Horror

Aug

2020

How They Continued

When all of the infants disappeared, hospitals echoed with the wails of parents. Bassinets lay empty as families uprooted furniture in their homes. 911 operators struggled to take the outpouring of calls, all reporting a missing newborn.

The leaders of each nation would release broadcasts hours later, solemnly reading from cue cards. Some blamed other nations. All tried to comfort their people. They would later learn of the miscarriages.

A week from the first incident, all children between the ages of one and two vanished. Parents clutched at the air where their children had existed moments before. In the days that followed, governments attempted to gather all two-year-olds in shelters. Vigilantes began murdering registered sex offenders.

By the fifth week, the world contained no children under the age of 6. Families clung to their children, praying for salvation. Churches called it the end of times. Communities began tracking where their children had disappeared, placing cushions and mattresses to catch them if they ever returned.

The number of murder-suicides continued escalating after the 10-year-old children left. The bodies would not disappear, even after their week had passed. The closed schools maintained the remnants of the youth, their artwork forgotten on the walls, desks holding mini animal erasers and superhero pencils. News began circulating that no child had been conceived since the initial incident.

As the teenagers began to vanish, the rioting increased, led by the young adults of the world. They burned the cushions and mattresses left for the other children, broke into government buildings. They protested against the aged politicians, criticizing their futile attempts to stop what had now been named the “Phasing.” The young would not listen to the old, distrustful of those who had more time. Once the 19-year-olds disappeared, the crowds became a raging fire.

When there was no youth left to protest, an adult humanity was faced with redefining “the future.” Some countries fell to anarchy, but others discovered their own selflessness. They understood some of them would still exist in another year.

Faced with a dwindling and aging workforce, with no one under the age of 50, the middle-aged leaders in the world began dismantling cities. They shepherded the remaining communities into centralized locations. After a year, a tenth of humanity remained, many destroyed by their own hand.

At Week 70, the elderly celebrated each other, turning on generators to play music and movies. They feasted on their rations and shared the last of the alcohol. On the night before the 71^st week, friends passed drugged cocktails to each other, inviting those who would not live long enough to phase on the 90^th week.

Once 95 weeks had passed, Earth remained very much alive, but humanity had left. Their cities survived them, now nothing more than vacant doll houses waiting to be overtaken by nature.

One week later, 96 weeks after the first incident, the infants returned. They wailed in their previously empty bassinets. Others were silent under the rubble caused by the riots.

Jun

2020

Inheritance

I inherited everything from my grandfather, as my mother would remind me. His easygoing nature, his curly black hair, his thick build, his pot belly, his profound laziness, his terrible sense of hygiene, his lack of ambition. She rarely intended her comparison to be kind. Rather, any time I failed to meet her expectations, Grandad was invoked to guilt me.

Up until I was 18, Mom and I had visited him around holidays and such. Maybe she had hoped I would change my act if I had occasional reminders of how Grandad lived. She never appeared to have any personal desire to see him. Each morning before our visits, she would be especially grouchy, complaining how she would have to put up with his filth.

When we would visit, I was instructed to never touch anything or leave her side. She would bring a blanket to spread on his living room couch, and she and I would sit on that. She had a bottle of hand sanitizer in her purse in case we came into contact with anything else. We would talk to Grandad for an hour before she would escort me out. She’d throw away the blanket in the gas station down the road afterward.

I thought Grandad was a nice enough guy. He’d ask about school and buy me things I liked. I never got to keep these presents – they’d get trashed with the blanket – but he thought enough of me to do that. His love felt different from the kind I got from Mom. Hers was the love that only appeared when I didn’t appreciate it.

It’s not like I didn’t understand my mother’s disdain for my grandfather. He smelled of moth balls and stuffy rooms, and his stained shirts could never cover his gut. His beard grew in patches and held bits of food. He always had these long, wiry hairs poking from his nostrils, and they wiggled any time he breathed or spoke. Even back as a kid, I knew he was gross, but he cared about Mom and me.

I stopped visiting him after I moved away from home, but I would call him every once and a while. Over the years, I told him about dropping out of college, struggling to find a girlfriend, and working odd jobs. He’d always reassure me things would be good eventually, and that helped, especially when I was feeling anxious. He’d ask about Mom, too. Once I had left home, she visited him maybe once every two years.

When he died, it was only fitting that I inherited everything. He left Mom a buck.

Her rage came out as criticism. She told me not to live off of his money, to make a life for myself. She warned me of moving into his house, of taking his belongings. She said I would truly end up like him, reclusive, lazy, and useless. It was the most she had said to me in a few years.

