Latest / Shallow Nights: Scary Bedtime Stories / Unmasking the Chilling Truth Behind Spontaneous Human Malnutrition: An Unsettling Encounter with Supernatural Beings in a Small Town

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Unmasking the Chilling Truth Behind Spontaneous Human Malnutrition: An Unsettling Encounter with Supernatural Beings in a Small Town · Shallow Nights: Scary Bedtime Stories

0:11
Title says it all, I don't care what the doctors, teachers,
0:15
police, my parents, or anyone else in this backward ass town
0:19
says. There is no such thing as
0:21
spontaneous human malnutrition. Hell, you probably haven't even
0:26
heard of it. Well no, of course you haven't
0:29
heard of it. It's not real.
0:31
Spontaneous human malnutrition. SHM.
0:36
Those 3 letters didn't just ruin my last year of middle school,
0:39
they've ruined my damn life. It's like every adult in town
0:43
has gone mad. People don't just, they don't
0:47
screw it. How do you even begin?
0:51
It started during COVID lockdowns.
0:53
It wasn't until the 5th or 6th case that the local news started
0:57
putting the pieces together. That's three weeks after Grant
1:01
and I started our investigation. BT Dumps We knew something was
1:05
up from the third victim. Why?
1:07
Because the third victim was Doug's mom.
1:10
Doug is or was the 3rd member of our cafeteria loser Musketeer
1:16
set up when his mom when whatever SHM actually is
1:20
happened to her. She was in the background of our
1:23
weekly DND Zoom session. Doug was shaking dice and
1:27
praying to the nerd gods for a critical when a weird noise came
1:31
from his audio. It was barely half a second
1:33
long, almost too quick to notice, but it was loud.
1:37
Like real loud. So loud that Doug jumped a few
1:40
inches in his seat and dropped the dice.
1:43
Grant and I never found out if Doug hit that crit.
1:46
His blonde bolt cut whipped away from the screen before we heard
1:49
the clattering of dice on polished wood.
1:51
Me and Grant didn't really care too much about killing cave
1:54
trolls anymore, though. Both of us were glued to the
1:57
screen playing out in Doug's kitchen.
2:00
The noise had come from Doug's mom.
2:02
She'd stumbled into shot clutching the kitchen sink.
2:05
She was vibrating. Not trembling, not shaking,
2:09
vibrating. The motion didn't seem to be
2:12
coming from any of her muscles. It was rapid, jolting like that,
2:16
caused by pneumatic tools rather than fits and convulsions.
2:21
She'd fallen to the floor by the time Doug reached her, totally
2:24
rigid and still juttering so fast that her form on my screen
2:28
was barely more than a blur. From the angle, I couldn't see
2:32
too much of what was going on. I saw Doug reach down to touch
2:36
her, heard him Yelp in pain, started yelling along with him
2:40
when he recoiled and held up the stumps where his fingers had
2:43
been. My speaker screeched at the
2:46
moment he made contact, a horrible shrill grinding with a
2:49
wet edge, the exact same noise Freddy Gruber's elbow made when
2:53
he accidentally leaned on a power Sander and woodshop back
2:57
in 6th grade. Doug had no color left in his
3:00
face. He wasn't aware of Grant and I
3:03
yelling to him through our webcams either.
3:05
His mom's ankles are still vibrating, the pace now so rapid
3:09
that a cloud of sawdust started billowing from the floorboards
3:12
beneath her. We were all screaming, Grant and
3:15
I in terror, dug from terror, in blinding agony.
3:19
Before any of us could find the scrap of calm needed to dial
3:22
911, Doug's mom let out a violent spasm.
3:27
Then, without warning, she fell still.
3:31
The last frames of the Zoom call were Doug standing over his
3:34
mom's still and smoking body, pleading with her to wake up.
3:39
I liked Doug's mom. She was like an aunt to me.
3:42
I'm glad I didn't have to see any more of her post SHM than
3:45
those thin, nearly fleshless ankles.
3:48
I haven't seen what SHM did to a person in full yet.
3:52
I wouldn't have to wait long. Within a week, it'd be on the
3:55
front page of both the local tribute and Harold.
