Snickering Clicketty Tickery

“The moon is an egg, you know.” said the homeless man. “It's filled with cannibalistic demons.”

I nodded stoically as I sat on the park bench and watched him eating the Gregg’s pasty. A chunk of 

chicken and gravy dropped into his beard. He wiped it off with decaying fingerless gloves.

I spotted a single shaft of cotton on the pinky finger of his left hand.

Not entirely fingerless but soon to be, I considered. I continued to swirl my pen around the 

notepad. Somedays Simon was useful, but today I just wasn’t feeling it. Maybe the material was 

just too weak.

“Anything else?” 

Simon chewed. 

“The world’s going to end in 2031.” he added, with the demeanour of a man remembering that he 

needed to reschedule a dental appointment. Not that Simon needed to, of course, as he gnawed

you could spot only about two of three teeth left in his mouth. “You can see it if you drive trains.”

“Cool.” I replied. I dropped the notebook back into my bag and headed off, leaving Simon to finish 

the rest of his meal. 

I know you’re probably judging me, but the way I see it it’s a victimless crime. Simon Maccles is 

crazy, addicted to at least two Class A substances and spends all his money on drugs before he 

can buy food. 

I need inspiration for a novel and can buy him food. 

It’s a symbiotic relationship, although some would call it parasitic. I never encourage anything he 

says, it just comes out of him and I nod and scribble down a few pieces. 

Sometimes he gives me good pieces, such as Vampires living in Los Angeles, a real life version of 

The Flash who is an insane and power-mad God, the ultra-elite drugging their children with a

serum that makes them hyper intelligent but kills them in their early twenties, a comet filled with 

robot snipers that assassinate key politic figures and celebrities seemingly at random and Hitler’s 

secret heir being alive and well in Hawaii. Today is not one of those days.

I think he can feel it too and he might be getting nervous that our 7am Gregg’s sessions may soon

cease. He called after me.

“There are smaller eggs in the park! The rhomboids! Go look at the rhomboids!”

I jot down a little note. ‘Go look at the rhomboids! The rhomboids!’ It’s not much but the idea of a 

crazy person shouting about shapes could possibly be in my novel.

My phone chimes.

Hey are you still playing homeless councillor or are you on your way?

Shit. I check the time on my phone. It’s coming up to eight and I’m almost late, so I break into a 

sprint.

It’s raining and the puddles are starting to fill up next to the drains that are clogged with Autumn

leaves. Maybe it’s for that reason I head through the park, diverting myself away from the high 

street. It gets me to school quicker too. But maybe I did it because I wanted to see them, even at a 

distance.

Of course the homeless man is crazy. There are records of the artist in residence, the funding and 

even pictures of the construction. Maybe it’s just the way mentally ill people are. Alcoholics, loners. 

Something psychological. The baddies are hiding deep inside where you can’t see them, you just 

need to get them out.

My uncle was like that before he was institutionalised. Muttered something about insects under his 

skin, scratched until he bled. Got medicated, got better, went to my aunt and told her he was 

having an affair. Now lives along in a flat somewhere up in Chester and makes ‘funny’ Facebook 

posts about football and Premier League every week or so.

Guess he got the baddies out.

I see a rustling from a nearby pine tree. The park is filled with them. 

My feet crunch-squish over the browning pine needles as I keep going down the concrete path.

In the distance I can see Appledon Secondary School and to my right, in the early morning fog 

there’s three tiny spires I can make out. The sculptures that-

“YO!”

I jump a foot in the air as Gavin Kemp laughs.

I make a swing that doesn’t connect. Gavin is an athlete. Me? Not exactly. 

“Sup Albans? Get my text?”

“You’re an asshole. And I’m not a fucking councillor.”

“You’re psychologically profiling him for when you drop out of school and go bugshit.”

“Whatever you say.” I responded.

“Where the easiest stores to steal from are. Where the thickest bush to take a shit is. Which park 

benches haven’t got little nubs on.”

