You stumble into the kitchen, covered in sweat. Mind racing. Heart thumping. Christ, could he have followed me here? You think. How did he even find me?

A moment passes. One thing is certain.

He’s not here now.

Your stomach rumbles. Even someone in your position has to eat. Your refrigerator door cries as you tug it open. You peer through the shelves. A jug of tea catches your eye. You take a swig, right out of the container. Your mother won’t know.

The tea tastes sharper than usual. You examine the label. Black tea. She bought the wrong kind. You shrug, reach for some leftovers. Flip the TV on in the other room as you slide them into the microwave. The five o’ clock news plays in the background. It might say something about him.

The usual teary story about the war. Some presidential candidate is coming to your town. You count down the numbers on the microwave. 5, 4…

“And, finally, tonight a food contamination alert for all residents in this county.”

…3, 2…

“A shipment of Lipton’s Black Tea delivered to local stores has tested positive for traces of the ebola solanum virus. This super-strain of the disease causes painful sores on the underarms, neck and groin followed by profuse bleeding from all orifices. The survival rate once infected is less than 10%. I repeat, Lipton’s Black Tea has been pulled from the shelves but any resident who purchased the tea is advised to call the Center for Health Control to dispose of it immediately.”

1.

You tug open the fridge once more and look at the tea you just drank.

Lipton’s. That’s not the kind your mother usually buys.

“Authorities report the shipment was tainted by an unidentified biological expert who remains at large.”

He’s not here now. You think. The jug of tea falls to the floor.

But he was.

–

Credited to Alice Wilde.

It is said that all of us have ancestral memories locked away within us. Some even argue to say that these memories are kept in consciousnesses separate from our own, or, to put it more simply, in multiple personalities. To unlock these memories is to gain an infinite amount of wisdom from the mistakes and experiences of the past, but to access the memories, one would have to discover their “other” personalities, and once they’re awakened, they’ll be wanting a body to STAY awake in….

–

Credited to SugarD.

It wasn’t until I broke down in front of my sister that it occurred to me to use the word ‘haunted’. When I tried to explain what was happening to me, finally articulating the weeks of dread and utter dislocation, I found that no other word would come. Haunted. There’s still a part of me that scoffs and glowers at this, to use the language of folklore; it seems to compress what I’d experienced into a simple banality, a prisoner of language.

I paid cash upfront for the house in West Toluca Lake. Something about the 1930′s Spanish architecture tucked behind the grove of weeping willows triggered a strong association with my childhood ideal of what it meant to be famous and successful in Los Angeles. It was far more than I needed, and I struggled to fill the extra rooms with bedroom sets and elaborate smoking lounges; more out of an obligation to keep up appearances when guests were over than to satisfy myself. I was happy there, for a short while.

My friends stop visiting a few months after I moved in. Increasingly elaborate excuses were spun, and I soon stopped asking. It only occurs to me now that I was doing the same, finding every reason to stay in the house.

There was such a gentle descent into the insanity of it all, that I hardly felt it happening. The unusually stormy winter hit me hard, and long hours in front of the sun lamp seemed to do little to halt my growing feeling of melancholy and nameless unease. I started sleeping later and I abandoned even the pretense of writing, spending long hours in silence on the back porch, listening to the dry rasping of the dead leaves in the cold breeze.

It was the middle of the night when I first saw him. After a long time of lying motionless in the dark, I slowly pulled myself out of bed from an Ambien fog at the sharp urging of my bladder, and shuffled towards the bathroom.

We’ve all experienced it, right? That sudden feeling like someone is looking you. A chill runs up your spine, and you are convinced that you have to find the source of the sensation. You look around and see someone just randomly staring at you. At gives you even more of a spook, but, after a few seconds of awkwardness, it subsides. You and the person go your separate ways, never to see one another ever again.

Or are you?

Why is it that we get that sensation when we make eye contact with another human being? I will tell you why. Its because they aren’t human beings. Not. At. All.

They look just like us, talk like us, act like us. But there is something strange about these creatures that mock us. They are each destined to certain people in their lives, they know not of who they are or what they look like. Just ordinary people, like you and I. When they find one of those people, the two of them make eye contact. At that moment, they are linked to you by a mortal bond. That is, if you die, the human, then they die.

Well that’s not so bad, now is it? I mean, if I was linked to someone by those means, I would personally try and protect the person. Wouldn’t you?

Remember that chill? That eerie feeling of ice shooting up your spine and back down again. That is your memories and your future, both of which are being copied at that moment and stored into their minds. Yet again, so what? Now they know all of your personal secrets. Its not like they will do anything, save for steal your money or something. But no one ever does that, really they don’t.

