Victorian swimwear for men

I’m a 21F and while I understand why modesty is important, I think a lot of people don’t understand what it actually is. I’ve seen so many posts from different Christian subs claiming that it is a sin for a women to wear a bikini, bc it attracts the wrong kind of attention, and that belief is SO insane to me bc its clearly not a women’s job to wear a swimsuit that covers all of their “assets” just so men won’t look at them lustfully. Like the amount of times it’s implied that women dress a certain way with the intention to get male attention is all around extremely misogynistic. The whole entire concept of modesty has been taken way out of context imo, modesty is more about how you present yourself than it is about what you actually wear. Now, that doesn’t mean we should wear anything super revealing, but the way people think a women is dressing slutty just bc her skirt isn’t maxi length or her tank top shows a bit of cleavage is so disrespectful. Jesus preached more about self control and not lusting after other people, yet we’re still making it about clothing?
Idk it just frustrates me, especially when it comes to swimwear. Bc, it’s like I have this inherited belief that god will be mad at me for wearing a bikini even if it’s in my own backyard, even though I genuinely don’t think the biblical definition of modesty is what society makes it out to be. I make a conscious effort not to lust. Now, ofc I’m still human. But I gave up porn, I’m waiting for marriage, I don’t listen to songs about sex anymore, etc. And I can’t imagine thinking my own hormones is someone else’s problem ya know? It is MY job to control my listfuk thoughts, it’s not on anyone else to prevent me from giving into temptation.
what are y’all’s thoughts?

After high school, having no better ideas, I joined the Navy SEALs. I never really liked any of it, but it was a job, after all. I loved the guns and airplanes and grenades, but having to run all the time while some scumbag with a chip on his shoulder yells in my face isn’t my idea of fun.
Things got a lot more interesting after my term of service ended. I still had a high-security clearance, so I used it to take temporary jobs as a mercenary, a hired gun. I did some stints in Iraq with Blackwater, where they set me out in the middle of the desert. A watchtower and oil refinery loomed over the burning sands. Along with a few other guys, they told us, “Guard this area with your life.” While better than the SEALs, working for Blackwater was extremely boring. The other mercenaries and I would mostly just chainsmoke cigarettes and drink coffee all night, staring out across the dead, empty desert.
Over time, I worked my way up. Things started to get more interesting when a job offer arrived in my email one freezing cold winter’s morning. This is what it said.
“Mr. Chase,
“I am the head of security for a private group of entrepreneurs and investors. Through some mutual contacts, I have heard of your professionalism and experience. We are currently putting together a small crew to guard a private event on [REDACTED] Island out in the Pacific Ocean that will run from January 9th to January 26th. Would you be interested in this job? The pay rate is $900 a day.
“Once you are on the island, it will be impossible to leave until the period of employment has ended. If you are interested, please respond to this email as soon as possible.
“Sincerely,
“Mario Antonin, Head of Security.”
I was working piecemeal jobs like this one at the time, but none of them were paying that well. At most, I would usually get $350 to $500 a day, which was still good money when I was working seven days a week until the job finished. I instantly responded and said that yes, I was interested. In response, they sent me a non-disclosure agreement that was the size of a small novel that I had to sign.
That was how I found myself on a private jet, flying out to an island in the middle of the vast blue ocean. I was never told the coordinates of the island or saw it on a map. It was all kept very secret.
A few hours later, we landed on a private airstrip. I looked out the window of the jet, seeing the tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean stretching off to the horizon in every direction. Below me stood an island with palm trees and sandy white beaches. An enormous Victorian mansion loomed directly in the center of it all. The mansion was painted black and looked like something straight out of a horror movie. It had no windows, and the turrets spiraled into blade-like points.
That was my first inkling that something might not be quite right about this trip.
***
As the stairs from the private jet descended, I looked out on this strange new world. Employees waited to greet us, looking like beaten dogs. Some had their heads down, their eyes blankly scanning the ground. Most of them were women wearing red dresses, reminding me of stewardesses on a plane. The jet strip was surrounded by palm trees and tropical brush. The chirping of insects sounded all around us, high and resonant.
I saw a strange patch engraved on all of the employees’ uniforms and jackets. It looked almost like a stick figure drawing of a man, the bottom of its body ending in a C. Its arms were long and jointed, almost spidery. Three symbols like repeated iron crosses connected to the left side of its body in a line. I wondered if it was the logo of some company. I put it out of my mind for now, but I would see that symbol again all over the island, painted on the sides of the mansion and even cut into the trees with a knife. It would only be later that night that I realized its connection to Moloch.
“Good day, sir, and welcome to the Island,” the server on my left said with glassy eyes and a fake smile plastered across her face. They all looked up at once, but it was like the workers all looked through me rather than at me. Their eyes looked flat and dead, like the painted-on eyes of a doll.
“The Island, huh?” I asked, curious. “They wouldn’t tell me where I was going. They said it was a secret. Is that what you call it?” The woman just nodded, the doll-like smile never leaving her lips.
“Officially, this island is unnamed and uninhabited,” the woman said. “In fact, all traces of it have been scrubbed from the internet. You won’t find it on Google Maps or in any publicly available satellite imagery.” She leaned forward towards me with heavily mascaraed eyes and ruby-red lipstick slashed across her lips. “This is a very special place. Only very special people are allowed here. You should be honored to work here under our Savior.”
“I hope you’re talking about Jesus or something,” I said jokingly. She just smiled blankly and motioned me forward.
“Just follow that trail for a few hundred feet-” she said, pointing at an opening in the palm trees where logs were laid down horizontally over the muggy jungle- “and you’ll find the mansion. Good luck!” I thought it was a somewhat strange thing to say, wishing a random stranger good luck.
But, by the end of that night, I realized that simply to make it off this island alive, I would need lots of it.
***
I followed the woman’s directions to the back of the brutalist mansion. A heavy metal door stood there with a small bullet-proof window built in the top. A tanned, Spanish face glowered out at me then rapidly drew back and disappeared. A few heartbeats later, the door slid to the side with a grinding of hidden gears.
The head of security at the Island was a heavily-tattooed ex-Marine named Mario. He wore a dark Kevlar vest over a black outfit, making him look like a walking shadow. I found the security had their own private complex in the mansion as he showed me around the site. Hundreds of hidden cameras covered every angle of the mansion and the surrounding parts of the island. Dozens of black-clad security agents swarmed over the screens, checking the monitors and computers constantly.
“Quite a set-up you have here,” I said to Mario, nodding at him. He smacked me on the shoulder, giving a confident grin.
“Money is no issue here, Richard,” he responded. “Security is paramount. There are things on this island that could rip apart the world if they ever escaped.” I raised an eyebrow.
“Like what?” I asked. “Nuclear weapons or something?” He laughed at that.
“You’ll see for yourself tonight,” he said, his dark eyes flashing with something cold and alien.
***
Mario led me and a couple other new hired guns around the Island. The place was certainly strange. It reminded me of some combination of a secret black-ops site and a playboy billionaire’s private heaven. All of the doors in the mansion looked like they were made of thick steel. They had wheels that would spin, like those on a submarine door. The mansion also had no windows at all that I could see, except for the small, shatter-proof glass openings on the steel doors. I didn’t want to ask too many questions, however. I couldn’t resist asking him about a couple small things, however- or at least, they seemed small to me at the time.
“What are those hatchways?” I asked Mario, pointing to rectangular covers built into the concrete walkway. They had heavy handles. “Are those manholes or something?”
“There are tunnels under the Island,” he responded vaguely. “Just for maintenance and security, you understand.”
“Wow, this place is certainly… well-developed,” I said. We came out through a grove of palm trees. A stone walkway led down to a white beach. Dozens of yachts were moored all across the shore, some of them looking like they must have cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
“There’s a lot of money and power here,” Mario said. “That’s why it’s important you never talk about what you see here. These are the people who control the world, the ones behind the government and the media. Not the elected officials who the people see, but the actual power.”
“Like who?” I asked. “You mean the Rothschilds and Soros?” He laughed again, a sarcastic, grinding laugh that grated my nerves.
“Trust me, the truly powerful ones don’t even have public personas. If you know their name, then they’re just one of the puppets.” I just shook my head at that, then asked the real question that had been bothering me since I first arrived here.
“Who is the Savior?” I asked. “Is that some codename or something?” Mario froze in place.
“He’s the one who runs everything here,” he whispered conspiratorially, looking around nervously. “But don’t be mentioning that kind of shit. You’ll probably see him tonight anyway. He’s the one who runs the show. He’ll be on the stage in his normal outfit.”
***
By the end of the day, I was suited up like the rest of the security staff, wearing the pure black pants and shirt with the symbol of Moloch engraved over the heart. Hundreds of the world’s most famous politicians, actors, businessmen and artists had gathered, streaming in the front doors with a soft, diffident susurration.
I stood by the open doorway of a side exit with an AR-15 and full body armor, next to one other soldier. They had also given me a sidearm. Every entrance or exit was manned by at least two armed men. The security at this place was some of the most intense I had ever seen. Beyond the door, there were rows and rows of the most comfortable seats, all gathered in a semi-circle around a massive stage made of pure mahogany. Blood-red curtains stood closed at the front of the room, concealing their secrets- for now, at least.
“Hail Satan!” I heard the elites cry inside in unison. I didn’t want to look in at the rows of high-ranking politicians, celebrities, influencers and artists, but my curiosity was high. I peeked around the corner of the stone archway, seeing the red curtains on the stage drawing apart. I saw one of my favorite actors standing in the front row, clapping excitedly and jumping up and down.
The crowd cheered as a naked female strapped to an obsidian altar lay there. She was beautiful and blonde, probably no older than twenty with the face of a supermodel. Her mouth was gagged, her arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross. Thin leather cords were tied around her wrists and ankles, biting deeply into the skin. Her eyes rolled wildly as she shook her head from side to side. She froze, and her eyes met mine for a brief moment. I saw the pleading expression there, the mortal terror and absolute horror.
A man in a goat mask wearing black robes slunk out from the side of the stage, carrying a wavy silver dagger engraved with strange symbols. The crowd erupted into a primal roar of pleasure and excitement that sounded like it came from one monstrous mouth.
“Worthy is the Lamb!” the man in the goat mask screamed with electronic amplification. He had a deep voice, as if he had rocks rolling around in his throat. The crowd roared and clapped. Scattered cries of “Hail Lucifer!” and “Ave Satanas!” echoed down the massive auditorium.
“Hey, pay attention,” the other security agent at my side said in a thick Finnish accent. He was a tall Scandinavian-looking guy named Kolmek. “You’re not getting paid to watch the show, new guy.” I tried to rip my gaze away from the stage, but it held my attention with an obsessive horror.
“The burnt bones of children and women have been offered to the ancient ones, to Moloch,” the man on the stage cried. “Under our feet, the burnt bodies of hundreds lay dreaming. This victim will be the 666th. Her blood will bring about the Gnosis that we seek, the direct experience of the divine held by the gods, by Lucifer and Moloch and Baal…” The roaring of the crowd temporarily drowned out his electronically-magnified voice. “Tonight, we will rip open the veil!”
I had stopped watching the show, instead staring blankly out at the beach and palm trees. At that moment, another black-clad security agent came up to my partner, whispered something in his ear, then immediately disappeared, heading off back in the direction of the main security office. Kolmek shook his head grimly.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Stay right here. Don’t move from this door no matter what. And pay attention.” I nodded and watched as he walked off in the same direction.
I immediately took the opportunity to continue watching the ceremony. I had missed something important, apparently. The woman now laid dead on the sacrificial table, a gaping hole in her chest. Blood spurted from the crater as the man in the goat mask held her beating heart grasped tightly in his hand, letting the blood stream down his naked fingers. The crowd cheered with a rising bloodlust and insanity. Most of them were standing, their eyes gleaming and wide with fanatical adoration. The entire spectacle reminded me of some kind of ancient Aztec ritual.
As the woman’s sightless eyes stared vacantly up in death, the man in a goat mask pulled out a can of gasoline. The clear liquid gurgled as he up-ended the canister over her pale, bloodless face, over her naked stomach and long legs. A moment later, he lit a match and dropped it. I heard the whooshing of the flames as they rose up.
The crowd went deathly silent as they watched the rippling flames. The man in the goat mask began chanting in some strange language I had never heard before. It sounded Semitic, but I knew it wasn’t Arabic or Hebrew. I felt something like electricity ripple through the air, almost like a feeling of falling pressure before a storm. I looked down at the hairs on my arms, seeing them rise up. I looked back up at the stage, and my eyes widened in horror.
The flaming body of the sacrificial victim had started to morph before my eyes and the eyes of the crowd. The dripping, blackening flesh jumped up and down, as if there were rats trapped in her body trying to escape the fire. There was a deafening hissing as if thousands of snakes were being burned alive.
The dead woman’s arms jerked up, the skin splitting open as if she had seams running along her skin. Something dark and muscular with curving, black talons ripped its way out of the dead, burning flesh. Behind it, a head appeared with long, curving horns and eyes that spun with whorls of fire. It looked like the offspring of a bull and a demon. Its imposing body rose up from the inferno, appearing like magic from the solid stone. It raised itself to its full height, looming over the crowd. The last of the woman’s blood hissed and boiled away, her flesh dissolving into ashes.
“Behold, Moloch rises!” the man in the goat mask screamed in a fanatical voice. The crowd’s cheering had stopped, though. Many of the faces in the crowd looked chalk-white with terror. The bull-god surveyed the crowd, its horns nearly scraping the ceiling twenty feet above the stage.
At that moment, I knew death was on its way with eyes of fire and a grin like a skull, ready to reap a field of human bodies.
***
I heard running behind me, but I didn’t dare turn away from the horrific sight in front of me. The last of the fire’s embers died, sending up thin wisps of gray smoke that spiraled around the bull-god’s monstrous face. Moloch stood as still as a statue, and if it weren’t for one thing, I might’ve thought it was some sort of sculpture or art project. He had two nostrils like a serpent’s. As his great lungs inhaled, the smoke billowed in and out of his mouth and nose.
Some of the people at the edges of the crowd had gotten up, hurrying towards the doors. Moloch’s head ratcheted to face them, his fiery eyes narrowing into slits.
“Do not leave!” the man in the goat mask pleaded. “Those who have fear are not worthy of life. Do not prove yourselves unworthy of life!” As the first of the fleeing men and women got to within a few steps of the door, Moloch gave a primal roar. In a blur of primal strength, he reached down and ripped the blackened sacrificial altar off the stage. It ripped from the wooden stage with a tremendous crack like a bullwhip. He hurled the heavy mass of stone at those heading towards the opposite exit from the one I guarded.
I watched it curve through the air. The people started screaming and clawing to escape as it smashed down on their heads with a grating crash. I could feel the floor shake from where I stood outside. Blood exploded from their smashed bodies. I saw arms and legs jerking and seizing under the heavy stone, but within a few moments, they slowed and then stopped.
Others were running towards the door I guarded, but Moloch leapt off the stage in a blur. In a few bounding steps, he reached the pale, terrified faces on the other side of the threshold. His massive clawed hand came down. I heard bones shatter as blood sprayed my face and the wall. Bone splinters and pieces of brain exploded from the screaming bodies. I backpedaled, wiping at my eyes, trying to get the blood off so I could see. No one had told me what to do in this situation. I didn’t know if I was supposed to shoot that massive abomination, or if this was all just part of the show.
“Richard!” a familiar voice cried from behind me. Panic oozed from every word. I spun, seeing Mario and Kolmek standing side by side, their pupils dilated and expressions grim.
“We have a major problem.” It was Mario. I recognized that voice, the one that sounded as if he had been gargling with rocks.
“I know,” I said, holding my rifle tightly. I pointed behind me at the scene of rampant death and destruction.
I had seen bloodshed and war before, but this was different. The Island itself seemed to feel it. The wind, which had been calm when I first landed, now whipped the Island in fast, circular currents. The breeze smelled of burnt matches and coppery blood. The static electricity which had caused the hairs on my arms to rise rippled over everything with tiny blue flashes, increasing in power by the second.
“No, no, not Moloch,” Kolmek said, looking much calmer than I felt. “The Savior lets Moloch thin the herd every year.”
