"Erosion"

Time is a constant.

Time cannot be stopped, controlled or altered in any manner; no matter how hard we try. Because time is exactly what it chooses to be when it chooses to be.

Time is patient.

Time erodes all.

Time always wins.

As I sit here with this diary and pen in hand, I know exactly what I want to write about. I want to describe feeling.

I want to describe the feel of that cool summer breeze on my skin, the feeling of the wind lightly blowing through my hair, the feeling of my leg lightly brushing against the grains of sand beneath me and the almost still water of the sea lightly lapping up against my feet, the feeling of my girlfriend’s head resting against my shoulder as she enjoys the peace.

But I can't.

Maybe I could describe what I hear?

I could describe the sound of the waves lightly sweeping over the shore, the sound of this pen scribbling against the paper, the sound of the city life behind me, cars travelling alongside the beach, people laughing and joking as they enjoy the parties, the sound of her lightly breathing as she almost slumbers off to sleep.

I can't describe that either.

Maybe I could describe sights?

Like the sight of the moon high in the night sky; full and shining down upon me, the sight of the sea looking almost pitch black when compared to the glittering of the sky, the sight of the yellow colour of the sand looking dulled over by the darkness of night, the sight of her long red hair slightly masking her eyes as the back of it lightly flows in the wind.

Even that I can't describe,

I can't describe it because it's the past now.

It's been and gone.

I could talk about what I hope to happen next. I could talk about how I hope to stay here a little longer and then retreat back to our hotel room. To lay there besides the woman I love and watch her fall asleep. Or perhaps just stay here and watch the sun come up?

I can't talk about what I expect...because it will never come.

The past has been eroded away.

The future isn't coming.

I can talk about the present though.

I can talk about how I feel nothing, because there is nothing. There is no cool feeling to my skin, there is no wind sweeping through my hair, there is no feeling of sand rubbing against me, nor is there any feeling of water or my girlfriend.

I can talk about how I hear nothing. There are no sounds of waves to be heard, no sound of the city life, there is not even the sound of this pen scribbling away and the papers turning…my girlfriend is silent.

I can talk about how I see nothing around me. The blackness of the sea is not the sea at all…but a vast void waiting to engulf me. The sand beneath me is grey and lifeless, as though the colour has been drained from it. My girlfriend's hair is not within eye sight because she isn’t either.

There is no ground but the patch of lifeless grey...remains...that I sit upon.

Remains of a world swallowed by darkness. No...saying world is an understatement.

The sky above, there isn't a single star or even the moon there. One by one they twinkled out as I sat there and watched everything fade away around me. My girlfriend never noticed; her eyes were shut the entire time.

While I continued to write away...that compulsion to write even as one is being devoured.

Devour is the wrong term. Eroded works better.

Time is a constant.

Time can not be stopped, controlled or altered in any manner; no matter how hard we try. Because time is exactly what it chooses to be when it chooses to be.

Time is patient.

Time erodes all.

Time always wins.

This is the end of time. The end of everything

The quiet claims us all.




i dont want to g

"SMILING MAN PROXIES"

a dramatization presented by the Just Shoot The Panda players

Cast:

The Smiling Man
Proxy Candidate One
Proxy Candidate Two
A Bouquet

Directed by Allan Smithee

Scene: A dorm/house/apartment

Smiley: Hey there!
Proxy One: OH JESUS WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOUR FACE?!
Smiley: Lots of things. Anyway, I was wondering, is your spouse/child/best friend/beloved pet at home? I have this spare bouquet just kinda lying around.
Proxy One: A bouquet?
Smiley: Yeah, it's kind of my thing. Sort of a "torture you soon" gift. Are they around?
Proxy One: Oh God no please don't give that to them I'll do anything?
Smiley: Well, okay. Go here, and do this murder/kidnapping/pyramid scheme/ice cream social
Proxy One: And then what?
Smiley: Just, you know, chill out.
Proxy One: ...anything else.
Smiley: Oh, you know, just LOOK INTO MY MOTHERFUCKING EYES
Proxy One: OH JESUS I'M CRAZY NOW

