I Clean Hoarder Houses For A Living

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Welcome back to Creepcast.

Today we are going to be reading a story called I Clean Crime Scenes and Hoarder Houses for a Living.

Today, I saw something I don't understand,

which is very Reddit-coded.

What the hell?

I don't really understand.

This is like a

lot of things.

It's like a Gen Alpha person thing.

It's a Gen Alpha person cleaning a house and they find like a Furby and they have no idea what it is.

Now, what the hell?

Nothing the hell is this?

Nothing will be bad as the church in the woods guy like I think you're full of shit with the smirk.

Like I think I've thought about him a lot since we read that story.

I think you're full of dookie.

Yeah.

And I don't want to say the actual word.

This is a story.

This is a story.

It's a six-part story here.

It is written by a person named Dopa Bean already.

Dopaban.

That's a red flag for me.

I just want to put that out there.

That's it.

Okay.

I just want to say dopabine.

don't like that.

All right.

Dopabine does feel like a Reddit name, but they seem to be a pretty well-accomplished writer online because they have a series called

the North American Pantheon, which has its own subreddit and a lot of followers that, according to the description of it, is about gods, monsters, and other inmates at the world's premier prison for supernatural beings, fight staff system, and each other while attending mandatory therapy.

So there's a bunch of people that follow that.

They post a bunch of updates to the story periodically.

There's still a very active writer posting, you know, only a few weeks ago

and commenting on people talking about their own stories.

They seem very active on Reddit, so we'll leave a link to their stuff in the description.

Be sure to show them some love, but the story we're reading today seems to be one of their standalone stories.

So no need, as far as I know, to understand like a greater world or other writings around it.

It's just this single narrative.

Also,

since you can see me right now, I'm in the process of moving.

That's why all my walls are very lame and boring.

I also have no idea what this stain on the floor is.

That was just there.

I didn't pee in the floor.

So anyway, let's go ahead and get into the episode now.

Dope bean.

I clean crime scenes and hoarder houses for a living.

Today I saw something I didn't understand.

I'm a hazmat cleaner in a very specific niche.

Basically, I clean hoarder houses, as well as family homes after traumatic deaths.

It's a necessary job.

First, imagine the worst thing that could possibly happen to you, like being a parent whose teenager just shot herself, or the survivor of a murder-suicide.

Then, imagine going home after the reports are filed and the detectives are done, and having to scrub your loved ones' dried brains off the walls.

That's where I come in.

It's surprisingly easy to acclimate to corpses and gore.

Depending on the situation, bloodstains can be hard to deal with, only because they're always in context.

The spatter on the children's Spongebob quilt, the smears across the cheerfully rustic kitchen, the violent sprays over family portraits, the stark evidence of violence over the normal trappings of a family home can be disturbing.

But even that gets easier over time.

The hardest part is the smell.

Sweet and almost gooey, with undertones of vomit, feet at swamp, sweat, and unwashed skin.

The stench strengthens and weakens seemingly on a whim.

Sometimes I swear it moves, drifting across a room or directly overhead, or lunging forward to swallow me.

But the rest really doesn't bug me anymore.

Even mattresses, dripping with decomposition juice, get unremarkable after a while.

Now a couple days ago, I was assigned to a suicide house.

The victim was a middle-aged lady with hoarding issues.

She lived alone.

Her much older brother lived in a nursing home.

She called him like clockwork once a week.

Suddenly, she stopped calling.

Four weeks passed and he was frantic.

He has dementia and other issues.

His sister was his only family, the only one other than the parish priest who ever came to visit, so he felt her absence keenly.

By the time his caretakers finally called in a welfare check, his sister had been dead for at least three weeks.

It's pretty ghastly, as advanced decomposition tends to be.

The one thing I can say is at least it's been a cold spring out here.

Low temperatures alleviate the stench somewhat.

The house is a neat, narrow little two-story with a slightly overgrown yard and a tiny grove of apple trees out back.

Nothing out of the ordinary.

Inside was another story.

Okay, so hold on.

Let me make sure I understand the logistics this right.

It was a lady who killed herself, and her older brother was in a nursing home.

And when she didn't call,

he got afraid after a few weeks and then

called the police a caretaker, right?

I think

she

does say who he called.

His caretakers finally called a wellness check.

Okay, so she took her own life.

He was the one that got suspicious in a nursing home, and that's where the call comes from.

Okay, I see.

So she lived alone in a hoarding situation, and that's where she took her own life.

Got it.

Okay.

It's hard to describe bad hoarder situations.

Entire rooms are overwhelmed with literal mountains of trash, clothes and stuffed animals, books and papers, cheap gas station figurines, cat litter, dead animals, old electronics.

The list is endless, and somehow it all looks the same.

Just a moraz of garbage and forgotten belongings steadily claiming the house from its human occupant.

This lady was no different.

Treacherous slopes made from old newspapers and books filled every corner.

Christmas trees, stuffed animals, dishes, garbage, pillows, and so much more filled out the rest, claustrophobic, filthy, and foul-smelling.

As cleaners, we typically just throw everything away.

The filth and biohazard issues make donation impossible.

If we find something valuable, jewelry, antiques, and so on, we set it aside for the estate.

For the most part, though, these belongings are worth less than the trash bags we put them in.

Again, this lady was no different.

It took two days to clear a path to the back of the house and three days to actually empty out the rooms.

It took a full day to clear the stairs, which for some reason were literally coated with dried vegetation and what looked like a metric ton of table salt.

According to real estate information, which we always dredge up before entering a home, the second level had two bedrooms and an office.

This is where things suddenly got weird.

The bedrooms were immaculately clean.

Which was impossible.

The entire stairwell had been packed floor to ceiling with garbage.

There was no way this lady would have been able to clean up here.

Even if she'd been climbing through the window every day, the entire situation defied hoarder behavior.

Ignoring a sudden case of the creeps, I inspected each bedroom.

While thoroughly permeated with the stench of the lady's recently removed corpse, they were utterly spotless.

The paint on the walls even glistened.

The office was more like it.

Stuff from floor to ceiling with dead plants, specimen cases, and paintings.

About a dozen taxidermy animals set in a neat row facing the wall.

It wasn't as filthy as the downstairs by any means, but it was much more in line with my expectations.

Due to the smell, most of the stuff, cool as it was, couldn't be salvaged.

There's just no reliable way to get three weeks of steadily worsening corpse stench out of household belongings.

Even so, I took a good look at most of it.

I'm an amateur zoologist, though I was going to be Steve Irwin when I grew up, majored in biology and everything.

So this is where it gets awfully strange.

First the specimen cases.

These are the small glass displays, usually around 12 by 12 inches, that people use to pin dead bugs and blossoms, you know, like butterflies and beetles.

Now, these things were definitely bugs, but they weren't normal.

For example, one was a coppery caterpillar with a flat, almost humanoid face.

Pinkish skin, wrinkles, eyelids sinking down into empty sockets and everything.

Another was this arachnid thing with a bluish, crab-like body and a single, desiccated eye peering up from the thorax.

Yet another looked underdeveloped, almost fetal.

It had wrinkled, sage-colored flesh and long ears that reminded me of a passethown.

At this point, I was pretty sure I'd stumbled on some eccentric lady's collection of gag gifts.

The taxidermy animals made the joke theory a lot harder to believe.

The first one I saw was this tiny, slow-eyed thing with beautiful features corrupted by unnatural proportions.

The second was basically a giant lacquered anemone with what must have been a thousand rot-rimmed holes pouring through the tentacles.

The worst looked like a person with a frozen, open-mouthed smile that spread to its ears and five glassy eyes arching over the lip.

By this point, I felt paranoid, even frightened.

This wasn't right.

None of this was right.

A typical hoarder house on the first floor blocked off from a pristine, empty second floor?

And what were these things?

Sophisticated fakes?

Somebody's forgotten art installation?

How did these things get up here?

And how are they all so clean?

Because I was no longer sure if these items qualified as garbage, I carefully sorted and stacked everything, and I got started on the walls.

Paintings cluttered every inch, literally fitting together like puzzle pieces.

Most are more or less unremarkable, if cool-looking.

Lots of surreal landscapes and stylized creatures, which are cat-nip to my fantasy-loving self, but one painting in particular trapped my attention and wouldn't let it go.

About seven feet tall and maybe three feet wide, it dominated the room.

Rendered in a hundred shades of green and black and gray, it depicted a misty, primeval forest drenched in moonlight.

Luminescent flowers sprouted along appraised tangles of tree roots.

A tall, forbidding figure peered through the trees, half cloaked in soft darkness.

No features, but the suggestion of strength was clear in its broad shoulders and long, sinewy limbs.

A curtain of hair reflected the moonlight.

I couldn't discern the color.

The shadows were too deep.

The lines and hues of the figure too indistinct to even begin to guess.

After a few minutes I realized all the hair on my arms was standing on end.

With a huge cathartic shudder, I spun around and pretended to survey the room, or rather, pretended I wasn't afraid.

As I stood there trying to mentally reset, a draught swept the room.

Wet, cool, almost inviting, and after the endless odor of human rot, beautifully sweet.

Trying to remember when I'd opened the window, I turned.

For a long, mesmerizing minute, I couldn't understand what I was seeing.

That enormous painting had come to life.

Tendrils of strange leaves swayed in that chilly fresh wind.

The glowing flowers bobbed, flattening slightly against the roots as the wind buffeted them.

Somewhere deep in that earthly landscape, a high, tonal song sounded, wordless and open-throated.

I imagined it echoing off icy peaks and down below in low, swampy valleys.

It made me think of forests and mountains, wild rivers, and endless plains.

The only thing I couldn't picture was the creature singing the song.

The figure stood silently.

Only its hair moved, rippling in the wind like a banner.

Then it took a long, sure-footed step forward.

Moonlight glanced off its face, illuminating an impossible sharp cheekbone and a dark, cavernous eye.

I bolted.

I tripped down the stairs, falling flat on my face at the landing, then scrabbled up and ran out of the house.

I don't even think I locked the door.

I know I shouldn't go back.

I don't know what that thing in the painting is.

Honestly, I'm not even convinced it's real.

But the thing is, I want to go back.

Not because I'm fearless, far, far from it, but because I want to know more.

I'm not the only one, am I?

I mean, how do you look at this stuff and not ask what, why, or how?

How do you not want to cross the threshold into the painting and see what's there?

I don't know.

Part of me definitely wants to call in sick for the next month, but part of me wants to go back.

Maybe even tonight.

Like I said, I don't think I locked the door.

I won't necessarily go upstairs or anything.

I'd just be making sure the place is secure.

Before I go, if I go at all, has anyone encountered something like this?

Does any of those taxidermy creatures ring a bell?

I know it's a shot in the dark, but if you have any ideas, I'd like to hear them.

End of part one.

You know what's the scariest part of the story, Isaiah?

What?

Is this

eerily similar to a story, like to an experience I had when I was a child?

When I was a kid, I had this Mark McGuire got milk poster on my door, and I could have sworn one day he like flexed and winked at me.

And

it scared the fuck out of me.

And I had to have my mom come in and take the poster off my wall.

Off the back of my door.

And it makes me think of that.

What?

You had a Mark McGuire poster?

Yeah, like got milk, got milk poster.

Remember the got milk baseball?

You got a baseball player?

Yeah.

Were you a big baseball kid?

Oh, yeah.

I still love baseball.

Okay, all right, all right.

So,

okay, so they had a got milk picture.

You have to see this.

I'm looking.

You have to look at this deal.

Mark Maguire

for young'ins out there.

Hold on, I see it.

Yeah, with the baseball.

Yes, this was literally on the back of my fucking, on the back of my door.

And I could have sworn one day he fully flexed.

Well, he's already flexing in the picture.

Yes.

Well, no, no, no.

Well, Barrel.

I'm saying

my partner.

He flexed more.

He let the guns really sing, right?

That's what I mean.

And I thought he winked at me.

Like, he like smirked and he winked at me.

I like, I freaked out.

And I had my mom come in, and she had to take the poster off my

poster off my door.

So when he's like, oh, the painting came to life, I was like, this is literally if Mark McGuire steps back from behind this tree and he has a baseball bat and he crawls through.

I'm like, you know how fucking horrifying that'd be?

Or even if it's like, yeah, there's a got milk poster and then Mark McGuire crawls through that.

Basically, just I'm wanting the antagonist of the story, or I'm going to just picture the antagonist being

mark maguire i guess is what i'm saying yeah okay so

i was gonna say i really like the riding style it's great this is great and i and to get off the mark maguire thing i apologize i thought i don't i'm brain dead i don't know what i'm just telling when people go into doing these cleaning things too I'm surprised, don't isn't there usually like a team, or is it literally like you, it's just like a one-person thing who goes in and does it?

Most videos, so like, I'll see, um, there's like TikToks.

Yeah, because I've seen some

crime scene cleaners and stuff.

It's normally a team or companies do it, I think.

And like, they work with the locals, like a little third-party company or something.

Yeah, yeah.

Coming and do the cleanup jobs after the investigation's done.

Um, and a lot of the time, I think it's always multiple people on site, but I mean, maybe there's ones where it's just like one guy for all I know.

Just curious, because I'm wondering if now now if they're if it's like relatively to this or relative to the size of the house, he could just be there alone.

I'm curious in the story if he's going to have people show up with him to be like, oh, I need you to help me.

If that's going to be a way that you get other people involved.

But I kind of like the idea of like the way that this is set up of going in.

He's kind of desensitized to like.

a lot of the stuff that you see, like all the dead bodies, blood, or not dead bodies, but like the blood smears and all that kind of stuff.

Or even just like crazy houses.

So he's kind of desensitized to it.

And then like just these little, like these little vignettes of like bugs behind glass are just there.

And it's just like, what the fuck?

Which they had, they must have been extremely vibrant and weird to catch his eye.

Because that was one thing I'm like, you know how hard it would be in a cluster of stuff to be fixated on that one thing?

Especially little bugs.

Yeah, like...

There's all these things.

Well, I mean, they are like, it's describing blue spiders with eyes on them and like faces on caterpillars.

At first, they sounded like he said taxidermy jokes, but now with the painting, maybe it's something maybe these paintings are like gateways to some other place.

The description of the painting itself was really cool too.

This giant figure in the dark woods.

Cheeky bone.

That's pretty deep.

I also love how uncanny it is to have like, have you like, have you ever been in a hoarder's house?

Like how they can be?

Not like actually in person, but I've seen plenty of, like, it's such a fascinating subject.

Yeah.

People basically creating like literal labyrinths in their house with garbage.

It's crazy.

And they're like they're so ingrained to the walls and floor it's like they're a part of it uh and to have that level of rot and then just the top floor is pristine that's pretty creepy that's a cool juxtaposition yeah and i like that the uh i think another visual i really liked from that first part was just the idea of like the tetrist kind of paintings like there's you can't see the wall at all they've been perfectly kind of like put together in this like cluster fuck mirage of images pretty fun and also

painting by the way seven feet yeah good god yeah it's it's massive.

Well, it's probably again, if it's like a gateway, you can probably step into it.

Well, yeah,

and things easily step out of things step out, probably the stuff that she's had taxidermied.

Um,

there was this short story I wrote, uh, I think in college, it was called Ozzy Mandius because I was very cool and edgy.