“It’s Leviathan,” Mario continued grimly, “the beast from the waters. The smell of blood is drawing it from the depths of the ocean. We picked up the first blips on radar a few minutes ago. When it gets here, it won’t stop until everything is rubble. It will kill every single person on the Island.”
“All security personnel must report to the south beach immediately,” a cool robotic voice cried out over hidden loudspeakers all over the Island. The screaming from the auditorium had quieted behind me. I was afraid to look inside.
“There it is,” Kolmek said, his head jerking up as the emergency alert read. He motioned for me to follow. “It’s time to fight.”
***
We sprinted over curving trails of smooth logs between deathly quiet forests. All the insects and birds had gone silent. Ahead of us, the palm trees opened up onto the Pacific Ocean. But it was no longer a beautiful tropical blue. A black, swirling whirlpool like an ulcerous wound had opened up on its surface. It stretched hundreds of feet across, drawing closer to the shore by the second. Dead fish, sharks, dolphins, squids and even whales spun in the filthy, dark water.
Twenty black-clad security agents waited for the three of us on the beach, their eyes wide, their faces pale with terror. Like myself, they all had AR-15s and Glock 22s with extra magazines for both. I guess the Glock might be useful for blowing my brains out as a last resort if some beast from Hell rose out of the simmering waters, but I didn’t think it would stop anything from another dimension.
The clouds swirled overhead in a thick curtain as black as smoke. Flashes of blue lightning detonated every couple seconds. Mario raised his hands, screaming over the roaring of the wind. Kolmek stood by my side, his face grim and eyes narrowed.
“Your job is to fight off anything that tries to get on the Island,” he said, looking from one face to another with rapt attention. “Nothing can stand against high-caliber rifle fire. Shoot at the face and eyes when it comes up. We’ve dealt with creatures like this before, and they will retreat if you injure them badly enough.” I had the sense of being fed a line of bullshit as my mind processed this.
“What exactly is coming up?” one of the doe-eyed security men asked. He barely looked old enough to drink, a young, muscular hulk with a Marine Corps tattoo on his neck.
“They call it Leviathan,” Mario responded. “Sometimes the rituals here and the smell of blood can draw… strange things. Leviathan is one of those. We have encountered it before. The most important thing to remember is…” His voice was suddenly drowned out by a terrible cacophony that came from the center of the black whirlpool.
A screech like the detonation of a nuclear missile shook the ground. The ocean jumped and bubbled frantically. The beach heaved and cracked, the white sands disappearing in fissures that opened up like greedy mouths underneath my feet. I lost my balance, falling forwards. The screeching continued rising into a primal roar.
A green dragon head the color of an infected wound erupted from the surface of the thrashing water, rising up dozens of feet in the air. It had two enormous slitted eyes that dilated and constricted quickly as it glowered down at us. The screeching abruptly stopped, the pointed mouth of the dragon slamming shut with a sound like a gunshot.
Within moments, another cancerous green head shot up in a blur, its skin looking as hard as stone. Ridges that looked as sharp as swords ran the length of its reptilian skull, arcing over its eyes and pointed snout. More heads erupted from the ocean until all seven heads of Leviathan loomed over us.
Not one of us fired. No one even seemed to breathe as we surveyed the beast across the no-man’s land of the white sands. The slitted eyes and yellow irises of the seven heads had a demonic hunger, a reptilian coldness. Far behind us, I heard distant screams still echoing from the auditorium where Moloch held sway.
“Fire!” Mario cried. Instantly, a cacophony of gunshots exploded all around me. I jumped up on my feet, scrambling up as the seven-headed dragon leapt forward. Thousands of gallons of saltwater streamed down its massive body as it came up on the beach. Long, black paws with bone-white talons shot out of the surging ocean, followed by a tapering tail like that of a water snake.
I brought the rifle up and emptied my magazine as fast as I could, pulling the trigger over and over as I aimed at the many slitted eyes of Leviathan. But the bullets seemed to ping harmlessly off of its hard, obsidian-like scales.
It scrabbled onto the shore, the heads coming down in a blur. Rows and rows of vampiric fangs gleamed dully in each of the mouths. One security agent was bitten in half, the spurting stump of his lower body still standing for a long moment even as the rest of the body disappeared down the throat of the dragon.
Mario ran forwards, slamming another magazine in his rifle and opening fire point-blank. One of the heads came down in a blur towards him. Its great, staring eyes exploded in a shower of blue blood and thick vitreous fluid. The dragon head pulled back, its mouth opening in a primal scream of agony.
As I reloaded, I scanned the area around me, realizing that nearly half of the security agents were either dead or critically injured. I backpedaled away, keeping my eyes on the dragon. It continuously drew forward, killing more of its enemies with every step. I turned and ran into the forest, the sounds of shattering bones and dying men ringing through the air with a sickening clarity behind me.
Once I had reached the border of the trail, I heard Mario yell, “Retreat!” behind me. But by that point, it was far too late.
***
“Hey! Wait up!” a voice whispered from behind me. I turned my head, seeing Kolmek. Spatters of drying blood covered his face and uniform. As far as I could tell, none of it was his. “Mario’s dead. They’re all dead. We need to get out of here. We need to get off the Island.”
“How?” I asked.
“Find the Savior,” he answered, panting and out of breath. “We must find him. He can get us out of here.”
“I don’t even know what the guy looks like,” I muttered. “He was wearing a goat mask.”
“You’ll know him when you see him,” Kolmek said. “His body is covered in scars. Everything except his face. Stay close to me. We need to watch each other’s backs. It’s our only chance of survival.”
***
A trail of twisted, broken bodies led from the mansion to the surrounding trails and beaches. A decapitated woman with solid gold necklaces embedded with diamonds lay in front of me. It was strange on the Island, the way oblivion and ineffable wealth coexisted side by side. But everything was deathly silent, even in the mansion’s auditorium.
“Where’s the Savior?” I asked through gritted teeth. I peeked my head into the auditorium, but nothing moved. Hundreds of smashed and bloody bodies littered the floor.
“He’s around somewhere,” Kolmek answered. We started circling the mansion, looking for any signs of life. Kolmek went in the lead. As he turned the corner, an enormous black hand with sharp claws of fingers flitted forward in a blur, wrapping itself around his chest. Kolmek gave a strangled cry as it closed around him. I heard his bones crush as a spout of blood and gore flew from his mouth and nose, as if he were a toothpaste tube being squeezed.
I backpedaled away as Moloch threw the twitching corpse aside like a discarded toy. It smashed into the wall of the mansion, exploding wetly. A human-shaped, bloody stain languidly dripped down the wall above Kolmek’s mangled body.
Moloch slowly turned his head towards me, the fiery eyes flashing with hunger. He gnashed his fangs together, taking a step forward with a leg the size and shape of a tree trunk. With every step he took, I felt the ground tremble.
“Stop!” I cried, moving away from the monstrous creature. “Why are you doing this?”
“There is no why,” he gurgled, his voice monstrous and inhumanly slow. “There is only power. The weak deserve to die. Only the strong are worthy of life.” I raised my rifle in a last-ditch effort to save myself. Moloch saw it and started running towards me, every footstep crushing the paved walkway around the mansion into rubble and dust.
I aimed for his eyes and nose, emptying the entire magazine as quickly as I could. The bullets smashed into Moloch’s face. Dark red, clotted blood dripped out of the wounds, writhing with maggots. Drops of it fell around me, landing on my hair and face. I felt the small larvae twisting all over my skin. Moloch’s blood smelled nauseating, like some combination of stinkbugs and rotting bodies. He slowed, giving a roar of pain. I turned to run in the opposite direction, but as I looked out in the direction of the beach, my heart dropped.
Leviathan was moving in our direction, the giant dragon heads looming over the trees. Quickly, it swept towards me like a dark wind.
***
“You will suffer for that, worthless slave,” Moloch growled, wiping blood from his fiery eyes with his sharp talons of fingers. A sudden idea came to me. I ran in the direction of Leviathan. Moloch followed closely at my heels, only a few steps behind me.
Leviathan slithered forward over the sands and trees, its enormous body undulating like a water snake’s. I screamed at it, an incomprehensible wail of terror. Its seven heads snapped towards me. Its slitted eyes widened as it saw Moloch.
I heard the crashing of Moloch’s footsteps stop behind me, only feet away from crushing me into a paste. His massive lungs breathed quickly, exhaling the odor of sulfur and smoke.
“Leviathan,” Moloch growled in his demonic voice. “These are my tributes.” Leviathan’s dragon heads looked straight up at the Sun and screamed in response, their many voices rising and falling in a dissonant wail. As I sprinted into the trees, Leviathan and Moloch ran at each other, colliding with an ear-splitting crash. I glanced back, seeing Moloch ripping one of the dragon heads off its neck with his sharp fingers. The head screamed as blue blood exploded from the spurting stump. After a long moment, the neck fell limply forward.
The other dragon heads bit Moloch in a unified attack. They ripped deep holes in his shoulders and arms, snapping over and over like rabid dogs. As the two eldritch monstrosities attacked each other in fierce combat, I lost sight of them, but the sounds of fighting echoed over the entire island, crashing like lightning.
***
I felt like the survivor of an Apocalypse. I couldn’t find a single other living person on the Island. Hundreds of crushed, broken and decapitated bodies surrounded me. Over the cacophony of fighting, I heard a new noise: the whirring of helicopter blades nearby. It was coming from the other side of the mansion.
Frantically, I sprinted around the other side, seeing a Black Hawk helicopter getting ready to leave. A man in black robes sat at the pilot’s seat, his green eyes gleaming and a wide smile plastered across his face. I smashed my fist into the door over and over until he opened it.
“Holy shit, you’re still alive?” he asked. I hadn’t seen this man before. He had a face like a Calvin Klein model, all sharp angles and high cheekbones, perfectly proportioned in every way. But his scalp looked melted and scarred, as if someone had thrown gasoline on his hair and ignited it. His ears were stunted, twisted growths of scar tissue. His hands, too, were covered in deep, folding burn scars.
“Are you the Savior?” I responded quickly. “Please, get me out of here.”
“They do call me that,” he said wistfully. “The Savior. Yes, I guess I am. Get in.”
***
The Savior stared at me with his strange green eyes, the color of swamps where monstrous things swam under the surface.
“Some people just need to learn the hard way,” he said. The helicopter took off into a dark night covered with bright, twinkling stars. “There is no great power without great responsibility, after all. Those of us who seek the ancient ones know it comes with a cost.” I just stared out the window, gazing down at the countless mutilated, broken bodies that littered the beach.
Below us, the face of a bull stared up with eyes of fiery cyclones. The broken, still body of Leviathan lay at his feet. As we made it over the great waters of the Pacific Ocean, the bull-god raised a hand and waved. At that moment, I thought I could almost see a hurricane of translucent souls circling around him, spiraling up into the sky.

After high school, having no better ideas, I joined the Navy SEALs. I never really liked any of it, but it was a job, after all. I loved the guns and airplanes and grenades, but having to run all the time while some scumbag with a chip on his shoulder yells in my face isn’t my idea of fun.
Things got a lot more interesting after my term of service ended. I still had a high-security clearance, so I used it to take temporary jobs as a mercenary, a hired gun. I did some stints in Iraq with Blackwater, where they set me out in the middle of the desert. A watchtower and oil refinery loomed over the burning sands. Along with a few other guys, they told us, “Guard this area with your life.” While better than the SEALs, working for Blackwater was extremely boring. The other mercenaries and I would mostly just chainsmoke cigarettes and drink coffee all night, staring out across the dead, empty desert.
Over time, I worked my way up. Things started to get more interesting when a job offer arrived in my email one freezing cold winter’s morning. This is what it said.
“Mr. Chase,
“I am the head of security for a private group of entrepreneurs and investors. Through some mutual contacts, I have heard of your professionalism and experience. We are currently putting together a small crew to guard a private event on [REDACTED] Island out in the Pacific Ocean that will run from January 9th to January 26th. Would you be interested in this job? The pay rate is $900 a day.
“Once you are on the island, it will be impossible to leave until the period of employment has ended. If you are interested, please respond to this email as soon as possible.
“Sincerely,
“Mario Antonin, Head of Security.”
I was working piecemeal jobs like this one at the time, but none of them were paying that well. At most, I would usually get $350 to $500 a day, which was still good money when I was working seven days a week until the job finished. I instantly responded and said that yes, I was interested. In response, they sent me a non-disclosure agreement that was the size of a small novel that I had to sign.
That was how I found myself on a private jet, flying out to an island in the middle of the vast blue ocean. I was never told the coordinates of the island or saw it on a map. It was all kept very secret.
A few hours later, we landed on a private airstrip. I looked out the window of the jet, seeing the tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean stretching off to the horizon in every direction. Below me stood an island with palm trees and sandy white beaches. An enormous Victorian mansion loomed directly in the center of it all. The mansion was painted black and looked like something straight out of a horror movie. It had no windows, and the turrets spiraled into blade-like points.
That was my first inkling that something might not be quite right about this trip.
***
As the stairs from the private jet descended, I looked out on this strange new world. Employees waited to greet us, looking like beaten dogs. Some had their heads down, their eyes blankly scanning the ground. Most of them were women wearing red dresses, reminding me of stewardesses on a plane. The jet strip was surrounded by palm trees and tropical brush. The chirping of insects sounded all around us, high and resonant.
I saw a strange patch engraved on all of the employees’ uniforms and jackets. It looked almost like a stick figure drawing of a man, the bottom of its body ending in a C. Its arms were long and jointed, almost spidery. Three symbols like repeated iron crosses connected to the left side of its body in a line. I wondered if it was the logo of some company. I put it out of my mind for now, but I would see that symbol again all over the island, painted on the sides of the mansion and even cut into the trees with a knife. It would only be later that night that I realized its connection to Moloch.
“Good day, sir, and welcome to the Island,” the server on my left said with glassy eyes and a fake smile plastered across her face. They all looked up at once, but it was like the workers all looked through me rather than at me. Their eyes looked flat and dead, like the painted-on eyes of a doll.
“The Island, huh?” I asked, curious. “They wouldn’t tell me where I was going. They said it was a secret. Is that what you call it?” The woman just nodded, the doll-like smile never leaving her lips.
“Officially, this island is unnamed and uninhabited,” the woman said. “In fact, all traces of it have been scrubbed from the internet. You won’t find it on Google Maps or in any publicly available satellite imagery.” She leaned forward towards me with heavily mascaraed eyes and ruby-red lipstick slashed across her lips. “This is a very special place. Only very special people are allowed here. You should be honored to work here under our Savior.”
“I hope you’re talking about Jesus or something,” I said jokingly. She just smiled blankly and motioned me forward.
“Just follow that trail for a few hundred feet-” she said, pointing at an opening in the palm trees where logs were laid down horizontally over the muggy jungle- “and you’ll find the mansion. Good luck!” I thought it was a somewhat strange thing to say, wishing a random stranger good luck.
But, by the end of that night, I realized that simply to make it off this island alive, I would need lots of it.
***
I followed the woman’s directions to the back of the brutalist mansion. A heavy metal door stood there with a small bullet-proof window built in the top. A tanned, Spanish face glowered out at me then rapidly drew back and disappeared. A few heartbeats later, the door slid to the side with a grinding of hidden gears.
The head of security at the Island was a heavily-tattooed ex-Marine named Mario. He wore a dark Kevlar vest over a black outfit, making him look like a walking shadow. I found the security had their own private complex in the mansion as he showed me around the site. Hundreds of hidden cameras covered every angle of the mansion and the surrounding parts of the island. Dozens of black-clad security agents swarmed over the screens, checking the monitors and computers constantly.
“Quite a set-up you have here,” I said to Mario, nodding at him. He smacked me on the shoulder, giving a confident grin.
“Money is no issue here, Richard,” he responded. “Security is paramount. There are things on this island that could rip apart the world if they ever escaped.” I raised an eyebrow.
“Like what?” I asked. “Nuclear weapons or something?” He laughed at that.
“You’ll see for yourself tonight,” he said, his dark eyes flashing with something cold and alien.
***
Mario led me and a couple other new hired guns around the Island. The place was certainly strange. It reminded me of some combination of a secret black-ops site and a playboy billionaire’s private heaven. All of the doors in the mansion looked like they were made of thick steel. They had wheels that would spin, like those on a submarine door. The mansion also had no windows at all that I could see, except for the small, shatter-proof glass openings on the steel doors. I didn’t want to ask too many questions, however. I couldn’t resist asking him about a couple small things, however- or at least, they seemed small to me at the time.