Scene II: A school/business/back alley

Proxy Two: OH GOD YOUR FACE
Smiley: Isn't it lovely!? Say, I was in the neighborhood, thought I'd drop this bouquet off for your significant other/life partner/mistress. Is he/she/it/hir around? I have a busy schedule of heart removal and gardening ahead of me.
Proxy Two: Oh no, please, don't give them that...
Smiley: You twisted my arm! The bouquet stays with me...I just need a small favor. There's this guy, doing this murder/kidnapping/dog and pony show/petting zoo. I need you to go kill them.
Proxy Two: What?! I can't--
Smiley: Oh, hey, I suddenly find my not-hands putting this bouquet on this desk. I wonder how that happened.
Proxy Two: Okay! Okay! So...I just kill the guy? And my significant other/life partner is fine?
Smiley: Sure*, let's go with that. Also, LOOK INTO MY MOTHERFUCKING EYES
Proxy Two: OH GOD THE CRAZY

Scene Three:

Proxy Two--dead
Proxy One: Man, that ice cream social sure was easy. Except for this guy trying to kill me.
Smiley: Hi again!
Proxy One: Oh God!
Smiley: Huh. You lived. I guess I owe Archie twenty bucks.
Proxy One: What...what's going on?! You sent that person to kill me?!
Smiley: Yep!
Proxy: But why?! I did what you told me to! See?!
Smiley: Yeah, I don't really care about that anymore. I never really did, to be honest. So anyway, I need you to go to this town/city/village. There'll be this guy. You need to kill them, now.
Proxy: But, wait...did you tell this guy to just stand there and wait, too?
Smiley: Oh no, s/he knows you're coming.
Proxy: But...why? What does this even accomplish? Is there even a point to this?
Smiley: Of course, silly. It makes me smile.

CURTAIN

Starring Penny Balisong as the Smiling Man
Tara Tillinghast as Proxy One
Chelsea Balisong as Proxy Two

and introducing Jeanette "This is Stupid" Cotton as the bouquet.

"Smoking Break"

The white cylinder soared through the air.

Thin, white, veined. A hand bearing long, jagged fingernails snatched the cellulose cylinder from its trajectory. Another hand flicked a small sheet of paper onto the table. Brown flakes soon covered the paper, clumped together in a line down its length. The cylinder landed at the end. Two flicks of a hand, and the paper had become a cylinder itself, enveloping the cellulose cylinder within it. A flame burst into radiance suddenly, and rested on one end of the new cylinder.

The man raised the cigarette to his mouth, and inhaled.

A look of bliss crossed his face, followed by one of relaxation. Grey plumes of smoke burst from his mouth and wafted on the breeze.

"Thank you," he said to the man opposite.

"We all have our vices, sir," said the man he’d asked, his greasy hair limp and dangling. He smiled slightly, revealing a mouth full of rotten teeth. He drummed his fingers on the table top.

"I’m quite… aware," replied the smoker. He inhaled again, burning away at more of the rolled cigarette. His bloodshot eyes simply stared at his opposition, who simply smiled back. "Yours is… sugars, obviously. Don’t you ever visit the dentist?"

The man chuckled. "Don’t you ever go to a rehab clinic, so’s that they can look at this little… habit of yours?" He gestured at the cigarette, grinning. He pointed at the tin of tobacco flakes that lay open on the table.

"Doctors, eh? What’ll they tell me? That it’ll kill me, so I should stop? Hah!" The smoker jammed the rolled cigarette into his mouth and inhaled angrily. The smoked item was half-gone by now. "Time’ll kill me, but I don’t stop counting the minutes."

As if on cue, the clock on the white wall gave a single note. The man with the rotten teeth grinned, and leaned over. "Yanno, sir, it would’ve been half a day without a fag if you’d just held it in a little longer."

"Shut up, I know," snarled the smoker. A tower of furious smoke escaped his mouth. He stuck the cylinder into his mouth again, and inhaled deeply. "I don’t care. I’m not stopping."