3:58
At the time, though, all I could do was sit and lock down
4:01
isolation and ruminate, robbing myself of sleep for days, trying
4:05
to make any kind of sense out of what the hell I'd just seen.
4:09
That was my first brush with SHM.
4:12
We were locked down, so I couldn't get to Doug.
4:14
By the time the COVID quarantine's finished, he'd been
4:17
sent off to some institution. That's how Grant and I knew we
4:21
had to keep our mouths shut. Doug didn't.
4:23
You see, he was very vocal about what he saw, and even more vocal
4:27
about how spontaneous human malnutrition was a load of crap.
4:31
Doug knew he was being lied to, and so did we.
4:34
We didn't have the anger of losing our friggin mom to drive
4:37
us, though. I think that's why Doug took a
4:39
different approach. He didn't think sleuthing would
4:42
get him anywhere. Answers need to be taken, not
4:45
found, he'd said. We tried to stop him, but once
4:49
he got the idea to set fire to a police station and he said there
4:53
was no getting it out. Yeah, 2020 was definitely one of
4:58
those years for me. Anyway, as I said, Doug's mom
5:02
was the 3rd victim, and it wasn't until the 5th or 6th that
5:06
the media started connecting dots.
5:09
There was nothing about the vibrating of course, that seemed
5:12
to be held. It kept deliberately under
5:14
wraps. What led local newscasters to
5:17
connect the occurrences was the apparent containment within our
5:20
town and the how shall I put this unique state the victims
5:25
are found in? It's from the victims that the
5:28
SHM lie was created. You won't find any info on it.
5:32
I know this because I'm not stupid.
5:34
One of the first things I did when the disappearances started
5:37
was liaise with my out of town contacts.
5:41
The only SHM info online is on the web pages of local schools,
5:45
hospitals, community centers, etcetera.
5:49
Try and access any of these from an IP out of the country.
5:52
Four O 4 to my friends. Try and get around that with
5:55
AVPN SWAT time. Only took 2 reports of that in
5:59
our paranormal investigation discord for grant me to realize
6:03
we were completely alone. Everyone wants to help, until
6:07
helping means an armed unit at the door.
6:10
But what is the SHM lie? The clue is in the name.
6:14
Spontaneous because it happened suddenly and without any prior
6:17
warning. There's no rhyme or reason to
6:20
who gets picked or when. Oldest victim was in their 80s.
6:24
Youngest was young enough that there are too many first graders
6:27
around here familiar with funerals.
6:29
Some go in their sleep. Others, like Doug's mom when
6:33
they're humdrumming through their daily grind.
6:35
There's no sign it's coming either.
6:38
Well, that we know of at least. It wasn't like any of the
6:41
victims were around to recount what they had experienced in the
6:45
lead up. Whatever happens, it happens
6:47
suddenly. Nobody reported feeling unwell
6:50
prior to getting SHMD. They're fine.
6:53
One second buzzing so hard they're dangerous to touch the
6:56
next. The human part is obvious.
7:00
It's the M and SHM, the malnutrition, that's the biggest
7:04
part of the lie. A local doctor coined the term
7:07
based on the state the victims were left in after the deadly
7:11
super convulsions. No matter their size beforehand,
7:14
every SHM victim came out the other end looking, well,
7:19
malnourished. Extremely malnourished.
7:24
The kind of malnourished that the term 0% body fat was made
7:28
for. They showed a couple photos on
7:30
the news and in the papers. Like I said, pictures that all
7:33
came with a disclaimer that sensitive viewers would find
7:36
them distressing. Apparently we're all sensitive
7:39
viewers when it comes to SHM, even the local news anchors.
7:43
It's a shame, actually, that the Internet blacklisting means the
7:46
clip of 76 News host Chip Dallas bursting into tears live on air
7:51
won't make it to YouTube. Despite the grim context, it's
7:56
still pretty funny to see such a corny POS lose their crap so
8:00
bad. We didn't think it was funny at
8:02
the time, though, of course. Took a few days of emotional
8:06
distance before we found enough teenage edginess to force a
8:09
laugh at his blubbering. Mainly because it meant we both
8:12
had to lie about the fact that we've been crying, too.
