I will eat your soul.



   Fog always comes when you least expect it. Normally it creeps in like a mist, unsuspected 
until it is actually there. At first, it just seems to refract the light a little bit. The 
typical piercing stars of oncoming headlights become just a little more vague, blurred, like 
they were smudged with a child's eraser. Then, the mist materializes out of nowhere, and 
you're caught thinking, Damn, I hate driving through fog.


   Thadd was doing just this, slowing his speed by almost half, watching the cars coming 
towards him doing the same. He disliked driving through fog, but you get used to it after 
awhile. That was the danger of fog. You got complacent, and before you knew it you're off 
the road in a ditch somewhere. So if you lived in a place that has consistent fog, you had 
to train yourself to always be on alert in the fog, because that thick mist is the enemy. It 
wants to mix things up, spread a little chaos, Here, soccer mom of three, have a little a la 
rear bumper of a Mack truck, so Thadd maybe didn't like mist like he was in now much, but he 
hated thick fog. He was the kind to read the paper, and he knew how many drivers had 
accidents in this area. Many times there were pileups, and fatalities common. Thadd had 
lived here for twenty years, most of his adult life, and he would never get used to the way 
the fog comes in so suddenly, sometimes rolling in, pouring in like it was coming from 
somewhere


(else)


deliberately, like some prankster with a fog machine somewhe-


   Headlights bloomed directly in front of him, someone was in his lane and about to--


But at the last second, as he mashed his horn, the other driver swerved sharply back into 
his own lane and almost went off it, going way too fast. At least sixty, heart 
pounding like a hard-working engine, sweat dripping off him now. What the hell is he 
thinking? But the other car was long gone behind him now, and he concentrated on the 
oncoming gray asphalt slowly appearing before him with all the intensity of a high-stakes
 poker game. Finally, his head pounding a little bit after so long on this narrow road, he 
saw the exit sign, RT 141 - NEXT EXIT, and felt that vast wave of relief wash through him 
again, coming home, home, home. He always felt like he was escaping from some kind of other 
world, a prison, when he came home and there was fog. Like it had let him go instead of 
taking him with it when it departed. As he pulled off onto Route 141 and saw the giant sign 
that announced his neighborhood entrance, COURT SAWYER BEND, Thadd felt like he had won 
again against the fog. The enemy was held back for a little while. 





Chapter 2


   Thadd walked quickly up the narrow walk, almost running toward the entrance to his home 
which was clearly visible through the lightening fog. He was concerned more about where his 
fellow "tenants" might be, and what they might be up to. This was always a critical stage. 
Almost every day would mark itself on Thadd in the form of cuts and bruises, or sometimes 
the mustard-yellow mucus, what seemed like gallons of it, on his clothes, on him, that was 
almost impossible to get off. Usually, Thadd saw the Sene, sometimes Bad Mary or the Other. 
Strangely enough, he had not seen anyone else here in the Urbs for the last three days. This 
had only happened once before, and Thadd felt a tickling of unease in the back of his mind.

   The tickle grew into a jab of distress that rocked through his body as he saw that his 
heavily reinforced door was standing partly open. This was a dangerous situation, alright. 
His eyes constantly scanning for movement, Thadd dropped to one knee and grabbed one of the 
heavy chunks of concrete that littered the walk, hefting it in one hand, liking the feel of 
comfort that it gave him. He dashed forward into the main room, leaping from his crouch in 
an instantaneous spring that was natural for him, but which any sprinter would have envied. 
Landing lightly on the front of his feet, he saw Bad Mary sitting in one corner, between the 
broken TV set and his book shelf. She looked miserable as always. He felt sorry for her, but 
she could not help him here. A few years ago someone had cut her tongue out, so she wouldn't 
exactly be able to tell him who broke into his home, would she? And so he dismissed her, 
looking for the intruder. 

   He must still be here. He knew it, could see it in the way Bad Mary was trying to drive 
herself through the corner, repeatedly pushing herself with both legs. He could see it in 
the path the man must have taken; the things he had knocked over - a cardboard box, several 
stacks of burnt electronics, his cigar case, open and upended on the floor, what little 
money in it gone - on his way to the door. The door to his bedroom.

