“Beep, Beep, BEEP BEEP BEEP,” the sound of Sandra’s alarm clock pulled her out of her peaceful slumber. Nine forty-five? Fuck I’m going to be late. She knew she wouldn’t actually be; she didn’t start work until eleven, and she’d overcome worse odds. Dressing herself quickly she descended the stairs to the warm smell of cooking meat. A full-Irish? She wondered as she approached the kitchen door and was pleasantly surprised to find herself proven correct upon entering.
“Heya love, want some eggs?” Her husband Gareth asked her, while she sat and busied herself with removing the gunk from her eyes.
“Yeah, please,” she curtly replied. “Why didn’t you wake me earlier? I could have helped.”
He looked back over his shoulder from the sizzling eggs. “You looked really peaceful. Plus, you think I can’t cook a fry on my own?” He mimicked accidentally dropping the pan. Sandra giggled at this; she could never help but laugh at his silly antics. “Anyway, here comes,” Gareth turned off the stove and lifted two plates full of delicious breakfast offerings onto the table. Rashers, sausages, black and white pudding, beans, eggs, and hash browns; Sandra was already salivating over this veritable feast.
“How did I ever get so lucky?” She sarcastically asked her husband as she gleefully speared a rasher with the prongs of her fork. But the rasher evaded her aim. I really am sleepy… She mused to herself, sharply focusing on the mouth-watering strip of fatty meat this time as she brought down her fork. Again, the meat evaded her. What the fu… The rasher lunged at her.

“Holy shit!” She screamed as her husband watched on aghast.
“What!? What’s happening!?” He yelled, leaping back up off his chair as the greasy slabs of disembodied pork rose off his plate and hurled themselves in his direction. No, no, no! Sandra’s thoughts couldn’t move past the haze of non-understanding. The meat!? What the fuck!? She grasped the rasher firmly and was surprised to find it possessing of preternatural strength; it was all she could manage to hold it away from her face. She fell to the ground and pushed herself backwards with her legs as the fridge and freezer doors burst open behind her. She turned her head and saw a raw, headless chicken emerge from the open refrigerator, the pointed ends of its drumsticks tapping against the tiles. This can’t be happening! This can’t be happening! She knew she had to be in some foul nightmare, yet it all felt so real. She felt the rashers and a string of sausages join to form a garrotte around her neck and suddenly it was tightening, constricting her air flow. From the corner of her eyes, she saw Gareth struggling with a number of fleshy masses that clung to his legs. The emancipated chicken leapt from the floor beside him, flapping its featherless wings wildly and, landing atop his head, drove these scythe-like appendages deep into his pleading eyes. Suddenly, he clutched at his face as warm blood flooded forth. Sandra felt the despair of witnessing the inevitable, but not being able to help. She reached an outstretched arm towards her lover as his body fell limp and dead, his bloodied eyeholes perceptive of her guilt in inaction. Gareth! She yearned to save him, but she was herself asphyxiating and she couldn’t let go. She snatched at the meat surrounding her throat and flung it away in parts. It was hard to think through the terrible throbbing of blood vessels in her brain. Her vision was going dark, and she sensed the end was near. No… no… the meat… no. With dying eyes, she saw an army of muscle and viscera and then the darkness overcame her.

Jose stood still in the middle of the street and wondered how he’d gotten there. Less than fifty metres from his house, beside the curb that separated sidewalk from road, his only recollection a blinding flash of light. All was silent around him. Too quiet, he realised. Where were all the people, the animals? It was the middle of the day, and this was normally a very busy neighbourhood. Now that he thought of it, he looked at the sky. It was dark grey, no clouds. And he couldn’t spot the sun. An anxious knot began to grow in the pit of his stomach. Something was really wrong.

He turned and moved to enter his house when he heard the blaring of horns. Far away, they sounded, but getting closer. He twirled in their direction. Someone was speeding towards him down the street in a modified muscle car of sorts. Not wanting to be run over, Jose extricated himself from the pavement, and waited on the visitor’s arrival. Perhaps they could explain why the gardens were empty, why he couldn’t even hear a stray wasp. 