8:16
It's the eyes that do it. Nothing prepares you for them.
8:19
Even in a photograph, when you hear about something called
8:23
spontaneous human malnutrition, you expect to see rib cages.
8:28
You expect to see bones and joints sticking out at odd
8:31
angles, draped in a sheet thin layer of near translucent skin
8:35
that leaves nothing of the anatomy within to imagination.
8:39
As harrowing as seeing those peeled back lips, those teeth
8:43
sticking up jagged and crooked from shriveled gums can be,
8:47
you're not blindsided by them. The sight of their distended
8:51
bellies is haunting, sure, but if you've ever seen what normal
8:54
malnutrition looks like, then you're not in unfamiliar
8:57
territory. The severity of it will take you
9:00
back, no doubt. Being able to see every crease
9:03
and fold of a person's lower intestine is jarring, even if
9:07
you're giving a heads up, after all.
9:10
Despite your shock, though, these things won't create any
9:13
kind of cognitive dissonance for you.
9:16
They're about on par with what your brain will conjure when you
9:18
read the phrase and diet of starvation.
9:21
The eyes, though no amount of disclaimers or trigger warnings
9:25
could prep you enough for the eyes.
9:29
The first thing off was the look of the face surrounding them.
9:32
Every single SHM victim I've seen had the same expression.
9:35
Terror. Complete and utter terror.
9:38
All of them died screaming. The eyeballs themselves are far,
9:43
far worse, though. Unnatural.
9:46
No disease can do that. And I know because Grant and I
9:49
researched it for weeks. It doesn't matter what color
9:52
your eyes are before SHM, when you come out of the other end of
9:56
it, they'll be black now. Black like coal or like ink or
10:00
shadow. Black like the darkest reaches
10:03
of deep space, the kind of black that absorbs all light so
10:08
nothing twinkles or shimmers in them.
10:10
You've seen a shark's eye, right?
10:12
Imagine them, but 1000 times darker.
10:15
That's why everyone watching Chip Dallas's 76 news special on
10:20
the mysterious new disease that had so far taken 6 people was
10:24
crying, screaming or laughing uncontrollably.
10:28
Not everyone laughed up the disease lie, though.
10:31
It's a small town, but it's not that small.
10:34
We've got 2 high schools. Grant and I were far from the
10:37
only ones who saw spontaneous human malnutrition for the crap
10:40
it was. You know what they say about the
10:42
truth though, a lie can hold it down and beat the crap out of it
10:46
before it even knows it's in a fight.
10:50
Doug was the first non believer to get, as we were told, sent
10:53
away. He tried to burn down a police
10:55
station, though when they took him we weren't at all surprised.
11:00
It wasn't until Brian Jarek's quote UN quote suicide that
11:03
Grant and I realized just how far the mayor, police,
11:07
government, military, whoever was prepared to go to keep
11:10
everything covered up. It was six months after the
11:13
first SHM case, so that's about 102 confirmed deaths.
11:17
For context, at the regular nightly vigils, the townsfolk
11:21
would say nothing with their lips but everything with their
11:25
furtive glances and nervous floor fixations.
11:29
Brian Jarek is was a local podcaster before SHM.
11:35
He talked to mainly about nature trails in the closest National
11:39
Park or shows that were coming through one of the three
11:42
theaters we boasted. As the SHM epidemic unfolded,
11:46
this all changed. Ryan saw through the crap too,
11:50
and he was very vocal about it. He had the balls to ask
11:53
questions on his podcast. Grant and I would only whisper
11:56
to each other in the our quiet corner of the cafeteria.
12:01
If it's a disease, then where's the CDC?
12:04
Why hasn't this gained national or international attention?
12:08
What kind of disease turns your eyes like that?
12:11
Where does all the body mass they've lost to go?
12:13
How can they vibrate so fast that sands down wood, but they
12:16
remain physically unscathed? Why hasn't it spread outside the
12:21
boundaries of our town? Why aren't the death
12:23
certificates public? How come their clothes look
12:26
ragged and old by the time they stop moving?