Um, but it was about this woman who like every it was an old lady that everyone in the community liked, but she had a hoarding issue,

And like, no one knew it, not even her daughter.

Until one day, her daughter sends her kid, so the woman's grandkid, to come stay with her for a weekend.

And then the grandmother wakes up one day and can't find him.

So they have a huge search.

Eventually, the daughter comes over to the house, finds out that her mom's a huge hoarder,

reports her to the police.

The police search the house and find that the kid had been crushed under a pile of trash that had fallen over on him.

That's what killed him.

So, you know, very, I was very happy and normal.

Yeah.

This is one of my feel-good stories.

Yeah, yeah.

This, this is one of those little slice of life things.

I like this setup too, Isaiah, because you have like a surrealist nightmare thing, which it's set, it's, it's setting up to me, which I don't know if we're getting, not to get too off topic here or anything, but, or not off topic, but veer too heavily into like speculation.

But I like the idea of going into someone's house, they're clearly mentally not well because they're just like, like, you know, they're hoarder.

To then you set up this catalyst of like this surrealist painting thing of something, something coming through that could have been the

start of this person's insanity or having like basically having them, this is like the reason why.

I like that.

I like that.

And will this affect our narrator moving forward?

You know what I mean?

Like, will it drive him fucking crazy too?

It's a great part one.

It's a very good part one.

Also short.

Short and punchy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, with that, let's get into part two.

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I did, however, check out the preternaturally clean bedrooms.

The first was a spotless, impersonal, and unremarkable as I remembered.

More like a hotel room than a bedroom.

The second had a dirty plate on the bedspread and a crusty old coat crumbled on the floor.

Someone had broken into the house last night, all because I'd been too chicken shit to go back and lock the door.

Heart pounding, I checked the closet and under the bed.

Nothing.

Then I prodded the coat.

It looked big enough to cover a person, a massive pile of brown fur encrusted with dark dirt.

Handfuls of tender green shoots sprouted along the shoulders and back.

I plucked one, feeling a mixture of curiosity, confusion, and inexplicable paranoia.

Then I looked at the plate.

Crumbles of dirt and greenery mixed with what looked like sticks, all overlaid with an odd, gossamer shimmer.

I leaned in and almost immediately reared back.

Long dark spider legs and tiny translucent bug wings.

He saw the shuttering plate through the the

I think this is saying on the plate, yeah, out of the dirt.

Weird

green on it, yeah, which I'm assuming that has to be some of the bugs that were in the case, right?

I would think so.

Yeah, shuddering, I swept through the house for intruders.

I even peeked into the taxidermy room, but found no one.

The isolation and general weirdness got overwhelming really fast, so I went outside and waited.

My boss, let's call him Kurt, pulled up around seven.

When he saw the taxidermy animals, his exact words were just fake freak show shit.

The lady used to work for a circus.

Guess you found her mementos.

He looked the giant hole-filled anemone up and down with a grimace.

Real nice.

Anyway, you're right.

We need an appraiser.

What about the other rooms up here?

They have beds and dressers.

I hesitated, but didn't mention the sprouted coat or spider legs.

I'm not sure why.

I know it was dishonest.

Gotcha.

He stepped towards the door, already set to leave.

I'll make some calls.

That way we can be sure we're

icy tree roots, further testament to the senseless passage of time within.

I like that paragraph, by the way, because it doesn't describe it as a painting anymore.

It's just like describing looking out a window and seeing something.

Well, I also like that there's a season change, too.

Now there's like it like there has been a passage of time through that window.

There's snow now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Pretty sweet.

Kurt approached the painting with the same care and stance one might use on a growling pit bull.

I wanted to stop him, but didn't quite dare.

Not like I could do anything, anyway.

I'm built like Frodo Baggins, and he's basically Gerald of Rivia, except clean.

He tapped the picture frame experimentally and reached inside.

The ambient light from the snow reflected off the hazmat suit, turning it an almost angelic white.

So cold.

Did you know about this?

Yeah.

He frowned, studying the feathery leaves of the trees.

For future reference, this is not the kind of shit you should sit on for 12 hours.

Pulled his arm back, briskly rubbing some heat back into it.

And he turned and beelined for the door.

A terminal case of the creeps overtook me the second he crossed the threshold, so I hurried after him.

To my mingled dismay and excitement, Kurt decided we were going to explore.

We pulled ropes, pulleys, and harnesses out of the van and got to work.

I did tell him about the figure I'd seen yesterday.

Rather than fear or trepidation, wild, almost feverish excitement lit his face.

So there are people in there.

This guy, Kurt, is white dude well i just want to say either he he knows something i think he's got to know something right i mean he's it's so casual to just be like okay well this painting is kind of a magical it's like not fucking narnia bro i mean wouldn't you be you'd be like fuck freak i mean i'd be freaking out like this

yeah like a satyr comes out he's like we have to kill the queen or whatever i would there's no way i would be like come on dude he said we got to kill the queen

the four four-foot-tall dwarf satyr said that we have to kill the queen.

I mean, we got to go.

We have to eat Turkish delights for six books.

No, he's got to know something.

It's also insane that our writer isn't more freaked out by it.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I can understand a mild curiosity.

Like, being like, did I really see that in the first one to eat?

He kind of shrugged it off.

But now that it's so abundantly clear that it's real, I feel like I would.

I would be a bit.

These are just the chillest people we've ever

read.

All right, well, fuck.

I guess that's just what it is.

Cool.

Another ghost portal.

I'll get the pulleys, I guess.

We'll go see.

Do you think that they're writing it this way, though, too, because they're constantly surrounded by death and this kind of like extremities, right?

Everything they potentially, but even if you're surrounded by death, I feel like a portal to Narnia would still be able to do that.

I mean, I agree.

Listen,

I'm right there with you.

I just think, I wonder if

it's just the explanation is like, well, they're around hoarder houses like death scenes and all kinds they see all kinds of crazy to where right they would see this and be like okay well that is odd i mean i still think it's absurd but still it's like if a wizard stepped out and he's just like here you have to come with me would they even remotely react or would they kind of just like

okay yeah well i guess that's what it is what it is

I mean, maybe.

I feel like...

Well, we'll see.

We'll see.

I don't think yet.

We'll see.

we harnessed up and anchored the rope as if preparing for a descent rather than a symbol walk of course he went in first

which i will

not to derail and once again bring up house of leaves but in house of leaves when a door randomly appears they spend like weeks and months like talking it over talking about if they should contact universities uh what you know what this means, trying to look at it from like physics angles and stuff.

And then they decide to go inside.

Yeah.

there's like a weight given to what's being seen yeah but again that maybe maybe kurt knows something we'll see you mean in house of leaves the guy does the kurt just doesn't there isn't a kurt character who's just like hey by the way maybe you don't sit on this one over maybe you don't sleep on it all right maybe let's get the

let's get the hooks and bungee cords and jump in this thing

The closest there is to that in House of Leaves is there's a guy named Holloway who it's an interesting dynamic because the protagonist Will Navitson used to be a war photographer and Holloway was kind of like his competition.

Like the two of them would go on these big like excursions and run into each other and kind of have this friendly competition.

But then Will gets married and his wife asked him to stop putting himself in dangerous situations.

So when Will's like, I'm not going to go into this room, but I know someone who can and contacts Holloway, there is a little bit of that from Holloway to be like, well, let's just go in already.

Like it's right there.

Why aren't we investigating it?

We've got to go in.

Which leads to like future conflicts between the two.

But there's kind of like that, but it's in a, there's so much reference given to that moment of Holloway saying, let's just do it, that it feels natural versus

maybe next time, don't wait 12 hours, you know?

Yeah, no, I see what you're saying.

Okay, I'm not going to do the voice.

The story, the story's cool so far.

I'm not going to do that.

No, I'm, I still, I still, I'm curious to see what's going on in the painting.

Yeah.

I watched, part of my throat, as that silvery, wraith-like light washed over him.

The tree branches cast spidery shadows that played over his form like living things.

Ice crunched under every careful step.

He grew confident quickly and kept moving, growing steadily smaller until he disappeared into the trees.

That's a fun visual, like a painting watching someone walk into the horizon, you know?

By the time the rope pulled taut, he'd been inside the painting at least five minutes.

I strained to hear, except for the gentle rustling of the wind, everything was silent.

A breath I hadn't even realized I'd been holding whooshed out of me.

Several minutes later, Kurt's form finally came back into view, jarringly anachronistic and terribly, terribly small against the primeval backdrop.

The towering forest spilled into a field of boulders, almost eclipsing him.

The trees and enormous tingled roots in the foreground framed the landscape strangely, bathed in that cold, hazy moonlight.

It all looked like something out of a fever dream.

Excitement coursed through me, overtaking my fear.

I could barely wait for him to get back.

I waited to go in there more than I'd wanted anything in my life.

I wanted to go in there more than I'd wanted anything in my life.

He finally emerged, shivering, and immediately reached for a water bottle.

Mud, leaves, and a delicate webbing of moss coated his gloves.

It's cold in there.

Can't believe how fucking cold.

I can't believe it's fucking real.

Clips my harness in, and we switched places.

The second I stepped across the frame, I gasped.

The chill was so powerfully shocking, I felt like I'd been punched.

I tried catching my breath, but the stunning alien beauty of the scenery made it impossible.

Everything was so much faster inside.

The boulders in the near distance were at least the size of houses.

Trees easily ten times my height towered on all sides.

Enormous nets of moss hung from the branches, drifting dreamily in the wind.

The thought of entering the ancient forest made me shudder, so I veered to the right instead.

The snowy landscape extended several hundred yards, terminating in what looked like a ridge.

I walked briskly, trying to ignore a highly uncomfortable, unnerving sensation.

Felt like my muscles weren't contracting correctly.

It's hard to explain, but you know how whenever you breathe or take a step, everything contracts, then expands?

It's like I was stuck in that expanded state, like my body couldn't tighten up again, leaving everything unnaturally loose.

Wind strengthened dangerously as I tromped towards the ridge.

The snow seemed odd, possibly refrozen, crunchy, thin, and deceptively slippery.

I moved carefully, steering clear of crystalline rocks and the occasional struggling sprig of greenery.

I searched the sky for stars, but the dreamy haze created by the moon reflecting off gauzy clouds obliterated whatever constellations there might have been.

Steadfastly ignoring the unsettlingly boneless quality of my movements, I made it to the ridge.

Straight down a sheer, rocky slope, glittering with ice and deep blue veins of crystal, set a dark valley.

Nestled in the center were labyrinth ruins dominated by a looming black pyramid.

Arranged in weathered steps, it looked both inexpressibly ancient and eerily futuristic.

The side facing me reflected the sky like a hallucinatory collection of enormous silver mirrors.

The rest of it was indistinct shadow.

It looked alive somehow, like sentient darkness masking itself in a facade of light.

At the very top of the pyramid stood a tall, thin figure, face turned to the sky.

Long hair whipped wildly in the wind, bright and filmy as the clouds overhead.

A heavy gust of wind shrieked past, buffeting me dangerously close to the edge.

I turned sharply and hunched down, hurrying back to the house.

Temperatures dropped as the winds grew, and soon enough I was shaking.

Ice and moon and bright snow mingled together, creating a glistening, dreamy atmosphere.

Tree branches groaned as the wind tore their delicate nets of moss away.

Somewhere in the distance, opposite the pyramid, that strange, atonal song echoed.

My bones and muscles felt looser than ever.

The vibrations from that voice coursed painfully through my body, and and for a few delirious moments, I was afraid the frequency would rupture my insides.

Finally, the warm, mundane glow of the taxidermy room appeared among the trees.

I caught a glimpse of Kurt's face peering around the edge and I rushed inside.

After the bitter chill of the painting, the room felt dangerously, oppressively hot.

What did you see?

I described the pyramid as best I could, as well as a slender, long-haired giant gazing at the clouds.

What about the thing making the sound?

The song continued continued to echo in the distance, priming with emotion that felt too insignificant to comprehend.

Did you see it?

No.

Kurt started pacing, all the while staring nervously at the painting.

All the while.

Have you put all these things on the manifest?

Yeah.

Redo it.

Take it all off.

Kurt, what?

What's your solution?

Do you really want to put this shit up for auction?

Don't know about you, but I don't want to end up shot by a fucking men in black or something.

Pause, took a deep, shaky breath.

Tell you what, I'll take care of the manifest.

That way, nothing's on you.

All you have to do is just keep your mouth shut.

We're done with this house in a couple days.

You need not have to worry about it anymore.

Panic and anger exploded.

No, you.

You don't get to take it.

His eyebrows crawled all the way up to his hair.

My insides instantly withered, but I held my ground.

I found this painting.

I could have stolen the damn thing, and he wouldn't have been any the wiser.

He didn't get to steal it from me.

Kerr's expression smoothed and to my surprise I saw a hint of relief.

Not like I want to do it alone, kiddo.

You look scared there for a minute.

Thought you didn't want anything to do with it, that's all.

Well, I do.

Good.

He peeled his gloves off and absently scratched his palms.

We'll leave it here till we clear out on Thursday.

Give ourselves some time to figure out what to do with it.

Sound good?

Yeah.

I answered because there was nothing else to say.

We spent the rest of the day pulling up the carpets carpets downstairs.

He wasn't scheduled to help me today, but he understandably wants the house clear as soon as possible.

I'm not complaining.

At this point, it looks like I'll be getting paid to explore an alien world.

Kurt cut the day short after developing a pretty ugly allergic reaction to the filth under the carpet.

Even with the hazmat suit, he ended up with huge hives spreading from his fingers all the way to his elbows.

I wanted to stay and finish it, but he didn't want me alone with the painting.

It's fair enough, I think.

On the way out, I asked to spread fresh salts along the stairs and sheepishly told him why.

He made fun of me for believing superstitious bullshit, but let me do it.

Okay.

Honestly, I'm glad.

Do what?

I just said, okay.

It's like you went into a fucking painting world.

Yeah, I guess that's okay if you want to put your precious salt down.

It's like, what the fuck, man?

Oh, is the

seven-foot-tall, thin guy that was echoing and it made your bones feel loose?

Yeah.

Go ahead and put your salt down there.

It's like, okay, man.

All right, Kurt.

Cool.

Oh, what?

You believe in ghosts or something?

But this guy believes in angels too.

What a loser.

What a fucking idiot.

This guy's an idiot.

Anyways, I'm going to call back to that painting where my bones feel like marshmallows.

I'll be back.

Do you hear that unspeakable paint demon?

This guy believes in ghosts.

Yeah, exactly.

Silly man.

Yeah, all right.

Salt salt circle it is

that's a funny kind of guy who like sees something supernatural and he's like what do you want me to do let's go in and he's immediately like exploring but then he hears about something that's like adjacent if not more believable and he's like

okay

you believe in spirits dude you believe in anything don't you as he's crawling through a painting anyway Yeah, he's yelling this from the painting world.

Honestly, I'm glad Kurt knows and I'm relieved he's taking the the lead.

Oh, hold on, before I read that line, it reminds me of like in that TV show Supernatural.

I feel like I remember there being some conversation early on.

Keep in mind, the show's about like vampire hunters and demon hunters and stuff.

Like

they've been fighting demons for seasons.

And then I think there was a conversation where one of them around season three is like, what, you don't believe in angels, do you?

