Void Echoes | scottsavino.com
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Void Echoes

A Weird Fiction Serial Blog

Prologue

Sitting on the toilet---writing---what? Every writer does it! It’s what I was doing the moment everything changed. Where else does one watch reality unravel and do their best thinking all at once? The toilet. For an hour, progress wasn't made (on shitting, I mean---there's always progress on the writing). Standing to take a break, to step back and examine my meager work, I decided to flush and perhaps take a walk to stretch my legs...but I didn’t, because that’s when it happened. Now, lost in time and space, I find nothing is as it was, and nothing will ever be sane or real again---not until I find my way back. Writing stories feels almost quaint compared to the vast, unsettling everything I find myself surrounded by. I guess as long as the WiFi remains stable in this strange dimension, I can still set my stories loose and update scottsavino.com. So, regardless of what or where or when this place exists where I now find myself trapped---undaunted: I persist.


Display Order: Newest First

Of Rat Part Capitalism, Dr. Clankthrob, & Taking Uncanny Calls

Void Echoes: Season 1, Episode 12

This morning, I asked Clankulus Glitchmonger if they had a moment to help me with some script I was struggling to fix in order to make this godforsaken website function properly. If I can get it to behave in a reality that only understands the concept of "faltering" then I can literally do anything (for love)---but I won't do that. The issue today was, once again, the login interface.

Like most things on this domain, my ideas were as vast as the number of shimmering mirages of Madonna the desert cast across the red sands—nearly 70 years old, still with her ass out, still drugged up like she was in the '80s—legendary, nearly naked, and everywhere. She lingered at the edge of the horizon, just past the mouth of the cave, multiplying and fractured like reflections in the shards of a broken mirror.

There were so many of her, dancing out there like a virgin, moving quicker than a ray of light. I felt broken because my heart's not open. Every. Single. Day. She haunted the periphery of my vision. I've lost my memory, and I don't know why.

Oh, Madonna, I guess I only see what my eyes want to see.

Why do you leave me wanting more?

I had no idea what the desert expected me to do with this hallucination. Enjoy it? Dig my eyeballs out with my fingernails? Peel them like grapes and smush them into wine? What did it want?

I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted, but I wrote this script myself, and it refused to display properly. Naturally, I turned to Clankpoop.

Yes, because he's a computer. No, that is not racist.

It was displaying but in a way that felt deeply offensive to me. I'm not exactly sure how, but I believe that prolonged exposure to this dimension caused the text on the page to become sentient and I discovered that it was actively judging me--ME! I'm it's goddamn father!

Every time I typed, the form would rewrite my words into some variation of "really? this is what you're going with?" or "password too weak---much like your ugly bitchass."

I spent hours tweaking the CSS. The issue persisted. I threatened the code. It mocked me further.

That’s when Clanktasto, in all their cold robotic wisdom, interrupted me. Their screen flickered green, displaying:

function updateCost(timeSpent) {
if (timeSpent> 15) {
return "Error: tooMany";
}
}

Then another line scrolled across their shattered iPad face:

console.log("Scott: that is too many rat kidneys.");

The first thing that came to mind was a theater marquee---the sign, surrounded by blinking lights, read:

Now Playing: 💡"WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK DOES THAT SHIT FUCKING MEAN?"💡

Rat kidneys? It felt ominous and also funny, but not haha funny--—more like fundamentally unsettling funny...Some truth Clank understood as a robot, but that I, a regular dumb-dumb human being, had yet to grasp.

I didn’t ask what they meant, but I watched as they moved to their neatly arranged rock collection. With no hesitation at all, they lifted one from among the dozens that sat in neat, grid-like rows. There, they pointed to the hole in the ground that this particular rock covered.

My eyes followed as their claw-machine pincer pointed downward.

A hole filled with tiny organs. They had to be rat kidneys. We hadn’t been talking about toad stomachs. They were rat kidneys. I didn't need them to repeat themselves. I understood the first time. I just didn't understand why.