“What are those hatchways?” I asked Mario, pointing to rectangular covers built into the concrete walkway. They had heavy handles. “Are those manholes or something?”
“There are tunnels under the Island,” he responded vaguely. “Just for maintenance and security, you understand.”
“Wow, this place is certainly… well-developed,” I said. We came out through a grove of palm trees. A stone walkway led down to a white beach. Dozens of yachts were moored all across the shore, some of them looking like they must have cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
“There’s a lot of money and power here,” Mario said. “That’s why it’s important you never talk about what you see here. These are the people who control the world, the ones behind the government and the media. Not the elected officials who the people see, but the actual power.”
“Like who?” I asked. “You mean the Rothschilds and Soros?” He laughed again, a sarcastic, grinding laugh that grated my nerves.
“Trust me, the truly powerful ones don’t even have public personas. If you know their name, then they’re just one of the puppets.” I just shook my head at that, then asked the real question that had been bothering me since I first arrived here.
“Who is the Savior?” I asked. “Is that some codename or something?” Mario froze in place.
“He’s the one who runs everything here,” he whispered conspiratorially, looking around nervously. “But don’t be mentioning that kind of shit. You’ll probably see him tonight anyway. He’s the one who runs the show. He’ll be on the stage in his normal outfit.”
***
By the end of the day, I was suited up like the rest of the security staff, wearing the pure black pants and shirt with the symbol of Moloch engraved over the heart. Hundreds of the world’s most famous politicians, actors, businessmen and artists had gathered, streaming in the front doors with a soft, diffident susurration.
I stood by the open doorway of a side exit with an AR-15 and full body armor, next to one other soldier. They had also given me a sidearm. Every entrance or exit was manned by at least two armed men. The security at this place was some of the most intense I had ever seen. Beyond the door, there were rows and rows of the most comfortable seats, all gathered in a semi-circle around a massive stage made of pure mahogany. Blood-red curtains stood closed at the front of the room, concealing their secrets- for now, at least.
“Hail Satan!” I heard the elites cry inside in unison. I didn’t want to look in at the rows of high-ranking politicians, celebrities, influencers and artists, but my curiosity was high. I peeked around the corner of the stone archway, seeing the red curtains on the stage drawing apart. I saw one of my favorite actors standing in the front row, clapping excitedly and jumping up and down.
The crowd cheered as a naked female strapped to an obsidian altar lay there. She was beautiful and blonde, probably no older than twenty with the face of a supermodel. Her mouth was gagged, her arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross. Thin leather cords were tied around her wrists and ankles, biting deeply into the skin. Her eyes rolled wildly as she shook her head from side to side. She froze, and her eyes met mine for a brief moment. I saw the pleading expression there, the mortal terror and absolute horror.
A man in a goat mask wearing black robes slunk out from the side of the stage, carrying a wavy silver dagger engraved with strange symbols. The crowd erupted into a primal roar of pleasure and excitement that sounded like it came from one monstrous mouth.
“Worthy is the Lamb!” the man in the goat mask screamed with electronic amplification. He had a deep voice, as if he had rocks rolling around in his throat. The crowd roared and clapped. Scattered cries of “Hail Lucifer!” and “Ave Satanas!” echoed down the massive auditorium.
“Hey, pay attention,” the other security agent at my side said in a thick Finnish accent. He was a tall Scandinavian-looking guy named Kolmek. “You’re not getting paid to watch the show, new guy.” I tried to rip my gaze away from the stage, but it held my attention with an obsessive horror.
“The burnt bones of children and women have been offered to the ancient ones, to Moloch,” the man on the stage cried. “Under our feet, the burnt bodies of hundreds lay dreaming. This victim will be the 666th. Her blood will bring about the Gnosis that we seek, the direct experience of the divine held by the gods, by Lucifer and Moloch and Baal…” The roaring of the crowd temporarily drowned out his electronically-magnified voice. “Tonight, we will rip open the veil!”
I had stopped watching the show, instead staring blankly out at the beach and palm trees. At that moment, another black-clad security agent came up to my partner, whispered something in his ear, then immediately disappeared, heading off back in the direction of the main security office. Kolmek shook his head grimly.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Stay right here. Don’t move from this door no matter what. And pay attention.” I nodded and watched as he walked off in the same direction.
I immediately took the opportunity to continue watching the ceremony. I had missed something important, apparently. The woman now laid dead on the sacrificial table, a gaping hole in her chest. Blood spurted from the crater as the man in the goat mask held her beating heart grasped tightly in his hand, letting the blood stream down his naked fingers. The crowd cheered with a rising bloodlust and insanity. Most of them were standing, their eyes gleaming and wide with fanatical adoration. The entire spectacle reminded me of some kind of ancient Aztec ritual.
As the woman’s sightless eyes stared vacantly up in death, the man in a goat mask pulled out a can of gasoline. The clear liquid gurgled as he up-ended the canister over her pale, bloodless face, over her naked stomach and long legs. A moment later, he lit a match and dropped it. I heard the whooshing of the flames as they rose up.
The crowd went deathly silent as they watched the rippling flames. The man in the goat mask began chanting in some strange language I had never heard before. It sounded Semitic, but I knew it wasn’t Arabic or Hebrew. I felt something like electricity ripple through the air, almost like a feeling of falling pressure before a storm. I looked down at the hairs on my arms, seeing them rise up. I looked back up at the stage, and my eyes widened in horror.
The flaming body of the sacrificial victim had started to morph before my eyes and the eyes of the crowd. The dripping, blackening flesh jumped up and down, as if there were rats trapped in her body trying to escape the fire. There was a deafening hissing as if thousands of snakes were being burned alive.
The dead woman’s arms jerked up, the skin splitting open as if she had seams running along her skin. Something dark and muscular with curving, black talons ripped its way out of the dead, burning flesh. Behind it, a head appeared with long, curving horns and eyes that spun with whorls of fire. It looked like the offspring of a bull and a demon. Its imposing body rose up from the inferno, appearing like magic from the solid stone. It raised itself to its full height, looming over the crowd. The last of the woman’s blood hissed and boiled away, her flesh dissolving into ashes.
“Behold, Moloch rises!” the man in the goat mask screamed in a fanatical voice. The crowd’s cheering had stopped, though. Many of the faces in the crowd looked chalk-white with terror. The bull-god surveyed the crowd, its horns nearly scraping the ceiling twenty feet above the stage.
At that moment, I knew death was on its way with eyes of fire and a grin like a skull, ready to reap a field of human bodies.
***
I heard running behind me, but I didn’t dare turn away from the horrific sight in front of me. The last of the fire’s embers died, sending up thin wisps of gray smoke that spiraled around the bull-god’s monstrous face. Moloch stood as still as a statue, and if it weren’t for one thing, I might’ve thought it was some sort of sculpture or art project. He had two nostrils like a serpent’s. As his great lungs inhaled, the smoke billowed in and out of his mouth and nose.
Some of the people at the edges of the crowd had gotten up, hurrying towards the doors. Moloch’s head ratcheted to face them, his fiery eyes narrowing into slits.
“Do not leave!” the man in the goat mask pleaded. “Those who have fear are not worthy of life. Do not prove yourselves unworthy of life!” As the first of the fleeing men and women got to within a few steps of the door, Moloch gave a primal roar. In a blur of primal strength, he reached down and ripped the blackened sacrificial altar off the stage. It ripped from the wooden stage with a tremendous crack like a bullwhip. He hurled the heavy mass of stone at those heading towards the opposite exit from the one I guarded.
I watched it curve through the air. The people started screaming and clawing to escape as it smashed down on their heads with a grating crash. I could feel the floor shake from where I stood outside. Blood exploded from their smashed bodies. I saw arms and legs jerking and seizing under the heavy stone, but within a few moments, they slowed and then stopped.
Others were running towards the door I guarded, but Moloch leapt off the stage in a blur. In a few bounding steps, he reached the pale, terrified faces on the other side of the threshold. His massive clawed hand came down. I heard bones shatter as blood sprayed my face and the wall. Bone splinters and pieces of brain exploded from the screaming bodies. I backpedaled, wiping at my eyes, trying to get the blood off so I could see. No one had told me what to do in this situation. I didn’t know if I was supposed to shoot that massive abomination, or if this was all just part of the show.
“Richard!” a familiar voice cried from behind me. Panic oozed from every word. I spun, seeing Mario and Kolmek standing side by side, their pupils dilated and expressions grim.
“We have a major problem.” It was Mario. I recognized that voice, the one that sounded as if he had been gargling with rocks.
“I know,” I said, holding my rifle tightly. I pointed behind me at the scene of rampant death and destruction.
I had seen bloodshed and war before, but this was different. The Island itself seemed to feel it. The wind, which had been calm when I first landed, now whipped the Island in fast, circular currents. The breeze smelled of burnt matches and coppery blood. The static electricity which had caused the hairs on my arms to rise rippled over everything with tiny blue flashes, increasing in power by the second.
“No, no, not Moloch,” Kolmek said, looking much calmer than I felt. “The Savior lets Moloch thin the herd every year.”
“It’s Leviathan,” Mario continued grimly, “the beast from the waters. The smell of blood is drawing it from the depths of the ocean. We picked up the first blips on radar a few minutes ago. When it gets here, it won’t stop until everything is rubble. It will kill every single person on the Island.”
“All security personnel must report to the south beach immediately,” a cool robotic voice cried out over hidden loudspeakers all over the Island. The screaming from the auditorium had quieted behind me. I was afraid to look inside.
“There it is,” Kolmek said, his head jerking up as the emergency alert read. He motioned for me to follow. “It’s time to fight.”
***
We sprinted over curving trails of smooth logs between deathly quiet forests. All the insects and birds had gone silent. Ahead of us, the palm trees opened up onto the Pacific Ocean. But it was no longer a beautiful tropical blue. A black, swirling whirlpool like an ulcerous wound had opened up on its surface. It stretched hundreds of feet across, drawing closer to the shore by the second. Dead fish, sharks, dolphins, squids and even whales spun in the filthy, dark water.
Twenty black-clad security agents waited for the three of us on the beach, their eyes wide, their faces pale with terror. Like myself, they all had AR-15s and Glock 22s with extra magazines for both. I guess the Glock might be useful for blowing my brains out as a last resort if some beast from Hell rose out of the simmering waters, but I didn’t think it would stop anything from another dimension.
The clouds swirled overhead in a thick curtain as black as smoke. Flashes of blue lightning detonated every couple seconds. Mario raised his hands, screaming over the roaring of the wind. Kolmek stood by my side, his face grim and eyes narrowed.
“Your job is to fight off anything that tries to get on the Island,” he said, looking from one face to another with rapt attention. “Nothing can stand against high-caliber rifle fire. Shoot at the face and eyes when it comes up. We’ve dealt with creatures like this before, and they will retreat if you injure them badly enough.” I had the sense of being fed a line of bullshit as my mind processed this.
“What exactly is coming up?” one of the doe-eyed security men asked. He barely looked old enough to drink, a young, muscular hulk with a Marine Corps tattoo on his neck.
“They call it Leviathan,” Mario responded. “Sometimes the rituals here and the smell of blood can draw… strange things. Leviathan is one of those. We have encountered it before. The most important thing to remember is…” His voice was suddenly drowned out by a terrible cacophony that came from the center of the black whirlpool.
A screech like the detonation of a nuclear missile shook the ground. The ocean jumped and bubbled frantically. The beach heaved and cracked, the white sands disappearing in fissures that opened up like greedy mouths underneath my feet. I lost my balance, falling forwards. The screeching continued rising into a primal roar.
A green dragon head the color of an infected wound erupted from the surface of the thrashing water, rising up dozens of feet in the air. It had two enormous slitted eyes that dilated and constricted quickly as it glowered down at us. The screeching abruptly stopped, the pointed mouth of the dragon slamming shut with a sound like a gunshot.
Within moments, another cancerous green head shot up in a blur, its skin looking as hard as stone. Ridges that looked as sharp as swords ran the length of its reptilian skull, arcing over its eyes and pointed snout. More heads erupted from the ocean until all seven heads of Leviathan loomed over us.
Not one of us fired. No one even seemed to breathe as we surveyed the beast across the no-man’s land of the white sands. The slitted eyes and yellow irises of the seven heads had a demonic hunger, a reptilian coldness. Far behind us, I heard distant screams still echoing from the auditorium where Moloch held sway.
“Fire!” Mario cried. Instantly, a cacophony of gunshots exploded all around me. I jumped up on my feet, scrambling up as the seven-headed dragon leapt forward. Thousands of gallons of saltwater streamed down its massive body as it came up on the beach. Long, black paws with bone-white talons shot out of the surging ocean, followed by a tapering tail like that of a water snake.
I brought the rifle up and emptied my magazine as fast as I could, pulling the trigger over and over as I aimed at the many slitted eyes of Leviathan. But the bullets seemed to ping harmlessly off of its hard, obsidian-like scales.
It scrabbled onto the shore, the heads coming down in a blur. Rows and rows of vampiric fangs gleamed dully in each of the mouths. One security agent was bitten in half, the spurting stump of his lower body still standing for a long moment even as the rest of the body disappeared down the throat of the dragon.
Mario ran forwards, slamming another magazine in his rifle and opening fire point-blank. One of the heads came down in a blur towards him. Its great, staring eyes exploded in a shower of blue blood and thick vitreous fluid. The dragon head pulled back, its mouth opening in a primal scream of agony.
As I reloaded, I scanned the area around me, realizing that nearly half of the security agents were either dead or critically injured. I backpedaled away, keeping my eyes on the dragon. It continuously drew forward, killing more of its enemies with every step. I turned and ran into the forest, the sounds of shattering bones and dying men ringing through the air with a sickening clarity behind me.
Once I had reached the border of the trail, I heard Mario yell, “Retreat!” behind me. But by that point, it was far too late.
***
“Hey! Wait up!” a voice whispered from behind me. I turned my head, seeing Kolmek. Spatters of drying blood covered his face and uniform. As far as I could tell, none of it was his. “Mario’s dead. They’re all dead. We need to get out of here. We need to get off the Island.”
“How?” I asked.
“Find the Savior,” he answered, panting and out of breath. “We must find him. He can get us out of here.”
“I don’t even know what the guy looks like,” I muttered. “He was wearing a goat mask.”
“You’ll know him when you see him,” Kolmek said. “His body is covered in scars. Everything except his face. Stay close to me. We need to watch each other’s backs. It’s our only chance of survival.”
***
A trail of twisted, broken bodies led from the mansion to the surrounding trails and beaches. A decapitated woman with solid gold necklaces embedded with diamonds lay in front of me. It was strange on the Island, the way oblivion and ineffable wealth coexisted side by side. But everything was deathly silent, even in the mansion’s auditorium.
“Where’s the Savior?” I asked through gritted teeth. I peeked my head into the auditorium, but nothing moved. Hundreds of smashed and bloody bodies littered the floor.
“He’s around somewhere,” Kolmek answered. We started circling the mansion, looking for any signs of life. Kolmek went in the lead. As he turned the corner, an enormous black hand with sharp claws of fingers flitted forward in a blur, wrapping itself around his chest. Kolmek gave a strangled cry as it closed around him. I heard his bones crush as a spout of blood and gore flew from his mouth and nose, as if he were a toothpaste tube being squeezed.
I backpedaled away as Moloch threw the twitching corpse aside like a discarded toy. It smashed into the wall of the mansion, exploding wetly. A human-shaped, bloody stain languidly dripped down the wall above Kolmek’s mangled body.
Moloch slowly turned his head towards me, the fiery eyes flashing with hunger. He gnashed his fangs together, taking a step forward with a leg the size and shape of a tree trunk. With every step he took, I felt the ground tremble.
“Stop!” I cried, moving away from the monstrous creature. “Why are you doing this?”
“There is no why,” he gurgled, his voice monstrous and inhumanly slow. “There is only power. The weak deserve to die. Only the strong are worthy of life.” I raised my rifle in a last-ditch effort to save myself. Moloch saw it and started running towards me, every footstep crushing the paved walkway around the mansion into rubble and dust.