"Oh, I know, sir, but that don’t mean I can’t try. This is what I do for a livin’, sir; for me, see, this is the show that never ends. People wanna get better, but they don’t wanna do it the hard way, see?"

"This is the hard way."

"Oh, you may think it is, sir, you may think it is, but it ain’t."

The smoker sighed; more grey tendrils blew in front of his eyes. He lifted the cigarette to his mouth, inhaled – felt heat rising in his fingers. His eyes opened wide, and he threw the cigarette to the floor. The fires flickered out in moments.

"Now, sir, are you ready to try again?" The man with the rotten teeth grinned, and he pushed a glass of water towards the smoker opposite, who placed a hand on it before pouring it down his throat.

Tick, tock.

The smoker’s eyes flickered around the room. It had been… two hours. No, the clock said two minutes. He looked at the man opposite with bloodshot eyes, and started counting the minutes.

"William Wright"

In the corner of my eye, people shiver.

I look away from the computer screen, but Karen-- sorry, Carpe Diem-- at the desk next to mine is merely droning on in her phoned meeting. Nothing out of the ordinary has happened for a good few weeks, nothing at all like what happened at the beginning of December, when the specimen broke out of its casing and escaped into the vents. That was a peculiar day, to say the least. FT-PASSACAGLIA was in the heads of near-every member of the Customer Support Team.

Yeah, there's nothing quite like calling up Customer Service and hearing nothing but mad screams about flying cheese blocks biting people's heads off.

But that incident was weeks ago; Fossil Security East secured FT-PASSACAGLIA by the end of a few days, and everyone's moved on with their lives. Boatshoe, who used to be a few cubicles away from me, resigned because of the traumas his mind revisited when FT-PASSACAGLIA got into his head, and we got customers calling to complain about "terrible service" for a week or so, but that's all that became of that.

So what in the hell am I seeing?

I decided to go ask Doctor Cloud what I might be experiencing.

"Well, William," I should mention my name's not actually William. My name's Stewart Grime, but the Genera provided me with the codename 'William Wright.' "I can't say for sure what's going in inside your head unless you're suggesting I perform Op-Salad on you." The Genera loves codenames; "Operation: Brain Salad Surgery" is the designated name for, well, brain surgery. Which, surprisingly, happens about once a week in this branch alone. Naturally, I wasn't going to have my head opened up for the eldritch equivalent of a stomachache, so I explained what was going on in my head:

"If a person ever enters the edge of my field of vision, they will always, without fail, appear to be shivering rapidly."

"It's not just your eyesight fading?"

"This only happens with humans, and only at the edge of my vision."

At this, the doctor let out a sound of stumped interest. "Maybe PASSACAGLIA's still hanging around in your eyes; maybe there's still some...PASSACAGLIA-dust that got caught in your eyes from the earlier incident?"

I hadn't considered this, actually. "Maybe. ..but wait, wouldn't I feel said PASSACAGLIA-dust? And I mean, this problem has only just started happening."

"I honestly don't know what to tell you," he concluded, throwing his gloved hands into the air. "All I can suggest is an Op-Salad, or you can just rough it out and let me know if any more symptoms occur." I decided to do the latter.

On the way home from work, I kept hearing laughter. As I lay my head down to sleep that night, I swore the ceiling looked to be of a different texture. The next day, I let Doctor Cloud know about these new symptoms. He turned to his computer and typed the symptoms into whatever program the Genera issued him with.

"I'm not getting anything. I was thinking maybe it was a Fossil, but no, unless it's an undocumented one. The closest thing I can think of is PASSACAGLIA. I'm sorry, William; I can't treat what I don't know." He saw the worry in my face, and suggested I take the day off. He even wrote me a letter of excused absence.

Working at the Genera isn't necessarily a tiring job, but we take mental health very seriously here. We research some of the world's most dangerous phenomena, and a lot of the Fossils wear away at our sanity anyway, so the higher-ups want us to be as focused and sane as we can be. That, and I work in Customer Support; dealing with complaints and reports all the time wears away at your sanity arguably faster than even the worst Fossil could. So naturally, I took excused absence.