Imagine this. Say you met someone the other day, a random person. Who’s to say that’s not the next Hitler? If I was to be endowed with all of the mindset of that person…I wouldn’t care if I died, as long as I took them with me.

Then again…maybe its not so bad. Sure, it’s rare, but there are defiantly good people out there, they are just hard to find. And, if I was to see an extreme goodness in someone’s heart, I would want to protect them. For my life, yes, but for theirs as well. Like a guardian angel, right?

Just…remember one thing. If anything, remember what I am about to tell you, because if you are like me, it will change the way you think about your life and the way you live. It may even save you from being struck down by one of THEM.

Humanity is inherently evil.

10:30 PM. Late in the Summer Season. It’s storming outside. My favorite time of year and my favorite kind of weather. Whenever it storms I just have to smile. Storms are beautiful, or at least I used to think so.

Almost all the lights in the apartment were off, and I’m just talking to some friends over AIM. Then suddenly it became very very cold. As if the storm from outside was creeping thru the door. I just figure there was a temperature drop because of the storm, so I toss on a sweatshirt. After about 30 minutes or so I’m still freezing cold.

I start to get this feeling.

It’s a feeling we all have felt before.

The feeling that someone is staring at you.

The feeling that this someone is not very far away.

The feeling that if you turn your head the slightest bit, you would see them.

I shrug this feeling off because I am an extremely paranoid person and I get this feeling all the time. I continue to converse with my friends, I even mentioned this sensation that I currently had, and my friends naturally laugh at me saying I need to stop being a baby. The sympathetic ones say it will go away eventually and not to worry. I waited awhile…it did not go away. In fact it increased.

It felt like something was consuming the very Happiness within me.

Like something was filling me with Dread.

That chilling Terror we all felt as children when the lights were turned out.

A true Fear of the Dark.

But it’s not the dark we are afraid of….but of what lurks in the dark

I almost couldn’t take it anymore. Here I am, almost a grown man, and I’m jumping at shadows. It’s ridiculous, but as ridiculous as it seems, I still have this little voice in the back of my head telling me that maybe I have a reason to be afraid. Maybe I should turn around and see if there’s actually anything there.

The clock stared at me with its red eyes, shouting to me that he would arrive soon. He always comes at the witching hour. Of course I didn’t know that the witching hour was three in the morning till I told my friend about my night time wanderer. The witching hour is the time of night when God is at his weakest and all the imps and minions come out. This man was obviously not a three horned demon, nor was he an evil servant of the devil. He looked old, and lonely. I felt bad for him. He was probably homeless with no family or friends to speak of.

Every night he’s there, just sitting in our backyard. Every night I want to go outside and talk to him, but I can’t seem to work up the courage. He just sits on the tire swing, muttering to himself. He looks so lonely. Luckily I have no trees near my window, or anything that could block my view of him. My friend says it’s a trap to lure me outside. He says that a little kid like me isn’t thinking straight this late at night, so obviously; this prince of darkness wants an easy meal. He just wants me to come outside and, wham, I’m a nighttime snack.

Maybe he has a point though. Not about the evil part, but about the unsafe part. The old man might be crazy. I’m sure being homeless takes its toll on your body. I can’t see him that well from window either. I’ll sleep on it, maybe tomorrow night I’ll go and see if he’s harmless or not.

The bed looked so comfortable I couldn’t help but to flop down onto it. I lay there, waiting for the sand man to put his special dust in my eyes to carry me off to dream land. The wind was blowing really hard outside. I could here a tree branch tapping on my window. I bet the man was cold. I wonder if he is smart enough to find shelter. My eyes began to become extremely heavy, but the tree branch’s tapping kept drawing me out of my inner peace. I stared blankly into the cold darkness, when a sudden chill traced its way down my spine. I don’t have a tree anywhere near my window.

The doorbell rings, and you get up from where you sat staring stonily into space. You already know who is at your door, and why he is there. You open it, nodding numbly to the man. You make a note in your head that the man looks… sneaky, but you assume that must be because he’s a lawyer. You show him into your living room, dreading what is to come. The man hands you a CD he produces from his briefcase, and sets what looks like a birdcage on your coffee table. You can not see what is inside the cage, as it is covered in a blanket of embroidered silk. The man sits as you put the disc into your stereo and press play.

You hear the sound of stressed breathing from the speakers as you take your seat. The lawyer hasn’t said a word, but you know the breathing to be that of your late friend, the last breathes of your friend. You can hear something in the background, behind your friend’s heavy breathes, as if someone, or something, was scratching at a door. You wonder if you’re hearing things, as the sound is barely audible in the recording. You look up as you hear her voice, as if she was in the room with you, as if she was alive.

“The date is September the first of two thousand eight.” Her voice is shaky, every word she speaks is saturated with fear, “This is my last will and testament. Now, I don’t have much time. They’re almost here, so I’ll dispense the formalities and get on with what I have to say. This is the last day of my life, as you have probably already figured out.”