I aimed for his eyes and nose, emptying the entire magazine as quickly as I could. The bullets smashed into Moloch’s face. Dark red, clotted blood dripped out of the wounds, writhing with maggots. Drops of it fell around me, landing on my hair and face. I felt the small larvae twisting all over my skin. Moloch’s blood smelled nauseating, like some combination of stinkbugs and rotting bodies. He slowed, giving a roar of pain. I turned to run in the opposite direction, but as I looked out in the direction of the beach, my heart dropped.
Leviathan was moving in our direction, the giant dragon heads looming over the trees. Quickly, it swept towards me like a dark wind.
***
“You will suffer for that, worthless slave,” Moloch growled, wiping blood from his fiery eyes with his sharp talons of fingers. A sudden idea came to me. I ran in the direction of Leviathan. Moloch followed closely at my heels, only a few steps behind me.
Leviathan slithered forward over the sands and trees, its enormous body undulating like a water snake’s. I screamed at it, an incomprehensible wail of terror. Its seven heads snapped towards me. Its slitted eyes widened as it saw Moloch.
I heard the crashing of Moloch’s footsteps stop behind me, only feet away from crushing me into a paste. His massive lungs breathed quickly, exhaling the odor of sulfur and smoke.
“Leviathan,” Moloch growled in his demonic voice. “These are my tributes.” Leviathan’s dragon heads looked straight up at the Sun and screamed in response, their many voices rising and falling in a dissonant wail. As I sprinted into the trees, Leviathan and Moloch ran at each other, colliding with an ear-splitting crash. I glanced back, seeing Moloch ripping one of the dragon heads off its neck with his sharp fingers. The head screamed as blue blood exploded from the spurting stump. After a long moment, the neck fell limply forward.
The other dragon heads bit Moloch in a unified attack. They ripped deep holes in his shoulders and arms, snapping over and over like rabid dogs. As the two eldritch monstrosities attacked each other in fierce combat, I lost sight of them, but the sounds of fighting echoed over the entire island, crashing like lightning.
***
I felt like the survivor of an Apocalypse. I couldn’t find a single other living person on the Island. Hundreds of crushed, broken and decapitated bodies surrounded me. Over the cacophony of fighting, I heard a new noise: the whirring of helicopter blades nearby. It was coming from the other side of the mansion.
Frantically, I sprinted around the other side, seeing a Black Hawk helicopter getting ready to leave. A man in black robes sat at the pilot’s seat, his green eyes gleaming and a wide smile plastered across his face. I smashed my fist into the door over and over until he opened it.
“Holy shit, you’re still alive?” he asked. I hadn’t seen this man before. He had a face like a Calvin Klein model, all sharp angles and high cheekbones, perfectly proportioned in every way. But his scalp looked melted and scarred, as if someone had thrown gasoline on his hair and ignited it. His ears were stunted, twisted growths of scar tissue. His hands, too, were covered in deep, folding burn scars.
“Are you the Savior?” I responded quickly. “Please, get me out of here.”
“They do call me that,” he said wistfully. “The Savior. Yes, I guess I am. Get in.”
***
The Savior stared at me with his strange green eyes, the color of swamps where monstrous things swam under the surface.
“Some people just need to learn the hard way,” he said. The helicopter took off into a dark night covered with bright, twinkling stars. “There is no great power without great responsibility, after all. Those of us who seek the ancient ones know it comes with a cost.” I just stared out the window, gazing down at the countless mutilated, broken bodies that littered the beach.
Below us, the face of a bull stared up with eyes of fiery cyclones. The broken, still body of Leviathan lay at his feet. As we made it over the great waters of the Pacific Ocean, the bull-god raised a hand and waved. At that moment, I thought I could almost see a hurricane of translucent souls circling around him, spiraling up into the sky.

After high school, having no better ideas, I joined the Navy SEALs. I never really liked any of it, but it was a job, after all. I loved the guns and airplanes and grenades, but having to run all the time while some scumbag with a chip on his shoulder yells in my face isn’t my idea of fun.
Things got a lot more interesting after my term of service ended. I still had a high-security clearance, so I used it to take temporary jobs as a mercenary, a hired gun. I did some stints in Iraq with Blackwater, where they set me out in the middle of the desert. A watchtower and oil refinery loomed over the burning sands. Along with a few other guys, they told us, “Guard this area with your life.” While better than the SEALs, working for Blackwater was extremely boring. The other mercenaries and I would mostly just chainsmoke cigarettes and drink coffee all night, staring out across the dead, empty desert.
Over time, I worked my way up. Things started to get more interesting when a job offer arrived in my email one freezing cold winter’s morning. This is what it said.
“Mr. Chase,
“I am the head of security for a private group of entrepreneurs and investors. Through some mutual contacts, I have heard of your professionalism and experience. We are currently putting together a small crew to guard a private event on [REDACTED] Island out in the Pacific Ocean that will run from January 9th to January 26th. Would you be interested in this job? The pay rate is $900 a day.
“Once you are on the island, it will be impossible to leave until the period of employment has ended. If you are interested, please respond to this email as soon as possible.
“Sincerely,
“Mario Antonin, Head of Security.”
I was working piecemeal jobs like this one at the time, but none of them were paying that well. At most, I would usually get $350 to $500 a day, which was still good money when I was working seven days a week until the job finished. I instantly responded and said that yes, I was interested. In response, they sent me a non-disclosure agreement that was the size of a small novel that I had to sign.
That was how I found myself on a private jet, flying out to an island in the middle of the vast blue ocean. I was never told the coordinates of the island or saw it on a map. It was all kept very secret.
A few hours later, we landed on a private airstrip. I looked out the window of the jet, seeing the tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean stretching off to the horizon in every direction. Below me stood an island with palm trees and sandy white beaches. An enormous Victorian mansion loomed directly in the center of it all. The mansion was painted black and looked like something straight out of a horror movie. It had no windows, and the turrets spiraled into blade-like points.
That was my first inkling that something might not be quite right about this trip.
***
As the stairs from the private jet descended, I looked out on this strange new world. Employees waited to greet us, looking like beaten dogs. Some had their heads down, their eyes blankly scanning the ground. Most of them were women wearing red dresses, reminding me of stewardesses on a plane. The jet strip was surrounded by palm trees and tropical brush. The chirping of insects sounded all around us, high and resonant.
I saw a strange patch engraved on all of the employees’ uniforms and jackets. It looked almost like a stick figure drawing of a man, the bottom of its body ending in a C. Its arms were long and jointed, almost spidery. Three symbols like repeated iron crosses connected to the left side of its body in a line. I wondered if it was the logo of some company. I put it out of my mind for now, but I would see that symbol again all over the island, painted on the sides of the mansion and even cut into the trees with a knife. It would only be later that night that I realized its connection to Moloch.
“Good day, sir, and welcome to the Island,” the server on my left said with glassy eyes and a fake smile plastered across her face. They all looked up at once, but it was like the workers all looked through me rather than at me. Their eyes looked flat and dead, like the painted-on eyes of a doll.
“The Island, huh?” I asked, curious. “They wouldn’t tell me where I was going. They said it was a secret. Is that what you call it?” The woman just nodded, the doll-like smile never leaving her lips.
“Officially, this island is unnamed and uninhabited,” the woman said. “In fact, all traces of it have been scrubbed from the internet. You won’t find it on Google Maps or in any publicly available satellite imagery.” She leaned forward towards me with heavily mascaraed eyes and ruby-red lipstick slashed across her lips. “This is a very special place. Only very special people are allowed here. You should be honored to work here under our Savior.”
“I hope you’re talking about Jesus or something,” I said jokingly. She just smiled blankly and motioned me forward.
“Just follow that trail for a few hundred feet-” she said, pointing at an opening in the palm trees where logs were laid down horizontally over the muggy jungle- “and you’ll find the mansion. Good luck!” I thought it was a somewhat strange thing to say, wishing a random stranger good luck.
But, by the end of that night, I realized that simply to make it off this island alive, I would need lots of it.
***
I followed the woman’s directions to the back of the brutalist mansion. A heavy metal door stood there with a small bullet-proof window built in the top. A tanned, Spanish face glowered out at me then rapidly drew back and disappeared. A few heartbeats later, the door slid to the side with a grinding of hidden gears.
The head of security at the Island was a heavily-tattooed ex-Marine named Mario. He wore a dark Kevlar vest over a black outfit, making him look like a walking shadow. I found the security had their own private complex in the mansion as he showed me around the site. Hundreds of hidden cameras covered every angle of the mansion and the surrounding parts of the island. Dozens of black-clad security agents swarmed over the screens, checking the monitors and computers constantly.
“Quite a set-up you have here,” I said to Mario, nodding at him. He smacked me on the shoulder, giving a confident grin.
“Money is no issue here, Richard,” he responded. “Security is paramount. There are things on this island that could rip apart the world if they ever escaped.” I raised an eyebrow.
“Like what?” I asked. “Nuclear weapons or something?” He laughed at that.
“You’ll see for yourself tonight,” he said, his dark eyes flashing with something cold and alien.
***
Mario led me and a couple other new hired guns around the Island. The place was certainly strange. It reminded me of some combination of a secret black-ops site and a playboy billionaire’s private heaven. All of the doors in the mansion looked like they were made of thick steel. They had wheels that would spin, like those on a submarine door. The mansion also had no windows at all that I could see, except for the small, shatter-proof glass openings on the steel doors. I didn’t want to ask too many questions, however. I couldn’t resist asking him about a couple small things, however- or at least, they seemed small to me at the time.
“What are those hatchways?” I asked Mario, pointing to rectangular covers built into the concrete walkway. They had heavy handles. “Are those manholes or something?”
“There are tunnels under the Island,” he responded vaguely. “Just for maintenance and security, you understand.”
“Wow, this place is certainly… well-developed,” I said. We came out through a grove of palm trees. A stone walkway led down to a white beach. Dozens of yachts were moored all across the shore, some of them looking like they must have cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
“There’s a lot of money and power here,” Mario said. “That’s why it’s important you never talk about what you see here. These are the people who control the world, the ones behind the government and the media. Not the elected officials who the people see, but the actual power.”
“Like who?” I asked. “You mean the Rothschilds and Soros?” He laughed again, a sarcastic, grinding laugh that grated my nerves.
“Trust me, the truly powerful ones don’t even have public personas. If you know their name, then they’re just one of the puppets.” I just shook my head at that, then asked the real question that had been bothering me since I first arrived here.
“Who is the Savior?” I asked. “Is that some codename or something?” Mario froze in place.
“He’s the one who runs everything here,” he whispered conspiratorially, looking around nervously. “But don’t be mentioning that kind of shit. You’ll probably see him tonight anyway. He’s the one who runs the show. He’ll be on the stage in his normal outfit.”
***
By the end of the day, I was suited up like the rest of the security staff, wearing the pure black pants and shirt with the symbol of Moloch engraved over the heart. Hundreds of the world’s most famous politicians, actors, businessmen and artists had gathered, streaming in the front doors with a soft, diffident susurration.
I stood by the open doorway of a side exit with an AR-15 and full body armor, next to one other soldier. They had also given me a sidearm. Every entrance or exit was manned by at least two armed men. The security at this place was some of the most intense I had ever seen. Beyond the door, there were rows and rows of the most comfortable seats, all gathered in a semi-circle around a massive stage made of pure mahogany. Blood-red curtains stood closed at the front of the room, concealing their secrets- for now, at least.
“Hail Satan!” I heard the elites cry inside in unison. I didn’t want to look in at the rows of high-ranking politicians, celebrities, influencers and artists, but my curiosity was high. I peeked around the corner of the stone archway, seeing the red curtains on the stage drawing apart. I saw one of my favorite actors standing in the front row, clapping excitedly and jumping up and down.
The crowd cheered as a naked female strapped to an obsidian altar lay there. She was beautiful and blonde, probably no older than twenty with the face of a supermodel. Her mouth was gagged, her arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross. Thin leather cords were tied around her wrists and ankles, biting deeply into the skin. Her eyes rolled wildly as she shook her head from side to side. She froze, and her eyes met mine for a brief moment. I saw the pleading expression there, the mortal terror and absolute horror.
A man in a goat mask wearing black robes slunk out from the side of the stage, carrying a wavy silver dagger engraved with strange symbols. The crowd erupted into a primal roar of pleasure and excitement that sounded like it came from one monstrous mouth.
“Worthy is the Lamb!” the man in the goat mask screamed with electronic amplification. He had a deep voice, as if he had rocks rolling around in his throat. The crowd roared and clapped. Scattered cries of “Hail Lucifer!” and “Ave Satanas!” echoed down the massive auditorium.
“Hey, pay attention,” the other security agent at my side said in a thick Finnish accent. He was a tall Scandinavian-looking guy named Kolmek. “You’re not getting paid to watch the show, new guy.” I tried to rip my gaze away from the stage, but it held my attention with an obsessive horror.
“The burnt bones of children and women have been offered to the ancient ones, to Moloch,” the man on the stage cried. “Under our feet, the burnt bodies of hundreds lay dreaming. This victim will be the 666th. Her blood will bring about the Gnosis that we seek, the direct experience of the divine held by the gods, by Lucifer and Moloch and Baal…” The roaring of the crowd temporarily drowned out his electronically-magnified voice. “Tonight, we will rip open the veil!”
I had stopped watching the show, instead staring blankly out at the beach and palm trees. At that moment, another black-clad security agent came up to my partner, whispered something in his ear, then immediately disappeared, heading off back in the direction of the main security office. Kolmek shook his head grimly.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Stay right here. Don’t move from this door no matter what. And pay attention.” I nodded and watched as he walked off in the same direction.
I immediately took the opportunity to continue watching the ceremony. I had missed something important, apparently. The woman now laid dead on the sacrificial table, a gaping hole in her chest. Blood spurted from the crater as the man in the goat mask held her beating heart grasped tightly in his hand, letting the blood stream down his naked fingers. The crowd cheered with a rising bloodlust and insanity. Most of them were standing, their eyes gleaming and wide with fanatical adoration. The entire spectacle reminded me of some kind of ancient Aztec ritual.
As the woman’s sightless eyes stared vacantly up in death, the man in a goat mask pulled out a can of gasoline. The clear liquid gurgled as he up-ended the canister over her pale, bloodless face, over her naked stomach and long legs. A moment later, he lit a match and dropped it. I heard the whooshing of the flames as they rose up.
The crowd went deathly silent as they watched the rippling flames. The man in the goat mask began chanting in some strange language I had never heard before. It sounded Semitic, but I knew it wasn’t Arabic or Hebrew. I felt something like electricity ripple through the air, almost like a feeling of falling pressure before a storm. I looked down at the hairs on my arms, seeing them rise up. I looked back up at the stage, and my eyes widened in horror.
The flaming body of the sacrificial victim had started to morph before my eyes and the eyes of the crowd. The dripping, blackening flesh jumped up and down, as if there were rats trapped in her body trying to escape the fire. There was a deafening hissing as if thousands of snakes were being burned alive.
The dead woman’s arms jerked up, the skin splitting open as if she had seams running along her skin. Something dark and muscular with curving, black talons ripped its way out of the dead, burning flesh. Behind it, a head appeared with long, curving horns and eyes that spun with whorls of fire. It looked like the offspring of a bull and a demon. Its imposing body rose up from the inferno, appearing like magic from the solid stone. It raised itself to its full height, looming over the crowd. The last of the woman’s blood hissed and boiled away, her flesh dissolving into ashes.
“Behold, Moloch rises!” the man in the goat mask screamed in a fanatical voice. The crowd’s cheering had stopped, though. Many of the faces in the crowd looked chalk-white with terror. The bull-god surveyed the crowd, its horns nearly scraping the ceiling twenty feet above the stage.
At that moment, I knew death was on its way with eyes of fire and a grin like a skull, ready to reap a field of human bodies.
***
I heard running behind me, but I didn’t dare turn away from the horrific sight in front of me. The last of the fire’s embers died, sending up thin wisps of gray smoke that spiraled around the bull-god’s monstrous face. Moloch stood as still as a statue, and if it weren’t for one thing, I might’ve thought it was some sort of sculpture or art project. He had two nostrils like a serpent’s. As his great lungs inhaled, the smoke billowed in and out of his mouth and nose.
Some of the people at the edges of the crowd had gotten up, hurrying towards the doors. Moloch’s head ratcheted to face them, his fiery eyes narrowing into slits.