It's like,

yes.

This show,

Like, what are you talking about, y'all?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Honestly, I'm glad Kurt knows, and I'm relieved he's taking the lead.

Having someone else in charge makes this less frightening and more exhilarating.

I'm scared, don't get me wrong.

For the first time in my life, I can't wait to see what happens tomorrow.

I mean, I can understand being like part two.

I can understand it being like something where it's like, this is crazy.

Like, and I'm like, there's a bit of a rush for looking at it.

But at what point they actually do they like, I know he's saying, listen, I'm scared.

Are you?

You kind of like, it.

I mean, like, just because you say you're scared, you're doing everything in your power to not show that you're scared at all.

I want to know what needs to happen for them to actually be like, okay, yeah, maybe we don't, maybe we call it quits on the painting, Kurt.

They come to the house the next day, and there's like a 20-foot

face in the window, and it's like, all right, Kurt, maybe we leave this one to the auction house.

Kurt, did you forget to cover the painting again?

Because there's a 12-foot-tall troll walking around the backyard.

I do like the weird, like the visual of the labyrinth and there's like a black pyramid.

Just kind of a weird like sci-fi fantasy.

It makes me think of like a old magic card art or something, you know?

Like weird retro sci-fi art, high fantasy, sci-fi art shit to where then you have like this weird nomadic like fucking wizard on top who's just like singing.

And you makes your makes your uh like basically your muscles your muscles are are able are unable to what is it contract Is that what it was?

I know they're loose.

But yeah, just kind of, just kind of weird.

But that person has to be the one that he saw the day prior, correct?

Yes.

Yeah.

And also, let's keep in mind that this person looks like famous baseball player Mark McGuire.

I legitimately,

when I'm reading this, I'm telling you right now, it's not even a conscious effort anymore.

When he's like, I saw him on top of the Black Pyramid.

I legitimately saw the sleeveless Mark McGuire guy.

He does the milk mustache and he has the baseball bat on his shoulder.

And I'm like, is that not actually just fucking horrifying thinking that Mark McGuire is in this painting?

That's where he's been.

Yep, that's where he's been.

He's been waiting for you, Hunter, and now he's here.

All right, you're starting, you're starting to scare me.

We don't need to

bring in Mark McGuire on the one.

What's Mark McGuire sound like?

Hey, y'all.

Hey, it's a new one.

Mark McGuire.

Hey, Mark McGuire here.

You're just gonna

text me.

You're just gonna be chilling out.

And then in that little like window behind you, it's just hey kids, Mark McGuire here.

Hey, kids, you want to do some steroids with me?

This is a hypodermic needle.

Did he do steroids, or are you just saying that because he's a baseball player?

There is

no fathomable way that Mark McGuire did not do steroids.

Mark McGuire was possibly the king of steroids at that time.

Hey, kids, so if you keep doing this, your heart's going to explode.

Listen to me, Mark.

I thought it was the milk.

Yeah, exactly.

Drink this milk and also here's seven cc's of bowl testosterone.

Give me your arm

anyway.

That'd be kind of a scary monster, though, huh?

Somebody that forcibly gives you steroids.

You just get bigger and bigger.

I never wanted to.

You're super fucking jacked.

I never wanted to be this big.

But Mark Maguire keeps sneaking into my house and

isn't that your Sam Sullet cartoon i guess a little bit but the whole thing is that sam just touches you and your bone and your muscles get huge

that's true yeah this is like him actually sneaking in and being like just got a dennis there's like a little kid

yeah

he's like in his record like in the shadow of his room dennis it's me mark

yeah

i just got back from tijuana and i have a bunch of bull testosterone Just wanted to make sure I came by and gave you your fix.

No, I'm good.

He's like, oh, come on

we made that pact when you were younger right he's like i'm four yeah come on let's do it that kind of thing that that's a horror film that's like a horror story right there old old baseball players that did steroids back in the day are uh trying to get little kids to do steroids so it becomes normalized so that like it uh it fixes their reputation as players Try to tell me that's not a good idea for a story.

That would be an idea.

Certainly.

Sitting there and he's a good idea.

It wouldn't be an idea.

I don't really know, Mark McGuire, if I want to do that.

Come on, man.

Who are you?

Barry Bond steps out of the shadows.

Come on, kid.

Just a couple.

Just a couple CCs, couple more CCs of bull testosterone.

You're really good at scenarios of like adult men like trying to coerce young men into doing

dangerous things.

Is this like related to anything that you had growing up?

Anything you want to happen?

This is legitimately the nightmare I had.

When I'm telling you, I had to take the milk poster off my wall.

Because it was on the back of my door.

So I'd look at it.

Why did you have it there in the first place?

Because I like Mark McGuire.

He was hitting tons of home runs.

He was a great player, great hitter.

So I was like sitting there, but then it's just him with his arm out.

And I just kept looking at it.

You know, like the little kid in the shining, he's like, he's like, sits there and

Danny,

his eyes are open and he like shakes when he's like, when he's like using the shining ability.

It was like that, except it was me thinking that like Mark McGuire was going to crawl through the fucking poster and be like, come on.

This is a hypodermic needle.

He's like flicking the tip of the needle.

You know,

square bubbles.

Yeah, do you think that maybe you had a different man in your life come through your window and try to coerce you to something and now your brain's just filled it in as the got milk poster that was on your wall?

Yeah.

Mark McGuire asking you to do testosterone.

Is that like indicative of something?

Yeah, it was Sammy Sosa crawling through my window every night.

And he was the one who was, he was the one actually visiting me.

And I put it all on Mark.

Sammy Sosa, Sammy Sosa and Jason Giambi used to crawl through my

words.

Are these all players?

These are all players.

You know what?

It's okay.

There's going to be like one guy who's like, hell yeah, dude.

Yeah, there's going to be one other 39-year-old man like, yeah, brother, that's awesome.

Also, sitting on his couch, hitting a bong, eating chips for the fourth time this week, and still this guy gets me.

He's like my best friend.

This guy gets me, and he's still doing steroids, too.

He's still doing steroids.

That's such a power move if a guy's just like a fat piece of shit and he's like hitting, he's like ripping bongs, bong hits, you know.

But he doesn't shoot separately.

Also, he's just like, Guess what?

Bold testosterone time and fucking jabs it in his arm.

Oh, oh, I'm huge.

I'm big, is what he says.

I'm huge.

Anyways, part three.

Yeah, part three.

Did you see while we're talking about your cartoons?

Did you see the Pirate Software made his profile picture, your drawing of him?

Really?

That's awesome.

Yeah, on Twitter.

It's pretty funny.

Anyway, part three.

I did appreciate the Uzumaki reference in that cartoon, by the way.

That was good.

Yeah, the little deal.

Yeah, I thought it'd be fun to have the Ouroboros.

Is it Ouroboros?

What the fuck is the snake?

Ouroboros.

Yeah.

The snake eating itself yeah yeah that was the whole thing but i was like man it'd be cool to uh reference that uh the little uzumaki dude who's like when the his wife and daughter or whatever open up the thing and in the basket yeah yeah

yeah that was pretty cool that was a good cartoon good job thanks isaiah

Last night I had strange nightmares.

Thank you.

Elegant men with decayed faces and beautiful women in jewel-encrusted bull headdresses, towering horn shadows and spidery monstrosities with wet, rotten flesh swinging from their bones.

Yeah.

That's a crazy opening.

My gosh.

I was going to say, hey, so, hey, so maybe the painting, maybe we don't go back in the painting.

Maybe we don't go back in the painting.

I'm having dreams of the bull-headed spider women.

with the rotting faces.

Maybe we don't do that again.

I just want to say, just want to reiterate to the audience, too.

This man cleans up literal murder and suicide scenes every day.

And then just now he's having having these nightmares.

Okay.

So maybe let's not go back in.

All right.

Just want to put that up.

By 4 a.m., I was trapped in that dreamy, high-alert state of paranoia peculiar to exhaustion.

Sleep wasn't a possibility, and it's not like I was eager to welcome more nightmares anyway.

So I got ready for work, suited up, and drove to the suicide house just as the sun rose.

I ripped up the last of the downstairs carpet.

and halted outside, struggling to ignore a sense of feverish, almost overpowering excitement.

Terrified as I was, i couldn't wait to re-enter the portal

man after the nightmare delusions i can't wait he's a psychopath this might be our the first like the actual first psychopath that we've ever met

we've ever read about i mean the anticipation was almost painful the only thing keeping me from hurtling in there on my own was a cowardice kurt still hadn't arrived by the time i finished the carpet so mindful of the squatter issue from yesterday I checked the upstairs bedrooms.

One was normal, as expected.

Heart lurching, I tentatively opened the second room and froze.

Tangles of vines draped the walls and clotted the bed.

A cool, earthy scent permeated the air, reminding me of wet woods after a winter's rainstorm.

Morning light filtered through the leaf-covered window, infusing the room with an eerie green radiance.

In the corners and under the bed, clusters of half-opened blossoms glowed faintly in the dim.

I'm wondering how

sorry to interrupt.

Because it just made me think, obviously, the bugs are coming coming from the painting area.

I wonder how many times the person who ended up committing suicide went in or if they really did drive themselves to suicide or if the thing just murdered her.

Right.

Curious.

I think either is possible.

I also think that there's some kind of infection or something because he says he found a jacket that had these green sprouts growing from it.

And then on the plate, he saw dirt and greenery, and then there's the spider wing things in it.

So I think there's like the painting grows outwards.

Like now, since it's upstairs, it's infected.

Maybe all the trash was like a barrier trying to keep it.

Yeah, that's what I'm trying to kind of get at, too, with it is like, was the hoarding actually like a defense mechanism against this thing?

Yeah, yeah.

And now it's like when it infects a room, the room becomes overgrown and rotted.

But now I think Kurt has become infected.

I mean, probably

allergies to make him all itchy and covered in hives.

Yeah, he blamed it on the thing.

He's about to sprout.

Yeah.

Blamed it on the thing.

Because now he's not there.

Now he's late for some reason.

So, yep.

I think it might be infected.

But yeah, it seems to spread out.

I'm not sure about the bugs, though.

Maybe those are people.

Maybe people turn into the bugs.

We'll see.

That's a humanoid face.

I stepped inside, jumping when something crunched underfoot.

A vine had snapped.

I kneeled down to have a look.

The dark stem burst with leaves, frilled blossoms, and long, wicked thorns.

Silvery drops of resin seeped from the broken stalk.

Carefully, avoiding the thorns lest I tear my suit, I strode to the window.

Greenery coated everything, masking all but the faintest hints of furniture.

Unbidden, I thought of where the wild things are.

That brought to mind the furry, sprout-covered coat I'd seen yesterday.

I found it by the bed, covered in a mound of greenery.

I gingerly tore vines away, grimacing as clumps of filth-caked fur came up too.

Pretty soon the coat was in tatters.

The vines had wormed through and separated it to the point of ruin.

Before long, I found myself holding patches of fur and tanned, brittle hide.

I pulled up the last few pieces, working it free of the stems and thorns, when something shifted.

It rolled under the vines, rustling and leaves and flowers as it went.

I reached for it.

I was so short, my fingertips barely grazed the hard, rounded surface.

With a careful, calculated strain, I hooked it with my thumb, pulled it out for inspection.

It was a skull.

Brown and uncomfortably soft with a massive snout and no eye sockets.

Wait, like a human skull with a massive snout and no eye sockets?

That's what I'm...

That's what I think.

Like, I can't tell if it's like an uncanny surrealist thing.

Is it an actual pig skull or, like you're saying, is it a human skull with like a snout, but no eye sockets?

I don't know.

Kind of weird.

Yeah.

Disgust and panic subsumed me.

Before I could think, I tossed it into the corner and stood.

It took all my willpower to leave the room slowly.

The only thing keeping me in check was the certainty that the thorns would shred my suit if I wasn't careful.

I finally decided to check the taxidermy room.

I pushed the door open, half expecting a pile of thorny plants to tumble out.

The window here faced away from the sun, leaving everything shrouded in shadow.

Even in the darkness, something felt terribly wrong.

I studied the room for several tense moments before it hit me.

The taxidermy animals.

Yesterday and the day before, they'd been neatly arranged against the north side of the room.

Now they stood around the portal facing the door.

The five-eyed humanoid with the wide mouth took pride of place, positioned directly before the painting.

The long-haired figure had returned to the frame, rested on its haunches, poised like a sprinter about to take off.

Shit.

I slammed the door and ran downstairs, struggling not to hyperventilate.

Salt crunched unpleasantly under my feet.

The way the house trapped the thick, syrupy morning light reminded me of my nightmares.

All shades of orange and gold and red.

I ran outside.

The door clattered loudly behind me.

Across the street, a blonde neighbor lady stopped and stared.

I avoided eye contact and pretended to busy myself with the equipment in the van.

My hands shook as I struggled to calm myself.

It was 7:30.

Kurt would be here any minute.

He'd sort shit out one way or the other.

Just a few more minutes, and excuse me.

I whirled around.

The neighbor woman reared back nervously.

I'm sorry to bother you.

I just got back into town.

Her gaze drifted curiously over my shoulder, then snapped back to me when she noticed me watching.

I was wondering, with the suit and whatnot, is everything okay?

I shrugged and gave the party line.

I'm with a cleaning company, ma'am.

I don't own anything about the situation.

Oh.

Oh.

Her tone turned mildly aggressive.

It's just that I spoke with my neighbor about a week ago.

I just thought that he would have mentioned a clean company.

She looked my azmat suit up and down with a tight, meaningful smile.

Especially a serious one like yours.

A week?

Kurt said the occupant had been dead for almost a month before anyone found her.

But this lady had spoken to her a week ago?

And what was this about a male neighbor?

Ma'am, I'm sorry.

I'm just an employee.

I can show you my credentials, give you my...

Boss's number, but...

She backed off immediately.

No, no, it's fine.

No worries.

Just a little concerned we're tightening it around here i waited until she crossed the street then called kurt he didn't answer maybe he was driving and he only lived 15 maybe 20 minutes away he'd arrive any second half an hour passed before i gave up and went to his house

when i got there both his vehicles were in the driveway he didn't answer the door so i tried the knob locked of course

Kurt!

Fighting a surge of panic, I felt around for a spare key.

I found one tucked into into a crack in the doorframe.

Took a minute to pry out, but it fit the lock just fine.

Kurt, it's just me.

He sat naked and cross-legged in the living room floor, right in the middle of the light streaming through the window.

He looked up at me.

Sunlight threw his features into sharp relief and turned the beads of sweat on his face to diamonds.

Stay there and shut up.

I looked him over, horror building in my chest.

My gorge rose.

Poles.

A hideous tripophobic nightmare spreading from his biceps to fingertips.

Hundreds of them.

Small and dark and round like termite burrows, all rimmed in red, vaulted flesh.

They don't like the sun.

They think it kills them.

My stomach heaved.

Kill what?

Have a look.

Pruisy bags puffed out under his eyes, making him look 20 years older and terribly sick.

Keep your suit on.

I knelt beside him and forced myself to look.

Sunlight bounced off the bottom of the holes, revealing soft, glistening white flesh.

First, I thought they were deep boils.

Then I noticed they were quivering.