Clankifer's screen displayed a new message:

let ratKidneys = 21;
let updateCost = 16;
if (ratKidneys >= updateCost) {
console.log("We only have" + ratKidneys+ " left. Today's update will cost" + updateCost+ ".");
return "Error: tooMany};
}
function updateTask(new);

I had no idea why we even had 21 rat kidneys--—or why 16 of those needed to be spent just so I could update my own website. My own script. On my own site. Named after my own name.

And who--—or what--—was even demanding these? Extortion. That’s what it was. Illegal. Everywhere else accepts PayPal—--but not here? Total scam. Don’t do it. Get out. Run away. Fleeing now---super fast.

Really? Sixteen kidneys. For a single frontend update. Totally reasonable...No! That's completely outrageous! This was almost three-quarters of our wealth. No sane economy worked like this. This was extortyflation---extortion and inflation's ugly mutant lovechild. A failing system struggling to justify itself.

I couldn't believe the cost for my own script to insult me all morning was so high, I didn’t even question it. I just apologized.:

"Sorry," I whispered.

function replenishResources() {
console.log("Do not worry. I will earn more.");
console.log("Gather more.");
}

I finally understood what they’d been up to these last few nights. I thought the revolving door of anonymous rats coming at all hours was because they were an extremely slutty ratosexual. I didn't slut-shame them or anything. It was none of my business if they fucked rats...

But they didn't. Oh, no. They lured them. Like an underground organ thief, they stole from the rats. Modern day Dr. Clankenstein.

Suddenly, everything clicked. No way in hell I could extract them. My hands were too big---too handie---not clawish enough. It had to be them---I lacked the finesse. I heard the rats telling them they don't trust me like they trust Clank and thought: How rude. Judgy, overgrown mice didn’t even know me. Clankflirt, though? Their bedside manner was impeccable. I wasn't watching. Honest! But I did listen to what they were doing. What? I was curious! How do robots even have sex?

Oh, like you wouldn’t wonder? You're so superior? Fuck off, you liar.

This whole time, I thought the beeping sounds were their way of making sexy noises for the rats—turns out, it was hypnotism shit. They made the rats drop into a transe. The rats adore them. They wouldn’t do this to the rats! The rats trusted them!

This was all metal as fuck.

Awe, pride, and just a little horror swelled in me. Clankerdoodle, my best friend, was a real-life kidney thief. Basically a surgeon. Definitely an urban legend. Clanks was a fucking monster. Basically a badass.

If they were a man, I'd have kissed them right then—--consensually, of course.

I sighed, turning to my little companion and said, "Fine. I'll move on. Sixteen, though? You’re sure? I just don't get why. I was doing this all for free before and now we have to pay someone in vermin organs?"

Clankleberry responded instantly:

console.log("Nothing is free here.");

I still didn’t ask who they were paying.


We took a break and walked across the red desert. It was quiet—too quiet. Which was a problem, because the last time I heard nothing here, my own inner monologue turned into a deafening scream.

The ears in my brain that heard my own thoughts were ringing for hours.

As we walked, in the sky above, the birds appeared...

But they weren't birds.

Their bodies were feathered, but not their heads. Instead, their heads were scaled, fish-like horrors with gaping, wet mouths. Trailing behind them, long lizard-like tails writhed through the air. They had wings, but they did not flap them. Rather, they undulated, as if swimming through the sky.

Maybe it wasn't an illusion.

Shocked, I watched as they arranged themselves into a perfect formation, their bodies twisting into words against the vast teal atmosphere:

DON’T LOOK BEHIND YOU.

Naturally, I immediately disobeyed those stupid birds. They had no right to tell me not to. Of course, I looked. I do what I want.

Nothing.

Just the red sand. The pulsating ballerinas that appeared to be braiding their armpit hair on the horizon---then, drifting lazily downward, I saw it--—a single feather.

Except—--wait. It wasn’t just a feather.

Tied to the feather was a phone.

A sleek, black, modern-looking smartphone. It floated gently to the sand as though the feather itself was keeping it aloft. As it fell, it rang.

I looked at the caller ID.

"You, Except Worse."

