u/OccultDetective79

Many years ago, when it was Christmas and I was eight years old, I went outside and I did what I always did. I built a snowman.

I’d start by making a big pillar of snow, taller than myself. I’d get a stool out from my dad’s shed so that I could mold the head into a blank, featureless oval. Then I’d make the arms. Long spindly things with pointed ends that, frankly, should have fallen off at a slight breeze. Somehow they never did. Then to top it all off, I’d get some coal from the fireplace in the living room - the two biggest chunks I could find - and press them into the face, making two round, dark eyes.

Now you may wonder; where’s the hat? The scarf? The mouth? The carrot for a nose? Well you see, the way I built snowmen - that’s how I saw people when I was a kid. In fact, sometimes I still see people like that. It’s not scary. At least not to me. I’m used to it. It makes them more interesting to me.

My family always found it strange how I would make these things and then I’d sit and talk to them, sometimes for hours. Other times I’d just stare at them and imagine them coming to life. I did it with pictures, clay models, anything I could use to create things that interested me.

Sometimes I would catch my mother staring over my shoulder, looking at the things I conjured from my warped little child’s brain. She would ask me why I drew those things and I would keep quiet. Something told me it wasn’t a good idea to say anything.

But I was talking about the snowman. I sat in front of it. This slender, looming snowman with big dark eyes of coal. Its legs - well, it didn’t really have legs. If it did then they were both fused together into one, rooting it to the ground like a tree. I wondered if it would be more interesting if people were like that. Like if they didn’t walk around and just stayed rooted to the ground, only able to talk to the people immediately around them.

What if people had big black eyes, no nose, mouth or ears, and couldn’t move at all? Wouldn’t that be interesting?

I looked down at my bare hands. Soot from the coal covered my fingers. I rubbed it between the tips, spread it around as much as I could. I liked the way it looked against the snowman’s glistening white skin. I tried to imagine it spreading all over me, turning me as black as the snowman’s eyes. Like I was a snowman’s eye.

The snowman’s arm came down. No, it didn’t just come down. It was knocked down. My brother had thrown a snowball at it. He was two years older than me and this was the usual ritual. I’d make something, he’d come along and destroy it. I’d learned long ago that crying made no difference. Whatever my brother did - at least to my parents - was only ever a joke. Everything, no matter what, was just a joke and I should stop being so petty.

So I didn’t cry. Not even when I looked down at the icicle-like arm sticking up from the ground at the base of the snowman. I wanted to cry. I could feel its pain. Just like if it was my arm that was broken off.

I turned and glared at my brother. He grinned back at me. Like it was all some big joke.
Our mother called us in for dinner and my brother ran inside, his job of terrorizing me done for the day. Before I left I said goodbye to the snowman. I felt it only polite.

That night I had trouble sleeping. That’s not strange. Children always have trouble sleeping on Christmas Eve. But I wasn’t awake because I thought I could catch a glimpse of Santa and his reindeer. I was awake because I could see the snowman’s eyes everywhere. They were little black holes covering the walls and doors and ceiling, gaping across and down at me like dark stars.

There was one. It was on the wall across from the foot of my bed. It was bigger and darker than all the others. I could have fit my whole body into it. In fact, something told me I should. It didn’t scare me. It still doesn’t. That very fact probably scares me more than the idea of the snowman’s eye itself. I’ve tried everything over the years to induce even an ounce of rational fear of that abyss into myself. But no matter what I do, there is always something within me that says that was what I was supposed to do.
Maybe if I had, what ended up happening may not have happened at all.

I heard something outside. It was like a footstep. The crunch of a boot compacting fresh snow out in the garden. Any other child - perhaps one lacking in my strangeness - might have thought, “Santa!” But I knew it wasn’t Santa. If he existed which, even at that point, I was certain he didn’t; it wouldn’t interest me anyway. But if he did exist then he wouldn’t be so careless as to approach on foot and alert everyone to his presence.

I got up, went over to the window. Perhaps whatever it was would take my mind off the holes and crawling inside them.

The snowman was there. Snow was falling slowly, blanketing the footprints my brother and I had left, making it new and excitingly blank again. The snowman’s arm - callously knocked off by my brother earlier - seemed to have reattached itself. Snowy sinews slithered up from the arm still sticking out of the ground and meeting with the shoulder once again. The other arm still stuck out at the side like a gnarled tree branch. His head was bent in a strange tilt that made him undeniably interesting.

I couldn’t see where the snow had been stepped in, nor could I hear anymore movement. All I could hear was the wind whistling just beyond the glass.

There was a creaking noise from outside my door. I turned to look, expecting to see my mother walk in and ask what I was doing staring out of the window so late at night. Trying to catch Santa in the act? Again, he didn’t interest me.

When I turned back the snowman was closer. Something else was different too.

He had legs.

Two long, thin legs that spiked deep into the snow just like his arm had been. That arm was now raised and pointed in a peculiar direction, I couldn’t tell where. I kept focusing on his eyes. They were bigger now. The howling of the wind grew greater still and then I realized that it wasn’t coming from outside. It was coming from the room itself. From the holes in the walls.

