It had been planned out efficiently; to capture the child, they would lure the mother away with the cries of innocent young ones tormented by a cannibalistic monster. And so, they had come screaming- two girls, about a smoking shadow beneath the bridge with a bloody grin. In that particular winter, stronger ghosts and monsters had emerged, hunting their prey through the shadows of homes and sleepy sunlight, and left behind only horrifying spectacles for the village: the skin expertly peeled back, the exposed muscles covered in savage bite marks with hunks missing, the hearts gone, and the skulls split open with the brains missing too; the gaping, startling empty hole mocking the fullness of life.

That wasn’t all the creature had in store for the villagers. Less than a week after the death of the third victim, the children had begun screaming in throes filled with pure terror. Desperately, parents tried to discover the reasons for the screams. They only screamed louder. And some grew violent. One youth, a boy, walked to the square, stood errily in the middle, and slit his wrists to the bone with his father’s hunting knife while screaming, “DEATH IS THE ONLY WAY TO STOP THE FEAR!”

He died seven hours later: the ground around his corpse drowned in blood. His death should have been swift, but something unnatural had prolonged his agony, almost as if taunting Hawthorne and the village with its power over life and death. More deaths had followed: one girl turned her head completely around, grinned at her shocked family, ran to the well with inhuman speed, perched on the edge, and screamed, “DEATH IS THE ONLY WAY TO STOP THE FEAR!” Then she dove in! No sounds of a splash or further demented cries following her descent into the earth.

As a woman, she despised those that willingly harmed children. As the local spellcaster, it was her duty to protect the village from the hordes of hell. And as a mother, she knew this monster would feast on the children until that no longer satisfied its appetite; soon, all that remained of the village would be ruins and corpses. Therefore, she had swiftly followed the young pair and left her babe in the care of another village mother.

It should have been a routine exorcism: finding the monster, luring it into a circle, and eradicating its evil forever. However, when Hawthorne reached the bridge-the demon wasn’t in sight. There was no presence of another being, especially a smoking, bloody grinned one. Could it have been playing a game with the girls, she wondered? Or was it simply lying in wait before committing another dark crime? Hawthorne turned to the pair, with questions on her tongue when she discovered they too were gone. Wha- “MMWWWAAAAHHHH!!!!!!

MMWWAAAHHHH!!!” Hawthorne froze- those cries belonged to an infant... The demon had HER baby!

“NO!” She screamed, running back the way she came, fear overcoming her senses: not noticing the smell of blood thickening into a fog around her. The scream came again: punctured with pain and fear, “MMWAAHHH!!!”

Hawthorne stumbled into the village square, hitting the ground- gashing herself in several places- she kept moving, motivated by a primal instinct no mother can ignore. Pulling her knives from their sheaths, she ran to her home and flung open the doors, ready to kill for love and life. No one was there. Her baby was screaming again louder- this time as if it was in the room, “MWWWWAAAAH!!!!!!” Hawthorne desperately searched the rooms again: Where. Was. Her. Baby!!

Hawthorne stood in the baby’s room where the crying was loudest- the sound rose and fell, eventually swelling to an ear-shattering, soul-wrenching pitch that consumed her entirely! She fell to her knees and screamed, “WHERE ARE YOU?!!!!!!!”

As suddenly as the torture had started, it ceased. The air grew impenetrably still. The scent of blood finally registered as it filled the room: she tasted sorrow, pain, and death.

“ Looking for something?” She twisted around and saw the speaker: it was the demon, a smoking, shadowy beast whose face held no features, but a grinning mouth of pointed white teeth, drooling blood onto the floor.

“Where. Is. My Baby.” She growled, springing to her feet blades at the ready.

It spoke, “With the villagers, of course, sleeping peacefully.”

“LIAR! I HEARD HIS SCREAMS! GIVE ME MY CHILD!”

“You want him? Come and get him.” The room became enveloped in darkness-time seemed to stop, and Hawthorne felt as though she were blindly falling down a pit- until she landed on her back.

Words can be deadly.

That was her latest Instagram post.

Just a spur of the moment quote.

She had no way of knowing that her latest Instagram post would become painfully accurate in the next few days.

Cressilia Crowe.

She always signed her name that way. She liked the way it sounded, the way the alliteration rolled off her tongue.

Her real name was Jane Smith. A boring name. A small town girl name. Cressilia had moved away from that town for a reason. When she moved to the city, Jane Smith died.

And Cressilia was sure this novel would be her big break.

She’d only just started it, but the words pulsed with a dark life. Her sentences dripped with blood. Her letters were scratched as if with a knife.

She’d done her reasearch. It had been a while since she was a teenager. Since she had read that book that changed her life. But her reasearch said that the average word count was somewhere around 70 thousand words.