I can’t help but chuckle. It’s a bad joke, but Gavin isn’t a bad guy. 

“I’m doing it for creativity. Trying to turn out the mind of something who thinks differently.”

“Is bugshit.” Gavin corrects. “Any sage advice today? Don’t forget to floss?” 

“The sculptures in The Companion Circle are eggs that are from Mars.”

Gavin stroked his stubble. He was very proud of what little he had managed to grow since turning 

fifteen.

“Three out of ten. It’s just the plot of Alien, so I’d usually give it a one but I’m adding two points. 

One out of sympathy, one because metal eggs mean a metal animal and I guess that’s cool.”

“Not sure the schizophrenic asked for notes, Gavin. He’s not looking to green-light an Amazon 

Prime short.”

Gavin smiled a smile that was all teeth.

‘But you are.”

I don’t know why but in that moment I felt pretty embarrassed. Maybe it just dawned on me how 

gross it was that I was technically taking advantage of the mentally ill.

I shifted my bag. Inside are three notebooks, all filled with scribbles and ideas from a madman. 

As we’re walking through the school gates I can’t help but think of my little notebooks as asylums.

Each page a patient.

— — —

The day is over and the grey skies have pulled apart like threshed cotton, revealing eggshell blue 

freckles. The sun is setting and the warm evening glow makes you consider it warm until you see

your own breath.

I walked back the same way, through the park. The morning fog has lifted and I decided to get a 

closer look at The Companion Circle. It’s just three rhomboids made out of pig iron. If I was to 

describe them, I’d say they look like sealed conches more than eggs.

There’s one on the far right that it opened slightly, usually revealing a thin puddle of rainwater at 

the bottom, cigarette ends and a rusted can of San Pellegrino with half the foil top peeled and 

discoloured.

I look again.

Clearly my memory is wrong.

There are two that are open. The one on the right is open like a maw, the rainwater puddle now 

deeper than ever. The cigarette ends float, and the can has now been joined by a broken glass 

bottle. Below the murk lays something I can’t quite see, not that I want to reach my hand in for it 

open account of the broken glass.

The one on the left is open a crack, but barely an inch. I can’t put my hand in so I take my phone 

flashlight and shine it inside. Nothing, empty. Not that I was expecting some screeching beast from 

Planet Quan’zar or something.

I check the dedication. Same metal sigil on the floor that looks like a bunch of weird concentric 

circles, same reference to Samuel Wardle who was a South African artist that the National Lottery 

Fund commissioned. No aliens, no robots, no crazy stuff. Just a man who got paid to make weird 

sculptures.

I head back, but immediately hear a snickering. Not like a laughter, but more like a thin metal 

clacking of a thousand clacks a second. Like forks in a cutlery drawer, clattering. Or a clock 

running fast.

A weird snickering, clicketty, tickery noise.

I swear, out of the corner of my eye, I can see something, no bigger than my thumb, disappear 

out of one of the rhomboids and off into the long grass.

I head back and look into the rhomboid on the far right. Whatever was lurking in the muddied 

waters below the broken glass bottle.

“It knows when you’re going to spot it, and runs before you do.”

I knew who it was even before I turned around.

“Hey, I don’t really have much money on me.”

Simon ignored me, continuing.

“Temporal chronographic brains. They know what’s going to happen in the future.”

For the first time ever, I took a good look at him. His clothing was wretched, as was his face. 

Something sluggish and brown was coagulated on his chin and I can still remember the clunking 

and swishing of the bottle of Irish Meadows in his overcoat pocket.

His eyes didn’t roll though, in that listless way of serious alcoholics. They were steeled, perhaps on 

something I couldn’t see. The man was mad, after all.

“Do you have somewhere to stay tonight? My mum might be pretty mad but it’s cold out and you 

can crash on the sofa as long as you’re out before anyone wakes up.”

Simon surprised me with a brief chuckle.

