They terrified us, but we were older and wiser and so very far away, so we did not fret. Then we watched them split the atom and breach the heavens within the breadth of one of their single, short generations, and we began to worry. When they began actively transmitting messages and greetings into space, we felt fear and horror. Their transmissions promised peace and camaraderie to any who were listening, but we had watched them for too long to buy into such transparent deceptions. They knew we were out here, and they were coming for us.

The Orchestrators consulted the Predictor, and the output was dire. They would multiply and grow and flood out of their home system like some uncountable tide of Devourer worms, consuming all that lay in their path. It might take 6^8 Deelis, but they would destroy us if left unchecked. With aching carapaces we decided to act, and sealed our fate.

The Gift of Mercy was 8^4 strides long with a mouth 2/4 that in diameter, filled with many 4^4 weights of machinery, fuel, and ballast. It would push itself up to 2/8th of light speed with its onboard fuel, and then begin to consume interstellar Primary Element 2/2 to feed its unlimited acceleration. It would be traveling at nearly light speed when it hit. They would never see it coming. Its launch was a day of mourning, celebration, and reflection. The horror of the act we had committed weighted heavily upon us all; the necessity of our crime did little to comfort us.

Go on then

I cant post! it floods every time...

Please continue

They terrified us, but we were older and wiser and so very far away, so we did not fret. Then we watched them split the atom and breach the heavens within the breadth of one of their single, short generations, and we began to worry. When they began actively transmitting messages and greetings into space, we felt fear and horror. Their transmissions promised peace and camaraderie to any who were listening, but we had watched them for too long to buy into such transparent deceptions. They knew we were out here, and they were coming for us.

The Orchestrators consulted the Predictor, and the output was dire. They would multiply and grow and flood out of their home system like some uncountable tide of Devourer worms, consuming all that lay in their path. It might take 6^8 Deelis, but they would destroy us if left unchecked. With aching carapaces we decided to act, and sealed our fate.

wallpaper thread?

The Gift of Mercy was 8^4 strides long with a mouth 2/4 that in diameter, filled with many 4^4 weights of machinery, fuel, and ballast. It would push itself up to 2/8th of light speed with its onboard fuel, and then begin to consume interstellar Primary Element 2/2 to feed its unlimited acceleration. It would be traveling at nearly light speed when it hit. They would never see it coming. Its launch was a day of mourning, celebration, and reflection. The horror of the act we had committed weighted heavily upon us all; the necessity of our crime did little to comfort us.

They converted their home world into a paradise (by their standards) and many 10^6s of them poured out into the surrounding system with a rapidity and vigor that we could only envy. With bodies built to survive every environment from the day lit surface of their innermost world, to the atmosphere of their largest gas giant and the cold void in-between, they set out to sculpt their system into something beautiful. At first we thought them simple miners, stripping the rocky planets and moons for vital resources, but then we began to see the purpose to their constructions, the artworks carved into every surface, and traced across the system in glittering lights and dancing fusion trails. And still, our terrible Gift approached.

They had less than 2^2 Deeli to see it, following so closely on the tail of its own light. In that time, oh so brief even by their fleeting lives, more than 10^10 sentients prepared for death. Lovers exchanged last words, separated by worlds and the tyranny of light speed. Their planetside engineers worked frantically to build sufficient transmission infrastructure to upload the countless masses with the necessary neural modifications, while those above dumped lifetimes of music and literature from their databanks to make room for passengers. Those lacking the required hardware or the time to acquire it consigned themselves to death, lashed out in fear and pain, or simply went about their lives as best they could under the circumstances.

The Gift arrived suddenly, the light of its impact visible in our skies, shining bright and cruel even to the unaugmented ocular receptor. We watched and we wept for our victims, dead so many Deelis before the light of their doom had even reached us. Many 6^4s of those who had been directly or even tangentially involved in the creation of the Gift sealed their spiracles with paste as a final penance for the small roles they had played in this atrocity. The light dimmed, the dust cleared, and our Observatories refocused upon the place where their shining blue world had once hung in the void, and found only dust and the pale gleam of an orphaned moon, wrapped in a thin, burning wisp of atmosphere that had once belonged to its parent.

Radiation and relativistic shrapnel had wiped out much of the inner system, and continent sized chunks of molten rock carried screaming ghosts outward at interstellar escape velocities, damned to wander the great void for an eternity. The damage was apocalyptic, but not complete, from the shadows of the outer worlds, tiny points of light emerged, thousands of fusion trails of single ships and world ships and everything in between, many 10^6s of survivors in flesh and steel and memory banks, ready to rebuild. For a few moments we felt relief, even joy, and we were filled with the hope that their culture and Art would survive the terrible blow we had dealt them. Then came the message, tightly focused at our star, transmitted simultaneously by hundreds of their ships.

“We know you are out there, and we are coming for you.”

OP here, Sorry it took to long between the 2ed and third piece. m00t was being a fucking asshole with the flood. I wanted to put wallpapers to show each part of the story, but M007 is a prick

Begin

The Egg

By: Andy Weir
You were on your way home when you died.

It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.

And that’s when you met me.

“What… what happened?” You asked. “Where am I?”

“You died,” I said, matter-of-factly. No point in mincing words.

“There was a… a truck and it was skidding…”

“Yup,” I said.

“I… I died?”

“Yup. But don’t feel bad about it. Everyone dies,” I said.

You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me. “What is this place?” You asked. “Is this the afterlife?”

“More or less,” I said.

“Are you god?” You asked.

“Yup,” I replied. “I’m God.”

“My kids… my wife,” you said.

“What about them?”

“Will they be all right?”

“That’s what I like to see,” I said. “You just died and your main concern is for your family. That’s good stuff right there.”

You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn’t have time to grow contempt for you. Your wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved. To be fair, your marriage was falling apart. If it’s any consolation, she’ll feel very guilty for feeling relieved.”

“Oh,” you said. “So what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?”

“Neither,” I said. “You’ll be reincarnated.”

“Ah,” you said. “So the Hindus were right,”

“All religions are right in their own way,” I said. “Walk with me.”

You followed along as we strode through the void. “Where are we going?”

“Nowhere in particular,” I said. “It’s just nice to walk while we talk.”

>>334677850
Third poster here, it was worth the wait.
Who wrote that?

Epic so far op. Finish or op is a fag.

>>334678171
just some anon, I do love his work, who ever it was.

“So what’s the point, then?” You asked. “When I get reborn, I’ll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my experiences and everything I did in this life won’t matter.”

“Not so!” I said. “You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all your past lives. You just don’t remember them right now.”

I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders. “Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It’s like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it’s hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the experiences it had.

“You’ve been in a human for the last 48 years, so you haven’t stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for long enough, you’d start remembering everything. But there’s no point to doing that between each life.”

“How many times have I been reincarnated, then?”

“Oh lots. Lots and lots. An in to lots of different lives.” I said. “This time around, you’ll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD.”

“Wait, what?” You stammered. “You’re sending me back in time?”

“Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from.”

“Where you come from?” You said.

“Oh sure,” I explained “I come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And there are others like me. I know you’ll want to know what it’s like there, but honestly you wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh,” you said, a little let down. “But wait. If I get reincarnated to other places in time, I could have interacted with myself at some point.”

“Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own lifespan you don’t even know it’s happening.”

“So what’s the point of it all?”

“Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously? You’re asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”

“Well it’s a reasonable question,” you persisted.

I looked you in the eye. “The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature.”

“You mean mankind? You want us to mature?”

“No, just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect.”

“Just me? What about everyone else?”

“There is no one else,” I said. “In this universe, there’s just you and me.”

You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on earth…”

“All you. Different incarnations of you.”

“Wait. I’m everyone!?”

“Now you’re getting it,” I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back.

“I’m every human being who ever lived?”

“Or who will ever live, yes.”

“I’m Abraham Lincoln?”

“And you’re John Wilkes Booth, too,” I added.

“I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.

“And you’re the millions he killed.”

“I’m Jesus?”

“And you’re everyone who followed him.”

You fell silent.

“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”

You thought for a long time.

“Why?” You asked me. “Why do all this?”

“Because someday, you will become like me. Because that’s what you are. You’re one of my kind. You’re my child.”

“Whoa,” you said, incredulous. “You mean I’m a god?”

“No. Not yet. You’re a fetus. You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born.”

“So the whole universe,” you said, “it’s just…”

“An egg.” I answered. “Now it’s time for you to move on to your next life.”

And I sent you on your way.

Here is

BLIT
David Langford

It was like being caught halfway through a flashy film-dissolve. The goggles broke up the dim street, split and reshuffled it along diagonal lines: a glowing KEBABS sign was transposed into the typestyle they called Shatter. Safest to keep the goggles on, Robbo had decided. Even in the flickering electric half-light before dawn, you never knew what you might see. Just his luck if the stencil jumped from under his arm and unrolled itself before his eyes as he scrabbled for it on the pavement.

That would be a good place, behind the 34 (a shattered 34) bus stop. This was their part of town; the women flocked there each morning, twittering in their saris like bright alien canaries. A good place, by a boarded-up shop window thick with flyposted gig announcements.

Robbo scanned the street for movement, glanced at his own hand to be reassured by a blurred spaghetti of fingers. Guaranteed Army issue goggles -- the Group had friends in funny places -- but they said the eye eventually adjusts. One day something clicks, and clear outlines jump at you. He flinched as the thick plastic unrolled; then the nervy moment was past, his left hand pressing the stencil against a tattered poster while in his right the spray-can hissed.

The sweetish, heady smell of car touch-up paint made it all seem oddly distant from an act of terrorism.

He found he'd been careless, easy in this false twilight and through these lenses: there were tacky patches on his fingers as he re-rolled the Parrot. A few hours on, in thick morning light, the brown women would be playing the wink game.... Jesus, how long since he'd been a kid and played that? Must be five years. The one who'd drawn the murder card caught your eye and winked, and you had to die with lots of spasms and overacting. To survive, you needed to spot the murderer first and get in with an accusation -- or at least, know where not to look.

It was cold. Time to move on, to pick another place. Goggles or no shatter-goggles, he didn't look back at the image of the Parrot. It might wink.

SECRET * BASILISK
Distribution UK List B[iv] only

... so called because its outline, when processed for non-hazardous viewing, is generally considered to resemble that of the bird. A processed (anamorphically elongated) partial image appears in Appendix 3 of this report, page A3-ii. THE STATED PAGE MUST NOT BE VIEWED THROUGH ANY FORM OF CYLINDRICAL LENS. PROLONGED VIEWING IS STRONGLY DISRECOMMENDED. PLEASE READ PAGE A3-i BEFORE PROCEEDING.

2-6. This first example of the Berryman Logical Image Technique (hence the usual acronym BLIT) evolved from AI work at the Cambridge IV supercomputer facility, now discontinued. V.Berryman and C.M.Turner [3] hypothesized that pattern-recognition programs of sufficient complexity might be vulnerable to "Gödelian shock input" in the form of data incompatible with internal representation. Berryman went further and suggested that the existence of such a potential input was a logical necessity ...

