r/CreepCast_Submissions

I wanna make a post here about being permanently banned on the official creep cast subreddit for calling out admin abuse as a fan of meat canyon I made a post about him promoting somthing harmful and my post was deleted within seconds when I tried to make a a comment on admin abuse I was banned I want to make it clear I am a fan but want to make awareness to amine abuse in his subreddit and I understand this is not meat canyon himself doing this but the admins should be called out regardless

November 6th, 2008

Mom,

I made it to Grandpa Dave’s place! You weren’t kidding about the signal out here, I figured that out fast, hence the letter.

What do they even do at the observatory that’s so important? I guess my laptop’s basically a paperweight now.

I found the keys under the mat, but I haven’t seen Grandpa yet. It looks like he’s been doing some remodeling.

Did his letter say anything besides needing an extra hand? Anyway, I’ll keep an eye out for him. He’s probably just out and about.

Feed Tippy for me. Love you.

November 8th 2008

Hi Mom,

I’m getting a little worried. I still haven’t seen Grandpa at all. I know he’s always marched to his own drum, but it’s been two days.

I was poking around and found a few things left out, a half‑drunk coffee mug, some chicken thawing. I cleaned it up and turned off the lights in his room. They’d been on for a while. Please don’t tell him I snooped.

Oh! I think I found the room he was working on. There’s this weird little hallway halfway down the stairs to the cellar. I’ve never seen anything like it. He strung up lights and if you follow them long enough, they lead to a room bigger than I expected, like two of my beds side‑to‑side and four deep.

There’s a sledgehammer and some tools, but the coolest thing is this big door he uncovered. None of the keys work, and there are these red roots covering it. I had no idea this place was so big. I don’t even know where that room would be in relation to the house.

I think Grandpa probably drove to town to get a key made. I found some molds in the room, so that’s my best guess.

I’ll keep poking around.

Hope you and Tippy are doing well. Miss you both. Love you!

November 9th 2008

Mom,

I’m getting kinda freaked out here.I don’t know how many pairs of shoes Grandpa owns, but there’s only one pair in his closet. I found his wallet in the bedside table too, which is weird if he really went into town.

I walked down the road to his neighbors and asked if they’d seen him. They said the last time they saw him, he was driving home with a bunch of tools in his truck, about three weeks ago.

I guess with them being so far away, I shouldn’t take everything at face value. It’s not like they’d always see him come and go.

I checked the detached garage and tried a few of the keys I found. One worked and Grandpa’s truck is still in there, but it doesn’t look like it’s been used in a while. The battery wouldn’t even start.

Where is Grandpa?

I love you. Give Tippy my best.

November 10th 2008

Mom,

Still no sign of Grandpa.

I went back into that strange room to see if I could find any clue about where he might’ve gone. Mixed in with the pile of tools, I found a receipt for a key. I’m thinking it was for the door with the red roots.

I don’t see the key anywhere, and even if I did, I don’t understand how anyone, even Grandpa, could get behind that door with all the overgrowth covering it.

Maybe I should walk to the sheriff’s tomorrow. I really wish I could call you. I don’t like being here alone.

I miss you. I miss Tippy. I love you both

November 11th 2008

Mom,

I need to come home.

I went back to the red door again, and right at the base of it was this red metal key. It looks like it matches the molds Grandpa made.

The weirdest part is that the roots are gone. And the door looks… paler? I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s definitely different.

The whole house feels strange all of a sudden. I was already a little off being here alone, but now it feels like someone else is here. Like someone always just out of view or maybe always in view? I don’t know. I’m starting to feel crazy, and the house keeps creaking.

Freaked out but still loving you. I just want to cuddle with Tippy and get out of here.

P.S. Any chance you can book me a trip back home? I think someone more qualified needs to look for Grandpa.

November 12th, 2008

Mom,

I’m leaving tonight. Hopefully you’ll see me soon. I’m just going to go and keep walking, I don’t feel safe. Something weird is going on.

I went to the door again, and now it’s almost white. I couldn’t resist. I used the key.

It opened into another room, a small red room with roots everywhere. In the center was a table, and hanging above it, held up by those roots, was a hand clutching a pen.

The hand was moving. Writing on the paper. It said:

“Send help. I need a hand.”

I didn’t stick around. The hand looked old… could it be Grandpa’s??? I’m not staying here anymore. There’s this pit in my gut that won’t go away.

This is my last letter. I’m only writing to tell you I’m trying to get home, so you don’t freak out if you don’t hear from me for a couple days.

Love you. I’ll see you and Tippy soon.

November 13th, 2008

Mom,

Everything is fine. Come help me.

I need some eyes.

Come soon.

Come.

Out in the Savannah wilds, I perch on top of a dying tree and see my next meal, a poor antelope running from hairless apes. I see him approaching me maybe I'll say hi to it.

"Hey friend, I see you're running, you think you lost them?"
*panting heavily* "I'm sure I did, they don't run fast at all so it was easy to escape."
"Interesting, well if you don't mind I'll drink some of the water here... Say antelope whats your name?"
"Derek, what's yours vulture?"
"Vulture is fine with me."

Interesting, why would a vulture just go by vulture? Well in any case I'm thirsty I've been running from those apes for hours now and I'm getting tired. Maybe I'll also rest here near this shade.

"Derek, I see them."
I rise straight and search the area, and horrifyingly I see those hairless apes with their sharp sticks with jagged stones adorned at the edges.

"Impossible, I ran for miles away, I lost sight of them almost an hour ago. How did they find me?!"
"Those funny apes, always seeming to know where to look for their food."
"What do you mean?"
"Speak vulture, SPEAK!"
"Those apes are very uncanny with how they track you. It's almost as if they're the apex."

I don't even think anymore, I bolt away the moment I hear one of them make those god awful noises. I bolt for hours on end my body is getting tired but I see another watering hole maybe I can rest, I surely escaped them this time. Why is vulture following me?

"Think you've lost them Derek?"
"Yes, they couldn't have followed me this far, they have to be exhausted by now. So stop following me, I'm not dead and wont be for a long while."

Vulture laughing is a sound I never want to hear nor do I wish anyone to hear, but why was he laughing.

"You really think you've lost them?"
He still sounded as if he enjoyed the thought

"Yes, they have to be tired."
"Fool, you're a complete fool! Those hairless apes will never stop, they continue to run and run until you die, I've seen it happen many of times and although it's a painful watch, a vulture has to eat."
He said this with a wicked smile across his beak, and as I turn around to make sure I wasn't followed, I see them. Over the horizon, only a few miles out, those hairless apes. May god have mercy on all of us, we can't escape these hairless apes.

The wheel turns. The cycle begins anew.

This mountain has no peak; an apex where the realm’s geography simply surrenders to the stars. To the civilisations that cling to its tiered face, it is The Spire - a vertical continent of stone, titanic aqueducts slung over miles of empty air, and amphitheatres carved into sheer cliffs where actors perform to shifting nebulas. A world of blinding, eternal glare; a beacon that summons the adventurous, the ambitious, the hopeful, and the devout from every corner of a known world.

The lower slopes bear no allegiance to a single empire. They are a sprawling, Silk Road of traders - from distant, jade-canopied dynasties to iron-clad legionnaires - their pack animals straining against steep marble inclines, basking in a vibrant, chaotic ecosystem fuelled by strange bounty.

They have documented it all; shared it with their conclaves and concords for centuries.

Jewelled, multi-eyed otters dart through pristine waters, their pelts shimmering with the colours of cosmos, chasing floating fragments of star-glass. And in terraced fields, massive stone-scaled herds pull heavy ploughs along soil enriched by celestial ash. Then higher, higher above, on treacherous ridges and narrower paths, unicorns with coats of liquid diamond and horns of solid quartz, stealing the light, watch human caravans and settlements with indifferent eyes.

All blessed, all fed, forever... by The Sun.

Yet Nova... Nova hates the sun.

Daughter of a Primarch, her very biology is a testament to the Spire's monopoly over the sky.

The Solar bloodline carries a volatile brand.

In her father, Sofon, an oppressive aura ripples across his skin like liquid brass; in her, it is a restless, suffocating heat. When her pulse spikes, her skin ignites with cruel, molten gold, as vibrant as the shining locks atop her head.

A damned tracking flare.

A beautiful, radiating cage.

Birthright.