‘I’m okay kid. Just, look out for yourself, yeah?”

And with that, he walked away.

I spent a brief few minutes looking over the rhomboids. No clue why. Pulled up the internet. No 

real information gleaned from Samuel Wardle’s socials. Living in Manchester. Did two more 

installations, a giant swan out of folding paper that looked a bit naff and a mural of a gorilla that 

looked lopsided.

As I walked back, I spotted something on the ground. A tattered leather wallet.

I opened it and flicked through the contents. No notes, no bank cards, just an ID card for

something called ‘Kilgrave Industries’ with a ‘Level 3 Clearance’. On the top, there’s a logo of an 

eye above a weird oblong covered in circles. 

Dog walker, perhaps. Or a jogger with their headphones in who wouldn’t notice something out of a 

wallet. Nothing to their name but a weird ID that’s probably a prop from some sci-fi show they like 

or some shit. Maybe a Cinereplica or something. I don’t really watch that kind of Star Trek stuff.

I have a brief thought flicker through my mind but then I push it to the back.

It couldn’t be him. Simon had nothing. No family, no notes, no anything. I wasn’t even sure 

of a second name or age, and neither was he. Either a mind too muddled by chemicals or maybe 

he wanted to forget. 

I slipped it into my pocket and make a mental note to check it when I get home.

My phone buzzes and I see another text from Gavin. Says we should check out the market on 

Saturday, no doubt in hoping to get a farmer who’s low on funds to sell us some apricot or 

dandelion wine without checking we’re of a legal age. 

He did it the month before. I remember having two sips and almost puking, same as I did when I 

tried a cigarette behind the bike shed last year. Standing in the summer sun, thinking I was really 

cool like a motorcycle dude or something, then sucking burning air that tasted of a swamp filled 

with burned leather and I coughed for five minutes whilst Gavin cried with laughter. Coughed so 

hard one of the teachers found us. Almost got suspended for it.

But still, I’ll probably join him. It’s something to do on the weekend as far as I can figure.

I remember thinking at that point that something was wrong, but I didn’t quite know.

Every time I laughed it off as remembering one was open when two were open, I remember what I 

saw on the inside of the other rhomboid.

Nothing. Clean, sparkling and new.

No rust at all.

The sun is still setting as I get home.

— — —

The next morning it’s stopped raining and the streets are filled with liquid mirrors courtesy of a 

council who avoid paying to fill potholes. I text Gavin and tell him I’ll meet him at ten, have some 

cereal. Toast. Grapefruit juice. 

I pulled my phone out of the charger with a pop and load up Chrome. Search for the name on the 

card. I type ‘Kilbride Industries’ and then delete. That wasn’t it. I check the card and retype. 

‘Kilgrave Industries’.

I see a building mentioned in an industrial estate nearby. Probably smelting. Or, like, a hipster t-

shirt printing company or some shit. 

I’m out the door by nine, throwing a wave to Mum. Dad doesn’t usually get up for a while on 

weekends. In truth, neither do I. Neither of us are morning people, but as I reach into my pocket 

and touch the tattered wallet, I know I can’t stay in bed. I need to know.

The estate itself looks a little run down, just a bunch of metal sheds in a giant parking lot under 

grey skies. The idea of anyone needing a clearance level just seems stupid. There were probably 

rats and squirrels sneaking in through the cracks in the tin roofs and gaps in the tarpaulin.

There’s a cracked board listening a bunch of businesses. Some have been painted over, but 

sloppily. I can still make out what looks like a cake decorating company, a key cutter and a cobbler.

The only two businesses apart from Kilgrave Industries are a cleaning supplies company called 

Cleano and an office supplies company imaginatively called “OfficeSupplies2U”.

A laminated piece of water damaged and yellowed paper attached underneath Cleano announced 

they now offered trade discounts.

