by Tobias Wade
The remnants of the burned sarcophagus puzzled everyone. When asked to explain it, I told them the Congregation believed God had been inside of it. I was forced to worship it and give it blood. With the search for Meisberger and the Congregation underway, I went into witness protection. It was fine with me. I had nowhere else to go. No parents. No sister. Nothing of a life to put back together. The Congregation had taken everything from me, except the chance to start over.
It’s been almost eight years now since those events and I’ve since relocated to California. I started a new life here, thousands of miles away from anyone I’ve ever known. I finished high school, graduated from college, and I’m working on a master’s in psychology. I currently volunteer to help children and adults who’ve survived ritualistic abuse, mind control, and endured torture at the hands of the people they trusted the most. This type of trauma stays with you the rest of your life. But it helps to connect with others who understand and can lend an ear.
My dream would be to see Meisberger and his Congregation caught, tried in court, and sent to prison. To know they couldn’t hurt anyone else would bring peace to my soul and the closure would help me move on from the terrifying ordeal.
But the police still haven’t found the Congregation. In fact, no one has ever seen them again. Good riddance.
I is for Ideation
Jack T. Anderson
Three months have passed since the tablet fell to earth.
I should say a lot of what you're about to hear is highly classified.
It was my job to monitor the object as it approached the surface of our planet. Even from afar it was intriguing. Plummeting through the atmosphere at an incredibly sharp angle of decline, yet showing no outward change in mass. Our instruments told us this was something novel, something more than a chunk of aberrant space debris.
It was also my job to survey the crash site, a smoldering crater roughly three hundred meters in diameter, blasted deep into the Mojave. After a short flight, followed by a few hours of driving, we found ourselves one of the first few research teams to arrive at the scene, and certainly the only group willing to descend into the crater to examine the meteorite up close.
The air was still thick with dust as we made our way twenty-six meters down the steep slope towards the marbled blue rock at the bottom. We discovered a remarkable object; unspeakably durable and seemingly undamaged by an impact which had shattered the earth around it. The rock was a large half-sphere, its round edge rough and pockmarked, likened by one of the team to fresh scoria. Conversely, the flat side was impossibly smooth, a level, shiny slab of ultramarine, its perfect surface only marred by an intricate set of markings.
It took a mere glance to understand what we were looking at, yet much longer for our minds to comprehend. The cuts in the face of the rock were too sophisticated to have been caused by erosion, or the random impacts of lesser debris. Their structure, their complexity, and the occasional instance of symbolic repetition all compounded to suggest a much more significant cause, the first evidence of something we had been scouring the universe for since time immemorial: Intention and intelligence.
The government set up a perimeter and threw a ring-bound NDA at anyone within a mile of the site. The only reason we didn’t get our marching orders was due to the expertise we demonstrated early on, before the rest of the scientific attaché showed up.
A few days later, a meeting was held on what these cryptic markings might represent. I had noticed that a few of the scrawlings, located at the lower left of the rock’s face, were accompanied by a series of sequential dots, with each set increasing incrementally by one. My team theorized that these dots, and by extension the symbols adjacent to them, constituted numbers. From there, our theory was jumped on quickly. Just five days after the strange tablet struck the ground, the scientific community realized just what they were looking at: An intergalactic Rosetta Stone, which equated an unknown alien language to the universal tongue of logic and mathematics.
From that point, the task of translating the mysterious etchings rapidly evolved into a 24 hour, 7 day a week effort. The rest of the scrawlings followed a logical progression, sprawling out from the simplest of calculations, eventually spiraling into to a dynamic lexicon which we worked painstakingly to comprehend. The language was efficient, but descriptive, combining qualitative and quantitative statements in a way no human tongue ever had.
Roughly a month on from the landing, we finally understood what the tablet was trying to say:
It was telling us a story.
The story of a species, buried deep in the past and deeper still in the most distant realms of the cosmos. A formless creature, nestled within the vast electrical storms of an impossible nebula. The tablet outlined how every strike of lightning, every interaction between every particle within that gaseous titan served, to put it crudely, as the synapses and neurotransmissions of a vast mindscape. An ecosystem of ideation, suspended in the vast blackness of space.
The species that evolved in this mystifying environment did not inhabit the physical world as we perceive it. They existed as an abstract of themselves. As the concept of their own being. In a slightly less accurate, but vastly more straightforward sense, they were a species of sentient ideas.
It was one paranoid scientist who suggested the creature might propagate itself in the same way as other ideas. Through translation and comprehension. By the time we realized she was right, realized the trick that had been played upon us, it was too late.
It was a few weeks after that unsettling realization, that the symptoms of ideation started to take effect. It began with the vaguest inkling that something was there, hiding in a worried thought, in an idle memory, in a daydream. Existing infinitesimally at the very edge of the frame.
As soon as it arrived the creature would suddenly be gone, disappearing for days on end, until you would encounter it once more, in another corner of your mind. Every time you’d see it, it would be larger. Every time you'd notice it, when you think back to your 10th birthday and find it gestating in the background of a treasured recollection, it would scuttle away to grow somewhere else.