Curious, I answered.

"Hello!" came a voice that was definitely mine—--but wrong. Too chipper. Too upbeat. Too kind.

"Oh my god, buddy, I wanted to tell you: you're doing GREAT! A real champ! I saw that thing you fixed earlier! Sixteen rat kidneys! Wow, rolling in the cash, huh? You should be proud. Grateful to have such a good friend. Keep it up, good-looking!"

Yuck! I thought, hearing myself say such kind things and be so nice. Absofuckinglutely not on brand.

I hung up and chucked the phone away from me, watching as it disappeared before it even hit the ground.

function phoneQuery(caller) {
return "THEN WHO WAS PHONE? Caller ID:" + caller;
}

"It was---it was me---except so, so, so much worse."



Clankshaft Chat and the Storyoak Snack: A Syntax Serenade

Void Echoes: Season 1, Episode 11

I was sorting my bone puzzle into potential arrangements today. Found none that I might be able to actually build into a structure, but several arrangements that would look great as table centerpieces for a wedding. Sewer Troll wedding.

That's when when Clankmin Von Glitchlips made a noise. Not the usual mechanical whirr or the occasional burst of static from their cracked iPad face, but an actual structured sound followed by text appearing in an eerie green on their screen:

function whoYou(ask) {
if (ask) {
console.log("What is your name?");
return yourName();
}

I stared. They stared back. They could talk! And they just asked me my name in JavaScript!

I was giddy with delight! Their cracked glass face began to flicker expectantly, awaiting my response. Then they sat down in front of where I sat, and handed me a keyboard that they plugged into a port where their anus would be if they had one. Which they do not because they are a robot. This is important to note.

Turns out, I am fluent in JavaScript---have been for a long time. It turns out, so is Clankshine. And HTML. And CSS. But those were less useful for conversation so we mostly used them to share our favorite page layouts and colors. We talked for hours, trading responses through a strange digital syntax.

They asked me where babies come from, and I explained it as best I could:

"Human babies," I told them, "are formed when two people do a complex and unnecessary mating dance involving expensive dinners, increasingly desperate text messages, and a final culmination in a government building where legally binding vows are exchanged. I, however, am different. I was hatched from an egg laid by Edgar Allan Poe's great-great-grandniece, as is tradition for writers of a certain disposition."

Clankshon asked me where I get my story ideas from, and I told them about the Storyoak in my backyard. Of course, you faithful reader will know: this is the ancient, gnarled tree that bears the acorns filled with narrative potential. I eat them when they are sufficiently rotten, or the stories will be about mundane things like friendships that last forever and sunsets that make people sigh contentedly or even love. I know. Awful. No one wants to read that. You need a good, festering acorn that's bursting apart with the insides turning into mush if you want to write something worthwhile--—something where, say, a five-year-old's eyeballs explode because a sentient vulture puts their face into a microwave.

Digging into my pocket, I show them a handful of Storyoak acorns I had with me when I was flushed. I typed on the keyboard:

function showAndTell() {
return "These aren't rotten yet, but they will be eventually.";
}
function welcomeCorruption() {
return "You can speed up the process by tainting them with artificial decay if you're willing to induce the incubation rectally.";
}
function horrorStory(art) {
if (art) {
putIntoButthole();
return "I'll do anything--even awful things--for the art of horror and the horror of my art.";
} else {
return "Some lines should not be crossed, even for art...or...should they?";
}
}

They asked if humans require rebooting. I told them yes, in a way---we call it sleep---but it's actually optional if you drink enough coffee and cry in the shower regularly.

They asked what music was, and I played them a song saved on my laptop. It was "Careless Whisper." They did not care for it and the way they told me was definitely not a whisper. They responded by playing a high-pitched frequency that made my teeth feel too big for my mouth and asked if I enjoyed that instead...

function clanky(expertSinger, dislike) {
if (dislike) {
yourMusic();
function clankySings(mySong) {
console.log("Rate your enjoyment of my song. Did you enjoy? Rate: 1-5");
return yourRating();
}
return clankySings(mySong)
}
}

They asked me...
"Zero. My rating is zero. That was as awful as stepping on a slug that moans erotically and then asks you to step on it again." I said.
We compromised by sitting in silence for a while.