It all seemed rather dreary. I checked my watch and noticed it was nine twenty. So I headed into 

the estate. It was a rather lacklustre compound all things considered. Pigeons pecking at the 

gravel. Faded ‘For Let’ signs on half of the rotting shacks.

But not the one at the far end.

Standing between two dishevelled looking sheds was a bright outhouse with ‘KI’ on the front. And 

just below, laser etched, a UK GOV logo.

As soon as I came near, a shutter in the wall slid open soundlessly. A hand concealed in what 

looked like a white hazmat glove poked out.

“DROP THE WALLET!”

“Excuse me?” I replied. I don’t know whether it was shock or something, but I dropped the wallet 

into the slot which shot closed in a mere fraction of second, but not before I saw the gloved hand 

fumble with it. 

And then I was alone again, in an empty lot with nothing more than three pigeons, an old Ford 

Fiesta and shuttered businesses. 

I wandered around the tin outhouse, but there’s no marks on it. I’m surprised I hadn’t noticed 

before. The rest of the buildings are aged, decrepit. This one just looked as if it had been plonked 

down yesterday. 

I tried tapping and knocking the sides and all I get is a resounding hollow thunk. I hear something 

inside. Gears twirling, moving. I can hear a muttering from inside. There’s one or two beeping 

noises followed by a whirring that seems to grow quieter and quieter.

It sounds like some sort of lift descending.

The whole thing was just weird, to be honest. A man in a box shrieking for a tattered wallet that 

somebody lost in the middle of a park.

I make my way out after checking my phone and seeing that I’m late. Part of me hoped that 

dropping off the wallet would make me feel less uneasy, but now I feel more uneasy than ever.

If Gavin notices that I feel off, he doesn’t say anything about it.

The stalls are dripping in the late Autumn rain, each laid out with wood carvings, homemade 

preserves, trinkets, toys, Christmas cards and woollen clothes. And at the end, Gavin’s version of 

Shangri-La, Kenneth’s Hooch. I could see him eyeing up a bottle of gin with a peeling homemade 

sticker on it, but my mind was elsewhere.

And then I heard it again. The snickering. Clickery. Tickery. Noise.

I can see a new stall. Which is weird because we never really get new stalls. The weekend market 

has always been the same faces from the village over, who come to Tagbury just because there’s

a lot of middle class people working in offices with expendable income and a dwindling number of 

charity shops. And the noise is coming from there.

They seem to only sell one thing, and a hastily scribbled sign had been put up at the front of the 

stall.

“Pendants. £10.00”

Each one was clattering away. Thin shadows played behind each one. In truth, it made me feel 

queasy. The lady behind the counter must have been about eighty five. She wore a long flowing 

orange kaftan and regarded me with a strange look of suspicion as she sold a pendant on a long 

purple string to an impressed blonde woman of twenty three. 

“How do these work?” I asked.

“Old automatic watch movements.” she said. 

She smiled. And when she did, I was unsettled by the startling number of pearly white teeth in her 

wrinkled mouth. It looked wrong, somehow.

“Are you interested, young man?”

I shook my head and her expression darkened. I moved away, wanting to get back to Gavin.

Not a lot of the people from the village over liked Tagbury locals, Tagbury being mostly very well-to-

do and Lockley, the place where most of the sellers came from, being mostly large patches of briar 

heath, barns and simple working folk who knew the value of a hard day’s graft. But still, they 

always smiled as they sold their wares. This lady was different. And I had a feeling she wasn’t from 

Lockley.

As I headed back to Gavin, a curious crowd had gathered around the pendant stall. He was 

bartering with Kenneth.

“A twenty spot, Kenny.”

“You don’t need to say ‘spot’, you’re not from America. Twenty five quid. Final.”

Gavin grumbled and fished five notes from his pocket and took the bottle of hooch that Kenneth 

told any ‘concerned officials’ was simply the result of him being lazy and accidentally pouring hard 

liquor into an unused squash bottle. An understandable workplace mishap. One that seemed to 

happen with startling regularity during slower periods.