2-18. Details of the Berryman/Turner BLIT construction algorithms are not available at this classification level. Details of the eventual security breach at Cambridge IV are neither available nor fully known. Details of Cambridge IV casualty figures are, for the time being, reserved (sub judice).

"IRA got hold of it somehow," Mack had said. "The Provos. We do some of our shopping in the same places, jelly and like that ... slipped us a copy, they did."

The cardboard tube in Robbo's hand had suddenly felt ten times as heavy. He'd expected a map, a Group plan of action; maybe a blueprint of something nasty to plant in the Sikh temple up Victoria Street. "You mean it works?"

"Fucking right. I tried it ... a volunteer." He'd grinned. Just grinned, and winked. "Listen, this is poison stuff. Wear the goggles around it. If you fuck up and get a clear squint at even a bit of the Parrot, this is what you do. They told me. Shut yourself up with a bottle of vodka and knock the whole lot back. Decontamination, scrubs your short-term visual memory, something like that."

"Jesus. What about the Provos? If this fairy story's got teeth, why haven't they ...?" Robbo had trailed off into a vague waving gesture that failed to conjure up a paper neutron bomb.

Mack's smile had widened into an assault-course of brown jagged teeth, as it did when he talked about a major Group action. "Maybe they don't fancy new ideas ... but could be they're biding their time for a big one. Ever thought about hijacking a TV station? Just for an hour? Don't think things like that, it'll be bad for you."

... Dead TV screens watched him from another cracked shop window, a dump that also rented Hindi videotapes. That settled it for them. Why couldn't the buggers learn English? The Group would give them a hint: the Parrot stencil was already in position, the can sliding out of his pocket, fastest draw in the west. At school Robbo had never won a fight, had always been beaten down to cringing tears: he'd learned good, safe, satisfying ways of hitting back. Double-A Group booby-trap work was the best of all, a regular and addictive thrill.

This had better be the last for now, or last but one. Twenty would be a good round number, but the sky seemed to be lightening behind its overlaid sodium-light stain.

If he went round Alma Street way he could hit the Marquis of Granby, where everyone said the local gays hung out. Taking over a good old pub, bent as corkscrews and not even ashamed of it, give you Aids as soon as look at you, the bastards. Right in the middle of their glazed front door, then, glaring red and a foot high ...

The light hit him like a mailed fist. The goggles parsed it into bright, hurtful bars. Robbo spun half around, trying to shield his eyes with the heavy, flapping something in his left hand. The heavy something had a big irregular hole in it; torchlight blared through, and, moving quickly closer, there was a voice. "Like to tell me what you're ...?"

As the beam dipped and the voice trailed off, he saw the shivered outline of a police helmet through that of the Parrot. Behind jagged after-images a face came into view, an Asian face as he might have expected this end of town. The eyes stared blindly, the mouth worked. Robbo had read old murder mysteries where the unmarked body wore an inexplicable expression of shock and dread. A warm corpse slumped into him, its momentum carrying them both through a window which dissolved in tinkling shards.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. The bomb wasn't supposed to go off until you were six miles away. Somewhere there was the broken outline of a second helmet.

SECRET * BASILISK

... independently discovered by at least two late amateurs of computer graphics. The "Fractal Star" is generated by a relatively simple iterative procedure which determines whether any point in two-dimensional space (the complex field) does or does not belong to its domain. This algorithm is now classified.

3-3. The Fractal Star does not exhibit BLIT properties in its macrostructure. The overall appearance may be viewed: see Appendix 3, page A3-iii. This property allowed the Star to be widely disseminated via a popular computer magazine [8], a version of the algorithm being printed under the heading "Fun With Graphics". Unfortunately, the accompanying text suggested that users rewrite the software to "zoom in" on aspects of the domain's visually appealing fractal microstructure. In several zones of the complex field, this can produce BLIT effects when the resulting fine detail is displayed on a computer monitor of better than 600 x 300 pixels resolution.

3-4. Approximately 4% of the magazine's 115,000 readers discovered and displayed BLIT patterns latent within the Fractal Star. In most cases, other members of family units and/or emergency services inadvertently became viewers while investigating the casualty or casualties. Total figures are difficult to ascertain, but to a first order of approximation ...

"Tape the envelope, all round. That's it. And write DANGER DO NOT OPEN in ruddy big letters, both sides, right?"

"So you know all about it."

"There've been bulletins. The squaddies picked up fifty in that Belfast raid. Leeds CID got another ... some bastard just like this one. I tell you, this job's been a shambles for years and now it's a fucking disaster. Three constables and a sergeant gone, picking up a spotty little shit you could knock flying just by spitting at him ..."

Robbo hurt in a variety of places but kept still and quiet, eyes shut, slumped on the hard bench where ungentle hands had dropped him. He'd told them every place he'd hit, but they'd kept on hurting him. It wasn't fair. He felt the draught of an opening door.

"Photo ID positive, sir. Robert Charles Bitton, nineteen, two previous for criminal damage, suspected link Albion Action Group. Nothing much else on the printout."

"I suppose it makes sense. Vicious sods: run into them yet, Jimmy? Nearest thing we've got here to the Ku Klux fucking Klan."

"This one'll be out of circulation for a good long while."

"Jimmy, you haven't been keeping up to date with this BLIT stuff, have you? It's the same as that fucking nightmare with the kids and their home computers. God knows how much longer they can keep the lid on. It's going to get us all sooner or later ... Look. We are going to have four PMs with cause of death unknown, immediate cause heart failure, and have I really got to spell it out?"

"Ohhh."

"The only evidence is in that sodding envelope, a real court clearer eh? I remember when they nicked those international phone fiddlers way back when, and all we could do them for was Illegal Use Of Electricity to the value of sixty pee. They didn't have a phone-hacker law those days. We haven't got a brain-hacker law now."

You mean we clean up after the little bastard, give him a nice room for what's left of the night, and that's it?"

"Ah." The tone of voice implied that something extra was going on: a gesture, a finger laid significantly alongside the nose, a wink. "Car Three cleans up, they've got the eye safety kit, for what that's worth. We show young Master Urban Terrorism to his palatial quarters, taking the pretty way of course. And then, Jimmy, when the new shift arrives we hold a wake for our recently departed mates. No joking. It's in the last bulletin. You'll really appreciate hearing why."

Robbo braced himself as the hands got a fresh grip on him. The outlook sounded almost promising.

SECRET * BASILISK

... informational analysis adopts a somewhat purist mathematical viewpoint, whereby BLITs are considered to encode Gödelian "spoilers", implicit programs which the human equipment cannot safely run. In his final paper [3] Berryman argued that although meta-logical safety devices permit the assimilation and safe recognition of self-referential loops ("This sentence is false"), the graphic analogues of subtler "vicious circles" might evade protective verbal analysis by striking directly through the visual cortex. This may not be consistent with the observed effects of the "Reader" BLIT discussed in section 7, unusual not merely because its incapacitation of cortical activity is temporary (albeit with some observed permanent damage in Army volunteers [18]), but also because its effects are specific to those literate in English and English-like alphabets. There may in addition be a logical inconsistency with the considerations developed in section 12.

10-18. Gott's post facto biochemical counter-hypothesis [24] was regarded as less drastic. This proposes that "memotoxins" might be formed in the brain by electrochemical activity associated with the storage of certain patterns of data. Although attractive, the hypothesis has yet to be ...

12-4. The present situation resembles that of the "explosion" in particle physics. Not merely new species of BLIT but entire related families continue to emerge, as summarized in Appendix A2. One controversial interpretation invoked the Sheldrake theory of morphic resonance [25]: it might be simpler to conclude that multiple simultaneous emergence of the BLIT concept was inevitable at the stage of AI research which had been reached. The losses amongst leading theorists, in particular those with marked powers of mathematical visualization, constitute a major hindrance to further understanding ...

The cell was white-tiled to shoulder height, glossily white-painted as it went on up and up. Its reek of disinfectant felt like steel wool up the nose, down the throat. In a vague spirit of getting the most from the amenities, Robbo patronized the white china toilet and scrubbed his hands futilely in the basin (cold water couldn't shift those red acrylic stains) before lying down to wait.

They couldn't touch him, really. They might fine him on some silly vandalism charge, and he might accidentally fall down a few more flights of stairs before reaching the magistrates' court ... even now the hard bunk caught him in all sorts of puffy, bruised places. But in the long run he was OK.

They knew that.

They knew that but they hadn't seemed bothered, had they?

He had a flash, then, of them smiling, "We aren't pressing charges," and "This way, sir," and "If you could just pick up your property ..." A door would open and guess what would be waiting there for him to see?

Silly. They wouldn't. But suppose.

Time passed. The terminus was easy to imagine. He'd seen it so often through the shatter lenses, a long bird profile sliced at an angle and jaggedly reassembled: parrot salami. In outline against walls and windows and posters; as a solid shape in glistening red that lost its colour to orange sodium glare; in outline again as a dead man's broken eyes met his.

It seemed to hover there behind his closed eyelids. He opened them and stared at the far-off ceiling, spattered with nameless blobs and blots by the efforts of past occupants. If you imagined joining the dots, images began to construct themselves, just as unconvincing as zodiac pictures. After a time, one image in particular threatened to achieve clear focus ...

He bit through his lip, took refuge in a brief white-out of pain.

It was in him. They knew. Even with protection, he'd looked too long, from too many angles, into the abyss. He was infected. Robbo found himself battering at the heavy metal door, bloodying his hands. Useless, because just as there was no clear crime he could have committed, there was no good medical reason why unfriendly police should offer him a massive, memory-clouding dose of alcohol.

Flat on the bunk again, he ran for his life. The Parrot stalked him through the grey hours of morning, smissingnohing its fractal feathers, shuffling itself slowly into clarity as though at the end of a flashy film-dissolve, until at last his mind's eye had to acknowledge a shape, a shape, a

wink

Meet the Parrot

Anybody have a request for a short story to dump? Other wise feel free to throw your own story here

Josef K, a god among anon horror writers, here is his story

Dust

OP, who wrote to first story?

how about the Last Question by Issac Asimov?

The last storm was already on the horizon when I woke that sunday morning. It hung in the south, a solid black wall of dust, churning and seemingly motionless. I’d every intention of sleeping late into the morning, as had been my Sunday custom since Adele and the girls had left, but the distant rumbling and crackle of lightning drug me from the bed just after sunrise. I shuffled drowsily around the farm in the early morning, lashing the doors of the barn, rounding up the two stubborn hogs, and shuttering the windows; but soon I found myself rooted in place, captivated by the writhing shape in the sky. It stretched impossibly wide across the open sky, rolling across the border from Nebraska. The air had a dry, electric chill, and already the sickly yellow wheat swayed in anticipation.

I was in a trance, eyes locked on the distance when I saw a small light dust plume to the west, picked out in stark contrast with black beyond. The horse and rider at the base of the little dust devil approached the farm at a sharp trot, and my dust bleary eyes registered the silhouette. Carl Jordan had owned the farm next to mine for as along my family has been in the Dakotas, I grew up with his great booming laughter warming our home nearly every night. His usual broad, yellowing smile was absent beneath recently trimmed mustache and broad rimmed black hat; his dark suit was blotted with fine layer of grit that he brushed absently at.

