CreepsMcPasta Creepypasta Radio - "The second coming has already come and gone. I performed His autopsy" Creepypasta

Episode Date: January 1, 2024

CREEPYPASTA STORY►by ChristianWallis: / the_second_coming_of_christ_has_already_co... Creepypastas 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

The festival season is Aangbroken, and that betekent mudder. And so, ging Kim to come to combe On the same a waterdict tent,

a comfortable luggette, oh, so, and Lupeartprint regalarze. Miao! Now, now he has Kim not sure of the modder, just like that

the dancing, the modder man that, oh, wait just even, has he now only modder on? Oh, yeah, only modder.

Drove blithe? Goar for. Find what you need what you need on Amazon.com. It began with a black bag over my head. Six or seven men seizing me off the street on my way home from work, holding me at gunpoint in the back of a van. They explained in detail what would happen to my family if I didn't listen to them. Until that moment, torture was just a word. I'd never given it much thought. I wasn't prepared to hear some of the things they told me.

By the time they were loading me onto a helicopter, I would have done anything they asked. I arrived at the black sight, kicked out of the chopper, where my feet hit the hard-packed wet mud with a splash. Black hood torn off so hard it hurt the skin on the tip of my nose. And then, I got my first look at the place. Can't say if it met my expectations or not. I didn't have any idea where I was. going, or what it was supposed to look like when I got there. Still, it managed to leave me feeling surprised. An abandoned village nestled in the jungle. Mostly one-room hovels, lots

of corrugated iron. Here and there lay burned allotments. Dying pepper plants left untended, their fruits stamped into the earth by the passage of soldiers dressed in all black. Rotten fences and troughs to feed long dead pigs and goats lay smashed to pieces. And then, lurking on a hill like some architectural jump scare, was a three-story hospital made of glass and steel. State of the art, built in a place where tarmac was just a rumor. Officially, it had been put there by a charitable non-profit wanting to research novel diseases and potential cures deep in the jungle. Unofficially, it had always belonged to the CIA, a useful place to test strange things with pox in the name.

And when the time came, a useful place to dissect the impossible. Imagine my surprise when I was escorted by armed men to an office with my own. name on the door and discovered that I was to be in charge of its latest major project. Head of research printed on the glass. Real official looking. Big black letters like I'd always worked there. First thing I thought, how long do they intend to keep me here? But that didn't last long. The hospital became my home and has been ever since. Less than 20, 24 hours after my arrival, and I had my feet up on the desk barking orders at lab technicians. I slipped into the roll easier than I'd like to admit.

You see, where they got me was on scientific curiosity. That's how they ensured I was on board with the project. That's why they never pointed a gun at me after day one. They didn't have to. The second I saw that thing inside the Messiah's chest cavity, I was a willing asset. No more me, only the project, the discovery and the revelations. Lying on that slab nestled in the flesh of an otherwise normal looking man was a white

hot piece of divinity, a pinprick in the fabric of reality. I don't know how else to describe it. It was like I'd spent my whole life seeing two-dimensional shableness. shadows, and then I suddenly got a glimpse of the three-dimensional shapes casting them. I haven't seen my children since they took me. Couldn't tell you their names. I was never the same after the first autopsy. No one in that place was sane after the scalpel first bit into his flesh.

Attrition, amongst the research staff, was incredibly high. Every day, another nurse seized by stigmata. Or, a once faithless lab technician struck by the call to write the Third Testament. The guards dealt with the unwilling members of the team. Traumatized scientists and clinicians lined up one by one against an exposed brick wall in the jungle heat. And shot. I remember smoking in the cafeteria in between surgeries, nervously shaking as I tried to ignore the pop, pop, pop, of some of my more stubborn colleagues being executed.

And then, back to work, where I suppressed the feeling that I was the worst kind of traitor. Next day, there'd be new faces scrubbing up and asking for orders, another pair of hands shipped in from God knows where. Back to cataloguing divinity. At times, I imagine joining the objectors, the people who feel. found religion in a sterile black ops lab. But that thing we pulled out of him, that baffling enigma that burned my eyes, it consumed the project. Everything we learned about it felt like a quantum leap in our understanding of microbiology.

We tested everything we could get our hands on, plants, animals, humans. I tried not to look any of them in the eye. quiet people taken from some quiet part of the earth where they wouldn't be missed. All of them scared. Did they know? I mean really know the suffering they were in for? Definitely not. They expected to be shot, I imagine.