On the way home this time, suddenly both humans and all forms of technology became blurry in the corners of my eyes. At home that night, my clocks suddenly began ticking down from "23:49." Twenty-three hours until.. something. I went straight to work the next day, bringing my clock with me.

Doctor Cloud turned white. He muttered something about "new symptoms" under his breath, but when I asked him to repeat himself, he said it was "Nothing." And then he turned to his computer and typed something long, asking me to wait outside his office for a little while.

To an outsider, a Topography Genera Center looks very much like your average white-collar office building. All you really see is average people typing at computers and using fancy bluetooth headsets. That's because someone came up with a brilliant idea: Place the offices at the front of the building so random people and new recruits think we're just all about reports and numbers. So we do that, and it really works; we don't want your common Tom, Dick, and Harry to step into our buildings and instantly see the crazy technology, wards filled with what look like zombies and people with strings in their skin, or the brain surgery theaters. …or the Fossil Experimentation chambers. When Doctor Cloud told me the higher-ups wanted me to report to Fossil Experimentation immediately, I, of course, had.. a lot of fears about this. But orders are orders.

In order to get to Fossil Experimentation, one must pass through a series of security checkpoints that often remind me of those spy films where the agent has to input several passwords into several terminals, do fingerprint scans, get guard escorts, and open so many doors. All this is, of course, absolutely necessary; we really don't want many people stepping into our research chambers. On any other day, I would have felt rather unaffected by these several complicated checkpoints, but today was different. Today, I could vividly hear endless screaming past all tangible noises. Today, every security guard appeared to be uncontrollably shivering. Today, every clock I saw was counting down. Fifteen hours left.

After all the security checkpoints was a hall spanning, I am told, one entire kilometre. The purpose of this hall is to provide some distance in case a Fossil escapes. Yeah, Fossils escape; it's hardly a very pleasant mental image, and it's exacerbated when you realize most Fossils can cover a kilometre within a fraction of a second. All it really did for me today was give me plenty of time to let my mind wander. Every human has an ocean inside, and every human has a tiny little drainpipe at the bottom of his or her ocean. When all the water has fallen down the drain, so too shall that person's mind. Well, I pictured, my drainpipe just got wedged open a couple hundred metres.

Eventually, I reached the Fossil Experimentation's front desk. I told Camilla I was sent here, and she checked the records before joyfully directing me to chamber H-07. The people working at Fossil Experimentation are odd; they're all always cheerful and happy, and none of us in the white-collar front of the facility can ever pinpoint why. As for the chamber naming system, it's fairly straightforward: the letter is the initial for the Fossil-Type, and the number is which chamber it is. However, I didn't know what Fossil-Type "H" was.

I passed through the dark-blue arches marking entrance to a Fossil wing, duly noting the name on the sign nearby: Fossil-Type HOMUNCULI. I may work for an organization that focuses on Fossils, but they don't exactly teach you every single term; everything's on a need-to-know basis, and I was just a customer support consultant. Whatever FT-HOMUNCULI was, I didn't know. But I was about to find out, and I knew I wasn't going to cheer at the answer.

Chamber H-07 was well-lit and empty like Camilla's smile. As I stepped into the white room, the door behind me slammed shut and the voice of a higher-up boomed into my ears despite the lack of any visible speakers on any wall.

"Dictate," the voice signaled. This was not directed to me, I gathered, but to a worker near him that was, from the sounds of it, transcribing his words onto an official document.

"Test designation: FTH07344. Test date: January 11, 2012. Test subject: Homo sapiens sapiens, a human male from Topography Genera Center East branch. Codename 'William Wright.'"

A slot opened on the far wall, and out of it was lowered an Apple computer.

The voice continued, this time directed at me, "Subject, you are to approach the computer." Having no alternative, I hesitatingly stepped towards it.

"Subject, you are to touch the computer with your right index finger only." I did so, feeling nothing of note.

"Subject, you are to touch the computer with your left index finger only." I did this as well, and nothing happened.