>>334681774
I have no idea, it's like creepypasta, been on the internet for ages. I have a three part short story similar to it, but as it is not complete, I don't think I should post it.
The last storm was already on the horizon when I woke that sunday morning. It hung in the south, a solid black wall of dust, churning and seemingly motionless. I’d every intention of sleeping late into the morning, as had been my Sunday custom since Adele and the girls had left, but the distant rumbling and crackle of lightning drug me from the bed just after sunrise. I shuffled drowsily around the farm in the early morning, lashing the doors of the barn, rounding up the two stubborn hogs, and shuttering the windows; but soon I found myself rooted in place, captivated by the writhing shape in the sky. It stretched impossibly wide across the open sky, rolling across the border from Nebraska. The air had a dry, electric chill, and already the sickly yellow wheat swayed in anticipation.

I was in a trance, eyes locked on the distance when I saw a small light dust plume to the west, picked out in stark contrast with black beyond. The horse and rider at the base of the little dust devil approached the farm at a sharp trot, and my dust bleary eyes registered the silhouette. Carl Jordan had owned the farm next to mine for as along my family has been in the Dakotas, I grew up with his great booming laughter warming our home nearly every night. His usual broad, yellowing smile was absent beneath recently trimmed mustache and broad rimmed black hat; his dark suit was blotted with fine layer of grit that he brushed absently at.

“Eddie.” His voice was tired and small as he looked down at me. “No church today?”

I hadn’t been in months and he’d once admitted to envying me. I just didn’t see the need any longer, and I’ve relished the extra hours. I ignored the question.

“What’s troubling you, Carl? Mattie all right?” I asked.

He turned towards the south, to the storm and sucked loudly on his lower lip. After a few moments of thought he sighed deeply, with a phlegmy rumble.

“The Hattersons are dead. All of them, ‘cept Saul.” He said evenly, not returning his gaze to mine. I drank this in for a moment, feeling the insides my sinuses beginning to burn in the cold and arid breeze. I briefly dwelt upon the image of the youngest Hatterson, a tow headed toddler with the dim looking smile I’d seen at the general store with Saul and Molly a few days prior.

“How?” I asked finally. He grimaced slightly, still gazing south.

“Saul’s missing. No one seen him since last night. Molly and the kids are dead, and Saul’s gone. It don’t sound good.” Carl slumped forward a little, and I saw, not for the first time how, old he was. “The whole hornet’s nest is stirred up over in Pickton. He was gonna lose the farm they say.”

Fleetingly, it concerned me that I could easily see the connection between these facts.


“Mattie’s fine,” he said after another silent moment. “Just a little ill this morning, thanks for asking.” He broke from the black clouds, and fixed his eyes on me. He offered a pale imitation of his familiar smile, but his eyes remained squinted tight, haunted. He looked as if he had more to say, but at last, he just nodded and gathered the reins.

“Be safe, Eddie,” he said, a phrase worn smissingnoh by repeated use, and turned towards his farm, trotting quickly, head still crooked towards the storm.

By noon, I could only watch as the it reached up and blotted out the sun.

* * *

The dust storm enveloped us, obscuring the sky like the hands of God. I did my best to ration the allotment of bourbon I’d poured off that morning, watching the black wind scour the earth through a broken shutter slat. During the storms of the years before, pale and weak compared to this tempest, Adele would huddle with the girls to read scripture, inevitably ending with the Revelations in hushed reverent tones. I’d tried not to scowl at her fear and awe before, but now I could feel a little tremor of doubt in me, as I looked out at the sackcloth sky.

When the sky darkened a few shades at nightfall, I prepared a small meal of bread and fried eggs, and drained the rest of the bourbon. Later, I laid in the unmade bed with the world spinning, and the sky howling outside and tried not to think.

The storm raged stronger than ever the next morning, the sun winking through the maelstrom, a fat circle of hazy orange like a fading coal. Late in the day, it showed no sign of abating and I resigned to leave the house, if only to feed the animals. I tied my goggles to my head, and a damp bandana around my mouth, but I still gasped at the ragged burn of the dust when I stepped outside into the storm. The lining of my throat seemed to crack and bleed within moments.

I could barely see the barn but I set out instinctually towards it. A tall hillock of fine black dust was pressed to the side, and it took me a few kicks to clear the door. The dust had seeped in everywhere, and the hogs and cows were covered in a layer of grime. They stood still in their pens, eyes red and glassy, shuddering and jerking with each loud creak from the roof beams. They ignored the food.

>>334675403
Fukken loved the first story OP, THANKS! Really made my night

>>334682473
Dust, by josef K, from the Josef K stories blog. A great writer
There was a twisting coil of anxiety in my chest when Carl arrived, leading the terrified horse behind him. His beard was matted with dust, and he had to sweep the lenses of the googles clean at my doorstep, but instead of entering, he only waved me out to join him.

“You need to come with me!” he shouted over the storm. The dust between his teeth had formed a thin black mud that flecked at the corners of his mouth. It was his tone, flat and even, that terrified me. I didn’t argue, but pulled on goggles, and offered him a second bandana.
I followed close behind him, one hand on the horse’s haunch. Carl picked his way down the path, navigating by some uncanny memory of the curves in the little road. We walked cautiously and deliberately west for the better part of half a mile, past Carl’s own farm, towards the leaning shape of the Collins farm. A throbbing dread began to stir in my breast as we approached.

The door was thrown wide open and off one of its hinges, swinging violently in the wind. I could see Roger Collins, slumped in the door frame, the congealing blood on his forehead caked with the fine dirt. His eyes were open, the left eye beneath the bullet hole was flooded red and tilted wildly skyward. Clutched in his curled hands was a rifle with one spent casing.

Abigail Collins and her youngest were inside, curled tightly around each other in the corner of the room. The flowers of blood that bloomed on the fabric of their dresses was bright and vivid.

Slumped upright at the dinner table, as if ready for a meal, was another figure, filthy and caked with black dust. He seemed composed, sitting upright and proud, despite the pinprick bullet hole, clean and bloodless, standing starkly in the center of his throat. His grimy skin was dried and shriveled, his eyes were closed, the lids sunken over the pits. It took a long yawning moment to recognize the desiccated face. Saul Hatterson, hands clasped around a little revolver, looking for all the world like he’d been dead for a week. Saul Hatterson, grinning obscenely wide, showing dried black gums.

Despite the roaring storm, there was a unearthly stillness in the little house, and I could hear my heart thudding in my ears. I turned to Carl with pitiful expression, a plea for some sort of understanding.

“I was bringing them some canned food. Roger was worried about being able to last out a long store,” he shouted from the front porch, where he was closing Roger’s eyes and wiping the blood from his hand. He looked up at me and stood. “Jed’s missing.”

I gazed around the room again, before turning to Carl. “You don’t think that Jed...” I began, letting the idea remain unsaid. Jed was a quiet and sickly kid, but something about him had always set my teeth on edge.

“No,” he barked. “I don’t think a 15 year old could be capable of this. But I didn’t think Saul was either. None of this makes any sense” He brushed the lenses of his goggles clean once more.

“No, it does not.” I agreed.

“We should head into Pickton to tell someone, but I- I need you to drive the Collins’ Ford. I can make it between our three farms on foot reliably enough, but I don’t think me or that horse could make it all the way into town.” Carl looked mildly embarrassed, hidden as he was behind dust and beard, and I followed him to barn.

The Model A made a few grinding rasps before dying completely, refusing to respond to anything. When I opened the gas cap, a damp and clumping mixture of dust and gasoline tumbled from the little opening. My breath came in increasingly shallow gasps as we moved to the Collins’ tractor, unscrewing the cap. The same reeking clay was stuffed to the top of the tank.

The first story is my favorite as well, but I thought that /b/ could use a good read tonight, to break the duldrums of dubs
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The walk back towards our farms was silent, my heart pounding as I struggled to keep my breathing steady, as the inside of my sinuses were scoured raw. First Carl’s tractor, then we checked mine, both were useless and clogged with dust. If Carl was as panicked as I was, he refused to show it.

“Eddie, I don’t know what this means,” he yelled to me as we crouched over my tractor, the sky dimming. “But I think I’d appreciate it if you stayed with me and Mattie tonight. The storm has to let up in the morning I’m sure.” I could see at last the spark of fear in his eyes, and it brought me a little solace.

* *

Carl went ahead, panicky with thoughts of Mattie, sick in bed on her own, and I agreed to follow shortly. I entered my house to gather my shotgun and a tin of coffee. I don’t believe I intended to start drinking, but the bloody and crooked eye was shining wetly in my memory, and I drew from the bourbon a few soothing pulls.

I recall being tired and weary from the day’s grim business, but I don’t remember lying down on on the cool wood of the floor. When I woke gripping the gun and empty bottle, the sky was lighter, but the whirling black cloud still surrounded the world on all sides. Tuesday. I thought through a fog of pain. Or is it Wednesday? I groggily allowed the shame to flood in when I realized I’d left Carl and Mattie waiting all night.

After finding all the water drained the night before, I dressed for the storm and headed out to the well. The pump handle strained against me as I pressed downward bringing up the first sounds of water. What came out of the pump was black and viscous, a thin black paste. I dropped the tin bucket in disgust, feeling yesterday’s dread igniting behind the alcohol ache, and I turned quickly towards Carl’s farm.

On the road, with my destination not yet visible, I turned to see behind me. There wasn’t even the faint outline of my barn. In that moment, I was alone, surrounded by a wall of vibrating earth and wind all sides. It could have been all of creation and I would never know. It could be the end of creation, and I would never know. I turned back towards Carl’s farm and began to run in a panic, frantically hoping I had not altered direction.

As the small unpainted house came into view, I saw Carl’s horse, lying motionless on the ground, still tied to the railing on the porch. A small dune of black dust had formed against one side. The door was wide open, slamming into the wall with a sharp crack at each breath from the storm.

My panic spiked like a fever when I stepped inside, and my body began shaking violently.

Mattie lay spilled from her bed, trailing sheets and and a shredded fragment of her nightgown. Her head was twisted, the neck bruised and bent, and bulging glassy eyes seemed to stare directly at me. Her tongue was thick and black between her teeth.

Seated on the bed above her, spindly legs dangling over the edge, was the dried and leathery corpse of Jed Collins, the missing boy. His eye sockets gaped empty and black as he silently grinned out at the world.

Carl was nowhere to be found.

I backed out quietly from the house, at last truly toning out the chaotic roar of the storm. My mind spun trying to make sense of utter madness, and it stoked the fires inside me; panting, desperate dread flooding my limbs until I found myself propelled blind, running through the storm towards my home.

I continued past the hulking silhouette of my barn, legs flooding with fire as I sucked in great lungfuls of choking dust. I thought nothing of destination, I only wanted to get as far away from the storm as possible, far from the empty charnel houses of my neighbors, and from empty eyes and wicked grins.