"Our mountain is a ladder, Nova," Sofon would say, his voice vibrating with the dry, cracked swelt of a desert noon as they look over a plaza bustling with foreign merchants. "Every generation must climb higher, burning away the dross of this earth to become one with the light."

"It is blinding, father."

"It is ours, girl! Our Sun is immortal-bah... the rebellion of youth. Perhaps marriage shall discipline you; you will come to understand. You will."

She scoffs.

And she won't; she has found something grander to gaze upon.

When the sun finally dips behind jagged, western peaks, casting monolithic marble into deep, indigo shadow, Nova has fled. She knows the routes of the guards, the blind spots in the architecture, the forgotten channels devoid of water; a black highway straight down into the roots. She suppresses her heat until her veins throb a dull, aching orange, and she descends into the stretching, familiar dark.

At the base, stone becomes shale and damp.

The darkest pit of the crag.

Here... the Lunar live in sprawling forests like mortals, dwelling in the mountains' shadow, far closer to a normalcy she can only dream of comprehending. Archives paint them as fractured outcasts, feral nightfolk; bandits and rapists, but Nova knows only a people nursing generational scars of an ancient exile.

Bound to the Moon, as her people are chained to the Sun.

Noctis waits on the precipice of a massive, hollowed-out root, staring into the cloud-sea, as she scampers out of a tunnel crack. The Lunar gift is a mirror to her own; his eyes don't reflect the starlight, they absorb it, leaving his pupils as twin wells of ink. And his skin possesses a pale, luminescent chill that seems to draw the air's warmth.

"You're late," he teases, his voice a quiet, low cadence like wind through winter pines.

"Father talks for hours!" She jabs back, holding out a glowing, golden palm.

Their touch is a shock of agony and ecstasy; a violent hiss of steam as gold meets silver, fire meets frost; cosmic opposites physically impossible. It stings, leaving faint, fleeting, pearlescent scars, but it feels.

It feels. And it is theirs.

Over months, a tucked lake has become their sanctuary, and they whisper of a world beyond this mountain, of a place where the sun and moon do not demand factions, or tribes, or bloodlines.

"He still says you people are a rot," Nova says, resting her head on his chest, feeling the rhythmic chill of his heart. "When he's not seeking my would-be spouse."

"Ha! And my folk still preach you lot stole the sky. Not so free after all," Noctis replies, tracing the golden veins that pulse along her arm. "They could be right. Or maybe the sky doesn't belong to anyone... And neither do you." His lips find hers, and they steam again; another night of intimate, forbidden passion atop the thinnest of ices.

Foolish to believe it can never crack.

Summer swells; Nova walks down a bustling street, pushing past a crowd of pilgrims draped in the robes of southern archipelagos, where exotic lowland spices mingle with the ozone, and pedlars push their pioneered prizes to curious eyes and hands, as tame, wingless birds chirp from cages.

They feel it first - the drop in the heat.

Pack-beasts bray and quiver; wildlife take shelter beneath Solar stones as she unknowingly ventures to an isolated alley.

"You seek a way out, little light?" A voice whispers.

Nova spins, her hand instantly flaring with golden fire, and from those embers forms a blade of pure sunlight.

Hiding in the shadows of an archway, away from prying market eyes, stands a Solar citizen, but his flesh is horribly marred - withered and blackened along his face as if he has been kissed by the void. His eyes are wide, bloodshot, and frantic, yet his posture is that of a righteous priest well accustomed to bowing.

"Who are you?!" She hisses, backing away.

He raises his hands in a playful surrender.

"Merely a messenger for our true Ascendant," he says, a shivering smile pulling at scarred lips. "He has been watching you for a time - he who cannot be slain or banished; he who waits in the scars of the world. He knows... yes, he knows all about your boy, Nova. How you sully your grubby, whore paws in silver; how your touches burn - tsk, tsk, tsk, what would Daddy think?"

"Silence, heretic-"

"Shhhhh, let's not draw an eavesdropper now, shall we? We both know the laws of the Spire would tear him apart, and cast you into a gilded prison until you breed more sun-spawn. But it does not have to be that way."

He steps closer, reaching out a trembling, onyx hand. In his palm rests a heavy, glass shard of pure obsidian, gushing shadows and sucking light.

"There is an ancient place, lost amid the high, ashen crags where even the mountain-beasts dare not graze. A crypt forgotten by time; by history. He stands there eternal... and he can snip your threads, little light. He can strip the solar fire from your blood, and the lunar ice from his. You could walk away from this mountain as human. Mundane. Free.”

He drops the shard into her basket, inhaling her heartbeats as they hammer against her ribs.

"The Convergence is soon, daughter of dawn. The wolves are hunting; he will be at his strongest. Decide before they catch each other once more."

And then he is gone, vanishing away into the dark from whence he came.

Nova peers into her basket, and a gleaming, hideous, rigid black rock winks back. A garnet light pulses through it in stubborn beats; older than the primal kings and their first roads. Solar scribes have buried such things beneath hymns and metal, if they dare name it at all, and when it finds its way into her hand, it thrums... as if it has been waiting.

What would the Lunar call it?

"Destroy it," Noctis whispers, his eyes fixed on the artefact pulsing between them. "Destroy it or cast it into the ocean."

Nova's knuckles twitch white around the stone, her fingers growing numb; a chill creeps up her wrist like phantom frostbite as the very air distorts, bending the pale moonlight into strange violet arcs.

"Did you hear a word of what I just said?" She asks, sharp and desperate, cutting through the hum of the forest. "For fucks sake, look at me-"

"Nova-"

"No, look at me!... I am a match, ready to burn your home down - any home. And what does my father see?! A daughter? No, he-"

"Nova-"

"-he sees an engine. He'll choose the high-born; he'll chain me to a fucking altar and spread me wide, I know it, and then-"

Noctis steps closer. "So you believe a madman with a withered face has your salvation-"

"Our salvation!... For. Us." Her voice breaks, and a sudden, involuntary spark of golden fire snaps from her fingertips, singing the edge of her cloak. "We have an option. The elders above preach the Ascent like it's a mandate, but it is a ladder of bones; forced your people down here into these roots because they fear the dark - I am sick of it! Aren't you?! This is no life; it is a routine! I want the quiet, Noctis. I want to be normal-I want-I just... I just want you."

He reaches out as golden tears come, his hand hesitating for a fraction before his palm closes completely over hers, sealing the lightless obsidian between their flesh. Another violent, agonised hiss of steam; physical torment endured a hundred times, a reminder of rebellion, that neither pulls away from. He squeezes tighter; natural chill soothes roaring heat, his eyes locking onto hers with fierce, tragic devotion.

"Then we flee." He whispers, his breath fogging the air. "Tonight. To the continent, to the sea, to any land where this mountain is nothing more than a speck on the horizon."

"But we-"

"We'll live with it. We'll bear it; we can. We don't need a dead star to strip our brands; a tool carved from myth or a stranger’s words, we'll find a way. And we'll do it together."

Nova watches the steam swirl around their fingers, and the desperate knot in her chest teases to unravel. His voice is steadier than her father's law, colder than the stones; a foundation to build a life.

"Tonight?" She croaks.

"Tonight," he promises, his thumb stroking the back of her hand.

Nova swallows, tension leaving her shoulders as she prepares to drop the shard to the dirt.

"O-okay... okay, we'll-"

The forest buckles.

The indigo canopy shudders and melts as a suffocating wall of golden heat crashes through the branches, casting them to their knees; ancient needles catch fire and rain ash, coating the shale and grass, and from the scorched boughs... a figure descends, borne by an oppressive, rippling aura.

The sheer weight of him cracks the ground, and amidst him, six royal guards lunge silently from the smoking thicket; golden ghosts, their spears levelled, glowing with cruel, incandescent heat.

"Did you think you could hide such treason, girl?!" Sofon roars, vibrating the air, his face a featureless mask of blinding light. "You defile the blood of your kin with this... filth?!"

Nova presses the shard to her thigh, concealing it, as she plants herself between Noctis and the wrath of a Primarch.

"Father, wait-"

Words don't suit him. With a single, dismissive swathe, he unleashes a torrenting, concussive surge of energy.

No time to coordinate; no time to fight.

In a split second of instinct, Noctis throws his weight into Nova. His hands slam into her shoulders, violently shoving her out of the blast path and sending her tumbling into the dirt. He takes the full, unmitigated brunt; the wave strikes him like a battering ram, the sheer heat scalding his skin, and hurls his broken form backwards into a tree.