I ignored her and moved in. It was a nice house. Filthy but nice. Grandad wasn’t one to take care himself. Apart from the living room, which he kept clean for Mom and me, every room was a mess of trash and bugs. The bathrooms had more mildew than porcelain, and the kitchen was a garbage dump of crusted plates and utensils. Mom had hired someone to clean his bedroom, mainly because his death wasn’t a tidy one.

I decided to replace him and not much else. My old apartment wasn’t much better than his place, and my grandfather seemed to get on just fine in the filth. He had made his wealth in stocks, which Mom says was the only way he bagged my grandmother. That wealth was now mine.

I ended up inheriting his lifestyle, too. I messed on my laptop, played games, ate delivery, did little else. Sometimes, I entertained the thought of cleaning. In a way, I felt connected to him. Only the roaches occasionally bothered me.

When the black hairs came wriggling out of my nose, I wasn’t surprised. Disappointed but not surprised. It was only logical I’d inherit them. It was also the only thing I didn’t want.

That first month, I would pluck one hair a day. Anymore was too painful. Pulling them out would shoot pain through my nose, make me tear up, make me sneeze. My nose would swell up, too, making me terribly congested the next day. What you’d expect from thick hair, I figured.

Plucking hair was one habit I managed to keep, but I never made progress. The hair seemed to keep up with me, growing longer and thicker. It was hard to breathe sometimes, even when I wasn’t plucking.

I don’t get desperate all that much, but those hairs made me desperate. I’d been nursing a cold at the time, and I was sick of being stuffed up. I was determined to push through the pain and get it all. Staring down my reflection that day, I shoved my tweezers deep into a nostril, grabbed a clump of hairs, and yanked.

The tweezers seemed to catch before ripping out the hair. I can only describe the next sensation as something like a prickly neti pot. Something tore through the entirety of my nasal cavity and came surging out of my nose. As I fully outstretched my arm, the sensation continued tunneling inside my head.

When the object did clear, blood flooded from my nostrils. My skull felt hollowed out, leaving me woozy. I held one hand to the bridge of my nose, blinking through the blinding pain. Looking in the mirror, I discovered I no longer had any nose hairs.

Looking at the tweezer, it made sense. Covered in snot, a centipede-like creature thrashed in the tweezer’s grip. Short, wiry legs squirmed all along its thin body, which had to have been two feet in length. Little barbs prickled its back, and it folded along itself, as if trying to reach for the tweezers.

My heart raced, and my breath hitched, coming in shallow, quick bursts. Signs of a panic attack. I could feel blood stream down my throat as I struggled to focus on steadying my breathing.

The thing swung back and forth at the end of my outstretched arm, flinging mucus across the bathroom. It came close to grabbing my t-shirt, and I shook it. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to pass out. I couldn’t. Not with this thing here.

I stumbled to the toilet and threw the tweezers and creature into the bowl. I could see it hit the water and flail about on the surface before I slammed the lid down and lurched onto the seat. The world spun as I gasped for air. I jerked the toilet handle, breaking it off as I did so.

Through the pounding in my ears, I could hear the toilet flush. I clutched myself, rocking back and forth as I listened to the water run. Droplets of sweat and blood dripped onto my boxers. I was still hyperventilating, and I couldn’t stop it.

I tipped forward off the toilet and pressed against the opposite wall as the pressure built in my head. I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing and I didn’t want to faint. My peripheries grew fuzzy, and I could only hear the toilet water running.

A black stream seemed to overflow from the toilet, and something slapped against the tile floor. I groaned and tried to push myself closer against the wall. An itch spiraled up my arm, and my vision went blank.

Only a few seconds could have passed before my consciousness returned. My body trembled, and my head still felt heavy, my temples pulsing. A puddle of water had collected underneath the toilet and trailed to my legs.

I lifted my fingers to my nose and felt the tickle of hair against the tips. I wasn’t bleeding anymore, but I felt a familiar congestion in my skull. Drenched in sweat, I slumped to the tile and disappeared into my thoughts.

It’s been a few months since then. I haven’t bothered with the tweezers. It still tenses when I go to the bathroom.

Back then, I had made an appointment with the doctor, but my nose started bleeding after the call and didn’t stop until I had called back and canceled. I’ve had to keep my phone silenced ever since. It doesn’t like the sound of the screen unlocking. I don’t even intend to answer my mother if she calls, which hasn’t been a worry since I moved in.

I’ve since learned it doesn’t know how to read, and it seems okay with the sound of typing. For now, just writing this down has helped. It helps me remember that I have time, if I can learn anything from Grandad.

