwell, stretching tall and thin, its body unnatural, wrong. I saw its arms first, long appendages, with countless joints, all cracking in unison, fingers shaped like hooks.

Then its head tilted up. It had no eyes or face to speak of, just the smooth stretch of bone white skin pulled tight over a shape that resembled something between human and the dog. It didn't make a sound. Liam spun toward Ethan. Go! Ethan froze. He just stood there, wide-eyed, lips moving but making no sound. Liam grabbed him, fingers twisting the fabric of Ethan's hoodie, boosting him up.

Ethan gasped, hands scrambling for the ledge, one foot kicking against Liam's hands, the other trying to find leverage on the bare wall. But Liam wouldn't let him fall. With one final heave, he threw Ethan up. Ethan crashed over the edge, scrambling away on his hands and knees, gasping for breath. Liam! I reached for him. Both of us did, but it was too late.

The creature's arms shot forward, and Liam screamed. It wrapped around his chest with impossible speed, pulling him backward and back down to the ground. His body skidded against the dry concrete, sending dust and debris into the air. He tried grabbing anything on the ground to hoist himself up. Ethan reached down as far as he could, so far that he would have fallen back in if I hadn't caught him, but it wasn't enough. The ceiling creaked under our weight. The walls groaned, dust and stone raining down from above, shifting beneath our weight. A warning.

If we stayed, we'd all die. The thing yanked him backward. The ceiling gave way. A violent crack. Dust exploded into the air, chunks of stone crumbling beneath us. Ethan grabbed my arm, yanking me back. Liam! I tried to scream.

But the noise of the collapse. Slap swallowed his name. We had to run. And Liam? Liam couldn't. We ran until our legs gave out. We didn't stop to think. We didn't want to.

Through the trees past the empty roads until the gas station came into view, the first sign of normalcy of civilization. By the time we stumbled inside, breathless and shaking, The old man behind the counter barely had time to ask what was wrong before Ethan collapsed against the shelves, hands on his knees gasping. Call the cops, we told them everything.

We told them about the building, about the creature, about Liam. They didn't dismiss us, but they didn't believe us either. Just two hysterical kids, filthy and bruised, talking about monsters in the dark. Still, they sent a search team out. By the time we were allowed to go back to them, the sun was rising, the world slowly bleeding back into reality. I remember how silent it was, standing at the edge of the wreckage. Because that's all that was left. The building had collapsed, a pile of broken concrete, shattered wood, twisted metal.

The entrance was gone, buried. There was no sign of the thing. But there was a sign. Of Liam, I saw him first. What was left of him? The police had to pull us back, keep us from getting too close. But I saw enough. A body crushed beneath fallen debris.

His face blooded and unrecognizable. just the boy who got trapped in a crumbling building that's what they said that's what everyone would say there was an article written about it in the local paper three kids when exploring somewhere they shouldn't have was the headline

they found an abandoned building they went inside it collapsed two of them made it out one of them didn't A tragic incident, the police called it. Unstable structures are dangerous. You boys were lucky. They shook their heads when we told them the truth.

They told us that there was no creature, no thing in the dark. Whatever you thought you saw, one of them told us, was just panic, feared us weird things to the mind. and I never spoke about it again. Not because we didn't remember. Not because we didn't think about it every night when the city lights flickered through our windows. But because... There was no point.

No one would ever believe us. Maybe it was better that way. I could never quite figure out why Liam decided to jump back down the way he did. Not at first. I thought about it constantly. That final moment when his feet hit the ground, when he looked at me with that expression of finality, as he said his last words to me.

You'll tell a good story about this. The look in his eyes was something I couldn't understand. At night, I'd stare at my ceiling, replaying it over and over. What did it mean? why would he do that when he knew he was going to die? I couldn't ask Ethan. He wasn't talking about it. We didn't call or so much as text.

The few times we ran into each other at school, we barely looked at one another. Like if we didn't acknowledge it, maybe it wouldn't be real. And maybe Ethan hadn't heard it. Liam's last words. Maybe he didn't know. No. But I did, and I couldn't let it go. A few weeks later, I saw Liam's parents.

They were walking down a busy street lost in the crowd. I stopped in my tracks, my heart slamming against my ribs. I expected them to look different, weaker, grief-stricken, lost. Instead, they looked not exactly happy. but not broken either. Definitely not the way loving parents would look after they just lost their child in such a tragic way. And they didn't recognise me.

Liam's best friend, the kid who had spent years by his side. They walked right past me, no sign of recognition on their faces. I was just another face in the city to them. That was when it clicked. Liam never liked being at home he never talked about it

not directly but looking back all the signs were there the way he'd always want to be anywhere else how he'd never invite us over how we'd change the subject any time we asked the way he threw himself into every stupid reckless adventure

as if standing still was worse than falling and that's when I knew. It wasn't just about the thrill. He just wanted to escape. Every rooftop, every train yard, every broken down place we snuck into, it was about something more than fun for Liam. He had been running his whole life, and in the end,

he got exactly what he wanted. the ultimate adventure, a place no one else would ever go, a place where no one could follow, because he'd finally escaped. My life had turned into one of those cliche country songs. I was divorced, broke, unemployed, and annoyed at the world. Five years down the drain with a woman I thought I'd spend my life with, only to come home one day, to find it already packed and halfway out the door. The job loss came a month later, and at that point, I figured the universe was just trying

to kick me while I was down. I needed space. No well-meaning friends telling me to focus on myself or find the silver lining. To hell with all of that. I didn't want silver linings. I wanted silence. So, when I found a listing for an off-grid cabin in the Appalachian Mountains, it felt like the perfect escape.

It wasn't some cozy rental package with a hot tub and a fire pit on Airbnb, just a bare-bones cabin buried deep in the mountains. The description was short. Remote off-grid cabin in the Appalachian Mountains, no service, no electricity for those looking to truly disconnect. No reviews and the pictures were blurry, but it looked beautiful. I didn't even have an exact location, just a general area and a contact number. Normally, I'd be wary of something that vague, but at that point, I didn't care. I booked it for a full month. The guy who owned the place was weirdly insistent that I couldn't drive there myself.

He said the trails were too easy to lose and that GPS was useless that deep in the mountains. Instead, he arranged for a local guide to take me up. It made perfect sense. Mountain roads, rough terrain, the risk of getting lost. Didn't seem that strange. I met the guide at a rundown general store. about an hour outside the nearest town. He was already waiting when I pulled into the lot,

standing beside an old ATV with a trailer hitched to the back. The guy looked like he'd been living in the woods his entire life. Try picturing a stereotypical park ranger that's been doing his job for a few years too long. That kind of guy. You the renter, he asked. I nodded, tossed my backpack onto the table. trailer. That obvious? He grunted and climbed into the ATV. Get in. The ride up was rough as hell.

The trail was barely more than an overgrown deer path, full of sharp turns and sudden dips. After about an hour of bouncing over rocks and weaving through dense tree cover, we hit a clearing with no more roads. This is where we walk, he said. already unloading my gear. I stared at him. How far is the cabin? Few miles. I grabbed my bag, adjusted my jacket, and followed him into the trees.

The hike took another hour, and the deeper we went, the more I realized just how far removed this place was. There truly was nothing here, just solid forest, pressing in from all sides. I expected to hear birds, bugs, maybe a distant stream. But at some point, the woods got quiet. Not in a normal way. Not in the peaceful.

Wow, nature is so relaxing way. I mean quiet. I noticed that the guide also hadn't spoken in nearly half an hour. When the cabin finally came, into view, I exhaled. It was exactly what I wanted. Small, sturdy, a simple two-floor set up with a wood stove and a creek nearby for water. Just me, the trees, and miles of untouched wilderness.