Not to wake up with a roof of their mouth lined with eyeballs. I'm ashamed to say. But those kinds of results invigorated me. excited me even. When it all fell apart and I missed the evacuation, I got to finally rifle through all those classified documents where I discovered I hadn't been selected because I was some genius of microbiology. But rather, because my psychological profile made it clear, I'd do anything if you dangled a big enough mystery in front of me. That and the fact that I was a. actually quite good at managing projects. Geniuses usually aren't great at sending out memos

or keeping track of performance numbers. Thankfully, I'm no genius. It was humbling at times, working with some of the guys down below, being senior to them even. I mean, Dr. Coates was probably the smartest man I'd ever met. No real academic career, because he had a habit of hyperfixating, on things that either couldn't be solved or which no one gave a damn about. But it was pretty clear this was a guy who could have turned his brain to just about anything and made a name for himself if he was just a little more on the ball. He was an odden, basically, gave lectures barefoot, would respond to last-minute marking deadlines by giving every student a bee, through a stapler at the head of his department,

that kind of thing. Intelligent, but not particularly sensible. The project broke him, broke his worldview, broke his mind and, towards the end, even his body. You might think the problem was asking a hyper-rational man to process the divine, but if anything, he processed it a little too well. He was the first person to read the Third Testament without going insane, immediately insane, I should say. Or maybe he was always nuts to begin with.

Either way, he managed to take all the random scribbles in bits of verse that we'd collected from the personal effects of the deceased and actually put it together into a single document. Then he read it and came out looking like nothing special had happened. The next guy after him. Not so lucky. But Dr. Coates, he carried on working for a few days after. Took measurements of this, made records of that,

slipped into the background, out of my notice, while I focused and trying to figure out some way of getting the Third Testament scanned into a computer without it causing havoc. A lot like the people who read it, machines like to give out halfway through reading the Third Testament. Not coats though. He seemed just fine.

I should have known better. The first clue that something wasn't quite right was when I went to his office. A cramped space with metal walls and floors. No windows given it was below ground and a countertop full of equipment. It was always a mess in there and usually. A bit smelly too. But it was usually just that unwashed scientist smell. But one day when I went to call on him, he opened the door and I got the whiff of something that was just wrong. Smelled a little like death, only not quite, just different.

Moldy almost. Of course, he was entitled to do some experimentation on his own time, and that's what I figured it was. At the time, I wrote it off, had other things on my mind, only the smell got worse with time. Turned up day after day, and each time it stung my nose a little more, hung around my sinuses a little longer. Then coats, he looked a little worse for wear each time too. Again, nothing serious. The kind of thing that's actually quite normal for a man like him.

I'm used to seeing scientists fixate on a problem. Something quiet they won't share with anyone else until they know for sure what they've got. That's what he was like, and I figured when he was ready, he'd either show me something that would blow my socks off, or it'll be something stupid like a goddess microwave to evenly heat up his lunch by taking it apart and rewiring its insides. Sometimes I wonder if I caught it earlier, could I have done something about it?

Someone smarter might have picked up the odd chemical mixtures on a shelf, or recognised the peculiar smells. Not me, though. All I can say in hindsight is, thank God my office was above ground. By the time, his little project had finished working its way through. the floor he was on. He'd killed 36 people with his home main nerve gas. Thankfully, the facility was prepared for that kind of attack, and the automated security systems had the entire level locked down very quickly so the damage wasn't that bad.

Could have been a lot worse. But what was weird was the venting system wasn't working. Should have cleared it out in under a day. But four hours later, and the gas levels were the same. The investigation, at least at first, had to happen remotely. CCTV from his lab was spotty. Something was corroding the cameras. But based on some of his material requests, we guessed he'd been culturing some unusual fungus to create the bio-weapon.

Whatever it was, it was potent. And we were helpless to do anything about. about it. We had to wait and hoped to guard whatever awful thing he'd concocted would wear out on its own. What little the CCTV could capture made for a grueling sight. Eight scientists dead at their desks, slumped over, blood pouring out of their mouths. The fluid looked black on the grainy black and white monitor. But what upset me more were the assistants? Dozens of young men and women who didn't really belong in that place, too much to live for, and all of them so scared of what was going to happen to them.

