#sinister scribbles

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.

DINNER_TIME_WILL

This was the only recovered still from an alleged eight hour recording recovered from Burlington Vermont in February of 2009. While it’s shaky at best on where the film had come from specifically, there were up to four possible sources as that same year a group of college students had disappeared days after intending to have shot a documentary on deforestation. With the footage almost 99% lost, nothing remains to show any evidence of it being tied to the students, though the camera while severely damaged, had been found only two weeks after the initial report of the students being filed missing only five miles from where they had intended to shoot their project. Their case was never solved, and the families for these four students claim that individuals with a sick sense of humor, often using untraceable profiles and emails, have sent them the image on the anniversary of their disappearance every year since the incident, with no additional context.

On sleepless nights I toss and grow weary, forgetting the position of where sit in my state of eternal, haunted existence. I live in a constant cycle perpetuated by my dreams, by my fears and from what hides just beyond the murky illness the planet is contaminated by. I imagine a fate worse than that of death, one that even for the most damned would find undesirable, a life granted immortality, but at the cost of reliving the touch of drowning on loop through a cycle for endless minutes. The gasping, gurgling of my own lone body, charged and soon brought to the breaking point of suffering not truly known. I fear not just the suffocation, but of such things that reside beyond my vision that continue to drag me further and harsher down into a loop I cannot escape from. A loop with no oxygen. A loop in which the waves will never let me go.

Cruelty lingers not just on earth, but on every surface, desolate or fueled by the fibers that make up all living things. The breath all things take some day shorten, and we're left in a state of immobile existence, our brains then empty, our eyes dim and shielding what we once processed. Such existence, while short, is only a temporary end for the Mortuus Astronauts; who stir in their own mangled filth and bodily waste of organs and flesh, awaiting their next and eternal resurrection, their skin shedding, their souls colder yet persistence always prevails. They took everything I had, and with every smash they make against those panels, I feel my patience, my mental state, my will to live, all thinning, like a drain that's trickling faintly until it's inevitable clog.

They issued a local emergency that had told us to stay inside and lock our doors early that morning. We weren’t necessarily secluded but we were far out enough to where things like this weren’t at all common, and for hours we had no idea what the hell was going on until we were told by a broadcast that some sort of leak had occurred just off the road about four miles into town that had contaminated the roads and possibly even the water supply. We had barricaded as it had become apparent that the occupants that had been infected were on par with wild animals, deranged enough to bash open doors and scream to seemingly no limitation to their vocals; acts of cannibalism were being reported left and right. It was a covered up case, so the most detail we got after the initial outbreak was that an unidentified craft had been seized by the FBI and before they were able to take it out of the environment something had drained out of it and into the soil, infecting the locals with signs of something possibly having inhabited the craft escaping. As to where such a creature is, we were never sure, but the roads seemed a hell of a lot more dangerous after that, and we’re not sure if we’ll ever recover or properly hide what horrible shit had gone down in such a small period of time.

Having moved only two weeks prior, Eliza would go to a corner of her room every other night before bed, listening, an ear pressed to the wall that divided her apartment from the next. The neighbor one room over always sung songs that caught her attention, a beautiful voice that would speak of grassy hills and waving trees, an elegance that one day made her ask for his name. In a moment of deafening silence, she could hear him getting closer, his smooth words whispering to her as if he knew exactly where to talk the closest. “Dan”, the voice said peacefully. She smiled. The following morning Eliza had attempted to knock on his door, looking to meet him, only to be stopped by a janitor who looked at her sideways. Confused, she had asked the man when or if he was home, only for the janitor to clarify that the room had vacant for years. That night, the room was investigated by police, who found no man, but rather a room full of tattered sheets, smeared walls, a hole in the ceiling and human teeth aligning the ground. Despite confirmation that nobody was there, at least anymore, Eliza still heard his voice every night, though it no longer brought her comfort. And unlike before, where the songs were distant and soft, they were closer now, pressed right up to where she would have listened days prior.

Eric would get out of there, screaming bloody murder, all the while chased by not just the creature which would soon disappear into one of the storage closets, but by officers who would stop to question the boy of his business being there, their voices stern and harsh. In a panicked state, Eric had explained everything, only for him to be escorted home, his story unbelieved. He was told there was no band practice that day.