I can feel it burning inside my stomach now. Feels like my organs are boiling. The bite mark on my arm is turning black. It's kind of amazing how fast The Plague operates, don't you think? Whatever nutjob chemist designed it... [Coughing]... did a damn good job.

The blackness was growing still, streaking and bending abruptly, making a bizarre humming noise as it spread, until it stopped and hung in the air, taking up much of the center of the room, a pulsating translucent black mass, humming with hundreds of tentacle like growths coming from all sides.

"You... made it," a bizarre, gurgling voice grumbled from somewhere in the darkness in front of me. I started dashing for those weird little moss covered steps.

"Wait!" It gurgled out and sounded like it was vomiting after it said it. Suddenly a light came on, a blinding buzzing white light. When my eyes adjusted I saw it. It was my God damn washcloth, about seven feet tall. It was green and grimy crusted cloth. It had one purple eye near the top corner of its sulking frame, with a slit that drooled out dark green and black liquids each time it spoke. I was gonna run, I swear it. But the way that fuckin' thing sort of swayed towards me made me freeze in a curious sort of way.

The fiery mass became clarified to Ed as an asteroid, but the texture was strange. Despite his confidence that this was all a very lucid illusion, Ed clenched every muscle in his body when the asteroid was about to make impact. What he saw next startled him, and that startle felt real.

With a hunched back I approached the window emitting yellow, ignoring those displaying black. Through the mustard sheath there was a shadowed silhouette shedding layers, revealing countless well formed curves. My eyes did the calculating, debating the best way to rearrange her terms.

Down the stones we went andz up to ma front porch. That damn swing was swingin' by itzelf again jus' like Granddaddy swung. Granddaddy carved roses in dat porch swing and alwayz said he could smell 'em even though they wood. Childruns alwayz called him Mr. Rose. Dem childruns always drove Granddaddy crazy though. He alwayz tolds me that I'm different, said I a old soul even when I young. He hated rest of them childruns though. HE HATED THEM!

Thirty-one red marks. I'd been in here, this horrible white room, for thirty-one marks: a month. I hadn't eaten a thing, hadn't had a sip of water-but somehow I was still breathing. My stomach got used to the feelin' of being starved. My throat was always dry, wasn't quite used to that yet. But that song, that song was always there, taunting me and laughin' at me.

"When it's eight, nine, ten, eleven too, I'll be goin' strong and so will you. We're gonna rock around the clock tonight, we're gonna rock, rock, rock, 'till broad daylight. We're gonna rock, gonna rock, around the clock tonight."

She haunted the highway that night like so many nights before. Her vague apparition absorbed the light around her creating an indent in the air like a night vision mirage. She reached out; feeling for her husband's pulse, but none of the cars contained it as they swooped by, often swerving and tumbling to a deathly halt in one of the ditches on either side of the highway. Mariah thought she could feel tears escaping her eyelids, but she couldn't be sure.

Obsidian Children

Quadraphonic

Ludger and the Silent Stranger

The People in the Walls

A Simple Taste for Aborted Dreams

The Legend of Spaghetti Fingered Freddy

Night at the Drive-Thru (extended)