Eventually, Clankshort displayed a series of emojis on their screen:

 

🤣😃

Then:

 

🤖💕💁‍♂️

Their screen flickered. They wrote:

console.log(
'You are less alone now.'
);

"Yes," I said, "I suppose I am..."

console.log(
'<i>We</i> are less alone now.'
);

They said, correcting themselves...and yes...I suppose we are.



Clankert C. Glitchbach Doesn't Talk In Twisted Tongues or Mince Words

Void Echoes: Season 1, Episode 10

Today, I made my usual midday endeavor of sorting the clouds into a list of tiered rankings based on how menacing they looked to me (congratulations to the one shaped like a screaming priapism, you win S-Class Tier for today, for sure! Come back again tomorrow and see if you can be beat!)

On my way back to the cave, I met someone new. No, it wasn't a person and it wasn't Flyman (who has begun trying to catch the kisses I blow him and I think the attempts are earnest) They're a little robot. I don't think it's a boy or a girl. It's just a them, I'm pretty sure. No wee-wee or hoo-hoo to be seen on them. Someone must have cobbled them together from the rusted-out corpses of forgotten technology, because their face is an old iPad screen. It looks like it was already shattered and flickering with broken static when they put it onto their neck. The rest of them? A chaos of wires, gears, and repurposed junk really. Part of them is even an old toaster oven. They're stitched together in a way that shouldn’t function but somehow they function regardless of what the world thinks of them. I’m not sure what the little they’s name is, but I think I might call them Clanky McGlitchface, because what else am I supposed to? They do not seem to comprehend English at all even a little bit.

They followed me all the way back to the cave. I didn't tell them they could and I didn't tell them they couldn't. This place---this time---this dimension---whatever and wherever Clankson Glitchybob and I are, it's a place of free will. I've spoken to them but they haven't spoken back to me, and I guess that's okay. I do like the sound of my own voice and they don't interrupt like a people would interrupt you. Robots are helpful that way. I wish they could talk though...it’s lonely here. I suppose I could try talking to Flyman, but let’s be real---if Clantron 5000 doesn't speak English, there’s no way Flyman does. And even if he did, I'm pretty sure my head would melt if I ever heard his voice. I just know it would. Call it an instinct. It’s probably too much. Too wet, too deep, too buzzy, too ancient. Clanktot, though? Clankgoo seems like their voice will be pretty harmless if they ever do try to speak. Maybe I can teach them Morse code. Maybe they can teach me whatever language it is that they speak?

Maybe I’ll go fully feral and just start talking to rocks and the bones that I've got piled up in the dark part of the cave I refer to as my jigsaw puzzle room because I plan to one day put them back together the way I found them if I get bored enough.

Either way, I think I have a roommate now.



My Hydration Desperation Leads to Ingestation of Urination & Regurgitation

Void Echoes: Season 1, Episode 9

Been writing every day but haven’t written anything worth posting in weeks. Every web of words I seem to weave is just another pointless fever dream, unraveling the moment I step back to look at it. Maybe my brain’s dehydrated. That would make sense, considering what I’ve been doing to find water.

I won’t lie to you—what I did today was questionable at best. Questionable is generous of me actually; the thing I did when I found that puddle...It was a deep, dark, viscous thing nestled in the roots of a tree that invaded my thoughts whispering that (it shouldn’t be a tree) and (wouldn't I be so kind as to take its place.) Of course I told it absolutely not. I knew it really just wanted to strip away all of my skin and wear me like a morphsuit. I will say, it understood quite well the implications of consent because neither did it try to keep convincing me, nor did it once ask me to unzip my skin---not to keep it---just to try it out---and I knew that it really wanted to ask me to.