Kenneth seemed happy though, and sipped at his cherry gin as we walked back.

The crowd had diminished by then. But the pendant stall was festooned with nothing but empty 

plastic branches where the pendants had once hung from.

The lady behind the counter grinned over at me as she reversed the sign that said “Pendants.

£10”.

The other side, in large crimson lettering:

SOLD OUT

— — —

I got home slightly later. We stuck around town, went to a Subway. Gavin got in trouble for spiking 

his own coke from the drinks machine with his own gin. He’d been sipping from the bottle since 

he’d got it, so he was a bit drunk. Prevaricated a few times to the poor dude just trying to make 

sandwiches for a living. We left after he threatened to call the police.

I didn’t eat much of my sub. Few bites, even though it was my favourite. (Turkey, American swiss, 

sriracha, pickles on hearty Italian if you’re ever wondering.) I just shoved it in my coat pocket.

I said goodbye to Gavin who looked a bit worse for wear. Later, in learned he threw up in a 

mulberry bush just outside of a Primary School both of us used to go to that very evening, unable

 to hold his drink down.

When I got back I put my stuff down, just a wooden toy car I picked up from some carver who 

seemed really knowledgeable and cool plus it was only ten pounds and I figure I can fob it off as as 

a Christmas gift to someone if I need to.

Head upstairs. Take a shower with some mint shower gel. Works well with hair, surprisingly. You’d 

be surprised how many shower gels are good shampoos. Head into the bedroom, get in my 

pyjamas, watch a bunch of YouTube and fall asleep.

I get awoken by it again.

That snickering

clicketty 

tickery 

noise.

I check my phone, which has gone off midway through the Friends episode I was watching on 

YouTube. It’s 2:23am. 

I creep out the door and head to the landing, down the soft stairs. One of the floorboards let out a

low groan and I stop, but nobody comes out of their bed. No landing light switches on.

I feel framed in the cold moonlight that comes streaming in through the little enclave near the stairs 

where Mum keeps her macrame attempts. Two knitted tapestries lay half down, along with the 

knitting needles.

clicketty

I looked out the window at that pock-marked moon, all the way out there in the darkness and 

emptiness. I don’t know why, but something about outer space has always made me feel so sad.

tickery

I looked down the stairs.

Something was moving.

In the murk

I thought of the pool of water in the rhomboid sculpture, how I hadn’t put my hand down into it 

because of the glass bottle, but wondered what I would have pulled up if I had.

It moved, skittering across the floor and I ran down the stairs.

My first thought was that it was a rat, but the speed of it was wrong. Too fast. It had tufts of fur but 

also something else. Not quite legs. Sticks. I could make out only part of it in the darkness. 

I hit the switch on the wall and screamed.

The creature stood three meters away from me, around the size of a drinks coaster and shaped 

much like a human head.

It had two metallic pins raised up like a spider. Below it was a swath of pink skin with two human-

like eyes now blinking and squinting in the unexpected brightness.

Two fangs crossed horizontally across a gaping maw. And suddenly a feeling of unreality swept 

over me. Sriracha sauce coated the linoleum in a snail trail up to the creature. Part of the wrapper 

was ensnared on a fang and the open Subway sandwich lay ransacked on the floor.

A cold and icy feeling engulfed by chest as I looked at the ruin of ingredients. Only the turkey was 

missing, I looked back at the creature, angry eyes now tracking itself onto me.

Meat.

With a bristling squeal it ran to me as I backed up the stairs, slipping and sliding. I managed to give 

out a feeble kick that connected with its furry carapace, sopping wet with some noxious goo, 

otherworldly, dripping. My stomach heaved as the creature let out another angry chitter and its 

metallic pins battered at the fabric of the stairs as it clattered, climbing.