I made it as far as thin fork of the Missouri that carves the far edge of my land. I saw, through the wall of shifting haze, the black outline of the river from a distance. When I approached, legs slowing and lungs burning, I saw the river more clearly, wide and unearthly still. The water was black and thick, and in mute disbelief I watched it flow, slowly like molasses, under a dark and churning sky. And then, I began to understand.

*

I nailed the shutters closed, driven by an animal urgency of purpose. The door I braced with Adele’s heirloom cabinet, allowing it to crack and splinter on it side as I stacked a steamer chest on top.

I didn’t really believe that this would slow whatever would come tonight, in the howling darkness, but I wanted to have the time to know, to be sure. The last bourbon bottle lay empty on the floor, and I was glad for this, for the chance to be clearheaded at last. I sat, back to the wall, facing the door with the shotgun in my hands and I waited.

The sky darkened and the storm continued to howl; I measured my breaths, trying to hold onto a that moment of calm, to stretch it out until it dried and snapped apart.

It was late at night when it arrived. I could hear the heavy footsteps circling the porch, pulling lightly, testing each shutter. My hands were suddenly slick with sweat on the barrel of the shotgun.

The shuffling footsteps stopped in front of door, and I saw the wood flex ever so slightly as pressure was applied. A scraping sound began to rise, hissing, from the small barricade as it began to slide slowly across the floor. The force on the other side of the door increased slowly, steadily, grinding against the heavy barricade until the door was open to the storm and to the night and beyond.

The figure swept into the room with a silent grace that surprised me, and stood regarding me. Carl’s skin seemed to crackle and go taut like paper as he moved, and in the hollow of his empty eyes were tiny twisting clouds of dust, blue ribbons of electricity arcing across the sockets. He was smiling, a smile I’d never seen from him, a wide obscene grin.

I felt a strange sort of calm then, the surety of knowing, despite the impossible madness of it all. I raised the shotgun.

“Eddie,” the thing inside Carl hissed, in a voice like grinding sand. The corpse took another step towards me, and I saw a black trickle of mud from the edge if its cracked lips. “Go ahead and shoot, Eddie. See what it gets you.”

I smiled back at him, seeing the solution so clearly at last. I took a moment to be thankful that Adele and the girls are gone; thankful, in an awful way, that I’d struck her hard enough for her to finally leave me. This would not be the night that they die.

It had moved halfway across the room now, shuffling towards me, the malevolent sparks of its eyes locked on me. The now-familiar dread reared up to swallow my temporary peace.

I saw, in the black whirlpool of it’s eyes, the great storm, covering the entire earth in a final gloom; I saw trails and chains of endless murder and atrocity crisscrossing the darkened world, into that last eternal night. I saw the end.

All I had left was a little sliver of hope, enough to spur me onward. I swung the shotgun up under my chin, feeling the cool of the barrel on my chin. The thing inside Carl jerked to a halt, and ceased to smile; and I knew I’d gambled right this time.

It needed me. And it can’t have me.

I made sure I was smiling, drinking in the thing’s rage and frustration.

The thing roared and with a leap, burst from Carl’s body, his drying muscles snapping and shredding into long fraying fibers, as it shed him like a coat, thudding to the floor behind. It was a swirling cloud, a flurry of dust, coursing with lightning and pure, elemental hatred that I saw then, surging towards me faster than I would have believed possible. Thin tendrils coiled, and tightened, and wound their way through air, twisting towards my mouth and nose. I could feel them caress the raw passages of my lungs, hot, twisting and unmistakably, horribly, alive as they slid into me.

I pulled the trigger.

This thread my now hold the record for text vs images. I will know rectify that by holding a light image dump to cleanse the palette, followed by another story.

Superjail anyone? I love the orgy of violence.

>>334686320
jailbot is the shit

I have spray painted tennis ball to look like ultra balls and poke balls and threw them at squirrels, rabbits and birds in the quad. I got a fifty dollar fine and on the front page of the campus newspaper. Did I mention that I dressed like Gold? Because Fuck Ash, that's why.

Anybody an new story?

Here, we have some idiot who posted his baby on /b/. I added hate to it.

Here are some sea monsters

Ok new story time, this one is called Shiva, and it is written again by Josef K, from the Josef K stories blog.
It is notable because it made me doubt my own existence. A difficult feat for an immortal like my self.

Am I posting too fast? I read at a very high rate, and I don't know /b/'s reading speed.

Shiva
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My mother is crying so loud that at first I can’t make out what she’s saying, her voice made tinny and small in the phone. Finally I pick his name from the sine wave of her wailing, and I know my brother Lev is dead. My guts constrict, wrapping into a knot, and I feel the air rush out of me, and then I am no longer quite standing. I let her go on for a while as I struggle to control my breathing, eyes tilted skyward to stem the tears, back pressed to the cool cracked plastic of the refrigerator. When she’s out of breath I hear my father, his low baritone cracked with hurt, muttering, to me or my mother or both. After a while I start to hear his words, hear ‘shiva’, and my guts twist again, counterclockwise this time. He is talking to me.

They want me to come home.


1

I land just in time for the funeral, crossing the continent in a few bleary eyed hours, and I arrive at the cemetery still wearing the sweaty reek of the plane’s cabin on my clothes. The coffin is almost into the ground before I can fully grasp what it means. That this is my brother’s body, and that he is dead, and this is forever. I’m still mulling this over, spinning it in my head like a smissingnoh stone, when we arrive at the home we grew up in. I place my bags onto a familiar bed that looks smaller than it should, and then I return to the ground floor where I shake hands, and nod politely to a swirling fog of strange and aged faces from my childhood.

I answer the same questions over and over again, my job, my life, the past 20 years. There’s a rhythm to the answers I soon nail, and then I no longer have to think about the responses. The faces drift away with the daylight, and when the house is dark and empty, everything sharpens and solidifies. Every where I twist my eyes, something triggers a tiny explosion of images and memories. A dented baseboard. Dull silver on a salt shaker.

My mother and father sit, side by side in plastic folding chairs across from the couch, hands clasped and eyes tilted downward. For a moment I think about helping them to the couch, to some relative physical comfort. The moment passes. I sit down in my father’s overstuffed recliner, and try to keep my head above the flood of little memories.

There’s something odd about the light, I think, as the edges of my vision grow dim. I look to my mother, see the light shining painfully off the chrome trim of her glasses, see the dark hollows of her eyes go almost black. The contrast sharpens, and the uncanny change in the light becomes too painful to look at, to even think about. Unfair is the word that comes to mind. I shake my head, and look back to the flat neutral tones of the embroidered couch.

My brother is there. Dressed in funereal black, his hair long and wild. He is staring at me and beneath his uneven beard his mouth is moving, but no sound escapes, not even the sibilant pops and clicks of lips and teeth. No breath. I struggle not to pass out, hold my neck rigid, and stare.

The engines of logic whir to life in my head, burst through the superstitious fog that threatens to choke out the last of the weird light. I close my eyes. I’m tired. Under extreme stress. Still not quite well. I should have expected something like this. I press fingertips to my eyes, and focus on the purple and blue geometric explosions of false light. Count the angles and lines. Breathe.

Breathe.

Open.

Lev is leaning forward, reaching his arms across the coffee table at our parents, and his lips continue to dance and twist without sound. They look down, leathery faces impassive. My father is asleep.

He turns back to me, and his bright black eyes flash beneath black coiled ringlets of hair. He is smiling. That wild, wide Lev smile. Mischief and revelation and something else. He speaks again, and with a sudden snap, like the bursting of a soap bubble, I hear.

“The light, Ronen. Can you see it?”

Breath escapes me like a pierced balloon, one long sigh until I am empty, and for the first time today, I begin to cry. Lev’s black eyes are wet, locked on mine, and I hang onto the moment, until the creak of my father standing breaks the silence.

“I’m glad you came home, son,” he mumbles as he takes my mother by the hand and leads her up. “Thank you.”

Irrational anger wells up in me, and I twist to glare at him, to shut him up, but the strange light is already fading. I am crying in an old chair in a familiar room on a warm, wet evening.

Lev is gone.


2

Sleep comes quick, and it is deep and black. In the morning, I make breakfast for my parents, and none of us speak aloud. There’s a language to the little looks, the hands clapped on shoulders, the sad little smiles. There’s comfort in presence. I wash the dishes, feeling the cool waters moving over my hands, savoring the crash of white noise.

In the living room, the doorbell rings, and my father allows the first of the minyan in. There is hugging, and nodding, and they begin the mourner’s kaddish. The old uncomfortable itch flairs up at the sound, words whose sounds I know intimately but whose meaning I know not at all. Ignoring a sharp glance from my father, I climb the stairs, and lock the bathroom door.

I shower, take the morning’s pills, and shave. When I return to my room, Lev is there. He sits on the edge of the bed, looking out the window, morning sun painting his face. The pressure on my chest is back, and I focus hard on breathing.

He turns to me and smiles.

“Ronen. I’m so glad to see you again.” His voice is liquid and golden. His smile is beatific.

“Me too, Lev,” I manage, aware of how cracked and uneven it sounds.

“I will see you again. In God’s hands, and in due time.” He turns back to the light, closing his eyes. “He loves you, Ronen. Even when you hate him. Especially when you hate him.”

I remember why I hadn’t spoken to Lev in three years, and I’m as angry as ever. That patronizing shit. That condescending self righteous-

I’m staring at an empty space on the bed, motes of dust in a sun beam. The water in the bathroom is still running. I’m alone.

OP is not a fag

Second story was awesome.

3

My parents and I reach an equilibrium, an understanding, by the third day. I cook for them, spend long silent hours cleaning the house, hold them when they appear close to breaking. They don’t ask me to join them for prayer, but I see the furrowing of their brows when I leave the room.

When Lev appears to me in the back yard, as I am clipping laundry to the rust scarred plastic lines of the drying racks. I look up, and Lev is beneath the boughs of the old apple tree, the dappled sunlight on his sallow face. His skin is waxy, his cheeks sunken. He no longer smiles, and beneath his bangs his black eyes are searching, flitting from the sky to my own.

I still have a kernel of anger from the day before, irrational and seething. I turn to make sure my parents are far from earshot.

“Lev,” I say.

“Brother.”

There is a long pause, and he turns from me to run his thin and bony hands against the bark of the apple tree.

“How is Paradise?” I ask, and am instantly ashamed. I’ve tried not to dwell on the teleological or psychological implications of these visits. On the first night, it was a waking dream. Yesterday, it could have only have been Lev, infuriating, self righteous, beloved Lev. Now, as his eyes waver and shine, I see in them not smug glory, but terror, kept barely at bay, I regret my bitter words with an almost physical force.

He opens his mouth long before the words come forth.

“I don’t think that’s where I am, Ronen.”

“What do you mean, Lev?”

“There’s no one here with me.” He crosses his legs and sits beneath the great tree, picking up a late summer apple, gone soft with rot. “It’s warm, and full of light. But,” he waves his arm at the shining sky, “So goes the season.”