Finally, I saw the eyes, tiny and fish-like, flitting wildly to and fro.

I emitted a low whine that made me want to shoot myself.

Don't!

Look!

Someone already dead.

He rolled one one of his wrists.

Sure enough, a few of the holes had bubbled over with jelly.

Two of those goldfish eyes were suspended in the murk, glinting like tiny coins.

I tried to call 911, but Kurt threatened to attack and infect me.

Thing is, he's four times my size.

He'd have no trouble hurting me in the short interval between the phone call and the ambulance's arrival.

I'm pretty tough, but the thought of these holes, of those quivering jelly worms burrowing in my skin.

No.

I let him die before letting him pass those to me.

Every once in a while, I'd hear a small pop.

Then he'd gasp as a geyser of translucent icer publed out of the holes.

After a while, that viscous gel covered his arms.

Shining with an iridescence that made my stomach churn, I swam in the gunk slowly dripping onto the carpet.

You caught them inside the painting.

He released a shaky breath.

In those ones, there was

something

like a weird giant skeleton.

I tripped and went down under the ribs into a patch of thistles.

It looked like poked a few holes in my gloves.

I punched your gloves and you came back through?

What?

What was I supposed to fucking stay in there?

I heard another low, wet pop.

Kurt hissed as a tiny volcano of pell gel oozed over his left wrist, obscuring several holes.

They made me sick and panicky, but I could barely look away.

Well, there are plants in one of the bedrooms now.

I explained everything as quickly as I could, from the flower vines and soft eyeless skull to the ominous rearrangement of the taxidermy animals.

He tried to interrupt, but I kept going.

What do you know about the lady who lived there?

Nothing.

He answered calmly, but for just an instant, his face flickered.

Really?

Because a lady from across the street came over and told me her neighbor is very much alive.

I stood up.

He followed suit, grimacing only slightly.

Where are you going?

To the office.

I'm going to find her brother's information.

Without thinking, I bolted for the door.

He caught me easily.

Hand tied his device around my elbow.

Jelly and glittering eyes smeared my suit.

You're not gonna tell anyone anything.

Then tell me what's going on.

Okay.

He dragged me back to the living room and threw me on the sofa.

That house is mine.

A thousand horrifying conclusions ran through my head.

But the lady who lived there

was my wife.

So this is more or less what he said.

Okay, so basically Kurt

that was his wife.

So okay, so that explains why he was so chill with the painting in the first place.

Yeah.

Because he knew about all this stuff beforehand, right?

Kurt's wife, Evie, has been missing a lot longer than four weeks.

Their relationship was fraught and they'd separated, though not divorced, six years ago.

God damn.

Checked in periodically, always hoping for the possibility of reconciliation, but that never happened.

He last spoke to her over a year ago.

She sounded terrified.

Kurt didn't think much of it, as Evie was prone to hysteria and not mentally or emotionally well.

After that, she stopped taking his calls.

About four months ago, she knocked on his front door, but it couldn't have been her.

Evie was 56 years old.

The girl on the porch would have been a dead ringer, except she was 30 years too young.

She was giggling and excited and uttered endless strings of gibberish.

When he freaked out, she shoved him into a wall with enough force to knock him out.

When he came to, she was gone.

And, as he shortly found out, so was Evie's house.

Now, a house was always on the property, but it was never the right house.

Every day, Kurt saw a different structure and a different occupant.

He saw everything from tacky tudor-style condos to low-slung sprawlers to wood cottages, and once a turreted blue monstrosity.

Finally, just a couple weeks ago, the house reverted to the neat little two-story he'd bought for her after their separation.

He broke in and immediately reared back, gagging from the overpowering stench.

He found her sprawled on the living room, liquefying corpse slowly bonding into the carpet.

When he checked the house afterward, even going so far as to use the ladder to peer into the upstairs window, he found nothing strange.

Certainly no taxidermy monstrosities or transdimensional portals.

The house hadn't changed since, but the weird specimens and awful painting appeared recently.

He's afraid this means the house is about to disappear again.

Fine, just fucking dandy.

Why the goddamn hell would you involve me?

I couldn't go in there after seeing her like that.

I sensed deception here.

Maybe an omission.

Maybe an outright lie.

I couldn't tell and didn't have the presence of mind to pin him down on it.

Instead, I angrily blurted.

Why'd you tell me she worked for the circus?

She did.

The house is the the circus.

What?

So I.

Oh, well, he's being

like Kurt's being cute.

Yeah, he's being cute.

He's like,

that house is a circus.

Yeah, it's like, ah, well, you're full of bugs now, idiot.

You're full of giant glass worm bugs.

Now you can't be here in a hazmat suit.

Why don't I shoot you in the head and then burn that house down?

That sounds like the best outcome for any of us.

Well, at least I don't put salt circles on the floor.

Okay, all right, all right.

Well, yeah, yeah.

Big talk coming from the guy who probably killed his wife and needs me to think it's a suicide.

No, at least I don't.

Never mind.

Okay, you hear that?

You hear that?

That's the worms in your skin, idiot.

I think there's a full worms.

What's that?

Sorry, I couldn't hear you over the worms in your mouth.

I hate you.

That's the honest reaction.

That's the actual honest reaction between them.

I don't like you a lot.

I'm glad this is happening to you.

Yeah, worms.

Worms.

So I don't know if you know this, but circus has a definition other than the clowns and elephants variety.

Circus is a sort of open public space where several avenues converge.

Circuses, I mean, I would describe that as like an intersection, not really a circus, but sure.

Circuses have been the crux of his last phone conversation with Evie.

She sobbed that she was tired of the circus, that the circus wanted too much, that she no longer knew what to do with the circus.

So what's the goal here?

I made my voice deliberately callous.

You own the house.

Why don't you just burn it all down?

Because.

He cut off, hissing.

A series of unwholesome pops filled the room.

Fluid erupted from a dozen holes in his arms.

He grimaced.

Because that girl, whatever she was, wasn't my wife.

She was too young.

I think Evie might be alive.

In the painting?

Through the portal.

He corrected.

He spread his arms.

A rain of jelly pattered to the floor.

I didn't want to involve you, but I can't do this alone.

Sure you can, I thought bitterly, but I didn't say it because you know what?

I can't get the idea of the circus out of my head.

An untold number of avenues from different dimensions and realities converging on a single, unremarkable spot in the West Coast's grossest mid-sized city.

In that bitterly cold, beautiful world full of luminescent moonflowers and trees straped in breathtakingly intricate nets of moss, and the labyrinth, of course.

The dark labyrinth with a black pyramid at its center.

I will never have a chance like this again.

Never in my life.

Okay.

What do you want me to do?

Lay in the yard for a while, in the sun, just in case these things are on your soon.

But go home.

I'll call you when the infestation's dead.

I did as he said, lingering in his yard till sunset.

I checked on him one more time, still stretched on his living room room carpet, squeezing fluid from the sickening holes, and went home.

I've been waiting for him to call ever since.

I hope his infestation's done.

I know I have a lot of other things to worry about, but I can't stop thinking about the holes in Kurt's skin.

It's great that sunlight kills him, but I'm scared of what will happen in the dark.

Margaret?

End of part three.

Margaret?

Yes.

Do you see that man in the hazmat suit laying down flat in the yard?

Across the street, what is he doing?

Just like a giant, just a man in an aspen suit lying there making this on i'm not sure should we check on him no just let's just lock the door lock the door

um so the pops were the worms exploding yeah like the little gel things be like and coming and popping out yeah yeah yeah like it's like the pressure boiling

right right um so i don't know if i didn't catch this but Who was the younger person then?

Is that just a random body?

Or do we know who the younger person is?

So his wife was his age like 50 something and then like a 20s version of his wife shows up in a super dickland who gets weirded out and she's strong and then runs back he follows her to the house that's now normal and she's dead on the floor right

but which i think he actually killed her not dead on the floor but you think so well yeah i mean so there's two options yeah either his wife is the giant in the painting somehow changed or his wife went in the painting got younger whatever and uh or even if she didn't go in the painting, got young, he didn't find her dead.

He killed that woman in the house.

That or she is.

That or could the man in the painting be Kurt, but older?

Because the giant in the painting, I think they've made pretty clear is a man, right?

Could the man be older?

Yes.

Could be.

Just something of if, yeah, I mean, I'm just trying to think here because there's a couple different things, but right now, essentially,

the halfway through because now we're on uh part four so the halfway point is them basically being like i think my wife's still alive in there we need to go in and get her out whatever and now our main character is even just like well i'm just gonna help not really because i give a shit about the wife but i just want to see this like

kind of uh astonishing thing one like just again and again he's becoming obsessed kind of uh drawn in just like this like weird fantasy grim obsession forming from that black pyramid Yeah.

Yeah, it's fascinating.

I like the premise so far.

Very fantasy, very cool.

Kurt's kind of a douche.

He is, but now he's full of worms, so I think he gets it.

Is the popping sound the worms popping randomly?

I think from the sunlight.

No, I think it's like the gel or like whatever goo is in the deal, like popping out, like is what I thought it was.

I see.

I got you.

Okay.

Cool.

All right.

Well, you ready for part four?

Part four.

By midnight, I still hadn't heard from Kurt, which was surprising.

I've been doing extremely well for a man whose arms look like fleshy honeycombs, and I expected him to check in periodically, if only to let me know he was still alive.

It occurred to me that I was expecting too much.

Under the circumstances, it's been easy to forget that I'm his employee, not his friend, or anything else.

My impatience probably seemed ridiculous, but the drive to learn, know, understand, seek is all-consuming.

The prospect of exploring a new world is overwhelming.

I want an adventure so much.

It's what I've wanted my entire life.

Then there's Kurt.

He's a good guy and I care about him probably more than I should.

I want to help him.

And feelings aside, I have no way to explore this new world if Kurt dies.

Do you believe that they around 1130?

Do you believe that the protagonist actually cares about Kurt?

No, I think he's obsessed with the painting.

He just wants to go back.

He's just like lying and telling himself like, I mean, I care about Kurt.

Yeah, okay.

Just my current.

I care about Kurt conveniently only when I found this multi-dimensional painting he had.

Right.

So around 11.30 on Tuesday night, I decided to go check on him.

Open my door only to find myself face to face with a stranger.

It was a woman, copper-eyed and terribly pale, with a choppy, tangled mess of black hair.

Chris?

Yes?

Kurt's with the circus.

He needs your help.

I trusted her for a second before every alarm in my body went off.

I tried to slam the door, but she struck forward and wrapped cold fingers around my wrist.

The second she touched me, her pallor warmed into a heartbreaking peaches and cream complexion.

Dull eyes brightened, and dirty hair turned smooth and thick.

My own fear and panic evaporated, replaced with a single-minded objective.

Help Kurt.

I drove to the house with the stranger.

The car didn't agree with her.

Within moments, she was whimpering and vomiting, but I was so focused on my goal that she barely registered.

When we got there, she grabbed my hand and walked me to the second floor.

You're the only one allowed inside.

strings of vomit glistened on her chin she pointed to the vine-choked bedroom in there she retreated as i threw open the door even in my mesmerized state the room shocked me it's nothing but a lush grove of vines strided leaves and soft luminescent flowers okay hold on who's this woman that's what i was gonna say i don't know my god it just introduced her it's like a woman came up and said you have to help kurt now they drove so am i to assume this is a woman from the painting?

I'm trying to assume if this...

What I'm wondering is, is this his wife?

Is this actually his wife?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Maybe.

Maybe.

But we haven't got a description of her that that

matches to know that yet.

I was very lost.

I was just kind of hoping

so much.

Well, I don't know.

I was like, what?

Woman?

I guess it's his wife or the younger version of his wife.

Maybe.

I'm thinking that it's his wife and that she's throwing up just because I'm guessing that she's just as sick or infected as he is from being in there, potentially.

Maybe or maybe she like hasn't been in a car for a long time.

It's sick the car doesn't agree with her.

I get motion sickness real bad now.

Yeah, just unrelated to anything, is also motion sick.

Yeah, sorry, this has nothing to do with the painting.

I swear to God.

Also, what's that whole part about like

she okay, so she has copper eyes, she's pale, massive, massive black hair.

For one, I don't know why the story's like, that's a bad thing.

Sounds like my type, but then she touches him and says she becomes, she gets a warm complexion, her eyes brighten, and her hair smooth.

So like

she touches him and gets like, she gets like yossified.

Yeah, exactly.

It's like she gets just like a Chinese Snapchat filter like goes over her or something like that.

She's like, oh, you're the only one allowed in now.

Yeah.

So I'm guessing because she...

She has been devoid of life, I'm guessing from being in the painting, and now she is back, and then she touches life.

I mean, I don't fucking know.

I'm sure it'll explain more, but still, I'm glad you're lost because I was like, I have no idea what the fuck is happening right now.

Okay.

I entered.

Kurt?

Vines crunched under my feet.

I winced only slightly as a thorn tore through the sole of my shoe, punched a hole in my heel.

Jesus.

Blood gush, soaking the sock and tripping through the hole.

I shook it irritably.

vaguely satisfied as drops pattered against the leaves and petals.

Flowers flared brightly where the blood hit.

The light swiftly spread from flower to flower, a multicolored chain reaction of bright blossoms.

A shadow shifted in the corner.

Relief flooded me and I ran over.

Kurt, are you okay?

The figure reared up.

Glowing flowers illuminated an eyeless head.

It might have been bovine, were it not for the teeth.

I thought of the coat.

Strange fur coat full of dirt and sprouts.

Not a coat.

A skin.

But it had been dead.

I'd seen and touched its skull.

I'd pulled its hide to pieces.

How is it alive?

The creature lurched forward.

Woody vines snapped under massive paws.

Long, lupine teeth reflected the eerie light of the flowers.

I turned and ran, slamming the door just as the creature pounced.

It hit the door with a bone-shaking crack.

I darted towards the stairs, stopping when I saw the girl.

No longer whole and healthy, not even human.

Leathery skin cascaded from her limbs, lumping and folding over itself.

Her head was wide and flat, with three enormous eyes and a superating snub nose.

I spun around and ran to the other room.

It was locked.

To my shock, voices and music issued from behind it.

I pounded on the door, screaming, but no one responded.

If anything, the music, soft, playful piping, got louder.

The eyeless monster tore a hole in the other door and started to squeeze through.

Once again, I lunged for the stairwell, but the girl warped, growing into a multi-limbed monstrosity.

I screamed and dashed to the taxidermy room locking the door behind me is there any way this could be the muffled sounds of music yeah yes he could be the guy from the ship story i had the same thoughts or no no

no no no it's also also sorry for over i'm i know i keep talking over you the uh no you're good uh i'm wondering if it's the neighbor

the girl yeah i'm wondering just because the the whole thing of like we're a tight-knit community or like we're we're tight-knit around here i'm wondering if these people could be but he also described her as uh blonde oh that's true so no you're right i was like well unless she can like cover up her looks yeah

maybe she can cover her looks yeah i don't know what it is there's also like the monster like werewolf eyeless

plant thing that's tearing through the door right now i will say the the flower kind of imagery pretty sick It's it's very it feels like Last of Us like the mold how it grows over the infected in that game.

It's like that, but with the vines.

I was thinking my mind immediately went to like Annihilation.

Yeah, that's what I thought, too, when it's like the eyeless thing stepping forward.