"Subject, you are to carefully lift the computer with both hands." This, I did slowly. I felt a bit of pain in my lower back, but that's all.

The slot in the wall opened once more, this time lowering a small pair of earphones.

"Subject, you are to carefully insert the left speaker into your left ear." After I put it in, the speaker began playing some strange static. I said I heard static, and the voice advised me to quickly leave the chamber.

Outside the chamber was a Genera Health Officer ready to see to me. He touched the outside of the speaker inserted in my ear and asked how it felt. "Loud."

"I'm gonna carefully remove the earphone from your ear, okay?" I saw no problem with this.

After he removed it, I screamed. My eardrum came out with the speaker, though this wasn't the scary part. I could still hear the Hellish laughter in my left ear.

The Genera Health Officer wrote something down on his clipboard and then led me down to a dark room with bars on the door. I was told to step into the cell, whereupon the door was firmly locked and guarded by heavily-armed men.

I could hear silence in my right ear and persistent laughter in my left. As time passed, I began to hear the higher-ups discussing the test results in my left ear.

"Test summary: Subject made contact with one (1) Apple-brand computer and had one (1) left earphone speaker inserted into his left ear.

"Test results: Computer provoked no change. Earphone began to fuse itself with subject's anatomy, subject claimed speaker played static upon fusion despite lack of source.

"Test conclusions: Definitive evidence of HOMUNCULI manifestation within test subject."

I heard a second voice-- Doctor Cloud, "What do you suggest?"

"Subject has been designated CRIMSON until further notice and placed in the subject detaining chamber. Immediate euthanasia recommended."

"..we can't save him?"

"HOMUNCULI presence has already reached subject's brain. The infection is fatal at this point."

Silence, the most silence of pauses I'd heard in my life, even with the endless laughter. Then finally, "I'll do it."

When Doctor Cloud arrived to mercy-kill me, I laughed along with my audience and began to shiver.

"Anxiety"

Before Mary went to Doctor Beakman she had been afraid her crippling anxiety would only respond to powerful drugs. The gently smiling, almost grandfatherly, doctor listened to her patiently as she explained how the fear and worry ate at her every day, how some days she was too afraid to go outside because she may have to interact with strangers and how difficult it had been just to come see him today. Whenever she faltered he would gently encourage her to continue without seeming to put any pressure on her. When she was done talking he briefly reviewed his notes and told her that he didn't think she would need anything too powerful. As a matter of fact he suggested she try a homeopathic medicine of his own making, an extract of Salmacis he called it. He said that when the anxiety got to be too much for her she should take a small dose and watch a relaxation video that he provided. He even included an audio CD of relaxing sounds free with the video. He also advised that she continue to see him twice a week for the time being for hypnotherapy.

Within two months she no longer needed her twice weekly appointments and only needed her medicine or the video during extremely stressful periods. That summer for example. It was a stressful time for everyone with so many children from the neighborhood disappearing. When the bodies of the missing children were found in Mary's basement that fall she was unable to explain how they came to be there. She had no memory of killing them. Police tested her medicine to determine if it could have caused her to have a psychotic break and discovered that inside the vial was nothing but water. When Doctor Beakman was contacted about this he replied that he had slowly been weening Mary off the medicine and that at this point she was only taking a placebo.

If they had checked the video and the CD perhaps they would have found the subliminal footage of children being tortured and killed or the subliminal audio that simply said over and over "Do it, Mary." Or the last subliminal frame of the video, where Doctor Beakman can be seen shaking hands with a man in a dark robe and a beaked mask.

"Health Insurance"

To: Daniel Rio
From: The Love of My Life at 1:53 PM

Baby could you pick up some milk on your way home?

To: The Love of My Life
From: Daniel Rio at 1:54 PM

Yeah, that’s fine.

To: Daniel Rio
From: The Love of My Life at 1:54 PM

Whats wrong honey??? Still caught up on that whole eye thing??

To: The Love of My Life
From: Daniel Rio at 2:03 PM

Yeah. I’m not seeing it so much anymore but it still bothers me every now and then

To: Daniel Rio
From: The Love of My Life at 2:05 PM

Dont worry about it. Youre just paranoid. How about I make you a nice cup of coffee when you get home from work??