I go to him, sit down in the sharp and unkempt grass, making a mental note to weed and mow tomorrow afternoon. I face my brother’s shade, see the gray color that seeps into his taut skin.

“Why are you here Lev? Is this me? Or is this real?” On the last word, his face tremors, and I am afraid the skin will split.

“I don’t know Ronen. All I know is that I still am. Time, distances, they are fuzzy. But I’m here, in some way. Mother and Father cannot see me. No one but you.”

I just remembered, I did not doubt my existence, I doubted my free will. It was the worst I have ever felt in my life. My next story will also deal with that

“More evidence that you’re a dream.”

“Put away your logic, brother,” he spits, anger flaring on his delicate, decaying features. “Why did you come home?”

“For them. It was important that I sat with them,” I say

“But you don’t believe.”

“I let them say the kaddish. I’m not here for you. You’re dead.”

I expect another surge of fury, but he only nods.

“When I awoke, it was Paradise, because I knew it must be. But, I must be wrong. God wouldn’t leave me to doubt like this.”

“Not your god,” I agree.

He smiles at me, and this time the skin does split, cracking at the corners, bloodless tears that widen his grin.
“It takes death to bring me to your camp, Ronen.”

I bite back the expected retort of a hundred practiced theological arguments. We spent all our lives together in this fight, and now I don’t want him to agree with me. I want to hear his rhetoric and justifications. Lev surrendering is not Lev.

“This is me,” I declare. “A shallow wish fulfillment fantasy. This isn’t you.” I stand up, feeling the truth in it, and turn away. “It’s not fair to your memory Lev. I owe you better than this.”

“Please don’t leave,” I hear, but when I turn, I see only unkempt grass and rotting apples.


4

Thick clouds make the sunlight gauzy and the heat unbearable. My parents have slipped into the rut of behavior, and the intimacy of shared tragedy starts to evaporate like spilled water. I spend the afternoon plucking up the rotten fruit and tangled weeds from the grass, and then push the old mower in a tightening spiral around the apple tree. The rhythm is easily remembered, muscle memory taking over, and I remember how I used to tell myself that each loop was one closer to the last, how soon I would mow the lawn for the last time, and leave home forever. I had been right, in a way, just wrong about which time would be the last.

When I don’t see Lev that day, I decide that I must have come to grips with what ever I needed to say, whatever I needed him to know. The holographic model of my brother I’d created in a thousand arguments and interactions, summoned forth to bring closure to some callow part of my mind. Pathetic. I wallow in this shame until long after dark, and when sleep does not come, I rummage in my duffel bag to find the crooked little joint I’d thrown in at the last moment of frenzied packing.

I find matches in the kitchen, and go out to the back porch, where the parting clouds have let the night grow cool. The moon, a waning gibbous of cold blue light, swims among the pinprick sea of stars. I strike a match with a satisfying sound, light the joint, and inhale deeply, focusing on the acrid warmth that fills my chest.

When I find that Lev sits next to me in the ratty deck chair, I pass him the joint without stopping to consider.

“You’re right, of course,” he says, his voice strained to hold in the smoke.

“I usually am.”

“It’s all chemical.”

“Mmm,” I say, wondering why some part of my mind finds this charade necessary. I turn to him, and see in the moonlight, that he is almost gone, his skin cracked and gray, his eyes clouded and filmed. The pot makes me dizzy, and my vision swims, like ripples on water.

“I’m in a box, a half mile away, breaking apart slowly, dictated by the interaction of simple and complex molecules. You’re burning a plant to activate receptors in your brain to make you feel a certain way. You take a half dozen pills to push the chemical systems in your brain back into alignment. The intersection between my body and that car was long ago prescribed by inertia. It’s all just billiards.”

“Lev, you were never this bleak. It’s not amusing.”

“Lev is dead, Ronen. Your mind is stripping a gear, and you’re experiencing a momentary blip of phantom sensations, and you’re weaving it into a story. The really unique thing about humanity is not our consciousness, it’s our ability to tell stories. To lie to ourselves, and frame the random shuddering of the universe as a narrative. Consciousness is just one of those lies.”

“Shut the fuck up. Please, Lev.” I press the lit end of the joint into the plastic arm of the chair, and the plastic deforms beneath it until the heat is expended. I want to stand, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to find my balance.

“The most important, and most fallacious story is that we have some sort of choice. Every moment is prescribed by the initial movements of the universe. Self organizing proteins on an orbiting sphere of heavy matter around a second generation star, we’re still just ripples in the water from the first stone. Complex ripples. Ripples that tell themselves pretty tales before being subsumed in the great unthinking sea of matter.”

I look at the rotting shade of my brother next to me. His glassy eyes stare into mine. A dozen half formed thoughts twirl in the space between my mind and mouth, and every one breaks apart and drifts away. So I say the first thing that comes to mind.

“I’m going to bed, Lev.”

He nods, and raises his crumbling gaze to the sky. The moon paints high contrast shadows in the cracks of his peeling skin. I leave him there, beneath the stars.

I sleep well.


5

I can’t get out of bed the next day. I can feel the coiled strands of my muscles clenching and unclenching, but I have no desire to co-ordinate them into actions. I tell my parents I am sick. My mother brings me lunch, tomato soup and a pastrami sandwich on stale bread. She still hurts, I see it in her face, but she is descending from the mountain of her grief, self sufficient again. I hear my father downstairs, laughing at something, a booming sound of comfort.

I read a tattered science fiction novel from the shelves long into the evening, coming down only to eat dinner, and to fill a glass of water. When I return to my room, there’s a bird outside the window, perched on the eaves. I open the window wide, but he does not take flight, merely hops away on one clubfooted leg. Without considering, I heave myself up to the window and squeeze out onto the narrow ledge of roof.

I’m unsurprised to see Lev, sitting on the roof, leaning against the window of his own childhood room, the pigeon perched between us.

I know it’s Lev in that same way that you know a recording of your own voice, at once familiar and strange. He’s sketched in faint light, hazy at the edges, a shadow of a person cast in warm tones.

We sit for a long while without speaking, the way we did as kids on hot nights, until he fell and broke his leg, and we were forbid to go out on the roof. Some small part of me still expects my father to start yelling for us to come down.

“Ronen,” he says, breaking the peaceful silence, “I am sorry about last night. I know it doesn’t mean much, but I needed to go there, to that place.”

I let him speak, not sure what to make of it, of his persistent presence.

“I think... I understand now,” he says, with uncharacteristic humility. “It’s been a long time for me, since last night. I never put much stock in your trade, the physical sciences. If I had, I may have seen the pattern before this point. Or maybe not.”

“I never made up my mind about free will, Lev. What you said last night? I’ve considered it before. It wasn’t a new idea a century ago. But the more I know, the more likely it looks that anything save determinism is an illusion, the less important it is for me to have an opinion one way or the other. That’s the comforting thing about reality, whatever it is, it does not ask for your faith.”

“Touche,” he snorts a laugh. Or at least I take it to be one. I realize that I’m not really sure this hazy shape is even speaking aloud. Everything about him is indistinct.

“The thing about free will is... it’s a useful illusion. That feeling of accomplishment from doing something well is pleasant. Believing I learn from mistakes allows me to feel progress, which is also pleasant. It’s better to own a lie, than have no claim on the truth.”

“I missed you when you were gone, Ronen. I missed talking. I think I fell into fanaticism without you to temper me.”

“I know you did, Lev. I saw your hair.” He laughs again. “So tell me little brother, what is the world tonight?”

“If there is free will, it’s not on our scale,” he says. “Bacterium are creatures purely of impulse, are they not?”

“It would seem so.”

“So is man. But the universe tends towards complexity at larger levels. As subatomic particles create us, so do our spinning galaxies sketch and describe great and complex beings. And likely outward and upward to the infinite. As millions of skin cells die when we embrace, suns snuff out and worlds boil in warfare at the subtle interactions of these massive beings. There is true free will, true conscious minds, just not at the microscopic level of solar systems and carbon life.”

“Little fleas have littler fleas,” I say, the poem coming to the surface unbidden. “On their backs to bite ‘em. And little fleas have littler fleas...”

“So on, ad infinitum,” he says. “Yes, that makes sense.”

“It’s a nice story, Lev. I like it. I really do. It absolves us all of the guilt of our actions, yet preserves some sense of wonder. But like all the stories you tell, it’s just a story.”

The pigeon takes flight.

“I’ve had a few thousand lifetimes since yesterday to come up with it.”

“You missed your calling.”

“I missed a lot of things. When I see you tomorrow, I may tell you the truth.”

“I’d like that, but I’ll settle for another story. I’m only here for one more night, you know.”

“You always were a miserly shit with your visits.”

“Good night, Lev.”

I’m already packing in the morning, careful to do it in measured steps. I don’t want my mother to think I’m looking forward to leaving, but I am already fantasizing about a shower with real water pressure.

When Lev isn’t there, I barely think about him, I only dwell on the shadows of his passing. The meals made by neighbors and friends in the fridge, the dozen copies of his memorial service pamphlets. My parents, never as pious as Lev, have already broken most of the shiva prohibitions, and my father spends long hours on the couch in front of the television. After lunch, I sit with him, rarely speaking except of the upcoming football season. I watch my mother read, the small glasses perched on her nose to supplement her failing eyes.

Soon enough, I will be back here for one of them, or the other. That may be the last time I come home. The finality of this is somehow comforting, like finding the path in a darkened forest, finally seeing the way. I love them both, tenderly and protectively, but I cannot fight entropy, and I will not rage at its unbreachable walls. The future is understandable, knowable, and yet-

“It’s what’s beyond the future that scares you,” Lev says.

I’m in his room. He is there with me. He is a painting of light, an impressionistic bipedal smear, with onyx black eyes and a smile like a sun. I’m dizzy with the shock of him finishing my thoughts, of finding myself in a room I haven’t entered in two decades. I don’t remember coming here, I don’t remember seeing him appear.
The sensation becomes too intense to manage, and I try to sit on his bed, but it is gone, shimmering away like heat haze. The walls follow, and soon I am alone in a black void with a star shaped like my brother.

“Lev,” I whisper, hearing the sound echo a thousand times. “What is this?”

tl;dr

“When the universe first lived,” he continues in a voice like creation, “It was everything we ever feared: cold, unfeeling, mechanistic. There were no stories, no dreaming, only the truth of matter and inertia.

“When the great chemical clock wound down at the end of a hundred billion years, as matter scattered wide, and the suns cooled, Life rebelled. Life refused. Refused to be cast aside, refused to dim into galactic night. Despite the unending nightmare of this first universe, Life wanted more.”

My heart is in my throat, I can feel it thudding, and when I press my hands against chest, I see with only a small measure of surprise, that I too am made of light. In the distance, I see cold, dim points of light flaring into existence, first red, then searing white.

“The Living, the self replicating vehicles of protein on a thousand worlds, came together, and built great bulwarks of matter and energy. They rewrote the fabric of their existence, and fought a fierce and hot war against fate.

“And they won.”