And they were just lying there in the middle of whatever it was they were doing. In the labs themselves, smashed beakers and machines in disarray. In their rooms, some of them lay peacefully sleeping. Others held each other in secret little trists they thought no one knew about. All over the level, bodies lay in the floor in strange positions. And again, the black fluid leaking from every orifice, staining the floor, their faces and their clothes, soaking their chests and groins. I remember sitting there and just watching them twitch and foam at the mouths, waiting for death to finally come. Even then, the hours ticked on as we waited

for the systems to purge the gas, 122448. Nothing happened. It was like everything in there was frozen in time. And then, somehow, the lights on that level went out. Emergency lighting came on, bathing everything in red, but combined with the low-quality cameras, it was like gazing at an old video game. Grainy, fuzzy, low resolution.

We figured that Coates must have rigged up a remote timer on the electronics, which wasn't a good guess, since his speciality was biochemistry, and the security systems were of the highest tier. But what else could it be? Wasn't like someone could have hit the circuit breaker. We knew eventually we'd have to go in there. 60 hours after shut down, we just had to. There was too much high-value material to leave behind,

and there were reports of strange noises down there. Guards posted to the door heard faint sounds on the other side. Footsteps, they reckoned. Of course, I wrote that off. Utter nonsense, I told myself and them. And yet, we still went in armed because, Well, if Coates were smart enough to rig this whole nightmare, who's to say he didn't make a little gas mask to keep himself safe?

You'd think I'd be used to working in hazmat suits, and I sort of am. But going into that sealed off floor was something else. The visor felt restrictive, the squeak of the rubber suit was deafening, my breath was too loud, and every time the insuit radio came to life with one of the soldier's barks, I damn near jumped out of my skin, and then the door actually opened. Nothing could have prepared me for that. The air was thick with mist, which lit up harshly with the emergency lighting's red hue. Old metal grates, vents, open doorways, all of it either blood red,

or completely dark. There were far too many shadows for it to feel safe. It didn't help some of the bulbs with strobe lighting, rotating sirens that lit the place up in periodic flashes of crimson light. God, even the four soldiers next to me look nervous. We passed more than a few bodies on our way to Coates' lab. All of them lay where they'd been on the CCTV. at least as far as I could tell.

Sounds stupid but I stared at a few of them closely just to make sure. All those reports of footsteps had started to worm their way into my brain. Couldn't shake the idea we weren't alone down there. When we finally opened the door to Coates, what I saw left me frozen to the spot. The soldiers focused on the strange growth. off to the corner of the room, which registered to me only as a dim sort of collection of thick fungal petals crawling up the wall, veins pulsing like capillaries in the eye.

But to me, what really hit home was the empty desk. Last time they had reliable footage of that room, Coats had been lying there, dead as a dodo, It started leaking from his still open eyes, pulling on the desk and dripping onto the floor. And that stain was still very much there. There was even the faint outline of where his head had been laying. But the man himself was gone. This even more than the grotesque thing that took up one wall terrified me. That quivering mass of fungus was pumping out enough toxic gas to kill half the base.

but it was stationary at least. In another circumstance, I might have even found it fascinating. But coats, he'd clearly gone off the deep end. Had he laying perfectly still for days on end to trick us? That didn't seem right. Again, I thought the bodies would pass, the way they looked so still, but not lifeless, like a porceling doll.

There was that slight suggestion of something working behind the eyes. What do we do with this? One of the men asked. Take samples, burn the rest, I replied. If gas levels don't go down in a week, we'll have to purge the whole floor with phosphorus. The whole time, I had my eyes in the space around us, under the desk, on top of the cupboards. If Coates wasn't at his desk, Where was he?

Where the hell did this thing come from? The same soldier muttered as he laid a series of thermal charges on the fleshiest parts of the mould. It seemed to flinch in response to his touch, but otherwise benign. Ah, he probably took some of the subject's tissue samples. We know it propagates unusual levels of growth in plants and animal tissue. Explains why the gas levels don't go down. What's it metabolizing? I gave the soldier an odd look.

What? He said, you aren't the only ones within education. Fair enough, I replied, with a quick shake of the head. It isn't metabolizing anything except his tissue. It's, uh, well, bluntly. I mean, I think of the fish and the bread right. It's something we've known about his tissue samples for a while now. Spontaneous creation of matter and energy out of nothing.