“Throw this over yourself, quick!” The woman yelled, before she’d even halted the car. A hand extended out through the driver’s-side window holding a silver hip flask.

“What?” Jose asked her, more confused now than scared.

“We don’t have time,” she replied. She drew herself out onto the pavement beside him and uncorked the flask.

“Hey!” Jose yelled, as she upended it and splashed him with the liquid inside. “What the fuck?” He asked her, but she motioned to the door of his house. “I’m not going anywhere with you, until you explain to me what the fuck is going on.”

“Fine!” She answered, exasperated. “You’re fucking dead.”

“Dead?” He laughed, as she surveyed the skies. “I’m right here, alive, and you’re crazy. What did you sprinkle me with?”

“Gasoline,” she told him, and before he could speak, she continued, “We really don’t have time. They’ll have smelled you by now. The gasoline won’t last for long.” Jose was about to argue again when he spotted something up coming towards them through the sky.

“What the fuck is that?” He asked the strange woman.

“Them.”

Fear built within Jose as the being grew near, a numbing terror he couldn’t fully explain. It looked something like a giant squid, soaring rapidly with arms extended toward them. Beneath its mantle was a vortex that reminded Jose of portrayals of black holes in the media, huge swirling portals of death. And out of this vortex grew enormous legs, spindly and chitinous in appearance. Apart from its obvious outward strangeness, energy visibly radiated off it in waves. Waves that made Jose ill with fear beyond comprehension. Whatever this monster was, he didn’t want to find out. He turned and ran. 

Inside his doorway, he grasped for keys and pressed them hard into the door. 

“That won’t help us,” his companion told him, and he spun to face her. 

“Then what will!? Look, I don’t even know you, or what’s going on. What the hell is that thing?” He felt like he was about to cry. He was starting to believe her. He was dead. And this was his own special hell.

“Do you have anything strong smelling?” She asked? “Oh, and you can call me Marie.” 

“Eh…” He wracked his brains. “Maybe some sort of bug spray?” Suddenly, from outside, the window nearest the door became covered, and the hallway within grew dark.

“Quick,” Marie said. Jose could see a wild panic in her eyes. “You don’t want to know what happens if it catches us. Spray us both!”

“So, I’m really dead?” Jose asked her. As they watched the leviathan lose interest and depart. 

“Yes,” she answered nonchalantly. “We both are.”

Jose put his hands to his stomach. The knot had hardly decreased in size. “And that thing? It hunts us by smell?” He was trying his best not to feel overwhelmed, but this was all another level of crazy.

“The Stalker, yes,” Marie deeply sighed. “I try to keep that from happening.” When Jose looked perplexed, she continued. “That flash, when you appeared, it was carry over from the living world. A remnant of the moment you died. Do you remember?”

Jose wracked his brains. “Maybe,” he replied. “I remember there was a ball in the street. The neighbour’s children were playing, I guess. Then… a car horn I think, and that bright flash of light.”

“Hmm…” the mysterious woman replied. “You’ll remember more of it lat-“

“Wait!” Jose started. A thought had just struck him. “Where are all the other people that died? Have they moved on to heaven?”

Marie grimaced and gestured towards the flying horror, diminishing in size as they spoke.

“There is no heaven,” she told him morosely. “Only this.”

Both contestants stood stoic at their stations, trying their best not to visibly shake. Brian stared down at his steak au poivre. He wondered despairingly whether he’d done enough to win. He had to have. This was his chance. One opportunity to show his worth, to be much more than just average. His overthinking was cut off by the sudden appearance of the first judge, followed closely by the second and third. They soon sat in their allocated seats, and their careful deliberation began. 

Brian’s entrée was up first, and he looked on with pained concern as the trio sliced into it. Morsels of meat were raised to lips and silently chewed. The tension in the room was palpable and Brian began to feel horribly ill.

“I really enjoyed your dish,” said the first judge finally, accompanied by nods from 

the others. “Your pepper sauce was beautiful, but…” Brian barely heard the rest of their comments. The judge had found a flaw in his dish, and suddenly, in his own eyes, all of his chances were over. No… it wasn’t over. He couldn’t give up now. Not when he’d had a taste of stardom. As the judges moved to his opponent’s dish, Brian’s hands moved to the strangely-shaped metal pendant around his neck. He closed his eyes and silently he prayed. 