I could feel the chill from the cold abysses that surrounded me and I began to shiver. I closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around myself. I could have gone back to bed and kept warm but I couldn’t. Something kept me ratcheted in place like I was one of those people who didn’t have legs and couldn’t move. When I opened my eyes again the snowman was gone and before I could even wonder where he was I heard it. A scream of pain so ice-shattering I can still hear it in my ears when I feel the winter wind against my skin. And when I heard it, I suddenly knew where the snowman was pointing.

It was pointing at my brother’s room.

My parents were shouting, running down the hall towards my brother’s room. More yelling, screaming from my mother, cursing, calling for God to help them. I looked down at myself. Ice clawed through my blood and I frantically wiped my hands against my pajamas. It wasn’t long before my mother came into my room. She was pale and didn’t say anything. She just sat me down on my bed, held me in her arms as she cried and cried and cried. I kept silent. She didn’t seem to notice the holes in the walls. I suppose they didn’t interest her.

When the ambulance came and mum left me to go downstairs I made sure to look outside. Sure enough, there he was. Standing right where I left him. Legs fused back together, arm severed and sticking up out of the ground. It was like he’d been there the whole time.

I saw my brother for the first time after he was brought into hospital. My mother and father sat by his side. He lay on his back, quiet, eyes wrapped in gauze. I was left by him while the doctor took my parents aside. As he explained that they had no idea how the coal could have gotten into his eye sockets and there was no way to remove them without fracturing large sections of the skull; I couldn’t help but think my brother seemed much more interesting this way.

I still go to see my family at Christmas. We don’t really celebrate the holiday. There are no trees or lights or turkey. No snowmen. We simply spend time with each other. My brother speaks little. He certainly says nothing of what happened to him that night.

But what’s interesting is that whenever I’m near him I always get the feeling he’s watching me. He can’t be of course. But it always seems like he makes a point of knowing precisely where I am.

I’m typing this out on my phone, sitting in the living room with my family now. I think this may be the last time I see them. Last night the holes in the wall were back. When I looked out the window of my old room I saw him standing out in the snow just like back then - calling out to me, asking me to join with him.

I can’t tell them of course. They’ll put me away. They would have put me away years ago had I only told them the truth about what I saw back then when I opened my eyes and heard my brother scream.

When I looked down at my hands and saw the black soot from the coal spread all over my fingers.

If you want to spread good ideas then you’ve got to get into culture. People tend to get their morals/philosophy from fiction rather than from reading essays. If you’ve got something people ought to be looking at then post it here.

PART1: https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromTheCreeps/s/U2AcrClmJy

PART 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromTheCreeps/s/HeQilV126Y

PART 3: https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromTheCreeps/s/o6Dd6UMVei

PART 4: https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromTheCreeps/s/eXl8n9ZTKy

My car skids to a halt on the old bridge into town.

Gunnar’s body is in the trunk, just in case one of the Agents of the Occult Bureau shows up out of nowhere as they are want to do.

I’ll lift him up by the collar with one arm, wave his inside out head at their stupid pale faces, mock them for killing their precious ‘leader of tomorrow’ with their ‘non-invasive’ punishment.

Goodbye Gunnar. Thanks for all the wonderful memories.

I get out, pull in a breath of the freshest air I’ve ever inhaled. I feel more alive than ever as I skip delightedly to my own death.

I look out over the side of the bridge. I used to walk across it every day to and from school. I always liked it because I could see the city skyline from here. I could hear every sound; the traffic, the car horns, police sirens, people yelling over the din of crowds milling around in the town center.

Now it’s silent. Blissfully, horribly silent. There’s no one around since the Great Mercy. Since the death orgies, the abortion showers, the controlled plagues and the mass suicides that hit the Earth in waves for multiple years before everything got deathly quiet and all that was left was us and our pets.

All those people. Billions of them.

And now I will finally join them.

I get to work tying the rope around the railing at the edge of the bridge and then making the loop at the other end. I let it rest around my neck like the arms of a lover.

There is no fear. I suppose the Death Conditioning did its trick but really, the fear of not dying was always greater. I ease into the feel of the noose. The way it rubs against my neck is uncomfortable but that doesn’t matter. It wont for long anyway.

My comfort is broken when I hear the sound of a vehicle. Another car coming up the road, lights beaming at me through the blue evening tint. I start to wonder if I was right, that the Bureau has come to inspect the circumstances of my death.

They wouldn’t show up in a car. They wouldn’t show up at all. It would just happen.

The car slows to a stop and the driver gets out. I can see he also has a rope in hand. He slams the door shut and then looks at me. Even through the dark I know who it is before he opens his mouth.

“Aguh, hi Caleb. How’th it goinguh?”

For once I’m not too irritated by Jim’s presence. “Hey Jim. Not too bad. For once. What are you doing here?” Then I remember. I already know the answer. “Oh, right. Sorry about Lily.”

Jim laughs, “That’th okay. Thuppothe it all worked out in the enduh.”

I nod and smile. It’s strange how happy I feel. I shouldn’t be. Something ancient in me tells me I shouldn’t be. But in the scheme of things it amounts to a dull ache. A mild nagging.

Jim Halper moves up next to me. He approaches the railing, about to tie his own rope before looking to me.

“Uguh, do you muh-mind?”

I’d rather be alone but I guess it doesn’t matter. I shake my head and let him continue. Once he slips the noose around his own neck we both stand in the evening gloom, staring out over the silent city. Two men about to step into the arms of Mercy.