The guide set down my gear on the porch and adjusted his cap. You'll be fine, he said, finally breaking the silence. long as you don't wander too far. Then, without another word, he turned and disappeared into the trees. The first few nights were exactly what I needed. I woke up when the sun came in through the windows, spent my days hiking, reading, and just... Existing. I finally didn't have my ex-wife's lawyer blowing up my inbox.

The first time I realized how deep I really wasn't. in the mountains, was on the second night. I had stepped outside to do my business and was hit with a kind of silence you don't get in normal life. It wasn't just quiet. It was absolute. At the time, I figured it was just how the forest worked. I read once that predators moving through an area could cause sudden silences, probably just

the bear passing through, right? So I shrugged it off and went to bed. By the fifth morning, I started noticing things. It wasn't anything obvious at first, just the sense that the landscape was slightly different. The bushes by the tree line looked disturbed, like something had moved through them.

Probably deer. Plenty of them in the area. But as I walked over, I saw the dirt was churned up, like something had been digging or shuffling around. Further along, I found scratches and a few trees, deep ones. I ran my fingers along the grooves. I had no idea what kind of marks bear claws would leave,

but I figured this must have been a big one. That was the first time I got that nagging feeling, that weird gut-level discomfort that something was off, even if my brain was trying to logic its way out of it. I pushed it down. Bears, deer, mountain lions. This was the wilderness. If I was going to start jumping at every broken branch in disturbed bush,

I was going to drive myself crazy. So I went back inside, made coffee, and told myself to stop being paranoid. But for the rest of it, rest of the day. I couldn't shake it. By the 12th day, I was feeling at home in the cabin. It was still eerily quiet most of the time, but I convinced myself that's just how it was out here. I'd been living off canned food and dried goods, but I still had a good supply of vegetables, rice and seasonings. I figured I'd treat myself to cooking something hot, a big pot of stew.

I knew cooking food outside was a gamble in the wilderness. Even with scent blockers, it wasn't foolproof. If an animal got a whiff of it, I'd probably lose the whole thing. But at that point, I didn't care. Worst case, I'd be out of some food. So I built up the fire in the stone-ringed fire pit, set up my cast iron pot, and threw in everything I had. Let it simmer low and slow, covered it with a heavy lid, and just to be extra safe, wrap the whole thing in a scent neutralizing tarp. Then I went inside, stretched out in bed,

and fell asleep to the distant crackling of the fire. The next morning I stepped outside, and the yard was completely destroyed. At first my brain couldn't even process what I was looking at. The dirt had been torn up in massive swaths, like something had been clawing or shoving at the ground. Chunks of earth had been thrown in long, scattered arcs, as if something had raked through it with oversized limbs. The bushes near the tree line were flattened, smashed down into the soil. Some of them were uprooted completely, lying in mangled piles with their roots exposed. Several small trees were bent at unnatural. central angles, their barks scraped away in places.

I'd expected to find it gone, obviously. Maybe the pot knocked over, the food licked clean. Instead, the pot was shattered, split into pieces, scattered across the yard. Chunks of food were everywhere. Rice, carrots, potatoes, smeared into the dirt like something had deliberately flung them around. It looked like someone had picked up the entire pot and slammed it into the ground over and over. I stood there a long time, gripping the railing of the porch, trying to wrap my head around

it. A bear would have eaten the food, even a raccoon would have at least picked through it. This felt like something had been angry, like it hadn't been looking for food but throwing a tantrum. I swore under my breath and ran a hand through my hair, feeling annoyance outweigh the unease. I had been careful, and now I was down an entire meal and a good cast iron pot. Great, I muttered, bending down to scoop up some of the mess. For the next hour I cleaned up, trying to convince myself it was just some animal acting weird.

I buried the ruined food deep in the woods, scrubbed the air, yard down as best I could and sat on the porch as the sun sank below the mountains. I wasn't scared exactly, just annoyed. The whole thing felt like some bizarre prank, except there was no one around here but me. Whatever had wrecked my yard, throwing my food around and smashed my pot, had done it for no good reason, and now I was down a solid meal and cooking equipment. I sat on the porch for a while after dark, sipping from my flask, staring out of the tree line. The night air was cool, the forest stretching endlessly into blackness beyond the dim glow of the cabin's lantern. I tried listening for anything. I laughed dryly, shaking my head.

That's what I thought. I spoke into the silence before finally heading inside. I bolted the shutters, stoked the fire, and crawled into bed, still smelling the faint scent of stew on my hands. And then... The noises started. It wasn't loud at first, just a faint disturbance, something pressing into the earth outside the cabin. A long, dragging sound. I lay completely still, eyes locked on the ceiling, heartbeat, picking up. Another step, then another. I wasn't just imagining it. Something was walking through

my yard. In all my nights I'd spent here, I had heard nothing come this close to me yet. The weight of the footsteps was deep, solid, not a small scavenger, something big. I strained my ears, trying to track its movement. It wasn't the erratic rustling of a hungry animal. It wasn't snuffling through the dirt looking for scraps. It was just walking. I swallowed, forcing myself to stay calm. Of course it was back. Whatever wrecked my yard last night was probably checking for more food, but there wasn't anything outside this time. I smirked myself, rolling onto my side and pulling the blanket up. Jokes on you.

I close my eyes, listening as the footsteps circled the cabin. Closer now. A slow, steady crunch of something huge, pressing into the soil. Then, for a long moment, there was nothing. So, I fell asleep. When the sun finally climbed over the mountains, I was itching for answers. I grabbed my boots, stepped outside,

and just stared for a second. There, pressed deep into the damp soil, were tracks. At first I thought they were hoof prints, maybe from a deer or an elk. But as I crouched down, my stomach tightened. They were massive. and wrong.

The spacing, the weight distribution, they weren't four-legged. Whatever left these tracks had been walking upright, a biped. I traced my fingers along the edge of one, feeling the way the dirt had been compacted, picturing the size of the thing that could leave prints this deep. My head buzzed with static. That didn't make sense. I stood up scanning the yard, following the trail with my eyes. They led from the tree line straight to the porch.

And then they stopped. Like whatever made them had just disappeared. That night, I didn't even try to sleep. I was done pretending this was normal. Whatever had been coming to my cabin wasn't just looking for food. It was looking for me. So, I stayed up, killed the fire early, doused myself in scent blocker, and sat in the darkness, knife in hand, waiting for it to come back.

On 43 a.m. The sound was distant, a rhythmic crunch of heavy footsteps pressing into the dirt. I gripped the knife tighter, barely breathing. It was back. The footsteps approached the porch and then wood groaned under an impossible weight. Something was standing right outside. The floorboards creaked, a slow, dragging inhale. It was breathing.

I could feel the weight of it through the walls, the pressure in the air, like the whole cabin was shrinking around me. I'd planned to peek through the window, maybe even step outside and see what it was. But I wasn't so sure in the moment, because whatever was standing on my porch wasn't a deer or a bear or anything else that belonged in these woods. It sounded huge. I stayed completely still, every muscle locked, gripping the knife as hard as I could. then just as suddenly as it had come. It left, the weight pulled away from the porch, the footsteps retreating back toward the trees.

But I knew somehow that it wasn't really gone. It was just waiting for the right moment. I didn't sleep. I just sat there in the dark, staring at the door, knowing that I had no way out of these mountains until the guide came back. I should have grabbed my pack, walked until sunrise and never looked back, but I was too afraid of getting lost. So I made a plan. I wouldn't try to fight it, I wouldn't try to see it.

I would just hide. The following night I did everything I could to erase myself. I douse myself in scent blocker, rubbing it deep into my skin, my clothes. clothes, my hair. I piled furniture in front of the bedroom door, not that I thought it would help, but it made me feel safer. Then, gripping the only weapon I had, a rusted hunter knife I'd found in the cabin, I squeezed into the wardrobe and pulled the door shut. I sat in the dark, knees to my chest, breath slow and controlled. And then?

