A tale about a man discovers something in the wild that man should not witness, and he tries to escape those that wish to keep it hidden.
The arches swayed inside my four walls like a drunken sailor as I sat in darkness while my fingers struck chords before my eyes processed what I had read. Furious! These folks couldn’t comprehend and refused to understand. Countless times I typed out my response only to select-all and delete. No response I could prepare would be worthy for their minds to accept much less considering the ones I needed wouldn’t accept.
What horrors our minds allow to flow freely and what terrors our minds eye ignores.
In despair I turned away from my desk to pace around the arched attic room. I had the window blocked by black cloth and walls lined with my mattress and all the pillows I had. All I had in this attic was all I normally outfitted my home with. I brought up a sleeping bag, a desk with my computer, a make-shift closet to hang my clothes, and a table with a chair I scattered my papers on. I kept all my files and personal effects with me here. There was something I knew that I tried keeping to myself, and not letting them know. But they will always know. They will find out.
I considered postage but I’d never make it to a mailbox or post office. Spies and scouts spent time in trees, on rooftops, or in black alleyways. I’d never make it where I needed to go alive. That led me here, my last hope, on my computer and online. But hackers! I knew someone would find me. I heard an offline computer could even be traced and so I kept mine unplugged at most times during the day. So I spent time on my keyboard with a darkened screen typing and deleting what I needed to say and how it needed to be said. Someone, someone out there must comprehend the terrible trouble we’re in. Someone, someone.
Even the cats roaming the alleys below and around I kept my curious eye on. Birds in the sky were not to be trusted. Stray dogs I refused to feed. Everything was suspect.
I blocked the walls in my attic room, soundproofed it as well as I could. I wish I were a spy, trained in the art of secrecy, able to transfer secrets to needed ears. But I was a common man, just an ordinary clerk who came across a secret that could literally tear our world in two. Some talk of conspiracies; Big Foots, Sasquaches, aliens in Area 51, flat earth, faked moon landing, but all of that is true and a lie. This thing I have learned could shape our existence into whatever it preferred. I discovered them, and it. A cosmic threat looking down on us like the ants we are.
I discovered a secret place, a wall, a tear, it’s hidden behind. And I must tell someone before I’m gone. Before they find out. Of course, they may already know where I am. It’s only a simple turn in their dimension to discover where I am, no four walls could hide me from them. But I discovered their dimension, where it’s hidden behind…
My room shook. Time running out. I sat at my desk and stared at my computer screen and I think I figured it out. I figured out what to say and who to say it to. No, nobody would believe. Instead I’ll type out my truth and maybe somebody will find my corpse and put it all together. My death would be inconsequential to them.
No, no good. I had more to say and more to do.
It was November 12th when I discovered it. Autumn leaves fell in midseason when I visited it. I remember how cold I was standing alone in the field. Shivering, thinking this was hell. People write about all the terrors hidden like they’re hidden in the arctic or in the sea or maybe in the woods. The arctic was the most terrifying; cut off with hundreds of miles between death and rescue. The sea the most unknown; eternal black as space, pressure could kill anything except being more exceptional than steel. Woods were most common to hold our fears; Unknown yet common to us, and close to home.
No, I visited a farmfield. A simple crop field of corn. Where night sky was blocked not by light, skyscrapers, hills or mountains but by endless infinite darkness and its own possibilities. And what possibilities there were. I spent hours staring out into the abyss with my telescope until the moon turned. The moon turned like a coin flipping on its edge. And the stars shifted into patterns not recognizable by any starmap.