I wonder what it will look like. Will it have the faces of my family? Will Gunnar be there too?

“Buh-Beautiful, huh?” says Jim. I nod again. “Y-You know… I fink we’re the only oneth leftuh.”

He may be right. I don’t remember seeing anyone. Not even at the store or walking their dogs around the block. “You think so?” I say.

“Uh huh.” He’s quiet for a moment before speaking again. “I uthed to - aguh - walk acroth thith bridge every duh-day goinguh to thcool, you know.”

I frown. Then I remember. Yeah. I remember Jim walking the same route as me. We used to talk about sports back then.

We were… friends. I think.

“Yeah, I know.”

I try to take in the sight. One last memory before I take the plunge.

“Cuh-Caleb?” says Jim. I’m starting to get a little annoyed. I wish I’d just told him to kick rocks now. Find his own place to kill himself.

“Hm?” I grunt.

“I… uh… don’t wanna duh-die.”

I frown again, look over to Jim. I see his face. His mouth hangs open like it always does ever since he shot himself. I can see his ruined tongue. A mass of mottled tissue resting in his mouth. A cauliflower tongue, if you will.

“What do you mean?” I ask, almost angry. Scolding.

“I-I’ve been dead. I don’t remember much - uh - but… I duh-don’t fink it’th… whu-what they thay it ith.”

I march over to Jim. He flinches as I get right up in his face.

“What are you talking about? What did you see? Tell me.”

Jim stammers harder than before. I think I’ve scared him. I don’t care. After all this time now he tells me. The amount of times we’ve seen each other since this dumbass shot himself. He could have said something but now… now?

He chokes out a few guttural gulps before saying:

“Nuh… nuffing.”

I’m shaking now. Fear, anger, it all passes through my arms, tightening my fists into steel clubs.

“Nothing? That’s it? No light? No Mercy?”

More gulping and stammering. I want to take his fucking head off but I let him speak.

“Juuuuu-Jutht him.”

Just him? What?

“Who?” I demand.

“Thuh guh-guh-Great Narlat. He wath… luh-laughing.”

My legs feel like they’re going to give way beneath me. I shoot out a hand, grabbing his arm. Jim is shaking too.

“Laughing? Laughing, why? Tell me!”

Jim is trying to get away but my grip is like a vice. I wont let him go. Now until he tells me. “I ffffffink he wath… puh-playing… wiv uth.”

“Playing with us?”

“Yeth…,” says Jim, then adding, “Luh-Like a…pet.”

He practically spits the last word, forcing it out like a kidney stone from the mouth.

I let go, grab the edge of the bridge to hold myself steady. I feel my stomach turn like a concrete mixer. Every bone in my body rattles with rage, terror, betrayal.

“But… I was told. I was TOLD, Jim! They told me all those years! I gave up everything! My family! I let them all die! They told me if I did that I’d… I’d see Mercy!”

I lunge at Jim, grip his shoulders. “I watched my parents die in the gas. I took care of Gunnar all those years. Going to the store. Checking his shit and walking him and…!” I’m on my knees, hands on Jim’s stomach, kneading at his shirt, weeping into it.

“I KISSED A FUCKING CORPSE, JIM! And they told me… I’d be rewarded. That it would all be worth it. And now… you’re telling me….”

I cry. I cry until Jim’s shirt is wet with tears. Then I hear him say:

“I’m th-thorry, Caleb.”

I look up at him as he slips the noose off of his head and drops it to the side. He turns away, starts walking towards his car, leaving me sobbing on my knees in the night.

No. No you… don’t get to….

Before I know it I’m on my feet again. I’ve pulled Jim Halper into a choke hold. He struggles as I pick up the noose, whip it over his neck, make it tight. He’s already choking before I topple him over the railing.

His scream is silenced by the snap and the tightening of the rope. Then the creaking as his body swings back and forth.

I watch him swing, arms draped loosely over the railing, keeping me upright as my legs slowly solidify again.

What now? I think. Well there’s not much else for it. If I’m the last one, I’m the last one. Whether there’s Mercy on the other side or not… what other choice is there.

Maybe he’s there. Laughing like Jim said.

I hear the voice behind me.

“Congratulations, Mr Whitaker.”

I spin around, shocked at the sight of the woman from the Occult Bureau, standing there in her suit with the gold eye over the breast, the tablet in her arms. She walks over to me, still smiling like before. I don’t bother asking her where she came from.

“Congratulations?”

“Of course. On being the very last one. You have suffered far more than anyone for the sake of tomorrow. And so I am here to deliver a personal letter of thanks from the Great Narlat himself.”

With those words she hands me an envelope. My name written on it in what looks like exquisite yet ancient looking writing, applied with a fountain pen. Or perhaps even a quill.

I take it in my hands and look down at it before looking to the woman.

“But… you’re still here. Surely if I am the last one then…?”

My sentence peters out. I see the look in her eyes. They’re tired. Cracked at the edges. Her skin is flaking and her lips are dry and gray.

She smiles back at me with those brittle teeth of hers as she slowly raises a pistol to her head, pulls the trigger and blows away most of her skull before thudding to the ground. I’m able to cover my ears before the blast.

