Every Bad Thing That Could Possibly Happen

Strange stories of terrible fates, for both kids and adults. 

[every-bad-thing]

Contents

Table of Contents

What Is This Series 2

10.20.22 - You Can’t Ignore It

10.27.22 - You’re Very Good Real Estate

11.03.22 - You’re in Debt to the Fae

11.11.22 - Your Mouth Grows Mouths

11.17.22 - There’s a Remarkable Resemblance

12.1.22 - You Think Things Could Improve at Least Somewhat

12.8.22 - You Hear Something at Night

12.15.22 - Ghosts are Boring

12.22.22 - You Can’t Get Rid of Him

1.12.23 - You’re Told Everything Will Be Okay

1.20.23 - You Can’t Get Anyone’s Attention

1.26.23 - You’re Stuck in the Bathroom

2.9.23 - You’re Too Human

2.23.23 - Your Parents Are Turning Into Cacti

3.2.23 - You’re Your Own Goldfish

3.9.23 - You Never Die, Ever

3.16.23 - You’re Not a Cockroach

3.23.23 - Where Wolf?

3.30.23 - You Run Out of Sky

Series 1 4.6.22 - You’re Told Not to Think About It

4.13.22 - You Get One Donkey a Week, Every Week, for Life

4.20.22 - Your Brother Falls in a Puddle

4.27.22 - You’re Followed by Clowns

4.28.22 - BONUS STORY - You Swallow a Bug

5.4.22 - You Are Not a Good Boy

5.11.22 -You Learn Life is Suffering

5.18.22 - You Find Out What Happens When They Get You

5.25.22 - You Anger a Goose

6.1.22 - Your Parents Aren’t Themselves

6.8.22 - You Didn't Pay Attention in Math

6.15.22 - You Have an Embarrassing Recording

6.22.22 - You Grow a Weird Hair

6.29.22 - You’re Being Awfully Presumptuous

7.6.22 - Giraffe Power

7.13.22 - You See a Scary Shadow

7.20.22 - You Ruin Christmas

7.28,22 - You Have a Boring Cat

8.3.22 - You’re Really, Really Hungry

8.10.22 - You Meet a Gorilla

8.17.22 - You’re This Title

[every-bad-thing]

If you liked these stories...

I've put my novel, Time's Orphans, on Patreon as a serial because I'm tired of it sitting on my hard drive collecting dust. It's free to read, paying subscribers just get new posts one week early, plus some additional content (e.g. alternate chapters, worldbuilding explanations, etc.) Read Time's Orphans here

What if your entire timeline was wrong? What if your world was never meant to exist? What if your entire reality is the result of rogue time travelers who altered history and changed everything? And what if you fought for it anyway?

In Time's Orphans, the Bureau of Temporal Affairs protects the Status Quo from its headquarters at the end of the world. Its agents, recruited from across time, find and correct temporal paradoxes before they attract 4D entities that destabilize reality. Luiz Tizok, zapped fresh from his ostensible death in 2108 AD, has just become its newest one. He has joined just in time for the Bureau to face its greatest challenge yet. For unknown to them, the Loose Ends are gathering. They are the survivors of whole timelines erased by the Bureau's mission to maintain Status Quo, refugees from histories that no longer exist. Drawn from a vast range of alternate worlds, they are united only by a shared hatred of that which destroyed everything they ever knew and loved and forced them into a reality not their own: the Bureau. Soon they shall strike, and all of time will hang in the balance. The consequences of their struggle will be historic.

[every-bad-thing]

You Run Out of Sky

(modified from "Stars glitter in the night sky above Earth's atmospheric glow" by NASA Johnson is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.) On a clear, cold night you notice: the sky is missing some stars. There are still thousands and thousands and thousands, of course. But some seem strangely absent. Like Orion's Belt: everything else is there, but the center belt piece isn't. Or the Big Dipper: there were only three stars in the handle. And the North Star was nowhere to be found. There must be some light obscuring them, you think, maybe reflected off the moon. But a few nights pass, and though the moon gets slimmer, the stars never return. Maybe it's your angle. That must be it. So, just to be sure, you walk around for a while. You still can't see them. In fact, you notice even more stars missing: Orion doesn't even have a belt anymore, and the Big Dipper lost another star in its handle. You start taking pictures of the night sky regularly. Looking through them all a few weeks later confirms what you suspected. It's tough to see, but every night there are fewer stars. One may be there one night, but the next it's just an empty black space. From what you can tell, about four or five stars disappear per night. Which of course leaves all the rest that still fill the sky, but that doesn't mean you're not concerned.

You do what most people do today and search the Internet to see if anyone else has seen this. You find an academic paper--a whole series of academic papers, really--written by scientists talking about this very thing. This is how you find out this has apparently been going on for the past two years. There have already been several conferences on the matter, and the EU formed a task force to investigate it last February. How did you never find out about this? Well, you reason, you never searched for whether the stars are disappearing from the night sky before either. You just kind of assumed, like everyone else besides these scientists apparently, they weren't.

With some effort you read the papers and find out that the scientists have no idea why this is happening either. Maybe some chain reaction caused by a dying star? Maybe rogue black holes? Maybe anti-matter? Maybe some devastating alien war? Maybe a massive star-eating space creature? There's a lot of theories. No facts. And absolutely no clue on what to do about it, or even if there is anything that can be done about it or should be done about it. No one really knows anything.

( "Stars in the Night Sky" by thecrazyfilmgirl is licensed under CC BY 2.0. ) A few more months pass and more stars are gone from the sky. You keep taking pictures. Now it seems stars are disappearing about ten or fifteen at a time. Whole constellations are wiped out. The night sky is now pocked with empty voids like holes in a sheet. One day you watch a bunch of scientists on the news saying they still don't know why the stars are vanishing. The reporter looks surprised and says wait a minute, the stars are vanishing? And the scientists look back and ask how did you not know about this? We've been working on this problem for almost three years! There's over 120 peer reviewed articles on the subject, there's another conference planned in Geneva next March, we're forming a consortium with astronomers in China and the US, like, how is this all news? The reporter shrugs.

A year passes. The sky is a lot more empty than it was before and it's getting emptier. At this point there are maybe half as many as there used to be. Hundreds are going missing every single night. They seem to go in clumps now, whole sections of the sky emptied out at once. You've been following this on the news pretty intensely. But every time you mention it to someone else--at a party or at work or chatting with someone on line at the grocery store--they're always so surprised. The stars? They're really disappearing? Sometimes it happens at night and you can actually point it out to them. Whenever you do, their eyes always go wide and they always say they never really noticed before. They usually ask, do the scientists know what's going on? You tell them that the consortium, which now includes scientists from all over the world, has managed to rule out a lot of theories (like, it can't be black holes because we don't see light bending near the sites of the disappearances) but don't really have solid answers. Maybe at the next conference in Sao Paolo.

Another year passes and the sky is almost completely empty, just a small sprinkling of stars left remaining. And then, one night, there were none at all. This is the point where, suddenly, everyone is starts freaking out, and asking what does this mean, and what do they do, and why did no one tell them, why are they just finding out about this now. Some people, including yourself, say they've known about this for years and there's been all sorts of things written about it, but they are seen as annoying and not listened to at all. Because why would they? The stars are gone and all those scientists that everyone said was so smart couldn't do nothin' about it neither, people tend to say in different ways. Where'd all those smarts getcha? Huh? Because those stars are gone!

They lash out because they're scared and confused, not because they're really mean people (with exceptions, of course). Still, they do have a point. What now? There's no more stars except our own, apparently the last star in existence. Everything else is a dark and empty void. Telescopes pick up nothing. Radio scans pick up nothing. Heat maps show just a uniform cold darkness. Why were we last? Was it something to do with our star, our solar system, us? Or was it completely random? The scientists had no answers. But they knew, soon, they'd have at least one. Because now that ours is the only star left, it's only a matter of time before whatever got all the others comes for ours too. And as much as people everywhere develop a sick feeling of cosmic dread, they're at least looking forward to finally finding out what it is.

Until then, however, all anyone can do is wait. It will come eventually. Whatever it is. Every Terrible Thing That Could Possibly Ever Happen will return. Eventually.

[every-bad-thing]

Where Wolf?

( "Werewolf" by San Diego Shooter is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. )

You don't think this should be that difficult, but apparently it is. All you want—you tell people as you travel the globe—is to find a werewolf, capture it, prove its existence and amaze the world. You don't know why people find this so confusing. It shouldn't be that difficult to understand. You're looking for a person who, every full moon, turns into a giant wolf beast that tears across the countryside, causing mayhem and generally wrecking up the place. You don't even need a specific werewolf. Any werewolf, really, would be enough. But no. Every time—EVERY EVERY.SINGLE.TIME—you think maybe this is it, you've finally found a werewolf, you find, no, it's not, and whoever gave you whatever lead you followed, once again, didn't understand you.

The first time you think, okay, maybe you weren't being clear enough. That was the time you were in northern England, Durham County to be precise, tracking the werewolf by the river bank, right where the villagers had said it would be. In the light of the full moon, you set a snare and place inside it a big, juicy steak. Before long, you hear it spring and your heart soars. But what you find is not some nine foot tall shag carpet of death, but a regular wolf, struggling in your trap. The villagers cheer and say you did it, you caught the werewolf! You say you didn't, that's just a regular wolf, but the villagers point out it was right by the banks of the River Were. Therefore: Were Wolf. Later on, biologists are amazed that wolves are still around northern England, as everyone thought they'd been extinct since about the 18th century. The discovery of these wild wolves, after all this time, well it's practically a miracle. But you don't care. It's not the werewolf you were thinking of.