“Caller hear me calling,

Move me like the tide,

Place your voice inside me,

Amenosth my guide.”

To the millions of viewers watching on their televisions at home he must have appeared a pious, God fearing man. But he did not fear their god, nor did he revere 

him. He put his fate now in the hands of the Caller, to help him in their way.

Amenosth’s aid was swift. As the judges smacked their lips around his adversary’s dish, they suddenly began to squeal and cry in panic.

“Oh God! Please help! It burns!” Screamed the second judge as she clawed at her tongue. Blood and foam frothed from her mouth. The third judge keeled over and spit on the floor, only to find himself staring down at a piece of his own destroyed tongue. The others grasped desperately at bottles of water and drenched their anguished cavities to no avail. 

While all around him, people scurried quickly to the judges’ aid, Brian remained stalwart at his station. As he surveilled the 

ensuing chaos, a sadistic smile crept onto his face, and he fondled his icy pendant over again. Thank you Amenosth, he thought to himself. For giving me all that I want.

“Every day is bright for me. Come and join me and you’ll see.” 

I first saw it when I was twelve, the creature in darkness, though I didn’t know it at the time. It was but a small speck in the distance as I lay in bed at night, my night-light abandoned with the onset of puberty and young-adulthood. I thought nothing of it, why would I? My developing brain had shown many unusual things to me in the preceding years and anyway it was but a speck in an ocean of darkness. Yet, as I matured, it grew. It became more significant; a pea, then a golf ball in size and, at age sixteen, my parents sent me to a specialist in ocular impairments.

“We can find no cause for his symptoms,” they would say. “Perhaps the cause of his ailment is psychosomatic. We can refer him to a psychologist, if you’d like?” 

As the tiny dot I once saw enlarged and evolved, I began to notice its features. And what I saw terrified me. A creature with cold, malignant form emerged into my darkened hours. Walking home from the library in the evening I would see it, in the distant shadows glaring. It was inhuman, so disparate and other I could barely stand its sight. My therapist told me it couldn’t harm me, that it was a figment of past trauma, yet her assurances meant little. I could sense in it a malign threat I couldn’t describe, not to her and not to anyone. That being of darkness would one day reach me and bestow unspeakable evil upon me. 

Throughout my adult years, I desperately sought some manner to rid me of this nefarious curse, some way to feel relief once more. I curtailed my nightly outings and slept with a lamp. I avoided shadowed parking lots or alleys, as best I could, yet when I couldn’t it was there. Always more substantial it grew, and ever more distinct. Its cruelty was evident, its single intent to bring distress. One night, I closed my eyes to sleep, and it was with me, beneath my darkened lids. Grotesque and haunting, an ocular testament to an evil whose expanse I couldn’t truly grasp. I was petrified and sickened; beyond this moment I knew I was no longer safe wherever I went. There was nowhere I could run or hide. It would advance more rapidly now, every night. It would defile me. 

So, I performed the only option that remained to me then. Swallowing several painkillers, and chasing them with rye whiskey, I took sharp scissors and I cut. I sliced and carved and didn’t stop until my eyelids were but two slender flaps of meat on the table in front of me. I was free. Finally free. Since then, I have lived in sunshine and light. A brightness free of that monster that haunts. Join me and rejoice.

Some things are best left undiscovered. Yet such was contrary to my feeling of wonder and amazement, when in my roving youth, I came across an ancient ruin. It was nestled deep in the jungles of South America, which I explored at the time, and looked as though it had sat untouched for centuries, if not millennia. The birds of the jungle squealed around me as I entered.

It was dark and I paused for a moment as my eyes adjusted to the change. The thick walls and ceilings dampened the sounds outside and I was plunged into silence. Slowly, I made my way between the chambers, imagining the hustle and bustle of life here all those countless years ago. I heard the bubbling of broth over hot fires, the braying of livestock in their pens, the whistling of an occupant as they worked. And then suddenly, I perceived the sound of something real and tangible. A low hum like I’d never known before. It was soft yet it vibrated inside my skull, bringing waves of warm pleasure in tow.

