The Void Gospel

For 28 nights King Edgar would dream of the hooded figure with mirror eyes. The dreams were full of low, commanding whispers and distant screams. Whether they were screams of pain or ecstasy, he could not tell. The mirror eyes gave out nothing. The stone hall in which they met was vast and shadowy. The air in it was thick with anticipation. He gave in to the whispers on the 29th night, when the moon was full. There was no resistance as he donned the red hood and the cluttering chains and went out into the night streets, a sharp, ceremonial sickle in each hand. The people of his kingdom were timid, broken by centuries of oppression at the hands of his dynasty. That was good. He needed their compliance. For each life he took as the Herald of the Othergods, there would be another month of prosperity for the kingdom. And then, as the moon would turn full again, he would descend into the stone hall to wait for his successor. The palace would issue a statement. The king would be proclaimed d...

 "Man, how you can play this game, it creeps the hell out of me" - Giorgio peered over Rod's shoulder. It was hard to say how much mockery was hiding in his solemn tone. "Come on, dude" - Rod replied. "It's Pac-Man!" Ever since his dad put the arcade machines in the lobby of the movie theater, working the ticket booth was no longer a dreaded chore for Rod. It became his favorite pastime. Whenever there was no one around, all the games were his to play with. Sure, as the kid of the theater owner he would still see all the movies, most of them multiple times. But even the best ones would inevitably bore him sooner or later. Video games were different. And the complex, yet simple gameplay of Pac-Man made it his favorite. "No, really man" - Giorgio wasn't letting it go. "Think about it. What is the game really about? Think about the ghosts. They are human ghosts, I don't think there's any other kind, right? So they would be m...

Sandra couldn’t stop laughing. The millipede that forced its way into her mouth and was now making its way down her throat tickled her with its many bristle-like legs. She wondered why wasn’t the gag reflex kicking in, but somehow all that she could feel was waves upon waves of laughter coming from somewhere deep within, now finding way to the surface. This wasn’t just the reaction to the tickling sensation. The amusement that she felt was greater than everything she ever experienced in her over thirty years of life. It touched on something that was always buried inside of her. A profound change in her perception, as sudden as a click of a button. Her entire existence, all of the universe, was an elaborate joke, and she just had been explained the punchline. Just a moment ago she was watching TV when the magician came on. He was standing in front of a concrete wall, dressed in a tuxedo and a ridiculously large top hat. His face was painted white, with smudges of rose on his cheeks and ...

 Harrison was falling. Whatever he imagined death would be like, it wasn’t it. It was like someone opened a chute underneath his bed-ridden body, and he fell down through it and kept falling further through blackness.  An explosion of sight and sound knocked him out of his numb state, as he beheld the red skies filled with twisted, tangled pillars of black, oily smoke, and the desert filled with black, shiny slag, ash, and bone fragments. He let out that scream of utter horror and pain, as he scrambled up from a small crater his falling mass had punched in the surface of hell. Because it was hell. There was no other way to look at it. Not that Harrison didn't expect to end up anywhere else if there was an afterlife at all. There was one, it turned out, and he knew damn well for a death-row murderer like himself there would be no other destination. Harrison felt like the impact had broken every single bone in his body. Yet, he discovered he was able to power through the excruci...

 "Come closer, girl" - grandma's voice sounded sweet as maple syrup, and it felt every bit as viscous. Her fever was finally gone. She was out of bed for the first time in weeks. "What's that wonderful smell?" Heavy curtains allowed very little light inside. The room was dark. Suzie stretched out her hands with the trey mom prepared downstairs. "Oatmeal, eggs, bacon, ham, jam on toast" - she explained. Grandma's back was hunched as she stepped out of the shadow. Tilting her head she smelled around like a dog. The whites of her eyes were pink and reflected light in an eerie way. "No, not ham. Not bacon either. A sweater meat. Yes. I smell a delicious little girl!" - she let out a growl-like sound and launched for Suzie with her fingers curled into claws, mouth open wider than it should be possible. Then she closed it with an audible clack of her teeth. Suzie dropped the tray, let out a shriek and ran downstairs shutting the door to gra...

"Let's get it out of the way" - said the gentleman in the red, embroidered jacket who wasn't sitting in a chaise longue in the corner of the room just a moment before. "You have not summoned me here. You've attempted to do so in your hubris and shortsightedness, but you've failed miserably." He looked around the room at the thirteen women dressed in nothing but ceremonial jewelry. Their sight was fixed on him but their stare was blank, devoid of any thought, like there was nothing happening behind their still eyes. All motionless. All except one. “Yet there you are” - the priestess in front smirked. Her voice was deep and confident, devoid of any sign of reverence and fear, the gentleman was used to hearing. “My coven has gathered. Our sacrifice has been made. The words of summoning have been uttered in the forbidden tongue. Yet you claim your appearing here had nothing to do with any of it? There are places where the outcome and the cause are perpet...

 It was a mixture of cordyceps extract and a few brand-new upper compounds, only recently made possible with the new particle reconfiguration tech. It had a scientific-sounding name, but everyone who bought it at over 500 creds per hit knew it by its street name, “F”. It boosted the creative drive turning nobodies into artists, and making artists into superstars. Melanie felt they were going nowhere with the band. She was the singer and the lead guitarist, and she knew she was amazing. Her on-and-off girlfriend, Hilde was a demon on the base, and Hilde’s autistic little sister, Brita, was probably the best drummer on the West Coast. Still, they couldn’t get a break. Much shittier bands playing in the same cheap clubs were getting discovered and signed by big labels. The game felt rigged, so she was ready to put her finger on the scales. “I got us a booking next Saturday at the Mausoleum” - she saw the shadow of doubt passing through the other girls’ faces, so she went straight to h...

There was something wrong with the light, something about the way it dispersed on the walls never reaching the corners of the room. The difference was subtle, but Matt noticed it on the very first day in his new room. Or should he call it a cell? They told him he wasn’t a prisoner. They explained the court committed him here, and he couldn’t leave until the doctor signs off on his release. But they insisted he was a patient, not a detainee.  “You’re here to get better, Matthew” - said the man who introduced himself as doctor Masterson. “Sometimes reality is just too much, the tidal wave of events becomes overwhelming, and the mind retreats into fiction of its own devise. Something it can control, a narrative that may seem like horror but offers a set of easy rules, sets a comfortable order. A person will retreat into such a fantasy world and some will call it insanity. The fact is the mind clings to what sanity it has left and protects itself from stimuli that would push it beyond ...