So that’s what Cressilia was trying to do.

Of course, she didn’t have time to waste. Her rent was due in a week and Cressilia was running low on funds. This book was going to save her.

She just had to finish.

She churned through page after page.

When the sun set, she didn’t notice.

In a day, 24 straight hours, no talking, eating, or sleeping, she had written five thousand words.

Cressilia blinked at the numbers.

That couldn’t be right. Only five thousand?

At this rate, it would take her two weeks to finish! She needed it done in half the time!

Cressilia had planned on taking a break to eat, a quick nap, but now it seemed she didn’t have the time. She needed to keep writing. Already, she had wasted precious time.

She let her fingers tap the keys. She let the words churn, rip out of her like cancer cut with surgical precision. The pages filled. The real world around her burned, but all she could see was the screen.

And on day two of no food or sleep (she only took the smallest of breaks to sip her water) she began to see him.

The demon in her story. He scratched at her arms and legs. He bit at her.

He didn’t want her to finish. He wanted her to quit, to give up. But Cressilia couldn’t. She needed this story. She needed the money.

By the end of day three, she was measuring time in words.

At the end of day three, she still had only 20,000 words.

She needed to be faster.

But work is hard with the demon scraping her arms away.

She sipped her water. She typed. She typed until her fingers bled like her arms. In some places, she could see bone.

The stupid demon was tearing her apart. But she had to finish. She must finish. She had four more days till rent was due.

Now her arms were covered in red blood and white lumps of fatty flesh. Her stomach had burned away all her fat and was now eating away at her intestines.

She kept writing.

Just a few more days, she told herself. then it will be over.

She became convinced that when she finished her book, the demon would go away.

She wasn’t sure how long she’d gone without food or sleep, but she reached sixty thousand words.

So close.

Now the demon had begun clawing at her back. Her legs. Anywhere he could reach. Her body was a skinny mess of loose flesh and torn skin.

Blood stopped flowing from her new cuts. She no longer felt it when the demon clawed at her.

Few more words few more words few more words few more words.

She felt reality slipping away.

It was no longer about the rent. It was about the story. She needed to write it down. Needed to finish. Once it was over her body would heal, the demon would leave, and everything would be okay.

And on day six she did it.

The last word was written

The total stood at 70,000. Exactly. She’d done it. Her novel was ready.

On day seven, her landlord came and knocked on the door.

There was no response.

“Miss Crowe,” the landlord called. “I need your rent.”

He knocked. He looked in the peephole. He could see and hear no one.

So he entered.

He looked through all the rooms.

In the bathroom, there was nothing. In the bedroom, also nothing. In the kitchen, nothing.

In the living room, he found the corpse.

Cressilia Crowe, formerly Jane Smith, lay on the floor next to a massive pile of paper. Her body was shredded beyond recognition.

The police called it an extreme form of self harm. Her body was extremely malnourished. She’d clawed herself apart. No one really understood why.

And as for the manuscript?

It was Cressilia’s longest piece of writing. The words were her soul. Her essence.

And it was never published. The police kept it as evidence.

Hundreds of pages. Thousands of words.

And all of them said the same thing, over and over and over.

HELP ME.

HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME. HELP ME.

It went on. Seventy thousand words. All of them the same.

HELP ME.

Cressilia spent her last days typing out a massive, beautiful story—

HELP ME.

Or so she thought.

HELP ME.

Or maybe...

HELP ME.

Maybe the demon got rid of it all. Hid it away.

HELP ME.

Maybe Cressilia’s real story is out there somewhere.

HELP ME.

Or maybe not.

I was drifting in and out of sleep. Morning was on the rise and I knew that soon I would be asleep and gone, like so many nights before when I tried to stay up only to fail myself the morning after. If I fell asleep, they would have won and I would have lost. I kept telling myself "You need to stay awake, forget those other times where you have tried and failed. This time, this is when it really matters." I needed to maintain the generators, it was my objective and they were the last source of power remaining.

My watch read 2 A.M, it felt much earlier but I had only 3 or so hours until morning would be shining my way. I was so close yet so far away, I had my generators on backup but with only a little gas left the lights would be fading fast. With all my preparation who thought that something like this would happen? Who thought this to be possible, something like that, like this - "It's nothing but fiction" they told me - I tried to believe; but here I am.

"I need to get up" I thought, I can't fall asleep and I can't sit here doing nothing. Light is what I need; I need to find light. A flashlight, a candle - anything that can give me light -I need to find something, anything. I must survive, if I don't then I will fail like the rest. Finally, I sat up and the window had appeared with the darkest black I had ever seen; to say this was the night that rid the world of light -but I advanced as if to try and find something that was no longer there, but there was nothing in sight. I knew what had happened and I sure couldn't let it happen here.