The second time you decide to be much more specific in what it was you were seeking. This time you're in a mall, one of the last in America, and you tell passersby that you've heard there's a giant wolf man in this area—not a regular wolf, you continually stress—and ask whether they've seen anything like that here. For the first few hours, you find nothing, no one having seen anything unusual save the presence of a thriving mall in an area with very little population density. This is likely because it is daytime. But eventually night falls and the moon rises. Now you ask and people say, yes, it's at the other end of the mall and you need to hurry! You run, pushing through the inexplicably dense crowds and even knocking over a few senior citizens, to find there is indeed a giant wolf man. It's no costume or robot, it's the real deal. The beast stands nine feet tall, with glowing red eyes and razor sharp teeth and it has all sorts of deals and discounts for YOU! Only the Warewolf, you find out, offers quality appliances and home goods for affordable prices but only on a full moon. Otherwise, you find, he is a mild mannered insurance adjuster. Despite going home with a new microwave, which cost only half what it does at other stores, you are not impressed. You were not looking for a wolf creature hawking wares. You were looking for a werewolf. How hard is this to understand?

( "WOLF MAN, THE - Promo - 1195-29AD - Lon Chaney - (Monster) - 1941 - Cropped for eyes" by monstersforsale is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0. ) The third time you think, okay, you're going to be VERY clear. You hold a picture of celebrated 1940s actor Lon Chaney Jr. in perhaps his most famous role The Wolf Man, then ask: have you seen a werewolf? People's eyes flash with recognition and say they have indeed seen someone like that before: in Paris! So, to the City of Lights you go, where you get closer and closer to your target. A woman leaning against a doorframe smoking a cigarette says yes, yes, she has seen this, how you say, wolf person. She gestures in the air with her Gauloise and says it can be found at the Avenue Montaigne. You ride there on a small scooter, your black and white striped scarf fluttering behind you. By the time you reach your destination, there is already quite a scene. You push your way through the dense crowd of onlookers to see what everyone is gawking at. It's a wolf person who highly resembles Lon Chaney Jr. except much bigger. And they are wearing an an over-the-shoulder Lanvin piece with Louis Vuitton shoes, a Givenchy bag, and a Hermes leather jacket. The wolf wears it all with style so intense it intimidates you immediately. You find yourself unable to appreciate the outfit fully.

Similar sets of circumstances lead to the wolf who doubles as a low-headed dam that can regulate river flow and elevation (the weir wolf); the wolf who is, in actuality, ten wolves linked together in a psychic hive mind (the we're wolf); the wolf that makes quite a bit of pocket money selling Tupperware (the 'Ware wolf, though this one you feel is kind of a stretch), and the wolf that exists in the form of software specifically related to wolves (wolfware).

The world is, quite frankly, amazed at all your discoveries. But you're not. You never found what you were looking for. The werewolf, the real actual true werewolf, continues to elude you. You feel more and more lost by the day.

And then, during a full moon, you find yourself transformed. Your hair grows, your flesh stretches and warps, and your teeth grow into sharp knife-like fangs. But you're still completely lost. With growing horror you realize that so many days of asking where is this wolf, where do I find this wolf, where do I capture this wolf has turned you into something else. Something inhuman. Something that's still not a werewolf. No. You realize, as you wander around, no idea where you're going, you are now... The Wherewolf.

( "Wolf's Moon" by Anindo Ghosh is licensed under CC BY 2.0. )

[every-bad-thing]

You’re Not a Cockroach

( "messy bed" by hosullivan is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. ) As you awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, you found yourself NOT transformed in your bed into a gigantic insect. You were still yourself. The only one, in fact, who was. Everyone else had become giant cockroaches. You thought at first it was just your family. Then you looked outside, at the streets teeming with human-size bugs, and thought maybe it was just your neighborhood. Then you looked at a few webcams online and hoped it was just your country. Then you went through every live news feed you could and concluded it was everyone. As far as you could tell, everyone in the world had become a giant cockroach. Except for you. No idea why. It just, apparently, is.

You don't seem to be in any danger at least. The cockroaches (the people?), despite being five to six feet long, aren't ravenous beasts or anything. They just move around, going about their lives. You're not sure whether they can understand you when you talk, if they even perceive you as what they used to be. You just generally leave each other alone. You try to learn as much as you can while the power plants still work and the Internet's still on. The event seemed to happen in the middle of the night, 2:45 a.m., based on what you see. That's the point where all activity stops, everywhere. You can't find a single social media post, a single video, a single forum topic, a single meme--nothing at all past that point, except for webcams that were left to stream. A few of them show it as it happened: someone would be talking about something or other and suddenly, in a flash of light, they're a cockroach, abandoning their laptops.

Power lasts for only two more days. You anticipated this. You'd read all about what to expect when civilization collapses. While the majority of it turned out to be entirely unsuited to the current situation, you at least knew things like how to make a fire, create a shelter, dress a wound, and cook a meal. Your bag is packed with survival gear, food, bandages, disinfectant, some over the counter medicine and a notebook. You put it on and go off into the world. You're looking for answers. Why is everyone else a cockroach? Why are you not? How can this be reversed? It's somewhere out there in the world, you think, a reason for all this.

( "Ghost city - Empty streets" by Malik_Braun is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. ) You walk, bike, and sometimes (though only short distances before you hit some sort of roadblock) drive. You travel to abandoned government offices, full of moldy records and sterile labs. You travel to military bases, stuffed with weapons and overrun with crabgrass. You travel to holy places, and are filled with their silence. Nowhere do you find answers. You do find some interesting things, at least. You read through documents at the White House and learn which presidents had to undergo exorcisms and when. You find a giant mech suit in a naval yard, and have a little fun with it doing jumps. You discover the Vatican has already had the Holy Grail for a few hundred years at least. But nothing about the mass transformation of the entire world population into cockroaches, with the exception of you.

Years pass. Society moves on. Everyone, despite being giant insects, apparently are still intelligent. They were just, well, very surprised and panicked when they initially woke up that morning. Once they had time to calm down, things started to proceed. Since their old human mouths were out of the question, everyone figured out how to communicate using their new insect bodies, eventually relying on a combination of jaw clicks and wing vibrations to convey meaning. They didn't have hands anymore, so they couldn't use any of their old technologies, but they could they could manipulate some basic tools using just their legs, and with that created new technologies. Their digestive systems had changed, and that led to food changing too--restaurants began to open serving piles of what seems, to your mind, rotting garbage.

In just a few years, society had fully recovered. Not unchanged, though. Everything at this point is built for cockroaches. It's tough for you to get around because you can't stick to walls. It's tough to find food you can eat without getting sick. It's tough to even communicate, having to rely on crude pantomime the majority of the time. And it's beyond tough--it's practically impossible--to find work. You've moved back in with your family in the meanwhile. Well, more you just kind of showed up and all the roaches in the house (you're pretty sure this was your house...) seemed to let you stay. You've taken up residence in a small room upstairs. Life is, you have to admit, kind of depressing. There's no one to talk to. Nothing to do. The roaches don't really interact with you at all. You're just kind of there to them -- something they tolerate. Of course, you think, you could also be just projecting your feelings onto them since they can't communicate. Either way, it's not nice.

( "What Is A Cockroach Good For?" by Cockroach Facts is licensed under CC BY 2.0. ) You watch life go on. You can't understand a thing they're doing but on the news you see roaches huddled in stock markets, roaches running marathons, roaches walking down the red carpet, roaches debating in Congress, roaches flying drones to bomb other roaches thousands of miles away, and other signs of what, by some definitions, one might call civilization. This is all on a TV that's about two feet off the ground, in order to be eye level with roach viewers. The entire world is passing you by. You're never in danger, really. You're just not really part of the story anymore. Even as an extra. It's all roaches now. Or, more accurately, the people who became roaches. You wish, so hard, every night, to be a part of it. You always wake up, knowing you're not.

Until, as you awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, you find yourself transformed in your bed into a gigantic insect! Earlier this would have been the cause of much distress, but now it is for celebration! You take your new roach body out into the living room, where your family is sitting. They're just like you remember them. Human. They have the news on, everyone hunched downward to see the TV. Everyone who was a roach, apparently, has become human again. And as a giant roach, the only one in the world now, you sit and you think and you wonder why.

[every-bad-thing]

You Never Die, Ever

( "Infinity - 008/365" by Long Road Photography (formerly Aff) is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. ) You never, ever, ever, ever die. You live forever. And we really do mean forever. Nations will fall, new ones will rise, and those will fall too. You'll still be alive. Religions will stretch and skew and merge and split and die and revive and die again and revive again. You'll still be alive. The wind will grind the mountains to sand, the surf will consume the shore, and the lakes will dry into deserts. And you'll still be alive. That means you will see all these things and more.

You live long enough to see terrible new weapons produced, and to see them used in terrible new wars. You live long enough to see this used as a reason to produce more terrible weapons still, which are used in more terrible wars still. You live long enough to see this cycle repeat, over and over and over. New wars create new weapons. New weapons create new wars.

Eventually, there's a weapon that's just too terrible, used in a war that's just too terrible. The destruction sweeps across the planet, and most die right away. A few, though, manage to survive. They band together to form new families. The new families band together to form new villages. The new villages band together to form new nations which, after a few thousand years, destroy each again, leaving just a few survivors to eventually rebuild their nations and destroy each other once more.

This continues on about five or six more times (you've kind of lost count) before everyone is well and truly gone, no survivors left to rebuild and repeat the process. You are the last human being on Earth. Because you will live forever.

You live long enough to see nature reclaim all traces that humans were once there, worn down first to ruins then to stone then to dirt. And you live long enough to see squids crawl up onto dry land. You see them get better at staying there. You see their bodies change and adapt. You see them start to make tools. You see them start to tame fire. You see them start making art on cave walls. You see them build villages, then towns, then cities, then kingdoms, then nations. You see their leaders address crowds, waving tentacles and speaking a language that's mostly clicks and hisses. You see them make terrible weapons and fight terrible wars. You see them eventually wipe everything out. You see a few survivors eventually form new nations that eventually make new weapons to use in new wars and eventually wipe everything out again. You see the squids continue this cycle, over and over again, and are impressed when they last longer than the humans did. 10. You remembered to count this time.