But to give Coet's credit, this is a pretty novel application. He's created an infinite bioweapon. Why? I was about to reply, I haven't the slightest clue when a loud bang drew attention to the doorway. Outside layer darkness, broken only by the strobing of a red light. Flashing on and off, it revealed for just a single instant. the outline of a man standing in the hallway. The soldiers swore nervously as they raised the rifles.

By the time the light came back, the figure was gone. Who the hell was that? One barked. Must be coats, another replied. Job's done, I cried while gesturing to the charges. Let's get the hell out of... There are no miracles left for you. You have made your own.

miracles. The words were growled so loud and deep, they seemed to vibrate my very bones. The soldiers snapped to attention. But me, I took a little longer to turn back to the corner of the room. I knew what I was going to see. But God, I didn't want to see it. There are other gardens, but not for you. Do not spoil the other Eden. Coats emerge from the thing in the wall, hauling himself free with a wet squelch. He stood, not naked, but clearly naked, as his skin began to absorb his clothes. He looked like a burn victim, coated in algae. He loves you.

In spite of everything, he loves you. And there is a place in heaven for you all. It is time to. I can't blame the soldier who pulled the trigger. It wasn't just the fact that Coach was speaking with a mouth that had grown grotesquely across his abdomen, but rather that the words were drilling straight into our heads, like some pushing up. You made my eyes cross, my ears ache and my nose bleed. Two of the men had vomited, splashing the inside of their visors with thick fluid. They were the first to go.

They didn't see what hit them. and I'm somewhat glad. Coats, angered by the gunshot, moved with the elegance of a dancer. I stumbled out into the corridor as he tore them apart, his arms seemingly flowing right through their biohazard suit. The remaining soldier, the trigger-happy one, was beside me as I fled. It wasn't far to the exit. I hoped we'd make it the rest of the way without incident.

I'd in just a few short hours I might be able to put the few images I had of coats pulling flesh and fabric apart like it was tissue deep into some recess of my mind and just move on but it was only a few short steps into the dark before the remaining soldier began to fire blindly at the corridor behind us

it was a mistake for him to turn around in the fraction of a second where his eyes had been turned away He missed one of the bodies lying in the ground. I jumped. He didn't. I was dimly aware of there being no one beside me, only when the gunshots grew fainter and fainter as I left him behind.

One of the shots dinged off a panel by my head, and to this day I suspect it was not a ricochet, but a deliberate attempt to get revenge for me abandoning him. Still, I didn't look back. back. Not until I reached the secure door. I thumbed the keypad frantically, terrified as my ears registered the sound of approaching footsteps muffled by the biohazard suit.

God, I couldn't stop myself. I looked. I had nothing else to do except wait for the security to clear me and open the door, and there was no guarantee they'd even do that. I might be waiting forever, staring at nothing. as Coates came closer and closer. Without even realizing what I was doing, I turned and saw the soldier with a gun.

Geez, Coates' office was out of sight, so I had no idea if he repeated this with the other two. But the man I saw, he was in pieces. Yellow and red in ragged strips that coated the ceiling as much as the same. the floor, and barreling toward me on all fours, legs and arms too long for a normal man, came coats, eyes wide, jaw distended, chunks out of his head still missing, but his mouth. It silently spoke the same few words, almost in time with his loping gallop, over and over and over.

It would take days for me to even realize what it was he was saying. saying. Thankfully, before he'd managed to reach me, the doors opened and a hail of gunfire filled the corridor ahead. Coats, fastest lightning, disappeared into some dark crevice, and I was dragged to safety before the worst might happen. As soon as I was on the other side, I told security to flood the place with phosphorus and everything was purged. White hot fire on demand. By the time it was over, only metal remained, and even then, a lot of it had melted and cooled in strange shapes on the floor. I also went out of my way to kill any attempts and reclaiming the lost workplace. Higher-ups were mad, all that square footage lost,

but I said the risk of contamination was too great. Of course, I left out the parts where I returned one quiet night a few days later and placed my ear against the thick steel wall that I knew ran close to one of the vents on that level. It was faint, but I heard Coates whispering. Only then did I get the final clue to what Coates had been saying as he came towards me in the flashing red of that darkened corridor. We love you, we love you, we love you, we love you, we love you, we love you. Even now, the cameras show that level to be a sterile hollow space. But I cannot escape the feeling that if I were to open it, I would see coats come slithering out of some long-forgotten vent, perhaps worse for wear, given all the time that has since