A scream tears from Nova's throat, and her flesh erupts, but a damning, white-hot force crashes down upon her - an ember snuffed by an inferno. Sofon seizes her by the hair, a vice grip of molten iron, and grounds her into the dirt. A brass-shod knee drives brutally into her spine, stealing her breath with hefty corona, and across the clearing, through the shimmering haze, she watches through winced eyes as Noctis finds a final, desperate gasp of defiance.

"NO... PLEASE-" is all Nova can muster.

With a ragged snarl, a construct of solid moonlight - a crystalline blade of silver frost - darts out his palm. He lashes out, shattering the tip of an oncoming spear into shrapnel... but their numbers hound him like dogs, their weapons and fists piercing and battering him into submission, his weapon into useless dust, pinning him and his broken limbs to the floor, leaking and splattering and sizzling the silver light from his veins.

One guard draws a mace, its head glowing cauterised.

"NO-DADDY, PLEASE-PLEASE DON'T! I'LL DO ANYTHING, PLEASE STOP, PLEASE-"

And she begs, and she pleads, and wails and screams and squirms and cries, as her father keeps his eyes fixed on the bleeding boy, his voice a heartless, soft echo.

"Leave not even ash."

The guard nods, raising his mace high, the light reflecting in Noctis's eyes as they find only her... through the spill of his own blood, his lips part to a silent goodbye.

Her heart doesn't break; her soul shatters.

And then taints; reforged in the foulest of fires.

A helpless, suffocating despair collapses into a voiding, towering vacuum of pure, unadulterated rage. Deep in her pinned hand, buried against the earth, her fingers scrape and squeeze the obsidian shard, and as the mace descends, she rips her skin across it and bellows a command not entirely her own.

"I SAID STOP!"

The gold within her sours, turning a heinous garnet - a terrifying hue that corrupts and infects her veins, creeping through her neck, and washing away the sun in her eyes; bleeding them into mortified, lightless crimson.

A sound like the sky tearing explodes through the clearing, and a raw, gory fire screams from her palm. The blast is catastrophic; Sofon's aura is snuffed as he and his guards are flung through the woodland like toys, crashing through burning trees as if they were mere twigs.

Then comes the smoke - a choking plume from the scorch and kicked-up earth floods the clearing. Nova heaves to her hands and knees, dripping a viscous, light-sucking ruby dew that erases the glow around her, and her gaze is frantic; new, garnet-rimmed eyes cut through the gloom like a beast.

She wails his name, and crawls toward the shattered oak where he lies still... but the distance between them becomes a canyon.

From the untracked denseness, the piercing note of signalling flutes slices through the air, met by the thunderous rally of awoken drums. Piercing beams of pale silver cut through the treeline as shadow-draped shapes begin to swarm the tops, skirting the edges of the grove.

Nova scrambles to her feet; her mind a fragmented, roaring static, yet to process the heat abandoning her, or the freezing infection mapping her frame.

A raw nerve; panicked, overwhelmed, detached.

She doesn't hear the bowstring snap.

A purple-feathered arrow zips through the smoke, burying itself into her shoulder with a sickening thud. The impact jars her back; an icy pain lances through her chest and threatens to freeze her breath; she cries out, stumbles into the underbrush, drags herself behind a massive, twisted root, presses her back against the rough wood, and snaps the shaft as the world, the sanctuary - her sanctuary - dissolves into madness.

A figure marches through the haze, taking the head of the vanguard. A warrior, armed with a crescent-shaped axe of solid platinum, oozing mist into the dirt; a dense aura of pure moonlight coiled around his shoulders like a cloak.

He dreads upon the devastation, locking eyes instantly with a weary Primarch.

"Solar?! Here?! Beyond the borders!"

Across the clearing, Sofon rises from debris with a furious, guttural groan, his shattered brass armour sparking with volatile, vengeful light. The features of his face are revealed. and a look of pure, bewildered terror is stitched across it as he tries to speak; tries to warn them of the power awoken here.

"Mark... a Mark of The Eclip-"

The Lunar cares not.

He lunges, his axe swinging in a devastating arc to meet Sofon's ignited blade with a disorienting shockwave of steam and luminary dazzles and to the death, they will rage.

Peering frantically through a split in the root, Nova's breath becomes pained, watching chaotic violence erupt. Lunar rangers pour from the brush like living shadow, a dozen at least, their silver armour flashing as they mercilessly engage the disoriented Solar.

And through the boiling steam and dance of temperatures and light, she sees them reach the base of a tree.

"No... no-no-wait-"

They gather Noctis's limp, bleeding form, hoisting him into their arms with barked woes, lost to the clash, and haul him away into the safety of obscured woodland.

The darkness swallows him fast.

Gone.

Her teary gaze snaps through the space, her mind forming a plan.

Follow him.

Prance the edges of the fight; or wait for it to subside, and-

>join it, girl

>end it

>slaughter them like the wild hounds they are, and take-

Pain spikes behind her temples; a foreign magnetic pull, a crushing gravity seizes her bones, and through the billowing grey and crossfire, she sees them - two spectral wolves running alongside each other.

One is a fierce, auburn gold; the other a cobalt, indigo blue. Unmoored and unbothered by the battle, invisible to its participants, they phase through wood and stone and flesh alike, chasing their tails in frantic, infinite circles.

Authority takes her reins.

Nova bolts from safety and runs, a volatile force overrides any agony screaming through her body, tearing through the thick underbrush; thorns clawing at her robes and skin, utterly unheeding of the battlefield around her, and to her sides, the wolves bound through the trees, their glowing forms growing and weaving seamlessly between the trunks, pacing her... guiding her deeper into the thicket as the roar of conflict dulls to a distant shout.

The air is heavy with ash when Nova bursts through a wall of tangled barbs and briars and collapses into an eerie clearing. The ground here is dead; her vision swims with iridescent fluid, and there, standing patiently in the centre of the quiet, is a statue of certainty.

Him.

The same man from the market.

She kneels in the ash, looking up with wide, wet eyes.

"Take me to him," she begs, her voice scratched, clutching her chest. "Wherever he is; whatever he is. Take me to the Ascendant."

The old man gazes down at her, his withered face twisting into a knowing grin too long for his split lips to allow. He points a gnarled finger toward her hand.

Nova looks down, vision blurring at the edges, viscous ichor drooling from her nose, to see the obsidian shard is no longer held; it has completely sunk into her flesh, its jagged edges melted and embedded beneath her palm, pulsing with a rhythmic garnet light like a newly born heart.

"As it is foretold," the man murmurs, an ancient reverb; a tomb opened for the first time in millennia. "So mote it be."

Nova's eyes roll back into her skull.

-

The wind is sulfur and ice, stinking through her lungs.

Garments torn into charred rags that flap against her bruised skin.

Her boots are gone, shredded to ribbons miles ago.

Her bare feet bleed on rugged, black glass; this battered body wanders on.

Her left arm hangs at a grotesque, useless angle, the gold snap of her ulna protruding through her ravaged forearm.

And she feels... nothing; merely a passenger in a broken shell, dragged on hook-jawed.

The Ashen Crags are a primordial nightmare, a vast volcanic wasteland inhumed within a forgotten, paradoxical fold. Plumes of toxic smog vomit from ripped vents, thick basins of bubbling oil reservoirs choke the valleys, and rivers of molten rock carve through the landscape, but the magma bleeds in unnatural shades - blistering, violent orange clashes against streams of glacial blue - and above it all, a perpetual frost clings to obsidian peaks, mixing snow with ash-fall.

From the gallows of this boiling bluff, the wildlife watches a gold blood pass.

Predators prowl the ledges, their muscular forms a bastardised fusion of flayed crimson and living, black metal plates that erupt through their skin, while bat-like scavengers perch basalt pillars, their leathery wings ribbed with obsidian shards and their faces smooth save for single, vertical slits of lightless red.

And when they part their blood-rimmed mouths, a discordant, overlapping chorus of hoary, scraping tongues vocalises a maddening, unified delirium that embraces her own mind.

"The vessel... leaks," they serenade in tantalising bloodlust, their voices like grinding tectonics. "The glass is ready to pour. Let the true throne reclaim the sky."

The wolves are with her still.