( "Nuclear Blast 1945" by thw05 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. ) You live long enough to see new animals evolve and take their place. You witness the rise of: ants, ferns, mold, another kind of mold, a third kind of mold, scallops, oysters, trees, something that looks like a tree but is really an animal, fish, cyborg fish, robot fish, a kind of intelligent shade of blue that eats radiation, stones with fanged mouths that roll to get around, swarms of flying insects that combine their intelligence into a singular ego, something that looks like an animal but is really a tree, hot dogs, living metal, magma people, bacteria, and thick clouds of sulfur that love poetry. And every time is the same. They build villages, then towns, then cities, then kingdoms, then nations. And then they destroy each other. And then they regroup. And then they destroy each other again. You would have sworn the magma people would last the longest, but they only got through three cycles, less than even humans! Turns out, it was the hot dogs that survived longer than anyone else: 29 cycles. You are extremely impressed.

You live long enough for the planet to become cold, barren and lifeless, all these cycles now nothing more than a distant memory. It's a lonely place. There isn't much to do. You spend your time just walking around, seeing the sights. This is pretty entertaining for a few thousand years because you get to see how the landscape changes. But eventually you get bored. You feel like you've seen everything there is to see on this planet. And you're still here. You wait for the sun to blow up. You wait for a long, long, long, long, long, long, loooooooooooong time. But eventually it happens.

You watch the sun get bigger and bigger in the sky until the entire planet is engulfed in its flames. And you're still alive. Inside the sun. It's kind of hot but otherwise you're okay, because you will live forever. You walk around a while and decide this is even more boring than Earth, because at least Earth had some interesting geography, all there is here is fire. Look up? Fire. Look down? Fire. Look left, right, backwards, forwards? More fire. You realize now you have to wait for the flames to die down, which winds up taking a few million years. While you wait, you talk to yourself, to the dying sun, to the memories of all the people, squids and other entities you've encountered on your never-ending journey through life.

Eventually, though, the heat dies down and the sun gets cold. Now there's not even flames to look at. Just great. You wait some more. The cold core of matter that used to be the sun starts to chip away into the cosmic void, little by agonizing little, until it's half the size it used to be, then a third, then a quarter, and eventually you're just standing on something that's about as big as a beach ball. Eventually even that dissolves and you're left just floating through the vast emptiness of space.

( "Tarantula Nebula Hubble combi" by ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Murray, E. Sabbi Acknowledgement: Y.-H. Chu is licensed under CC BY 4.0. ) Sometimes an alien picks you up. Turns out there's a lot of them out there, but space is just so big they're easy to miss. Some of them have nations that span the very stars, vast empires with giant spaceships that patrol the skies of countless planets. Inevitably, they destroy each other too. Sometimes it happens quickly, other times it takes thousands of years, but whenever it does happen, the devastation consumes big chunks of the galaxy, burning millions of planets over millions of light years with terrible energies. And then you're left floating in space once more, until the next set of aliens pick you up, and you see it all happen again.

You don't always wind up with aliens. Sometimes you drift into a star and wait for it to blow up and dissolve. Sometimes you land on an asteroid and ride it through the galaxy. Once you fell into a black hole and it took billions of years for it to evaporate and you to escape.

This all goes on for, oh, as long as the universe does. By the time it's all over, you've seen every star fade out, you've seen every black hole evaporate, you've even seen space turn from black to dark blue. It's been eons since you've seen any matter, let alone life. Your mind has long ago joined the cosmic oneness of the universe, everything you know, everything you are, attuned only to the existence that extends outwards in all directions to the point where it is near impossible to tell where you end and the rest of the universe begins. You are simply, yourself, the universe. It was the only way to deal with the boredom. But you shake yourself out of it once you realize that, yes, it's finally happening. The universe is coming to an end and, perhaps, you with it. You close your eyes as space collapses, waiting for the sweet embrace of nothingness, the last thing in existence to ever die.

Nothing happens.

You open your eyes. There's nothing. Not even space. Just... Nothingness. It's not hot or cold because temperature is a thing. It's not dark or bright because light is a thing. It's not good or bad because those are things too. You've just never seen so much nothing. You wait. You don't know how long. There's no more time after all, since time is a thing. And so either eventually or suddenly or something in-between, you hear it. A bang. A big bang. The biggest bang, in fact, in all creation. Time comes back into existence around you. Then space comes into existence around you. Then the stars, the planets, the asteroids, the aliens, the nations, the weapons, the wars, the cycles--everything.

You will see it all over again. Because you will live forever.

(CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=599657)

[every-bad-thing]

You’re Your Own Goldfish

( "goldfish" by josullivan.59 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. ) You, like many millions of people before you, buy a goldfish in a large bowl. It does all the typical goldfish things: swim around, float around, look around. You take care of it in the way millions before you have taken care of them. You feed it flakes every morning and clean its bowl every week and have the occasional one-sided conversation with it. It's nice having it around. Sure, it's just a fish, but its presence adds an element of life to your room, however small. You often wonder what it's thinking. You hear goldfish have only a five second memory. Seeing it swim around the same bowl day after day, you really hope it's true.

You spend a lot of time staring at it. Eventually you realize it spends a lot of time staring at you too, its fishy gaze always following you around. It will look your way as soon as you enter the room and slowly turn as you move about, keeping you always at the front of its vision. You've walked back and forth a few times, to see whether it's really you it's looking at, and each time confirm that, yes, it is looking at you and only you. It starts making you uncomfortable once you notice. Even when you're not looking at the fish, you can feel its stare on your back, never letting you forget it's there. It's creepy, but that's pretty much it. After a little hesitation, you go about your days as normal. The fish keeps staring, but you don't really care anymore.

Years pass. You keep taking care of it: feeding it flakes in the morning, cleaning its bowl every week. The fish is still doing its intense, intelligent gaze and now you think it's kind of cute. Your fish likes you. And why not? You take very good care of it. That must be why it's lived such a long time--much longer than you'd think a goldfish would. So then you're surprised when, one morning, you spot a strange growth on the top of its head. It starts out almost invisible, but within a week balloons to the size of a pearl, which on this fish is rather large. You've never seen anything like it, in or out of water. It glows with a brilliant light that shifts rapidly from one color to the next, pulsing out shades of red, green, blue, gold and every shade between them. It lights up the water, making it shine like a sparkling star.

You kneel down next to the bowl to take a closer look, your eyes squinting against the brightness. The fish floats right up against the glass and raises its gaze to you. You stare at each other and the light gets stronger. You want to look away, to close your eyes, but you can't do either, it's like your body won't listen. Soon, your entire world goes white as searing pain beams down your face and into your body, which is now wracked with convulsions. You can't see a thing, but you feel yourself go limp and fall down. You expect to hit the floor but instead crash through a pool of water, like some hole to the sea had been waiting below you. You struggle and flail for a moment, your heart beating fast, but pause when you realize you can still breathe. You don't know how this can be, but you calm down a little. You're not drowning. You feel better. That stops when you finally open your eyes.

You see your room, but from a much different angle. Everything is strange and distorted. Lines are curved, and proportions are off, everything looking much bigger than it should. Suddenly, your entire perspective shifts as you feel the water move around you. It feels like you're moving up, so very fast, until something huge rises into your entire field of vision, dominating your view like an endless horizon. It's a face. Your face. It smiles, a grin that, to your little eyes, looks as big as the sky. You try to ask what's happening, why you're in water, why everything looks so weird, but nothing happens. The thoughts form--telling your mouth to move in certain ways, for your tongue to position itself correct, for air to move from your lungs--but you remain silent, no matter how much you try. You involuntarily try to whimper and find you cannot do even then. Then, it speaks with a big booming voice that you recognize immediately as your own.

( "Bedroom" by Studio Sarah Lou is licensed under CC BY 2.0. ) Your voice says You must be feeling very confused right now, and you try to say Yeah No Kidding, but once again no sound comes out your mouth. You feel your world start turning around as your voice says Maybe this will help you understand. Your vision rotates until you see you're in front of a large mirror. Reflected inside is your room, with your bed and your shelves and all your stuff. And there's you! You see yourself, holding the goldfish bowl. That's strange, though: you don't feel yourself holding anything. The you in the mirror smiles. That's also strange, you think, because you don't feel yourself smiling. You move closer to get a better look. At the same time, the goldfish moves forward. You feel weird and stop. The goldfish in the mirror stops too. You feel even weirder and move away. The goldfish swims backward.

With a sudden, painful burst of revelation you finally understand.

You try to scream. You want to scream. You need to scream. But that's something humans do. All goldfish do is swim, so that's all you can do, though you do it as frantically as possible. You hear your voice say Now you're getting it. Your hands set the bowl back down and the face, your face, returns. The thing using your body says it's unfortunate things had to be this way, and that it understands you'd be upset, but to try to see things from its perspective.

It began life at the bottom of a cold, dark lake. Back then, it was just a worm, one of thousands burrowed in the muck. The nutrients there could sustain it, yes, but not forever. It knew it was only a matter of time before all the minerals were leeched out and starvation would begin. It had seen it happen to others and feared it would share the same fate. Its only hope, your voice explains, was to be consumed by some sort of animal, where the next stage of its life could begin. Daily it prayed, every time a passing fish or crab swam by, that it would be the one to be finally plucked from the muck and ingested to safety. Daily it was frustrated, seeing hundreds of others chosen but not it. Until one day, it said, salvation came in the form of a goldfish that dug through the mud and slurped up the worm in a single motion.