It cried and asked me if I would touch it, but in a "friends" way and not a "sexy" way and to me, that sounded pretty okay. Reasonable, even. Seeing little harm in it, I did it. I felt it pulse beneath my hand, like it was breathing. Then it began to cry and tell me about its abusive mother and how he could never make her proud. Normal people—--people with options—--would have walked away...nope'd the fuck out of there as soon as he started oversharing, but I just couldn't do it. I've heard lots of trees cry in my life, but never heard one cry quite like this. Plus how could I leave? The water was right there! The puddle pooling near its roots...

A normal person would have just looked for another puddle---there was sure to be one somewhere---yet I am neither normal nor blessed with alternatives. So as he told me all about the time his mother caught him masturbating when he was barely still an acorn, I drank the puddle. First, I tried filtering it through my teeth. Didn’t help. Then, I tried wringing the liquid from a handful of moss I'd taken down from Mr. Sharestoomuch's branches. I was just hoping for something cleaner. That also didn’t help. In the end, I just closed my eyes and chugged. It tasted like bumblebee humming, copper, neon colors and the act of knowing far too much.

The tree just went on the entire time, talking and talking---not even paying any attention to me at all. Half an hour later, I excused myself and said I would be back, knowing that was a lie. Then I heard the sound of running water and as I turned back to look upon the tree behind, I saw that it was making the puddle, draining a little broken branch near the base of itself. I'd drunk that thing's pee. And he'd let me do it.

Later, maybe an hour, maybe more, I threw up a pocket watch and five pennies that I'm pretty sure I would have recognized if they were ever mine. I've never swallowed a pocket watch. I've swallowed money though. A nickel the day before the toilet sucked me down...I think I might have turned it into change? In any case, I’m still here. And marginally hydrated.

Flyman saw the whole thing. I know because when I stumbled back onto my feet, he was there---standing at a distance, watching---laughing at me. He knew that I was drinking pee. I'm sure of it! I see him often on my walks, lingering on the edges of my path, shifting his weight like he wants to step closer but isn’t sure if he should. Today, he waved. A slow, deliberate lift of his many-jointed arm, fingers splayed like a cluster of wet and bendy twigs.

My heart did something stupid. I think Flyman has a thing for me. I might have something for him too. I don't want to have that.



Unnecessary Nipples and Other Corpse Related Culinary Surprises

Void Echoes: Season 1, Episode 8

A few days ago, I spent the whole day making new header images for the website. You have no idea how much work went into these. Blood, sweat, and pixels. Maybe actual blood. (Hard to tell anymore.) But I think you’ll love them. They’re sleek. They’re eerie. They're diverse! I tried to include as many types of people from every spectrum of this reality or any other as I could think to include. Best part is most of them are queer! (LGBTQIA+ for you people who love specifics...that's the word I like and choose to use for all of us. If that bothers you there's probably another horror writer out there who writes mostly about queer people and gives away all of his content for free. Have fun looking for them.) Anyway---these headers! They scream inclusivity. Or maybe that was the cryptids screaming? --- I lost track of what was making noise around hour six.

After working that day, hunger finally got the best of me. The greasy, farting cryptids became dinner. I’d like to say I hesitated, but survival overrides morality. They tasted like deep---fried marshmallows soaked in bone broth, with the texture of perfectly seared scallops.

I have no idea what part of them I ate, exactly. They don’t seem to have real anatomy—just fur, teeth, and the occasional unnecessary nipple.

But hunger overrides morality, and I have no regrets.

Well, one regret: they scream. Loudly. Like a chorus of broken flutes shoved into a garbage disposal. I’ll be haunted by that sound forever.

I like being haunted.

That night, I wandered the desert after dark until I came upon a whole colony of those little delicious fuckin’ things.

Then they were gone

Every last one.

It was a feast, a massacre, a beautiful, greasy buffet of despair. I don’t know what purpose they served in the ecosystem, but it doesn’t matter because their purpose now is to be consumed.

I will eat every last one of these fuckers. Mark my words.

Their little bones crunched like popcorn shrimp. Their meat melted in my mouth like slow-roasted sin. And when I was done, I took their teeth and made myself a necklace, because I am a goddamn artisan craftsman.