It quickly becomes apparent that there's nothing you can do. No harmful notions will hurt it, no thoughts of fire will burn it out of you. In fact, thinking about it only makes it worse. The only ones who truly rid themselves of it are those who vacated their brain matter across the walls of their homes.
They were the brave ones.
Unfortunately, I’m not one of them.
Three months have passed since the object fell to earth. The idea that was imparted to us is now engorged and mature. I can’t conjure a thought without some part of it lying across the scene. It’s very presence leaks a subtle influence, until I can no longer extricate its will from my own. Until I can’t divine where my thoughts end, and it begins.
The creature isn’t evil. It has no malevolent intent. It simply desires what every living organism seeks.
Survival through propagation.
I can’t tell which ideas are mine anymore. In fact, I’m not quite sure why I’ve written this story…
J is for Jackass
Saint Entropy
My roommate when I first started college was a pothead named Jeff, known not quite affectionately around campus as Jackass Jeff. He was an asshole, but he was also everything I wasn’t: confident, shameless, and unpredictable. I had been homeschooled my whole life, and in many ways Jeff was my first ambassador from the real world. I’m not sure if that’s why, but whatever the reason, I loved him dearly.
My parents would have hated him. He had an appetite for chaos that few could match, and the audacity to feed that appetite. One day he’d be drinking openly in class and hitting on the aide, the next we’d find him pissing on anthills. It was impossible to guess where his latest whim would take him, but I always enjoyed the thrill of trying to keep up.
Knowing this, the incident with the cop didn’t really s
urprise me. A group of us had been drinking on the lawn in front of the dorms, crushing our empties and stashing them in the leaf litter underneath the bushes flanking the steps. We were arguing about something stupid when a gruff voice cut through the conversation, “You boys been drinking?” The man seemed to step straight out of the shadows, a hulking golem of disapproval. He was in street clothes, but something about his bearing screamed law enforcement, and we immediately pegged him for a cop. He looked toward me, and something about his milky blue eyes made me shudder.
Most of us stammered out half-formed denials, our words amounting to little more than a plea to be left in peace. Jeff reacted a little differently, though. He dipped a hand into his jacket pocket, and for one horrifying moment I thought he was reaching for a gun. I was confused when he pulled out what looked like a jelly donut. I squinted, finally realizing that it was a plush dog toy that housed an annoying squeaker in its polyester guts. He held it up in front of his face and squeaked it once, a sly smile creeping across his lips as he waved it in front of the cop. “Piggy want a donut?” he asked, then threw the toy as hard as he could. The cop watched it sail through the air, landing in a snarl of neglected bushes. He then turned his attention back to us, and his hazy eyes burned with furious intensity. His face was twisted in anger, his expression an unspoken threat. Jeff tried to keep a nonchalant grin on his face, but I could see the muscles twitching at the corners of his mouth, and I was startled to realize that he was scared. We all held our breath until the cop turned smartly on the ball of one foot, and stalked away without a word.
Jeff laughed and jumped to his feet, hooking his thumbs in his front pockets. His eyes caught the light from the street lamp, and they flashed as he grinned down at the rest of us still sitting on the grass. I had spent enough time with him to know when he was satisfied with himself. “All right, ladies, I’m off,” he announced casually. He winked at me conspiratorially before he walked away, whistling into the night. It was the last time anyone saw him.
Considering Jeff’s chronic lack of give-a-shit, it took almost a month before people started wondering where he’d gone. Theories began to spread around campus; a drug deal had gone lethally wrong, or he ran off with some coked out waif that he met in a bar. It was 26 days before someone finally thought to file a missing persons report –- his mother, I supposed—but by that time he was long gone.
A detective came by the dorm shortly after the report was filed. We sat in the humming of the fluorescent light, drinking weak coffee out of chipped mugs and trying not to grimace at the taste. He asked me questions about Jeff’s life, and I tried to be as honest with him as I could. I only lied when he asked if anything unusual had happened around the time of Jeff’s disappearance, and I told him nothing had. When he left my dorm, walking slowly down the sidewalk, the disappointment was obvious in his hunched shoulders.
I watched him through the window, the tears that I’d been holding back finally escaping from the corners of my eyes. Silent tears quickly transformed into loud, wracking sobs, and I collapsed into a fetal position on the floor. Part of me wanted to run after him, to tell him everything about the strange man who we’d thought was a cop, tell him to search for the man with milky blue eyes. But fear kept me paralyzed, and I was forced to bury the secret deep within my heart.
Theories surrounding Jeff’s disappearance continued to circulate around the campus, and I said nothing to rebuke or correct them. I let people think that he’d joined a gang, or became a drug mule for Columbian employers. The one thing everyone agreed on was that, whatever had happened to him, the jackass had probably gotten what was coming to him.
I would often find myself thinking back on the blood-soaked plush donut that I’d found hanging from my doorknob the morning after the incident, and I felt that no one, not even Jackass Jeff, deserved whatever fate had befallen him.