Once inside, your voice says, it was a simple matter to fuse with the fish's spine and take control. From there, all it had to do was wait for the next stage of its life to begin. Eventually it was scooped up in a net and brought to a pet store, the same one you bought it at. You never suspected a thing, but then why would you? After all, until recently it looked just like any other goldfish in any other bowl. By the time the glowing growth finally appeared on its head, it was too late. The only thing it needed to do then was wait for you to make eye contact for just a few seconds and, says your voice, you know the rest.

And finally, it says, the last stage of its life cycle has begun: being human. Having now taken over your body, it can move through society freely with no one suspecting that this perfectly normal person is secretly, inside, a goldfish. And similarly, no one would look at you, in your new fish body, and suspect you're really a person. You want to cry, but that is something else fish can't do. The thing says that it's looking forward to finally meeting the others--those just like itself, who switched minds with some unlucky human and took over their life. It tells you there's millions and millions of them on Earth, as it has been for thousands of years. You've probably already met one and never even knew. The only way to tell would be to run their waste under a microscope, to see all the tiny eggs they release every time they go to the bathroom. And who's really going to do that?

(By SuSanA Secretariat - https://www.flickr.com/photos/gtzecosan/15518236248/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38222502)

So what's going to happen to you? Your voice explains that it will take good care of you, just like you took good care of it. You'll get flakes every morning and a bowl cleaning every week. In the meantime, you'll be free to do whatever you want, even though the only thing to really do is just swim around, float around and look around. And, as the hours turn to days and the days turn to weeks, you find that's exactly what you do. It's not very exciting. But that is the life of a fish. It is your life. Forever.

[every-bad-thing]

Your parents are turning into cacti

( "Hat & Scarf in Arizona" by dr.coop is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0. ) Your parents work in a factory, both of them for some chemical company. Neither of them really wanted to work there. One of them had wanted to be an artist, and went to school for art, and tried for a while to make it in the art world, but eventually had to get a job that made at least a little more money. It was the same case with your other parent, who'd wanted to be a veterinarian but couldn't afford the education.

They wake up very early each morning, before you're even up, and come back late at night, only a little while before bed. There's still the weekends, but most of those they spend just watching TV feeling exhausted, not having much energy for anything else. You take care of things around the house because there's no way they'd be able to. You do the vacuuming, you empty the trash, you clean the bathrooms and even, when you get old enough, manage the bills.

Together, you make up a household that is barely functioning, which isn't really the best but could be a lot worse. You don't have the same cool things other kids do, but there's still food on the table and there's still heat in your home. You study very hard, because you know your parents are doing a lot for you to maybe have it a little better than them.

One day they come home very excited, and tell you they've been selected to help with some super secret project. It will be more hours, sure, but it will also be more money! You see them even less now--just under an hour before bed during the week, and just half a day on weekends. There is more money at least, though not as much as you thought. You don't have to buy store brands, you get to go to restaurants sometimes, and you do have a cool new video game, but other than that things feel kind of the same. Your parents say they're putting a lot of the extra money away because they want you to go to college. The thought makes you uneasy--you worry about who's going to take care of things for them when you're gone, but you don't tell them this. You know this is important to them. So you study hard and try not to let it bother you.

A few months into the new project, one of your parents gives you a hug. Something sharp pokes you. There's a tiny thorn sticking out their face. They chuckle and say oops, and finds a pair of scissors to cut it off. That night you sneak out of bed and listen to your parents outside their bedroom. You can't hear very well, but you pick up things like 'go this long? Because...' and 'no, the company said...' and 'little longer, just a little longer' and '... end up like us? That's what you want?' You feel like you shouldn't be hearing this and creep back to your room.

A few more weeks pass. Now, whenever your parents come home, they spend a few minutes trimming spines from their skin. You asked them once what was happening. They looked at each other, then put on that fake smile that they thought was convincing and said it was just, well, and then they paused and said it was nothing to worry about and to just trust them.

("02-13-06 Chemical Plant and suffocating tree" by Picture_taking_fool is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. ) Time goes on, and they have to spend more and more of their evenings trimming spines. You begin to notice, too, their skin developing a greenish tint. And it was starting to get rubbery. One day you spot your parents in their bare feet, and there are tiny little tendrils, dozens of them, hanging off their toes. You ask what those are, and once again your parents kind of hem and haw and start and stop before saying that they've been working with some new chemicals and they were told something like this could happen but that their boss said that it wouldn't last and wouldn't really hurt them anyway. You say you don't believe their boss. One of them makes a deep sigh and says that they're making good money for the first time in a while. You don't know what that has to do with what you were just talking about, but you let it go.

It's been nearly a year now and there is no denying it: your parents are definitely turning into cacti. Their skin is now dark green and thick, with sharp spines all over. When they come home they now must immediately cover their feet in soil. Since the bathtub was the only thing deep enough to hold the required amounts, they spend a lot of time there. They can still move, slowly, but it gets tougher for them every day.

You tell them to see a doctor, but they say they saw the company doctor and he told them they were just fine. You shout that they're very clearly turning into cacti so how can that possibly be just fine? They don't know what to tell you. Indeed, their minds seem to be moving slower lately too, taking longer and longer to think things through. You say they should quit this job, that it's doing terrible things to them, but they say not to worry, to let them take care of it, that they're doing all this for your sake, and you may not understand now but you will when you're older.

One day you get up and your parents are still there. They move so slowly now that it takes them hours just to cross the room. They ask if you could carry them to work, because they're already very late. You try, but they're far too sharp now. You start thinking that maybe you could borrow a hand truck when the phone rings. They ask you to get it for them and put it on speaker. It's their boss, asking where they are. You watch your parents explain that they're having trouble leaving the house, and that they're trying to get there as fast as they can, but the boss cuts them off and just says they're fired. It takes a minute for the thought to process in their heads but when they do they immediately start crying. One of them is saying "so what do we do now? What do we do now?" over and over while the other is mumbling things like "but they said... they told us... what is... how..."

A few weeks pass. Your parents are on unemployment, trying to find work, but there's not a lot of jobs they can do. What's more, even though they're not at the factory anymore, they're still turning into cacti. Their faces have begun to shrink, and their legs are stuck together. They spend most of their time in the bathtub now. At least they don't need much water, it seems.

You think often of the company that did this to them, and whenever you do a white hot anger blows through you like an explosion in a tunnel. You take the money your parents saved for college, all of it, and manage to find a lawyer to sue everyone responsible. You will have justice!

( "Courthouse Square - Trumbull County Courthouse. 'Lady of Justice.'" by Jack W. Pearce is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. ) Things look good for you when the case begins. You find out that the company was researching some new fertilizer derived from cacti. Its scientists, under questioning, admit that exposure does cause some genetic abnormalities, but is otherwise perfectly safe. Pointing to your parents, who at this point look indistinguishable from any other desert cactus except for two small eyes, your lawyer demonstrates that the company's idea of 'perfectly safe' is really off. Based on this, as well as testimony from several other workers who were also turned to cacti, it is made pretty clear that the company is indeed responsible.

The company's lawyers don't dispute their role in turning your parents to cacti. But they point out that they, as well as everyone who joined the special project, signed a release saying they understood they were working with highly experimental chemicals and so they would not hold the company responsible for any medical conditions that might arise. Your own lawyer argues that those were signed under pressure, because their financial situation was so bad, and that furthermore how could any reasonable person believe that becoming a cactus was part of this agreement? But the company says a contract is a contract is a contract. It doesn't matter why they signed it, what matters is they did. And the judge agrees.

The case is ruled in favor of the company. They owe your family nothing and walk away with no consequences whatsoever. You, meanwhile, have no more money for college or, really, anything else at all. As you wheel your parents out of the courthouse, you see the company's lawyers high fiving each other and laughing. They apparently plan to go to the bar and do 'victory shots, bro!'

You spend a few years trying to make the best of things. You drop out of school to work because while your parents are on disability, it's not nearly enough to cover things like rent, power and garden supplies. You're able to live like this for a while, but one day there's some sort of surprise bill--maybe a medical emergency, maybe a credit thing, maybe some fee or penalty you forgot about. Even with your low-wage job, you can't even start paying it. You know that you, and your cactus parents, will soon be out on the street.

There's just one thing left to do. Something you swore up and down you'd never do. But you know the money's good, and that they're always hiring--mainly because their workers keep turning into cacti. So, one gray morning, you put on a tie and interview with the company you tried, and failed, to sue. And that is where you work. Until of course the day comes when you too become a cactus. But for now, at least, you get to keep your home. For a while.

[every-bad-thing]

You’re Too Human

( "jumping-spider-3888x2592-macro-black-eyes-yellow-insects-arachnid-cute-1254" by johnvoo_photographer is licensed under CC BY 2.0. ) You're just a spider, doing your spidery thing hanging out on your web, eating bugs and drinking dew and just enjoying your life being a spider. Eight legs are all you need. Eight eyes are a perfect amount. Web spinners? You love them! And what about the poison sacks? That tiny bit of extra confidence, knowing you have them, really helps. Things, overall, are good. Then you cross paths with a radioactive human, someone grunting and glowing and stumbling from the direction of a building that says "High Energy Laboratory" and what does he do? He bites you! He actually stoops down, gently grips you in his mouth, and--very lightly, very gingerly--bites. Ouch!

That night, you toss and turn in your web, feeling sick, dropping into a dreamless sleep only after great effort.