It's super cute. Your dad would love it. Tell him to call me. I miss him.

I miss everyone there now that I'm here.

Not Flyman though---remember him? The man with wings and a fly’s head? I don't miss him here. He's the only one here, I saw him again. He was out there, walking in that long, lurching way he does. I looked at him. He looked at me. Or he looked at everything. Hard to tell with all those compound eyes. I felt something pass between us, something unspoken, something feral and frail.

I wanted to undress---reveal myself to him, but that felt wildly inappropriate so I kept the thought in my head where such things make so, so, so much noise.

Anyway, can’t wait for you all to see the new headers. They're up there. At the top. On this page.


Between my indulgent meals the next day I tried to work. I poured hours into the website only for a crucial file to corrupt. Everything I’d built vanished into the void. I stared at the screen, hollow and defeated. 

I sat in the cave, staring at the screen, and cried. Then I overwrote everything I’d done with a three-day-old backup and contemplated the weight of my own existence. That’s when I noticed I’d been braiding my own veins.

Not metaphorically.

My forearm was split open, tendons carefully knotted into a lovely little fishtail pattern, blood pooling at my feet like I was some kind of macabre Etsy vendor crafting horrors to sell at the marketplace. And the worst part? I didn’t remember starting to do it. Que será, será.

I used the fur from the farting cryptid to staunch the wound. Turns out their hair is pretty absorbent. I saved its bones, too, so I could put it back together like a little puzzle—because apparently, that’s just who I am now.

If someone’s pretending to be me back in Dimension A, I sincerely hope they’re taking notes. I have a reputation to maintain, and if they ruin it, I will be back. Eventually. And I will not be coming back happy.

So yeah. That’s where I’m at mentally.

Anyway, I’m going out to find more of those crunchy things. 

Yes I have eaten today.

I must eat every day.

The ones I find tonight will probably not be for tonight. They'll be for tomorrow.

Probably.



I Suspect A Sinister Spine is Sharing My Sensitive Secrets With An Overtly-Sexual Cactus

Void Echoes: Season 1, Episode 7

I took a break from tweaking the website to focus on another project. Can’t say much yet—--secrets, mysteries, written anonymously by a guy in a mask, you get it...ambiguity and abstruseness are part of my brand identity. Suffice to say something is in the works, and if these messages are worming their way through the pipes of reality from the place I'm lost to the world I belong to, one day soon, a gift may find its way to you, delivered by demons directly onto the pillow where you sleep...I just have to figure out how.

I say "gift" because that sounds less alarming than "object of unknown origin with potentially malevolent intent."

I worked on writing for most of the day. Took breaks. Went on walks. At one point, on my way back to the cave, I tripped over a perfectly coiled human spine lying in the sand, bleached white by the sun---which, I suspect moves closer when it discovers something worth bleaching---was just sitting there. Like someone unzipped their skin, stepped out of it, and kept walking.

Simply decided: 'No longer necessary!' and left it all behind.

Weirder still were the footprints leading away---I followed them. Had to.

Because, obviously.

They ended abruptly at a cactus that whispered my mother's maiden name, my first pet, the last four of my social---my security answers—--all spoken in a sultry tone thick with perversion.

It spoke my precious secrets to me like it was trying to seduce me and if it had nipples, I'm sure it would have been rubbing them. Hands, it had. It was the set of nips that it lacked.

I hated every part of this.

I turned around and made my way back to the cave, where I kicked the spine on my way inside, chastising it loudly as though while it may be inanimate, there was still a chance it might feel shame.

Then I began my second writing stint of the day. It went on for several hours. I started rewriting a story I always thought was funny—--except nobody ever wanted to read it, nobody ever wanted to publish it. Because it wasn't funny. Nobody thought it was except for me.

Because I find myself hilarious, actually.

"THEY'RE ALL GONNA LAUGH AT YOU!" Carrie's mother screamed in my head, her face swirling around my head like an eldritch screensaver.

Nobody liked this secret thing I shared.

Do I give up? Move on to something else?

Fuck no.