Massive now, they skip over molten streams and leave no tracks, their spectral jaws snapping as their endless chase continues - guiding her, herding her, driving her on into oblivion.

The path terminates at a fissure; the mountain splits like an old scar, and as she steps through the threshold, the roar of vents and the cackle of magma die, replaced by a light-swallowing silence.

The chamber is staggering in scale - a sprawling, cavernous expanse - a subterranean cathedral, a crypt, carved by ancient catastrophe. The air is stagnant, wafting in the scent of parched blood and oxidised metal.

And it is occupied.

Bound to towering pillars by thick chains and powerful runes of Solar gold and reinforced Lunar silver are monstrous beings; a diverse lineage of ancient, fallen wretches whose cardinal flesh has long since fused with metal and crystal, echoing and heralding the malformed, fastened horrors of a bygone era.

Not all bear the same corruption; they hail from every distant corner of this realm.

To her left, a chitinous insectoid warrior with a scythe for an arm snarls through teeth of beating amber, writhing in immobile restraints; to her right, a beaten, avian warlord, its feathers made of rust and sand, hangs limp, its single eye tracking Nova's descent.

>conquerors, girl

The sunken tool in her hand rumbles.

>generals

>kings and queens from a neglected epoch; scrubbed from scripture and stone

>left here to rot until the end of days

Nova passes them, and their chains clank with deafening, metallic shrieks. They lean forward what precious inches they are allowed, into the dimming, hopeful light of her, their breaths rattling like dying snakes.

A hollow, four-armed warlord, whose chest is a fused cage of skewers, speaks first in gravelly mysticism.

"She has come; she has strode the path. His tales were no lie. The Gold has tarnished; a rebel of tradition at last."

A canine beast with sapphire erecting from its spine tilts its head.

"The Silver will follow!" It chirps in a mocking sing-song cadence. "The boy will drone his way up a broken mountain, over corpses galore, just to caress her hand as the welkin perishes!"

Nova stumbles, her vision strained from pain. The voices claw over each other, wrapping around her, weaving a tapestry of incomprehensible futures.

"Sun and Moon; a single coin again!" A gargantuan, faceless entity whispers, its chains scratching the cavern roof. "Beneath the bleeding firmament, they will melt! One flesh; one ruin."

The insectoid warrior clicks its mandibles. "The chase comes to an end; the masters take what they're owed; what they want... So mote it be."

The centre is exposed; the soul of this crypt.

Suspended over a pit of bottomless liquid night is a false cenotaph of unrivalled grandeur; an obelisk, pulsing with a mirrored rhythm to her palm. Brilliant spikes of sun and moon drive deep into the stone's back, tethered by crackling shackles of energy that hum with the combined might of heaven and star.

A truce - two rivals united once for a sole purpose.

Contain.

For He cannot be killed - the first shadow cast; the final frost remaining.

He speaks not in the droll riddles of his immortal lessers. When his voice comes, it reaches her mind alone, as it has done thus far with resonance, with culture - immense, patient and sane - but tempered by military restraint; a ruler of empires, softened into a grim, protective empathy.

>sit, girl. rest a spell. you are safe here

She collapses, tears stream down the grime on her face, her frail body finally surrendering.

She stares up at the prison, her voice a pitiful rasp.

"I... I was told a promise."

>you were. i remember

His tone drops; thousands of years of resentment froth under solace.

>as were we... once

Polished black ripples begin to shift and warp, casting a luminous projection across the pool.

Nova stares, crimson eyes wide and cracked, as a prehistoric visage is painted.

A war unfinished.

The Eclipsing horrors she waded past tear Celestials from the clouds - radiant Aspects of pure starlight whose very footfalls reshape the lands - severing their wings; ripping the astral from their wounds; an apocalyptic clash of titans that bathes The Spire in blood and cosmic arcane. And below their strife, fighting along the slopes, shoulder-to-shoulder, are the first armies of the Solar and Lunar; a single, magnificent host, their sun-blades and crescent-shields forming a brilliant wall of light against the cataclysm.

>do you see? what was? what will be again?

... Again?

The word stabs her.

Foggy exhaustion vanishes, replaced by a feeble, sharp clarity, and a moment of startled terror follows, punching through the delirium. She looks down at her feet - shredded, bloody, caked in sulfurous mud. Then her arm, her own bone protruding through.

"Wha-... what is this place?! How... how did I get here?!"

How long? How long has this gruelling odyssey across the wastes taken her?

Driven like a brute of burden.

>you inherited much from your father, girl. his resolve; his grit

Her wrist is seized, her palm is pulled to the obelisk, and she thrashes and pulls as a surge of adrenaline fights to rip it away.

His manners fade; the gentle facade becomes the rigid, unyielding Commander executing an order.

>but I am beyond such things

Her body jerks and spasms as black glass bleeds into her veins until her smeared, infected hand slams onto the surface.

A blaring, vitreous crack booms through the cavern.

>they will fear you; blame you. a monster. an ender of worlds

A fissure rends the face of the obelisk, and from the breach a lightless, garnet fluid pours over her fingers, damning her cries to silence.

>forgive me, little light. fate is cruel, but we have waited far too long this time

Assimilation begins in earnest, and from the shadows, out steps the market man and a dozen fellow withered, falling to their knees, their faces warping into ecstatic grins as they chant... while her mind tears and snaps, and she is consumed.

Through fading sight, a spectral duo breaks away from her flank.

They pounce upwards, and higher and higher they ascend, running up the sheer columns, trailing twin wakes of gold and sapphire until the wolves reach the cavern ceiling and take the terrain with them, erasing it, evaporating into the ether and exposing the naked, unprotected sky above.

The Sun shines brightly upon them.

>Well, someone's an early bird today, huh?

The Moon approaches; unnatural, wrenched from its alignment.

They overlap; they clasp; they enfold.

And a crypt of monsters cheers as the horizon ignites in a harrowing, hellish blaze; the wild blue bleeds bruised and burning, soaking crimson around the edges of a black disk with an ear-splitting cosmic boom, and the clouds turn to rolling ash, ablaze, showering the world below with the colours of a fresh wound.

>If you're done staring into space, I'll take a sourdough, cutie.

An Eclipse; complete, absolute, and blinding in its darkness -

her father is a lying pig for the sun is not immortal no this yes this is immortal this is immortal the infinite dark behind curtains she can feel it now she understands pouring down her ears this is forever-

>"Heloooo? Earth to Nova?"

-the locks are melting and the wolves have eaten each other and she is the hand that turns the clock and the glass shatters into ten thousand screaming pieces the void between the charted prophecies and it hurts it hurst so beautifully as her skin peels to reveal the black iron undeneath her true birthright and they scream their throats raw do you see do you see what will be again this world must end so that we may finally know peace-

"Nova?!"

Her voice is too loud, but it pierces through the ringing in my ears like a needle.

The world is spinning, a blur of light; my chest heaves; my heart hammers like a trapped bird trying to break its own wings, and a sweat quickly coats my neck.

"Nova?"

She tries again, softer. The blur resolves into a face. A woman, standing on the other side of a smooth wooden counter, cradling a wicker basket, her expression shifting from mild amusement to sudden concern.

I look down at my hands. White and dusted with powdery baker's flour. My fingers tremble against the wood's lip, and as I turn my arm over, my breath catches. It is whole; the skin peachy and unblemished.

"... where am I?" I mumble.

Her face goes pale.

"Shit," she leans over the counter and takes my hand. "Hey-hey, look at me-"

I do, lost in water.

"You know me," she adds. "I'm your friend. You're okay; just breathe."

I nod, I think.

The walls feel as if they're closing in; the bright morning sun spills through the window like a spotlight, blinding me, buckling my knees.

Outside - clean ivory streets.

Majestic, towering marble arches.

Green banners snap proudly in a gentle breeze.

A kingdom; a capital.

Crownsgate

The name surfaces like a drowning swimmer.

Knights in gleaming armour stroll past, their laughs muffled, and down the cobblestone path, children chase a cart of squealing pigs, their shouts bright and carefree, amid the hustle and bustle of Main Street.

My lungs won't expand. My hands clutch the counter, my fingernails dig into wood and the skin of a stranger, and I feel tears begin to well.

The bell above the bakery door jingles.

"Nova, I got that extra sack from the square, but the merchant was-"

His voice beats down my panic.