The cockroaches haven’t been around since the tweezer incident, which explains why I feel less congested at night. My mouth tastes bitter every morning, but I can ignore that. The headaches have been harder to ignore.

I have a great respect for my grandfather, for his kindness and care. I now appreciate the time I had with him more, for our talks. He focused only on me during them, no matter how much his nose hairs wriggled. I imagine it wasn’t easy for him, considering it probably didn’t like company.

These days I wonder if I actually inherited my personality from him. Maybe he was stronger and braver than my mother made him out to be. I at least know he wasn’t selfish in killing himself, mainly because I don’t think he did. Mom reported his death a suicide by shotgun, and nobody investigated it.

My grandfather never owned any firearms. Even if he had, I don’t imagine any gun could blow off the front chunk of his head and that’s it. I can’t imagine the headache he had that day.

Oct

2019

Halloween on the Bad Side of Town

We don’t answer the door on Halloween, much less any other day. When you live where we do, opening the door is inviting trouble. People get killed that way, lose their stuff. If you’re expecting somebody, they don’t ring or knock; they call.

My kids know this, but Halloween gets them hoping for something different. They want to give out candy like they’ve seen on TV. Some of their friends have been trick-or-treating. I wanted to give them at least that, so this Halloween, I took them over to a fancy gated community where I know it’s safe.

Over there, people answer their doors for anyone and hand out big candy bars. They compliment my daughter’s fairy costume and recognize which superhero my son is. Police patrol the streets, and I know they’re eyeing me and my kids, but they’re at least keeping us safe.

I make sure to get the kids home before dark, and after they check what they got, I get them to bed. Their smiles make me happy. A couple of beers afterwards also make things nice.

I settle in the basement where it’s easier to ignore any knocking at the door, and for those two beers, I relax a bit.

A few hours later, after a recent round of knocking, I hear my son call me from upstairs. “Dad, there’s somebody at the door.”

“Don’t answer it,” I groan as I get off the recliner.

He knows better, so I startle when I hear him remove the deadbolts and open the door.

He sounds like he’s crying. “But it’s Mom.”

Shit. She’s reason alone to never answer.

I race the rest of the way to the front door where I find it wide open and my boy frozen, tears running down his cheeks. He should’ve known better than to open the door. He knows better than to scream now.

The thing has latched its proboscis around his right arm, up to his elbow. Its lumpy, slimy body fills up the doorway, and two eyestalks watch both me and my son. I see what’s a mold of my late wife growing out of its mouth. I hear it hum almost like she used to.

I own an axe for these situations. I never wanted to use it, but I had to tonight.

My son’s now fainted as I fix the tourniquet on his bicep. My daughter’s awake, too, huddled beside me as we hide in her room. The thing’s gotten back to knocking, but it’s not getting through that reinforced bedroom door, as long as we all know better now. I’m watching the windows, too, just in case. I know we’re safe as long as I can get this bleeding stopped. Halloween’s probably ruined for a while though.

Not everyone gets to live in the safe parts of town. Judging by all those sticky hands pressing up against my daughter’s windows, I reckon not many people will live outside of the safe parts either after tonight.

Oct

2019

The Oil Slick

We didn’t cause the largest oil spill ever, but it will be the worst. We didn’t know how it happened. We didn’t know what we hit, but something had managed to pierce through the double hull of our tanker. Hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil poured into the ocean from a single damaged compartment.

We all knew an oil spill was possible, and we generally knew what to expect. The oil that day didn’t do what it was supposed to do. It didn’t spread; it pooled. Its sickly rainbow hue grew darker as it amassed beside the tanker, reaching no farther than a couple hundred yards. A few of us watched from the deck as it coagulated. It was all we could do.

The oil had become a physical mass on the water’s surface. It seemed to float, rising and falling with the ocean’s swells. A crew member threw a boot from the deck. It landed on top of the oil with a squelch and stayed in place.

I was among the team selected to venture on the new “island” we had inadvertently created. Our captain led twenty of us as we descended from the tanker and took our first ginger steps onto the slick. We spread out along the entire area, moving slowly to test the ground. We had no explicit purpose. We were there more out of curiosity than need.

The ground depressed under my feet, squishing like a wet sponge. Purple, green, yellow, and red waved along the surface, licking up along my boots. The ground had taken the texture of the ocean when it had hardened, freezing the small ripples and crests in place. Its pungent odor was overwhelming, even through my bandana.

The groan of steel against steel sent a shudder through the oil spill. I looked back toward the tanker, seeing my coworkers do the same. The bow of the ship had caved in on itself. The outer hull peeled inward and sank toward the oil spill. On the deck, the workers screamed for the captain, their cries deafened by the metal screeching. Some clung to the railings while others held various tools in their hands, too confused to know how to react.

