The Red Men

It was the slowest wave she had ever seen. It was so slow, she wasn’t even certain when it actually began. She first noticed it when she stumbled over the red lump in the grass during her morning jog in the park.

On her hands and knees, she inspected the strange sudden protuberance that had thrust itself into her daily routine. The smooth ochre stone seemed to strain against the soil around it. Touching it, it feel hot and wet, but nothing came off on her fingers. Strange, she thought.

Dismissing it, she continued on her way.

It wasn’t until several days later that she noticed the lump was growing. She had diligently avoided the spot since then, either by going around or being sure to step over it. It wasn’t quite as smooth looking as she had first assumed. It was creased a bit at the edges. She reluctantly put aside her thought that the lump was a bowling ball that had gotten buried somehow.

As the weeks passed, her horror mounted. At first, she did not put together what she was seeing each day, but as the eyes erupted she was dismayed. It was beyond belief that a statue was not only buried, but heaving its way silently upward out of the soil.

And even more incredible is that no one else seemed to notice. Each day she watched other joggers, pedestrians and the like simply pass the ochre anomaly without notice. They never stumbled or tripped over it like she did, but yet they were also unaware. Aware and unaware.

She knew she should have stopped coming to the park. But she was drawn. She was witness. She didn’t know what she was seeing.

More weeks passed, and the statue was fully revealed. An ochre man in ochre clothes, with tears smeared like birdshit down his face.

Why are you weeping? She wanted to ask, but could only remain silent. What is happening?

The first was followed by more underneath, which raised the first on their shoulders. In turn, they were followed by more behind and below. And still, people did not see even when their numbers were in the hundreds, and then thousands. They rose in an eternity of months and eternity of years, a stair of crying ochre men stretching to the sun. Reaching upwards. A bloody, straining, grievous stairway to Hell.

 

The Pits

“Fuuuuuuuuck…” Johnny sighed, exhaling a long stream of tobacco smoke. He leaned back, placing his boots on the splintered counter in front of him. The light coming from the ballast above his head seemed to writhe and twist with as much impatience as he felt to leave.

And fuck, tonight’s event hadn’t even started yet. There was one more…

Thud.

Thud. Thud.

Thud.

Johnny straightened in his chair.

Finally, the late fuck is here, he thought.

Eventually the bootsteps reached the bottom of the stairs and a skinny rat-faced man with a covered crate, the kind you’d carry a small dog in, slipped through the doorway and took a seat at the stool in front of the counter. The sounds of the crowd milling about in the back room swelled in anticipation, as if they new the newcomer had just arrived even though no one but Johnny was minding the door.

“Name?” Johnny asked. He knew, of course, but the formalities were a necessity and a precaution.

The man opened his mouth to speak, but his eyes suddenly darted to the left of Johnny at the same time Johnny heard a crinkling sound behind him. Johnny whirled around in his chair.

A doll was rifling through the small cupboard by the minifridge. It paused, sensing it was discovered and turned to Johnny. Its dress was rumpled lace which may have been white, once.

“Please Mister, can I just have one cookie…?” It begged, gazing at him with empty eye sockets which had had their beads torn out some time ago. It twitched on cracked and broken joints.

“GET BACK IN YOUR CRATE!” Johnny roared. The doll shrieked and ran deeper into the building, in the direction of the dollhouses.

The violence in his voice silenced and protest the rat-faced man may have had about the treatment of the doll. Of course, if he had been the kind of person to complain about something like that, he wouldn’t have been there at all.

“Sorry about that,” Johnny muttered sheepishly. “Damn things are always finding new ways to get out. I prefer dogs, myself. Good thing they don’t seem to have much will to go far, eh? Now, about getting your info down…”

Johnny finished taking down the challenger’s information, inspected the doll he brought, locked the entrance, and led the man with his crate to the pits.

Legend of the Lambs

Listen closely little ones, for this tale is the core of our history and lore.

Long long ago in a time before the Tall Ones, our people lived in the hills and fields at the edges of the Earth. We were a content people. The grass was enough, the sun was enough and our females were plenty. But there was a price to pay for Paradise, the price of Desolation. For soon there were many of our kind upon the Earth and soon all the grass and sun were not enough.

The wolves saw the Despair of the sheep, and an opportunity for themselves.