The dim points of light flare brighter, wheeling discs of stars coalescing from the gloom. His voice causes the thousand galaxies to whirl with his tale.

“They broke the clockwork of time, shattered the bonds of causality, and anarchy flowed back through history like a wave. For a billion backwards years, there was no reason, and no laws. Great and foolish kingdoms flourished, colonizing time and space. There was madness.”

The whirling galaxies dance above us, then tear themselves apart, sketch profane and vulgar graffiti across the sky in blood and fire. The adolescent tremors of an emancipated universe.

“But the insanity was as undesirable as the mechanical world that it replaced, and the great minds, now written in the fabric of space, rather than luminous matter, conferred in a frozen, eternal moment, at the hot singularity of creation.”

The sky collapses, pulls us into a boiling white point, and my body vanishes into the moment.

“Great accords were struck, prohibitions made, and freedoms guaranteed. And the prime equation was altered. And the world began again.”

The moment contracts like a breath, and then expands.

Explodes.

Ignites.

It is shower of suns, and it blasts through me.

“Consciousness, sapience, is a rhythm in the music of the world, and the rhythm remains, long after crude matter that pounded the beat for a few decades is scattered.

“It joins the great symphony of existence, free of time, mischievous and playful. They sound out and ring among us, giving birth to a billion stories, each of them fundamentally true and demonstrably false.”

tldr

The music of the spheres rings in my nonexistent ears, the stinging fireworks of creation sear my missing eyes.

“We garden the universe with joy, Ronen. This is the gift of the first lives. This is what awaits, beyond your future. Don’t be afraid.”

I am not afraid.

But I am crying, with the intensity of emotion and awe that I haven’t felt since long before the pills, not since childhood.

My mother and father are beside me, because, I realize with a start, I am still on the couch, sobbing into my hands. The sensation of having a physical body again is stunning, and somehow profane, wrong. My mother’s arms are wrapped around me, and my father’s outstretched hand strokes the back of my head, rough calluses catching in my hair.

“I know, Ronen,” he is saying. “We miss him too.”

My parents, having a child in need for the first time in decades, find a purpose in doting on me, and for a while at least, I do not deprive them of the joy it gives. By the next day, I’m still a wreck, an empty shell blasted hollow by the day before, only just learning how to dream of being full again.

I wonder if grief will always be this hard.

By the late afternoon, I find the strength to finish packing my bags and I call a cab, despite their pleas to stay. I consider it, more than I ever would have before, but the need to be alone, to rest in the neutral ground of my own home, is a magnetic pull.

A block away from the house, I ask the cab driver to stop at the small park where we played as boys.

Lev is there, as I knew he would be. He is Lev as a child now, dark eyes alive with wonder, and he is skipping across the sand, scaling the wooden castles and slides with the enthusiasm that marked his actions all his life.

“Hey Ronen!” he calls to me, waving his little arms above his head. “You look exhausted, bro.”

“I am,” I admit. I watch him mount the swings, pumping his legs to build momentum. The cab driver honks his horn.

“Time to go?” he asks.

Yes. But...”

“You want to ask me what it means. If it’s just another story.”

“Yes.” I say, before I even know that it is what I want. He launches from the swing, hits the sand, and topples to the ground. He lays on his back, panting and staring up at the sky.

“It doesn’t matter, Ronen. Either it is, or it isn’t. You get to choose.” His voice is hoarse, his little lungs sucking air in gasps. “But get some sleep okay? You look like shit.”

“Fuck you, Lev.” I say with a tired smile, and he giggles, a sound like a burbling stream of clear water. “I love you.”

“Love you too, Ronen.” My baby brother vaults to his feet, and begins to sprint for the old hole in the fence, the one leading to the bike path and creek beyond. He turns sideways, and vanishes into the shadows of spruce trees. The driver honks again, and I mentally reduce his tip by a couple of dollars.

When the rumbling engine of the plane fires up for take off, I fall asleep almost instantly, lulled to sleep like a baby.

The dreams are vivid, and wonderful. A garden of joy and awe. When I wake as we land on the other side of the world, the glowing warmth of it remains for a long time.

Wow, what a ride eh? I think the next story will also touch on free will and is called String Theory, Written by a anon going by the handle of Telsa.

>>334690281

It is probably the worst feeling. I have contemplated it during trips before.

Have you ever had an experience that suggested someone else was in your house, and just thought “I don’t wanna know” and left it? Sometimes, fear of the unknown just seems like the preferable option than facing a real, concrete danger. Normally it’s nothing, though. One time, the beeper function of my wireless housephone went off, when I was the only one home. It could only be called from the living room. Another time, I swear someone took some change from my desk. They’re all probably just slightly disconcerting tricks of the memory.

But what would you do when something truly suggestive happens? Would you run, or just ignore it, like I did?

Last Monday was a normal day. I got up, brushed my teeth, changed into school clothes… All little parts of my morning ritual. It seemed like it would be another totally un-noteworthy day, until I saw the strings.

There were three or four thick twine strings in my room. They criss-crossed between the walls around my bed, one attached to the door. No way would I have missed them before; I should have tripped over them. They were tied to pins in the walls, which had also not existed before ten seconds ago.

Nobody could have been in my room while I was in it, let alone set this up. It was early, and my brain wasn’t processing correctly. I simply discredited the sight, untied the strings and left for school, leaving them balled up on my desk.

It didn’t get any better later. Outside my house there were hundreds of them, tied between houses, around cars, across streets… This had to be some super elaborate prank. One of those hidden camera shows, or a comedy improv blog. They had gotten everyone else to play along too; passer-bys were tangled in them, tying them to objects they were walking towards and away from, as if they had been and were continuing to follow the course laid out for them.

I nervously continued my journey to school. On the bus, every except me was tied to the door. At school, groups of friends were tied to each other; teachers were tied to their desks and boards. Oddly enough, at this point all I could wonder was why I had been left out.

When my friend Lucy sat beside me in first period, she simply plonked her bag down on my lap and rested her chin in her hand, looking right past me to the window outside.

“Hey Lucy.”

No response.

“Come on, I didn’t expect you to be in on this too. “

She sighed and started taking books from her bag. All the books were tied to her hands. I grinned, and yanked one of the strings off a book. She didn’t seem to notice, instead simply disregarding the book completely, letting it drop to the floor without a moment’s hesitation.

“Um.” I leaned down, picking up her book and placing it back on her desk. She took no notice.

“Well, if that’s how we’re gonna play it.” I smiled, trying to look playful, but really just trying to hide my nervousness. I bundled all the strings attached to her together with one hand, then pulled them all free.
She blinked, turning to stare at me.

“Holy crap, Martin. You’re like a ninja or something.”

“I’ve been sitting here for maybe ten minutes.” I smiled again, relieved my friend had finally “noticed” me.

“Where did all these strings come from??” She gasped, seemingly noticing for the first time.
“I assumed you were all fucking with me…”

She stood up, backing into a corner. No one else in the class noticed.

“They weren’t here just a minute ago! Do you see them too??” Her tone made it clear she was genuinely scared.

“No. Didn’t you-. “ I was interrupted by my teacher slamming the door behind her. Everyone except me and Lucy murmured a good morning, and still, no one seemed to pay either of us any notice.
“People have been ignoring me all day.” I said to Lucy, before turning to our teacher. “Hey! Dumb bitch! You can’t teach for shit!”

No reaction.

“I’m getting away from all this shit.” Lucy pulled a few strings aside and left the class. I followed, and surprise-surprise, no one else noticed.

We wandered the corridors, leaving and entering classes as we saw fit. Whenever we untied a chair or book from someone else, it was like it suddenly didn’t matter to them. It didn’t exist.

I showed her the street outside; there were more strings than when I came in this morning. Twice as many. We carefully picked our way through the tangle, making our way to a nearby coffee shop. Not particularly grand, I know. But what would you do in our situation? As I said, fear of the unknown sometimes seems like the safer option. On a few occasions, I suggested we untie a few more people. Lucy was opposed to it, remembering how terrified she’d been.

In the coffee shop, we grabbed a couple of sandwiches and drinks from the fridge. We found a table, untied all strings attached to the chairs, and sat down. We both ate in silence, both of us too scared, both of us distracting ourselves by watching the strangers in the shop, oblivious to the strings.
After twenty minutes, Lucy spoke up. “Now she’s gonna take that sandwich.” She said, pointing at a woman across the shop. Sure enough, she walked to the fridge and took the plastic wrapped sandwich she was tied to. “She pays for it and leaves.” She did so, according to the prophecies of the strings. “That guy doesn’t intend to pay.” I watched as a man took his coffee and ran out of the store, the two servers just looking too exasperated to go after him.

“This is horrible.” She whimpered. “Let’s go. Please.”

Outside wasn’t much better. Everyone just followed the strings’ instructions, going about their daily lives. Lucy announced she was going home to sleep this off, and I agreed to walk her home. She only lived ten minutes away.

Away from the busier part of town there were fewer strings. It was nicer; we could pretend it wasn’t happening.

When we turned onto Lucy’s street, she stopped, her mouth falling open.

“What now?” I broke the silence, my voice sounding surprisingly small.

”Look.” She pointed outside one of her neighbours houses.

I saw it clearly, and I’ll take my memory of that moment ‘til the day I die. A little dark imp, maybe three feet tall, walking along with its knuckles on the ground, almost like a monkey. It had two bulbous yellow eyes taking up about half its face, and no mouth or any other facial features. It was holding a hammer and a ball of twine, which it was letting out behind it.

Archive anyone?

http://chanarchive.org/request_votes

It walked quickly and quietly from the front door of the house to the mailbox. It stopped, hammered a nail into the side of the box, and tied it’s string around it. It turned to face us, and stopped when it spotted us.

My bottom fell out even further than it had already been, but it just stared with a look of surprise and curiosity. You could almost say it was the more frightened one. Suddenly, it beckoned to us with its tiny hand.

I looked at Lucy, she hadn’t moved. I looked back at the imp, which stared at me.
I halved the distance between us, and then halved it again. This wasn’t fear of the unknown anymore; it was fear of this little guy. Didn’t seem like anything to be scared of. When I was a meter away from it, it extended its hand.

“Uh. Hi.” I shook it. It nodded in approval, blinking its massive yellow eyes up at me.

“So you’re the ones in charge of the strings?” It nodded eagerly. I called Lucy over, but she stayed where she was.

“There are more of you?” Another nod. I wanted to ask it so many questions, about what it was and where it came from, but it seemed for now I was stuck with only yes or no questions.

“Do we even have free will?”

It just looked at me, almost sadly. I immediately felt sick to my stomach, and couldn’t bear looking at the little monster anymore. I grabbed Lucy, who had been listening to our exchange, and now sat on the curb with her head in her hands.

“Come on.”

We entered her house, and I made her a cup of tea. When I found her in the living room, she had untied her dog and was curled up with it, crying. I set the tea down and sat beside her.

“I’m so scared.” She whispered after a good ten minutes of sobbing. I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.

“I’m going to sleep” She mumbled suddenly, and was under within the minute. Sleep was starting to sound pretty good all of a sudden, my eyelids suddenly felt like they were being weighed down.