I rushed over to the wall to flick the light switch. Something was in my room, watching me. It was lurking somewhere behind me, sitting in the shadows, and staring at me. This was more than just paranoia. There was definitely something there. I could almost envision it wrapping its arms around me and dragging me into some terrifying abyss. I sat in my chair and stared at my shadow on the ground in front of me. I watched as another shadow slowly grew over my shoulder, never taking on any definite shape. I looked back up and stared at my computer screen. I thought maybe that if I believed it wasn’t there, it would just go away. I held my breath, and tried to engross myself in reading the article on the website in front of me. I couldn’t help but notice how my computer screen showed a reflection of what was in front of it. I couldn’t help but notice the worried look on my face. I couldn’t help but notice the thing hovering behind me, staring at the back of my head. I could tell it knew I knew it was there. I screamed and threw myself against the wall, and slid to the bottom. I was crying now.

Scanning the room, I searched for the thing that was behind me, but I found nothing. My room was empty, except for a mirror. My eyes lingered over the mirror on the wall across from me. I watched my black fan twirl around and around through the mirror. I watched how the shadow of the fan moved all around the room. I watched how the mirror slowly began to tilt till I could see myself in it… I watched as a dark scaly hand grasped my shoulder. I was entranced by my own reflection. All I could do was sit there as I watched the black abomination cup my face. I screamed at my reflection to move as I watched a face made from the darkness itself whisper into my reflection’s ear. I gazed in horror as my reflection stood up and walked to the window. I gasped in pain when he smashed the glass with his fist. I tried to hide my eyes when I saw him pick up a broken piece of glass. I tried to look away when he forced me to stare into his eyes. I sensed his thoughts in my head. They said to me that if I was afraid to look, then I don’t need to look. Everything became tinted red when my reflection brought the jagged object across his eyelids. Yet, there was no blood. Not for him. He just smiled. He walked back over to the black abomination; it again drew him near and whispered into his ear. I could see it chuckle. I cried in despair when I saw a tear roll down my reflection’s face. I cried in pain when he jabbed the jagged glass into his throat.

I awoke in a cold sweat, and rushed to the wall to flick the light switch.

Do you know what a Cordyceps is? I didn’t either until 20 minutes ago. It’s a family of thousands of different types of fungus, grows all around the word in various rainforests and jungles. The awful thing about them is they’re parasitic, they grow on other animals. An ant happens to run into some spores, and then it starts to colonize his insides, starting with his brain. At some point, the ant starts to act visibly ill; standing in place and shivering, or walking in circles. If a fellow colony member sees him in this condition, he will be dragged to the border of the colony and exiled.

Then, when it’s almost over, the ant weakly climbs as high as he can up the vines, and locks his body on tight. Finally, he dies, and the fungus emerges from the back of his head, bursting forth like a long and foul fruit. After a short time, the little stalk spews forth its own spores, leaving the mummified and broken ant clinging to the stalk, his eye cavities filled with drying fungus.

I mention this because last night, when I was up on the roof of my apartment complex, I found my brother’s body.

He’s been back from 18 months on duty in the Philippines for less than three days. This was the first I’d seen him. My parents called me up the day before yesterday to tell me that he was on his way up. They told me he’d stayed in his room since he got home, and then suddenly got up and announced he was on his way to see me. They thought he was drunk, I’d thought he’d never made it.

He must have come straight up to the roof and died, by the smell of it. I was just finishing a cigarette, all torn up with anxiety and head throbbing, and when the acrid smoke vanished I caught a whiff of rot on the hot wind. It took me just a few minutes before I’d found him; face down behind the vents and fans. A slimy gray column rose up obscenely from the base of his skull, and a frozen waterfall of roots and tendrils was dangling from his eye sockets and mouth. At the top of stalk was small arrangement of feathery wisps, a white powder drifting idly from it tips.

In Beantown, Nebraska, a town with a population of just over 200, there lives a man named Jack Black. Not THE Jack Black, of course, but just a guy named Jack Black.

At 10:06 PM on January 4th of 2014, Mr. Black’s phone will ring. Upon picking up the reciever, Jack will suddenly be able to comprehend the TRUE definition of infinity, and for a split second will be able to truly understand how long an eternity is.

The massive strain on the collective conscience of existence that this paradox will create will actually cause the fabric of space-time to collapse on itself, creating a NEW universe identical to ours, but starting at the beginning of time.

This universe will proceed to exist until the exact moment in time that humans would identify as 10:06 PM on January 4th, 2014 C.E., at which point an alternate Jack Black will pick up his alternate phone, thus comprehending infinity and starting the whole process over again.