“Do not leave!” the man in the goat mask pleaded. “Those who have fear are not worthy of life. Do not prove yourselves unworthy of life!” As the first of the fleeing men and women got to within a few steps of the door, Moloch gave a primal roar. In a blur of primal strength, he reached down and ripped the blackened sacrificial altar off the stage. It ripped from the wooden stage with a tremendous crack like a bullwhip. He hurled the heavy mass of stone at those heading towards the opposite exit from the one I guarded.
I watched it curve through the air. The people started screaming and clawing to escape as it smashed down on their heads with a grating crash. I could feel the floor shake from where I stood outside. Blood exploded from their smashed bodies. I saw arms and legs jerking and seizing under the heavy stone, but within a few moments, they slowed and then stopped.
Others were running towards the door I guarded, but Moloch leapt off the stage in a blur. In a few bounding steps, he reached the pale, terrified faces on the other side of the threshold. His massive clawed hand came down. I heard bones shatter as blood sprayed my face and the wall. Bone splinters and pieces of brain exploded from the screaming bodies. I backpedaled, wiping at my eyes, trying to get the blood off so I could see. No one had told me what to do in this situation. I didn’t know if I was supposed to shoot that massive abomination, or if this was all just part of the show.
“Richard!” a familiar voice cried from behind me. Panic oozed from every word. I spun, seeing Mario and Kolmek standing side by side, their pupils dilated and expressions grim.
“We have a major problem.” It was Mario. I recognized that voice, the one that sounded as if he had been gargling with rocks.
“I know,” I said, holding my rifle tightly. I pointed behind me at the scene of rampant death and destruction.
I had seen bloodshed and war before, but this was different. The Island itself seemed to feel it. The wind, which had been calm when I first landed, now whipped the Island in fast, circular currents. The breeze smelled of burnt matches and coppery blood. The static electricity which had caused the hairs on my arms to rise rippled over everything with tiny blue flashes, increasing in power by the second.
“No, no, not Moloch,” Kolmek said, looking much calmer than I felt. “The Savior lets Moloch thin the herd every year.”
“It’s Leviathan,” Mario continued grimly, “the beast from the waters. The smell of blood is drawing it from the depths of the ocean. We picked up the first blips on radar a few minutes ago. When it gets here, it won’t stop until everything is rubble. It will kill every single person on the Island.”
“All security personnel must report to the south beach immediately,” a cool robotic voice cried out over hidden loudspeakers all over the Island. The screaming from the auditorium had quieted behind me. I was afraid to look inside.
“There it is,” Kolmek said, his head jerking up as the emergency alert read. He motioned for me to follow. “It’s time to fight.”
***
We sprinted over curving trails of smooth logs between deathly quiet forests. All the insects and birds had gone silent. Ahead of us, the palm trees opened up onto the Pacific Ocean. But it was no longer a beautiful tropical blue. A black, swirling whirlpool like an ulcerous wound had opened up on its surface. It stretched hundreds of feet across, drawing closer to the shore by the second. Dead fish, sharks, dolphins, squids and even whales spun in the filthy, dark water.
Twenty black-clad security agents waited for the three of us on the beach, their eyes wide, their faces pale with terror. Like myself, they all had AR-15s and Glock 22s with extra magazines for both. I guess the Glock might be useful for blowing my brains out as a last resort if some beast from Hell rose out of the simmering waters, but I didn’t think it would stop anything from another dimension.
The clouds swirled overhead in a thick curtain as black as smoke. Flashes of blue lightning detonated every couple seconds. Mario raised his hands, screaming over the roaring of the wind. Kolmek stood by my side, his face grim and eyes narrowed.
“Your job is to fight off anything that tries to get on the Island,” he said, looking from one face to another with rapt attention. “Nothing can stand against high-caliber rifle fire. Shoot at the face and eyes when it comes up. We’ve dealt with creatures like this before, and they will retreat if you injure them badly enough.” I had the sense of being fed a line of bullshit as my mind processed this.
“What exactly is coming up?” one of the doe-eyed security men asked. He barely looked old enough to drink, a young, muscular hulk with a Marine Corps tattoo on his neck.
“They call it Leviathan,” Mario responded. “Sometimes the rituals here and the smell of blood can draw… strange things. Leviathan is one of those. We have encountered it before. The most important thing to remember is…” His voice was suddenly drowned out by a terrible cacophony that came from the center of the black whirlpool.
A screech like the detonation of a nuclear missile shook the ground. The ocean jumped and bubbled frantically. The beach heaved and cracked, the white sands disappearing in fissures that opened up like greedy mouths underneath my feet. I lost my balance, falling forwards. The screeching continued rising into a primal roar.
A green dragon head the color of an infected wound erupted from the surface of the thrashing water, rising up dozens of feet in the air. It had two enormous slitted eyes that dilated and constricted quickly as it glowered down at us. The screeching abruptly stopped, the pointed mouth of the dragon slamming shut with a sound like a gunshot.
Within moments, another cancerous green head shot up in a blur, its skin looking as hard as stone. Ridges that looked as sharp as swords ran the length of its reptilian skull, arcing over its eyes and pointed snout. More heads erupted from the ocean until all seven heads of Leviathan loomed over us.
Not one of us fired. No one even seemed to breathe as we surveyed the beast across the no-man’s land of the white sands. The slitted eyes and yellow irises of the seven heads had a demonic hunger, a reptilian coldness. Far behind us, I heard distant screams still echoing from the auditorium where Moloch held sway.
“Fire!” Mario cried. Instantly, a cacophony of gunshots exploded all around me. I jumped up on my feet, scrambling up as the seven-headed dragon leapt forward. Thousands of gallons of saltwater streamed down its massive body as it came up on the beach. Long, black paws with bone-white talons shot out of the surging ocean, followed by a tapering tail like that of a water snake.
I brought the rifle up and emptied my magazine as fast as I could, pulling the trigger over and over as I aimed at the many slitted eyes of Leviathan. But the bullets seemed to ping harmlessly off of its hard, obsidian-like scales.
It scrabbled onto the shore, the heads coming down in a blur. Rows and rows of vampiric fangs gleamed dully in each of the mouths. One security agent was bitten in half, the spurting stump of his lower body still standing for a long moment even as the rest of the body disappeared down the throat of the dragon.
Mario ran forwards, slamming another magazine in his rifle and opening fire point-blank. One of the heads came down in a blur towards him. Its great, staring eyes exploded in a shower of blue blood and thick vitreous fluid. The dragon head pulled back, its mouth opening in a primal scream of agony.
As I reloaded, I scanned the area around me, realizing that nearly half of the security agents were either dead or critically injured. I backpedaled away, keeping my eyes on the dragon. It continuously drew forward, killing more of its enemies with every step. I turned and ran into the forest, the sounds of shattering bones and dying men ringing through the air with a sickening clarity behind me.
Once I had reached the border of the trail, I heard Mario yell, “Retreat!” behind me. But by that point, it was far too late.
***
“Hey! Wait up!” a voice whispered from behind me. I turned my head, seeing Kolmek. Spatters of drying blood covered his face and uniform. As far as I could tell, none of it was his. “Mario’s dead. They’re all dead. We need to get out of here. We need to get off the Island.”
“How?” I asked.
“Find the Savior,” he answered, panting and out of breath. “We must find him. He can get us out of here.”
“I don’t even know what the guy looks like,” I muttered. “He was wearing a goat mask.”
“You’ll know him when you see him,” Kolmek said. “His body is covered in scars. Everything except his face. Stay close to me. We need to watch each other’s backs. It’s our only chance of survival.”
***
A trail of twisted, broken bodies led from the mansion to the surrounding trails and beaches. A decapitated woman with solid gold necklaces embedded with diamonds lay in front of me. It was strange on the Island, the way oblivion and ineffable wealth coexisted side by side. But everything was deathly silent, even in the mansion’s auditorium.
“Where’s the Savior?” I asked through gritted teeth. I peeked my head into the auditorium, but nothing moved. Hundreds of smashed and bloody bodies littered the floor.
“He’s around somewhere,” Kolmek answered. We started circling the mansion, looking for any signs of life. Kolmek went in the lead. As he turned the corner, an enormous black hand with sharp claws of fingers flitted forward in a blur, wrapping itself around his chest. Kolmek gave a strangled cry as it closed around him. I heard his bones crush as a spout of blood and gore flew from his mouth and nose, as if he were a toothpaste tube being squeezed.
I backpedaled away as Moloch threw the twitching corpse aside like a discarded toy. It smashed into the wall of the mansion, exploding wetly. A human-shaped, bloody stain languidly dripped down the wall above Kolmek’s mangled body.
Moloch slowly turned his head towards me, the fiery eyes flashing with hunger. He gnashed his fangs together, taking a step forward with a leg the size and shape of a tree trunk. With every step he took, I felt the ground tremble.
“Stop!” I cried, moving away from the monstrous creature. “Why are you doing this?”
“There is no why,” he gurgled, his voice monstrous and inhumanly slow. “There is only power. The weak deserve to die. Only the strong are worthy of life.” I raised my rifle in a last-ditch effort to save myself. Moloch saw it and started running towards me, every footstep crushing the paved walkway around the mansion into rubble and dust.
I aimed for his eyes and nose, emptying the entire magazine as quickly as I could. The bullets smashed into Moloch’s face. Dark red, clotted blood dripped out of the wounds, writhing with maggots. Drops of it fell around me, landing on my hair and face. I felt the small larvae twisting all over my skin. Moloch’s blood smelled nauseating, like some combination of stinkbugs and rotting bodies. He slowed, giving a roar of pain. I turned to run in the opposite direction, but as I looked out in the direction of the beach, my heart dropped.
Leviathan was moving in our direction, the giant dragon heads looming over the trees. Quickly, it swept towards me like a dark wind.
***
“You will suffer for that, worthless slave,” Moloch growled, wiping blood from his fiery eyes with his sharp talons of fingers. A sudden idea came to me. I ran in the direction of Leviathan. Moloch followed closely at my heels, only a few steps behind me.
Leviathan slithered forward over the sands and trees, its enormous body undulating like a water snake’s. I screamed at it, an incomprehensible wail of terror. Its seven heads snapped towards me. Its slitted eyes widened as it saw Moloch.
I heard the crashing of Moloch’s footsteps stop behind me, only feet away from crushing me into a paste. His massive lungs breathed quickly, exhaling the odor of sulfur and smoke.
“Leviathan,” Moloch growled in his demonic voice. “These are my tributes.” Leviathan’s dragon heads looked straight up at the Sun and screamed in response, their many voices rising and falling in a dissonant wail. As I sprinted into the trees, Leviathan and Moloch ran at each other, colliding with an ear-splitting crash. I glanced back, seeing Moloch ripping one of the dragon heads off its neck with his sharp fingers. The head screamed as blue blood exploded from the spurting stump. After a long moment, the neck fell limply forward.
The other dragon heads bit Moloch in a unified attack. They ripped deep holes in his shoulders and arms, snapping over and over like rabid dogs. As the two eldritch monstrosities attacked each other in fierce combat, I lost sight of them, but the sounds of fighting echoed over the entire island, crashing like lightning.
***
I felt like the survivor of an Apocalypse. I couldn’t find a single other living person on the Island. Hundreds of crushed, broken and decapitated bodies surrounded me. Over the cacophony of fighting, I heard a new noise: the whirring of helicopter blades nearby. It was coming from the other side of the mansion.
Frantically, I sprinted around the other side, seeing a Black Hawk helicopter getting ready to leave. A man in black robes sat at the pilot’s seat, his green eyes gleaming and a wide smile plastered across his face. I smashed my fist into the door over and over until he opened it.
“Holy shit, you’re still alive?” he asked. I hadn’t seen this man before. He had a face like a Calvin Klein model, all sharp angles and high cheekbones, perfectly proportioned in every way. But his scalp looked melted and scarred, as if someone had thrown gasoline on his hair and ignited it. His ears were stunted, twisted growths of scar tissue. His hands, too, were covered in deep, folding burn scars.
“Are you the Savior?” I responded quickly. “Please, get me out of here.”
“They do call me that,” he said wistfully. “The Savior. Yes, I guess I am. Get in.”
***
The Savior stared at me with his strange green eyes, the color of swamps where monstrous things swam under the surface.
“Some people just need to learn the hard way,” he said. The helicopter took off into a dark night covered with bright, twinkling stars. “There is no great power without great responsibility, after all. Those of us who seek the ancient ones know it comes with a cost.” I just stared out the window, gazing down at the countless mutilated, broken bodies that littered the beach.
Below us, the face of a bull stared up with eyes of fiery cyclones. The broken, still body of Leviathan lay at his feet. As we made it over the great waters of the Pacific Ocean, the bull-god raised a hand and waved. At that moment, I thought I could almost see a hurricane of translucent souls circling around him, spiraling up into the sky.

After high school, having no better ideas, I joined the Navy SEALs. I never really liked any of it, but it was a job, after all. I loved the guns and airplanes and grenades, but having to run all the time while some scumbag with a chip on his shoulder yells in my face isn’t my idea of fun.
Things got a lot more interesting after my term of service ended. I still had a high-security clearance, so I used it to take temporary jobs as a mercenary, a hired gun. I did some stints in Iraq with Blackwater, where they set me out in the middle of the desert. A watchtower and oil refinery loomed over the burning sands. Along with a few other guys, they told us, “Guard this area with your life.” While better than the SEALs, working for Blackwater was extremely boring. The other mercenaries and I would mostly just chainsmoke cigarettes and drink coffee all night, staring out across the dead, empty desert.
Over time, I worked my way up. Things started to get more interesting when a job offer arrived in my email one freezing cold winter’s morning. This is what it said.
“Mr. Chase,
“I am the head of security for a private group of entrepreneurs and investors. Through some mutual contacts, I have heard of your professionalism and experience. We are currently putting together a small crew to guard a private event on [REDACTED] Island out in the Pacific Ocean that will run from January 9th to January 26th. Would you be interested in this job? The pay rate is $900 a day.
“Once you are on the island, it will be impossible to leave until the period of employment has ended. If you are interested, please respond to this email as soon as possible.
“Sincerely,
“Mario Antonin, Head of Security.”
I was working piecemeal jobs like this one at the time, but none of them were paying that well. At most, I would usually get $350 to $500 a day, which was still good money when I was working seven days a week until the job finished. I instantly responded and said that yes, I was interested. In response, they sent me a non-disclosure agreement that was the size of a small novel that I had to sign.
That was how I found myself on a private jet, flying out to an island in the middle of the vast blue ocean. I was never told the coordinates of the island or saw it on a map. It was all kept very secret.
A few hours later, we landed on a private airstrip. I looked out the window of the jet, seeing the tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean stretching off to the horizon in every direction. Below me stood an island with palm trees and sandy white beaches. An enormous Victorian mansion loomed directly in the center of it all. The mansion was painted black and looked like something straight out of a horror movie. It had no windows, and the turrets spiraled into blade-like points.
That was my first inkling that something might not be quite right about this trip.
***
As the stairs from the private jet descended, I looked out on this strange new world. Employees waited to greet us, looking like beaten dogs. Some had their heads down, their eyes blankly scanning the ground. Most of them were women wearing red dresses, reminding me of stewardesses on a plane. The jet strip was surrounded by palm trees and tropical brush. The chirping of insects sounded all around us, high and resonant.
I saw a strange patch engraved on all of the employees’ uniforms and jackets. It looked almost like a stick figure drawing of a man, the bottom of its body ending in a C. Its arms were long and jointed, almost spidery. Three symbols like repeated iron crosses connected to the left side of its body in a line. I wondered if it was the logo of some company. I put it out of my mind for now, but I would see that symbol again all over the island, painted on the sides of the mansion and even cut into the trees with a knife. It would only be later that night that I realized its connection to Moloch.
“Good day, sir, and welcome to the Island,” the server on my left said with glassy eyes and a fake smile plastered across her face. They all looked up at once, but it was like the workers all looked through me rather than at me. Their eyes looked flat and dead, like the painted-on eyes of a doll.
“The Island, huh?” I asked, curious. “They wouldn’t tell me where I was going. They said it was a secret. Is that what you call it?” The woman just nodded, the doll-like smile never leaving her lips.