   He walks through the door. The darkness seems to envelop him. The silence is suddenly
 broken as he hears what sounds like something sloppy thrown against a hard surface, and now 
his head is filled with memories of the Ravaged and he knows it's one of them as the door 
slams shut behind him. Through the darkness that is everything the soft scream of a rusty 
gate grows closer to him and he is utterly terrified to find that it is calling him, he 
thought it was coming for him but he had been walking to it in the black eternal night that 
had seeped into his head. An unacknowledged, deeply seated core of his being shudders and 
threatens to give as he realizes how familiar this all seems, knowing it is just happening 
again. They had come back for him again. The ones who had stolen all the children were 
taking him in their arms once again.


It was a relief when his consciousness succombed.




Chapter 3


   Thadd was at work again. He felt horrible. He had awoken in his bed this morning like 
usual, but a feeling of revulsion and despair had been clawing through him and he had almost 
decided to not go, but something 


(else)


had made him change his mind. Something about his house. So he had driven to work, through 
the security gates with the small contingent of guards controlling it. They did not glance 
at him. They knew how bad it was.

   
Most of the people at work looked as bad as Thadd felt. 


   He worked mindlessly, the automation line a non-stopping explosion of noise that he had 
so grown used to that he heard it in his dreams, men on his left and right doing the exact 
same thing he was doing, taking a stock from one line and screwing it onto each carbine as 
they came. The guns were shipped out in massive quantities, and were always needed. It 
wasn't his job to know if they worked. He just put them together, and it was his sole 
possession that he treasured - the only time in his recent existence when he could forget.
 For three hours they worked, and then they had something to eat and worked five more. By the 
time he was finished each day his hands were always completely deadened and almost numb, his 
arms two branches of wood that had somehow been attached to his shoulders. It was something. 
He had to help, and so he did it. It helped him, too.


   The fog came again as he drove home, body screaming from the torture, stomach a small 
shriveled stone. And none of it bothered him, because what the hell was a little work when 
the world was a fucking nightmare? His mind was a tottering building that creaks so 
alarmingly in a blast of wind, and through the shrieking undercurrent that was the maelstrom
 of his mind a tiny question, barely audible, touched him through the raging storm inside. He 
thought that question deserved some thinking, but the time for thinking in Thadd seemed to 
be over. His eyes glistened and bulged as the headlights of oncoming cars washed over his 
face. His mouth was twisted into a grotesque smile that was really a scream.


   The question was,


This wasn't the way it was before, was it?


Was it?


A slow certainty began to puddle in the bottom of his mind. This was that life was a play. 
This could not be the way things were now, could they? How could he remember his seventh 
birthday, when his parents threw him a surprise party and there must have been dozens of 
children, and everybody was so happy, everything was fucking perfect, clear blue sky and 
birthday cake and innocent laughter of boys and girls, the parents smiling and talking 
calmly as if nothing was wrong, because nothing was. How could he remember his seventh 
birthday with all its serene divinity, and also be able to remember when they came, when the
 world stopped and Hell began. This had to be Hell, didn't it? 


   As the wheels slowly began to churn in his head, he felt like an explosion suddenly went 
off in his mind. The fog. To Thadd it now seemed like an in-between place, a place to travel 
through and out. It had occurred to Thadd that perhaps his perfect world was somewhere in 
the fog. That maybe 


(before)


at some point he had gotten lost in the fog, and it had taken him somewhere else. A 
not-so-perfect world that was more like the gnashing of teeth and rending of clothes. A 
world Thadd could certainly do without. A world where there were no children, because there 
really were monsters and they really did grab your arm as it hung over the bed, it pulled 
him over the bed, it was under the bed and pulled him under, Oh my God how could it do that?

   The tears were streaming down his face as he drove, but Thadd was beyond noticing. He was 
remembering how it had grabbed his son Thadd had been putting him to bed, how he was right 
there next to him when it happened, and Thadd still couldn't do anything about it. Most 
distressing was that he could not recall his son's name. He couldn't remember his wife's 
name, either, but this seemed less important. He had a picture of a woman at his home that 
he was pretty sure was her, although she did not look familar in the slightest. He had 
nothing to remember of his son except that it had grabbed him and taken him away. 


Chapter 4


incomplete...