passed. But coats nonetheless, terrifying and misshapen, but desperate to spread the very testament that twisted his mind and body. That caused him to try and breed something that might well have ended the entire world. And the worst thing of all, what he'd been saying to me in that corridor? What if it was true? What if he hadn't done it out of hate, but love? At the time, I assumed the force we were dealing with was hostile. But what if it was wasn't. Everyone who goes near the Third Testament kills themselves, and until Coates, I thought it, some kind of twisted revenge. But what if that wasn't the case? What if he wasn't doing it out of spite or hostility? What would that mean for me? Forgiveness? If so, that terrified

me, because after everything I'd been through, I doubted I'd have the strength to resist that kind of offer. For weeks I lay awake at night, wondering just what the hell might be in those words that could compel people like Coates to do what they did. And yet, despite everything, I still haven't read the Third Testament. Coates was a genius, and he still gave in. I know that I did some pretty messed up stuff in the name of scientific curiosity, but... Well, I guess I'm not ashamed to say.

I'm also a coward. I'm afraid of dying. Curiosity can only get you so far. And after seeing everything that happened to the people who read that thing, I couldn't bring myself to risk it. Whatever, the Third Testament is, hearing it seems pretty bad. for your health. I don't think I even deserve to be forgiven, if that is what he's offering. It was poetic justice that out of all the people who managed to make the evacuation, I wasn't one of

them. Leaving on foot is hardly an option for me. I mean, even if I had the strength to hike through hundreds of miles of rainforest, I need to reach the outer fence first, and strange things are vested in the chemical pits where they disposed of the bodies. Soft mounds of ash and bone that sing from time to time, exciting the birds in the canopy to take off and make strange patterns in the sky. If they can sing, they must have mouths, right? And if they have mouths, what else? I think about coats, about what kind of hands would reach out to drag me into those rotten pits of long dead flesh and drown me in filth, and I shudder. I could try and sneak past, but...

It really isn't safe outside the hospital. It isn't safe inside, to be fair, but what choice do I have? At least there's still power, internet, food to last me over a century, and security doors I keep everything below sub-level one firmly locked away. while out there. Well, I see things sometimes moving quickly between the old buildings. The trees shake and stir. And where jungle now grows thick and heavy against one of the glass walls of the hospital,

the vines twist and turn and spell out odd messages. I shut my eyes firmly whenever I have to pass them. And yet, even blind. I can hear the tightening fibrous coils as the clawing flora scratches against the glass. They want me, hungering. All those corpses we buried out there, rotting, breaking down, contaminated with divinity. What strange waters flow through the soil in this place. Nothing could make me risk opening the doors and try walking through that vegetation.

He might forgive, but I don't think my former test subjects have. And, as for down below, you know, I never met him while he was alive, don't know where they got him from, or even why. My bet, he ticked off the wrong people, got shot and got back up. Maybe they shot him again and he got up again. maybe they did it five times, ten times, I don't know. Somewhere along the lines, someone worked out, they had an anomaly on their hands. Maybe I wasn't the first person to even try cutting him open. It's just weird.

No one ever told us who he was. We just knew. It'd be years before I wondered who mothered him, loved him, raised him, raised him, him. I often wonder if this was the way it was meant to go, or was it just an accident that he bumped into the wrong people at the wrong time? The Messiah came and the first thing we did was cut him up. No wonder we failed. Things in the project started to go really bad about six months after the first incision. I turn over amongst researchers was one something but, well, it turns out a lot of the soldiers had religious inclination.

Wasn't just us dealing with visions and voices. At some point they worked out what they were part of. The agency likes compartmentalization, but it can only go so far. After the religious element became clear to the guys on the ground, things started to break down. It was one thing to control the scientists. where the guards were armed. When they broke, they broke hard.

Most of his remains are stored in the lowest level, where it's easiest to keep things cool. Outside, there's this long corridor leading to the central chamber. Huge, wide enough to drive four or five cars side by side. And that was where the first guard hanged himself. Simple enough, they dragged him away, and cleaned it up. It wasn't long after coats.