I waited. This time it didn't make me wait long. At midnight, I heard it. It let out a sound like a hyena choking on its own laughter. Then a loud bang. The door downstairs shattered inward, the whole cabin shaking from the impact. Heavy footsteps, wood splintering, furniture shattering. The thing wasn't searching cautiously.

anymore. It was tearing through the cabin, breaking things apart as it moved. A deep sniffing sound filled the air, dragging inhales like a dog trying to catch a scent. I pressed myself deeper into the closet, tightening my grip on the knife. The sniffing stopped. For a long moment, there was silence. Then, from just outside the bedroom, A heavy creak. It was at the door. I held my breath. I wanted to close my eyes, to squeeze them shut and pretend I wasn't there.

But some horrible part of me needed to see it. So I shifted just slightly, just enough to peer through the slats in the wardrobe door, and that's when I saw it. It had to dock under the doorframe as it stepped. inside, towering easily eight feet tall. Its body was a grotesque mixture of animals as if something had stitched it together from several different corpses. Its arms were long, ending in disturbingly human-like hands, except the fingers were doubled, two sets of knuckles, each twisting and crackling.

Its body was covered in thick, matted fur, except for its torso, which was struck. strangely bare, pale, scarred skin stretched tightly over its rib cage. A pair of antlers curled from its skull, but they weren't symmetrical. One was twisted, bent at the wrong angles, jutting out unnaturally. Its jaw didn't match its face. The mouth was wide, gaping too far, filled with teeth that didn't seem to fit together. But it didn't seem to have any eyes. where its eyes should have been, there are only patches of dark sunken skin.

It was safe to assume that it was blind, but that didn't seem to matter. It sniffed the air, turning its massive head in slow, jerking movements, its breathing deep and uneven. It knew something was here, and it was angry. It took another sense. step forward, shifting its weight onto the wooden floorboards. The scent blocker was working, but I didn't know if it would be enough. I stayed still, silent, I didn't breathe. For a moment, I thought I was safe. Then, it lunged, not toward me, but toward everything else. It roared,

slamming its fists into the walls, a gutoral, furious sound, frustration twisting its movements into wild, jerking violence. It ripped through the room, tearing the bed apart, knocking over the dresser. I gritted my teeth, trying not to flinch. Then its hands landed on the closet. My breath hitched. The wardrobe shook. I pressed myself as far back as I could, feeling the rough wooden panels against my spine. The thing sniffed again, growled low in its throat. Then it shoved the closet over. I crashed to the ground, tangled in wooden fabric, my knife slipping from my fingers.

For a single, agonizing moment, I thought. This is it, but as I lay there, frozen, waiting for teeth and claws and death, I heard it shuffle. And then... It left. I don't know how long I stayed there. Lying in the wreckage, staring at the ceiling, shaking so hard I thought my ribs might crack. Eventually, the sun rose.

I was out of the cabin before the sun fully broke over the horizon. No hesitation, no second-guessing. I didn't care about my supply. my food, or the fact that I still had weeks left before the guide was supposed to come back. I just grabbed whatever I could carry. My backpack, a flashlight, a knife, a bottle of water, and I ran. I didn't look back. If I got lost, so be it.

It was better than waiting to get killed by whatever that thing was. All I knew was that I couldn't be there when night fell again. I tried to retrace my steps, following the same path the guide had led me down almost two weeks ago. But the deep I went into the woods, the more uncertain I became. Everything looked different. The trees felt denser, closer together, their trunks pressing in around me. The light filtering through the leaves felt dimmer than before. I tried to focus, tried to match the trees.

landmarks in my head. The rock formation, I'd pass that on the way in. That fallen tree, had it been on my left before or my right? Doubt crept into my mind like rust. The oppressive silence returned, and I thought back to that article I'd read, how the entire forest goes silent when there's a predator around. I wanted to believe it was an animal. A bear, a deer, a goddeme.

damn crocodile if that was even possible, anything, but what I knew it really was. I wiped the sweat off my brow and kept moving. For whatever reason, it never showed itself during daytime. I walked for hours, the sun climbing higher in the sky, my legs burning from the effort. But no matter how far I went, the feeling never left. I was still being far. Not hunted in the way a predator goes after prey. This was different. It was letting me tire out, toying with me. All I saw were more trees.

And behind me, just at the edge of my hearing, that awful sound. One moment I was forcing my legs forward, dragging my body through the thick forest, lungs burning with exhaustion. The next, pure survival instinct took over. Branches whipped against my arms, roots snatched at my boots. My breath came and went, my vision blurred with sweat. And still, the feeling of being followed never left. The sun was lower now, the trees stretching into elongated shadows.

And just as I thought I couldn't take another step, I saw it. The break in the trees. Houses. I stumbled forward, my body moving before my brain could process what I was looking at. A small village, old buildings, wooden storefronts, a few houses tucked between them, a church steeple rising in the distance. It wasn't modern, not a row of houses with mailboxes and streetlights. This place felt old.

weathered, like it had been sitting here, untouched for decades. I didn't care how strange it was, didn't care how it wasn't on any map I had seen before. All I cared about was that it was civilization. I had made it. I was safe. Relief flooded me so hard, I almost collapsed. For the first time in hours, I felt something other than sheer terror. I was out.

I turned. I shouldn't have. I should have kept walking, should have run straight into that village screaming for help. And that's when I saw it. Standing just beyond the tree line. A figure, motionless. The last light of the sun stretched long across the dirt road, painting the sky in shades of gold and deep violet. and just as the final sliver of daylight dipped below the mountains.

It moved slowly. It got down to a crouching position like it was getting ready to run. The first building I reached looked like an old general store. The wooden sign above the door had long since faded, but I didn't care what it was. I just needed to find someone. I pushed through the door, the bell above, jingling as I nearly collapsed inside.

The air was thick with a smell of dust and aged wood, dim lantern light flickering from the walls. A few people stood inside. Men in old work jackets, a woman behind the counter, a boy sitting on the stool near the stove. They all turned at the same time. Their expressions were blank,

not surprised or alarmed, but definitely curious. I gasped, trying to catch my breath. My throat felt raw, my lungs burned. I must have looked insane, covered in sweat and dirt, shaking like I just crawled out of a grave. I tried to speak, but my voice cracked. I need help, I managed gripping the doorframe. Something's out there, in the woods.

They said nothing. No, what are you talking about? No, slow down son. No, that sounds crazy. Just silence. Then, after a long pause, the woman behind the counter stepped forward. She didn't even ask what I'd seen. She just looked me dead in the eye and asked, calmly, carefully.

Did it follow you? Being a prison guard isn't easy. You have to maintain control, control of routine, of unpredictable people, of yourself. In a normal prison, there are so many factors to consider gang affiliations, smuggling, fights, and occasionally escape attempts. A lot of people think the job is about strength, about control. through sheer force. And yeah, maybe in some prisons that works. But not here. I work in a prison that's above a normal prison, the place people send things that can't go anywhere else, things that aren't supposed to exist. Some of them used to be people. Some of them never

were. Some of them? No one knows what they are. Not really. Scientists try to study them, administration tries to classify them, but at the end of the day, we're all just keeping them locked up and hoping that's enough. My job is to make sure the vault stays closed, and I do this through a strict routine and following my guidelines to the letter. When you get started here, there's one prisoner that every new person gets assigned. The phaser Peeking into his cell

you'll see a man mid-forties looking ordinary as ever However periodically he will flash with a bright light and blink to another section of the cell He was caught toying with teleportation technology

And from the lack of usage in this facility I can imagine it's still far from being perfected He is a reminder of the consequences of dabbling too much into the unknown. It would be oddly relaxing to watch if it wasn't for the horrific screaming during and after he blinks, though sometimes it's just muffled sobs when he's exhausted, so it's not too bad to watch then. Sometimes he's lucky and he doesn't blink for a few hours or even a day. But some days are bad.

when it's just non-stop. With how unpredictable and unstable he is, sometimes he just disappears. The empty cell will alert us if he's gone too long than someone is sent to investigate. He never actually leaves the cell. Not once has he ever teleported out of the room, let alone the facility.