12:30
Brian became a firebrand, A preacher, voicing the doubts we
12:34
all shared, the questions so many of us had but we're all too
12:37
afraid to ask. He'd known they were coming for
12:40
him, too. You can probably guess the
12:42
story. Night before a suicide, he
12:44
objectly stated that he would under no circumstances commit
12:47
suicide. When the first guy to point this
12:50
out on Facebook was reported dead an hour later, the message
12:53
had become pretty clear. After that, pretty much every
12:57
public doubter and worried citizen kept their mouths shut.
13:01
Grant and I didn't accept it, though.
13:03
We couldn't. It wasn't a disease.
13:06
We didn't know what it was, but we knew that there was no such
13:10
thing as spontaneous human malnutrition.
13:13
We were being lied to, and unless we could figure out why,
13:16
we wouldn't be safe. We both begged our respective
13:20
parents to move out of town, but you can imagine how that went
13:23
down. Grand's dad told him to stop
13:26
being a pussy. Mine sat me down and gave me a
13:29
lecture on the importance of not running from your problems.
13:32
Both of them. And our moms brought into the
13:35
SHM lie. I'm not going to lie, so heavy
13:39
was my sense of helplessness that I cried myself to sleep
13:42
most nights after that one. If it weren't for Grant, the
13:46
sense of isolation, that feeling of being the only sane one in
13:50
the nut house would have broken me.
13:53
Grant's not me. He's made of tougher stuff.
13:56
Whereas I retreated into existential despair, Grant
14:00
decided Brian Jarek's death as the catalyst to get up and get
14:03
stuff done. That's why he was the one that
14:06
managed to gather the puzzle pieces and put them together.
14:09
It took him a little while, though, a few months and several
14:13
dozen more bodies happened before the morning he arrived at
14:16
my door with a cardboard box full of laptops.
14:20
I still remember his expression as clear as day.
14:23
Me, was the phrase. I've done it personified.
14:27
But whereas Wide Grin wore the phrase triumphantly, his eyes
14:31
bore it with guilt, shame and fear.
14:34
He made me help him carry the box up to my room to dump the
14:37
dozen or so old laptops onto my bed.
14:40
I had to run through every variation of what the hell that
14:43
I knew before he spewed A rambling, near breathless
14:46
explanation. He'd started with the footage
14:49
recorded from our DND session. He'd been planning to keep it as
14:53
a surprise, but he'd been recording them to put together
14:56
an animated highlight reel for Doug's birthday.
14:59
I was a little annoyed at the invasion of privacy at first,
15:02
but more I rate that Grant had kept this SHM clue from me.
15:07
After a brief and admittedly genuine apology, Grant opened up
15:11
one of the laptops. He pulled Ausb Drive out of his
15:14
pocket and plugged it in. When I asked why he hadn't just
15:18
used my PC if he had the clip on a thumb drive, he muttered
15:22
something about not wanting to buy me a new monitor.
15:25
I understood exactly what he meant once he played me the
15:28
clip. This probably is no shock to any
15:31
of you, but the three minute snippet was of the end of our
15:34
final DND session. It was the video of Doug's mom
15:38
dying. It wasn't raw footage, though
15:41
Grant had edited it. Specifically, he'd slowed it
15:45
down to a tenth of the original speed.
15:48
Three minute clip represented only about 20 seconds of real
15:51
time footage. It was enough.
15:54
Granted, found all we needed to prove SHM was a hokum made-up
15:57
bullcrap disease to cover up something else happening.
16:02
Despite what you're thinking, it didn't feel like a victory.
16:05
I've never felt worse about being proved right.
16:08
The something else was so far outside the realms of my
16:11
explanation that trying to understand what I was watching
16:15
literally gave me a migraine. All I remember thinking when the
16:19
clip finished was that I'd give anything to wake up in a reality
16:23
where I'd been wrong once more. I was watching Doug standing
16:27
over his mom in his kitchen. He was moving at super slow
16:31
speeds. As to be expected, she wasn't.
16:34
She was still shaking, but it was shaking now, not blur
16:37
inducing vibrations. Her speed was still faster than
16:41
it should have been, but thanks to Grant's editing, we could see
16:45
what she was actually doing down there.