Back to the letter, now spattered with the woman’s black green blood. I open it up. It’s a greeting card with a picture of a dog on the front, smiling and wagging its tail. It looks just like Gunnar.

I open up the card and the same beautiful handwriting stares back at me:

Congratulations.

Thank you for all the wonderful memories.

- GN

The card slips through my fingers and glides to the ground. I turn around walk over to the railing.

I climb over, sit on the edge, staring out over the silent cityscape.

I lean over. I fall.

I fall to meet his face laughing at me in the dark.

PART 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromTheCreeps/s/U2AcrClmJy

PART 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromTheCreeps/s/HeQilV126Y

PART 3: https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromTheCreeps/s/o6Dd6UMVei

The growls and rumblings from Gunnar get louder.

I step back. He raises his head and I can see multiple glistening tendrils shoot out from all sides of his face from behind. They all have tooth-like spines jutting from them, hundreds of them. So thin they’re almost like needles.

All the while he grows. By the time he turns around and I get a better - albeit unwanted - look at his face, he’s around the size of a tiger.

His normally smiling pink mouth has ripped wide open, turned in on itself allowing the spiny, tooth-laden tentacles to shoot out and whip themselves towards me. There’s a churning red hole where his throat used to be, itself lined with razor sharp teeth.

I can see parts of Lily still hanging from them like thin pieces of stir-fry meat. It makes me think of those rotating hooks with hanging pig carcasses in slaughterhouses.

I turn and sprint towards the glass door. Gunnar lets out a terrible, gargling roar, the heat of which only just hits the back of my neck as I spin back around and slam the glass door shut.

A second later he rams against it. I topple, smacking my lower back against the dinner table.

Gunnar isn’t the size of a tiger anymore. He’s far bigger. Still growing. The toothy tentacles shoot out, slicing the air and creating tiny fissures in the glass which quickly turn to cracks.

What the hell am I supposed to do about this? I think. I’ve never seen anything like it. Not in those veterinary textbooks, not in any of those videos on animal care the Occult Bureau made us watch for hours on end one enormously boring day in July.

Is this… my punishment?

This? This is what she meant by ‘brief and non-invasive’? Brief in that I wouldn’t last a second against Gunnar in this state. Non-Invasive in that they wouldn’t touch me personally.

Gunnar on the other hand….

Gunnar’s black fur-lined skin splits as he grows, showing the red and pulsing muscle sinew beneath. The glass door cracks under his steadily growing weight. I turn around and clamber over the table as the door shatters inward and I just feel the whip of a tendril on the back of my neck. My blood lashes across the wall next to the kitchen door.

I crash down on the floor and stun my left arm. Ignoring it I get up and vault over the couch as the table splinters under Gunnar’s immensity. Rushing out into the hall I grab the front door handle.

Locked. Damn! I must have done that after the woman left. I felt so unsafe.

I can hear the distinctive sound of my couch being torn in half. Massive paw pads break through the floor boards as it clumsily stumbles towards me with little to no elegance. It’s how I know Gunnar is still in there.

I could run for the stairs but it’s too close to me now. It’ll easily grab me with one of those ever-lengthening tentacles. The spiny teeth would sink into me and never let go. Drag me into the fleshy maelstrom.

I slide my back down the door and my rump connects with the ground. My chest heaves, blood pumps from the wound on the back of my neck. My mind rushes.

What will happen to me? Will I wake up tomorrow, still alive? Will Gunnar be waiting for me? Smiling and breaking wind and waiting for his next serving of supermarket slop?

Yes. They would never punish me by sending me to the arms of Mercy, even in such a brutal fashion. Even at the monstrous teeth of the puppy I once loved and cherished. If I knew that truly I would die then I’d throw myself head first into Gunnar’s gaping machine of a mouth.

They wont let me. If they can do this then they can keep Gunnar alive for as long as they want. To torture me, torment me! Brief and non-invasive my ass! They’re going to make me live forever! I will never see Mercy! I will never see my parents! NEVER!

I keep cursing inwardly. I don’t care if they can hear my thoughts. Let them hear. Let the Great Narlat himself hear every word. If I could I would hand deliver them directly to him. Him and his Occult Bureau have made my life Hell!

All the things I could have done. I could have married Sandra. Had children. My parents would still be here. And Gunnar… would still be my friend.

Gunnar claws his way towards me. I notice his back legs are still small in comparison to the rest of his body. Whatever spell they cast on him was imperfect. They drag along behind him like loose shoelaces as his front claws pulverize the wood flooring.

I almost laugh at the sight.

The tentacles are feet from my face. One or two whip against my cheeks and I can feel blood drip from the barely stinging cuts. His breath smells of rotten flesh and chicken flavoured dried dog food. He belches and something flies out and hits my forehead, sticks to my skin with thick saliva.

When I reach up to brush it off I find it’s Lily’s collar.

‘My Name is Lily! If you find me please call my owner, Jim at 555 - …’

I throw it aside. At least Jim will be happy.

I don’t close my eyes. I want to see. I want to try and catch a glimpse right before they pull me back to life. Just a little bit. A little bit of the light of Mercy.

Gunnar’s grumbling and roaring stops so suddenly it makes me flinch.

The tentacles go limp and the blasts of burning furnace-like breath die like an electric fan being ripped from the wall socket.