Our captain was quick and decisive. He yelled for us to support our crew, however we could, no matter if we didn’t know how to. He launched himself forward into a sprint, and his next step went through the oil. The rest of his body followed, as if he had leapt off a cliff. He didn’t have time to react. Only ripples in the oil remained where he had disappeared.

Whatever composure we had left had fallen in with the captain, and the men both on and off the tanker panicked. The tanker continued to fold in on itself, its shrieking acting as the call for our ruin. Those on the slick fled for the water. Some landed a few steps before the oil liquified around them and sucked them underneath. They clung to each other, doing little more than to pull each other down together. Rainbows spiraled across the slick.

Men rained down upon the water from the tanker. Water erupted from the ocean as they fell in, but the people didn’t resurface. It didn’t matter from where they had jumped. One head made it above water, stained black. I could see a film sealing his open mouth. Then he was gone.

Within minutes, everything was gone. The entire tanker had crumpled into nothing. No scraps of metal, no additional oil, no blood. Everyone had fallen into the ocean except for me and one other. He cried at the edge of the oil slick, begging God for help.

I remained silent, trembling. Neither he nor I had moved since the chaos had started. Our cowardice had saved us, leaving us the sole witnesses. My vision faded in and out. Oil, sweat, and ocean invaded my senses. I recognized I had wet myself.

The hours crawled past. My legs started to burn, and pain raked across my back. I dared only to shift slightly to redistribute my weight. I didn’t speak to the other man, and he didn’t call out to me. He stood with his back toward me, staring off into the ocean as he whimpered unintelligibly. I knew he was looking where he imagined was the closest shore, some several hundred miles away. Protocol dictated that someone aboard the tanker had to have contacted coastal authorities. We didn’t know if the person had finished the job.

As the sun seeped into the horizon, my fear bled into fatigue. I had been baked to a dark red, and my clothes were damp with my sweat. My tongue lay shriveled in my mouth, my lips cracking as I inhaled. I convinced myself death was better than this. I was never a strong man.

I shook as I eased onto my knees. The ground sunk a few inches around me but ultimately held. Hy heart pounded in my ears, and air struggled to reach my lungs. The world spun as I rotated onto my back and laid against the oil. I could feel it soak into my clothes. It was cold, but it hadn’t eaten me.

My breathing was ragged as I watched the sky. The stars gradually blinked into existence as the orange hues faded. I tried to focus on their light as my muscles relaxed. I tried to count them. I tried to ignore my hallucinations, the dirtied rainbows which snaked between the stars. When I closed my eyes, the colors remained. They would follow me into my dreams.

I awoke the next morning to the moans of the man. The clear sky offered a reprieve, and I could feel the sun dry my clothes. In this position, I pretended that I was sunbathing on a beach. Given the forlorn cries of my companion, I could not fully transport myself to that calming scene, and the wetness along my body kept me grounded on the oil slick.

I held a hand over my face, saw how the black had traced the lines in my palm, had wrinkled my fingertips. I rested it back on my stomach. Sleep had done little to relieve my fatigue. I was still thirsty, still hungry. The stench of the island nauseated me, and I could now smell rotting fish.

I closed my eyes. Rescue had not arrived yet, so there was no point of getting up. I spent the day slipping between consciousness and unconsciousness. The events of yesterday repeated under my eyelids as the man grieved every hour or so. Hunger clawed within my gut, growing fiercer over the hours.

Another night passed, and when dawn came, my companion resumed his crying, cursing the oil slick. I loathed his whiney voice. My muscles ached; I was starving and dehydrated; and I was sick of the smell. His presence just reminded me of my circumstances. I stirred from the imprint I had developed in the oil.

When I sat up, I felt the ocean air against my back and head as my shirt fell off my torso. My hands instinctively reached for my back and head, finding bare skin. I shifted and looked where I had lain. Remnants of my clothing sunk into the oil, and above them was a mat of my hair. Bile stirred in my stomach, but my surroundings diverted my focus.

The man sat hunched in the same spot where he had been two days ago, rocking back and forth. He had buried his face in his hands, covering his eyes. His voice droned through his palms, wordless but conveying his despair. Although insufferable, he was a semblance of normalcy. The oil island, conversely, had become more alien.

The spill had attracted marine life. Fish had punctured the ground from underneath, their heads sticking out like grotesque garden ornaments. The oil colors glistened across their dead eyes and scales. The carcass of a blue whale made a mountain range along one side of the spill. Several sharks had gathered to gnaw at the body, unaware of the oil creeping along their snouts and into their gills.