The generators were running fine but by some instance the back lights began to flicker, what could have caused this to happen? I was running a second generator for the outside lights so it could not affect the lights on the inside of the house to whom were merely protecting me. Still it was an unfortunate priority to see what the cause of this persistent flickering may be. Only time could tell how safe I would be and how long id be able to stay within the confines of my own living space.

I knew that one day, one day I would have to venture outside even if only for a moment. This was my tragedy, to know that soon I would be pushed fourth into the outside world but who knew it would be for something so insignificant. I had to go, that much I knew but I wasn't prepared for what I didn't understand. There was a box, I guess you could say it was an emergency box -something I always had in case of those disasters you always see on the news. I never used it before truth be told but I only needed my lantern. It was a present my father had given me on a camping trip when I was ten. It was a large lantern, with a dark green hue, almost like the color of the forest.

I swiftly ran up the stairs trying to reach my room before the lights vanished and with it my grasp of hope. I was determined, set only on my room. My room was minimal, always clean and set apart from the rest of the house. I decided to have a simple life requiring only things like my computer, dresser, and bed. Looking over I remembered placing the box under the bed many summers ago. I got down on one knee and stretched my arm outward underneath the bed hoping to retrieve what I was searching for. There was my lamp placed above everything else, but there was something else that caught my attention.

A pistol was barely showing from under a few particles of folded clothing; I picked it up and next to it revealed a magazine, it was full. A note was attached to the holster read "Son, if you are reading this now then I am terribly sorry that your mother and I could not make it to be there with you, I have left you provisions in the event that we are not there, do what we could not and live, live not for us or for you but for the others". I put the magazine into the pistol and pulled back the slide placing a round into the chamber, I hoped I wouldn't need it. I got what I needed and perhaps something extra but time wasn't something I could waste, I brought my attention back around to the lights. I needed to swiftly get back down stairs.

I left the room and ran down the hallway as I turned to catch the stairs. I was too fast, I slipped and tumbled, hitting my hand on the way down. I was at the bottom trying to regain my consciousness; my mind foggy and misplaced. It took a moment to focus but here I was, back again. I grabbed the railing and sat up-gaining hold of my stance and erecting myself up. My lamp was out but not damaged from the tumble and only a few steps up, I reached for it and grabbed it, I lit it and pressed on.

Still the flickering was progressing although with the exception that this time there were intervals of darkness, the light was not as quick like before but slower and the darkness was prolonged giving less light as previously noted. I stumbled over to the back door trying my hardest to stand straight. I opened the back door and immediately held my lamp high to provide light over an array of items including a path to the fuse box beyond giving myself an area of protection.

A distant growl could be heard and I knew I wasn't alone. With a quickness the porch lights went out. Slowly, so very slowly did I motion my lamp outward towards the rest of the yard, I peered out only to see Crimson red eyes peering back at me. Eyes that presented an unfulfilled lingering hunger. My lamp did not provide much light but I held it close, I looked back at the fuse box only to notice the unfortunate cause of the current issue; it appeared that the wires were chewed through.

With the lighting gone and the wires no longer available I knew I was in trouble. The wind was gradually picking up and it was just my luck for this to happen at a moment like this. The crimson horror was advancing closer and with it my death, all the while I could not move; what could I do- how can I survive in these conditions! Their crawl became a jog and then a sprint, I raised my gun and fired. One shot, two! I missed...I came right back with a third, a hit! I became enthralled with my small victory but this did not stop the small army that was coming to me.

Suddenly I kicked over the generator spilling gasoline, I no longer needed it. They were seconds away, I threw down my lamp destroying it in the process while flames erupted and shrieks were heard. I dashed back for the house, leaping over debris to grab the door knob and immediately shut it behind me. I was now safe or at least I was hoping to be...a movement was seen in the corner of my eye but what it was I could not say.

 I turned to look but it was nothing, I finally felt safe even with only one generator left. I turned back around to find supplies and block out the doors. What was before was almost indescribable -in comprehensible; a creature of such features were startling.

A creature of darkness, I had finally seen one up close; this creature was almost as if a piece of darkness formed a body of sorts, staring me down with its crimson eyes and readying it's sharp fangs for my death, it's body black but with a subtle transparency. What this some new breed? How the hell could it survive is this light?! It's growling became intense, louder than before - I fired at it and missed. I fired again, I missed yet again except I didn't...It had gone through the body of the creature! It leapt for me as I threw the gun at it and again it did nothing!

Trying in any possible circumstance I covered myself with my arms hoping that in some instance it would protect me. My defenses were lost and I was in trouble. The beast caught onto me as I fell, it was on me and it had won...It began ripping into me without mercy. There I lay in my last moments...as the sun rose above the mountain peak breathing my last words "God help my poor soul".