16:47
She was rising, kicking, flexing every joint in her body with
16:50
jolting spasms that bent them into contortionist like angles.
16:55
To my disgust, I realized that what I thought was the natural
16:59
crack and pop of slowed audio was actually the snapping and
17:02
crunching of bones and cartilage.
17:05
More than once she twist into a position that showed more than
17:09
just her ankles. We saw her legs, saw the flush
17:12
on them shrink away. In a matter of seconds, we'd
17:15
catch glimpses of her hands, of the skin around her digits,
17:18
vacuum sealing the bones so tightly that fingernails
17:22
splintered and cracked. Only once did we see her face.
17:26
It was one time too many. She'd spasmed forward, folding
17:31
inward without warning, until her temples touched her toes.
17:35
Her eyes were they were burning. Bright green flames poured from
17:40
her sockets, the black orbs at their center bubbling and
17:44
sputtering with intense heat. The skin of her face was pulled
17:48
so tight that pulsing veins around her eyes seem to dance
17:51
and writhe above the skin. She was screaming too, screaming
17:55
with such force that the windpipe in her shrinking neck
17:59
bulged and her wilting tonsils bled.
18:03
Her jaw was open long past that point that it should have
18:05
dislocated. That's when I realized what the
18:08
weird audio spike had been when I'd seen the footage months
18:11
earlier, when it was live and at normal speed, it was Doug's
18:16
mom's screams speed up so fast they sounded like microphone
18:20
feedback. With the footage slowed down, it
18:24
was clearly audible. Garbled and distorted, sure, but
18:28
there was no mistaking the stretched, tiny shrieks
18:30
cascading from the laptop speaker.
18:33
It wasn't a scream of fear, but of pain.
18:36
Unrestrained, unreserved agony. It was when Doug started to bend
18:41
over in super slow motion that my stomach dropped.
18:44
I remembered his fingers, the power Sander sound that reminded
18:47
me of Freddy Gruber's elbow in 6th grade.
18:52
With the footage slowed, Doug's attempts to save his mother
18:55
sounded nothing like a power Sander.
18:57
It sounded like lightning the moment the tips of his fingers
19:01
were within 6 or so inches of the top of her head.
19:04
There was an almighty crack, a booming Thunder so loud that the
19:07
speaker screamed for a few seconds before falling silent.
19:12
Twin streams of emerald flame leaped from Doug's mom's
19:15
boiling, hissing eyes. The moment the hardware killing
19:18
noise hit the green fire wrapped around Doug's slow motion
19:22
fingers. The moment they made contact,
19:25
the flesh of his digits curled and split, falling away and
19:29
fluttering shreds that cascaded back towards his mom's black
19:32
hole eyes. Within a few seconds there was
19:35
nothing left but bone, and before long that too was lost in
19:39
the bubbling voids. Doug had pulled his hand away
19:43
quickly, so I knew he didn't lose more than a few fingers.
19:47
Still, the tension caused by watching him from our slowed
19:50
perspective, holding his hand in that acid like green burning had
19:54
made me grind my teeth so hard that I lost a filling.
19:59
The relief I felt when he finally pulled his hand away was
20:01
short lived, however. The worst of Grant's discovery
20:04
was yet to come. That's the moment that they
20:08
arrived. I can't describe them, do you?
20:10
Because I've not actually seen them.
20:13
Neither is Grant. That's the thing, though, You
20:16
can't. The way you can't see them,
20:18
though, that I can describe real clear, even though thinking
20:22
about it too long makes me so queasy that I nearly puke.
20:27
I didn't notice them at first. They started small, 3 clusters
20:31
of fuzzy darkness hovering at Doug's feet.
20:34
Within a few frames, though, they were all as tall as his
20:37
knees and wider as he was. In other words, impossible to
20:41
ignore. The panic riding my breathing
20:44
grew louder and louder as the three beings unfurled.
20:47
Once materialized at their full height, they were easily 6 foot
20:51
tall, the very peaks of the conical heads brushing the
20:55
ceiling of Doug's mom's lofty, rustic kitchen.