“Officially, this island is unnamed and uninhabited,” the woman said. “In fact, all traces of it have been scrubbed from the internet. You won’t find it on Google Maps or in any publicly available satellite imagery.” She leaned forward towards me with heavily mascaraed eyes and ruby-red lipstick slashed across her lips. “This is a very special place. Only very special people are allowed here. You should be honored to work here under our Savior.”
“I hope you’re talking about Jesus or something,” I said jokingly. She just smiled blankly and motioned me forward.
“Just follow that trail for a few hundred feet-” she said, pointing at an opening in the palm trees where logs were laid down horizontally over the muggy jungle- “and you’ll find the mansion. Good luck!” I thought it was a somewhat strange thing to say, wishing a random stranger good luck.
But, by the end of that night, I realized that simply to make it off this island alive, I would need lots of it.
***
I followed the woman’s directions to the back of the brutalist mansion. A heavy metal door stood there with a small bullet-proof window built in the top. A tanned, Spanish face glowered out at me then rapidly drew back and disappeared. A few heartbeats later, the door slid to the side with a grinding of hidden gears.
The head of security at the Island was a heavily-tattooed ex-Marine named Mario. He wore a dark Kevlar vest over a black outfit, making him look like a walking shadow. I found the security had their own private complex in the mansion as he showed me around the site. Hundreds of hidden cameras covered every angle of the mansion and the surrounding parts of the island. Dozens of black-clad security agents swarmed over the screens, checking the monitors and computers constantly.
“Quite a set-up you have here,” I said to Mario, nodding at him. He smacked me on the shoulder, giving a confident grin.
“Money is no issue here, Richard,” he responded. “Security is paramount. There are things on this island that could rip apart the world if they ever escaped.” I raised an eyebrow.
“Like what?” I asked. “Nuclear weapons or something?” He laughed at that.
“You’ll see for yourself tonight,” he said, his dark eyes flashing with something cold and alien.
***
Mario led me and a couple other new hired guns around the Island. The place was certainly strange. It reminded me of some combination of a secret black-ops site and a playboy billionaire’s private heaven. All of the doors in the mansion looked like they were made of thick steel. They had wheels that would spin, like those on a submarine door. The mansion also had no windows at all that I could see, except for the small, shatter-proof glass openings on the steel doors. I didn’t want to ask too many questions, however. I couldn’t resist asking him about a couple small things, however- or at least, they seemed small to me at the time.
“What are those hatchways?” I asked Mario, pointing to rectangular covers built into the concrete walkway. They had heavy handles. “Are those manholes or something?”
“There are tunnels under the Island,” he responded vaguely. “Just for maintenance and security, you understand.”
“Wow, this place is certainly… well-developed,” I said. We came out through a grove of palm trees. A stone walkway led down to a white beach. Dozens of yachts were moored all across the shore, some of them looking like they must have cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
“There’s a lot of money and power here,” Mario said. “That’s why it’s important you never talk about what you see here. These are the people who control the world, the ones behind the government and the media. Not the elected officials who the people see, but the actual power.”
“Like who?” I asked. “You mean the Rothschilds and Soros?” He laughed again, a sarcastic, grinding laugh that grated my nerves.
“Trust me, the truly powerful ones don’t even have public personas. If you know their name, then they’re just one of the puppets.” I just shook my head at that, then asked the real question that had been bothering me since I first arrived here.
“Who is the Savior?” I asked. “Is that some codename or something?” Mario froze in place.
“He’s the one who runs everything here,” he whispered conspiratorially, looking around nervously. “But don’t be mentioning that kind of shit. You’ll probably see him tonight anyway. He’s the one who runs the show. He’ll be on the stage in his normal outfit.”
***
By the end of the day, I was suited up like the rest of the security staff, wearing the pure black pants and shirt with the symbol of Moloch engraved over the heart. Hundreds of the world’s most famous politicians, actors, businessmen and artists had gathered, streaming in the front doors with a soft, diffident susurration.
I stood by the open doorway of a side exit with an AR-15 and full body armor, next to one other soldier. They had also given me a sidearm. Every entrance or exit was manned by at least two armed men. The security at this place was some of the most intense I had ever seen. Beyond the door, there were rows and rows of the most comfortable seats, all gathered in a semi-circle around a massive stage made of pure mahogany. Blood-red curtains stood closed at the front of the room, concealing their secrets- for now, at least.
“Hail Satan!” I heard the elites cry inside in unison. I didn’t want to look in at the rows of high-ranking politicians, celebrities, influencers and artists, but my curiosity was high. I peeked around the corner of the stone archway, seeing the red curtains on the stage drawing apart. I saw one of my favorite actors standing in the front row, clapping excitedly and jumping up and down.
The crowd cheered as a naked female strapped to an obsidian altar lay there. She was beautiful and blonde, probably no older than twenty with the face of a supermodel. Her mouth was gagged, her arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross. Thin leather cords were tied around her wrists and ankles, biting deeply into the skin. Her eyes rolled wildly as she shook her head from side to side. She froze, and her eyes met mine for a brief moment. I saw the pleading expression there, the mortal terror and absolute horror.
A man in a goat mask wearing black robes slunk out from the side of the stage, carrying a wavy silver dagger engraved with strange symbols. The crowd erupted into a primal roar of pleasure and excitement that sounded like it came from one monstrous mouth.
“Worthy is the Lamb!” the man in the goat mask screamed with electronic amplification. He had a deep voice, as if he had rocks rolling around in his throat. The crowd roared and clapped. Scattered cries of “Hail Lucifer!” and “Ave Satanas!” echoed down the massive auditorium.
“Hey, pay attention,” the other security agent at my side said in a thick Finnish accent. He was a tall Scandinavian-looking guy named Kolmek. “You’re not getting paid to watch the show, new guy.” I tried to rip my gaze away from the stage, but it held my attention with an obsessive horror.
“The burnt bones of children and women have been offered to the ancient ones, to Moloch,” the man on the stage cried. “Under our feet, the burnt bodies of hundreds lay dreaming. This victim will be the 666th. Her blood will bring about the Gnosis that we seek, the direct experience of the divine held by the gods, by Lucifer and Moloch and Baal…” The roaring of the crowd temporarily drowned out his electronically-magnified voice. “Tonight, we will rip open the veil!”
I had stopped watching the show, instead staring blankly out at the beach and palm trees. At that moment, another black-clad security agent came up to my partner, whispered something in his ear, then immediately disappeared, heading off back in the direction of the main security office. Kolmek shook his head grimly.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Stay right here. Don’t move from this door no matter what. And pay attention.” I nodded and watched as he walked off in the same direction.
I immediately took the opportunity to continue watching the ceremony. I had missed something important, apparently. The woman now laid dead on the sacrificial table, a gaping hole in her chest. Blood spurted from the crater as the man in the goat mask held her beating heart grasped tightly in his hand, letting the blood stream down his naked fingers. The crowd cheered with a rising bloodlust and insanity. Most of them were standing, their eyes gleaming and wide with fanatical adoration. The entire spectacle reminded me of some kind of ancient Aztec ritual.
As the woman’s sightless eyes stared vacantly up in death, the man in a goat mask pulled out a can of gasoline. The clear liquid gurgled as he up-ended the canister over her pale, bloodless face, over her naked stomach and long legs. A moment later, he lit a match and dropped it. I heard the whooshing of the flames as they rose up.
The crowd went deathly silent as they watched the rippling flames. The man in the goat mask began chanting in some strange language I had never heard before. It sounded Semitic, but I knew it wasn’t Arabic or Hebrew. I felt something like electricity ripple through the air, almost like a feeling of falling pressure before a storm. I looked down at the hairs on my arms, seeing them rise up. I looked back up at the stage, and my eyes widened in horror.
The flaming body of the sacrificial victim had started to morph before my eyes and the eyes of the crowd. The dripping, blackening flesh jumped up and down, as if there were rats trapped in her body trying to escape the fire. There was a deafening hissing as if thousands of snakes were being burned alive.
The dead woman’s arms jerked up, the skin splitting open as if she had seams running along her skin. Something dark and muscular with curving, black talons ripped its way out of the dead, burning flesh. Behind it, a head appeared with long, curving horns and eyes that spun with whorls of fire. It looked like the offspring of a bull and a demon. Its imposing body rose up from the inferno, appearing like magic from the solid stone. It raised itself to its full height, looming over the crowd. The last of the woman’s blood hissed and boiled away, her flesh dissolving into ashes.
“Behold, Moloch rises!” the man in the goat mask screamed in a fanatical voice. The crowd’s cheering had stopped, though. Many of the faces in the crowd looked chalk-white with terror. The bull-god surveyed the crowd, its horns nearly scraping the ceiling twenty feet above the stage.
At that moment, I knew death was on its way with eyes of fire and a grin like a skull, ready to reap a field of human bodies.
***
I heard running behind me, but I didn’t dare turn away from the horrific sight in front of me. The last of the fire’s embers died, sending up thin wisps of gray smoke that spiraled around the bull-god’s monstrous face. Moloch stood as still as a statue, and if it weren’t for one thing, I might’ve thought it was some sort of sculpture or art project. He had two nostrils like a serpent’s. As his great lungs inhaled, the smoke billowed in and out of his mouth and nose.
Some of the people at the edges of the crowd had gotten up, hurrying towards the doors. Moloch’s head ratcheted to face them, his fiery eyes narrowing into slits.
“Do not leave!” the man in the goat mask pleaded. “Those who have fear are not worthy of life. Do not prove yourselves unworthy of life!” As the first of the fleeing men and women got to within a few steps of the door, Moloch gave a primal roar. In a blur of primal strength, he reached down and ripped the blackened sacrificial altar off the stage. It ripped from the wooden stage with a tremendous crack like a bullwhip. He hurled the heavy mass of stone at those heading towards the opposite exit from the one I guarded.
I watched it curve through the air. The people started screaming and clawing to escape as it smashed down on their heads with a grating crash. I could feel the floor shake from where I stood outside. Blood exploded from their smashed bodies. I saw arms and legs jerking and seizing under the heavy stone, but within a few moments, they slowed and then stopped.
Others were running towards the door I guarded, but Moloch leapt off the stage in a blur. In a few bounding steps, he reached the pale, terrified faces on the other side of the threshold. His massive clawed hand came down. I heard bones shatter as blood sprayed my face and the wall. Bone splinters and pieces of brain exploded from the screaming bodies. I backpedaled, wiping at my eyes, trying to get the blood off so I could see. No one had told me what to do in this situation. I didn’t know if I was supposed to shoot that massive abomination, or if this was all just part of the show.
“Richard!” a familiar voice cried from behind me. Panic oozed from every word. I spun, seeing Mario and Kolmek standing side by side, their pupils dilated and expressions grim.
“We have a major problem.” It was Mario. I recognized that voice, the one that sounded as if he had been gargling with rocks.
“I know,” I said, holding my rifle tightly. I pointed behind me at the scene of rampant death and destruction.
I had seen bloodshed and war before, but this was different. The Island itself seemed to feel it. The wind, which had been calm when I first landed, now whipped the Island in fast, circular currents. The breeze smelled of burnt matches and coppery blood. The static electricity which had caused the hairs on my arms to rise rippled over everything with tiny blue flashes, increasing in power by the second.
“No, no, not Moloch,” Kolmek said, looking much calmer than I felt. “The Savior lets Moloch thin the herd every year.”
“It’s Leviathan,” Mario continued grimly, “the beast from the waters. The smell of blood is drawing it from the depths of the ocean. We picked up the first blips on radar a few minutes ago. When it gets here, it won’t stop until everything is rubble. It will kill every single person on the Island.”
“All security personnel must report to the south beach immediately,” a cool robotic voice cried out over hidden loudspeakers all over the Island. The screaming from the auditorium had quieted behind me. I was afraid to look inside.
“There it is,” Kolmek said, his head jerking up as the emergency alert read. He motioned for me to follow. “It’s time to fight.”
***
We sprinted over curving trails of smooth logs between deathly quiet forests. All the insects and birds had gone silent. Ahead of us, the palm trees opened up onto the Pacific Ocean. But it was no longer a beautiful tropical blue. A black, swirling whirlpool like an ulcerous wound had opened up on its surface. It stretched hundreds of feet across, drawing closer to the shore by the second. Dead fish, sharks, dolphins, squids and even whales spun in the filthy, dark water.
Twenty black-clad security agents waited for the three of us on the beach, their eyes wide, their faces pale with terror. Like myself, they all had AR-15s and Glock 22s with extra magazines for both. I guess the Glock might be useful for blowing my brains out as a last resort if some beast from Hell rose out of the simmering waters, but I didn’t think it would stop anything from another dimension.
The clouds swirled overhead in a thick curtain as black as smoke. Flashes of blue lightning detonated every couple seconds. Mario raised his hands, screaming over the roaring of the wind. Kolmek stood by my side, his face grim and eyes narrowed.
“Your job is to fight off anything that tries to get on the Island,” he said, looking from one face to another with rapt attention. “Nothing can stand against high-caliber rifle fire. Shoot at the face and eyes when it comes up. We’ve dealt with creatures like this before, and they will retreat if you injure them badly enough.” I had the sense of being fed a line of bullshit as my mind processed this.
“What exactly is coming up?” one of the doe-eyed security men asked. He barely looked old enough to drink, a young, muscular hulk with a Marine Corps tattoo on his neck.
“They call it Leviathan,” Mario responded. “Sometimes the rituals here and the smell of blood can draw… strange things. Leviathan is one of those. We have encountered it before. The most important thing to remember is…” His voice was suddenly drowned out by a terrible cacophony that came from the center of the black whirlpool.
A screech like the detonation of a nuclear missile shook the ground. The ocean jumped and bubbled frantically. The beach heaved and cracked, the white sands disappearing in fissures that opened up like greedy mouths underneath my feet. I lost my balance, falling forwards. The screeching continued rising into a primal roar.
A green dragon head the color of an infected wound erupted from the surface of the thrashing water, rising up dozens of feet in the air. It had two enormous slitted eyes that dilated and constricted quickly as it glowered down at us. The screeching abruptly stopped, the pointed mouth of the dragon slamming shut with a sound like a gunshot.
Within moments, another cancerous green head shot up in a blur, its skin looking as hard as stone. Ridges that looked as sharp as swords ran the length of its reptilian skull, arcing over its eyes and pointed snout. More heads erupted from the ocean until all seven heads of Leviathan loomed over us.
Not one of us fired. No one even seemed to breathe as we surveyed the beast across the no-man’s land of the white sands. The slitted eyes and yellow irises of the seven heads had a demonic hunger, a reptilian coldness. Far behind us, I heard distant screams still echoing from the auditorium where Moloch held sway.
“Fire!” Mario cried. Instantly, a cacophony of gunshots exploded all around me. I jumped up on my feet, scrambling up as the seven-headed dragon leapt forward. Thousands of gallons of saltwater streamed down its massive body as it came up on the beach. Long, black paws with bone-white talons shot out of the surging ocean, followed by a tapering tail like that of a water snake.
I brought the rifle up and emptied my magazine as fast as I could, pulling the trigger over and over as I aimed at the many slitted eyes of Leviathan. But the bullets seemed to ping harmlessly off of its hard, obsidian-like scales.
It scrabbled onto the shore, the heads coming down in a blur. Rows and rows of vampiric fangs gleamed dully in each of the mouths. One security agent was bitten in half, the spurting stump of his lower body still standing for a long moment even as the rest of the body disappeared down the throat of the dragon.
Mario ran forwards, slamming another magazine in his rifle and opening fire point-blank. One of the heads came down in a blur towards him. Its great, staring eyes exploded in a shower of blue blood and thick vitreous fluid. The dragon head pulled back, its mouth opening in a primal scream of agony.
As I reloaded, I scanned the area around me, realizing that nearly half of the security agents were either dead or critically injured. I backpedaled away, keeping my eyes on the dragon. It continuously drew forward, killing more of its enemies with every step. I turned and ran into the forest, the sounds of shattering bones and dying men ringing through the air with a sickening clarity behind me.
Once I had reached the border of the trail, I heard Mario yell, “Retreat!” behind me. But by that point, it was far too late.
***
“Hey! Wait up!” a voice whispered from behind me. I turned my head, seeing Kolmek. Spatters of drying blood covered his face and uniform. As far as I could tell, none of it was his. “Mario’s dead. They’re all dead. We need to get out of here. We need to get off the Island.”
“How?” I asked.
“Find the Savior,” he answered, panting and out of breath. “We must find him. He can get us out of here.”