I thought I went mad. I studied and mapped the phenomenon. Before I went to any astronomy institute I needed to secure my facts and science. But November 23rd the eye in the sky fell upon me and I knew I was merely an insect staring into man’s eye. I knew it’d be a matter of time before I was discovered. And that’s when I began seeing the world shift. Like a three dimensional being interacting with a two dimensional world. I imagined being Mario and this being could draw a box around me and hold me forever in prison. I saw figures turn into our reality, shift into being. Like lines turning into boxes. Lines turning into three dimensional shapes. Tentacles and appendages flailing out of nothingness. But what cautioned, no not cautioned, frightened me into action was the great beast that flashed in and out. A floating mountain with great limbs flashing through the air wildly. It appeared for a minute and went back into the rip in the sky. It appeared for long enough to cause my heart to nearly give up as I fell to the ground and cried myself asleep, yet laughing hysterically until I passed out. My own laughs gave me night terrors. My own laughs! Waking up days later, I could not tell, for I immediately collected what photos and notes I had and retreated home.
Friends and colleagues as much as I expected thought I lost my mind. In the days of the internet, movies CGI, and photoshop, anybody could design what I had captured. But in my quest to find resolution to what I knew, I attracted watchers of less than ideal quality. Men in black suits. Under umbrellas, watching. I did not know whether they were black government or members of a cult of worshippers. Neither wanted the beyond beings, as I titled them, discovered. And so I must find another avenue to release the truth before they discovered I knew their truth. I knew these beyond beings were here, present, and could destroy our reality.
Oh the potential of being able to view all of reality, insert your hand, and grasp anything you desired. All was yours with a flick of the eye. But we were not these things, but men desired their power whether it meant our utter oblivion.
A knock on my attic room door. The house shook again. I held the power button on my computer. I turned my computer chair, careful not to move the chair. Lifting myself up, I kept my eyes on the door. The knob moved. It twitched. Not noticing, my left hand rubbed the bandage on my right wrist. It caressed the wound hidden behind…
If this were them, they could appear inside my room. But someone wanted to erase this information from getting out. Something wanted it hidden. Somehow they found me. The old clerk at the gas station, the homeless beggar at the exit, the woman in the red velvet hat…it could have been any of them. Black agents and cult members were everywhere. My parents, my work mates, my friends. I had crossed them all out of my life for the past three weeks. But somehow they found where I hid.
The door moved inward. Outward. Inward. The knob rattled back and forth. But there was no forceful movement behind, instead a hesitant testing of the doors integrity. Whatever behind, took its time testing me. I stepped closer, and stopped after two steps when the door pounded. Something hit the window behind me.
They know I’m here. I cannot hide much longer. Quickly I sat at my desk and powered on my computer. I turned to email everything I had wherever I could. The potential for this new dimensional being in our world was unfathomable. It could appear anywhere, rip and pluck like poking a hand through a doorway like a tear, a rip, what it willed out of existence. Pounding the keyboard, I spilled out all the information I knew on the tear, the split in our reality that was going to tear our world in two and prayed people would know.
My walls shook again. The mattress fell over. Glass shattered. Something blasted through my window. A meteor! Fiery and fast came barreling in. But it slowed, resting on my carpet floor. It turned into a crimson sludge and grew! It’s shape formed into something and into something else just as I looked. I thought I witnessed a movie with missing picture frames. Skipping tens of frames as it transferred into something else entirely. I typed furiously. I typed with purpose. It overwhelmed my attic floor and climbed the walls. It consumed what furniture I had in its growth. It covered the walls, like a warm flesh wallpaper. In the middle of the ceiling I saw my roof pump like a heartbeat. It pumped like an Olympics heart beating after running a marathon. I knew then, this being would consume our entire world into it, becoming larger than anything imaginable. I saw its flesh evolve in front of my eyes and my eyes teared at its sight, my ears bled at its screeching and the terrible sounds it made in its utter consumption of everything in my room. Before it got to me I hit send. I at least would give the world a chance. I let the evil beast overtake me climbing and sucking in my body into it, becoming one.
It crawled like a slug over my skin, sucking the hairs off my body and burning my skin. It peeled the skin off my flesh, and bit away at my flesh like a vacuum with teeth. I screamed in agony, like pain I’ve never felt before. A torture and a slow death. Before it reaches my hands please know the location it came from, it’s hidden behind…
Welcome to B-Side Tales 
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