A young man, a simple sweat-stained tunic, a messy head of brown hair, and his eyes - when they find the girl, then mine - brim with fierce protectiveness. A bag of grain drops off his shoulders, and he is across the gap in a heartbeat. His hands come up, rough with honest calluses and smelling of the morning air, gently cupping my face as my knees give and we are sent to the floorboards.

"Whoa, easy. You're home; you're safe." He commands; his hands are a steady, grounding anchor thrown into the storm raging in my head. "Breathe with me. We've done it before. In and out. You remember?"

I stare into his eyes, my chest scrambling to match his rhythm.

In. Out.

In. Out.

The trembling in my limbs begins to recede.

"Do you know who I am? He asks slowly.

Then, from the living quarters, comes the hurried pitter-patter of bare feet.

A little girl, no older than four, trots into the kitchen, clutching a ragged wooden wolf. She stops, tilting her head as she looks at me and the man huddled on the floor; her eyes large, and curious, and a bright, beautiful blue.

"Why're you on the floor?"

The man chuckles, and the last static in my brain snaps. My heart slows, warm and steady, and I take a deep, shuddering breath; a soft, tearful smile breaks through chapped lips as I bury my face into the crook of his neck. He holds me tight, his grip unyielding.

"Yes," I whisper, profound with staggering relief that washes over me. I look up at him and see his tension drain, then look over at our timid daughter, staring at us. "Yes, I-... I'm sorry-"

"Don't apologise. Don't ever apologise." He kisses my forehead. "It's not your fault."

It's not your fault.

-

A dainty cabin smells of old grease, stale tallow, and the vinegar tang of abandonment.

Noctis wakes with a wet heave and a gargled name, spraying grey spit onto his knees. Same clothes, fingers stiff and curled into rigid claws around his hem, frozen in the posture of a dead soldier. A bowl of cold broth lingers on a stool by his cot, its surface covered in a leathery white mould.

A scrape catches his ear.

scrape... scrape... scrape

He blinks crust from his eyes and looks to a dim corner, near the cold hearth adorned with trophies of winter hunts.

Someone sits, their back turned to him, hunched over in intense, private concentration. A familiar shape - broad, draped in the grey-wool uniform of the village nurses.

"Hello?" He rasps, his voice a desiccated thing, as a dread brews in his stomach.

A woman turns to face him; words die in his head.

Her eyes are wide, glassy, overrun with a horrific, burning garnet light - shining like gemstones in the dark cabin. Branching out from her collarbone and mapping up her neck are thick, pulsing veins; angry, twitching wires beneath her skin that bulge over mottled stains of blackened decay.

She holds a piece of bone-handled flint, carving ruthlessly into her arm, stripping back skin to engrave harsh, archaic glyphs into her meat. She doesn't flinch; she bleeds twilight, and she smiles, unblinking.

"...you... wake," she gurgles, painfully, her voice layered with the hollow resonance of another.

Noctis screams, bounding off his bed, scrambling and skidding across the floor in total horror, as the woman rises. He hurls himself away from her, darting to the door, but as he does, his gaze drifts to a small windowpane.

Light blazes; ungodly red.

He lunges for the latch, throwing his shoulder into the oak, and bursts out onto his porch.

A Lunar town; hand-crafted abodes carved into trunks, catwalks and pathways dangle above, and a hundred souls - weavers, woodcutters, rangers, guards, the elderly from their councils circle - assemble in the muddy, littered tracks. They stand in silence, basking under a sky utterly torn apart, for through the indigo canopy, the sun and moon are one - a raging, bloodied flame.

The sea of red-lit faces turns in unison to gaze upon him, heads tilted back, watching, waiting in the aching light of the apocalypse. They shift, and they part, and from their centre, a figure strides toward him.

Sofon.

"... beautiful!" He calls, his voice devoid of any authority. "... isn't it?"

"What is this?" Noctis chokes.

"... the end, boy... the end of all things." He extends a blackened hand with strange paternal tenderness. "...come... he waits... waits for you to claim... all she wants."

What a pathetic dribble it instils in him, his words.

"... Nova?"

"Nova."

They walk, and they crawl, up the marble of the range, marching boots beating out a liturgy that splits his skull down the seam until they arrive at a wide, flat expanse of an aspiring summit plaza, an oily smear of red, shifting and breaking between the fried-copper stench of a thousand dead stacked deep, a necropolis of Solar knights and Lunar scouts fused in leaking violet ink, and Sofon stops at the edge of the carnage, relaxed, and ushers the boy on alone into the rotting ridges of the unchosen, where massive, Eclipsing monsters and new multi-limbed horrors of black iron and twitching sinew slither through the red-lit mist, stepping like priests around small, ecstatic circles of the living who huddle on a meat-carpeted floor, laughing and giggling, eyes fixed on The Eclipse.

He wades through the dead, and the beyond, nodded on through pockets of bliss-delirium and unchained generals and warlords, to a new sanctuary.

He waits.

It pulses behind my eye, where the world turns garnet, weeping, and at the crest of the land, I see him... a terrible, colossal majesty, twenty feet tall, forged from nocturnal obsidian and flowing garnet, staring out over the precipice to a rabid, cosmic warzone where comets tear through the fabric of space, and the starlight frenzies within the last, fleeting remnant of untouched red.

He is not alone.

Nearby, resting on cracked stone, lies a giant twilight wolf, a half-Eclipsed beast of matted fur and plated armour, her breath coming in laboured rasps, and beneath her cuddle... nests a pair of tiny, radiant pups, a sun and a moon, whining against the cataclysm. Kneeling beside them is an astral woman plucked from tapestry, of cosmic geometry, her skin translucent and inside a universe swirls, her hair a waterfall of starlight and bipolar colours, her garments woven of floating fabrics and bleeding the aura of dead planets, and she uses her fingers to trace a protective circle of runes around the wolves, to -

"Should we fail," Speaks The Master. "The wheel turns. The cycle begins anew."

He looks down on me like a father.

"...where... where is she?"

"She fights... for the first time, she fights."

I look past him, into the mouth of the rage... and there she is.

A towering, beautiful deity of destruction and blinding ire, fused with the fury of the sun's might, blitzing through supernovas with wings of solar fire and shadow, in lethal lockstep alongside her kin, and she strikes brilliant, burning blades, slaying the shimmering galactic warriors and stellar beasts that dare oppose her, scattering their stardust - a sovereign of the unmaking reigning over the death of the old world-

"A sword without her shield... go to her... be one."

-this red sky is no nightmare it is a dawn and the garnet fire floods my eyes in bliss burning away the fear and the grief and everything until my mind and body are clear take what you want what you need what was promised take her take all of her...

as it was foretold... so mote it be-

Her fingers snap in front of my face.

The gentle warmth; the unhurried breeze.

The sky is a flawless blue.

I blink; it almost stings my eyes, shifting atop a checkered wool blanket in rolling green fields, a basket between us, packed with fresh bread and a jar of the sweetest clover honey.

White spires of the city rise in the distance like a pristine dream, and above them, a flock of argent-winged griffins soars through the sunlit clouds.

A laugh pulls me to an oak tree where a girl, our girl, chases two of her friends through the meadow grass, her white dress fluttering behind her.

Nova punches my shoulder, leaning in, and I can smell the faint scent of flour and mint on her skin.

I rub my eyes.

"Sorry, um... what were you saying?"

"Ugh, did you hear a word of what I said?" She teases, opening her arms and gesturing at herself. "Look at me - you're looking at Vance's new apprentice."

"... are you serious?!" A profound pride settles in my chest.

"Oh yeah. A lot more hours, and I'd have to learn the aristocrats' pastries." She half-laughs, and I do too. "But... fuck, this could be it. A real future. For us."

I take her in, all of her; her simple linen, her bright eyes, the little sun inked on her neck to remember her father by. But then she picks at the grass, and a rare flicker of doubt crosses her face.

"What's stopping you?" I ask.

"Hm. On, nothing, it's-... well, it's a big step, and-"

I wrap my hand around hers.

"You're better than anyone in the valley. He wouldn't offer it to you otherwise. Sky's the limit, remember?"

Her doubt melts away, and a familiar smile appears, outshining any dawn. She leans back, and playfully reaches her arm above, her fingers curling as if she were capturing the sun in her palm.

"Oh, please," she teases, looking back at me with a mischievous wink. "The sky is ours."