“I don’t even know what the guy looks like,” I muttered. “He was wearing a goat mask.”
“You’ll know him when you see him,” Kolmek said. “His body is covered in scars. Everything except his face. Stay close to me. We need to watch each other’s backs. It’s our only chance of survival.”
***
A trail of twisted, broken bodies led from the mansion to the surrounding trails and beaches. A decapitated woman with solid gold necklaces embedded with diamonds lay in front of me. It was strange on the Island, the way oblivion and ineffable wealth coexisted side by side. But everything was deathly silent, even in the mansion’s auditorium.
“Where’s the Savior?” I asked through gritted teeth. I peeked my head into the auditorium, but nothing moved. Hundreds of smashed and bloody bodies littered the floor.
“He’s around somewhere,” Kolmek answered. We started circling the mansion, looking for any signs of life. Kolmek went in the lead. As he turned the corner, an enormous black hand with sharp claws of fingers flitted forward in a blur, wrapping itself around his chest. Kolmek gave a strangled cry as it closed around him. I heard his bones crush as a spout of blood and gore flew from his mouth and nose, as if he were a toothpaste tube being squeezed.
I backpedaled away as Moloch threw the twitching corpse aside like a discarded toy. It smashed into the wall of the mansion, exploding wetly. A human-shaped, bloody stain languidly dripped down the wall above Kolmek’s mangled body.
Moloch slowly turned his head towards me, the fiery eyes flashing with hunger. He gnashed his fangs together, taking a step forward with a leg the size and shape of a tree trunk. With every step he took, I felt the ground tremble.
“Stop!” I cried, moving away from the monstrous creature. “Why are you doing this?”
“There is no why,” he gurgled, his voice monstrous and inhumanly slow. “There is only power. The weak deserve to die. Only the strong are worthy of life.” I raised my rifle in a last-ditch effort to save myself. Moloch saw it and started running towards me, every footstep crushing the paved walkway around the mansion into rubble and dust.
I aimed for his eyes and nose, emptying the entire magazine as quickly as I could. The bullets smashed into Moloch’s face. Dark red, clotted blood dripped out of the wounds, writhing with maggots. Drops of it fell around me, landing on my hair and face. I felt the small larvae twisting all over my skin. Moloch’s blood smelled nauseating, like some combination of stinkbugs and rotting bodies. He slowed, giving a roar of pain. I turned to run in the opposite direction, but as I looked out in the direction of the beach, my heart dropped.
Leviathan was moving in our direction, the giant dragon heads looming over the trees. Quickly, it swept towards me like a dark wind.
***
“You will suffer for that, worthless slave,” Moloch growled, wiping blood from his fiery eyes with his sharp talons of fingers. A sudden idea came to me. I ran in the direction of Leviathan. Moloch followed closely at my heels, only a few steps behind me.
Leviathan slithered forward over the sands and trees, its enormous body undulating like a water snake’s. I screamed at it, an incomprehensible wail of terror. Its seven heads snapped towards me. Its slitted eyes widened as it saw Moloch.
I heard the crashing of Moloch’s footsteps stop behind me, only feet away from crushing me into a paste. His massive lungs breathed quickly, exhaling the odor of sulfur and smoke.
“Leviathan,” Moloch growled in his demonic voice. “These are my tributes.” Leviathan’s dragon heads looked straight up at the Sun and screamed in response, their many voices rising and falling in a dissonant wail. As I sprinted into the trees, Leviathan and Moloch ran at each other, colliding with an ear-splitting crash. I glanced back, seeing Moloch ripping one of the dragon heads off its neck with his sharp fingers. The head screamed as blue blood exploded from the spurting stump. After a long moment, the neck fell limply forward.
The other dragon heads bit Moloch in a unified attack. They ripped deep holes in his shoulders and arms, snapping over and over like rabid dogs. As the two eldritch monstrosities attacked each other in fierce combat, I lost sight of them, but the sounds of fighting echoed over the entire island, crashing like lightning.
***
I felt like the survivor of an Apocalypse. I couldn’t find a single other living person on the Island. Hundreds of crushed, broken and decapitated bodies surrounded me. Over the cacophony of fighting, I heard a new noise: the whirring of helicopter blades nearby. It was coming from the other side of the mansion.
Frantically, I sprinted around the other side, seeing a Black Hawk helicopter getting ready to leave. A man in black robes sat at the pilot’s seat, his green eyes gleaming and a wide smile plastered across his face. I smashed my fist into the door over and over until he opened it.
“Holy shit, you’re still alive?” he asked. I hadn’t seen this man before. He had a face like a Calvin Klein model, all sharp angles and high cheekbones, perfectly proportioned in every way. But his scalp looked melted and scarred, as if someone had thrown gasoline on his hair and ignited it. His ears were stunted, twisted growths of scar tissue. His hands, too, were covered in deep, folding burn scars.
“Are you the Savior?” I responded quickly. “Please, get me out of here.”
“They do call me that,” he said wistfully. “The Savior. Yes, I guess I am. Get in.”
***
The Savior stared at me with his strange green eyes, the color of swamps where monstrous things swam under the surface.
“Some people just need to learn the hard way,” he said. The helicopter took off into a dark night covered with bright, twinkling stars. “There is no great power without great responsibility, after all. Those of us who seek the ancient ones know it comes with a cost.” I just stared out the window, gazing down at the countless mutilated, broken bodies that littered the beach.
Below us, the face of a bull stared up with eyes of fiery cyclones. The broken, still body of Leviathan lay at his feet. As we made it over the great waters of the Pacific Ocean, the bull-god raised a hand and waved. At that moment, I thought I could almost see a hurricane of translucent souls circling around him, spiraling up into the sky.

After high school, having no better ideas, I joined the Navy SEALs. I never really liked any of it, but it was a job, after all. I loved the guns and airplanes and grenades, but having to run all the time while some scumbag with a chip on his shoulder yells in my face isn’t my idea of fun.
Things got a lot more interesting after my term of service ended. I still had a high-security clearance, so I used it to take temporary jobs as a mercenary, a hired gun. I did some stints in Iraq with Blackwater, where they set me out in the middle of the desert. A watchtower and oil refinery loomed over the burning sands. Along with a few other guys, they told us, “Guard this area with your life.” While better than the SEALs, working for Blackwater was extremely boring. The other mercenaries and I would mostly just chainsmoke cigarettes and drink coffee all night, staring out across the dead, empty desert.
Over time, I worked my way up. Things started to get more interesting when a job offer arrived in my email one freezing cold winter’s morning. This is what it said.
“Mr. Chase,
“I am the head of security for a private group of entrepreneurs and investors. Through some mutual contacts, I have heard of your professionalism and experience. We are currently putting together a small crew to guard a private event on [REDACTED] Island out in the Pacific Ocean that will run from January 9th to January 26th. Would you be interested in this job? The pay rate is $900 a day.
“Once you are on the island, it will be impossible to leave until the period of employment has ended. If you are interested, please respond to this email as soon as possible.
“Sincerely,
“Mario Antonin, Head of Security.”
I was working piecemeal jobs like this one at the time, but none of them were paying that well. At most, I would usually get $350 to $500 a day, which was still good money when I was working seven days a week until the job finished. I instantly responded and said that yes, I was interested. In response, they sent me a non-disclosure agreement that was the size of a small novel that I had to sign.
That was how I found myself on a private jet, flying out to an island in the middle of the vast blue ocean. I was never told the coordinates of the island or saw it on a map. It was all kept very secret.
A few hours later, we landed on a private airstrip. I looked out the window of the jet, seeing the tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean stretching off to the horizon in every direction. Below me stood an island with palm trees and sandy white beaches. An enormous Victorian mansion loomed directly in the center of it all. The mansion was painted black and looked like something straight out of a horror movie. It had no windows, and the turrets spiraled into blade-like points.
That was my first inkling that something might not be quite right about this trip.
***
As the stairs from the private jet descended, I looked out on this strange new world. Employees waited to greet us, looking like beaten dogs. Some had their heads down, their eyes blankly scanning the ground. Most of them were women wearing red dresses, reminding me of stewardesses on a plane. The jet strip was surrounded by palm trees and tropical brush. The chirping of insects sounded all around us, high and resonant.
I saw a strange patch engraved on all of the employees’ uniforms and jackets. It looked almost like a stick figure drawing of a man, the bottom of its body ending in a C. Its arms were long and jointed, almost spidery. Three symbols like repeated iron crosses connected to the left side of its body in a line. I wondered if it was the logo of some company. I put it out of my mind for now, but I would see that symbol again all over the island, painted on the sides of the mansion and even cut into the trees with a knife. It would only be later that night that I realized its connection to Moloch.
“Good day, sir, and welcome to the Island,” the server on my left said with glassy eyes and a fake smile plastered across her face. They all looked up at once, but it was like the workers all looked through me rather than at me. Their eyes looked flat and dead, like the painted-on eyes of a doll.
“The Island, huh?” I asked, curious. “They wouldn’t tell me where I was going. They said it was a secret. Is that what you call it?” The woman just nodded, the doll-like smile never leaving her lips.
“Officially, this island is unnamed and uninhabited,” the woman said. “In fact, all traces of it have been scrubbed from the internet. You won’t find it on Google Maps or in any publicly available satellite imagery.” She leaned forward towards me with heavily mascaraed eyes and ruby-red lipstick slashed across her lips. “This is a very special place. Only very special people are allowed here. You should be honored to work here under our Savior.”
“I hope you’re talking about Jesus or something,” I said jokingly. She just smiled blankly and motioned me forward.
“Just follow that trail for a few hundred feet-” she said, pointing at an opening in the palm trees where logs were laid down horizontally over the muggy jungle- “and you’ll find the mansion. Good luck!” I thought it was a somewhat strange thing to say, wishing a random stranger good luck.
But, by the end of that night, I realized that simply to make it off this island alive, I would need lots of it.
***
I followed the woman’s directions to the back of the brutalist mansion. A heavy metal door stood there with a small bullet-proof window built in the top. A tanned, Spanish face glowered out at me then rapidly drew back and disappeared. A few heartbeats later, the door slid to the side with a grinding of hidden gears.
The head of security at the Island was a heavily-tattooed ex-Marine named Mario. He wore a dark Kevlar vest over a black outfit, making him look like a walking shadow. I found the security had their own private complex in the mansion as he showed me around the site. Hundreds of hidden cameras covered every angle of the mansion and the surrounding parts of the island. Dozens of black-clad security agents swarmed over the screens, checking the monitors and computers constantly.
“Quite a set-up you have here,” I said to Mario, nodding at him. He smacked me on the shoulder, giving a confident grin.
“Money is no issue here, Richard,” he responded. “Security is paramount. There are things on this island that could rip apart the world if they ever escaped.” I raised an eyebrow.
“Like what?” I asked. “Nuclear weapons or something?” He laughed at that.
“You’ll see for yourself tonight,” he said, his dark eyes flashing with something cold and alien.
***
Mario led me and a couple other new hired guns around the Island. The place was certainly strange. It reminded me of some combination of a secret black-ops site and a playboy billionaire’s private heaven. All of the doors in the mansion looked like they were made of thick steel. They had wheels that would spin, like those on a submarine door. The mansion also had no windows at all that I could see, except for the small, shatter-proof glass openings on the steel doors. I didn’t want to ask too many questions, however. I couldn’t resist asking him about a couple small things, however- or at least, they seemed small to me at the time.
“What are those hatchways?” I asked Mario, pointing to rectangular covers built into the concrete walkway. They had heavy handles. “Are those manholes or something?”
“There are tunnels under the Island,” he responded vaguely. “Just for maintenance and security, you understand.”
“Wow, this place is certainly… well-developed,” I said. We came out through a grove of palm trees. A stone walkway led down to a white beach. Dozens of yachts were moored all across the shore, some of them looking like they must have cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
“There’s a lot of money and power here,” Mario said. “That’s why it’s important you never talk about what you see here. These are the people who control the world, the ones behind the government and the media. Not the elected officials who the people see, but the actual power.”
“Like who?” I asked. “You mean the Rothschilds and Soros?” He laughed again, a sarcastic, grinding laugh that grated my nerves.
“Trust me, the truly powerful ones don’t even have public personas. If you know their name, then they’re just one of the puppets.” I just shook my head at that, then asked the real question that had been bothering me since I first arrived here.
“Who is the Savior?” I asked. “Is that some codename or something?” Mario froze in place.
“He’s the one who runs everything here,” he whispered conspiratorially, looking around nervously. “But don’t be mentioning that kind of shit. You’ll probably see him tonight anyway. He’s the one who runs the show. He’ll be on the stage in his normal outfit.”
***
By the end of the day, I was suited up like the rest of the security staff, wearing the pure black pants and shirt with the symbol of Moloch engraved over the heart. Hundreds of the world’s most famous politicians, actors, businessmen and artists had gathered, streaming in the front doors with a soft, diffident susurration.
I stood by the open doorway of a side exit with an AR-15 and full body armor, next to one other soldier. They had also given me a sidearm. Every entrance or exit was manned by at least two armed men. The security at this place was some of the most intense I had ever seen. Beyond the door, there were rows and rows of the most comfortable seats, all gathered in a semi-circle around a massive stage made of pure mahogany. Blood-red curtains stood closed at the front of the room, concealing their secrets- for now, at least.
“Hail Satan!” I heard the elites cry inside in unison. I didn’t want to look in at the rows of high-ranking politicians, celebrities, influencers and artists, but my curiosity was high. I peeked around the corner of the stone archway, seeing the red curtains on the stage drawing apart. I saw one of my favorite actors standing in the front row, clapping excitedly and jumping up and down.
The crowd cheered as a naked female strapped to an obsidian altar lay there. She was beautiful and blonde, probably no older than twenty with the face of a supermodel. Her mouth was gagged, her arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross. Thin leather cords were tied around her wrists and ankles, biting deeply into the skin. Her eyes rolled wildly as she shook her head from side to side. She froze, and her eyes met mine for a brief moment. I saw the pleading expression there, the mortal terror and absolute horror.
A man in a goat mask wearing black robes slunk out from the side of the stage, carrying a wavy silver dagger engraved with strange symbols. The crowd erupted into a primal roar of pleasure and excitement that sounded like it came from one monstrous mouth.
“Worthy is the Lamb!” the man in the goat mask screamed with electronic amplification. He had a deep voice, as if he had rocks rolling around in his throat. The crowd roared and clapped. Scattered cries of “Hail Lucifer!” and “Ave Satanas!” echoed down the massive auditorium.
“Hey, pay attention,” the other security agent at my side said in a thick Finnish accent. He was a tall Scandinavian-looking guy named Kolmek. “You’re not getting paid to watch the show, new guy.” I tried to rip my gaze away from the stage, but it held my attention with an obsessive horror.
“The burnt bones of children and women have been offered to the ancient ones, to Moloch,” the man on the stage cried. “Under our feet, the burnt bodies of hundreds lay dreaming. This victim will be the 666th. Her blood will bring about the Gnosis that we seek, the direct experience of the divine held by the gods, by Lucifer and Moloch and Baal…” The roaring of the crowd temporarily drowned out his electronically-magnified voice. “Tonight, we will rip open the veil!”
I had stopped watching the show, instead staring blankly out at the beach and palm trees. At that moment, another black-clad security agent came up to my partner, whispered something in his ear, then immediately disappeared, heading off back in the direction of the main security office. Kolmek shook his head grimly.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Stay right here. Don’t move from this door no matter what. And pay attention.” I nodded and watched as he walked off in the same direction.
I immediately took the opportunity to continue watching the ceremony. I had missed something important, apparently. The woman now laid dead on the sacrificial table, a gaping hole in her chest. Blood spurted from the crater as the man in the goat mask held her beating heart grasped tightly in his hand, letting the blood stream down his naked fingers. The crowd cheered with a rising bloodlust and insanity. Most of them were standing, their eyes gleaming and wide with fanatical adoration. The entire spectacle reminded me of some kind of ancient Aztec ritual.
As the woman’s sightless eyes stared vacantly up in death, the man in a goat mask pulled out a can of gasoline. The clear liquid gurgled as he up-ended the canister over her pale, bloodless face, over her naked stomach and long legs. A moment later, he lit a match and dropped it. I heard the whooshing of the flames as they rose up.