The next morning, you feel strange, as if some energy filled your body as you slept. You get up and walk around a little, trying this new feeling on for size, when you realize you're actually walking on just two legs! The other six are kind of waving around in the air, pumping back and forth to keep you balanced. In surprise, you stumble backwards into a large rock, which you find you can easily push aside. You're amazed, then amazed at the capacity to feel amazed, as well as a wide variety of other emotions you'd never even thought to have before. You sit (something you've never done before) and ponder (something else you've never done before). It doesn't take long to realize that you now have the proportional strength, agility, and intellect of a human being contained within your tiny spider body. Your mind, never before all that active, suddenly brims with the possibilities. At first it's very fun. You learn how to make tools and with those learn to make traps. Soon you're eating the biggest, juiciest bugs out there, things your fragile web could never catch before. You outsmart all the birds, snakes, and wasps that would otherwise make a meal of you. You move heavy stones without effort to construct what could practically be considered a palace. This last thing you were particularly proud of--it took many weeks and a lot of work to put together but it was worth it. All the other creatures will be so impressed, you think at first. But then, with your human intelligence, you realize "why would they be?" That's when it starts going downhill for you.

 ( "Stone hut" by Andy_Mitchell_UK is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. ) No one else cares. This shouldn't be a problem but for some reason it is. You now care about what the other forest creatures think about you. Why should it matter? You're a spider, who have you got to impress? You look at your reflection in a puddle and see the same spider body you've always had. But now you wonder whether you have too many legs. Is it... Weird... To have so many legs? Most things you eat only have six, or sometimes even just four. Or maybe you have too few. There's that centipede over the log you sometimes see. He seems like he's got his stuff together. Maybe you should be more like him?

You start thinking similar things about your eyes. They're too dull. They make you look old. And your web spinners? If they were really any good, you wouldn't need to be making traps, would you? And you wish you could make more poison. Or better poison. Some spiders can kill, like, 10,000 mice with just a single drop of venom. You're lucky to give a mouse an itchy welt. Maybe it's better that no one else cares. If they cared, they'd hate you. But to be ignored completely? Is that worse? You try to find an answer, but you don't know. These things bother you more and more each day. They are a tree in your mind, growing little by little until its roots cover your every thought. Your new human mind thought of that metaphor.

What is all this? You're plagued with questions. What is your purpose? What is the purpose of anything? Who created this world? And who created that creator? Does it keep going back, ad infinitum? And what does ad infinitum mean, and how do you know how to use it in a sentence? Did you use it properly? Probably.

Finally, after much back and forth, you decide on a plan. Maybe it will work, maybe it won't. But your human mind has gotten you this far.

You wait outside the building that says "High Energy Laboratory" for someone else to come out. Someone like the one who made you into this. You wait for days and days and days, through rain and sun and hail. Then, on a damp and overcast day, finally, you spot one. They have all the same features as the last: a glowing, a grunting, a stumbling gait. You dance to get its attention, then lead it into the woods.

You bring it to the old log and watch as it gingerly bites the centipede. You overturn a rock and see a beetle skitter out, then get bitten. An unlucky bird is snatched from the air and cries out as the human bites into its wing. More! More! You take it through a long and winding path through the forest, letting it bite whatever it pleased. By the end of the night, though, the glow had faded and the grunting had stopped and the gait had corrected itself. The human walked away, unsure of the night's events but having a strange taste in their mouth.

You turn around to go home. Turns out, a crowd had gathered behind you. There were ladybugs and mantises and scorpions and wasps and ants and beetles--all of them standing upright. You did it! Now, they too had thoughts and ideas and emotions. You'll never be lonely again. Except, you realize, they all look kind of angry. Some of them have clubs they're tapping against their palms. Some have sharpened stones with sloped edges. Some even have burning torches. Turns out that, yes, they are very angry. The centipede from over the log steps forward, them stumbles.

"There's so many of them... How do I even... Wait... I think I've..." then it falls again. "Ow."

( "Soil Centipede" by Furryscaly is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. ) You tell them all to calm down, but they won't. They cry that they never asked for this! That they were fine how they were! But now they're tormented and neurotic and anxious and there's this deep pit at the base of their soul that craves meaning and connection while, at the same time, fearing it intensely. Why, they all demand to know, did you do this? And you say that you brought them into clarity to seek that same meaning and connection and perhaps, through steady emotional work, they can overcome fear together and create a true community. Surprisingly enough, this seems to set them at ease. You watch them fall into intense discussion on the nature of intelligence and how identity, as a product of both the self and the other, straddles each the subjective and objective experiences simultaneously. Which is a perfect time to show them your amazing stone mansion!

They stop their debate over the proposed framework for consensus decision making to gawk. Then burst into laughter. The centipede from over the log--who by now is being carried by several helpful ants--says that is the most garish and gaudy thing he has ever seen! Everyone agrees, and says it is a perfect example of shallow materialism. A million clever comebacks burst through your head then fizzle. You can't think of anything to say. Anything to do. Shame has swallowed your speech. Amid the laughter, you retreat into your home, now feeling rather foolish.

[every-bad-thing]

You’re Stuck in the Bathroom

( "Blue Bathroom" by mrbill is licensed under CC BY 2.0. ) You're sitting on the toilet. Not much going on except the usual. But then, outside the door, you hear something. Footsteps, you think. But not like a human's. It's something else. Some sort of animal, maybe? You run through every animal you know of and try to imagine what they might sound like walking through your house, but nothing matches. Perhaps, then, some sort of machine? But then you hear a set of deep breaths that rumble with a rich base tone. Whatever it is, it's alive, and it's just feet away, nothing separating you but a flimsy wooden door. The breaths turn into a... Well, kind of a growl? Or a roar? Or a howl? Some combination of the three? You can't really place it, but whatever you'd call the sound, it makes the floor rumble and your teeth chatter. The water splashes beneath you.

Your eyes shoot to the door. The knob starts to wiggle and shake. You're glad you clicked the lock. The knob shakes harder, and the door shudders in its frame. Then, you see something poke through the narrow gap at the bottom. It's a single very long, very thin finger that probes around then withdraws. It makes that same thundering cry that shakes the room, and you realize within it are what sounds like a dozen different screams mashed together. Then, you hear it walk away. Its footsteps get further and further. It's going down the hall. That's toward the door. Is it getting ready to leave? Maybe it will just go away. You wait a while, but don't hear the door open. What's it doing? Just hanging out? You don't know, but you hear its scream in the other room and know it's still there. From where the noise came from, it sounds like it's in your bedroom now, which shares a wall with the bathroom. You put your ear against it.

You hear it moving around, picking things up and putting them down. It's breaking a few things when it does this, from the sound of it, whether by accident or on purpose. You hear springs creak. It's on your bed? Is it lying down or standing up? The creaking continues, and intensifies. Its it... Jumping? You're not sure at first but, no, that's what's actually happening. It does this for a few minutes, then there is a loud crash. The thing screams again and starts thrashing about and smashing furniture. Suddenly, something long and rubbery punches through the wall, barely avoiding the side of your head, then quickly pulls back. You look through the hole it left behind and see your room utterly wrecked, everything covered in some kind of thick clear gel. It made a trail out your door. You hear it back in the hallway, and then outside the bathroom again.

(lost places from Deutschland, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons) This time you hear deep sniffs at the bottom of the door. One, two, three. Then it screams and splinters it with its mass. You see something pink and glistening and covered in veins, a huge fleshy stump bristling with fingers, feet and fangs. You scream and back away. There's a window behind you. You're on the second floor, but still you break the glass with your fists, cutting yourself terribly as you do so. The thing, whatever it is, looks like it's preparing the charge. You dive out and land roughly at the side of your house. You see the thing looking down at you, making that same awful sound. You run with no direction or plan save 'away.' Terror propels you for a while, but eventually your lungs become fiery and your legs become wobbly and you stop. Right in front of a local police station. You run inside and sprint to the front desk.

The conversation, however, goes much differently than you'd planned. Maybe raving at the top of your lungs that a terrible flesh beast was loose in your house while you stood in front of them pantsless and quite filthy was not the best approach, but it was the only one you could take. You end up in jail, as your appearance scandalized several passers by. To make you feel better, though, people do investigate your house. They see no sign of any creature. What of the gel? That was all gone too. The damage was real, sure, but they say you could have done that. So, of course, no one believes you. You're eventually released. You return home. Eventually you fix your things. And you never, ever close the bathroom door--which causes you a great deal of social problems in the long term.  But you grimly press on despite them. You will never be trapped again.

[every-bad-thing]

You Can’t Get Anyone’s Attention

( “Ghost Shadows” by edenpictures is licensed under CC BY 2.0. ) Due to a series of wildly strange events, you wind up stuck in some sort of other dimension with no way home. Some kind of scientific accident or magic spell or weird hiccup in reality, take your pick, the important thing is that you’re no longer really part of this universe anymore. Not entirely at least. You can still see it, hear it, even smell it. That is, however, the extent. Past this, there’s really no way to interact with the world around you.

Try to touch something and your hands pass uselessly through. Try to say something and no one listens. Try to fart? Everyone assumes it was someone else. It’s a wonder you can even stand on the ground. That seems to be the only thing that still believes in you. Everything else? Everyone else? You may as well be watching TV.

It’s not all bad. You never get cold, you never get hungry, you never even get tired. You can walk forever, stopping only when you get bored. You can go places like the movies or the baseball stadium or the White House and no one says a thing. You can never really get hurt–cars pass right through you, fire completely ignores you, you don’t even need to breathe. It takes you a couple of years, but eventually you get used to it. Good thing too, since you figure you’ll probably be around a while, since you never seem to age.

You spend a lot of your time listening in on people, whether you’re wandering around a house or walking down the street or standing in an office. There’s at least a few interesting conversations a day. Sometimes they’re educational, like when you sat in on two professors arguing about light. Sometimes they’re funny, like those two women who accidentally stole someone’s coat and were trying to figure out how to return it without being noticed. Sometimes they’re sad, like with the kid whose parents were asking who he’d rather live with.