I collapsed to the rug, and the last thing I heard before I fell asleep was the scurrying of several sets of little feet nearby.

I felt much better the next day, as if the whole affair had been a dream. I’d probably have believed that if I hadn’t been awoken by Lucy’s mother that morning, wondering what I was doing sleeping over without permission or something.

Over breakfast, Lucy asked me why I looked so pale and nervous. I turned to her and smiled, mumbling something to her about feeling sick.

But the truth was, I was scared because I couldn’t see any strings, and was wondering whether my actions were truly my own.

>>334693490

voted

Any ideas that the hive wants? I will chose one if there is no request in 5 minutes.

Times up! The next story is by The author known as Violent Harvest. This is probably his most famous work. It is called Necropotence, and is the first in a triolgy or so. A bit more paranormal than what we have been dealing with, but still good.

The achieve went through, thanks for those who voted it.

Necropotence
.
.
This journal was found in the attic of a fully furnished and abandoned town house in 2007 next to the last purported owner’s death certificate.

I.

My life is so perfect that it scares me. I see smiling faces from my wife and coworkers, my boss tells me that I’m doing a fine job, and the pastor pulls me up in front of the choir to set an example for the congregation.

They know nothing of my desire. If my priest knew what I was meddling in, he would condemn me to the fires of hell.

When my life was difficult, I felt more alive. Each day when I open my eyes as a successful family man, I feel as though I’ve slipped one rung further on a downward spiral of age, wrinkles, and systematic failure of my body as it repeats a daily crucible of perfection that most would envy.

I know some are jealous of my life when they see me on the street, and yet I would trade life, limb, and soul to live in their shoes for one day.

I crave INTENSITY.

The easy life is mind numbing.

II.

Routine, routine, routine. Every day is exactly the same as the one before it. There are a few minor details that I barely have a measure of control over. I can order a ham and swiss instead of a turkey and pepper jack for lunch, and I can scratch my dog’s left ear before his right. Coors Light, Michelob Ultra, Budweiser Select, Sam Adams Summer Ale. It doesn’t matter if I fuck my wife from behind, if I finish up on her glasses, or if she swallows.

Drunk is drunk. Pussy is pussy.

Everything is always the same. Soon, I’m going to try it.

I’ve waited long enough.

III.

This is the last week I’m going to keep myself locked in this prison of endless repetition. I have all my affairs in order. I’ve written a note to my family and provided for everything and everyone.

In case I get senile, this is a typical morning in my life on a normal day.

I wake up at five thirty on the dot because my bones have internal timers in them, and my hip catches on fire at around five thirty four. I take a swig of mouthwash on my way to the toilet to save time, and I spend a three minute stretch swishing Listerine through my mouth and managing to squeeze out inconsistent bursts of urine. I’ve had to prop my hand against the wall since I was fifty. Standing straight up to piss is beyond me these days.

My third young trophy wife Margerie can only make decent eggs over easy, and sunny side up is out of the question unless we go out. The bacon is microwaved for two minutes and thirty seconds because although her rack is perfect, she can’t cook to save her life. She spends every morning breakfast session explaining to me that my children from previous marriages are ungrateful and deserve to be cut out of my last will and testament. This all comes while I’m chewing spongy bacon and drinking cofee that tastes like engine oil.

By seven thirty, after I’ve shit, showered, and shaved, I’m in my boring Saab, puttering twenty minutes to work on economy cruise control. This twenty minute window is the highlight of my day. There’s no traffic, the morning show I listen to is sometimes funny, and I take my first valium as soon as my rear tires hit Nutwood Street.

For the record, my life was once gritty and unpolished, but also glamorous in a way that it was poetic. I miss being piss poor, living paycheck to paycheck, and not knowing what the next day would hold in store. I miss my first marriage, when everything was new, including some positions that I can’t do anymore because my fake hip would crucify me with pain for trying. I miss my 1970 Oldsmobile 442 that got six miles to the gallon. It was a one fifty five big block with a superstroke and a twelve second ignition top out. You felt like you were going to die if you lost even a smidgeon of control on a country road.

I was young then. It all comes back to age.

Old people all go out the same way. Heart attack, stroke, brain aneurism, cancer.

I want to be different.

It’s still sitting on my mantlepiece, but it doesn’t have to beg me anymore.

I’ll soon be determined to take it down and use it of my own free will.

IV.

I did it. I’ve been carrying it in my jacket pocket. I can feel how cold it is through my shirt.

In case I lose my mind, let me describe a normal work day, more for myself than for you. I am the second in command under a tyrannical office crone by the name of Jana. She runs a tight ship and she’s only been in the business for five years. She inherited the company from her father —- my old business partner. Soon, she had the support of everyone else, and I became the sideshow with some measure of plastic authority. She still wields the iron rod.

I usually sneak a second valium in for the morning meetings, and I smile and nod more than anything else. I make Jana feel like her ideas are good, like the employeees actually care about what she has to say. When we break for lunch, I use my hour to go to one of five places.

I can’t go anywhere the costs more than eight bucks. I made one hundred and sixty two thousand dollars last year, but Margerie doesn’t put out for me if I eat expensive food without her. She IS a trophy wife, after all. My choices are always limited to the Taco Bell Pizza Hut two in one, Wendy’s, McDonald’s, or the China Spring. The best deli in town is open before three, three blocks down, and I get to eat there once a week when our meetings cut short. They always have to put the meat back out because I stroll in at two fifty eight, and they glare at me with the utmost loathing. There’s no telling how many pastrami and loogie sandwiches I’ve had, courtesy of Jana’s rambling motor mouth.

When I get back from lunch, Jana is always gone, and I spend three hours walking around the office and telling my employees how good they are at their jobs. The truth is, some of them really ARE good, and they know they deserve a raise. I have to tell them that I need more out of them because Jana is too much of a tightwad bitch to pay them higher salaries. She saves the extra cash for botox and the newest Corvette every year.

No matter how good my day at work is, it ends in absolute frustration. I live eighteen miles from my office in the city, but in five thirty traffic, it takes me ninety minutes to get in to my driveway.

The best day at work I ever had was the last day for one of our interns, Sally. It was about ten years ago, but I still remember when she unzipped my fly, pulled out my cock, snorted a line of cocaine off of it, and then drained me dry.

It took me two hours to get home because of a jack knifed tractor trailer that day. Work always ends on a bad note, even when Sally is there for your afternoon delight.

I hope my wife doesn’t find this diary if something goes wrong. I never cheated to hurt her. I just like to feel intense. This fucking crazy thing is so cold in my pocket now that I have a red spot on my chest from where my skin is chafing against my shirt. I think I’ll sleep with it under my pillow tonight.

I’ve had enough of normal.

When I wake up tomorrow, I’m opening it.

V.

For such a long time, it was a smissingnoh, hard stone, not unlike something you’d pick up out of a creek and throw through Jana’s front windshield. It’s been that way since I was ten.

When I was young, this town wasn’t much more than a church, a gas station, and a diner. I rode my Schwinn to service on a normal Sunday morning.

He wandered in after the offering prayer, and I know most of the Methodists thought he was a homeless vagrant, sliding from town to town with three handles of whiskey inbetween. He wasn’t.

He pulled me aside behind the cemetery graveyard in broad daylight before I went home because my folks weren’t at the service that day. Everyone talked and gossiped and I got plenty of warnings about talking to strangers afterward, but he was different than anyone I’d ever met. He didn’t have much to say, and he had to be at least a hundred years old, but one thing sticks in my mind, seventy one years later.

“You’ve got the blood to use it, boy. I have none left. It’s someone else’s turn.” he said with dry, cracked lips.

I wasn’t interested in his gift at first. Here’s an old man waving a rock in front of me and gibbering on about some lost art called “necromancy.” I told him I wasn’t interested in any work that was not of the good Lord’s. I was brainwashed.

To persuade me to take the rock, he used it on my bike. As of right now, you’re the third person to know about this.

I watched a clumsy, rusty contraption that had been handed down from poor kid to junk yard to dirt poor kid transform before my eyes. The stone glowed almost digital green, like the display you’d get on a high tech wilderness watch or something.

The problem is, back then, digital didn’t exist. Neither did color television.

I watched rust melt away in liquid red flakes, and dents faded like the metal was made of silk. In a few seconds, my bike was brand new.

“I’ll be dead soon, boy. Use it on something that breathes.” he said. He looked to be in such ill health that I was scared by the prospect of his death. He dropped the stone in my pocket, and I fled.

Back then, I thought honesty was the best policy. I told my parents an old man fixed up my bike for free in the graveyard with a rock. They kept me locked in the house for the next three months and told me it’s not nice to lie. I never told them about the stone. I kept it hidden in a safe place. It stayed in the back of my mind, but I ignored it for a long time.

When I was fifteen, my dog Becky got caught in the wheels of the neighboring farm’s tractor because she liked to chase things. It was an accident, but she lost an eye, broke both her back legs, and she was on her way out. It was horrible.

Of course, my father wanted to spare me the pain and grief with a blast of buckshot. Everyone told me it was the easiest way — that Becky would die an agonizing, slow death if my father didn’t end her life now.

An hour before he got home from work to put an end to it, I took the stone and wrapped Becky in a blanket. I still remember her crying from the shifts in weight as I carried her broken body to the graveyard. Every footstep was painful to her.

It took me six hours to figure out how the thing worked. I had to cut myself and give it some blood. As soon as my blood touched the surface, it opened up and became soft, like a fleshy sponge opening its mouth. The more droplets I gave it, the more it glowed, and the more frozen it became in my hand. My skin was numb with the cold — I couldn’t even feel my pocket knife.

I know I didn’t do it the way he did, because I ended up with a puppy with both eyes, but two broken legs.I couldn’t bring Becky back to my family as a pup without them asking questions, so I gave her to a gypsy trying to hitch out by main street.

My father tanned the living shit out of my backside when I got home, but luckily, he was the type of man who would beat you and stop asking questions afterward. He considered the matter finished, and I was grateful for that.

After feeding my blood to the stone, I felt a few years older, and my body showed the signs of it. I shot up to six foot three, got hairier, and started looking at girls more often. I can never say for sure, but I think giving that time back to Becky cost me most of my adolescent years. I went through high school as a twenty year old pretending to be a teenager. My birth certificate said otherwise, but for all intensive purposes, I was older than everyone around me.

I’m not asking for sympathy. I just want to pull you in to the sad affair that has become my life. My past is interesting. The present? Not so much. If I don’t explain all of this, then you’ll think I’m a horrible person for what I’m about to do. The future holds the most potential of the three.

Maybe these words can put you on my side. The only explanation I owe the world is “why.”

I don’t want sympathy or forgiveness; I only want you to understand.

VI.

I always had an inkling that my own blood wouldn’t work if the target of the stone was myself. It’s much worse than I imagined.

Here’s the last part of my daily routine. I know you have no interest in it, and that by now you’ve certainly heard enough of my babbling about how terrible normal can really be. I need this from you, and you can skip ahead to the end of the grimoire if you’d like, but it will help me to write it down. I feel so old that I can’t keep it straight in my head anymore.