Yeah, I love Annihilation, dude.

That's an awesome thing.

Great.

So many good visuals in that, dude.

Yeah.

The muffled sounds of music and laughter permeated the room, punctuated by the frantic snarling of the eyeless monster.

The taxidermy animals had changed position yet again, flanking the painting like an honor card.

Somehow, the painting's perspective had changed.

Instead of the stunning, Sylvian landscape of trees and glowing flower vines, it displayed a breathtaking vista of the labyrinth valley.

The pyramid loomed to the left, cube steps flashing silver in the moonlight.

A warm breeze drifted from the painting, carrying strains of that alien song and the wet, green scent peculiar to lush summers.

Summertime.

But yesterday, that land had been in the throes of winter.

What was going on?

The monster crashed into into the door, breaking my reverie while sending an explosion of splinters across the room.

Without thinking, I ran into the portal.

Humid, sweet-smelling air enveloped me.

Soft tangles of grass and wildflowers carpeted the ground.

Finally, I noticed the pain radiating from my punctured foot.

My entire shoes squelched with every step, making my stomach churn.

The pyramid towered in nearby, greened on all sides by a maze of massive walls.

Awestruck, I started to slow down just as I heard a heavy, thudding gallop.

I looked over my shoulder and saw the eyeless creature tearing through the grass.

It ran low to the ground, long snout stretched outward.

I sprinted toward the labyrinth and veered wildly to the right.

An unbroken expanse of wall curved as far as I could see.

Even through my fear, I marveled at it.

The walls were smooth and richly dark.

Carvings covered every surface, a mixture of unrecognizable characters and hieroglyphs.

Finally, I saw a light ahead, soft and soothing green.

It reflected off the walls like a beacon.

Grimly ignoring the galloping monstrosity behind me, I put on a final burst of speed and read into the entrance.

The eyeless thing caught me just as I crossed the threshold, batting me down.

I squirmed away, heedless of the sharp undergrowth prickling my skin.

It caught me easily and swiped.

Burning pain subsumed from my wrist, followed by a cascade of slick, wet heat.

Light erupted all around me, flowers again, blazing alive, all around me.

I cradled my injured wrist, shivering as blood streamed over my fingers.

The monster thrust its snout against my throat.

For a terrible instant, its teeth pressed into the soft skin.

Then it pulled back, leaving a cluster of fur and sprouts in the hollow of my throat.

I crawled to my knees, sobbing, and scuttled away.

So I think it just infected him, whatever it was, right?

Also, it seems like wherever his blood, either wherever he touches or wherever his blood is landing, it's like ringing

the the flowers.

Yeah, it's like the flowers are bioluminescent, but they need blood to clow.

Yeah.

Which is a cool idea.

That's a cool vision.

No, it's super sick.

Very surreal.

And like I said, too, even from the thing earlier of like the like weird black pyramid, like just this like weird fantasy, like high, high-fantasy sci-fi type shit makes me think of that.

Very much just the annihilation thing, basically.

But yeah, no, it's sick.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It feels very other earth.

Maybe it's like, you know, the whole H.G.

Wells story, the time machine Yeah, it's like they go to so far future It's like a different planet people aren't near maybe it's something like that the painting takes you to like a far future just like a different people

or something

Yeah, yeah, it's like it's so it's so impossibly far forward or backward that it's not even decipherable as earth

That'd be kind of sick.

Also, you know, remember the

What were you about to say?

I was just saying, I just also I love a nice like just pyramid visuals when people like just like the black pyramid.

There's just something so sick about like, just the pyramid

visual and stories.

I don't know.

I'm always stoked on them.

Dude, I've never wanted, ever since I, at one point in time, I was like, oh, I want to go visit the pyramids, right?

But ever since I've seen, I've seen so many different videos of like, it looks like hell.

Like going there looks like for a couple reasons.

One, you're continuously harassed and like potentially scammed by people being like, oh, this way, this way, trying to get you to come in.

But also, my fat ass trying to go into that tiny ass, like, claustrophobic halls of a pyramid.

No fucking way, dude.

No way.

I couldn't do it.

It's a lot of cope from someone who really likes pyramids.

They've got a few over there.

God, you know what?

I'm going to do it.

I'm going to do it for me.

The pale light illuminated it fully.

A broad, bony crest lay atop its long snout, creating a sharp angle that somehow looked inorganic.

Thin, brittle skin stretched painfully over its skull, splitting apart in several places to reveal the bone beneath.

It didn't have enough flesh to cover its teeth or gums, resulting in a perpetual snarl.

Its head was enormous, far too large for its low, muscular body.

It tried to raise its head, but couldn't.

Snout lifted several inches before plummeting back into the earth.

That's sick.

The monstrosity that is pretty cool.

It's like a giant bull head put onto a person.

Yeah, it's like a it's like a yeah, exactly.

Almost like a fucking zombie minotaur is kind of how I'm reading it.

Yeah, yeah.

It's pretty sick.

The monstrosity retreated suddenly, disappearing into the tall grass as a shadow swept across me.

I turned around, already knowing what I would see.

Sleek, long hair shone like glass.

Inhumanly sharp planes created an angular, hypnotic face that was equal parts breathtaking and horrifying.

He knelt in front of me.

I kicked away, feet tangling in the long grass, but grabbed my hands and pulled me close.

His skin glimmered strangely, moon-wide and iridescent, comprised of a delicate, overlapping pattern that reminded me of scales.

He inspected my wound, iron grip pressing down to the bone.

Then he pressed my wrist to his forehead, smearing my blood all over his face.

Somewhere in the labyrinth, a throaty, tonal song began to echo.

Finally, he brought the gash to his mouth and sucked.

Agony immediately exploded.

I thought of poison, a venom, acid eating me down to the bone.

This was it.

This was it.

Dying outside an alien pyramid in a shitty painting while a half-starved reptilian dissolved me with his tongue.

I wided out.

Sometime later, I woke, propped against the labyrinth.

I shot up and scanned my surroundings.

Nothing.

No lights, no monsters, just bramby flower fields and the endless curve of the wall.

I retraced my path and soon found the portal to the taxidermy room.

I entered anxiously.

Everything was still and silent, with no music or laughter to be heard.

I hurried into the hallway.

No eyeless monsters or warped multi-limbed girls waited on the stairs.

I sobbed with relief and ran downstairs, but stopped when I saw the front door.

The five-eyed taxidermy monstrosity sat just to the side.

Glass irises glittered over its unsettling wrap-around smile.

It looked for all the world like I'd caught it in the act of blocking the door.

Those relieved sobs morphed into a a frightened crying.

But what was I supposed to do?

Go to the backyard, taking my eyes off this thing in the process?

No.

Fighting a surge of panic, I tiptoed to the door, staying as far away from the creature as I could.

It towered over me.

The top of its head grazed the door frame.

Had it been that big before?

I couldn't remember.

With a choked gasp, I opened the door and ran out into the night.

I expected it to follow, but reached my car safely.

Okay, hold on.

Things happen in this story really fast.

Okay.

Yeah.

It's hard to kind of keep up.

Yeah, so hold on.

He gets bit by the werewolf, and then the giant thing seems to help him by sucking on it, right?

And then he wakes up propped against the labyrinth.

Shot up, scanned my surroundings.

Uh, everything's fine.

I retraced my path and then found the portal.

Okay, So he wakes up outside the labyrinth, walks straight back home.

Everything's silent.

And then he goes down those stairs.

And then the taxidermy thing's now big.

The one earlier he described as being in a 12 by 12 inch case, right?

Yeah.

But now it's huge.

There was no, like, it feels so weird too because there's no, like, there's not enough description of what's going on to where, like, I mean, you're right.

It's like things are happening fast but also there's just no it's just like even even if it was just something minor where it's like him traversing back through the painting and kind of like putting us back so we understand where we are because like it's like half a sentence yeah

it's like the writer knows what they're talking about so that's fine

so it's just like well yeah i woke up in the labyrinth anyway i'm back in the house i'm going down the stairs it's like whoa whoa whoa whoa that's like someone's a big process to get there it's a conversation where someone's like rehashing an episode to you and they're skip, like they're kind of like they've seen it, so they know, but they're just like kind of giving you like bullet points of something, even though you're kind of lost on where you're at.

That kind of idea.

Yeah.

And also, it's like, these are cool concepts.

Like, all the, all the themes and

stuff like that are really cool.

I'm enjoying it.

But it just needed,

it needs a bit more fleshing out in those scenes.

Along with that and some of the spelling and grammar mistakes.

Well, not spelling, just grammar mistakes.

I feel like this is the first draft of a really good story, you know?

Yeah.

Well, yeah.

It just feels like very, very, which is weird.

I wonder how much of this too, which actually,

let's finish this part and then I can go into it.

Okay.

I thought immediately of Kurt.

The warped girl had used him to lure me away.

Maybe this meant he was dead.

Maybe it meant something even worse.

I had to know either way.

So I drove to his house, struggling to suppress visions of limbs so full of holes they split apart.

When I pulled up, I saw all the lights were on.

I got out of the car, almost laughing with relief.

That relief soured when Kurt opened the front door.

I stopped in my tracks.

He looked unwell.

His hair lay slicked against his scalp, and his skin glistened under the porch light.

My stomach clinched, but I approached anyway.

Kurt, sorry for stopping by this late.

I just shh

shushed me and beckoned.

His movements were slow, almost clumsy.

Where have you been?

I've been trying to call you all fucking day.

My skin prickled.

Why?

Are you okay?

Just come inside.

Now!

An imaginary itch, dirty and pervasive, dreamed its way across my skin.

But it wasn't enough to stop me.

None of it was.

Not the portal or the pyramid, not the eyeless monster or the long-haired man, certainly not Kurt or the deep burrowing holes in his arms.

So I I went to him.

Up close, Kurt's wet skin looked painfully weird, far too smooth and almost slimy, like he coated himself in a thin layer of Vaseline.

His arms.

The holes were gone.

Whole, unblemished flesh, not only healed, but completely regenerated.

Weird.

I slowed to a halt, unwilling to march up the steps.

I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

Instead of the usual brown, his eyes looked coppery and somehow multifaceted.

They weren't Kurt's Kurt's eyes.

With horror, I realized they weren't even human eyes.

A hundred tiny, shimmering discs composed each iris.

The eyes of the parasites that have burrowed into his skin.

Okay, that's awesome.

That's super sick.

That is so cool.

See what I mean?

It's frustrating because this story has some insanely cool visuals.

Like, he realizes the eyes are just the worms inside of him bundled together to look like an eye.

And now they're like, come inside.

I need to talk to you.

But he's like, he's eaten out from the inside.

That's so cool.

Such a cool visual.

Parasite Kurt smiled.

Are you scared?

That's awesome.

That's great.

My knees felt watery and terribly weak.

My car was close, but would I be able to outrun him?

Would I be able to run at all?

Kurt's shoulders heaved and he started to chuckle.

Then a voice, his voice, came both from inside the house and from the body in front of me.

I'm scared too, but

Kurt, pale, sick, exhausted Kurt appeared behind a shiny doppelganger.

They laughed in tandem, then waved me inside.

Shiny Kurt's movements were clumsier and lagged slightly, but there's no doubt about it.

They were moving together.

I tried to run, but my knees gave out and I fell instead.

Shiny Kurt helps me up, process leaving a glistening handprint of film on my arm.

Come inside.

Come inside, come inside.

One, Kurt is scary enough, but two, I had no chance of getting away.

I follow this parasite doppelganker into the house.

What is this?

Kurt grinned with a surge of nausea.

I noticed that his arms remained pocketed with dark, inflamed holes.

The sunlight didn't kill them.

It made them grow.

Oh, man.

An unsettling mixture of fear, disbelief, and irritation rattled my already shot nerves.

Your parasites grew in a new you?

And you're

happy?

I can control him.

Kurt threw his arms into the air.

Fraction of a second later, shiny Kurt followed suit.

I can speak through him.

I can see through his eyes.

He ran his hands through his hair, laughing triumphantly as his doppelganger did the same.

He's me.

Another part of me.

Okay, Kurt, this...

this isn't what if there are more inside of you there aren't any more.

His certainty gave me a chill.

For the first time since this started, I wanted no part of it.

They're all him now.

Oh, man.

Somehow, I talked both Kurts into sleeping.

It's been several hours now.

Worried about Kurt.

Holes in his arms look infected.

Even worse, I lost a lot of time.

I last spoke to Kurt Tuesday afternoon.

It's now Thursday evening.

An entire day passed while I was in that portal.

That doesn't make sense at all.

According to the way the seasons change in the painting, time passes more quickly there than it does here.

As for the injury inflicted by the eyeless thing, it looks alright.

The edges are too pale with an iridescent sheen I can't think about for too long.

I can't think about Kurt either, really.

I've tried to sleep a few times, but whenever I drift off, I hear the faint sound of that piping combined with the atonal singing I heard in the labyrinth.

Every time I wake up, I have to fight the urge to return to the house, to that portal.

I'm finally afraid, finally seeing this entire situation for the horror show it is.

Finally seeing this entire situation for the horror show it is, rather than the adventure I wanted it to be.

Don't know what I'm going to do, though.

I know my name and have my blood.

I don't think I have a way out anymore.

End of party.

Man,

so what I was saying there basically is, it seems like, and I'm curious what you think about this too.

With a lot of these no-sleep stories, it seems like somebody has an initial idea, you know, but they don't have something planned out along the way.

So they kind of keep adding because it's popular.

Seems like this person has an idea, but it seems like, at least on the parts where it's like, well, I need him to go back into the portal and do something.

And then come back.

It's like the current angle seems really flushed out and nice.

Like all these visuals are inspired and stuff.

But the pacing of back at the house that one time, it just seems so like, Yeah, he goes in there and he comes out and then he goes visits Kurt.

You know what I mean?

It just seems like really quick.

So I'm wondering if it was maybe partially that.

It's just not really having a lot of like,

he just goes in and comes out.

Yeah, it's like

the Kurt stuff, it's like the worm stuff was what they wanted.

There's some different dimension and people get infected by worms and they change.

So it's like, okay, we need to sort out the dimension, the creatures and stuff.

And the other stuff seems kind of short around it.

I honestly think if you trimmed off a lot of the fat and just had the the worm thing, that would work.

I was going to say this is about a man that got infected during a cleanup job.

I was going to say that doesn't need all the stuff around.

Yeah.

If it was literally, if it was something of like, even if it was your co-worker gets infected with a parasite and is slowly being fucked up.

Like you lose the, which don't get me wrong, I still like all the, like there's still

fun, but it feels like two different stories.

You know, kill, kill your darlings thing again of, get rid of that stuff and just focus on because the Kurt thing is by far the strongest.

even the lines that he has it's like great little great little zingers they're they're all him now or whatever really nice uh but i feel like i'm i'm curious how it's gonna wrap it up because now we're on part five of six and we still like still the like cheeky bone person that we thought was a threat but kind of saved him from being infected may you know there's a there's a lot of stuff still to be answered and i'm i'm worried that within two parts can this all be wrapped up in a nice bow versus if it was something as simple as like hey my coworker is infected i feel like you have a lot of room to play you know and build out from the simple premise but we'll see uh you you could push it a far away and you could also have like

you could have more weird stuff with visiting the co-worker and then the holes develop more and more and stuff like that you could even do some of the like depending on where this infection goes you could keep like oh well at the job we found a coat that was sprouted with like you know, limbs and stuff and the blood flowers, like maybe those will tie into it and stuff.

