The chillanthon was waiting for me outside of my house, calling to me with its unsettling voice, tearing through my heart with its restlessness. I could hear its arms whip across its torso as they swiveled back and forth from shoulder sockets detested with freakish pivotal ability. It stood in the middle of the street, shrouded in an ink-drawn fog that swirled around the neighborhood as a cursed drape.

As it called my name, my family looked to me from beneath the dining room table with eyes that spoke of fear so deep that pus muddled their unblinking outlines. They could not speak, and might not have ever again. They did not understand what was occurring; I did. I had been thrust despairingly into an abominable fate. There was nothing left for me but to embrace the terror, pain, and incredible sadness quelling the last remnants of my life.

I took my wife’s face between my hands, followed by my children’s, drawing them close to me one by one. To each of them I left the grace of my departing love—all of the embers of goodness remaining within me to give. I left no words unspoken—no virtue unkindled. With a kiss, I sealed each of their spirits with my own, and then I walked out of my house to encounter the nightmare stalking my existence.

(Listen to the rest

On the dull road called Mayberry Lane, I stood at the turn of the evening. I had just flicked a cigarette at a passing vehicle, watching as its cinder flashed into the night. In front of me stood the Cursory—a name given to a house because no one ever gave the place a second glance. It was tucked a short ways off the road, but far enough away so that even the bluntest detail of its presence went unobserved; it was the home of my love.

As I began my walk to the house’s secluded porch, a succession of pricks began jabbing the back-ends of my eyes. In patterns of circles, the pricks drilled, pushing forth into my retinas. The burrowing continued once inside my eyes; when in the middle, the digging descended and came out through the bottom. There, the apparitions poured invisibly out into the open; it felt as if they were flowing forth like worms through a meat grinder, but there was nothing to see—no evidence of any such happening. The sensation then ceased.

I had just turned twenty years old.

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The creations of the artisan were always magnificent. Every detail, contour, and finish orchestrated a perfection of visual embrace. The way his completed works mesmerized the most critical of art and the most cynical of achievement proved his worthiness to all who might own—or if but see—a piece of his allotted mastery. Even in touch, his work marveled no less; a blind man would have been amazed. The work that came from his hands was embodied by nothing less than a craftsmanship inspired by the heavens. What a gift he had, and he did not spoil it.

There were many different mediums for the artisan’s work, but there was one he greatly preferred. He used wood, marble, and clay, but his favorite, and domineering preference, was bone. Its rigid, unique, and lifelike form allowed accomplishments unlike anything that could have been imagined. With grooves and notches, he connected them into powerful displays of entity, which he then manipulated into strange figures and beasts ranging from short heights to towering presences. It was as if the ability given to him was for something much greater than art. Yes, it was art, but it was also architecture and science and innate, unnatural understanding.

(Listen to the rest)