20:59
At first I thought they were dark, shadowy, the same intense
21:03
blackness that SHM left the eyes of every single victim.
21:09
That's when Grant reached forward, paused the video, and
21:13
minimized the window. I stared at the generic desktop
21:17
wallpaper, my jaw falling open and closed.
21:21
I sputtered, trying to get words out.
21:23
All my mouth could find was shrill, nonsensical gibberish.
21:27
The three figures were still there.
21:29
The pixels of their forms weren't displaying darkness.
21:33
They were dead. I peered down to look closer.
21:37
Sure enough, the black light of the screen was completely gone
21:39
where the figure stood. The pixels at the edge of the
21:42
silhouette, the ones that should have been displaying the clear
21:46
Blues and greens of a rolling hill, flickered and glitched.
21:50
They cycled through every color visible to the naked eye, not to
21:55
mention some that shouldn't have been.
21:57
Although please don't ask me to elaborate on this because if I
22:00
think too much about it, it literally triggers an epileptic
22:03
fit. No teenage hyperbole.
22:08
It was at this point that Grant started frantically booting up
22:11
the rest of the laptops. On the screens of every single
22:14
one were three identical clusters of dead pixels outlined
22:18
by a madding, razor thin spectrum of madding color.
22:22
Whatever these things were, capturing their likeness and
22:25
displaying it digitally was too much for man made electronics.
22:29
Grant proved this by showing me his phone, which he'd used to
22:32
film one of the laptops while it played the video.
22:37
There on his home screen were three miniature clusters of
22:40
lightless pixels with conical heads, figures that aligned
22:43
perfectly with the aforementioned video.
22:45
When he tapped it open with his thumb a few seconds later, I was
22:51
babbling and shaking. By this point, there were more
22:53
than a few tears, let's put it that way.
22:56
Grant wasn't done yet, though. The clip still wasn't finished.
23:02
The last 20 seconds of the clip were of the three figures
23:05
towering over Doug. They didn't move, but I could
23:09
tell they must have been doing something behind their shroud of
23:11
pixel death. I know for two reasons I'll get
23:15
through the least harrowing of them.
23:17
First, because for the second I need to build myself up a
23:20
little. The first reason I knew the
23:23
conical headed giants were there for a reason was Doug's mom.
23:27
She was convulsing more violently than ever.
23:29
Her spasms were rocketing her from the floor so hard that she
23:33
seemed to almost be floating toward the three dark masses.
23:37
Well, perhaps pulled toward them is more appropriate.
23:40
Pulled by her bubbling, boiling black hole eyes, the green
23:46
flames had once more left from them.
23:49
This time though there were three tendrils of fire and
23:52
thankfully none of them found Doug.
23:55
Instead they snake their way through the air until they each
23:58
found a mass of pixel death. The flames disappeared behind
24:02
their respective voids. Into my growing horror, I
24:05
realized they were at the exact height one would expect to find
24:09
on a non foot. Conical headed being a mouth,
24:13
the arcs of green fire kept Doug's mom and the dead pixel
24:16
figures connected until almost the very end of the clip.
24:20
Her convulsions grew more violent and contorting than
24:23
ever. Her skin rippled as the final
24:25
ounces of fat, muscle and mass were sucked into these void
24:30
filled orbs to be burned into green flames.
24:33
Every vein on her face bulged to bursting point.
24:37
Her mouth twisted into a teeth bearing grimace from which
24:40
streaks of foam oozed. Doug stood above his mom, still
24:45
slow motion and oblivious as the three towering beings around him
24:49
consumed her until she was little more than an abyss
24:53
skeleton draped in papery skin. As I said, though, that was the
24:59
first of the two reasons. I knew those beings must have
25:02
been doing something beneath those lifeless pixels.
25:05
The second one, the one that's kept me up for however many
25:08
nights have passed since that morning, was much worse.
25:13
We could hear them not through the speaker.
25:16
The speaker was dead and busted. This was made all too apparent
25:20
by the fact that Doug's mom's electric chair convulsions and
25:23
screaming from burning eyes had been inaudible since Doug made
25:27
the mistake of trying to touch her.