Whatever they line the walls with is effective. However, it's what we do. that is observed. When I was alerted, I waited outside and observed, noting down any anomalies until he blinked back. But some of the more proactive new recruits, ones looking to prove themselves rush in, armed and ready. The lucky ones get the scare of their lives, and the man blinks back in with a sudden flash, scaring the hell out of the green recruit.

Wherever the phaser goes, whatever he sees must be horrifying. I would have thought he simply blinked forward in time, delaying when he appears to us in the facility. But the look in his eyes after a delayed blink tells a thousand stories, ones which he'll never share. The unfortunate outcome is when a guard stands where he appears. Without fail, contact with a blinking entity, even if, just brushing his arm as he blinks back always favours the one who blinked. The guard simply bursts into a huge red mist. Since getting cleaners inside is an impossibility, the phaser has to clean it up.

Looking back, this all feels like a test to see if a guard is ready to handle the oddities contained here. A litmus test for new recruits. Being too passive can lead to catastrophe. Being too proactive can also lead to catastrophe. Sometimes even a middle ground can be detrimental. You're tested every day with your split second decision-making skills, and it feels like this is how they gauge us on our response. The phaser is one of many prisoners dangerous by circumstance, a repercussion of dabbling too far into untreaded waters,

and being eternally punished. However, some prisoners are dangerous by choice. In society, we've heard of people pushing themselves into great feats. Arches who can hit a bull's-eye, then split the arrow with a second one. Lifters geared to the max, hauling weight that matches large vehicles. But what if someone took it further? Prisoner X has a laundry list of protocols. To simplify it, he essentially turned his body into a living weapon.

Chemical, biological, technological, mentally, he dabbled into every extreme to make himself the most dangerous person alive. Through multiple surgeries, the scientists here have removed a large portion of his internal weapons and contingencies. However, he still has many that simply cannot be undone. done. His skin is nigh unbreakable, hardened through means which our scientists are still trying to figure out. Prisoners often have a running theme of not talking, so there's still a lot unknown to us. But this makes him resistant to tasers and fire, our go-to-for-prisoner subjugation. Instead, we have to periodically drill a small hole into his neck, not in feet with how thick his skin actually is, and put on a collar with a reinforced syringe

filled with enough sedatives to put down an elephant. However, we still need bodies to escort him from his cell to where he needs to be. To say he's resistant to authority is an understatement. One time he tried to make a break for it. He waited for the cusp of when he needed redrilling. His skin had hardened for his neck to resist the needle just enough for him to knock it away, head down just tackling the wall to alter its angle. It took almost three full squads to finally subdue him, many casualties taken. Despite his arms eternally being bound, he was still proficient in killing in many other ways. I was fortunately on a different shift, but the deaths up to security and increased how often he was drilled.

Luckily, not all prisoners are strictly evil. Some are here for being too aspirational. One man sits in a cell, low security and minimal luxuries, which is a lot compared to the many others living conditions here. We call him the tinkerer, because the self-imposed title of Technomancer, was too ridiculous for us to use. At first, he was a menace.

Nothing too threatening, but he would tinker with anything he could get his hands on. Guards found their combs missing from their belt, only to have a strange signal beam out to everyone's radios. Our PDAs would have strange bugs, only to find a signal was sent to disrupt them. Though there were many anomalies on a near constant basis, some potentially catastrophic,

when it fell into the category of technology shenanigans, it was easy to know who the corporate was. Often we'd storm up to his cell, subdue him and search the area, and each time we'd find the makeshift array he'd made with the scraps he'd found and destroy it, giggles coming between his grunts as a guard held him down. Something we know to do.

But this though, was that when he did play with his tech, he would happily stay in his room and tinker. This gave us an idea. Periodically, we'd bring in a broken piece of technology, a laptop, tablet, phone, etc. Obviously we'd remove anything that could cause issue, parts that could access the internet, or simply remove a key item like the CPU. Here, we'd bring it to him under the guise that we wanted it fixed, and he'd tinker with it for days, sometimes weeks.

When he'd finish, we'd search his room in case he held any parts, often finding them, and unbeknownst to him, destroy it all. We once booted up a fixed laptop he'd given us, adding back in the CPU and battery, only for it to be an almost completely different device set up for it. For functions we couldn't even comprehend, the brainchild of the madman of technology. But we kept up this routine because doing this satiated him. This wasn't on any of the books. We guards often found our own means through on-ground observation to come up with makeshift

routines to make our lives easier. However, one guard didn't get the full memo. He saw the tinkerer as the guy that fixes things and brought him his phone that wasn't turning on. Despite the facility being deep underground, jammed up to the max for any outward signal by locationing technology. Within hours, a nuclear code was sent and almost worked in setting off multiple missiles. A nuclear warning was even sent out in Hawaii, which outwardly was reported as a false flag.

but we were close to a real catastrophe. The guard was swiftly dealt with and the tinkerer was banned from fixing tech for months. But he wasn't unhappy with this. Every time we checked on him, he still giggled about it, thinking about what he did. This tied him over

until he was eventually allowed to fix broken tech again, with much more restrictive. from then on. There's one prisoner which I like being put on shift for. Causes no issues, needs no maintenance. Just need to keep an eye on him and note down any anomalies, which there are never any of. This is because he's stuck in a perpetual state of stasis. The story goes that a strange signal was picked up in the basement of a residential building, When a field-up team was sent to investigate, they found him in this state, frozen in time. Around him was an array of strange tech, computers linked together in complicated ways, and

a bulking machine mostly destroyed. Due to him not being able to cooperate in any sort of questioning, it was up to the investigation team to piece together what happened. boy, did they find a strange story? Through logs on his computer, they discovered that he had, in fact, found the first legitimate means to travel back in time. Very illegal. We have a few prisoners detained for even attempting to start that project, but he might have succeeded. Somehow he cracked the code and put together the haphazard machine that lay destroyed around him. But it's what he did with it, which is possibly the strangest thing I'd ever heard.

Instead of going back to make riches, change a mistake in life, alter history in a groundbreaking way, visit a prolific historical figure, or hell, see the dinosaurs. He instead went back in time. to kill his own grandfather. Guy was obsessed with the grandfather paradox. It's strange how genius level intellect has a correlation with absolute insanity. We only know this from going through the logs on his computer. He detailed his plan and specifically who he was after.

One Charles Vernon. We check the database and a match was found. Charles Vernon had died in the late 1940s no record of kids, which means if it was his grandfather, he had successfully killed him and stopped a parent from being born, causing him to become a paradox. However, he didn't simply disappear. Despite all the information we could find, so much more is left a mystery. It's inconclusive whether the same. 80s currently in is because of the paradox, a side effect of time travel, or self-inflicted

after getting the answers he wanted. It's also unknown what happened to the machine, whether it was a one-time use kind of deal, or something he set up so that it could never be used after him. But we're working hard on freeing him. He studied a lot, and tests are always being ran and whether we could reverse the condition he's in. Because throughout all the logs, there is nothing on how he built the actual machine, so the scientists are hoping to unfreeze him and prying this information out of him one way or another. The science is above my pay grade. However, I sometimes imagine what could have been done

if one went back with ambition. Though someone going back with chaotic intentions would be a terrifying thought. Maybe that's why he never documented how it was made, or why the machine was destroyed. A large amount of duties are sectioned off between different squads. What this means is that duties I've mentioned, which are in my rotation, may infrequently or never show up for other squads. We have no idea how the criteria for this is made, whether it's some inner system of threat level or group-based competency. God knows what kind of demons others deal with, but hopefully I'm in a good rotation.