Then just as suddenly, Gunnar keels over to the side and lands with an enormous thud that makes the walls of the whole house shudder. Ornaments fall to the floor and shatter.

I watch as Gunnar, my friend of many years and foe of many more, convulses, chokes and splutters on the ground. He begins to shrink, the tentacles and teeth and other fleshy appendages that comprised his new face retract.

His head doesn’t quite reorient. His own teeth remain on the outside making his head resemble a red and glistening mace.

Finally, his whole body goes limp.

I sit for several minutes and just stare at him. Eventually I get up the courage to reach out a single foot and nudge him with my toe. I flinch back immediately.

Nothing. Not a move. Not a sound. Not a smell.

Could it be?

I scramble over, place my ear against Gunnar’s body.

Nothing. No heartbeat.

It’s gone.

Gunnar is… dead.

I pull myself away, stare down at the lifeless mound that used to be my dog.

I remember when I first held him in my arms. It was the day of the Death Conditioning when I threw up all over the corpse and I was given detention for it. Everyone made fun of me. But when I got home and my dad handed me this beautiful little black puppy, I didn’t care. None of it mattered. He licked my hand, my face, barked happily as I played with him all day until we fell asleep together on the couch.

It didn’t matter what else was happening. It didn’t matter that the world was going crazy. It didn’t matter because it was just me and Gunnar against everything and everyone.

No matter what, we had each other.

I pull in a deep breath. I feel tears start to come. My eyes swell and my throat tightens.

I shoot to my feet. I lash out with my foot and kick the dead dog across the hallway. The body slides along the floor and smacks against the wall. Then I thrust my arms into the air and scream the happiest scream I’ve ever screamed in my whole damn life.

They killed him! Those idiots killed him with their stupid punishment and now I’m free! I’m FREE!

I grab my car keys, rush out to the garage, snatching a coil of rope as I go. I jump into the car and almost take the roof off with the garage door as it takes too long to open.

I speed away to a place I’ve been wanting to go for a long time.

PART 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromTheCreeps/s/4Hnw2ygL8p

PART 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromTheCreeps/s/Mz9c164398

‘Brief and non-invasive?’

What the hell could she have meant? ‘Brief and non-invasive.’ That could mean anything!

Brief could mean five minutes. It could mean twenty four hours. Davina Harrington was bereft of her skin for several days.

Non-invasive? I guess that means my organs are safe. But what does ‘non-invasive’ even mean to the cold hand of the bureaucracy of Mercy?

Maybe… this is my punishment. Being made to wait. To wonder.

Wishful thinking. The idea that they would stop at inflicting mere anxiety. Too easy. Too….

… merciful.

Images from the TV flicker across my vision, almost none of the information reaching my brain.

No. I wont let them control my mind. It’s all I have. My mind, my TV and my dog which refuses to die.

There’s a show on called ‘Diseased Date’ about people with chronic illnesses and deformities finding love. What a pointless thing, love. Love implies a future. The Great Narlat tells us that a future is possible but it must be without us.

A woman with tumors over 90% of her body is sitting in a restaurant with a young man with leprosy. She asks him to pass the salt. Her lips are swollen with cancerous growths. Only reason I know what she’s saying is because the show has subtitles.

The guy with leprosy - somehow understanding without subtitles - hands her the salt shaker. Part of his skin sloughs off and lands in her vegetable lasagne.

They both laugh. I change the channel. I’ve seen it before. They both die together in a chamber before the episode ends.

Romantic.

Now it’s a public information film. It’s called ‘Death Conditioning.’

The camera centers on a school classroom. A man in a dark robe, gold threaded eye over the front walks between the aisles of children quietly writing away in their notebooks.

This is the Great Narlat, the saviour of the world.

NARLAT: Death. It is known as a universal enemy. Humanity used to put in countless man hours to stave it off, prolong the presence of life.

The Great Narlat stops between two of the children, places either hand lovingly on their shoulders. They do not raise their heads.

NARLAT: But now experts agree, life is the sole common factor in all of the world’s ills. War, disease, murder, pollution, extinction.

He walks to the front of the classroom, turns back to the camera. His face is sleek, his head perfect and hairless, his eyes dark and piercing.

NARLAT: With the advent of my administration and the Occult Bureaucracy, the solution to the problem of life is now here. Today I present to you the latest in education. Allow us to demonstrate.

Just what I needed. Memories of my school days. They’re gonna bring that thing in now.

Two men in hazardous materials suits wheel in a table draped in a white sheet. The sheet takes the form of something underneath. The men leave and the Great Narlat removes the sheet.

It is the pale, naked and hairless dead body of a man. The man himself has no defining features. It is like he has been bred and then killed for this precise purpose. His stomach is distended, body lanky. The genitals are barely visible as to be non-existent.

I don’t wanna watch this. I don’t care how necessary it was. I don’t want to remember.

The Great Narlat points at a teenage girl. Immediately she rises, walks towards the body. She scans her eyes across its form.

NARLAT: Touch it.

The girl places her hand on the corpse. She moves it back and forth, caressing the skin of the body almost lovingly.

When I look at her… I see her. Sandra. My high school crush. I know, crushes were pointless. Are pointless. But I couldn’t help it. She was beautiful.

Even when she went up to the corpse and she….