K is for Kinky Serial Killers
Bak Hayong
I know, the title makes me seem like a complete douche, and to be quite honest, I am, but this isn’t just about me, it’s about my little group. We call ourselves the kinky serial killers. Yes, it sounds like a name of a middle school band, but I really do tend to lack creativity when it comes to naming anything. Which is exactly why the name of my dog is “pup”. Sorry, got a bit sidetracked. Anyways, our group started in the summer of 2012. Originally, the group didn’t have a name. Hell, it wasn’t even a group. Just a man and a woman very much in love, who shared some uncommon interests.
We liked to kill, but not like those brutes you hear about in the news. No, no, no. We were much more artistic, everything was meticulously planned out, and every person we killed had some sort of sin they would never be able to live with anyway. I’m talking about sexual predators, murderers, abusers (whether it be sexual, physical, or mental). For the first two years, we kept this very much a secret between the two of us. It was beautiful. The world was our canvas, and the sick people of the world became our bright red paint. Have you ever fucked on top of a pool of blood before? It brings out your primal instinct in you. Fucking hot. I won’t get too descriptive, but you know, you should try it sometime.
Anyways, let me tell you how the group got its name. It all started with a Craigslist orgy.
While searching for potential targets on Craigslist, I saw an ad that caught my attention instantly:
“Four couples in need of one extra couple to make the night truly memorable...”
Though that is an enticing offer, that’s not what interested me. It was the last couple of sentences in the ad:
“No experience necessary, but we do hope you guys have an open mind. The odder the kink, the better. If you have any special requests, please don’t hesitate to contact Gerald directly.”
A night of animalistic fucking, deep scratches, fluid swapping, and an orchestra of moans and grunts later, we all sat around Gerald’s living room. I asked all of them if they wanted to join my group. Risky move, I know, but hell, I could always just tell them it would be a roleplaying thing if any of them showed any sort of negative reaction towards my question. Luckily, those kinky fucks were all for it.
We have a full 26 members in our group now, but today is not only the third-year anniversary of our group, but also its last day. No matter how many bad people we manage to get rid of, three take their place. It is a never-ending battle, and I am done with the endless battling.
I won’t get into all of the people we have killed. It would take days for me to describe all 283 murders. So, let me just tell you of the last person we will ever kill. His name is James Bradford, and out of every single person we had to kill, he will definitely be the hardest. Which is why we have decided to make this our last killing. James had a girlfriend and two kids. If you asked their families and friends, they would tell you that they were about the happiest little family you would ever have the pleasure of knowing. Their family were actually about the most popular people in their whole neighborhood. If anyone threw a party or had any sort of gathering, they would be among the first to be invited. You see, James’ neighbors became worried after they noticed that no one walked in or out of the house for the last two weeks. Several times they tried knocking on the door hey could hear whispering coming from within, but no one would open the door. When the cops were finally called, they were too late. They walked into the house to find the corpse of the girlfriend in the middle of the living room. James and the children were nowhere to be found.
The children were found a couple of days later, locked inside a storage unit. Don’t worry, they were very much alive. They had everything they needed to survive and didn’t seem to be malnourished. The police were notified when the owner of the storage units noticed a power cable that started at a plug near the front of the units and ended at one near the middle. She opened the unit and found two scared looking kids hiding under a small bed. Shivering, but not from the cold. As they were being led out of their little makeshift house, one of the daughters asked the ow
ner a single question, ”Can you please let us know if the bitch is dead?” Not really something you expect an eight-year-old to ask.
Four officers arrived at the scene a while later, and the girl asked the question again. One of the officers, who happens to be in our group, put a hand on the girl’s shoulder and asked her who she was referring to as the “bitch”. Without any hesitation, she looked up at him with a face full of hatred and said, ”The piece of shit our father dated!” He gave her a nod and she seemed content with sitting at the back of the police car. The son was quiet the entire time.
That was two days ago. Yesterday at lunchtime, our group met up at the local buffet and we collectively agreed that the death of James was still a necessity. It was a pretty quiet lunch afterward. A couple of them tried to start some small talk, but were all quickly shut down. Despite the years we have worked together, we were merely just that. People that worked together. Of course, there would be some fucking at the end of a particularly juicy kill, but that’s just natural. At a little past 1 in the afternoon, we all went our separate ways. .
By 8 pm the local news station was fully dedicated to reporting nonstop on a mass murder that just occurred. Twenty-four bodies of the people in my group had been torn apart and placed in an abandoned building. Their body parts were arranged so that it spelled out two words.
Well, two names.
“Grace” and “Benjamin”.
I’m sure a couple of you intelligent readers managed to figure out already that I was the one that killed them, but let me tell you why.
Three weeks ago, I overheard my girlfriend telling the group about how fast our kids were growing up. She said it in a way that made me immediately suspicious. I continued to listen in on the conversation, and it took everything out of me to not vomit. She told them how the kids should be involved in the next team-bonding orgy. I thought at least some members would decline her offer, but the sound of every single one of them agreeing filled me with more hatred than I could endure.