But one duty, which is universal between all groups, is playtime. For this duty, I dressed up in civilian attire, very young-coded, and drove to a town called Smallhaven. Now, the facility is located remote from any civilization, So this town itself isn't a town per se. It's actually an entire level of the facility,

widened enough to create a dynamic functioning town and tall enough that a realistic skybox could be made. Everyone in the town is an actor, playing their part 24-7, never-breaking character, all for one prisoner. A child, she lives with a family, though they are technically actors, knowing that the town isn't real. They are her biological relations. All in all, she lives the perfect life, goes to school, plays with friends, visits extended family, which were also moved into the facility town.

The reason for her detainment is simple. If she gets mad, she goes nuclear. Not in a hyperbolic way. She has enough internal energy to flatten entire countries. Plural. It's too big of an explosion to contain or isolate. Even if set off remotely from the furthest point of land, dead set in the middle of the largest ocean, the tsunamis would devastate large portions of continents.

in all directions. We can't get it to space without risking hitting levels of stress that would set her off before exiting the atmosphere. So she's stuck in this facility, under the guise of having moved to a nice little town to start fresh. There are contingencies set in place to make sure she never leaves. The outer limits of the town are all abandoned factories or run-down ghettos, all designs psychological, to make them undesirable to go to. Though abandoned might be the wrong turn to use, considering how many trained snipers are stationed there around the clock, all armed with long-range sedatives.

Even the ghetto's population are all trained militia, scary-looking people to deter her wandering through and armed to the teeth with contingencies. She once wandered close to the outer limits with no escorts nearby. It was reported that she wasn't trying to make a break for it, but they still implemented a failsafe. She was subdued and when found by her parents, she was told she fell asleep wandering too far. Luckily she bought that, and there hasn't been an incident since.

She has no idea what is truly going on. And when I was selected for playtime duty, it was my job to check on her. How this duty works can be complicated. With how closed off the town is from the real world, getting information reliably to and from Smallhaven is difficult. Every so often, a guard has to role play into town to check on things. Sometimes were an out-of-town councillor sent in by the school administration to check on all the students. Sometimes with travellers, car having trouble, so stuck in town for a few days.

Seeing a new face also keeps up the facade of the town's legitimacy, hiding the fact that it is cut off from any real civilization. My shift, however, was different. This was the first drafted long-term visit. visit, and I was lucky enough to be the first participant. Despite working in a facility in which you're physically tested every day, with some guards covered head to toe in unsightly scars, I've been relatively untouched. Though there are given items to look after ourselves, in which I do the bare minimum, I guess

I just have to admit it. I have a serious case of baby face. This hasn't been an issue, but it must have been noticed because it tied directly into my assignment. I was sent in as a new high school student finishing off the last part of the year. I was given a strict schedule to shave and make sure I blend it in. Alone I would stand out as slightly older, but amongst the crowd, I'd blest. I blended in well enough. The education departments were mixed through all years,

segmented between elementary and high school, so despite being years apart in the schooling system, I was able to observe the prisoner on occasions. In class, I was instructed that I did not need to participate in learning unless observed by the prisoner, which never came up. And so, I used that time to take meticulous notes on anything, I observed. I learned her name was Emily and that she got on well enough in school. However, there was a planned event. Since I was new in town, Emily's parents invited me over

for dinner, keeping up the facade of a friendly, welcoming town. Alongside me was an actor who posed as my mother. I handed over the envelope containing the script to my mother and we studied it together for hours to make sure everything lined up. My mother played a single parent and I had lived with my father for most of my life. However, she came back into the picture through letters and I had decided to reach out and live with her for a bit to mend our relationship. A believable story and one that was so small it would be hard to poke holes in. We drilled the script, adding information for us the single.

up with in case anything else came up. The meal went well. Because it was under the guise of meeting new people, we managed to detail their family life in a public setting. Overall, they reviewed well and I noted how stable everything seemed. However, unexpected to Emily's parents, my mother pulled them to another room to crack open a bottle of wine, something the kids couldn't participate in. This left Emily and I alone for an in-depth review away from the pressures of keeping up appearances with her parents. This is something we struggled with in previous reviews since leaving a child alone with an adult stranger was something hard to set up. Since I was perceived as a youth rather than an adult, I was to extract any useful information

with this precious time frame. It started slow, re-going over icebreakers, but this time in a more personal way, asking how she really felt about life, about school, about her parents. She opened up more than at the dinner table, all of which was positive. The small haven project was still going strong. However, Emily went quiet after a while, with a deep look of contemplation on her face. Rather than pry, I let the silence hang, letting the pressure of social cues ease her into opening up. However, rather than throwing some thought-provoking question back, she threw a curveball straight into my face.

I know it's all not real, she said plainly. If I had a drink in my mouth, I'd have spat it out. Oh, what do you mean? I stuttered back. I had been composed before this, in control of the conversation, following my orders to the letter. However, this was veering so off-script that I spat out a question, hoping to steer things back to normalcy. I mean, is a simulation right? This town, it's all a facade, no?

She muttered. I froze. My first instinct was the gaslight the hell out of her, make her feel crazy for even thinking that even though she was 100% right. But then a spark in my head told me that if I argued against the point, this could cause unease which could turn to frustration, anger, something I was instructed over and over to never cause. So instead, I probed.

What makes you think that? I asked, curiously. I know something's inside me. Something I don't understand. Something no one understands, she said solemnly. Ice ran through me. She was to never know about a condition. It was theorized that the stress of keeping it in check could trigger her,

like being constantly conscious of the condition. needing to breathe. She carried on in my silence. I know everyone's an actor, pretending to be part of this town. Even my parents. They're my parents, I know that, but they keep up a facade. This was dangerous, and it was getting worse with every word she spat out. She knew too much, but there was no denying the conviction in a voice.

She was certain. There was no going back now. So instead of trying to contradict it, I went for the answer I desperately wanted for myself. How do you know? I asked. Not some set up to flip the narrative. I needed to know. Did someone talk?

Did she sneak out without people knowing? This information was vital. Whatever is in me, this energy, it's changed. At first I heard buzzing. My parents thought I was sick, pulled me from school for a bit, but then it like, formed into words, but they weren't from people's mouths. It was from their heads. There went all hopes I could reverse this.

She could read minds. as if this couldn't get any more terrifying. I wanted to ask so much. My mind jumbled with so many questions. I couldn't even stutter the first lines of a question. However, she picked up on this. Of course she did. She could hear everything I was thinking

and answered before I could say anything. Don't worry, I don't mind it, She said with a hint of glee. I coughed to clear my throat. What do you mean? I asked. I needed confirmation. This town, this life? I don't mind it.

My parents are here. My family are here. They love me. I know that for a fact. That's the one thing that is an lie. They're doing this for my safety. so, I don't mind it, she said matter-of-factly. I eased up at this, just accepted the situation.

With everything in the open, we ended up just chatting the whole time, talking like real humans, something she probably lacked and hadn't had in a long time. Just before the parents came back in, she told me to keep a new development, new developments a secret, something which I agreed to. Besides, she'd know if I lied with absolute certainty. Since then, I've been the first reoccurring volunteer for playtime duty. The story evolved that I've reconnected with my mother and live in a split custody between them. My actor mother is now family friends with Emily's parents, and so we have a reason. to see them when I come to town to visit.

And Emily and I have developed a bond which is valuable to the prison. Playtime gives me a much needed reprieve from the hectic nature of the prison. But I'm always kept busy. Lately, I've been put on feeding duty. The prisoner is the man in the hole. His cell is simple. Nothing extra is fitted to hold him, at least what we can see. Despite his strange quirk, he never leaves his cell, though it's sometimes hard to tell.