In fact, it was one of the men who saved me at the door. But pretty soon, another two guys went down there and hanged themselves, and then five, and then eight. And then, topside, some people started blowing their brains out, in their barracks, in the canteens, standing watch at the doors, looking out on the jungle, cigarette hanging loose on one lip. seemed almost random, except there was a clear pattern of escalation. When those guys started killing their friends, that's when it reached the point where they couldn't ship new guys in fast enough to replace losses. Once that happened, orders started getting lost, jobs started being left undone.

One lab got written off because the test subject's body was left to fester over a weekend, and by the time they got the door of, open, there was flesh growing up the walls. Not enough manpower to deal with it, so they left it for another day and moved on. Only, they forgot to tell the researcher who worked there. So, come Monday, he went in and had a hell of a surprise. Must have been like stepping into a wall of sourdough. I can only hope he suffocated and it was quick. But who knows? Not like that stuff has hard and fast rules. For all I know, he's still in there, screaming for air. Meanwhile, that tunnel.

People just kept going down there and hanging themselves. I mean, every day I'd wake up and I'd be down a few researchers, and a couple more guards would be missing. Took a shockingly short amount of time for most of the 600 people on site to just disappear. God knows when security stopped taking the bodies down. Just another job that got lost in a growing panic. By the time, evacuation orders came. We were down to a hundred people.

I estimate that around 400 ended themselves in that tunnel. I've only visited him once since the project shut down. Only had the guts to go look once. Barely made it out alive. I felt compelled to try and face up to him, acknowledge the role I played, only that meant actually getting to the door at the end of the tunnel, which was, by this point, pitch black except for my torch, and blocked almost entirely with hanging bodies. So many pressed together so close that I had no hope of make my way through without bumping into one.

reminded me of the jungle, funnily enough, of a thick, claustrophobic forest made of dried skin and brittle ligaments, different colors and shapes, and of course, different levels of decomp. Some had lost their noses, lips and eyes. Others were a little bloated, but still recognizable. Not friends, really. I don't think I actually made one solitary friend on that project. But colleagues, people who were under my charge, they looked sad. All of them looked sad. They should have been buried at home with their families. But instead, they were locked all the way in the ass end of nowhere.

Of course, you can bet your ass the agency will make sure no one ever knows the truth. You know, I still have contact with them. Anything I post gets screened Arrogant assholes know that no one's going to take me seriously No record of this project anywhere All those people Just ghosts in a system too big

For any one person to keep track of it all You know how many people go missing in the United States in a year What about Europe With a whole damn world God this project Was just a drop in the ocean I wanted to put it to bed, to see if I could get some kind of answer from him. It was that idea.

Trying to get some resolution to this nightmare that gave me the strength to push past the first dead body and go deeper into that tunnel. It reminded me of trying to make your way to the front of a gig, only deathly silent, and the people you barged past swung gently back and forth. the sound of makeshift noose is tightening in the dark. I think the worst part was the limited vision. My light was just a lone disc. And God, it was pitch black in that place. Like caving, only the floor is slick, and you don't have to worry about a ravine. May me think about being in the bottom of the ocean.

With all the corpses, visibility was never more than a few foot ahead. I remember panicking at the realization I could easily get turned around and, well, if all those lost souls didn't let me go. What if I wound up going in circles for hours, days even on end? Just round and round. The nearest wall could be right there, and I wouldn't know it. Just bones and teeth and ribs and hanging in trails. All of them called to the touch. freezing. Obviously, that's why we'd put him down there. The place was cold. My own breath

visible in the air. But the bodies were like the meat you grab out of the fridge in a supermarket. It was just awful. I found the fresh ones the hardest the stomach. A really rotten body looks almost like a prop. It isn't, don't get me wrong. You look at it and you're brain tells you damn well it ain't a prop, but it's a hell of a lot easier to convince yourself it's just the thing when it hasn't got eyes or skin. But the fresh ones, sometimes they still had expressions like anger or sadness on their faces. They made me feel watched and the fact they were cold and slick with condensation. Every time I bumped into one, it took everything I had not to let out a whimper.

And they moved. They didn't move, not like that. But there were no drafts down there. It was perfectly still. They'd been perfectly still for months after the project shut down. And then I came along and disturbed them. And it was like a giant Newton's cradle, a static system that I put energy into.