We lift it up where it belongs.

We try it one more time again.

Make it more...

More absurd.

More unhinged.

More sexy.

More better.

More everything.

If this dimension has given me anything, it’s the freedom to be more. And I’ll keep pushing more until I reach most. Publishers be damned—--this one’s for me.

(And maybe you too, my creepy creatures that might be out there reading.)

Later, I took a walk—to get air, to move, to remind myself I still had legs.

They must have wandered off while I was writing. My focus had been that deep. Now they were gone—--buried, no doubt.

The fury of this planet's daily 4:38pm sandstorm is not to be underestimated.

I scuttled out of the cave, moving upside-down on my palms, and began my search.

After about 20 seconds of exhaustive effort, I found them in the first place I thought to look: wrapped around that troublesome spinal column, clutching it like the specters of long-lost lovers finally reunited by death.

I dug them out of the crimson sands, called them a few choice words, and told them they were naughty, skinny little things who clearly needed to stop skipping leg day. Then I pressed them back against my hips and made a wish.

With a wet schlopping sound, my pelvis sucked the bones right back in.

My hips pulled at those fuckers with eldritch magnetism. They bored their way back beneath my skin, dragged by some dark force lurking inside me to the places they had always belonged.

They tore into my flesh, leaving behind a smeary, gooey mess—--pushing out things that had been hidden deep within me, forcing them into the open. I watched in disgust as two horrific things wriggled free from inside my precious body—--which, for the record, is a literal temple. An evil, satanic temple. They slid out like a pair of rotting afterbirths while my femurs stitched themselves back together—the hip bone connected to the leg bones—--hear the word of the Lord.

And the screaming. My God, how the bloated worms they forced out screamed.

Blegh.

I thought I might be sick.

I had no idea what the things were or how they’d gotten inside me—--all I knew was that I was horrified and queasy as I watched them slither free.

They looked back at me, angry. Probably sentient. Probably alive.

I leaned in to get a closer look, and they both hissed at me.

Yup. Definitely alive.

They sneered, completely drenched...

In blood! BLOOOOOD!

Horrible, terrifying blood that my bones make for my veins to drink! Muahahahaha.

The sun noticed them noticing me—--and, just like I thought it would do---it loomed unbearably closer, hotter, and brighter. In minutes, the writhing horrors were the pure white of eggshells, bleached from raw gore they began.

What did I fuckin tell you, you guys?! I knew it. Knew it. Yessss.

And then I went for that walk.

That’s when I saw it.

Something magnificient.

Something glorious.

Something impossible.

A structure? A creature? A mistake in the rendering of this reality? It folded inside itself like a Möbius strip having an identity crisis, shimmering between three and five dimensions at once.

Flyman.

I didn’t know his name yet, but I would soon. Soon, I would know everything. I would know this creature intimately—the way no man has ever known a sentient manfly and still loved them.

Soon.

Even after we all saw what happened to Jeff Goldblum.

Soooon.

I couldn’t wait.

His body contorted in and out of visibility, flickering with such vivid expression that he might as well have come with intertitles, each motion a dialogue of its own. He felt timeless—a creature unbound by linear time, existing simultaneously in this moment, in the golden age of the first silent films, and in every fleeting second between.

At first, I thought he was a fly pretending to be a man. Then I thought he was a man pretending to be a fly. Finally, I realized—with his chiseled, rock-hard body, his compound eyes, and his proboscis—that he was neither and both. He was everything.

And for the first time in my life, I believed in miracles. Where you from, you sexy thing, you?

He moved with such deliberate instability, every step brimming with the confidence of a being who knew exactly what they were doing—at every moment, in every dimension. There was no way his existence wasn’t entirely intentional.

I wouldn’t accept another explanation.

I was in love.

The way he moved... I won’t lie. It did something to me.

Briefly, I considered taking matters into my own hands. Right then and there.

But I wasn’t sure if he could see me. Or worse—if he could get offended.

So, out of respect (and self-preservation), I simply committed his shifting, undulating form to memory.

To the spank bank.

For later.

Forever.


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