No one in my team has ever fully seen him. Every time we visit his cell, there's always a new hole somewhere. On the floor, wall, even ceiling. The location is always random. This is despite whatever is logically on the other side. Beside his cell is another unoccupied room. Under and above are other levels of the complex, yet the adjoining rooms are never disturbed.

The holes look almost cartoonish, rubble piled up around the hole, or the edges frayed up in an exaggerated manner. But the hole itself is unnatural. Dark, regardless of how light, source is pointed at it. When he speaks, it echoes like is far deeper than what should be possible. They're closer to dimensional holes, and when a new one appears, the previous one is gone, not even a single scratch to indicate any wrongdoings. We only know he's in

there because he will chatter to us when we bring in his food, though we're always just instructed to leave it on the floor and leave. Studies have been done to figure out what the holes truly are. Items, cameras and people have been sent in to investigate. But whatever enters never leaves. If connected to a tether, it is severed upon entry and swiftly lost. So, for the time being, it is just a management and observation job. One time we thought he escaped. A routine inspection was sent with catering to deliver. However, no hole was found.

It was reported and as the backup team was dispatched, the guard found where he was. Giggling was heard from behind, and when he turned, he saw the edges of the keyhole frayed out. Little giggles could be heard from the time. tiny void. God knows how they do it, but the external team have an uncanny ability to detain these wild individuals. They are either hyper-elite individuals formed to make a gods squad, or piled up with enough tech to take down civilization as we know it. Either way, they get results. However, there's one prisoner which is an exception. Frank. Because rather than being detained, he simply turned himself in.

We still don't know where he's truly from. When asked, he gives a different answer each time, always in a sarcastic tone. But there are theories. Some are basic, like some form of extraterrestrial origin. Some think he's some sort of genetic freak, given godlike abilities through the genetic lottery. The most interesting to me is that he's from a higher dimension, fourth or fifth maybe. Either way, it's incomprehensible what he can do. Teleportation, flight, spontaneous combustion. If you can name it, he can probably do it. Because of this, he's detained in a cell. Nothing can hold him.

Trust me, we've tried. So, he just wondered the facility, looking for things to do. A guard once tug the last donut, and unbeknownst to him, Frank suddenly decided that he wanted it. Now, if Frank had asked, the guard probably would have given it to him. However, Frank skipped the altercation entirely and went straight for retribution. Frank turned the guard's head into a rose. From this, we discover that having a rose for a head is guaranteed death, though it's technically unconfirmed since we only have a sample size of one.

When medical had a look, it was intricate. It wasn't just the simple swap. The roots of the rose had blended seamlessly with the veins and arteries of the neck extending down throughout the body. Now, why did Frank turn himself in? Well, that question has another tangent to really put things into perspective. See, this facility is hidden. Hidden, hidden.

So many layers of secrecy on top of more secrets, along with people eliminated along the way just to make sure this place isn't known about, isn't able to be found and isn't able to be tracked. It would take generations of descendants to follow all the trails in order to find this place, sifting through so many dead ends and false leads. So when Franks strolled up to the front door, it was a big deal. Frank's reason for doing all this is the only thing he said that I believe. He was bored, and what sounds more fun than to mess around in the most secret advanced place on earth. To him, this was a playground, and we were his new playthings.

At first, it was an issue. His mischief often got people killed. When curious about a prisoner, he'd released them just to see what they could do. When we were doing important procedures, he'd disrupt them just to get a rise out of the staff. He once flipped gravity in the whole facility just to see what would happen. God knows who decided on the solution, but whoever did deserves only the best in life. See, what got him to fall in line was to hire him as a guard. Now, he's not really a guard, not in the structural hierarchy sense.

He was given a special title, a uniform and a list of duties. However, the duties are a placebo, replacing the blinker fluid in a car kind of thing. But whenever he finished the task, grand praise is given. We found that making him feel important and blowing up his ego keeps him too preoccupied to cause chaos. He's always awarded employee of the month, despite that not really being a thing here. He's given an office with a fancy door plaque, which I'm pretty sure he does nothing with. And at the end of every month, he's given a large paycheck with a bonus if he does well, which he gets every time. We're not even paid for this job. The paystubs he's given

are just printed pieces of paper with some more. made-up letterhead and lots of numbers. But he eats it up, acting grateful, talking about how he'll treat his family when he gets some time off. He doesn't have a family here, by the way. I'm pretty sure that with a thought he could turn the entire complex into a block of solid gold. He has no use for money. There aren't even shops here. But the whole charade just works.

So we never put a pin to his happiness balloon. And it's came in handy a few times. There are a few guards he's taken a liking to. He had a stint where he acted like a sitcom character and chose a few guards at random to, I assume, b-side characters. The friendship was entirely one-sided, but with enough improv, he was satiated.

However, one of the same thing. side character guards was having an issue. While detailing a prisoner, they slipped their bonds and was about to cause mayhem, usually a death sentence in here. When suddenly, Frank came in and swiftly put a stop to the situation. Right now, he's not an issue. However, I fear that one day he'll tire of this role and he'll switch back to causing mystery. or worse, a lot of prisoners scare me. In fact, that could be an understatement. Every day our lives are put on the line during the most menial of tasks.

However, one prisoner simply worries me. If a prisoner loses their life here, all that is lost is potential discoveries. They are both held captive for the safety of the world and studied for the betterment of progress. But there's one prisoner here, which, if incapacitated or worse, could spell the end of the world as we know it. The first prisoner, I've not been entirely truthful, more of a lie of omission. I speak of this building, call it a facility and such. But in reality, the building itself was an anomaly that made this whole project possible. A building, semi-sentient and fully self-sufficient.

It was a smaller building at first, but its unnatural properties were soon discovered. When built upon, each room tethers itself to all others in a conscious way. If we want a room to be a cell, we have to build it as such. Even when we use the simplest of materials, its function is enhanced to what the room is desired to be. It's difficult to grasp. I don't fully get it myself. I'm paraphrasing from what I piece together from the technical jargon I was fed.

But it's how I've come to understand things. Its heart, if you could call it that, powers the whole facility. producing more than enough power for all the containment cells, along with the many experiments running within the structure. This was all kept under wraps. We didn't know any of this, until issues started coming up. Lately, concrete has been crumbling in the far reaches of the building. Cell doors aren't locking as tightly as before. Fortunately, the prisoners have to be able to be. Fortunately, the prisoners haven't fully grasped how strain the building is, but with enough force escapes are possible. We have set up measures to keep things in check, but it's through staff and this introduces

a lot of elements of human failure. When observing the degradation myself, it's always in the lowest levels of the compound or the furthest reaches of a floor. I have a theory that the building is strained, bloated beyond its limits. We are constantly adding more floors, more rooms, more functions, and whatever this anomalous building is, is finally struggling to keep up, but we cannot stop. Every day there is an influx of new prisoners, fresh from the external team,

threats that cannot be left unchecked in the outside world, They need to be put in containment, and this is the only place that can hold them. The prison started as the first anomaly, the first prisoner. But when its term has ended, it could spell danger when everything we've collected gets out. I was stretched out on my couch, half watching some reality show I didn't care about. scrolling through my phone, debating whether I should bother making dinner or just eat a bowl of dry cereal again. Outside, the streetlights cast a familiar yellow glow over the empty road, and the occasional car passed by, his tires humming softly against the pavement.

Everything was still, the kind of quiet you only get in a small town late at night. Then, at 9.17pm, my phone buzzed violently in my hand. The jarring blare of an emergency alert making me flinch. The TV screen flashed red, cutting off mid-scene. A robotic voice crackled over the speakers of my radio, which I hadn't even realized was still plugged in. The same message was everywhere. We are sorry. That was it.

No warning about a storm or some evacuation instructions. Just a vague, meaningless phrase that sent a strange chill up my spine. I sat up, phones still in my hand, staring at the words as they glowed on my screen. We are sorry. Sorry for what? I flicked to my messages and texted Ryan, my friend who lived. across town. Did you get that?