NARLAT: Kiss it.

The girl bends down, kisses the corpse on the mouth. She remains there for a long time. When she’s done all the others do the same. They all got up and stood in single file, one after the other, touching, hugging, kissing the dead man. Then it got to me and I….

I threw up. All over the fucking corpse. God it was embarrassing. They all laughed at me. Because… because I was WEAK! I couldn’t do it!

I ran all the way home. That night I cradled Gunnar in my arms. He was just a puppy then. How I loved him back then.

To love is to be weak.

The words of the Great Narlat. I remembered them as I wept at the Mercy Clinic. Sandra was there. She was a nurse. She put her hand on my shoulder as my parents lay in the bed together and the gas filled the pure white chamber. I moved closer to her.

To love is to be weak. Strength is to embrace death.

I rip the remote out from between the cushions, turn off the TV. I can feel tears streaming down my cheeks, drying on the tip of my chin.

I can hear something coming from outside.

It takes me a while to get up and check. Normally I wouldn’t but the sound is… strange. Like someone viciously digging into a steak so rare it still moos when you bite into it. I head to the back of the house. The sliding glass door that leads into the backyard is open.

Gunnar is nowhere to be seen.

Shit! I don’t even remember leaving it open! Mercy knows where he might have gone. What if he wanders away? Dies of starvation from his own stupidity? Will I be held responsible?

I quickly slide the door open further and step outside, ready to search the block before the Admin comes down on me like an anvil from Heaven.

I don’t get far. I don’t get far because he’s right there. His back is to me, his head down, chowing away on something I can’t see.

Must be a rabbit, I think. I sigh, thinking of all the parasites he’ll probably contract from this little meal of his.

I’m about to move over to him and pull him away but I stop.

Something is… wrong. There’s something different about him.

Firstly, Gunnar was never a hunter. He got startled by pigeons in the town center. But that isn’t the only thing that gives me pause.

He’s bigger.

I know I’m not imagining it. I know Gunnar up and down, every inch after all these years and he’s bigger. Not only that, he’s getting bigger by the second.

And the sounds. It isn’t just teeth ripping through flesh. Not just bone cracking. It’s disintegrating. It sounds more like a massive meat grinder than the jaws of an animal.

Then the head of the poor creature he’s feasting on detaches and rolls off to the side. It’s white and has pointy brown ears, very much unlike that of a rabbit. I’m paralyzed as I recognize it.

It’s Lily. Jim Halper’s Jack Russell Terrier.

PART 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromTheCreeps/s/2NxDXPihAu

Initially Gunnar turned his nose up at the food. Then he realized it was all he was getting and began to chow down.

I’m flicking through channels on the TV. I land on a game show where a grinning TV show host with a toupee that looks like someone shampooed a dead rat is sitting across from an excited young woman.

“Congratulations, Kalina! You’ve won a free hysterectomy courtesy of your local Mercy Clinic!”

The girl screams, jumps up and hugs the host as the people around her cheer. As the masked and gloved surgeons enter to perform the procedure live I grunt and change the channel.

A documentary about the Church of Mercy. A lavish temple hall where robed children kneel down in a line. The priest, himself dressed in a flowing black robe with a golden eye emblazoned on the front, inserts a pill into each of their mouths. They all drop dead one after the other, falling into each other like shiny black dominoes.

Ech. I saw this one, I think as I change the channel again. It’s all just reruns these days.

Now an old execution. A bunch of rebels are on the gallows platform, about to get the rope for blowing up a Mercy clinic. One of them is yelling as they put the noose around his neck.

“Don’t you see? God has abandoned us! He has abandoned us for worshiping false idols! We are all bound for oblivi - !”

The trapdoor opens. I’ve changed the channel before the rope even goes taut.

There’s a knock at the door. Gunnar toddles back through to the living room and flops back down in front of the fireplace.

I’ll get it then.

When I open the front door a woman in a black suit, golden eye symbol stitched over her right breast, smiles back at me. She clutches a tablet in her hands like an unusually flat infant. She looks about thirty but her skin is pale and cracked. Her hair is white and stringy.

“Good evening,” she says brightly, “I’m from the Occult Bureau. I’m here for your monthly inspection.”

Every month someone from the Narlat Admin shows up to inspect the condition of my animal and make sure I’m doing what I can to keep it physically and mentally healthy.

Over the years I’ve managed to keep a pretty steady mid to high score but as Gunnar has aged this has become more difficult.

The woman stands there, unmoving, waiting for me to respond with a rictus smile exposing browning, brittle teeth.

Something about her puts me at an unease. But that’s always the case.

Honestly I don’t see why these inspections are even necessary. They seem pretty damn good at knowing when people are leaving their dogs in the woods or trying to strangle their caged birds without boots on the ground.

I guess there’s value in seeing the CCTV camera staring down at you.

“Of course,” I reply finally, “Come on in.”

I close the door and we head through to the living room. She seems to hobble slightly like her legs aren’t quite flexible enough to accommodate normal movement. I try not to shudder. The moment we enter the room she’s on to Gunnar, bowing towards him and smiling down gently.

“Hello there, future leader. Are you well in these exciting times?”

Gunnar looks back at her with one eye, not even bothering to raise his head. His tail wags lazily.