This strange melody was so out of place, I should have run then, turned tail and left that jungle, not to return. However, it enchanted me so that I followed it to its origin. A hole in the ground, bottomless perhaps, for I could see nothing past 30 or 40 feet, was the source of the beautiful emanation. I directed an ear down towards this well and I could sense, beneath me, something listening back. All of a sudden, the noise began to grow, in volume and in pitch, and within seconds I was fully surrounded by a screaming cacophony. The ecstasy I felt before was replaced now, with a feeling of deep unending dread, and I ran.

I ran from that wicked place then and in essence I have never stopped running. That ghastly sound has remained with me always, maddening and frustrating. It has haunted and destroyed me, filling me always with a sensation of profound anxiety, even as I sleep. I fear I’ve gone mad. And now I take final action against it, one last attempt to venture beyond the limits of its reach. Pray the echo of my shotgun through my brain serves to finally drown it all out. This message serves as a warning to all who seek to venture unto places unknown. Some things are best left undiscovered. Farewell.

What the hell is that? I wondered. A foggy globule, the size of a grapefruit; it looked gelatinous in texture. It also appeared to be glowing slightly with a dim golden light. It appeared to be growing out of my garage floor. Maybe it’s some kind of mushroom? Better check it’s not poisonous, I reasoned. Typing ‘glowing opaque mushroom’ into my phone’s search engine yielded no results and neither did the several other queries I tried. Well, if it’s not a mushroom what is it? Maybe a toy? I reached down and carefully prodded it with a finger. It yielded to the pressure and my fingertip slid inside. It was a strange sensation, slightly warm at first, it felt as if a current of blown air flowed around my inserted digit. Then after a moment it didn’t feel like anything. I retracted my finger, mulling on the object’s strangeness, when a new sensation appeared: pain. Huh? I looked down at my severed digit, spouting blood from its clean-cut face. The rest of my finger remained still inside the curious article. The pooling blood was evoking in me a woozy sensation. I felt weak. Curious and deadly, my last thought before I collapsed.

When I awoke, I was disoriented, and my head hurt like crazy. I must have hit it when I fainted, I guessed. Putting a hand under me, I pushed myself up into a sitting position. And almost hit the blob. It was bigger now, so much bigger, and arranged in little lumps all around me. Holy shit! I recoiled. Feeling a stabbing pain, I remembered my injured finger. It cut off my fucking finger, then, how the fuck am I supposed to get out of here? I was cramped back up into a corner of the garage, almost underneath the long tool bench. Maybe I can cut it with something? A saw or a knife? But I couldn’t see what was on the bench above me, and I couldn’t stand up or I’d hit the strange growth. I reached an arm up and, curling my arm backwards onto the surface of the bench, I felt for anything I could use. Nothing, nothing, THERE!
“Yes!” I audibly cheered. A handle… Something. I pulled it carefully down and found what I held to be a metal mallet.

Damn, I’d been hoping for something sharp, but this could work. Wait… how do I even know this ‘thing’ won’t cut the mallet, like it did my finger? I looked down at my severed finger, which no longer bled, but throbbed incessantly. Only one way to find out. I touched the head of the mallet to the blob and for a moment I thought it would swallow it whole, but it didn’t. It simply moved away as I pushed. Thank God! I exclaimed. Okay… now for the hard part. Pulling my good hand around my body, I primed the mallet. And swung, and swung, and swung again. The cold steel of the mallet felt good in my grip. I skittered to a crouch and, thrusting the globule aside before me, I edged towards the door.

“AGH!” A flailing piece of it hit me and removed a chunk from my calf. Fuck, I gotta be more careful! I lamented. One step, then another, perceiving the ache of my wounds, I loped the length of the garage and, throwing open the door to the house, I was free. Relief blotted out the pain from all of the lacerations I knew I possessed. A relief violently quashed, when in the kitchen before me, I spied a plethora of growing masses, foggy and glowing.
“Fuck,” I cursed.