25:29
No, I could hear them in the room from all around me.
25:34
Their hollow tones echoed and bounced off every wall.
25:37
I yelled, whipping around in every direction, adrenaline
25:41
shooting through every blood vessel.
25:44
Grant was crying now, crying and mouthing I'm sorry over and over
25:48
like a twisted mantra. It wasn't just the fact that I
25:51
could hear them which made me throw the laptop out the damn
25:54
window, it was what I could hear them doing too.
25:58
They were laughing. All three of them were locked in
26:01
high pitched, chittering hysterics, the kind of laughter
26:04
you imagine a spider makes before it injects its cocooned
26:07
prey with chemicals that turn them into liquid mulch.
26:11
Every barked ha screeched through my eardrums, twisting my
26:15
spine and setting off every nervous tick I never knew I had.
26:21
I shouted at Grant for about half an hour once I was
26:24
satisfied the laptop hadn't survived the fall.
26:27
He took it like a champ, and when I'd finally calmed down, he
26:30
showed me the bloodied knuckles he'd obtained when he put his
26:34
first through drywall. After watching it the first
26:36
time. The fear it created was beyond
26:39
rationality. Hearing that laughter set off
26:42
something deep within me, a set of emotions long dormant thanks
26:46
to the comfortable safety of modern life.
26:49
Once Upon a time, human beings needed that mix of aggression
26:52
and panic. They needed it because if they
26:55
didn't have it, they'd never be able to fight their way out of
26:58
the corners the beings that live in shadows could back them into.
27:03
I know those feelings now, although every single part of me
27:06
wishes that I didn't. It was after I apologized for
27:10
losing my cool and Grant began to talk about our options for
27:14
what to do next that our phones rang.
27:17
I felt a little composure and I'd managed to build since the
27:20
laptop went flying ebb away in an instant.
27:23
There was no number, but instead of caller not recognized or
27:27
withheld number, the writing on the screen showed 2 simple
27:30
spirit crushing words. Human phone.
27:35
I looked up at Grant, tears once more falling down my cheeks.
27:39
He was in the same state. He nodded at me and I gulped,
27:43
resigning myself to whatever happened next.
27:46
We both clicked the green icon to accept the call.
27:49
A single voice answered, and once more it came.
27:52
Not from our phones, but from every square inch of space
27:55
around us. It was a single voice, whining
27:58
and high pitched. The syllable sounded not like
28:01
organic speech, but like someone had stretched and manipulated
28:04
audio of billions of people screaming until it became
28:08
coherent language again. Only two words, but they were
28:12
enough for both Grant and I to get on our bikes and cycle as
28:15
far away from my house as we possibly could.
28:18
Hello boys. My folks were the ones who
28:21
reported us missing. They found us hiding in our
28:24
shack in the woods, though one we'd naively believed our
28:29
parents didn't know about. It was when we started to
28:32
explain why we ran. That crap went sideways fast.
28:37
We'd expected the cops not to believe us.
28:40
We never thought they'd place us under house arrest and cut both
28:43
our houses off from the Internet.
28:45
We were both dumbfounded when they confiscated our phones and
28:49
told us every device we own was getting taken in for evidence.
28:53
We were real surprised when one of the cops punched Grant in the
28:57
face and told us in no uncertain terms that just because we were
29:02
kids didn't mean we couldn't get and I quote dealt with when I
29:08
found out about the bribe money to keep Shum.
29:11
I don't know what I felt more shocked at how much it was or
29:15
disgusted that my parents accepted it.
29:18
They don't believe me, by the way.
29:20
They're pissed that we tried to leave town at and again I quote
29:23
but from my dad now a time when the community needs to come
29:27
together and not do anything to rock the boat.
29:31
That was a week ago. I haven't slept since.
29:34
I also haven't heard from Grant. I've been watching the news
29:38
though. 17 more gone in the last five days. 17 more people burned
29:43
away and consumed by by whatever those things are.
29:47
And our police, at the very least, are in on it, keeping it
29:51
covered up. Not just keeping it covered up,
29:54
allowing it to happen. I know it runs deeper, though it
29:58
has to. Why else would those scientists
30:01
in hazmat suits keep showing up outside my house at night?