I had backed up to the top of the stairs when those metal pins, like a fistful of syringes, skittered 

across my leg. I was frozen, done for. The creature came level with my chest and I could see its 

nascent fury as the two fangs pulled back, the jaw itself unhinging and I see a trillion tiny sharp 

nodules that seemed to twist and sway. Its insides are made of teeth.

My hand touched soft fabric as I twist away and I grab the first thing I can and heave it into the 

mouth of the creature. It lets out a shriek followed by a low moan.

The knitting needle drips with something blue and sizzling, melting the metal needle on contact.

The creature slid down and I drop it, quickly, and watch as the corpse of the thing bounces down 

the stairs and lands on the carpet in the front hall. Its legs quiver, bristling out like a hedgehog 

before it curls inwards. Inhuman eyes look up at me with a stabbing glare of vengeance. I want to 

throw up. It dies.

It dies and I’m fucking glad.

At some point, I don’t know why, I throw a towel over it. Maybe I just don’t want to look at the thing.

I take a moment to trace the trail of sauce and it ends in the dining room. There’s a bunch of gift 

box where Mum had been wrapping Christmas presents. 

One gift box is torn open amongst a huddling hill of ornate coloured boxes, the wrapping paper 

decimated.

I look inside and I already know what I’m going to see. The strange pendant, probably a gift for 

Deb at the office who was always ‘an arty’ soul and who she once caught smoking weed in the 

staff toilets, has broken open. There are shards of glass tinkling inside the torn wrapping paper.

I wrap the up the towel, feeling the weight of the thing inside it.

I go outside and heft it in the dustbin, towel and all. A strange part of me checks on the top of the 

dustbin to make sure it’s not the plastic bin or cardboard one, not that I’d fish it out if it was. 

The neighbourhood is quiet. Dark with a scattering of streetlights punctuating the pavement every 

twenty meters or so. 

At the end of the road is a man in a waistcoat and tuxedo wearing a bowler hat. 

After everything tonight, honestly, it doesn’t even seem strange. 

After a few seconds, he nods my way and walks off, heading in the direction of the park.

I follow.

— — —

Simon sat on the bench. His back, straightened and not slouched. The crust on his beard was 

gone, as were his stains. His beard was neatly cut and there was little sign of the homeless man I 

once knew. It was strange, but looking back I don’t remember smelling liquor on him, only seeing 

him with bottles and cans.

“You’ve probably established that my second name isn’t Maccles. It’s Kilgrave.” he began. No 

slurring, no mumbling, not even a shadow of the man I once knew. “I’m also not a drug addicted 

alcoholic, as you may now consider.”

I opened my mouth to ask. What is Kilgrave? What are those horrible things? What the fuck is 

going on?

“Truth be known, I don’t really have a name.” said Simon. “We’re not actually allowed them.”

“We?”

“There’s three of us.”

I smiled. ‘Secret agents?”

He took out a transparent piece of blank card for the inside of his jacket.

“I can put that into any ATM in any country and it allows me to take out the entire cash reserves of 

the machine.”

He slid it back into his pocket.

“We operate so clandestinely, no world leader has ever heard of us. No secret society can record 

us. No historian recounts us.”

“Certainly, everything I have told you has been categorically false. Every single tidbit of information. 

There’s nothing on the moon, there’s no vampires in Los Angeles, no robot snipers on comets or 

Hitler’s heir and the world will likely be fine for quite some time.”

He dragged an immaculately waxed and polished shoe against the tufts of yellowed grass below 

the bench.

“The two rhomboids, however, are a different deal.”

“Why did you tell me?”

“Because you noticed.” he said “You noticed another had opened.”

“What are they?”

The man in the suit shrugged, then paused.

“You don’t need to know. If it can be stopped, the three of us will find a way to control it. If not, then 

it doesn’t matter either way.”

“I could tell people, warn them.”

The man on the bench smiled.

“Could you even tell people what I am?” he replied.

I stopped. Confused. Hadn’t he just told me?

“I didn’t tell you.” said the man on the bench.