It began to sway and twist and bump. I'd knock one, and a fraction of a second later it would knock me back, jostling against my cheek or my arm as inertia rocked it back and forth. Ten minutes in, too far to turn back. That was when the nightmare began. Started small. I lost my ability to track what body was where and which ones were sent swinging by my own clumsy movements. And then fingers comb my hair. I cried out.

Another set touched my beard, my face. I forced myself onwards and started making eye contact with one too many dead men for it to simply be an accident. Their expressions changed from sullen and listless to angry and cruel, leering smiles and curled lips. Then came the unmistakable sensation of so many. someone deliberately grabbing for my arm. I had to shake it loose, too afraid to look back and face the possibility that I'd see one of them moving and scowling. I pushed on, constantly having to shake cold fingers off my elbow or my collar.

They groped incessantly, looking for anything to hold on to. Firm grips pinched my belly fat, my shoulders, my chest, and then they started reaching for my eyes. At one point I made the mistake of crying out and a freezing cold finger with a slightly furry texture slid into my mouth. The only relief came when I dropped to my hands and knees and crawled. The entire time my mind raced with a terrible possibility that I really was just being sent in circles over and over and over.

and they were never going to let me leave. I would die down there, in the dark, smothered by their rotting hands. God damn, I came close to giving up. When my torch finally alighted upon an open space, I cried out, a heaving wet sob, made of relief and joy, and my muscles, given new life, worked over time to get me out of that horrible nightmare and into freedom. I didn't stop until I bumped my head against the steel wall with a dull clang

and looked up to see the vault's door. At last, the place we'd frozen him. I got up with what little dignity I had left, brushed down my clothes, and risked only the briefest of glances back. The bodies looked inert now, just like they had before. I entered. I could have tricked myself into thinking it was my imagination. Only half my shirt was now in tatters on the floor, and I could still see strips of it still clenched in a few of their hands. I did my best to compose myself. And I entered the vault. We hadn't left him in a very nice

state. The plan was the catalogue everything. Yeah, we excise the most striking biological anomalies, but the remaining flesh. I mean, we wanted to know everything. Every last capillary, every last cell, we wanted it recorded. So, we had this special machine flown in. It works by taking a piece of flesh and slicing into a layer that's barely a micrometh. to thick and depositing it into a slide. That slide is digested and then stored in specialized cold refrigeration units. It's usually used on a sample, not much bigger than a potato. But for him, we had something specially made.

Frozen stood vertical. We put him on the machine where it worked, creating about one slice every three hours. Only at the end. well first no one came to take the slides away so they had gathered on the floor below in a terrible mess and second no one had bothered to check

if he was still dead stupid of us really of course he came back to life only this time he didn't get to leave the cave I often wonder if he had anything left to say. But by then, the machine had reached his nose. Just his eyes at the top of his head looking right at me. Following me. God, we made a mess of things, didn't we? May the Romans look

gentle in comparison. I fell to my knees and begged for forgiveness. And the worst part? He gave it, obviously, not verbally, but it shouldn't surprise you to know. He had other ways of putting thoughts in my head. I was so angry at myself. I was positive. I'd find some kind of punishment waiting for me. But I didn't. He forgave me, told me I was loved.

After everything I'd done, I mean, God, that hurt the most. I didn't deserve it. Still don't. And then he gave me the Third Testament. Or rather, the cliff notes. Not enough to drive me nuts, but the gist of it, so to speak. Did a number on me anyway. By the time I was done sobbing on the floor, I looked up, and he was gone.

Nothing remained, just broken glass in a machine cutting empty air. Going back through the tunnel was no easier than going in. but I hardly remember it. I lost a couple of weeks after that little trip down below, but eventually I came to in my office. Now I stay above ground. I've asked for rescue, but the agency feels I best serve my country by staying where I am,

making sure nothing else leaks out. It's messed up, but I think for once. They might be right. I've considered sharing what he gave me, considered even putting it in bits of writing here. Might even go get the full testament and upload it. But that would involve reading it. And like I said, I'm a coward and I don't want to die. Everyone who reads it dies by their own hand.

I guess all I can say is the Third Testament. It's something of a warning, an outline of what's coming our way, so bad that he came just to offer us a way out, I promise that there's somewhere else, and an acknowledgement that we're going to need it. Makes me think of Coates. Smartest man I ever met, whose first reaction to knowing what was on the way was the way was the to try and engineer something to wipe humanity all out, given to what we did to him. I wonder if we don't deserve it.