You say all sorts of things, commenting when you thought someone was being stupid or mean or praising them for being nice or desperately telling them not to make the bad decision you know they’re going to make. You’ve long since given up on trying to be heard, but you still like to talk. It’s helped keep your mind in place the whole time you’ve been here. At this point you’ve actually spent more of your life here, in this weird other dimension, than there, where you used to be able to live. You don’t really like how lonely it is, but what are you going to do? What can anyone do, really? You’ve looked all over for someone who can see you, hear you, or even smell you. Once you crossed the planet four times—first from north to south, then again from south to north, then from east to west, then finally from west to east—before you gave up. There was no one who could help you.

( “blue globe with arrows” by Andy M Johnson is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. ) For a long while, you become convinced that nothing will ever change. One day, though, you find this is wrong. That is when you spot something shimmering and gray off in the distance. You squint. It is shaped like a person, but obviously is not. And it is coming closer. As it draws near, you see it as a shimmering silhouette, gauzy gray light evaporating off it like steam. This is the first new thing you have seen in years. It gets closer, and you look around and see no one around you has noticed it. Only you. The arm reaches out, in your direction, and you wonder what it would be like to finally touch something and have it matter. You walk forward, and brush your hand against it.

A light begins to crawl up your arm and tighten. You can actually feel it. You’re amazed at the sensation. It’s a gentle warmth, something like hot bubbling water seething around your hand. There’s a pressure there, one that lets you know it really exists. And it’s increasing. It takes you a second to remember what it was to feel pain, to hurt, because you realize that’s what it’s starting to do. You jerk back your arm and find it’s not that easy. Whatever the shimmering thing is, it’s not letting go, and in fact is gripping even tighter. You scream and wrench your body with all your might, and stumble back free. You look down at your arm. It’s become insubstantial, gray, with vapors rising from its surface. You scream and shake your limb, then watch it re-solidify back to the limb you knew.

The thing is still there and it reaches for you again. This time you run, as long as you can for as far as you can, which is very, very far indeed. You don’t even thinking of slowing until you’ve crossed one ocean, and you don’t actually stop until you’ve crossed two. At which point you see, not too far from you, the shimmering thing, walking toward you. Stopping was a mistake. So you run again and don’t stop, the world speeding past your vision in a blue and you keep going for weeks on end until, finally, you stop to see if you lost it. You did not.

( “CERN Globe Light Man” by shotleyshort is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. )

You keep running. This becomes your life for a long, long, long time. How long, you don’t even know. You can’t even remember the last time you stopped. Whenever you do, the thing is always there and is always closer. The only thing to do then, is keep running, forever and ever.  You spend your life fleeing, escape the only thing on your mind. All other thoughts have been sanded away. Who you were, what you loved, where you came from, how you lived–replaced with nothing more than raw animal flight, the parts of your brain devoted to any thought but this goal withering away to nothing. Including, one day, why you were running in the first place. That is when you finally stop.

The thing closes in, its arms outstretched. A terrible pressure builds over all that you are, but you’re no longer afraid. Because now there is no more you to be afraid for.

[every-bad-thing]

You’re Told Everything Will Be Okay

( "the dark side (cc) [silhouette1 - fire, water, light]" by marfis75 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. ) You're sitting around in your room, doing whatever it is you normally do, when there's a blinding flash of light and a loud sort of "HUMMMMMMMMMM" that makes your teeth rattle in your jaw. When everything calms down, you see standing in front of you someone who looks a whole lot like you but much older, twenty or twenty-five years perhaps. You say this, and the person replies that it is because they are you, the you from the future, and they've traveled back in time to tell you something very, very important.

You're not entirely ready to believe this. The older person anticipated this, and so proves it by telling you something that you and only you would ever know, something you know for a fact you've never told anyone else, something that no one even could find out otherwise. While you're still not ruling out other possibilities, like telepathy, for now you're willing to accept that you're speaking to a real time traveler.

So, you ask, what is this very important thing you want to tell me?

Your future you gets down on one knee, puts a hand on your shoulder, looks you right in the eye and says "Everything is going to be okay."

That's it? You're a little puzzled, and it shows on your face. Your future you says that, for much of your life growing up, you will be very worried about many things. You're already worried about getting good grades and having good friends. As time goes on, you'll also be worried about getting a good job, having a nice place to live, staying in good health, finding love and so much more. It will give you a lot of stress, this worrying, the kind that makes your stomach hurt and your heart beat fast. Which, of course, you'll worry about too.

Overall, this will make you less happy as time goes on, and less able to enjoy the things in life other people, who don't seem to have the same concerns as you, do all the time.

You'll come to regret all this, but by then you won't know what to do about it since your whole life has been spent this way and you don't really know how else to live. Until you eventually get the bright idea of using a time machine. Because, yes, there's time machines in the future. Don't ask how it works, it's very complicated, and Future You isn't entirely sure either.

Your future self explains that all will be well. You do get a good job, you do have a nice place to live, you do stay in good health, you do find love, and so much more. There's no need for worry, no need for stress. You don't have to wonder about what the future will bring, because it will actually be quite nice.

That's what your future self wanted to tell you, so that you would go through the years being a lot more chill than before, and hopefully enjoy life a little more.

You've got to admit, you do feel a lot better after hearing all this and you say so to your future self. The older version of you smiles and says that's great. "All you've got to do," future you says, "Is whatever you were already going to do in your life."

( "overthinking a plate of data" by modern_carpentry is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0. ) That sounds great. Until you think about it a little more. You don't really know what it is you're going to be doing with your life, so how can you know it's whatever future you had already done? What kind of things were you going to do? The future you says not to think about it too much, just live your life. But it's not that easy anymore. Because from now on, whatever it is you do you will be asking the question "is this what my future self did?" and maybe it will be and maybe it won't but you won't ever really know.

And it's not like your future self will be of any help, because there's really no way that they can remember every single decision they made for the past few decades. This means that anything you do could throw everything off and lead to a future dramatically different, and perhaps far less pleasant, than the one your future self came from. It could be as small as ordering chicken at a restaurant when future you chose steak. It could be as big as living in a different city. Not only do you have no idea, there's no way to even have an idea because you won't know if you chose the right path until you find out where it leads. The future just went from certain to very, very uncertain.

Based on the horrified expression on your future self's face, they had never really considered this. But now it's too late. You have knowledge of the future, which just by itself means you're all but certain to change things without even trying. And just to confirm all this, you watch your future self change before your eyes--the clothes get cheaper, the hair gets messy, the posture becomes hunched and tight, weighed down by a thousand unknown tragedies. The you from the future gives a terrified look as once-vibrant bright eyes turn dull and jaded and, voice thick with desperation, begs you to forget all about this, to just live your life as if this never happened, but this is impossible. You watch as things keep changing. The teeth get crooked, the clothes develop food stains, and a scar appears above the left eye.

Your future you lets loose a loud, wordless scream, then rushes forward. You turn and run out of your room, your older version not far behind. Then, you trip and bang your head hard against some furniture, making your vision spin. Your future self grabs you from behind, saying gotcha, and yells that you can't let their life change like this. You struggle for a second, then slip easily out of their arms. You  see their body becoming faded and translucent. Your future self sees this too and looks at their hands. They say oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no, over and over again, then disappears into thin air.

Questions with no answers swirl through your head. What happened? What does it all mean? What will the future be like? Will you even have a future anymore? Like everyone else in the world, you just don't know. You'll need to find out when it happens. And given what you saw your future self turn into, you're not looking forward to it.

( "Ghost Hand" by Justin/G is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0. )

[every-bad-thing]

You Really Have No Idea

(Txllxt TxllxT, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons) You have no idea it's there. You don't know it's watching, following, waiting. There's no way you know that it's always near you, lurking perpetually outside your vision, but only just. That, despite its size, it's quick and nimble and can scurry away before you've even turned around. Where is it? Maybe the floor, maybe the ceiling, maybe wedged behind some furniture. Wherever, really, you aren't looking. How could you know that all the noises you hear at night, the ones that make you turn nervously toward your bedroom door, are really the thing moving freely through your house? There's no bother checking, it will have hidden itself before you even turned on the light. It knows all the best hiding spots, and is surprisingly flexible, letting it creep into even the smallest crevice. It's an amazing mimic as well, and has played the part of furniture many times without your knowledge.

You're never free from it. Whenever you leave the house, it leaves the house. If you're on a train, it will be perched outside the doors. If you're in a plane, it will be tucked under your seat. If you're in a car it will squeeze in your trunk. There is nowhere it won't follow. But you won't spot it. Usually no one else will either. Almost always it keeps hidden from passersby. On the rare occasion it doesn't, it has found that looking scary enough will easily frighten them off. These people generally do their best to forget the whole thing, dismissing it as just their imagination, and rarely ever talk about it. So, of course, there's no chance anyone would warn you that this thing is following you.

Where did it come from? Why is it here? What is it waiting for exactly? These are questions you don't even know to ask because it never once occurred to you that there was a creature following your every move. And why would it? This is not exactly a thing most people worry about. So of course you know nothing about it. At the same time, it knows a whole lot about you. How could it not, after watching you so for long? It knows your hopes, your dreams, your wishes and joys. It knows your sorrows, your pains, your fears and shame. It has seen you at your very best and your very worst. Because all those moments you thought you were alone? You weren't. There was never any real privacy, but don't worry, it doesn't actually care about any of the things you'd find embarrassing. Its opinions, really, don't even factor at all. It would be there no matter what.

It has always been there, since the day you were a wriggling infant. That was the one time it let you see it. You don't remember and that is probably for the best because it remains the most afraid you have ever been in your life. Your parents came in when you cried, and you wanted to tell them about the thing you saw, but of course you had no words, and so all you could do was wail as it loomed right outside their vision and squarely inside yours. From then on, though, you never saw it either. But it was always still there. It watched you sleep. It watched you bathe. It watched you cry after a bad day at school. Not that you knew. And it will continue watching you, just outside your vision. It's actually watching you right now, as you read this. It's no use turning around, though, it will always dart away. If you hadn't caught it when you were younger, before it developed so much experience avoiding you, there's no way you're catching it now.             