“Oh yes indeed,” the woman responds. She straightens up with an audible crack and turns back to me. “Such wisdom in the legitimate dwellers. You are lucky to have such an amazing responsibility, Mr Whitaker.”

I nod. We both sit down, her in the armchair, me on the couch. She swipes through her tablet, humming away to her self. I hate these things. They always draw it out.

“Your regular reports show no signs of ill health on a part of, uh, Gunnar here. Feces analysis shows no bowel issues, no sign of parasites… there were some heart palpitations in the last few weeks. Been keeping an eye on those?”

“I’ve been watching his blood pressure. Trying to feed him the right stuff, walk him every day. But he’s getting on in years and - .”

She looks up from her tablet, eying me expectantly. “Yes? Go on?”

Sweat coats my body. Any suggestion that one might be waiting for the death of their pet may be grounds for punishment. I change tact.

“I’ve been blessed with Gunnar’s presence for a very long time and, well, age catches up to us all.”

She looks at me for a long time before shrugging.

“I see. Well in any case, those like yourself hold this responsibility to the last. As the Great Narlat once said, ‘The enslavers shall be enslaved.’”

I nod enthusiastically. Her eyes drift back down to her tablet.

“But you aren’t wrong, Mr Whitaker. I see here that you’ve had Gunnar since you were quite young. Is this true?”

My heartbeat simmers. It seems to have worked. I get to keep my skin for another month at least.

“My father brought Gunnar into my life as a puppy, oh, around eighteen years ago?”

What in Mercy’s name was he thinking?

It’s not like I’d shown any skill in taking care of animals. I’d had multiple hamsters before Gunnar. Most of them either died of fright when my father stumbled in drunk in the middle of the night or they escaped never to be seen again. I found one of them stuck to the bottom of a paint can in the garage.

And somehow this track record told my father I was in need of greater responsibility. A dog of all things. Now here I am eighteen years later being grilled by a bureaucrat on said dog’s bowel health.

Thank you father, resting in the arms of Mercy.

“Eighteen years,” she responds wistfully, “Mercy, that is a long time to be blessed. It must feel so wonderful.”

I nod again, almost giving myself whiplash. She questions me for a little longer before eventually getting to her feet, signalling the end of the inspection.

“Well Mr Whitaker, I see no need to continue any further. Gunnar is in excellent health.” She places a hand on the eye insignia on her suit jacket. I do the same despite my lack of insignia. “May Mercy be upon you.”

“May Mercy be upon you,” I repeat back.

I walk her back to the door, celebrating inwardly on escaping the boot of the admin once again. As she exits she quickly spins around, eyes down at her tablet.

“There’s one thing left here though, Mr Whitaker. Something… troubling.”

The coat of sweat returns. “Um, yes?”

She slowly raises her eyes to me. Her smile is long gone. Replaced with a scolding glare.

“It says here you were muttering some rather horrible things earlier this morning. In the presence of poor Gunnar no less.”

I try to speak but she keeps going.

“Come on. Come on! Die, you mangy mutt! Die?” she quotes coldly from the glass in front of her. I wonder how she could possibly know this but then I think better.

I gulp hard. My body trembles, mind reeling with various potential bizarre and atrocious punishments they could rain down on me like Zeus’ lightning bolts.

A lightning bolt would be a blessing.

I close my eyes and wait for the inevitable moment my skin erupts in agonizing boils or my limbs fall off, leaving me a mere head and torso to crawl in my own filth for days on end.

But I open my eyes, only to see the brittle smile beaming dimly back at me again.

“Ah well. We can’t begrudge you the odd indiscretion. It’s a very stressful responsibility. One is being kept from the arms of Mercy. It’s liable to create strain.”

What is this I see? Mercy in the eyes of a bureaucrat?

My tremors vanish, my clothes soak up the last of the terror sweat. I almost feel like hugging the woman until she says:

“As such, your punishment shall be brief and non-invasive. Have a good day.”

She hobbles back down the path. There is no car waiting for her.

“Come on. Come on! Die you mangy mutt! Die!”

I whisper this as he lies on the floor in front of the fireplace. His tail isn’t moving. He doesn’t seem to have breathed in the last thirty seconds.

Come on. Stop being selfish. Die so I can have peace!

I’ve shifted to saying it in my mind now. Mercy knows who’s listening.

It’s been a full minute. He hasn’t moved at all.

Could it be… that I have finally been granted Mercy?

After all these years in this house on this godforsaken street surrounded by all these miserable people and their blasted animals, will the Great Narlat finally give me rest?

I move from the couch, go on my hands and knees and move slowly over to him, scanning him for signs of life, signs of death.

Please, for the love of Mercy. Don’t make me go back there. Don’t make me go to the store again.

Earlier I was in the kitchen and discovered, to my horror, that I had run out of dog food.

This meant that I would have to go out to the store and deal with them. All those glowering goons wandering zombie-like through the aisles, waiting for death as I am. I was mentally prepping myself for the prospect when I noticed Gunnar, my elderly black Labrador, was lying very still. More still than usual. Naturally my heart skipped a beat. I’ve been watching him for the past several minutes, hoping, praying.

I clasp my hands together.

Please let him die. Let me finally be free. Let me pass into the arms of Mercy.

There’s a sound of rapidly escaping air. The smell hits me.