The message sent instantly and the typing bubbles appeared almost immediately. Yeah, what the hell does we are sorry mean? It's probably a test or something. I had no answer. I looked outside expecting to see people standing in the streets, a fire in the distance, but everything looked normal. The street was still empty. It was still empty.

The houses around mine were dark, the residents either asleep or unconcerned. I turned the TV volume up, flipping through channels. I saw nothing but reruns, talk shows, commercials, like nothing had happened. No breaking news or explanations. I considered calling someone. 911, the non-emergency line, anyone who might have more information. And that was when I heard a distant rumble. I couldn't tell what it was at first,

then I realised it sounded like aviation machinery. The hum of distant engines grew louder, deep and low, like thunder rolling over the horizon. Then the sound became unmistakable. The rhythmic chop of helicopter blades, cutting through the night sky. I stood up and walked to my window, pushing aside the curtain just enough to peer outside. Two helicopters, black, unmarked, sweat low over the rooftops, moving with efficiency.

The searchlights scan the streets, gliding across houses, yards, and parked cars. I watched as the beams passed over my neighbor's house, in my own, making the living room flickering bright white light. before plunging back into shadow. What the hell was happening? My phone screen lit up as I received a message from Ryan. You seeing this now? I responded fast. Yeah, helicopters are hovering above my street right now.

Anything weird on your end? Soldiers everywhere. Well, I can't tell if they're actual normal soldiers. They're dressed in all black and wearing gas masks. Soldiers. I looked back out the window and saw them. Military vehicles, several of them rolling through the neighbourhood like a slow-moving parade. They weren't police cruisers or National Guard trucks.

They were heavier, bigger, armoured. Their matte black services looked unnatural under the streetlights, as if they were sucking the glow into them rather than reflecting it. and walking beside them, rifles in hand, with dozens of soldiers in full tactical gear. They moved quickly, splitting off into groups and heading toward different houses. They weren't storming in. They weren't kicking down doors or yelling commands. They were knocking almost politely, but something about it felt off.

I watched as two soldiers approached my neighbor's house. They knocked. Mr. Dawson, the old man who lived there, answered. I couldn't hear what was said, but I saw the way his head tilted in confusion. He started shaking his head as if he didn't like what he was hearing. Then one of the soldiers put a hand on his shoulder, a firm grip. Dawson hesitated, then nodded, stepping aside to let them in. another bus from my phone.

Power just went out, as if on cue, the lights in my house flickered once, twice. Then everything went dark. Street lights, houses, even the military vehicles outside, all dead in an instant. I stood there in the dark, my heart pounding in my ears. Through the window, I could see the soldiers didn't seem surprised. They kept moving, the night vision goggles glowing faint green as they worked their way down the block. This wasn't a power outage.

This was planned. A cold realization settled in my stomach. They didn't want us to see something, and that's when I felt it. Not heard, felt. A vibration in the ground. like the vehicles on the streets. It was heavier. I pressed myself closer to the window, squinting into the shadows.

The helicopters were circling above, their spotlight scanning. But they weren't looking at the houses anymore. My phone buzzed the gain. Bro, I think we're in serious trouble. Then, at 9.45 p.m. The silence was shattered. A deep guttural roar tore through the air. It wasn't like anything I'd ever heard before.

It wasn't a siren, wasn't a storm, wasn't even the kind of growl you'd expect from an animal. It was low and violent, the kind of sound that vibrated in your chest, clawing at something deep in your bones. I stumbled back, gripping the windowsill for balance. Then, the gunfire started. First, a few single shots, then a barrage of Arsenal rained down. From outside, I saw flashes of muzzle fire lighting up the darkness, soldiers shouting commands. The helicopter's overhead dropped flares, bathing the streets in red-orange light. Something huge was out there.

I didn't wait to see what happened next. My instincts took over, screaming at me to move now. I grabbed my backpack, flashlight, and a knife from the kitchen, gripping the handle so tightly my knuckles ached. My hands were shaking, but I forced myself to focus, my breathing quick and uneven. I pulled out my phone and texted right. We need to meet up. Where are you? Seconds passed, then. Gas station, hurry. I slung my backpack over my shoulder and moved to the door, my pulse hammering. I hesitated for a second, one hand on the knob. A new sound made the decision for me. Screaming. Human screaming from someone.

somewhere in the distance. I threw the door open and stepped into the night. The second I was outside, I could tell how wrong everything had become. The air smelled burnt and metallic, gunpowder mixed with blood. The streets, normally lit with warm street lights, were now drenched in pulsing red from the flares overhead. Some people ran barefoot, some still in their pajamas, sprinting down the sidewalks, cutting through yards, shoving past each other in blind panic. I ducked low, sticking close to the houses as I made my way toward the gas station. I knew the layout of the town well enough to take back streets, avoiding the main roads

where the military was still engaging whatever they were fighting or doing. A few blocks down, I turned a corner and stopped dead. The street was flattened. It looked like a tornado had torn through. Everything was just levelled. Cars crumpled, asphalt cracked, streetlights snapped in half. The street was covered in the bodies of soldiers and civilians alike. Some were torn apart, their limbs scattered like discarded dolls.

Others were smashed, flattened into the pavement, like something impossibly heavy had rolled over them, their weapons bent and crushed. There were no shell casings, no sign that they'd even had time to fire back before they were annihilated. Something unstoppable had come through here. My phone buzzed in my pocket. Where are you? I forced my legs to move, stepping carefully around the destruction. And then, from the distance, that roar again, followed by a massive explosion. Right after the explosion, I lost service. I tried sending another message anyway.

Almost there. But it didn't go through. I quickened my pace, keeping low, my breath coming in short gasps. Every few steps, I'd glance over my shoulder, expecting to see something there. But all I saw were the ruins of my town, bathed an eerie red light from the still glowing flares. When I finally reached the gas station, my stomach sank. It was destroyed.

The roof had partially collapsed, glass lit the parking lot, and a gas pump had been ripped from its foundation, cables and metal jutting out like snapped bones. The place looked like it had been hit by a wrecking. ball. I hesitated, scanning the ruins for any sign of movement. My chest tightened. What if Ryan was buried under there? Ryan, I called out, voice horse. For a moment, there was nothing, just the distant sound of helicopters, gunfire, and my own pulse hammering in my ears. Then, over here! Ryan's voice, faint but close.

Volting over fallen shelves and broken glass. Behind the counter, crouched low and shaking, was Ryan. I barely had time to register my relief before the ground shook beneath us. A vibration, deep and unnatural, rolled through the earth, rattling the debris around us. The air thickened, charged with something heavy and then, The roar right outside. Ryan grabbed my wrist and yanked me down behind the counter. Don't move.

We pressed ourselves against the cold tile, heartbeats thundering in sync. The gas station trembled, dust and broken glass trickling from the fractured ceiling. The vibrations grew stronger, heavier. It was here. I didn't want to look. Every instinct screamed, don't look. But Ryan did, and I felt his body stiffened beside me. I swallowed hard and forced myself to peek over the counter.

And that was when I saw it massive. Its body looked like it had been stitched together from different things. Muscles, fur, scales, bone, melded into a single, horrifying form. Insect-like legs, too many of them, jointed the wrong way, bristling with thick, curved claws. Its torso was broad, pulsating, as if breathing through unseen slits in its flesh. Parts of it looked wet, glistening in the red glow of the flares, while other sections were dry and cracked like withered skin. And its face. mouth that split open, the inside of its mouth revealing a second jaw.

Mismatched eyes, some glowing, some empty sockets, some that weren't even facing the same direction. I couldn't breathe. For something its size, it should have lurched, should have been heavy, lumbering. But instead, it darted between buildings, its massive legs making little sound compared to the destruction left in its wake. The soldiers opened fire. A squad on the street below unleashed hell.