A story that I wrote back in May, “I’m a Pokémon Scalper With The Worst Luck,” just got Narrated by the YouTuber

https://youtube.com/@creepycavatappi?si=L7d-fJwu60erHGYrn - Creepy Cavatappi and is officially up on their channel. Huge thank you to them, and as well, I highly suggest taking a look at their other work, such as the “I’m a NATO soldier” series, “The Need to be Seen,” and “I’m a Mortician.”

I’m gonna try and cook up something spooky that should be posted tomorrow, but for right now, I just figured I’d just give this small content creator a shoutout, if you happen across this post, you’re great Creepy Cavatappi 👍

Leo woke up to the sound of a guard rapping his baton along the bars of his cell. He rose groggily and saw his bunkmate Tom do the same, descending from the top bunk. They didn’t exchange any words; Leo had given up on trying to initiate conversations with the man some time ago. He didn’t know why – Tom seemed perfectly happy to talk to other prisoners in the yard or the commissary – but for some reason the older man seemed to want as little to do with him as physically possible. After the morning count was done they shambled towards the mess hall in a line spanning the entire cellblock, showing little enthusiasm for what was sure to be a breakfast of barely edible gunk.

The way the other prisoners chose to sit anywhere other than the table Leo sat at was nothing new, but still it  vexed and confused him. After all he wasn’t some crazed serial killer or rapist. Leo had been incarcerated for destruction of public property, drunk and disorderly and a fist fight he had embarrassingly lost. You could still see the ridge on his nose where it had broken against the pavement.

For the first few days in prison there had been a few people walking up to Leo, seeming as if they intended to start a conversation, yet after looking him in the eyes they all turned heel and left without saying a single word to him. Still, he mused, it was better to be left alone than to be too popular among the other inmates, many of whom hadn’t so much as seen a woman in years, so he just dug into the slop on his plate and washed it down with a cup of stale water.

The morning turned out rather tranquil, with not a single fight among prisoners that would invite the overzealous guards to make use of the savage batons they so readily used on their charges. After finishing his work detail, taking a solitary lunch and yet another few ours of monotonous labor, the tolling of  bells signaled it was finally time for the few hours of leisure time the prisoners were permitted.

Walking out into the prison yard Leo realized with equal amounts of wonder and worry that he hadn’t said a single word all day. There weren’t many opportunities to talk when all your begrudging cohabitants avoided you like the plague. Yet an opportunity to speak would soon present itself.

When it was almost time to head back inside for what could not in good conscience be called “dinner”, a tall, heavyset man approached Leo. It was clear that he wanted to be seen as much by Leo as by all the remaining men in the yard – he stepped slowly and purposefully and Leo was sure he was trying to make himself seem as big and imposing as humanly possible. The resulting gait would have been comical, had not Leo known the man. He was called Brick, for the implement he had used to show his first cellmate – a known pedophile – just how little he thought of him. That was the last time the man was allowed to work as part of the construction crew.

It seemed like the whole yard held its breath when Leo and Brick finally stood face to face. Noone heard the few words that were exchanged, but a wild roar arose from many throats when Brick drew back his enormous Fist with obvious grave intention.

Brick was quick – but Leo was quicker

Leo had suspected that he might be confronted with violence at some point during his incarceration. Whether they had a reason or not, he knew the other inmates hadn’t been avoiding him because of his bad breath – they obviously despised him. So as a contingency he had filed his plastic toothbrush against the floor of his cell every night, until he had made himself a passible shiv. Though the quality of his breath had further suffered, the present situation proved his precaution a wise one.

His fist still drawn back, Brick let out a startling cry as the toothbrush slid squelching into the thick of his belly once, twice, then a third time. His cry didn’t sound pained as much as surprised, or even offended. It seemed a cry more suited to someone whose parking spot was just snatched right in front of them on a busy day at the mall than someone who had just been viciously stabbed.

It took but a few moments for the yard to be overflowing with guards, the air thick with shouts of fury and pain and the shrill whine of whistles. It was the “innocent” bystanders rather than Leo who got the brunt of the nonlethal violence, because as soon as he saw the imminent threat of Brick as subdued, he knelt on the floor with his hands laced behind his head. If his fellow inmates hadn’t hated him before, the fact that no less than seventeen of them were beaten to varying degrees of bloody pulp because of his transgression was sure to change that.

 

 

 

After the whole mess had been sorted out, one of the guards informed Leo that Brick would survive. His shiv had luckily missed any of the man’s major organs on all three of his stabs. Maybe the layer of belly fat the man had curated was just too thick to be overcome by his crude, short tool, Leo thought. Just how someone could grow so obese as Brick on what passed as food in this place, Leo couldn’t understand. But still, just as well,  he mused. Because Brick made it through, Leo’s stint in solitary confinement was to be for a term of seven months, rather than several years had he died, after which he would be transferred to a higher security prison, his sentence extended by an additional six years.

He knew that people were known to lose their mind in solitary, for want of human interaction or overwhelming boredom or a combination of both. Leo wasn’t scared though. For one thing, if a lack of human contact were enough to drive him insane, it probably would have happened some time ago, the way he had been shunned up until his fateful encounter with Brick. For another, the boredom couldn’t be much worse in the hole than in general prison.

The first day of this new ordeal passed slowly, like molasses going through a sieve.  Leo found that he would eat his thoughts about the boredom being akin to what he was used to. He paced his tiny cell, did pushups and the like, but when he was finally brought dinner it felt as though his whole seven months must have passed, and he began to fear for the first time.

Being of the opinion that the fewer hours he spent in this cell awake, the better, he tried to fall asleep early. Tossing and turning he thought he could again hear the sickening sound of his shiv slipping into the fat man’s belly, along with a constant, low crackling that gave him pause, and that pursued him into stifling, manic dreams.

Leo awoke with a start, torn from his sleep by a crashing sound like a glass bottle shattering. His unfocused gaze followed the walls of his almost pitch black cell. Only the tiniest sliver of light coming from the slit under the door made it possible to distinguish the details of the tiny room. As he had expected, there was nothing to see – until there was. At the very foot of his bed  he thought he could see what light there was being reflected by a small pair of eyes suspended in the darkness – floating at about the height his own eyes would be were he to sit on the side of his bed . But the light didn’t seem to be reflected as much as emanating from the childlike eyes, with an inconsistency he associated with naked flames. A fire seemed to burn in those eyes.

He immediately let go a primal scream that was thrown back at him thousandfold by the surrounding walls. “Help, help! There’s somebody in here! Please! I swear I’m not alone in here!” But as soon as the sound of his voice slashed through the eerie silence of night, the eyes vanished. Still, he jumped up from his bed and started pounding his fist against the door the way Brick had intended to pound his against Leo’s face.

After a few seconds he could make out the sounds of a guard approaching his cell. The slit in the door was opened and Leo jumped at the sight of the eyes that peered through it. It was just the guard. “Holy hell, get the fuck back to sleep, inmate!  You almost gave me a damn heart attack!”. All his protests were in vain, the guard turned to leave as soon as he could tell there was no medical emergency or anything of the like. Sobbing into his hands Leo could hear the guard’s now muffled voice mumbling “God damn. On the first fucking night? That’s gotta be some sort of record”. The sound of the man’s footsteps grew more faint as he left Leo terrified and alone in the dark – solitary.

Unsurprisingly, Leo would not get any more sleep that night. He just cowered in the corner of his cell, his hands wrapped around his knees like a child, his stare snapping anxiously from one end of the tiny room to the other, then back. All the while he could hear the blood rushing through his ears, his heart still pumping blood into his body as if he was running from something. Yet underneath that sound, there it was still: the faint, arrhythmic crackling.

There was no telling how long he remained in this position until even a semblance of calm returned to his body – in tandem with the sun’s first rays coming into his cell through the small, narrow window that sat high on the wall. The following day he tried again to alarm the guards of his plight, but his efforts would remain fruitless. Far from believing his crazed pleadings, they stopped even coming to his cell door after a while.

As the day grew long, the sun creeping farther past its zenith and its light thusly waning, the dread Leo was experiencing gained an almost physical quality. He could feel it like a stone in his gut, like a chill in his bones and an ache in his throat. He realized there wasn’t a chance in hell that he could pass the seven months in the hole without falling asleep, but that wouldn’t stop him from trying.