I stared.

“You can read my mind?”

He stood up and moved towards me. A voice seemed to emanate from the center of my brain.

“I can do you one better, Jonathan Albans.”

I never had the chance to ask how he knew. His fingers touched the sides of my temple and 

seemed to sink into my very skull, pushing painlessly through my skin like a knife through hot 

butter. In those last moments before my mind exploded with visions, I saw what he was and 

opened my mouth.

He wasn’t a human.

My body dropped to the ground. It dropped through the ground. All was blackness.

And then I see it, a planet of dirt and rust. Swarms of bristling mechanical creatures circling

glistening seas of oil. A few people who look like sapient monks in brown robes  toiling near boiling 

lakes of mud and metal grist. Their eyes are vacant and see, unstaring. One suddenly lets out a 

cry and lunges towards a slice of sharp metal atop a pile of broken rocks.

Something on his back lets out a shriek and I can see the creature that was on my stairs, skewered 

by a knitting needle, buried deep into his spinal column.

The body of the monk shudders and stops before it can reach it and is pulled back by the 

screeching demon in his spine.

I don’t recognise the language he speaks in but his tear stained face seems to say it all.

He looks directly at me, though I do not know where I am, ephemeral and above the horror scape.

‘kill me. please.’

His prayer is drowned out by a cacophony above me and I see it. An eye the size of a country. 

A body being welded on by slaves until they collapsed and died. Clutches of metal rhomboids filled

with thousands of twitching eggs from a demonic god, half flesh and half machine. Envoys in suits 

with smiles and rings or pendants or trinket boxes, each one grinning the pained grin of a dead 

man or woman walking, a creature strapped to their neck with their metallic tail only ever a 

millisecond away from severing their cerebral cord in a death of surgical precision.

The creature, eating worlds, pressing the living into rock and coal and metallic undeath. 

That beast of finality that swam through the depths of space, that to look at would be realise reality

for the threshing machine that it is.

It opens a mouth that can eat planets, its throat is filled with dead civilisations.

Each one beyond saving. Each one realising that death was their mercy.

— — —

I awoke on a dew covered grass to find the man on the bench nowhere to be seen.

I left that park, heading back for home.

Mum and Dad were worried, but I told them not to. 

I watched the bin being taken out and emptied, just in case. 

I saw the towel, but there was no creature inside. Just what looked like a lump of gone off meat 

surrounded by bolts and hunks of ancient metal. The meat was riddled with botfly eggs and the guy

taking the bin out looked like he was about to hurl.

I don’t know what happened after that. 

I never saw the man again and never saw one of those creatures again, not that I’m sure they’re 

not out there. Maybe they all attack at once, maybe they stay in hiding until they know you’re not 

looking. And because of their chronographic brains, they know when you’re not looking.

But I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t know how much I was told was a lie and how much was a 

falsehood. 

But I worry it is. And that’s why I hate that damn homeless guy so much. He gave me an excellent 

story, sure. But I don’t think it’s just a story. And I still wonder what he was, to this day.

When I came to, in that park, I did find a piece of neatly cut paper inside my pocket. It read:

XENDROS IS COMING

which chilled me to my core. If that thing I saw in my visions is Xendros…. I can’t describe just how 

bad things are going to get for us.

But they might not. After all, the man on the bench said the world would be fine.

But again, where did the lies begin? Where does the truth?

I go back to school on Monday, hoping everything’s normal.

I see Gavin in the hallway and he runs up to me, grinning.

“Good weekend, Albans?”

I nod. Something about talking to Gavin is reassuring. After all, isn’t that what friends are for?

I see a thread dangling around his neck.

“Hey man, what’s that?”

“Oh, my little sister bought a necklace on the weekend. Weird clockwork thing.”

He looks down at the vacant string.

He scratches the back of his neck.

I can hear a noise coming from the back of hoodie.

A weird 

snickering, 

clicketty, 

tickery.