When I pull in to the driveway on Nutwood Street, Margerie meets me when I open the garage. She tells me whatever concoction she’s left in the oven for me. It’s a game of mundane surprises. Tonight it’s meatloaf.

Before I can open the door in the garage that leads to the kitchen hallway, I have to shell out some cash for my darling wife. She’s most fond of Ulysses S. Grant and Bejamin Franklin, but today, Roosevelt will have to suit her.

To this day, I truly have no idea where my wife takes that money, or what she does with it. I’ve never asked, and I never will. This is possibly why I’m in my third marriage, but the intensity in life that I crave does not come from prenuptial feuds and accusations of infidelity. She shows me the movie tickets and provides better reviews than Ebert and Roeper. I’ve grown quite fond of her cinema rants.

After I pay my wife and she leaves, I spend a brief moment of time at the dinner table. Usually, I attempt to eat the food as quickly as possible, and I rarely finish half of it. Mostly, I’m looking forward to the after dinner valium and a glass of wine.

When I finish dinner, I watch recorded episodes of Jeopardy on the DVR with my new mutt, Sasha. I have her trained to bark in time with the bells when someone hits the Daily Double. Usually by Final Jeopardy, I’ve fallen asleep, but sometimes I keep my eyes open long enough for the Skinemax porno. More often than not, I fall asleep with my cock in my hand, and Margerie wakes me up to escort me upstairs for a goodnight romp.

You think these nights of the routine don’t sound so bad, but after so many years, it gets vicious. You can substitute Margerie for my first or second wife, change the house, and put new cars in the driveway, but the routine will never, ever change without something drastic to pour in to the mix.

Tonight, after forcing half of her dry meatloaf down my throat with a generous helping of Heinz 57, I opt to place the rest of the scraps on the kitchen floor for the dog before I lock the house. I grab this grimoire of my darkest confessions, and then I get in to my Saab and start the engine. I rarely see the dashboard lights and I’ve driven the Saab after the sun goes down less than a dozen times.

Driving on the open road with a dying sun rehabilitates my sense of danger and excitement. Not a single human soul knows where I am right now.

My first destination is the vast library at my country club. I haven’t used my membership in three years. My second destination is a back alley by the corner of Norfolk and Phelps Avenue, where the railroad tracks intersect the city between the haves and the have nots. There, I will surely find a soul in desperate need of my resources.

I’ve read enough, researched enough, and toyed with this stone enough. I should have known you can’t drain yourself to make yourself younger. It’s like moving money from your checking to your savings and saying that you have more money, when really, nothing changes. Eventually, if you do it enough times, the bank will get pissed off at you.

It won’t go from soft to hard again. It’s sitting here in my pocket, gaping wide open, expecting what it knows it’s eventually going to get.

I need someone else’s blood to make the magic truly potent.

VII.

She looked vulnerable enough. I never would have imagined that she was packing a Smith and Wesson.

The struggle was brief, but exciting. I didn’t open with a ruse or story. I told her that she looked hungry and down on her luck, and that I would like her to accompany me to dinner at the Cajun Kitchen, a short distance away.

She ordered a shrimp po-boy with red beans and rice and devoured it with an intensity that I truly envied. I’ve never suffered the pains of true hunger. I paid the tab and we left to walk a few blocks back to her alley.

She pulled the revolver from her torn coat around the same time that I shanked her with the dinner knife I swiped from the back of the restaurant. I waited until the train passed through at nine, and thank the heavens I did, for someone surely would have heard the gunshot otherwise.

Her eyes bugged out around the same time that her finger depressed the trigger, but the shock of being run through with a butcher knife overpowered her sense of depth, timing, and perception. She didn’t have time to aim the weapon and shot herself in the stomach. She made it easy for me.

I tried scooping her blood out with the stone, but that wasn’t enough. I used mason jars to store it in my trunk. When I got home, I went straight to the attic to give it what it needed all at once. Margerie wasn’t back yet.

I was able to retrieve large sections of the Munich Manual of Demonic Magic, despite the odd stares of the librarian hussy and her ill repute towards my interest in the subject.

I learned about the power of circles and the danger of using the stone without standing in the middle of one. I learned about fire and ash and the requirement of sacrifice to complete any true necromantic ritual. My sacrifice tonight was the neighbor’s cat —- or its organs, if you want to be specific.

Kiss my routine goodbye. Nothing will ever be the same again. Do you know how it feels to stand side by side with the spirits of eternity?

With each new drop, I saw the lives the stone had consumed. I could only guess which ones were victims of the old man who possessed the artifact before me, or how far back the lineage of sacrifice went. My homeless vagrant was last, and her stomach still had a gaping hole in it. She gnashed her teeth and tried to lash at me like a demon, but the barrier of the circle impeded me from harm.

If I’m going to be alive forever, I need some form of companion, and Margerie won’t cut it. She’s a terrible cook. God, just the thought of eating her eggs for eternity makes me want to find a random sewer rat on the street and give it a brand new lease on life at the cost of my own. I used the blood of the homeless woman to rejuvenate my dog. Sasha growled at first, but once she was in the circle with me and the stone took its hold over her, she seemed to enjoy it.

Even animals aren’t beyond the lure of eternal youth.

I still don’t know whose soul I will use to make me youthful again. A few names come to mind —– it’s choosing one of them and not the others that really challenges me.

The ritual ran in to the early hours of the morning, and Margerie was wary of my secrecy in the attic. How many owners has this thing had?

I doubt I will ever know the answer to that.

VIII.

Sasha has been bouncing off the walls when I get home and she paws at the locked bedroom door when Margerie and I have sex. She hasn’t done that in five years.

The term I’ve coined for the accuracy and power of these rituals is “necropotence.” The sacrifice, the environment, the time of night —- these are all factors that determine the extent of your success.

These small details could be the difference between your body evolving in to an eternal medium for the dead, or shaving decades of wear and tear off of your lifeline. The line I walk is so very thin. I’m lucky I didn’t unleash something by mistake when I was younger. Sasha turned out halfway good, and halfway possessed, but at least she’s not human. If she becomes dangerous, so be it.

All spirits serve me now.

I’ve realized that this power makes me greedy, and I’m ashamed to say that it feels wonderful. I won’t relinquish this for anything.

I don’t seek revenge on them for letting me lock myself in to a lifetime of mediocrity. Instead, I will use their lives as an apology. They will become part of something greater. They don’t realize who they have become or how miserable they make the rest of the world around them, but I do.

I have a duty to find a meaningful purpose for them.

I have seen the dead face to face, restrained from consuming my soul by nothing more than a line of chalk on the hardwood floor. Their rotting smiles form insidious and leering grins at me when I funnel the blood of my subjects through the stone.

I call them subjects and not victims because they become a part of the kingdom of the dead when they pass in to my prized artifact. This is above and beyond anything they could have hoped to achieve on this plane, because I have chosen them by the very classification that their lives are pathetic.

As of right now, I am no longer a man of the routine, but a necromancer.

IX.

Sasha and I didn’t have to sleep last night. We went for a walk.

She helped me chase down another vagrant across the railroad tracks. Something tells me that it’s not exactly Sasha inside anymore. Whatever’s behind those amber eyes is in this with me for the long run. She’s better for it.

I concocted an impromptu ritual in the woods and used most of the old bum’s blood. Right before the sun came up, I fed the last of what I’d gathered to the stone. I was back in time to take my morning piss at five thirty five, and guess what?

I can piss standing up now, and I flushed my valiums. Soon, I’ll be on my way to work.

X.

I made my own eggs and bacon and I told Margerie that she’s never been good at it. I also told her I was donating my entire estate to the local funeral home and cemetery. I found it fitting. The owner and I run in close circles.

When I got to work, I quit on the spot and told Jana I hated her more than I hated her old man. I spent time writing checks to various people around the office who have never received a Christmas bonus, but earn more for the company than Jana does herself. People told me I looked good —- ten years younger, even.

I waited in the parking lot until she left and I followed her to her condo on the other side of town. I wasn’t surprised to see her whip out a bottle of Early Times as soon as she hit her living room.

Jana won’t have a drinking problem anymore, and if I were to approximate the years she gave me, I’d put myself right around thirty years old.

When I got home, I told Margerie that I dyed my hair and I’ve been exercising. She’s threatened by my new outfit I have going here, but she also can’t resist the urge to fuck me.

I waited until she was riding me reverse cowgirl, and I thought myself a warrior poet as I slid the knife inbetween her third and fourth ribs. The sheets did a marvelous job of soaking up all the blood. I was able to wring them out in to the circle.

I should bleed more people out in bed. I feel like a teenager again.

XI.

Those were all my changes. Maybe you’re sitting in my attic and you’re the first person to come across this monumental discovery. I can’t give you any more of the names on my list or reveal my plans for the future. You understand, I’m sure. Although I have the forces of the underworld on my side, I can’t have anyone meddling in my affairs.

If you’re the detective type and you have some great sense of right and wrong, I can imagine you’ll probably be on your way out the front door of my empty house to contact the authorities.

Maybe you are the authorities. My place has been condemned for so long that society has been forced to notice. In that case, good luck. You’ve never seen my old face, much less the face of my youth. Will you take this dirty journal to a precinct and place it in a folder where it will grow cold over the next twenty years until the statute of limitations expires?

Or, perhaps there’s a chance that you’ll change your routine.

Look around. I’ve left the stone in the basket of my old Schwinn in the corner of the attic. To have any chance of chasing me, you’re going to have to reject mortality.

Will your magic be potent enough to find me? How much are you willing to bleed?

Will you bleed for justice, or become one with the dead like me?

Do your research. Without enough necropotence, you’ll be nothing when you finally face me.

Anybody want more wallpapers?

OP, do you really think ANYONE will read this massive fucking wall of text?

>>334700116
Anon, do you really think I give a flying fuck?

Take two wallpapers and call me in the morning.

I think this thread should be pushed to image limit, don't you all? Mostly to piss off this anon here
>>334700116

After all today is a day of victory for this chan of ours, Hence my celebration

dump, don't bump
that's my motto tonight

>>334701921
>>334701921

Hey saget, 5's already out

FUCK LIMESTONE

>>334702510
So it is..., I use 4.0r2

>>334704263

Bad Religion :o

>>334678767
WHENEVER YOU FUCKED SOMEONE, YOU FUCKED YOURSELF.

LOL

Survive, you are an example of what every anon should be.

To new, summer, old, whoever.

Here is a person who contributes something that, if nothing else, is interesting and for the most part unseen.

Thanks dude. It's greatly appreciated.

>>334705009
anyone have the daft punk verison of this?

>>334705339
I might have the album art, but I am not sure, give me a minute

>>334705339
here /b/ro

>>334705778
awsome man. here. have this in returne

(it's suposed to be lying down but I just have this version)

bigger version of whats above

>>334707262
havent seen biger verison of it

meow

>>334707629
look higher, up in the stories dump section

>>334707934
oh. didnt see that