He got through the first night by periodically and viciously pinching the skin on his arm and – when that method lost its effectiveness – literally banging his head against the wall. Throughout the night, the crackling seemed to gain in volume, until finally waning again when the sun mercifully climbed high enough to illuminate the cell that was by now rank with smells of sweat and fear.

During the second night however, the weight of exhaustion would prove to be too much to bear.

There was no telling when, but at some point Leo’s eyelids began to flutter and then fell shut completely. With the crackling always in the background, he started to dream of the day leading up to his arrest:

Fired. After years of sneakily getting drunk at his desk, his boss had finally discovered the bottles that littered his locker. How dare he?! True, Leo couldn’t get through the day without getting a nice little buzz on, but had his work suffered? No! He was the most damn integral worker in the company, wasn’t he? At least he had been.

The events that followed flashed ever faster before Leo’s inner eye

Screaming at his boss, who had the gall to call security. Security! On him!

Going to his watering hole of choice, getting proper shitfaced until he was “asked” to leave.

Picking up another bottle of the good stuff and stumbling through the night. Night already? Damn.

Ending up at his boss’s house as though by coincidence. Soaking a rag in the strong liquor and affixing it to the bottle neck. Grabbing the lighter. The flame was pretty, dancing in the wind. Holding it to the rag until it caught fire.

Letting the bottle fly

The crash of broken glass, followed almost instantly by the roaring of flames.

He didn’t know. HE DIDN’T KNOW! Didn’t know that the window he had hit led to a little girl’s bedroom. That his boss’s daughter was peacefully sleeping, alone at home since her daddy was out working late.

After fleeing from the scene, Leo stumbled drunkenly along the roads, until a stranger had bid him to stop. Angry words led to flying fists, and Leo awoke in the drunk tank of a police station. They couldn’t prove it was him who threw the bottle, so they slapped him with the maximum sentence for what they could prove. And Leo would go to prison.

Leo woke up with a start, drawing in huge gulps of air. The crackling in his mind was now a roar, the voice of unrestrained fire. He could see them. The eyes hanging in the dark, now definitely smoldering, giving of the inconsistent light of a campfire.

“I’m so s-sorry. I s-swear I didn’t know. I would never – never hurt a child”

“But you did hurt me. And  you’re not sorry. Not yet anyway”  it came as a whisper out of the darkness. The flippant voice of a little girl, yet heavy with menace that should be far beyond any child’s ability to muster

Leo could feel the flames. Invisible, yet definitely real, he could feel them lapping at his feet. Climbing up his body. He could feel his fat tissue emulsifying, becoming more fuel for the infernal fire; could feel his teeth cracking, his eyes popping in the impossible Heat. And Leo screamed, oh how he screamed.

 

 

At first the guard was slow to respond to the cries coming from the cell, seeing as the inmate had been making a ruckus ever since he’d been transferred to solitary confinement. But it was his job, so he just groaned and got up from his chair. As he came closer to the cell door he paused – something was off. It was as if he could hear two voices screaming in tandem. One belonging to a grown man, the other – disturbingly – to a little girl. As he started to comprehend the shouted words he almost grew sick. The voices were screaming:

“Help, Daddy! Daddy where are you? It hurts Daddy, it hurts so bad”

After opening the door, stepping back from the inexplicable wave of heat that rushed out to greet him, the guard would be witness to a curious scene: The body was completely charred, the bones and teeth black as coal, yet nothing else seemed to have been touched by the fire that had undoubtedly raged in here, not even the highly flammable mattress.

The ensuing investigation would reveal very little. Many prisoners would be interviewed, for somebody must have laid the fire. Somehow, none of the inmates seemed surprised by Leo’s fate. Concerning the reason the dead man had been so universally shunned and despised, they would all say the same thing:

“It was his eyes. There was a fire burning in his eyes. It was as if… as if he was already burning in hell”

Ever since my life took a downturn, people thought it would be a good idea to find help, but I guess therapy doesn't work when people think that what's making you sick is all in your head. Talking about it doesn't work. Maybe writing it will. I'm stuck in this hospital bed anyway, and I've got time. Plus, I couldn't waste the opportunity to see the irony.

Back in the day, when I was just an aimless teenager, I figured I should just get a job; at least I would have money to spend aimlessly. Work was hard to find and the only place that accepted me was a hospital, weirdly enough—the biggest one in the city and the one that I was born in. I thought it was like a full-circle kind of thing, like I was helping the place that helped me get into this world. I was a teenager, after all.

This wasn’t one of those ancient European cities, but the building still looked like something people don’t build anymore. It had old architecture, like something vampires would live in, but painted white. 

My job was pretty good, and I really liked working there, making friends, and helping people, even if some of them couldn't really be helped all that much. Such is life. 

I guess the managers liked me too, because they fast-tracked me to bigger responsibilities and even paid for my studies to become a nurse. They didn't get a lot of men interested in this job, and they really wanted someone to work in the psychiatric wing.

At first, the job consisted of just giving pills to people and entertaining the occasional “crazy talks.” The team that ran that wing was older, maybe in their thirties or forties, but they were nice and helped me get used to the work.

The doctors treating the patients would tell us that it was part of our job not to get into patients' delusions, but since they weren't there all day, the guys working there always seemed to ignore that part, and so did I; I didn't know why they did that, though.

Every now and then they would give me odd jobs around the hospital. I figured it was so I could learn more about the place while still doing something.

On my occasional errands, I would come across people asking for information, looking for people and places that I didn't know about yet. So, most of the time, I would just direct them to an information desk. Half the time they wouldn't go. Maybe they didn't really want to find their loved ones suffering… or worse. 

Since it was a huge hospital, it was also noisy; you'd always hear shouting, crying, and stretchers being rushed to the emergency room. 

One day, right as I came back from an errand, the head nurse told me I needed to go to the fifth floor and hand some papers to the guys working there since no one else wanted to. That floor was new compared to the rest of the hospital and reserved for surgeries. You would need to take a different elevator to access it normally. “The new guy should take them, and don't forget to take the stairs! The elevator is broken,” I heard my “friend” say, laughing his ass off as I walked away. The papers needed to be delivered fast, and since I was the new guy, I had no choice. I figured those lazy bastards just didn't want to climb all the way up there.

The way up was through an old corridor, and the stairs looked like they weren't used that often anymore. They were even sectioned off. Old hospital, mold, I thought. I had to ask around, and some people looked genuinely surprised that I even wanted to find it. 

On my way through the fourth floor, on a set of stairs that never seemed to end, a well-dressed woman stopped to ask me how her father was. I told her I didn't work on that floor and she should ask the people working there. Before I could even finish, she scoffed, saying that no one wanted to work in that hospital, and just went down the stairs. That floor looked very quiet, so I guess she was right. When I finally got to the fifth floor, the woman at the desk took the papers. As I was getting ready for my journey back, she said, “Did you take the stairs? Don't go back through there, take the old service elevator out back.” It would have been nice to know about that on the way up, too. The only thought that came to my mind at the time was that my coworkers truly were assholes for testing my cardio like that. 

When I got back from my tour around the hospital, no one said a thing. I guess my furious look made the joke stale. “Why didn't you guys tell me about the service elevator? Wanted me to pass out on the way down?” That was it for a few weeks. No more stairs or errands for me, plus I was getting tired of having to answer the same questions every time I passed the main hall. There was a giant sign that says “information desk” right there! Anyway, thank God.

Since it was a psychiatric wing, most people were knocked out by their meds by the time the night shift got there, so it was a joke we had that most of their work was clocking in. One patient, hearing our conversation, said he was going to give the night nurse a good scare to “make her work a little.” We all had a laugh, since I was getting his sleeping pills ready at that very moment. There would be no scare. 

By the time I was getting ready to greet the night shift and go home, I was told I had to work an extra shift, since one of them was sick. Extra money, I thought, so I took it since the other guys didn't look so keen on staying on short notice.

For the first few hours, it did seem like we were right. The hardest part of my job WAS clocking in. I had my lunch break. I even watched some fights on my phone. I could get used to it. That was until around 2 AM. I was feeling exhausted; I wasn't used to staying up that long. Outside, I could still faintly hear movement, even if I couldn’t see anyone. It is a big hospital, after all. Inside that wing, all I had were those purposefully harmless white walls, long corridors, and the ticking of that huge clock on the wall. It almost seemed like I was the one who took those sleeping pills. The wall next to me looked so soft and comfortable. I leaned against it and almost slept. 