Again, it feels like two separate stories.

One of them is

being more executed than the other.

So maybe just split them into two.

But again, these are like, this is such an interesting story and very different than a lot of the others we've read because there will be sentences where it's like, well, this is clearly like a problem.

There's a lot to be done here.

But then the next one will be like a banger.

Yeah, very so back and forth.

Very elegant.

I will say, not, you know, we have, there's still two parts.

There's still more of the story, but I will say having it, having your story be set up as like people who come in and clean up houses for people who recently have died or hoarders, and they're like they're thieves, like they're kind of pieces of shit, and they steal stuff.

And you steal and you get punished by stealing the wrong thing.

And like, let's say it's like the fur coat or something, and that infects you.

How sick is that?

Like, that'd be that, that'd be pretty cool.

But, okay, part five, pretty cool.

Part five, Kurt has a closet full of sprouts and human bones.

I found it by accident the other night after he and his parasite doppelganger fell asleep.

It looked like a shrine.

Tangles of also

the younger version of his wife he saw was definitely his wife's parasite version, right?

Yeah, definitely.

Well, I mean, it was like even the way too of like it touching him and becoming more

becoming more youthful just feels like it feeds off the energy the same way that like

Kurt's worms fed off him, you know?

Yeah, yeah, I think so.

Tangles of vines coated the walls, competing for space with glossy, strided leaves and those luminescent night blossoms.

The bones were suspended from the ceiling.

Vines snake through sockets and ribs, hoisting them up as effectively as a harness.

Sprouts cover everything like confetti.

Unlike the flowers, they're dead.

Whole but dry, fragile and crumbling from root to ground.

I reached out to touch them.

I don't know why.

I didn't want to.

It was a numb, thoughtless compulsion, almost like a spell.

The greenery enveloped my arm, gentle and cool like mist.

My fingertips quivered a fraction of an inch from the sprouts, and one of them twitched.

Dry matter plumped, darkened, growing into a rich green shoot with lush leaves.

The root snake upward.

At the bottom, I saw an eye.

Small, round, metallic, like that of a goldfish.

I reared back and slammed the door, then obsessively scanned my skin for sprouts and eyes.

I heard footsteps from the living room.

What are you doing?

Kurt's shadow preceding him, stretching over the wall.

What's in there?

Evie.

He halted in the mouth of the hall.

Bruisy shadows and painful hollows moured his face, making him look horrifically sick.

The real one.

What do you mean?

The real one.

The body I found in the house wasn't her.

It was the younger copy.

The one I told you about.

He motioned vaguely to the living room to his parasite twin.

More like him than anything,

but not quite.

He rubbed his neck fretfully.

I'll tell you what I know.

Come to the kitchen.

I did as he said, sat at the table while I clattered around, trembling.

He threw on a pair of yellow dishwashing gloves, then brewed tea and put together a plate of cold leftovers.

He sat both in front of me, took a seat at the opposite end of the table.

Only when I started to eat and drink did he speak.

Evie had a lot of problems.

Actually, from what Kurt described, Evie was insane.

She claimed to be the victim of an adoption gone wrong, a kid who'd slipped through the cracks and been sold to a new parent.

Parent was a rich woman who supposedly ran a network of private schools for disadvantaged youth.

Evie told Kurt the schools were just front for a breeding program and wolved.

Just dropping that on

the top floor.

Welcome.

Welcome to No Sleep, boys.

Watch out, watch out, watch out.

Watch out, watch out, watch out.

Me, me, me, me.

It's the sheriff from Barasca in the ring.

Yeah, meeting Tommy Taffy.

And they're duke it up.

I'm an alpha, Sam.

Yeah.

Yeah,

it was pedophile fight night here at the pedophile fight night.

WWE Raw.

Which goes that you know, that joke goes full circle because it goes back to your Randy Savage.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, they did.

Just comes in.

Comes in with a chair and just beats it over the back of his head.

That's the wrong answer, brother.

Oh, man.

A breeding program and a training regimen to create what she called obedient sociopaths.

According to Evie.

Oh, wait, so not actual breeding.

Breeding is in like breeding a perfect soldier.

I mean, listen, we're on R/slash/Nosleep.

We're doing our best trying to get it.

No, wait, wait.

The next sentence says, according to Evie, the babies are using rituals.

Okay, so there you go.

All right.

So glad we cleared that up.

Rituals for what?

To create circuses,

among other things.

Evie told Kurt all about circuses, basically from day one.

Circus is a locus, a place where several planes of reality converge.

Circuses do not occur naturally.

God, I cannot feel that, dude.

I keep thinking of like a fucking clown and like an elephant on a ball and stuff like that.

I'm so fucking stupid.

There's like

Evie told Curry about the circuses, and I just think, like, hello there!

And he's like going around, you know, come inside.

Look at that, whoosh, like, like an elephant and all kinds of, like, a bear on a ball, like rolling around a deal.

A trapeze act.

Yeah, exactly.

It's funny to imagine that she's like, well, we were in the breeding programs.

Do you want me to tell you about it?

And then Hunter's just like talking to this woman, and then his mind's like,

Well, I would just be,

well, she'd be saying all this stuff.

It's like it's different planes of existence.

And then I look at her and I'm like, I have like glasses on, I take them off, and I'm just like, But what of the clowns?

No, you have a you have a clown nose on, and anytime that she says something dramatic, you honk it.

That'd be a really fun grief counselor.

Exactly.

Like a girl like, and I never saw my dad after that.

My father, he drank.

I just think that

he'd come home and he'd hit me.

Go on.

He's got a sly whistle.

Yeah, exactly.

And I didn't know how much her death affected me because I started drinking my hurt.

I started drinking myself and I just, every time I look in the mirror, all I do is I see him.

Woo!

Wah-uh, wah-uh.

That must have been hard for you.

Dude, grief counselor, the clown grief counselor is sick.

That's awesome.

That should be a real thing.

Just talking about like her parents' abuse and then.

when it's a good thing, it goes up, and when it's a bad thing, you go down.

But then I met Kyle.

He's got like blue hair off both sides of his head, and when he gets happy, it goes up.

When he gets sad, it goes up.

He has a bunch of theater masks that he puts on for happy and sad faces and stuff.

My name's Chim Chim, the grief counselor.

Please come in.

My name's Boingo McBoingerton.

The last time you said Chim Chim in a story was related to a monkey.

So now imagine he also has like a chimpanzee.

Yeah, exactly.

Mr.

Banana, would you mind giving us our file?

That's what

it's like Patch Adams, but like the way the movie depicted him.

She's like, oh,

yeah, Robin Williams.

Your parents took advantage of you.

Good morning, domestic abuse.

You're free, Genie.

Robin Williams just swinging in a closet.

No, I'm kidding.

All right, let's go.

Oh, my God.

I'm sorry.

God, I just, I still cannot get over the fact that Robin Williams, he did, like, he killed himself.

And then people were posting images of Genie with Aladdin saying, you're free, Genie.

That is, that is actually insane to me.

The main thing people did.

Oh, dude, all over.

You're free now, Genie.

It's like, what are you talking about?

The guy, like,

like,

this is not, it's not like he was fucking battling.

I don't know.

It's whatever.

I just thought, I thought that was insane.

Do you remember that tweet?

I forget what YouTuber it was, but that tweet where Robin Williams' daughter was talking about how hard it was for her to deal with like the passing of her father on its anniversary and how she never felt

that she was allowed to grieve on her own.

And then some YouTuber

tweeted, what was it?

Someone, I forget who it was, but some YouTuber replied with a meme that said, calm thy tits.

God.

Good lord.

Swear this out.

Was it Boizo?

Was it Bozo Mick Boisington with his chimp, with his chimp tail?

With his Mr.

Bananas?

Calm thy tits.

Yeah.

Also, check out my YouTube channel.

I do six-hour documentaries on uh celebrities deaths so feel free to do that even told kurt all about circuses basically from day one circus is a locus

i'm sorry i need to god okay i'm actually okay a circus is a locus a place where several planes of reality converge circuses do not occur naturally They have to be built, and building a circus is a horrifically violent process.

Even worse, the builders have no say over which planes converge.

More often than not, you end up with a circus you can't control, filled with beings and artifacts that actually use you, entities that possess the ability to manipulate or rewrite reality on a whim.

We can't comprehend these beings because we exist on the most mundane of planes, not due to chance, but because we, as a species, expect and require the mundane.

We influence and shape our own reality to suit our comfort zone.

Our collective will function as a creator force, but that collective will isn't enough to control these entities.

Okay, hold on.

So, again, a lot happening.

Realities converge.

I get that.

Building a circus, you have to do a violent process, which I imagine is the sacrifices that the children come from that was mentioned.

And the builders have no say on what happens.

So it takes a bunch of sacrifices, basically.

And then once you create it

you it's like you are now the victim of it effectively it's like a it's like opening a portal to hell you don't decide what hell does once it comes out you just open the portal yeah um

a proper circus acts as a cage but like all cages the bars rust and the locks break if you aren't careful that was why evie left him her guardian old now on her deathbed ordered her to take care of the circus Kurt was flabbergasted.

What kind of horror story, fairy tale, MK Ultra shit was this?

I feel like Mother Horse Eyes just like zipped by in an airplane real quick because I read that.

Flushing her face is.

Yeah.

Evie claimed they

thank you, doctor.

Thank you, doctor.

And Jim, Jim.

Evie claimed they kill him if she didn't do it.

Sometimes I just gotta

sometimes you gotta wake up and smell the roses.

He has that fake plastic flower in his shirt pocket and squirts her in the face.

Just kidding.

Go ahead.

You put a whoopy cushion under the therapy chair.

Oh,

This coming from a great counselor

would be so funny.

Here, have a seat.

Oh, excuse you.

The chimpanzees in a cage.

The chimp losing his mind.

The chimp's in a cage, and he's like, freaking the fuck out.

And meanwhile, meanwhile there's

like there's just a girl sitting there really scary.

She's traumatized.

She's traumatized.

This guy's laughing.

And once it gets quiet, she's just like,

so I still haven't heard from my dad.

And there's another whooping cushion.

Whoa, whoa,

it all starts again.

After that, second one's like, well, it looks like that's all the time we have for today.

Yeah, he like cuts off as soon as the time hits.

He's like, so actually, we, I guess we'll just schedule for.

Thank you so much for coming in, Rebecca.

The monkey chills out too.

Like,

she just immediately falls asleep.

Oh, okay.

Jesus.

That whoopy cushion thing just really got me.

It was really good.

That got me really good.

I mean, just the sentence: whoopee cushion in a grip counseling shit.

I like the thing that she walks into.

He's like already sitting there, face painted, hair blue, giant red nose, his legs crossed.

He's like, go ahead and have a seat.

He's like playing a seat.

He's like playing it really straight.

Go ahead and have a seat.

And then, yeah, just a giant wet.

And it just

starts the chaos so good.

It's like the bizarre version.

I'm sorry.

I just can't quit laughing thinking about the monkey just freaking out.

Don't get close to it.

He actually has to break for a second.

Don't get close to the gate.

Rebecca, back!

Get back!

Freaking out at her.

It's like the bizarro version of that, like, for sale baby shoes never wore.

It's like grief council chair with whoopee cushion.

This is actually,

you know what that is, Isaiah?

That's legitimately a good two-sentence horror.

It's a six-word story, yeah.

It's so good.

All right, anyway.

Evie claimed they'd kill him if she didn't do it.

That his life was in danger as well as the world itself.

When he tried to stop her, she assaulted him and got her temporarily committed on a 72-hour

psychiatric cold.

When he went to see her the next day, she wasn't there.

No one even confirmed that she'd been there at all.

She disappeared.

Two years later, he found her by accident.

She looked awful.

It was desperately lonely.

A bad guardian, she kept saying.

I'm a bad guardian.

Then she asked him to stay with her.

He was happy to do it.

He worried about her.

He missed her.

He loved her.

Next day, he zipped back to his place to gather some belongings.

When he returned to Evie's house, it was gone.

In place of her charming little two-story set of sprawling ranch house, occupied by a couple with a kindergarten-age daughter and a newborn son.

Kirk came back every day, and each time he saw a different house occupied by different people.

No one noticed but him.

After a couple more years of this, the young version of Evie came to his house, just like he'd said before.

He followed her back to the circus house and made it inside where he found the real Evie.

The wrong one got violent and knocked him out.

When he came to, both were gone.

The wrong version returned to him several times after that.

Even though he was afraid, he always followed it every time because that was the only way to reliably find Evie's house.

Evie herself was never there.

He saw her in the painting once, the side of the pale, long-haired entity.

Couldn't get inside, though.

It was like staring through an unbreakable window.

He saw them and they saw him, but they were trapped on opposite sides of the portal.

Sometimes though, there'd be dry bundles of sprouts and vegetation on his side.

Over time, the taxidermy animals and specimen cases appeared too.

He assumed this meant he wasn't the only one using the circus, but as of now, he's never seen the other user.

At some point, claims he doesn't remember, but I call bullshit, he found out the sprouts are regenerative.

All the plants from the painting are, some form or another.

They bring dead things back to life.

Sometimes they create life from nothing.

Sometimes they transfer life between creatures.

On his very last visit with Rongivi, he once again saw the real Evie in the painting, dismembered and filleted to death, just beyond the threshold.

The barrier was gone.

He ran in and cradled her.

She was still warm.

Rongivie followed him in and laughed.

And Arangi killed her, left her in the house.

Then he packed up the remains of Riel Evie and took her home, coated her with sprouts and vines.

He's been waiting ever since.

Okay, so she dies in the painting.

He's trying to use the regenerative stuff to bring her back.

That's why her body's there.

And I was right about him killing the other Evie that was basically like the maggot or parasite form of Eevee.

Yeah.

Right.

Then why the hell do you think she's still in that painting?

Because she is.

When he went into the painting with me, he followed the song, that wordless, eerie, open-throated song, all the way into the woods.

Even though her bones were in his closet, Evie was there, under a giant rib cage in a grove of thistles.

He couldn't touch her.

She could touch him.

In fact, she gave him the parasites to show him what must be done, she said.

Okay, I don't think that's your wife, dude.

If she's in the giant, if she's under a rib cage, it's like, you have to do this, and it fills you full of worms.

I don't think that's your wife, man.

Yeah, no, she's not.

Sorry.

she told him the secret of the god in the pyramid that no dead thing resurrected unless it willed resurrection it didn't want to resurrect her it wanted to keep her the only way to trick it is with the help of its guard the pale long haired man with scales he alone can override the will of the god but he needs a worthy bribe and that bribe is freedom why didn't you ever bring that painting here Because

if it isn't at the circus, the thing in the pyramid escapes.

That tracks because he said circuses are made to like keep the things in that you want to summon the power of.

Yeah.

I stared down into my cup, trying to hide my anchor from him.

Tendrils of steam curled upward, warm and strangely soothing.

I stirred the tea, taking savage pleasure in the obnoxious clink of silverware against ceramic.

Crumbled leaves surfaced and spun into vortex.

Why me?