30:04
Why else would a black van be parked across the street
30:07
morning, noon and night? Why else would three police
30:11
officers resign do citing a conflict of conscience, and die
30:17
under mysterious circumstances the night afterward?
30:22
Whatever's happening in my town, it's big and it's being kept
30:25
quiet. Not only kept quiet, it's being
30:29
allowed to happen. I stole my dad's work phone to
30:32
post this. I'm hoping that it gets out
30:35
there, that it makes it past the blacklist they've got in place.
30:39
That's part of the reason I've omitted the name of where I
30:41
actually live. They'll no doubt have scrapers
30:45
mining every search engine for it.
30:47
I mean damn it probably won't work but I'm Plumb out of ideas
30:51
and honestly way beyond desperate by this point.
30:55
This isn't a send help now post because the help is half the
30:58
damn problem. This is so you can be on the
31:01
alert. If you get wind of anything that
31:03
sounds even remotely like SHM, skip down.
31:07
Leave. Especially if you live in a
31:09
pokey little cult like quiet town like mine.
31:12
I don't care what you think of your neighbors, Forget
31:15
everything you know about your friends, your family.
31:17
When crap hits the fan, they will play along with the lie.
31:22
As I said, this doesn't seem to have spread beyond the town's
31:25
limits so far. Whatever those beings are,
31:28
they've picked here as their hunting ground.
31:31
They could move though, or there could be more of them.
31:35
Who knows how many ghost towns and dwindling populations are
31:38
actually whole communities being deliberately fed to these
31:40
things? the US is a big place.
31:43
You really think anyone would notice if podunk villain
31:46
Shitheep County vanished slowly over a few years?
31:50
That's what's happening here, and nobody around me is trying
31:53
to stop it. My parents, the news, the
31:57
police, the mayor, everyone with any kind of authority are doing
32:01
what they can to make sure we sit tight and let it happen.
32:05
There's no such thing as spontaneous human malnutrition.
32:08
There never has been, and there never will be.
32:11
But because the idiots around me refused to stop insisting
32:14
otherwise, I'm going to get consumed by no, screw it, screw
32:22
the house arrest, I can't stay here.
32:26
Those things know who I am, know where I am.
32:31
They'll be coming for me sooner or later, house arrest be
32:34
damned. I've got nowhere to go.
32:36
But damn that footage. Dying alone and starving in the
32:41
forest would be much better than than that.
32:46
Dad, if you're reading this, I'm sorry.
32:52
I don't want to know what it feels like to have eyes that
32:55
burn like dying Suns. I'm not going out the way Doug's
33:00
mom did, the way I know you're hiding from me that Grant
33:03
already has done. I can't take this madness
33:07
anymore. Dad, you know I'm right about
33:09
all this. I'm sorry, I truly am.
33:14
But you and I both need to accept that it's not my fault
33:17
you decided to fall down this rabbit hole.
33:21
As for the rest of you, wish me luck.
33:23
You might see me cycling through your town one day.
33:26
Who knows? I'm posting this, then hitting
33:29
the road. It's about an hour's journey
33:31
between my house and the edge of town.
33:34
If I push it, I can make it before my dad or the cops
33:36
realize what I've done. I'm taking a risk by posting
33:40
this, I know, but that's the thing.
33:43
There's always a chance those things might reach me first.
33:46
Hell, they might even be reading this now, They've already proved
33:50
they can mess with our phones, it won't be a stretch if they
33:53
were watching me type this, right?
33:55
No, I can't think like that. Got to focus, got to remember
34:00
that as risky as leaving is, the risk of staying is always
34:04
higher. It's a certainty.
34:07
I'm going to be keeping my head down so you won't hear from me
34:10
again, but keep your fingers crossed for me, please.
34:14
Oh, and remember, if and when your local Chip Dallas, a simile
34:19
starts telling you not to worry about a mysterious new disease
34:22
called spontaneous human malnutrition, don't believe a
34:26
word they say. It doesn't exist and you have
34:29
every reason to panic.