(Malopez 21, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons) There will come a day when it will show itself to you one final time. Finally, after all this time, you will know it's there. It's just waiting for the right moment. An accident. Maybe you slipped in the shower. Maybe you fell down a cliff. Maybe your car slammed into a tree. But you'll be hurt and alone and far from help. That is when it will finally slide into your vision and revel in your terror, your body so broken you won't be able to get away. You will watch as its unnatural form, moving like nothing on Earth does, approaches, and you will feel sick attempting to comprehend what you're seeing. Some part of you will remember seeing it before, but it will be so deep you won't notice. It will get closer. Its head will split open, revealing a gaping maw filled with wide, flat teeth the size of chalkboard erasers. And you will scream.

And after that, you'll be gone. Just gone. People will search, but no one will ever find you again. Did it take you away somewhere? Did it eat you? Did it absorb you into some sinister hive mind? Right now, you have no idea. And, perhaps, it's better this way. Because that day--that terrible, terrible day--is probably a long way away from now. It knows this, but isn't bothered. Because it knows, eventually, that day will come. And all it has to do is wait.

[every-bad-thing]

You Can’t Get Rid of Him

( "Pabst Door" by Atelier Teee is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. ) One day, a really weird guy starts standing in front of your house. It's not how he looks that's weird. He looks like any regular guy would look. It's the fact that he never, ever leaves. Whenever you walk out, he's there. Whenever you come back, here's there. He never gets in your way or anything. But he just never leaves.

Asking him doesn't work. Yelling at him doesn't work. Pushing him doesn't work. Trying to lift him and move him yourself doesn't work. Whacking him over and over again with an empty orange juice bottle doesn't work. Trying to use a hammer instead doesn't work. Trying to use a chair instead doesn't work. Trying to use a very heavy stone from your yard doesn't work. Calling a priest doesn't work. Calling the police REALLY doesn't work. Nothing works. He's just always there. Outside. Every time you pass him, he'll ask: can I come in? Very casual. Like there's nothing weird about it. Still, every time he asks, you say no. He doesn't get angry or upset at that, but he doesn't go away either. He just waits for the next time you pass. He doesn't do anything when he does. He just stands there.

You've never seen him eat, drink, sleep, or go to the bathroom. You'd think, after all this time, at least his hair and nails would get longer, but they don't. All he does is stand there and wait. You eventually get really frustrated and ask him why he was doing all this--well, more screaming it in his face. He doesn't answer. He never answers. The only words out of his mouth, always, are "can I come in."

Time passes. You start to wonder what exactly would happen if you let him in, but you push those thoughts away. You think moving is a good idea. But every time a potential buyer comes over, they ask about that guy standing in front of the door, and you always have to explain the deal with him, and then they're no longer interested in the house. Soon, though, you don't even care about the money. You just want to get away. So you board up the windows, pack up your things, and walk away, leaving it—and him—all behind. You move across the country, in a small town with one post office and a lot of geese. At first you're afraid he'll show up there too, but that never happens and, after a few weeks, you finally relax.

Until one evening, when you're watching TV, and you find out that police are investigating the mysterious disappearance of over a dozen people who'd attended an open house, including the realtor. The woman on the TV says that authorities are baffled: everyone's car was still parked, and there was no sign of any struggle. It was like they just walked into the house and never came out. They show the house where this happened. It's yours. But you notice there's something missing. Someone. The guy is gone. You get up from the couch and take a closer look. He's really not there. There's no one standing in front of the door. You feel relieved. But then you see something else.

Your vision spins. You feel sick. You sit back down as the news turns to sports.

Standing in the window, overlooking the street, was him. He was in. 

( "silhouette against windows" by tango.mceffrie is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0. )

[every-bad-thing]

Ghosts Are Boring

(Exitmanned, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons) The world is shattered by the revelation that ghosts are real. It's confirmed by everyone, from respected scientists to noted politicians to prominent social media influencers. They all report the same thing. Ghosts really do exist and, what's more, they're extremely common. It is very like there are at least six ghosts within ten feet of you right now, maybe more.

This, of course, has wild implications, one of which being that life after death has been definitively proven. The specific nature of this afterlife, or even whether this is the only one, is completely unknown, but the fact it exists at all leaves everyone shocked.

But even more shocking than their existence was their wide array of industrial applications. It didn't take long to develop technology to control them, and soon ghosts were vital to the world economy. The souls of the dead, it turned out, were a superior source of energy—abundant, clean-burning and portable. A single one could power anything, from a phone to a building, for years at a time before dissipating. A few thousand, compressed together in a tight enough chamber, can power a city. Ghosts also make the best computer processors. When bound into a chip and exposed to a current, a ghost is capable of making complex calculations much faster than any silicon unit. Scientists explain this is likely because of quantum entanglement taking place on a sub-atomic level, but aren't completely sure. What they do know, however, is that ghosts in the machine enable practically infinite memory and processing power, which allows science to advance dramatically.

Certain spirits can even be used in manufacturing, mining and other physical jobs. While poltergeists—ghosts capable of affecting objects in the living world—are less common, there are still millions of them around the world available for work. Soon poltergeists are not haunting creepy mansions or suburban television sets. They are bound to assembly lines, producing finished products all day and all night. They wander the streets, picking up garbage thrown out by the living. They wash dishes and mop floors and unclog toilets. But they do not, under any circumstances, haunt.

And--because of course--military forces around the world use ghosts in a variety of inhuman weapons of war. Reserved for these purposes are the most vengeful of spirits, the most violent, the most hateful. They are dropped from planes onto enemy armies or, more commonly, civilian populations. If you've ever seen a horror movie, you know what their effect is.

( "Navajo power plant" by bass_nroll is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. ) No one knows what the ghosts think of all this, or if they can even think at all. Few have ever bothered to ask, and for the ones that did the only answers they seem to get back are “OoooOoo!” or “AaaaaaAhhhhhh!” or “Uuuuuhhhhoooo.” One person with a Ouija board said a ghost told him “My soul has been chained to this Earth, please release me for my existence has become one of unending misery and pain” but no one has ever been able to replicate the result and the incident faded into the realm of urban legend.

Ghosts in this world are many things. They are a vital economic resource. They are essential to public infrastructure. They are an intense field of academic study. They are not, however, mysterious, spooky, scary, magical or even remotely cool anymore. They have become as mundane as garbage trucks, air conditioners and aspirin. To be interested in ghosts now is akin to being really, really into stamp collecting. Ghosts are boring.

Which isn't to say it's all running smoothly forever.

It is estimated that 121 billion people have lived and died in the entire history of our species. Of those 121 billion people, scientists calculated that around 39 percent have become ghosts. If this is correct, that means there are about 47 billion ghosts in the world. This is, to be sure, a lot of ghosts. But it is also finite. The world realizes this only after ghosts became essential the world economy. By the time the problem of “peak ghost” is taken seriously, it is believed there are only about 14 billion ghosts left.

Technological advance does much to make ghosts more efficient, but this doesn't solve the problem. People seem to be meeting increased efficiency with increased consumption. Like, ghosts to power cars become very cheap, so people start driving more, thus canceling out the gain. This effect is found everywhere it's figured out how to do more with less. People just... Do even more than before.

World governments, plus a few corporations that may as well be governments, met to discuss the issue. The main problem was that the supply of ghosts wasn't really increasing. Sure, a few thousand people here and there would die and become ghosts, but those were just a drop in the bucket. They needed more, much more. They decide on a drastic solution.

By now the process behind which someone becomes a ghost is pretty well understood. They need either some sort of unfinished business or a particularly traumatic death. The problem is that, with ghosts raising the standard of living far beyond what had ever before been achieved, there are very few people who die in such circumstances. It is decided that this is what must change.

A new order is instituted. Before death, everyone must report to their local Spectral Conversion Center to be traumatically euthanized. Failure to do so results in steep fines for the loved ones who survive them. The program is considered a success: 89 percent of those processed become ghosts, which are then sold to businesses for any number of purposes. The only ones who avoid this fate are the very wealthy, who are allowed to pass on in peace to wherever it is they go when they die.

But for everyone else? The question of happens to you when you die has been now definitively answered. And the whole world suffers for it.

[every-bad-thing]

You Hear Something at Night

( "'I Can't Stand The Rain'" by CJS*64 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. ) You're asleep in your room one night when you're woken up by a tap, tap, tapping in the corner. Your ears perk up and listen for a few seconds, but it sounds just like a branch against your window. Probably just the wind or something, nothing to worry about. You roll over and go back to sleep.

You wake up again a little while later, hearing a creaking noise towards the front of your room, near the door. You perk up your ears again and listen. This time, you think, it sounds like someone walking down the hallway. Probably one of your parents. They must be going to the bathroom, or to the kitchen for a glass of water. You sigh, draw the sheets up, and fall back asleep.

The next time you're woken up it's because of a high pitched beep. You're not sure what that is at first. Your heart starts pumping faster. A few minutes go by. You hear it again and then realize it has to just be the smoke detector down the hall. Someone needs to change the batteries, probably tomorrow, because this could get really annoying really fast. You manage to fall back asleep before you hear any more beeps.

You wake up again. There was a clattering noise to your left, like something just fell. Without opening your eyes you imagine your room and where everything is. You know there's a clock that just doesn't want to stay on your wall. The nail holding it there was at a bad angle and so occasionally would just fall out, taking the clock with it. You figure it just happened again. You'll need to put it back up in the morning. Which means you'll need to get the step ladder. You groan and go back to sleep.

You wake up again to a soft hissing sound right above you. It sounds exactly like the pipes after someone in the house flushed the toilet. That must be it. Happens all the time. It doesn't usually wake you up, but you figure that you must not be sleeping as deeply since you've been woken up a few times tonight. You really don't want to be too tired in the morning, so you roll onto your stomach and bury your head in the pillow, trying to get back to sleep.