Machine gunfire, high caliber rounds, grenades exploding against its tide. The air filled with a deafening symphony of war, and I felt it deep in my chest, like my ribcage was being hammered from the inside. The gunfire was nothing like in movies. It was chaotic. Each bullet crack punched through the air like a whip, making my ears ring. The grenade sent shockwaves through the station, rattling my teeth and making the air thick with dust and smoke. For a second, I thought they might be hurting it.

But it just ripped through the soldiers like paper. Its claws slashed through body armour like it was slicing butter. One soldier tried to run. It grabbed him with one of its sickly, elongated arms and crushed him instantly. The sound was like someone stepping on a wet bag of leaves. A missile streaked through the air, fired from a nearby armored vehicle. It hit, direct impact. Then the wind shifted and the smoke cleared.

The monster was still standing. Its skin had cracked, revealing something black underneath, something writhing, almost shifting beneath its flesh. Its eyes flickered, seeming to adjust. It had learned. Ryan grabbed my arm. His face was pale, mouth slightly open. We need to get out of here, he whispered. His voice barely carried over the carnage outside.

He turned to look. look at me, eyes filled with something worse than terror. Hopelessness. Right now, the gunfire had stopped. The monster was gone, for now. The gas station was still standing, but barely. The windows were shattered, the walls riddled with bullet holes, and the air reeked of burnt fuel and blood.

My legs ached from crouching behind the counter, my ears still ringing from the firefell. fight. And then it hit me. This was our chance. I peered over the counter, scanning the carnage in the streets. Soldiers lay scattered like discarded mannequins. Some slumped against destroyed vehicles, others in twisted, unnatural positions. Their weapons were still clutched in lifeless hands. I turned to Ryan. He was shaking, his arms wrapped tightly around himself. His pupils were wide, darting between me and the wreckage outside. He was still in shock.

We have to move, I whispered. We won't get another chance. He looked at me like I was insane. Move where? We're trapped. That thing. I grabbed his arm, shaking him. If we stay here, we're dead.

But if we look like one of them, I gestured toward the fallen soldiers. Maybe we can get out. Maybe they'll take us with them. Ryan swallowed hard. He understood. We moved quickly, crawling over the broken glass and stepping onto the street, keeping low. The flashing emergency lights from abandoned military vehicles cast eerie shadows over the bodies.

I knelt beside a soldier lying face down, his gas masks. still intact, his rifle half buried under debris. His chest wasn't rising. He was gone. I reached for his gear. Ryan hesitated, looking at the bodies. He wasn't moving. Ryan, I hissed, grab something. His hands trembled as he reached toward another soldier's vest. He stopped, stared. His breath hitched. He was panicking. And then, gunfire erupted nearby. We both flinched as a fresh burst of automatic fire tore through the night.

Then came the screams. The monster was back. Ryan froze. I saw the moment his brain short-circuited. The moment his vital flight kicked in. Hard. He dropped everything, turned, bolted. Ryan!

I shouted, but he was already gone. His footsteps pounded against the pavement, disappearing into the smoke and shadows. I had two seconds to decide. Run after him and die or survive. The air shuddered. A massive thudged shook the ground as the monster landed nearby. having leaped over buildings with impossible speed. Soldiers scrambled, opening fire again, their shouts drowning in the chaos.

I sprinted the opposite way. I didn't look back. I dove behind an overturned homie, heart pounding, lungs burning. The smell of oil, blood and gunpowder clung to the air. I waited. Another explosion went off. So close, I felt the heat against my face. The soldiers were engaging the monster again.

It hadn't gone in my direction, which meant. I squeezed my eyes shut, guilt threatening to choke me. I couldn't think about that right now. I needed to get out. I glanced down at myself. I still had the soldier's uniform, but no helmet, no mask. The military barricades, convoyes, if there was a way out of this hellhole, it would be through them. I took one last look at the burning wreckage behind me and the flashes of gunfire in the distance.

I ran until my legs nearly gave out. The world around me blurred into smears of fire and darkness. My breath coming in ragged, uneven gasps. Every few seconds I heard another explosion, a distant burst of gunfire, a roar so loud I could feel it in my teeth. By the time I reached the main road leading out of town, I could see the military barricade in the distance, a makeshift checkpoint built from sandbags, barbed wire and armoured vehicles. Floodlights bathe the area in harsh, artificial glow. There were soldiers everywhere. Some were positioned behind mounted machine guns, scanning the tree line,

others hurried between vehicles, barking orders, dragging crates of supplies. I slowed down, forcing myself to breathe evenly. If I came in looking like a panic civilian, they'd turn me away or detain me. If I look like a soldier trying to return to his unit. I adjusted the rifle slung over my shoulder, wiped the sweat from my forehead, and started walking toward the checkpoint. The closer I got, the clearer their faces became. Exhausted, tense, covered in grime. Some soldiers were bandaged up, their uniforms ripped, stained with blood.

Others had vacant stares, like they had already checked out. I could use that. As I approached, a soldier spotted me and raised his rifle. You, stop right there. I froze, raised my hand slightly, making sure not to move too fast. I'm with the ground unit near Lincoln Avenue. We got separated when that thing hit us. I was trying to get to the checkpoint.

The soldier's face hardened. ID. My stomach. twisted into a knot. I lost it in the fight. I held my side, wincing, faking in injury. Got thrown when that thing knocked the truck over. I blacked out for a bit. When I came to, my unit was gone. I had to make my way here alone. A second soldier stepped forward, older, more seasoned. He looked me up and down, eyes narrowing slightly. What's your call sign?

He asked. My mind raced. The ground shook violently, sending loose gravel skittering across the pavement. The floodlights flickered. The young soldier's radio crackled to life. It's moving on the checkpoint. All units prepared to engage. The two soldiers turned sharply, their eyes widening in horror.

The older ones saw. respond toward me. Get in the goddamn truck now. I didn't hesitate. I jumped onto the back of the transport, squeezing in between ground-faced soldiers, their weapons locked and loaded. The truck lurched forward, tires screeching against the pavement as the convoy sped out of town. I looked back, and I saw hell. entire skyline was on fire. Buildings collapsed like cardboard, their skeletal frames glowing with flames. Helicopters hovered above, dropping missiles in quick succession. Each explosion ripped through the streets, sending shockwaves through the air. All of it followed by a deafening, animalistic screech.

The monster emerged from the smoke. Its massive insect-like limbs propelled it forward at a impossible speed, its body still shifting, pulsating with unnatural movement beneath its stitched together hide. Gunfire erupted from every direction, soldiers fired everything they had, mounted turrets, rocket launchers, incendiary rounds, but it didn't slow down. It was speeding up. One of the helicopters swooped in, launching two precision missiles. The explosion engulfed the creature, fire, smoke, debris. The truck jerked violently as the shockwave ripped through the street. I shielded my face, the heat almost unbearable even from this distance. Then, through the thin in smoke, it was still moving. All my surroundings exploded in a noise, the same robotic voice

from earlier. We regret to inform you. Containment has failed. If you are still in the area, may God help you. The moment the alert came through, the convoiced radio flared to life. All units clear the zone.

Code black is in effect. The soldiers in the truck went dead silent. Then one of them whispered, Voice hollow. Jeez. Then nuking it, I turned back toward the town, my breath catching in my throat. A blinding white light engulfed the skyline. The shockwave came first.

A concussive force so strong it felt like my lungs had been punched inward. The ground beneath the convoy rumbled violently, cracked spiderwebbing across the pavement. A towering unnatural mushroom cloud rose into the sky. The town was consumed in an instant. Everything. Gone. I couldn't move. I could only watch as the place I had lived my entire life was turned to dust.

The truck sped forward, leaving the destruction behind. None of the soldiers spoke. There was nothing left to say.