Why am I involved at all?

The bribe is an escape.

The guard can only leave if someone else takes his place.

I need need a body.

Within the whirlpool of tea grit, came a flash of gold.

Spun around and floated to the surface, resolving into a small metallic eye.

I couldn't inhale or exhale.

The guards need a replacement, and the god needs an offering.

Then I'll get Eevee back.

I don't want to kill you.

That's why Evie did this.

To show me it's safe.

You have to let them grow for a little bit.

Then you pop them in the sun.

When it's grown, give one to the jailer and one to the god.

You don't even have to go through the portal.

We can control them.

We can make them do what we want.

It's completely safe.

Yours were only in your skin.

You made me drink them.

He stared at me with a sort of pained, guilty shock.

The room was silent and deafening at once, and the air felt heavy.

Terribly, terribly heavy.

I bolted.

He caught me before I reached the living room and lifted me off the ground.

I flailed and kicked, driving him into the wall.

His grip loosened and I squirmed away, only to slam into his parasite double.

Together, they dragged me into the hall.

Up close, Kurt's arms were a horror show.

The inflamed flesh inside the holes bubbled up and spilled over his skin like burn scars.

Parasite Kurt looked almost translucent, like a thin scrim of water was strapped between layers of flesh.

In a panic, I bit down on Parasite Kurt's hands.

A gush of thin, sweet liquid erupted from the puncture.

I accidentally aspirated it.

My entire mouth and throat went numb.

While I struggled to breathe, they forced me into the closet and locked the door.

I fell into the pile of bones, tangling in the vines and tearing blossoms apart.

When I finally straightened up, the skull dangled inches from my face.

Bright flowers glowed from each socket, equal parts horrifying and dreamily lovely.

All around me, the dead sprouts came to life, golden eyes opening along the roots one by one.

I tried to move but couldn't.

The numbness had spread, overtaking my shoulders and chest.

Sleepiness came with it.

The thing I saw were the eyes, a hundred and a thousand, sparkling like miniature searchlights in the dim glow of the flowers.

As I drifted off, I became dimly aware of a maddening itch in my heel.

I woke to a sensation of uncomfortable pressure and painful tugging, like something was pulling muscle out through my skin, slowly turning inside out.

My throat hurt, my arms hurt, and my foot radiating a deep, maddening itch.

Everything flooded back, and I opened my eyes.

Long, glistening larvae towered from dozens of holes in my right arm, thickest tentacles, covered in round, glittering eyes.

They stretched painfully, straining toward the wall.

Little pockets of my swollen tissue stretched with them, tinting along the base of each larva.

I threw up.

Brackish fluid choked with plant matter and metallic eyes flooded my lap.

I kicked away, then shrieked as something shifted inside my heel.

It felt like a snake, coiling and sliding across itself.

My shoe shifted as something pushed it off, tickling my arch as it fell away.

The parasite snaked out of my foot, rough edges scraping the skin of my heel.

A sparkling serpent reared up like a cobra.

Rippling fins propelled its narrow body upward.

Bright blue eyes glittered from its sides, glinting like crystal in the dimness.

After regarding me curiously, It darted upward and wove itself into the rib cage.

All of its eyes were fixed on my left arm.

Quivering, I looked down at my arm, expecting the worst.

Roots and sprouts dusted my skin, but the flesh was whole and unblemished.

Even the injury inflicted by the sprout beast, the wound the guard had sucked clean, was gone.

All that remained was a patch of strange white flesh that glimmered with an iridescent sheen.

I looked up at the larvae.

They too were focused on that patch of skin.

That was why they were straining.

They were trying to get away from it.

On impulse, I thrust my arm toward them.

With a volley of pain, unlike anything I'd ever experienced, they plunged down into my arm.

Ugh!

They were big, much bigger than Kurt's, and my skin bulged with the strain.

Electric bursts of pain shot through my body, subsuming all my senses in a white nova of agony.

I screamed helplessly, which quickly devolved into wet, painful coughing.

Another torrent of fluid came up.

To my horror, tiny larva wriggled weakly in the puddle.

I sobbed and reached for the doorknob.

To my shock, it turned, spilling me out into Kurt's hallway.

Soft, midday shadows cloaked the hall, but I saw clear, clean sunlight streaming into the living room straight ahead.

I tried to stand, but my legs weren't strong enough.

Sobbing weakly, I crawled to the living room and collapsed in the light.

Both Kurt and his double were gone.

The house was quiet, enveloped in that soft, stuffy stillness peculiar to hot days.

I writhed miserably, weeping and screaming as my larva erupted.

They were easily five times the size of Kurt's, thick and rope-like and several inches tall.

Even worse, they made noises, keening, high-pitched shrieks that seemed to slice through my head.

I coughed helplessly the entire time, stomach and lungs expelling incredible amounts of dark fluid.

Roots, sprouts, and weak parasites came with every expulsion.

It smelled sweet, almost tropical, with hints of citrus and flowers and warm rain.

The larvae were too large to simply explode.

Instead, they ruptured, swelling and splitting like overcooked sausages and splattering everything with thick, translucent icher.

Had I been physically capable, I'd have crawled out of the light just to escape the pain, but between the endless coughing and weakness, I was as good as paralyzed.

Eventually, I faded out.

A sensation of warm heat and softness woke me up after sunset.

I turned over.

Something squelched under me.

thick and damp like jelly.

I sat up and found myself wallowing in a pool of exploded larvae.

Strings of their tattered skin trailed from inflamed holes in my arm, reminding me absurdly of seaweed.

Their eyes lay everywhere, glinting dully in the dying light.

My foot twitched, whimpering.

I looked up as the serpentine thing snaked out of my heel.

The skin around it was baggy and pale like a blister.

The serpent darted over the mass of jelly, picking out the eyes and eating them eagerly.

Stomach lurching, I glanced at the holes in my arms.

Pus rimmed the edges, paleness contrasting with the furious, swollen red.

Each pit bore downwards like a honeycomb cell.

At the bottom of one, I saw a quivering mass of tissue studded with small eyes.

Altogether, I counted ten, ten ruined pits in my skin glittering with fresh larvae.

They're growing back.

I tried to pull the rippling snake from my foot, but before I could touch it, it burrowed deep.

I swear I can feel it curling around the bone.

Maybe that's why I'm weak.

It's damaged the tendons and muscles.

Breathing isn't easy.

Each inhale is ragged, thick.

Soreness radiates from my ribs and down to my stomach.

It's more larva.

They're inside me.

I know it.

I have to go back to the house because my only hope is the guard.

Kurt said he needs a body as a bribe.

That's fine.

I've got my own slippery doppelganger growing.

The larva jelly is bubbling up before my eyes, slowly resolving into a copy of me.

If he doesn't want a doppelganger, I can always give it Kurt.

Even now, after all the lies, I feel for him.

I really do.

But if he wants his wife back, he has to pay the prize himself.

And endor five, man.

That's sick.

The descriptions of it

are unbelievable, man.

That's why I'm like, I just want the larva.

The larva stuff is my favorite.

The larva is great.

All the larva stuff is fantastic.

Yeah.

I'm curious to see how it pieces together.

I like the whole motive of Kurt trying to revive his wife, basically.

This kind of weird conspiracy he's been having, but I'm curious to see how it all wraps up because we are now on part six, the final part.

We are on part six.

i've always preferred pain to itching not that i enjoy either but pain is straightforward even at its worst pain is somehow clean pain also has the decency to kill you once it reaches a certain threshold itching on the other hand is filthy and consumptive itching can't kill you it'll just drive you insane in fact if you could transform the essence of madness into sensation that sensation would be itching.

Itching was the only thing on my mind as the larva infestation infestation worsened.

Every breath produced a deep, explosive itch that wrapped over my ribs and organs.

I saw vines in my mind's eye, thin and wet and tipped with golden eyes, winding their way through my body.

By the time my parasitic doppelganger blinked awake, night had fallen and my larva had regrown.

The new batch was small and stringy, ill-looking.

They peeked out anxiously for the holes in my skin, quivering.

My doppelganger was easy to control.

Actually, there was nothing to it.

When I moved, it moved.

I was glad for this because I didn't have any energy left for conscious control.

With a great deal of effort, I dressed it and together we hobbled out to my car.

There was a moment of confusion when it tried to climb into the driver's seat with me.

I repositioned it in the passenger seat, struggling as it mirrored my movements.

The larva surfaced to watch, straining the tender flesh at the bottom of the holes.

The drive to the suicide house to the circus was a hallucinatory nightmare.

Things crept around inside me, prodding and squeezing tissues.

The winged snake in my heel thrashed angrily, nipping my skin as it attempted to chew through my shoe.

Worst of all, I couldn't stop coughing.

Every fit inevitably ended in a torrent of vomit, choked with leaves and tiny golden eyes.

My doppelganger gagged with me, identical except for its eyes, flat and golden, comprised of a hundred parasite irises.

After what felt like eternity, I reached the circus and led my doppelganger inside.

The living room had transformed into a grove.

Vines and glowing flowers covered every surface.

In the corner, dimly illuminated by the blossoms, sat the enormous anemone.

Tentacles drifted dreamily, seemingly oblivious of the holes scoring its flesh.

The five-eyed monstrosity lay before it, half buried in vines.

I shuddered and hobbled upstairs.

My doppelganger followed hesitantly.

Through my haze, I heard voices, men's laughter, and a woman's playful, sarcastic bite, all underscored by a tonal piping.

One of the bedrooms was closed off.

A bar of golden light flickered along the bottom of the door.

The door to the other room was torn to pieces, drooping on a single hinge.

My larva peeked out and pulled toward the open room.

A mindless, blissfully calm compulsion overtook me.

I followed their lead and tucked inside.

A blanket of dead vines, curled leaves, and dry blossoms covered everything except a twisted figure on the bed.

The larva strained forward, eyes glittering in the moonlight.

It was the warped girl, unnaturally stretched across a blood-soaked quilt.

Strangely, slates lay atop each of her hands.

They were piled with hairy spider legs and bloated tentacles, garnished with sprouts and dead flowers.

Horrific details resolved as I came close.

From throat to thigh, she was a bloody ruin.

Glistening guts cascaded from her butchered abdomen.

Buried in the morose was a multi-limbed fetus with several eyes.

Translucent hands clutched the gory remnant of a twin.

The spell suddenly broke.

The larva retracted, causing a nauseous explosion of itching that radiated in my shoulder.

I turned, wretching, and found myself face to face with the five-eyed taxidermy monster.

It loped past me and lunged, plunging long, thick fingers into my parasite doppelganger's throat.

Thick eichers spurted like blood from an artery and it collapsed the serpent in my heel quivered my knees gave out i slid helplessly to the floor the five-eyed monstrosity approached and knelt before me to my shock it spoke in all that forms the parasite shall achieve the ruin of your mind

its voice was low and liquid almost childishly high lips rolled above its vast mouth the way grass ripple in the wind

ruined minds make out doors

It touched my intact arm, the one the long-haired guardian had sucked clean.

The unusually pale skin glimmered faintly.

Its cold, puffy fingers circled my head.

The touch was sharp and oddly refreshing.

My mind suddenly felt clear.

The larva in my arm shuddered, producing a thrumming tickle that made me moan.

Find him.

You just want me to trade places with it?

Painful hysteria built in my chest.

Is that him being?

That's like an accusation.

That's him being like, you just want me to trade places with it, like angrily.

But this is the monster of the larva, right?

No, this is our protagonist.

Something like pity crossed its face.

The caretaker captures and relics his charges at will.

You were released once.

You'll be released again, though the vines were otherwise.

So I skated over my honeycombed harm.

Your friend, the madman,

wants you to take the kid taker's place so that you'll release his wife.

He will confront you.

He surrendered to the vines.

You may not recognize him.

Looked meaningfully at the warped woman.

She did not.

Interesting.

Okay.

So, like, again, I go with you.

I agree that the

larva is the strongest part of the story should just be that.

But there are things about this like mere extra-dimensional plot that I do like.

Yeah, Kurt threw himself to it, became a monster.

Now he's killed the other version of his wife, or

she was on the bed.

So there's a good shit in there for sure.

Hysteria and horror continued to build, twining together like the vines.

Go

I will make a door from you.

I tore into the hall, past the room where men laughed and pipes echoed, into the taxidermy room.

The specimen cases were broken and empty.

No taxidermy creatures remained, and the paintings showed only empty backdrops.

Forest and beaches, rock canyons and golden fields, luxurious bedchambers and blood-stained dungeons.

Yeah, the more I think about it, the cooler this idea is of like, if you perform enough evil, if you break the minds of enough people, have enough sacrifices, you create an intersection between all these different dimensions these creatures go through, and the paintings are pictures of the different roadways.

That's pretty cool.

In the center hung the familiar moonlit landscape.

I ran through, gasping, as deep cold settled over me like a blanket.

That familiar, wordless song, beautiful yet so very close to screaming, echoed over the plains.

I veered toward the slope.

The pyramid came into view, a cubist masterpiece of blinding silver and unfathomable darkness.

Low veils of clouds clung to the top like a gathering storm.

Itching ran along my bones as larva shifted.

I hurtled toward the labyrinth, dodging thorny vines and treacherous burrows half hidden in the brittle grass.

My attacked arm glimmered strangely on my periphery, milky and too smooth.

It frightened me in a way even the larva could not.

I sped up, grimly ignoring the serpent writhing in my foot.

Pale light guided me to the labyrinth's entrance.

As I approached, I heard a low, resounding thrum.

The ground vibrated and a chorus of horns echoed through the night.

To my shock, glittering beetles erupted near my feet and flooded across the grass.

Other creatures followed.

Antlered hogs and primordial cats, giant toads, tiny foxes with billowing clusters of tails and more, so much more, all running away from the pyramid.

I reached the entrance just as a pack of long, low wolves with tusks and bulbous eyes bolted past.

Six winding paths flanked a marble promenade that led directly to the pyramid.

Horns and wordless wailing echoed off the black walls.

The larvae in my arm peeked out of their burrows.

I fought the urge to rip them out.

The pain I knew would make me black out.

Marched forward.

More paths spun off the promenade, narrow and impenetrably dark.

I hurried past, refusing to look lest I find something staring back at me.

Man, again, like, there's so much cool stuff happening.

It's just so

like there's the serpent in his foot, and he walks into the labyrinth glittering beetles and then it's just quickly mentioned antlered hogs primordial cats giant toads tiny foxes it's like he's he's in another earth it's so fascinating it's just so quick i think my biggest complaint with the story is there's so many cool things happening they're all pulling away from other cool things well that's the thing is it's two separate ideas you know like the the painting idea is different than the idea of like the thing growing inside it's just the worm it's too much also for just a short story maybe if this was like a novel where you got got to build up these things, yeah, maybe, but that being said, once again, as we said, like just two really cool things, but it's just which, like, which one do you want to actually commit to?

Because these are two great ideas, and also, too, the way that he describes it so colorful, and like it's just tasty.

Like, it's just every time you read it, you're like, oh,

it is.

I like that.

Yeah, all the little paragraphs I reread.

I'm like, that's pretty cool.

I like that.