Seconds later Gunnar’s eyes open and he slowly clambers to his feet like an old man hoisting himself out of a chair, having thoroughly woken himself up with his own bodily functions. He looks up at me with that permanent smile all dogs seem to have as if to say, “So what’s for dinner, human?”

At one time that smile gave me peace.

I sigh the greatest sigh in the universe, get to my feet and continue the process of getting ready to go out. He toddles off to stink up some other part of the house.

When I get to the Slash/Mart I find that Bill the Greeter isn’t standing at his usual spot. Then I remember that the llama he won in a bet ten years ago finally died of bowel cancer. He danced around in the street flipping the bird at everyone before setting up a simple Rube Goldberg contraption to get his car to roll over his own head.

If there’s anything I hate, it’s a sore winner.

Walking past the aisles of barren shelves I hear a tuneful ringing and a monotone feminine voice emits from the speakers above.

“TO ALL THOSE STILL ON THIS PLANE OF LIFE, THE GREAT NARLAT THANKS YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION IN LEADING OUR ANIMAL FRIENDS TO MERCY. MAY MERCY BE UPON YOU.”

It’s like it’s taunting me.

I get to the pet food section and it’s just as patchy as all the rest of the aisles, if not more so. Supply lines haven’t been so great lately. I suppose that happens when 99% of humanity dies and whoever’s left are taking care of their pets.

Thank Mercy there doesn’t appear to be anyone around. In fact it’s strangely quiet today.

Good. Last thing I need is a conversation with one of my ‘neighbors’.

I spot a box of dry dog food on the shelf and make a beeline for it. The moment my hand graces its edge another hand appears from around the corner and grabs it. I look up and our eyes meet.

Jim Halper stares back at me through a single eye. The other is covered by a reddening bandage, along with a good portion of his head.

“Oh, hey Caleb. How’th it goinguh?”

Great. Probably the last person I wanted to run into.

About two weeks back Jim tried to beat the system. He took his Jack Russell Terrier, Lily, out on a little road trip. Took her eighty miles away up into the mountains, dropped her off and then just drove.

That night he got back and the whole block heard the sound of him unloading the contents of a 9mm pistol into his own head.

About twenty minutes later everyone heard him screaming and throwing things around.

Yup. He’d woken up.

Can’t escape that easily.

In the morning he opened up his front door, Lily scampered in like she’d been there the whole time and then he slammed the door shut. Now not only is he back in the same prison as the rest of us, he can barely talk properly because he shot half his own goddamn tongue out.

We both stand in the aisle, shoulders parallel, the box of dog food between us like a child in a custody dispute.

“Okay, I guess. How’s yourself, Jim?” I ask, inching closer to the box.

“Guh, good, actually. It waaaath really bad-uh for a while, buhd now I… duh-don’t fink I’ve evah felt bettah!”

Nobody is quite sure how much of his brain the bullet took or whether it’ll grow back again. It’s possible that looking and sounding like this for the rest of his life is his punishment for trying to game the system.

The Occult Bureau of Narlat are cruel mistresses to be sure.

“Oh! Did you hear abuh-about Davina Hu-Hu-Harrington? She tried to struh-strangle her parakeet and all her thkin fffell off.”

“Yeah. I heard.”

How could anyone not? She hobbled around the neighborhood screaming and banging on doors for several days before she eventually got it all back. Although whatever skin she did get back can’t have been all hers. Some of it trails along the ground and she has to put it in a cart whenever she goes shopping.

I dart my eyes around, hoping to Mercy I don’t see her too. Is Jim gonna make his move on the dog food yet? I really don’t want to get into another fist fight.

“Look, Jim, I really need this dog food. I’ve got none left and… well you know what happens if you don’t feed them for too long.”

Jim’s mouth opens multiple times and only a slew of ‘gluh, gluh, gluhs’ come out like what’s left of his brain is trying to rev itself to life like an old chainsaw. Eventually words come.

“That’th oguuuh-okay, Caleb. I’ve got some luh-left over. You can have thith awuh-one.”

Thank Mercy. Jim’s not such a bad guy. Just kind of annoying to talk to.

But then we’re all just here to do a job. A job none of us knew we were signing up for.

“Thanks Jim,” I say, picking up the lone box of dried food, tucking it under my arm and turning to walk back down the aisle.”

“Nuh-No problem, Cuh-Caleb. We should cuh-catch up thometime.”

There’s nobody at the counter so I just leave.

Okay so I’ve self-published three books and have two more waiting to go out. I make no money off of them because I’m bad at advertising but that’s not the problem right now.

Currently I seem to be in a bit of a slump. I went through a period of high productivity (was also working on audio dramas recently with some friends) but now when I try to write something there’s this demon in my mind that tells me that what I’m writing sucks and will always suck and I should stop.

Bear in mind this is during first drafts. Of course those are gonna suck and I know this having done it multiple times. But right now I just seem to… not want to write. At all.

Might have something to do with a bunch of stuff going on in my life right now which I obviously won’t get into, but if anyone here can tell me how they got through such a slump then maybe it’ll at least make me feel better. Lol. Maybe I do just need a break until I’ve had enough input to generate output, so to speak, but that just feels like an excuse to me.

It’s not for a lack of ideas either. If anything I have too many. 😅