“Sheep,” the Lord of Wolves said, “we are both destroyed by the price of fecundity. For as you starve, my kind starves as well. Let me offer a treaty for our survival. Let us take our chance to hunt you each night.”

At first our ancestors could only reply with Dismay. But in the throes of their decline they came to see the wisdom of the wolves. Each night, they offered one of their own until the grasses returned.

The bargain has held since then, even through the Reign of the Tall Ones, and even when wolves became dogs and forgot their way.

But the Tall Ones are gone now, buried in fire and ash and in lush grasses.

And now, we are too many again.

And now, we begin the sacrifices of the night once more.

Inside

The dream started normally enough.

She was at work, at one of the large retail pet store chains. Her arm was soaked to the elbow as she scraped and scrubbed the algae of the blue backing and front acrylic of hundreds of tanks.

It was soothing, normal.

The customer was normal, too. He had a box in his arms. He examined the aviary for a few moments then approached. He held up a battered cardboard pet carrier like an accusation.

“My parakeet died.” He stated, wielding the words like a weapon. The man seemed to think that no other words were necessary. His eyes gave away the confrontation he was prepared to engage in.  This was normal, too.

“Did you notice anything unusual?” She asked. A lot of people were surprisingly unconcerned about animal death, but the details could nearly always be teased out. She lifted the bird from the box. She had sold this one only a few days ago.

“No, but I’m sure there is some kind of disease in your birds and I want a refund! I don’t want another one of your sick, mass produced birds!”

She sighed, internally. This was normal, too. The bird was light in her hands.
“How was he eating before he died?”

“Well, I bought those pellets but he didn’t seem to like them much.”

“Any seeds, fruits or veggies?” She already knew the answer. It was just normal ritual at this point.

“No.”

“Sir,” she began carefully, “parakeets and most other birds don’t switch well to pellets. You have to transition them carefully. A parakeet or a cockatiel has a high metabolism. They literally will starve themselves. The instructions are given on your care sheet and on the bag of pellets.”

As she was talking she walked to the shelf with the bird feed, grabbed the bag the man had probably bought, the bag she didn’t see him leave the store with. She turned the bag over, smoothed the crumbled plastic and showed him the instructions. The belligerence went out of the customer’s eyes as it always did.
Mumbling confusion, he took his bird back and left the store. She still would have honored his request for a refund, corporate policy dictated she do so but she had no interest in clearing the man’s confusion. Payback for his careless death and mindless accusation. For the way he had stared into the aviary looking for more dead or ill birds to justify his position.

She stood there for a while, thinking.
She had the answer. She knew what to do.

Unnoticed by customers and coworkers, she poisoned the fishtank system with an overdose of Melafix. She crushed the rodents and reptiles with her feed, snaring them in fish nets to hold them in place.

It wasn’t until she had started in on the aviary that she was caught by a manager with a parakeet in her left hand, its head twisted around in another.

That was the exact moment awareness and sanity returned to her. A moment later, she woke terrified of the realization that she had no free will.

When she got up and looked at her baby sleeping the next morning in its crib, also normal, she realized it wasn’t a matter of choice. She couldn’t choose to not love him, she couldn’t choose to suffocate him. She stumbled out into the living room.

It would only take one small quirk in her brain, one small moment of nightmare to change her perceptions, alter her choices.

She pressed her head against the glass coffee table and laughed.

It Dwells

It came only after her breath had steadied into the long deep rhythm of sleep. Dark fingers crept along her jaw, ebony limbs slid over her torso. A blank, empty visage nestled itself between my face and hers.

“She doesn’t love you, you know.”

I didn’t say anything in reply. Please, please let me sleep.

“She only feels sorry for you.”

I turned away, carefully, trying not to wake her. The low whisper continued.

“If you died, she wouldn’t have to feel guilty about leaving you.”

Go away. Let me sleep!

I felt its fetid breath on my cheek. I felt it’s tongue slithering against my ear. I tried to ignore it, but the whispers cut through my resistance. They were undeniable. I threw back the blankets and went out to apartment balcony. I sat on the wooden bench swing. The florescent light overhead was calm and did not crackle or waver. The stable glow soothed me, stabled me.

After a few moments, my loathing slithered up beside me.

“She never loved me anyway.”