The tanker was also in the process of returning. The bow had emerged from the oil, its steel replaced by elongated femurs, rib cages, and skulls. Black tendrils slithered in between, acting as a connective tissue.

Among the fish heads, a singular tree had sprouted, the oil swirls streaming along its black bark. It resembled something like a maple, and its branches had borne fruit: identical copies of the captain’s head, expressionless, dripping with oil. I assumed the tree had grown where he had fallen.

My anger slipped away. My brain couldn’t make sense of any of it and had given up trying to. My peripheral vision had dulled, and my forehead pulsed. My own sense of hopelessness overcame logical thought, allowing only hunger and thirst to remain.

I crawled along the ground, the rest of my clothing falling from my body. I came close to a fish head and tugged at it, but only its scales sloughed off into my hand. I lowered my body and chewed on its head. What I could rip off liquified in my mouth, spilling through my teeth and down my chin. What I could swallow stuck to my throat. I retched, tears coming to my eyes.

Desperation drove me forward to the tree. Whether the ground would hold no longer registered in my consciousness. Greater men would last longer than I could, but I needed less than 48 hours to break. I grasped at the trunk of the tree, pulling myself back to my feet. My knees buckled, but I dug my fingers into the trunk and held. When I was steady, I climbed up into the branches, my body darkening as the bark spilled open into more oil.

I plucked a head from the branch, gripping it by its hair. It was tender but maintained some consistency. I peeled away the scalp, and the skull crumbled when I pressed against it. It was like eating an overripe peach.

I don’t care to describe the taste. I ate with the eyes turned away from me. I ate from the fruits until I vomited. The man started screaming when I had begun and continued long after I had stopped.

I remained in the tree, cradled in its branches, allowing the sun to warm the oil on me. The sharks had stopped moving, having become a single mass of fins and teeth. The bones on the tanker no longer looked human.

The sun has started to set again. The man calls out to his god once more. He begs for rescue, even as the oil eats away at his legs.

My stomach has become distended, and my teeth have fallen out. I do not pray to a god. I do not ask for rescue anymore. I hope that whoever finds us incinerates the entire island, and I hope it is soon. It’ll be better for the environment.

Aug

2019

The Animals Knew Before We Did

Two months ago, a stargazer captured the first known instance of a “string shower” on video. The video made rounds on the internet with other amateur astronomers, but it lost its popularity within a few days. Some claimed the footage was edited; others shrugged it off as a freak occurrence.

A week after the original sighting, the string showers returned. With thousands of people across the world claiming to have seen them, the professionals decided to get involved. A string shower was confirmed to be a sequence of five larger-than-average meteors following the same arc across the night sky in quick succession. A single event lasted no more than two seconds.

Hundreds of thousands of pets stopped eating that night. No one would notice the severity of this issue for another day or two. Park rangers encountered an increase in mutilated animal bodies.

In the following two weeks, the string showers became a natural occurrence. The majority of world population had encountered at least one. An unease grew within the scientific community. The astronomers struggled to capture clear footage of the phenomena, each video or picture coming out distorted and blurry, just like the original footage. They reasoned the string showers had some electromagnetic effect.

The conservation scientists scrambled to capture animals in order to ensure the survival of the species. The grey wolf population disappeared in one night. The animals had turned on each other, leaving behind stained battlefields of shredded corpses. Despite their more docile nature, the black bears followed suit.

Two weeks ago, governments around the world declared a state of emergency. The string showers had increased exponentially, with China reporting at least 300,000 cases in one night. Religious fanatics declared it was the end of the world, and the string showers were their hail of fire and brimstone.

Apart from emotional fatigue, humans had been unaffected. However, the other species continued their descent into extinction. People stopped burying their cats and dogs, and garbage trucks became hearses. Zoos closed due to the level of aggression between the animals. The surviving creatures were placed in separate cages to prevent them from killing each other. Those animals then stopped eating, dying within a week.

Three days ago, the string showers began to appear during the day. Exposed to the light, people began seeing a connective body between the meteors, almost a translucent film. People panicked. Chaos ensued.

The following day, the string showers stopped. Millions of meteors suddenly hung suspended in the sky across the world. Each still burned. Where it was night, the meteors overwhelmed the stars. Where it was day, people witnessed the snakelike bodies for each set of meteors. They saw the thin tendrils which connected them.

No bird sang. No ant crawled across the ground. No flies collected around the mountains of corpses in the farms. This morning, only humanity was left to gaze upon the meteors. Only humanity saw the meteors collectively blink.

I’m the last story.

Archives