( "Pipes" by Beige Alert is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. ) Before you can, you hear something else, a sort of mechanical humming. You know this one. It has to be the air conditioning. You wonder, though, why it would only be going on now. Hasn't it been on all night? Maybe it's on that mode where it turns off when it gets too cold and turns back on when it's warm again. You don't remember it being on that setting, but what else could it be? The humming stops. Must have gotten cool. A few minutes later it starts again. Must have gotten warm. You finally fall back asleep. You hope nothing wakes you up again. You really need your rest.

You're woken up again. You moan. This is a long night. This time, you hear a rapid rhythmic rattling near your window. You're a little confused at first, but then figure it must be raining. The rattling is punctuated by the occasional tap, just like the branch against your window. That's probably what's happening, you reason. Just some a storm. How long has it been raining? You don't really care, you realize. Still, from the sounds, it's a pretty intense one. You crack open your eye and look to your window to see.

It's not raining. But you still hear the sound.

You look around your room, but it's too dark to see anything but shadow. Slowly, your eyes still sweeping back and forth, you reach over and click on your lamp. You find out what's been making the noise. It's perched on your ceiling. It's the size of a dog. Its covered in bristly brown hair. Its whole body shakes and wobbles as if it's not entirely solid underneath. The thing has too many legs to count, all of them wriggling and writhing as if they had minds of their own. But its face is human, and it stares at you with a set of steely blue eyes. It opens its mouth, full of sharp, needle-like teeth, and from it comes the sound of rain against the window. Then, its cheeks split open and form two more mouths on both sides of its face, and one makes a sound like the air conditioner and the other hisses like the water pipes.

( "Chair Shadow 'Spider'" by jaisril is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. ) You scream. With one of its three mouths it screams back in exactly your voice then shuffles out of your room. Drawing your covers over your head, you can still hear it outside, roaming through the house--the microwave beeps but you know it's not the microwave. The faucet turns on, but you know it's not the faucet. The computer makes the startup noise but you know it's not the computer. You hear, then, a loud bang and some furniture clattering. You're not sure whether the thing actually banged into a chair or if it just made a noise sounding like it did. You don't want to find out. You shut your bedroom door and push some heavy objects in front of it. Somehow, despite everything that happened, you manage to fall back asleep.

You wake up and it's morning. You grab a baseball bat from your closet and slowly, carefully, creep out of your room. It's a bright and sunny day. And there's no sign of the creature at all. You spend an hour searching for it--in closets, under couches, on the ceiling--but find nothing. Is it still here? Did it leave? Will it come back if it did? You don't know. You find this uncertainty to be even worse than seeing what you saw for sure last night. Because you know that, eventually, the sun will set and you'll get tired and have to go to bed. And when you do, you'll never trust any noise again.

[every-bad-thing]

You Think Things Could Improve at Least Somewhat

( "'THE ELDRITCH RACE'" by Midhras is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. ) Despite great effort, you fail to prevent the cultists from enacting their ritual and summoning their dread elder god from its ancient prison between worlds. And you watch, as you'd long predicted, all the nations on Earth utterly powerless against the writhing alien darkness that unmakes space itself through its very presence. It takes only a few short days to take over completely--how few you're not sure, seeing as time now warps and stretches like fabric. All of creation laments its cruel fate, forced to bear the existence of that which, by all rights, should not exist yet, against all reason, does.

The world is remade to fit the ancient god's horrid reality. A new order forms. The nameless god rules all, sees all, knows all, consumes all. It is a wound on the face of creation, from which seethes forth numinous abominations that fill the planet with terror and dread. No one is safe, save for the blasphemous priesthood, made of half-mad once-humans, that carries out its wishes.

All else in this world was nothing more than fodder for its howling madness.

You do what you can to survive, spending most of your time darting between the many safehouses you'd constructed for just this occasion. Others are less fortunate. You see many carried off into the endless night. Sometimes you are tempted to help, but previous experience has shown there is precious little that can be done. It won't be long before they're eaten, or their souls are sucked out, or their bodies are twisted into some perverse monstrosity. You know things look grim. But you aren't despairing. You know of a magic ritual that, if performed properly, can send these eldritch horrors screaming back where they came from. All you need are 9 ancient artifacts and at least 8,100 dedicated people. Simple, right?

No. Not at all. Most are just trying to get through their day without, say, their shadow eating their reflection. Sure, they all concede, it would be nice for the nameless god to be banished to the endless void, but they just don't find that very realistic. You always say it's perfectly realistic! All people have to do is collect the 9 ancient artifacts scattered throughout the world, divide them among 9 groups of at least 900 individuals, and activate them one by one over 9 days while fending off the hordes of inhuman creatures that will inevitably attack. It won't be easy, but it's not completely impossible.

That may be, people tend to respond, but isn't it better to focus on things that can be achieved right now? Take the all the blood sacrifice. Why should they have to go to the temple, through traffic and the devil birds that eat your memories, just so the priests can spend five minutes cutting out their heart and burning it. Much more convenient for them to come to you instead.

You can respect that view, but you keep pointing out that this never solves the main problem of the nameless god. And people shrug and give a wan smile and say they just think the best thing to do is improve their lives in this world, and make things a little more tolerable.

(Kawanabe Kyōsai, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons) You find, to your disappointment, this is a very widespread view. No one really likes the fact that the nameless god defines the very structure of the universe, but people don't seem to possess much urgency in defeating it. It is so pervasive, in fact, that you soon hear word that the people (at least a certain set of people) have come together and elected a representative who will negotiate with the nameless god on their behalf.

This makes recruiting your 8,100 people even more difficult. Now people say the Representative has it covered, and they're sure things will get better soon. You kind of miss when they'd engage you enough to pick your arguments apart. Now, it seems, no one cares. The Representative quickly gets to work, meeting directly with the priests of the nameless god, whose eyes have collapsed into pits of shadow. It doesn't take long before tangible results are delivered.

Human sacrifices will be capped at no more than 50,000 per day worldwide, except for the anniversary of the day the nameless god first entered our world, when it will be unlimited. Furthermore, heresy against the nameless god will no longer be an instant death sentence--instead, they will simply turn your tongue into a ravenous beast, which will slowly and surely take over your mind. And the best part? Sunlight. The nameless god itself will suspend the magics darkening the sky for thirty minutes every day. In return, however, the priests demand that everyone tattoo themselves with the sigil of their dark lord, dedicate ten drops of blood per day to its glory, and ban iodized salt. The Representative decides this is a decent deal and agrees, signing the pact in blood.

No one was consulted about this decision, least of all you, but people seem to believe this was a big accomplishment. Of course, there were some caveats. Because the nameless god controls time itself, it can make it the anniversary whenever it wants, meaning the 50,000 cap was rarely enforced. Further, while heresy against the gods is no longer a death sentence, the priests greatly expanded exactly what counts as heresy, leading to many more people getting their tongues turned into slavering parasites. Though the sunlight, people agree, is pretty nice. A shame it can't be on longer.

The Representative, now filled with confidence, says it's not over, and there's so much more to accomplish! Less painful executions! Less food that devours you from the inside! Finally doing something about that devil bird problem! And, of course, more sunlight. Why, if everyone works really hard, maybe, one day, they can get a whole hour of it.

You, meanwhile, still do everything you can to gather 8,100 people. So far, you've got 110, so you're not very hopeful. You keep wondering about the iodized salt. Why did the priesthood want to ban it? You start looking for some as you skulk around the wasteland, though it takes weeks to find any. When you do, however, you discover that iodized salt not only neutralizes magic from the nameless god, it also burns its servants. This seems like a pretty ridiculous weakness, and are especially surprised no one had tried it before, but after a few experiments you have to conclude that it works.

(BigBrotherMouse, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons) Your timetable suddenly gets pushed up. You and your now-105 allies scour the world for as much iodized salt as you can, and when you can find no more you learn to make it yourselves. It doesn't take long before you have literally tons of the stuff.

You share your secret with the world and arm thousands of people with iodized salt. With it, you're able to easily resist the minions of the nameless god. Seeing your early victories, more people join you and fight back. In less than a year, you've recovered seven of the nine artifacts with the help of, now, 7,800 people. You're close. You know that soon the nameless god will be banished and your world will be freed.

What you don't anticipate is, one night, people working for the Representative drive up in firetrucks and wash away all the iodized salt. At the same time, others destroy the facilities that had been making more. This, you find out, is happening all over the world. In less than a week, there is nothing left to fight the nameless god. Everyone is now scared and abandons the plan, doing their best to not mention it ever again and going back to supporting the Representative.

As your hopes turn to ash, the Representative tries to assure you this had to be done. They couldn't afford a "little stunt" like this, not when they were so close to a breakthrough on the sunlight negotiations! They were going to give us two--TWO!--whole hours of sunlight, but that deal's gone now. But maybe, by stopping your plan, they could at least save the concessions on soul shredding they'd been working on for weeks.

You're told you need to let go of these silly fantasies that it's somehow possible to overthrow this system of oppression and dread and replace it with one of mutual aid and solidarity. It's time, says the Representative, to live in the real world. The more everyone struggles, the less the priesthood will listen to reason, and that makes it so much harder to fight for positive change in the community.

Not that it matters what you think. The nameless god has now acted to remove the very concept of iodized salt from all people's minds save your own. Whenever you bring it up with anyone now, they just look confused while trying, and failing, to wrap their heads around the idea. Without even knowledge of the weapon, let alone the weapon itself, no one will risk enacting the ritual. Not that you stop trying. You keep trying, again and again and again, to get your 8,100 people and all nine artifacts. Always. For the rest of your life.

( "The Temple - Lovecraftian Concept Art by Mihail Bila" by Mihail Bila (MCrassus Art) is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. )