A tall, perfectly rectangular opening loomed ahead glimmering steps led to the entrance i slowed to a halt at the base of the stairs for a paralyzing moment i thought about turning back this was i thought the very last thing i wanted to do that moment the serpent in my heel convulsed sending bright electric pain coursing through my leg it was an apt perfectly time reminder that actually Dying of an alien parasite infestation was the last thing I wanted to do.

So I went inside.

Soft, smoky incense enveloped me, along with an almost debilitating heat.

Vines and flowers crawled up the walls alongside veins of polished ore.

Blossom and mineral glowed dimly, illuminating a septet of enormous images on the antechamber wall.

Five I recognized.

A bull, a locust, a malformed wolf, a breathtakingly beautiful person that could have been man or woman, and a golden dragon.

Two I had trouble with.

A hideously proportioned human with wings, no eyes, and three mouths, and a creature with a shape I couldn't quite comprehend, whose flesh glimmered with mad arrays of stars.

A sharp chorus of laughter echoed through the chamber, indulgent and somehow cruel, followed by a bone-rattling roar.

I spun around anxiously, looking for a door, but only saw another set of seven images behind me.

The laughter grew abruptly, both in volume and glee.

My arm itched, my feet ached, and a terrible, pulsating pressure built in my chest.

Breathing suddenly became impossible.

A moment later, I felt it, long and wet, slithering up my throat.

My gagged tongue rolling back and touching the tip of a vine, those strange, towering images swam before my eyes.

Dreamily, I realized it wasn't laughter I was hearing, but screaming punctuated with a chilling, inhuman bellow.

I collapsed, painfully aware of the serpent shifting in my flesh.

Everything blurred together, soft and almost beautiful, as vines and larvae erupted from my throat tiny eyes and wet leaves glittered on my periphery it scared me so i closed them just as halting footsteps echoed through the chamber i felt hands on mine strong and cold i looked up and saw the caretaker's strange sharp face staring into mine one of its eyes had ruptured red swollen and unwholesomely bloated

Horror and hope suffocated me along with the vines as the guardian lowered its mouth to mine.

Cold lips closed over my chin and cheeks.

Pitching abruptly disappeared and I felt a bare, blissful instant of relief before an overwhelming ova of agony scorched me into unconsciousness.

I surfaced to silence.

So it bent down and like kissed him

effectively purified him the same way it had with his arm.

Yeah.

Gasping, I shot up.

I was naked, but could breathe just fine.

No plant matter or worms choked my throat.

I immediately looked at my arm.

Pale, plump flesh peppered with half-healed holes.

I touched one experimentally.

No itching, no larva, just a dull, unremarkable ache.

My heel was strangely horrifying, deflated and colorless, like an enormous drained blister.

The sunken hole reminded me of rotting pumpkins, but at least it was empty.

No serpent, no larva, no vines.

I climbed to my haunches.

My hand fell into a soft pile of vegetation and I almost screamed.

It was the caretaker, shriveled and glimmering like moonlight, covered in tall, luminescent flowers that looked like lupines.

Fighting back tears, I inspected my skin for any scratch or puncture.

There were none.

The flowers had been soft, after all, softer than any I'd ever touched.

Was that any guarantee?

Just as I began to calm down, a low, wet rumble rumbled through the antechamber.

I jumped up and saw the door where there hadn't been one before, under the feet of the bull, low and glowing with rich golden light.

A hideous, incomprehensible shadow filled that beautiful doorway and lumbered into the chamber.

Seven enormous, sinewy limbs exploded from a twisted torso.

Four were vaguely human.

Three were thick vines studded with glittering eyes.

Sprouts and humming tangles of bright-eyed larvae laced every inch of its raw flesh.

A human head crowned the monstrosity, warmed and lumpy with clusters of subcutaneous vines.

A feathery anemone extended from its mouth, straining the skin to such a degree that the flesh had split up to the eyes and ears.

Blood sheeted past its cheekbones, choked with vines and squirming with small worms.

Dangling from a broken jaw was half an eerie, translucent fetus.

But the twin, I realized, to the one at the suicide house.

So, ah, okay, so I'm going to guess this is Kurt, right?

Yeah, it's 100% Kurt.

And he, like, the things grown in him to the point that he's like, his skin is broken apart and the vines make up the most of the torso.

Yeah.

And it went to that woman who was pregnant and then it seems to have eaten one of the twins or like hanging from its broken jaw.

Maybe still alive, but probably dead.

It's like a resident evil villain.

It's such a cool description.

Yeah, it is really cool.

Very,

yeah, I agree.

Just kind of like a weird, like, umbrella mutation kind of creature.

Yeah.

Like, you can see where, like, the infection, like, took what pieces were there and just stretched them far past what they were supposed to be.

The anemone snaked forward and spun open, barring a tangled spiral of teeth that made me think of sharks.

At the center of that spiral, set in the throat like a gem, lay a massive cluster of golden eyes.

The anemone shifted sharply, straining upward to offer full sight of the human head from which it sprouted.

Kurt.

Kurt's head, Kurt's body, Kurt's mind warped and erupted and overtaken by the vines.

His right eye found the dead caretaker buried in his carn of flowers and spun towards me, radiating madness and triumph.

And I knew, somehow, what he was thinking.

He'd won.

I was the new guardian, and I would now release his wife.

Sadness and profound rage swept through me just as the caretaker shifted under his glowing lupines.

A deafening roar shook the pyramid.

The anemone stood at attention, and Kurt looked back at the small door, panic flickering across his ruined face.

Then he lunged at me.

The caretaker exploded from his funeral grove in a tornado of stems and glittering petals, launching himself at Kurt.

He reached into that nightmare gullet, ignoring the spiral teeth, and plucked out the golden cluster of eyes.

That roar sounded again.

Dust rained from the ceiling.

Leaves and flower vines rattled as if in a wind.

The guardian ignored it and continued his methodical dismemberment of Kurt.

A chorus of shrill screaming issued from Kurt as larva squirmed and shot out of his flesh, swaying several feet in the air before diving down to the guardian.

Glistening bodies swarming over the guardian's snowy arms.

I turned and ran, hurtling down the promenade, oblivious to the numbing cold.

I don't know how I made it back to the suicide house, but I did.

I stumbled past empty paintings and taxidermy monsters who now breathed, past the warp woman's corpse and the laughing men.

Salt crunched under my feet as I tore down the stairs and out into the yard.

It was dark and I was panicked, so my nakedness didn't matter to me.

I slid into the front seat of my car and sped home, where I inspected every inch of flesh.

My hands are smooth and unmarked.

My feet are not.

Small scratches and punctures litter the skin, but I think I'm alright.

They're already healing.

The skin is smooth and unusually pale.

Just in case, I drenched my feet in hydrogen peroxide, washed them, and sprayed them with cheap herbicide.

It hurt like hell, but I could barely stand, and I'll have scars, but it's worth it.

Then I showered in the hottest water I could stand and stumbled to bed.

I woke this afternoon to a very familiar painting propped against my bedroom wall.

It's just a painting for now.

Rich oils and silver tones depict the scene as I first saw it.

A crisp spring night with a tall and human figure framed by luminescent flowers and strange trees.

I left it there and went to the suicide house.

Instead of Evie's two-story house, I saw a neat little bungalow with a breathtaking rose garden.

I drove by three times before going back home.

I haven't done anything with the painting, but I need to soon.

I had a really good look at it just now, and there's a problem.

In the distance behind the caretaker is another figure, malformed and multi-limbed, coated in vague suggestions of vines and worms.

I don't know what happens happens to doorways when you burn them, but I'm about to find out.

Man, wonderful.

Gosh, dude.

Wonderful.

That was great.

With the ending, that last part was

really cleared up a lot of the issues I had previously.

It felt like I was in another world.

And like,

him getting out and the caretaker saving him, then dying, then burning it at the end.

That was all great.

I still think that the initial gut reaction, at least how I see it, is, I still feel the same way of it's two very good concepts.

I almost wish that the painting was more focused than on like the body horror of the larvas growing inside.

It feels like you could have taken that idea and just shifted it to like this obsession of going into this painting and exploring more of all these creatures in this world because it felt like

it felt like with how simple the larva thing was, with how quick the story was, I was really able to sink in and get into this into this really uncomfortable setting of a guy transforming over you know this particular job or whatever but then the the the parallel sci-fi fantasy world

was still super beautiful and descriptive and i felt like i wanted more like i feel like i i wanted and needed more information in that world to where even at the end still very quick very you know what i mean even kurt's reveal all that stuff the the uh guardian kind of does his thing and then our guy is just able to be like oh shit and get up and run away I just would would have loved to play around in that because also that ending is awesome.

Love, love that it also answers.

Well, how the fuck are we getting these paintings and stuff?

It just shows up.

And then now you see Kurt and like the person that

was in there and now it's looking at him.

And just that ominous ending of, I'm not sure what happens when you burn it, but I'm going to find out.

And then we're just left with that, I think is awesome.

Really love that.

Yeah,

I think the two options are

either you have

two separate stories that takes these two different designs, you know, or two different plot lines, and then does their own thing, fleshes out each of them.

So they're not competing with each other,

or make this into a longer story where everything ties in.

And also, there at the end, I kind of changed my mind about some of the early stuff because we were harping a bit

early on about, like, well, the characters are kind of okay with this really quick.

And, like, I need to understand a bit more why they just hopped on board so much.

But at that end, where we were like,

it seems like that ending's where they wanted to get to, right?

Of like this black pyramid and like a forest seen through a painting at the intersection of dimensions.

And as they're walking through it, there's these multi-creatures.

And it's like, it reminds me of, it's in completely different directions, but like in McCarthy's work, right?

A lot of the characters won't so much be characters in the sense of like,

why aren't they talking realistically?

Or that's not how humans would speak.

A lot of them are almost symbols of things.

Like they'll enter the picture and say like, ye carry the mark of a dead man to a dead man's land or, you know, stuff like that.

And it fits because the world around it is so

drenched in itself that it makes sense the people fall in line with it.

You can see in some of the writing of like Cohen Brothers movies and stuff like that, right?

You're not really questioning why people speak the way they do.

It just feels correct for where they're at.

And the things we were complaining about in the beginning, the way people act, feel like they fit in that last part.

Like

the lines and dialogue and all that felt like succinct in that moment when we got near the end.

I don't think that any of it was particularly, I think that it's just with the pacing of which it's going of this being a short story and moving so fast.

I think that at first glance, it's easy to be like, well, why the fuck would you care about this with the information that you're giving?

Or like, not that, why would you care about this, but like, why aren't you freaking out?

You know, once again, if this was a longer, which I think that like painting idea, if given more time and more like brevity through the whole thing, I don't, I think that becomes a lot clearer.

Like, I don't think I'm questioning anybody's actions as much as like we're moving along so quickly, and it's just one of those things of like, oh, it's a weird painting.

I'd love to go back,

which it's setting up the correct beats for me, and it makes sense, but it's just a thing of like, oh, damn, you're not freaked out by that.

But once again, I think like if you get more time and more, like, I just think you get more.

if there was just more information given and also in the short form in the short form of the story like this short story format, sorry, I'm jumbling my thoughts.

Short story format, I just think that sci-fi story doesn't get to shine nearly as bright as how simple these things of going back and checking on your friend.

And even the idea of like, you know, pitching like you go, you clean up bodies and you steal something.

And because you steal that, it's like a little, it's like a curse or something that gets put on you.

Those kinds of stories weave themselves together really nicely in a nice punchy way.

But this thing of exploring and there's a giant fucking pyramid and all this kind of stuff, I just think you get more, even if the characters are acting strange or acting weird.

I think that even in those works of like Cohen brothers and stuff, you're still setting up the universe to play off them nicely.

And you're also getting information, all the information to where nothing is like left up to chance.

It's just kind of like, that's just the world that it is, if that makes sense.

I can't tell if I'm rambling.

But anyways,

it's not that I don't think even earlier that we were complaining, I think it's just kind of jarring when you walk in and you're just like, yeah, there's fucking weird, you know, it's not like it's a TV or something that's just on.

It's a fucking oil painting that's alive.

So

it's almost like, and it goes back to what you were talking about, uh,

or what we've been talking about with it.

It needs to be either be two separate stories or longer because I feel like if this was longer, and imagine if there was like kind of like an intro area where it set up the world and it talked about, you know, or maybe this main character is own depression or something.

Like it kind of like built up the mental image, then

some of that dialogue would make more sense as things happen.

Because when we got to that ending, I'm like, I could read another story twice this length from here.

Like, keep going.

Yeah.

The payoff.

It had me in a great direction.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Just some of the beats.

Absolutely.

Very, very fast.

Very fast.

Yeah.

I think, I think, again, a lot of the problems come like this, this can be more.

And the writer has certainly has potential to make it more, which is why now, thinking about it, the, their,

um,

the North American Pantheon, the thing that they seem to be the most famous for, is like a multi-part series about like monsters kept in like a sort of prison or penitentiary, so to speak.

That's pretty cool.

And I could see how if you give this author a lot of time, they can do something cool with it.

So I understand why it has fans.

So

it just felt like a case.

I'm just wondering if it felt like a case of an idea that

submits a story, it does very well, because even on Reddit, it has like a lot of upvotes and stuff to where now you're quickly trying to make posts for, you know, trying to follow up with it and stuff, and you're kind of playing it by ear versus this pantheon kind of story.

I'd love to read that one and see, and just especially if that's the thing where it's like, it feels like a more curated story.

That's something that he's been working on for a long time.

I think that'd be really sick.

Because this was a great, like, and the things I say with this, these like criticisms or whatever, first off, they're subjective to where it's like, it's just my opinion.

But then also,

it in no way reflects that, like, I think the story sucks or is like, you know, faulted in any way.

I just, just simple thoughts of when you get through a story and you read it, you're like, fuck.

And you kind of just like simmer with it.

These are just first gut reaction kind of responses to it.

But in all honesty, it was awesome.

Like, I think that like so many stories,

this story went very big, very, very big.

you know, but it was able to be confined in a way that felt believable.

I wanted to be there.

There's so many of these stories where it's like, I don't know, I dared my best friend to ruin my life where it's like, I'm going big by, but it's just in a very dumb kind of way.

And it doesn't make a lot of sense.

And you're kind of like, you're stuck in the short horror, like you're stuck in this Reddit format.

And now this idea is getting too big when it should have just been much tighter, much more consolidated.

And now I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum where I'm just like, I would love more because this feels realized.

This person is like taking us through the story in this beautiful way.

And he's doing this large, big idea in a way that is nice because god damn, we read so many stories where it's like, you know, the world's going to end.

And you're like, oh my God, like,

here we go.

Kind of idea.

So,

yeah.

I don't know.

It was awesome.

I'm really glad that we read this story.

They killed it.

Yep.

Check out, check out Dopabine.

Also, I should mention this story was written seven years ago.

So if this is them seven years ago, I can only imagine how good their stuff is now.

So check them out.

Be sure to show them some love.

They certainly deserve it.

and just want to say, real quick, thank you so much to our Patreon supporters or they're on Patreon.

We appreciate you.

Uh, it's just,

I don't know.

I love you.

I was supposed to tell you, it's fucking awesome.

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Stay creeped.

Bye-bye.

Stay creeped.

And if someone convinces you to once again run a breeding operation that's crazy and sacrifice a bunch of kids to open up something called a circus, don't.

Thank you for watching.

Bye.