To: The Love of My Life
From: Daniel Rio at 2:05 PM

That would be nice, yeah. Make sure it’s not decaf, though. Love you.

To: Daniel Rio
From: The Love of My Life at 2:06 PM

Ok no problem :) love you honey

To: Daniel Rio
From: The Love of My Life at 3:28 PM

Hey honey someone just tried calling for you…. I didn’t recognize the number but they left a voicemail…. it was just heavy breathing and someone said to check your work computer… i think maybe one of your drinking buddies was pulling a prank but its still really weird and im kind of nervous

To: The Love of My Life
From: Daniel Rio at 3:30 PM

What was the number? Make sure to keep the voicemail. I’ll look at it when I get home.

To: Daniel Rio
From: The Love of My Life at 3:42 PM

they said something about judgement and stuff…… I dont know what to think of it

To: The Love of My Life
From: Daniel Rio at 3:51 PM

It sounds like a prank caller to me. Don’t worry about it.

To: Daniel Rio
From: The Love of My Life at 3:52 PM

okay… they also sent me a picture… here it is
Attached file: JUDGEMENT.jpg

To: The Love of My Life
From: Daniel Rio at 3:56 PM

What… What number sent that to you?

To: Daniel Rio
From: The Love of My Life at 4:04 PM

it was some 303 number

To: Daniel Rio
From: The Love of My Life at 4:17 PM

someone just knocked on the door… they left an envelope with some pictures in it…… theyre people i dont recognize. ones of a woman that looks like shes in her late teens, another ones of a little boy who cant be older than nine, and then the last one is an old woman… somethings not right about them… its like these pictures were taken after they were dead

To: Daniel Rio
From: The Love of My Life at 4:20 PM

and theres a note… all it says is JUDGEMENT

To: The Love of My Life
From: Daniel Rio at 4:46 PM

Cheyenne I want you to take the kids and get the fuck out of there right fucking now there’s not much time just go fucking go go for the love of god leave the house take everything you can they’re everywhere theyre everywhere oh god ohgod oh god

To: Daniel Rio
From: The Love of My Life at 4:47 PM

Baby whats going on????

To: Daniel Rio
From: The Love of My Life at 5:32 PM

Danny????? Are you okay??

To: Daniel Rio
From: The Love of My Life at 5:47 PM

Daniel this isn’t funny!! Tell me whats going on!

To: The Love of My Life
From: Daniel Rio at 5:54 PM

On January 6th, 1994, Daniel Rio denied a young woman a claim. The aforementioned woman was a twenty-six year old by the name Lauren Dale. She suffered from heart conditions and severe head trauma. Through Daniel’s denial of her claim, she died a few days later from heart failure. Her family could not afford her funeral arrangements. They went into poverty. Her father committed suicide. Her mother became an alcoholic. On October 18th, 2004, Daniel Rio denied a cancer patient’s parents a claim. Said cancer patient was six years old. He had cancer in his lungs. He died by suffocating one month later, three days before he was to turn seven. His name was Jacob Moore. On March 12th, 2008, Daniel Rio denied an elderly woman a claim. She required a kidney transplant and removal of her appendix. She died a week later by committing suicide. She hung herself from the rafters of the assisted living home she lived in. The rope was made out of organic matter. These claims would have been approved by company policy if Daniel Rio had not intervened.

Daniel Rio will now never claim another life.

"The DeGroot Journals"

I would recommend that you read no further, if you enjoy your sanity. Within these pages are words that reveal the strange and phantasmagorical. Collected inside are the journal entries of one Maximillian DeGroot, a wealthy 19th Century business man, who lost his life tragically in 1881, when his family manor burnt to the ground. Only eye witness testimony and scorched journal entries tell of events that occurred. Much of this evidence says that the family brought madness in their wake. Copies of these materials were soon made, and had been circulating in private collections for many years with only whispers of what they told. What happened to the real journal is unknown.

Continue reading "The DeGroot Journals."