On one of my “long blinks” I saw it: the son of a bitch, butt-naked with a blanket over his shoulder. *He must've spat out his pills*, I thought. I had to check on him; after all, he was under my care and was unwell. I called his name, but he just ignored me, so I had to go all the way there. When I touched his shoulder, he turned, pushed me as hard as he could, and ran. I fell on my ass but tried to give chase, only to turn the corner and see there was no one there. I guess the commotion made people wake up, and the guy that just pushed me was on the other side of the hall, groggy from his pills. I just stood there for a couple of minutes trying to figure out what just happened. When I told the head nurse, she just laughed at me. “You'll get used to it, honey.” I must've been dreaming.

For all of the good and funny days I had working at the psych ward, one thing was certain: I did not want to be on the late night news as the guy who was brutally murdered by a rabid patient while working night shifts at a hospital, so I asked to be transferred to the general ward. 

My first day there, I thought that maybe the “brutally murdered” thing was better. I had so much work, so many patients to take care of, and for the first time, I came face-to-face with how frail we all are. How some diseases eat people, both the sick and their families. It was a harsh contrast from goofing around with mental patients. 

One day, while I was caring for an old lady, she said that I spooked her. I apologized. She laughed and said, “I thought you were an angel coming to take me!” I am handsome, but not that handsome. I didn’t want to waste the opportunity, so I bragged about it to another coworker a couple of hours later, but she did not seem to find it funny. The only thing she said was, “Poor thing.” The old lady died the next day.

We would get these “predictions” from time to time. Like the surge—that's when a terminally ill patient gets a last burst of energy, starts eating, talking, hell, some even start to walk again. Some family members knew what that meant, some didn't. It was heartbreaking just the same.

There were times when a patient would see an angel, just like the old lady, or the grim reaper coming for them. And about the grim reaper, we actually had one there. He was an old doctor; so old, in fact, that he might've been around when this place was being built. That is probably why he never got fired, because every time he came in to make the rounds, we would have an abnormally large number of deaths. I don’t know if he was trying to free up beds for “new customers" or sheer incompetence, but I just couldn't believe that he never got caught with whatever he was doing.

Night shifts were fine due to the reduced workload most of the time, however, if things went sideways, there were also fewer people to help. Normally, when someone dies, a special team comes in to prepare, collect the body, and take it to the morgue where all deaths are investigated. Again, I have no idea how that doctor wasn’t caught.

On one of those busy nights, the day shift couldn't finish getting this one guy ready, so it fell to me to get it done. Preparing a body isn’t difficult; you just clean it and bag it. But it takes a sort of mentality to go from “them” to “it” that I just didn’t have yet. Since it was my job, and I couldn't just let him—it—rot there, I got it done.

When I got to the morgue, there was only one guy working. For such a huge hospital, they sure liked to cut back on staffing.

“Busy night, huh? Reaper came in?” he asked.

“Yeah, about that guy, wh—”

He interrupted me. “Thanks for bringing it in. Since I can’t leave this place alone, it would have been a while until someone came up to get him, and I don't like to keep them waiting.”

“Yeah, sure, no problem. It was my first time doing it, though. Hope everything is alright.”

“Don't worry about it. I'll take him from here.”

A few days later, a rumor went around about a guy who was declared dead and taken to the morgue. When they went to check later, there were scratch marks on the inside of the bag, as if he was trying to get out. They were saying it was the Lazarus effect. I read somewhere that it’s a rare return of a heartbeat. This is a big hospital, and people like to gossip and make up stories. But I couldn't help but think about the guy I took down there. I kept thinking about how that doctor could have declared him dead, how the drugs or whatever he did weren't strong enough to kill him, and how I was the one who let him suffocate to death in a body bag. I held on to the thought that the guy that took him did his job better than the reaper. I think I need therapy.

While I didn't want to go back to the psych ward, I did miss my first coworkers. They were assholes, but so was I. We would meet in the break room from time to time. They would crack jokes, talk about the latest loony antics the patients were up to, and how some of them never seemed to be able to stay away for too long. It's sad how mental health issues take hold of you and make you a permanent fixture of a place as awful as this. Better than dying, though.

This is by no means an easy job and the people that stay long enough are few and far between. Too much work, too much stress, too much death. It's not for everyone. People bounce from hospital to hospital just to get a “fresh start” somewhere else. I was starting to get the same idea, and maybe I just needed to stumble into this decision.

Around my one-year mark there, I overheard some people talking about what the new management was doing. “Did you hear it? They are finally gutting the fourth floor. I think they are going to make a memorial or something there.”
I didn't get around the hospital much at that time. I was finding out that being given more responsibilities wasn't a perk after all, just a lot more work, so I was entirely out of the loop. I asked why they were getting rid of an entire floor, and they said, “Because of the gas leak. Three people died there and a bunch got really ill a while back. Plus, that woman a few years earlier…”

That made no sense. I had worked there for almost a year. A WHOLE year! I would have heard about it. I would have seen it on the news or something. There had been people there just a few months earlier, I’m sure of it! I wasn't crazy, not yet anyway. I had to see it.
I took the elevator from the ground floor, where I worked. It wouldn't open on the fourth, so I exited on the fifth. I saw that lady, the receptionist. She looked confused; she wasn't expecting me. But she quickly realized what I was thinking when I had my eyes fixed on that corridor.
She stood up. “Don't g—”

I bolted down the first set of stairs. When I reached the next landing, there she was.

That woman.

She was lying at the bottom of the stairs, bloodied, her head cracked against the wall, her high heels snapped in half. She hadn't just walked away that day. I had been unlucky enough to see where she always ended up.

I had no tools to deal with this.

I ran back up as fast as I could. When I got to the top, my heart was pounding. I felt like I was going to vomit, and all I could say was, “I don't think those guys are my friends at all!”

I woke up a few hours later in one of the beds meant for patients.

After coming to, they said I was talking nonsense to the fifth floor staff about a dead woman downstairs. They called it burnout, but since I punched a guy on my way out and had to be physically restrained, there I was, back in the psych ward, but now on the other side. At least I'll finally get that therapy I was looking for.

It is certainly different being on this side of things. They wanted me to say everything I needed to “get off my chest,” but at the same time, no one really cared. I remembered the rule about not indulging patients' delusions, and clearly, they weren’t indulging mine. 

There was an almost entirely new crew working there. Part of the renovations by the new hospital management. They wanted to move away from the sad, old, creepy aesthetic and toward a modern one, so there were a lot of layoffs. Or so I heard.

One thing they couldn’t get rid of was the religious aspect of the place. There were all sorts of statues, names and phrases written on the walls, and other sacred items in that hospital, and unless they wanted to bring down the wrath of the Catholic Church, every single religious resident of that city, and maybe God Himself, they had to keep them. That meant keeping the old traditions of priests and nuns visiting patients.

That usually happened with critical cases. Pneumonia is a big deal when you are a child or an old person, so they would come and pray for patients like that because you might as well try everything at that point. I actually got a visit from an old priest who had prayed for me when I was a child, hospitalized for that same reason more than a decade prior. This time, at least, we had a conversation. 

“How are you doing?” he asked.

“I'm fine, Father. And you?”

“As well as God allows me.”

“That's good to hear.”

“I’m glad to see you survived back then. Although I'm sad to see you back here. I'm sure you'll pull through just as you did once before.”

“Thank you for your kind words, Father. I hope you are right.”

“I’ll keep you in my prayers, son.”

Funny how some things stick with you. Even though I was really young back then, I still remembered his face. It looked exactly the same as it did the first time I saw him. I guess not even death can keep a man of God from his duties. 

I've been here for a while now, since my mind apparently still isn't in the right place. Even if they didn’t believe everything, they believed most of it, and some of the meds helped a little. The doctors came in with the usual generic questions: “Are you sleeping well? Are you eating? Taking your meds on time?” As if I have any choice. But one thing stuck.

“Are you still hearing voices?”

“I've never heard things that weren't there,” I answered.

“The night crew told me you keep talking to yourself sometimes.”

“No. I only talk to the five night-shift workers when the noise outside keeps me from sleeping. No extra voices in my head.” 

“There are only four workers at night.”

Well, I think I'm still learning things about this place.