The crowd went deathly silent as they watched the rippling flames. The man in the goat mask began chanting in some strange language I had never heard before. It sounded Semitic, but I knew it wasn’t Arabic or Hebrew. I felt something like electricity ripple through the air, almost like a feeling of falling pressure before a storm. I looked down at the hairs on my arms, seeing them rise up. I looked back up at the stage, and my eyes widened in horror.
The flaming body of the sacrificial victim had started to morph before my eyes and the eyes of the crowd. The dripping, blackening flesh jumped up and down, as if there were rats trapped in her body trying to escape the fire. There was a deafening hissing as if thousands of snakes were being burned alive.
The dead woman’s arms jerked up, the skin splitting open as if she had seams running along her skin. Something dark and muscular with curving, black talons ripped its way out of the dead, burning flesh. Behind it, a head appeared with long, curving horns and eyes that spun with whorls of fire. It looked like the offspring of a bull and a demon. Its imposing body rose up from the inferno, appearing like magic from the solid stone. It raised itself to its full height, looming over the crowd. The last of the woman’s blood hissed and boiled away, her flesh dissolving into ashes.
“Behold, Moloch rises!” the man in the goat mask screamed in a fanatical voice. The crowd’s cheering had stopped, though. Many of the faces in the crowd looked chalk-white with terror. The bull-god surveyed the crowd, its horns nearly scraping the ceiling twenty feet above the stage.
At that moment, I knew death was on its way with eyes of fire and a grin like a skull, ready to reap a field of human bodies.
***
I heard running behind me, but I didn’t dare turn away from the horrific sight in front of me. The last of the fire’s embers died, sending up thin wisps of gray smoke that spiraled around the bull-god’s monstrous face. Moloch stood as still as a statue, and if it weren’t for one thing, I might’ve thought it was some sort of sculpture or art project. He had two nostrils like a serpent’s. As his great lungs inhaled, the smoke billowed in and out of his mouth and nose.
Some of the people at the edges of the crowd had gotten up, hurrying towards the doors. Moloch’s head ratcheted to face them, his fiery eyes narrowing into slits.
“Do not leave!” the man in the goat mask pleaded. “Those who have fear are not worthy of life. Do not prove yourselves unworthy of life!” As the first of the fleeing men and women got to within a few steps of the door, Moloch gave a primal roar. In a blur of primal strength, he reached down and ripped the blackened sacrificial altar off the stage. It ripped from the wooden stage with a tremendous crack like a bullwhip. He hurled the heavy mass of stone at those heading towards the opposite exit from the one I guarded.
I watched it curve through the air. The people started screaming and clawing to escape as it smashed down on their heads with a grating crash. I could feel the floor shake from where I stood outside. Blood exploded from their smashed bodies. I saw arms and legs jerking and seizing under the heavy stone, but within a few moments, they slowed and then stopped.
Others were running towards the door I guarded, but Moloch leapt off the stage in a blur. In a few bounding steps, he reached the pale, terrified faces on the other side of the threshold. His massive clawed hand came down. I heard bones shatter as blood sprayed my face and the wall. Bone splinters and pieces of brain exploded from the screaming bodies. I backpedaled, wiping at my eyes, trying to get the blood off so I could see. No one had told me what to do in this situation. I didn’t know if I was supposed to shoot that massive abomination, or if this was all just part of the show.
“Richard!” a familiar voice cried from behind me. Panic oozed from every word. I spun, seeing Mario and Kolmek standing side by side, their pupils dilated and expressions grim.
“We have a major problem.” It was Mario. I recognized that voice, the one that sounded as if he had been gargling with rocks.
“I know,” I said, holding my rifle tightly. I pointed behind me at the scene of rampant death and destruction.
I had seen bloodshed and war before, but this was different. The Island itself seemed to feel it. The wind, which had been calm when I first landed, now whipped the Island in fast, circular currents. The breeze smelled of burnt matches and coppery blood. The static electricity which had caused the hairs on my arms to rise rippled over everything with tiny blue flashes, increasing in power by the second.
“No, no, not Moloch,” Kolmek said, looking much calmer than I felt. “The Savior lets Moloch thin the herd every year.”
“It’s Leviathan,” Mario continued grimly, “the beast from the waters. The smell of blood is drawing it from the depths of the ocean. We picked up the first blips on radar a few minutes ago. When it gets here, it won’t stop until everything is rubble. It will kill every single person on the Island.”
“All security personnel must report to the south beach immediately,” a cool robotic voice cried out over hidden loudspeakers all over the Island. The screaming from the auditorium had quieted behind me. I was afraid to look inside.
“There it is,” Kolmek said, his head jerking up as the emergency alert read. He motioned for me to follow. “It’s time to fight.”
***
We sprinted over curving trails of smooth logs between deathly quiet forests. All the insects and birds had gone silent. Ahead of us, the palm trees opened up onto the Pacific Ocean. But it was no longer a beautiful tropical blue. A black, swirling whirlpool like an ulcerous wound had opened up on its surface. It stretched hundreds of feet across, drawing closer to the shore by the second. Dead fish, sharks, dolphins, squids and even whales spun in the filthy, dark water.
Twenty black-clad security agents waited for the three of us on the beach, their eyes wide, their faces pale with terror. Like myself, they all had AR-15s and Glock 22s with extra magazines for both. I guess the Glock might be useful for blowing my brains out as a last resort if some beast from Hell rose out of the simmering waters, but I didn’t think it would stop anything from another dimension.
The clouds swirled overhead in a thick curtain as black as smoke. Flashes of blue lightning detonated every couple seconds. Mario raised his hands, screaming over the roaring of the wind. Kolmek stood by my side, his face grim and eyes narrowed.
“Your job is to fight off anything that tries to get on the Island,” he said, looking from one face to another with rapt attention. “Nothing can stand against high-caliber rifle fire. Shoot at the face and eyes when it comes up. We’ve dealt with creatures like this before, and they will retreat if you injure them badly enough.” I had the sense of being fed a line of bullshit as my mind processed this.
“What exactly is coming up?” one of the doe-eyed security men asked. He barely looked old enough to drink, a young, muscular hulk with a Marine Corps tattoo on his neck.
“They call it Leviathan,” Mario responded. “Sometimes the rituals here and the smell of blood can draw… strange things. Leviathan is one of those. We have encountered it before. The most important thing to remember is…” His voice was suddenly drowned out by a terrible cacophony that came from the center of the black whirlpool.
A screech like the detonation of a nuclear missile shook the ground. The ocean jumped and bubbled frantically. The beach heaved and cracked, the white sands disappearing in fissures that opened up like greedy mouths underneath my feet. I lost my balance, falling forwards. The screeching continued rising into a primal roar.
A green dragon head the color of an infected wound erupted from the surface of the thrashing water, rising up dozens of feet in the air. It had two enormous slitted eyes that dilated and constricted quickly as it glowered down at us. The screeching abruptly stopped, the pointed mouth of the dragon slamming shut with a sound like a gunshot.
Within moments, another cancerous green head shot up in a blur, its skin looking as hard as stone. Ridges that looked as sharp as swords ran the length of its reptilian skull, arcing over its eyes and pointed snout. More heads erupted from the ocean until all seven heads of Leviathan loomed over us.
Not one of us fired. No one even seemed to breathe as we surveyed the beast across the no-man’s land of the white sands. The slitted eyes and yellow irises of the seven heads had a demonic hunger, a reptilian coldness. Far behind us, I heard distant screams still echoing from the auditorium where Moloch held sway.
“Fire!” Mario cried. Instantly, a cacophony of gunshots exploded all around me. I jumped up on my feet, scrambling up as the seven-headed dragon leapt forward. Thousands of gallons of saltwater streamed down its massive body as it came up on the beach. Long, black paws with bone-white talons shot out of the surging ocean, followed by a tapering tail like that of a water snake.
I brought the rifle up and emptied my magazine as fast as I could, pulling the trigger over and over as I aimed at the many slitted eyes of Leviathan. But the bullets seemed to ping harmlessly off of its hard, obsidian-like scales.
It scrabbled onto the shore, the heads coming down in a blur. Rows and rows of vampiric fangs gleamed dully in each of the mouths. One security agent was bitten in half, the spurting stump of his lower body still standing for a long moment even as the rest of the body disappeared down the throat of the dragon.
Mario ran forwards, slamming another magazine in his rifle and opening fire point-blank. One of the heads came down in a blur towards him. Its great, staring eyes exploded in a shower of blue blood and thick vitreous fluid. The dragon head pulled back, its mouth opening in a primal scream of agony.
As I reloaded, I scanned the area around me, realizing that nearly half of the security agents were either dead or critically injured. I backpedaled away, keeping my eyes on the dragon. It continuously drew forward, killing more of its enemies with every step. I turned and ran into the forest, the sounds of shattering bones and dying men ringing through the air with a sickening clarity behind me.
Once I had reached the border of the trail, I heard Mario yell, “Retreat!” behind me. But by that point, it was far too late.
***
“Hey! Wait up!” a voice whispered from behind me. I turned my head, seeing Kolmek. Spatters of drying blood covered his face and uniform. As far as I could tell, none of it was his. “Mario’s dead. They’re all dead. We need to get out of here. We need to get off the Island.”
“How?” I asked.
“Find the Savior,” he answered, panting and out of breath. “We must find him. He can get us out of here.”
“I don’t even know what the guy looks like,” I muttered. “He was wearing a goat mask.”
“You’ll know him when you see him,” Kolmek said. “His body is covered in scars. Everything except his face. Stay close to me. We need to watch each other’s backs. It’s our only chance of survival.”
***
A trail of twisted, broken bodies led from the mansion to the surrounding trails and beaches. A decapitated woman with solid gold necklaces embedded with diamonds lay in front of me. It was strange on the Island, the way oblivion and ineffable wealth coexisted side by side. But everything was deathly silent, even in the mansion’s auditorium.
“Where’s the Savior?” I asked through gritted teeth. I peeked my head into the auditorium, but nothing moved. Hundreds of smashed and bloody bodies littered the floor.
“He’s around somewhere,” Kolmek answered. We started circling the mansion, looking for any signs of life. Kolmek went in the lead. As he turned the corner, an enormous black hand with sharp claws of fingers flitted forward in a blur, wrapping itself around his chest. Kolmek gave a strangled cry as it closed around him. I heard his bones crush as a spout of blood and gore flew from his mouth and nose, as if he were a toothpaste tube being squeezed.
I backpedaled away as Moloch threw the twitching corpse aside like a discarded toy. It smashed into the wall of the mansion, exploding wetly. A human-shaped, bloody stain languidly dripped down the wall above Kolmek’s mangled body.
Moloch slowly turned his head towards me, the fiery eyes flashing with hunger. He gnashed his fangs together, taking a step forward with a leg the size and shape of a tree trunk. With every step he took, I felt the ground tremble.
“Stop!” I cried, moving away from the monstrous creature. “Why are you doing this?”
“There is no why,” he gurgled, his voice monstrous and inhumanly slow. “There is only power. The weak deserve to die. Only the strong are worthy of life.” I raised my rifle in a last-ditch effort to save myself. Moloch saw it and started running towards me, every footstep crushing the paved walkway around the mansion into rubble and dust.
I aimed for his eyes and nose, emptying the entire magazine as quickly as I could. The bullets smashed into Moloch’s face. Dark red, clotted blood dripped out of the wounds, writhing with maggots. Drops of it fell around me, landing on my hair and face. I felt the small larvae twisting all over my skin. Moloch’s blood smelled nauseating, like some combination of stinkbugs and rotting bodies. He slowed, giving a roar of pain. I turned to run in the opposite direction, but as I looked out in the direction of the beach, my heart dropped.
Leviathan was moving in our direction, the giant dragon heads looming over the trees. Quickly, it swept towards me like a dark wind.
***
“You will suffer for that, worthless slave,” Moloch growled, wiping blood from his fiery eyes with his sharp talons of fingers. A sudden idea came to me. I ran in the direction of Leviathan. Moloch followed closely at my heels, only a few steps behind me.
Leviathan slithered forward over the sands and trees, its enormous body undulating like a water snake’s. I screamed at it, an incomprehensible wail of terror. Its seven heads snapped towards me. Its slitted eyes widened as it saw Moloch.
I heard the crashing of Moloch’s footsteps stop behind me, only feet away from crushing me into a paste. His massive lungs breathed quickly, exhaling the odor of sulfur and smoke.
“Leviathan,” Moloch growled in his demonic voice. “These are my tributes.” Leviathan’s dragon heads looked straight up at the Sun and screamed in response, their many voices rising and falling in a dissonant wail. As I sprinted into the trees, Leviathan and Moloch ran at each other, colliding with an ear-splitting crash. I glanced back, seeing Moloch ripping one of the dragon heads off its neck with his sharp fingers. The head screamed as blue blood exploded from the spurting stump. After a long moment, the neck fell limply forward.
The other dragon heads bit Moloch in a unified attack. They ripped deep holes in his shoulders and arms, snapping over and over like rabid dogs. As the two eldritch monstrosities attacked each other in fierce combat, I lost sight of them, but the sounds of fighting echoed over the entire island, crashing like lightning.
***
I felt like the survivor of an Apocalypse. I couldn’t find a single other living person on the Island. Hundreds of crushed, broken and decapitated bodies surrounded me. Over the cacophony of fighting, I heard a new noise: the whirring of helicopter blades nearby. It was coming from the other side of the mansion.
Frantically, I sprinted around the other side, seeing a Black Hawk helicopter getting ready to leave. A man in black robes sat at the pilot’s seat, his green eyes gleaming and a wide smile plastered across his face. I smashed my fist into the door over and over until he opened it.
“Holy shit, you’re still alive?” he asked. I hadn’t seen this man before. He had a face like a Calvin Klein model, all sharp angles and high cheekbones, perfectly proportioned in every way. But his scalp looked melted and scarred, as if someone had thrown gasoline on his hair and ignited it. His ears were stunted, twisted growths of scar tissue. His hands, too, were covered in deep, folding burn scars.
“Are you the Savior?” I responded quickly. “Please, get me out of here.”
“They do call me that,” he said wistfully. “The Savior. Yes, I guess I am. Get in.”
***
The Savior stared at me with his strange green eyes, the color of swamps where monstrous things swam under the surface.
“Some people just need to learn the hard way,” he said. The helicopter took off into a dark night covered with bright, twinkling stars. “There is no great power without great responsibility, after all. Those of us who seek the ancient ones know it comes with a cost.” I just stared out the window, gazing down at the countless mutilated, broken bodies that littered the beach.
Below us, the face of a bull stared up with eyes of fiery cyclones. The broken, still body of Leviathan lay at his feet. As we made it over the great waters of the Pacific Ocean, the bull-god raised a hand and waved. At that moment, I thought I could almost see a hurricane of translucent souls circling around him, spiraling up into the sky.

After high school, having no better ideas, I joined the Navy SEALs. I never really liked any of it, but it was a job, after all. I loved the guns and airplanes and grenades, but having to run all the time while some scumbag with a chip on his shoulder yells in my face isn’t my idea of fun.
Things got a lot more interesting after my term of service ended. I still had a high-security clearance, so I used it to take temporary jobs as a mercenary, a hired gun. I did some stints in Iraq with Blackwater, where they set me out in the middle of the desert. A watchtower and oil refinery loomed over the burning sands. Along with a few other guys, they told us, “Guard this area with your life.” While better than the SEALs, working for Blackwater was extremely boring. The other mercenaries and I would mostly just chainsmoke cigarettes and drink coffee all night, staring out across the dead, empty desert.
Over time, I worked my way up. Things started to get more interesting when a job offer arrived in my email one freezing cold winter’s morning. This is what it said.
“Mr. Chase,
“I am the head of security for a private group of entrepreneurs and investors. Through some mutual contacts, I have heard of your professionalism and experience. We are currently putting together a small crew to guard a private event on [REDACTED] Island out in the Pacific Ocean that will run from January 9th to January 26th. Would you be interested in this job? The pay rate is $900 a day.
“Once you are on the island, it will be impossible to leave until the period of employment has ended. If you are interested, please respond to this email as soon as possible.
“Sincerely,
“Mario Antonin, Head of Security.”
I was working piecemeal jobs like this one at the time, but none of them were paying that well. At most, I would usually get $350 to $500 a day, which was still good money when I was working seven days a week until the job finished. I instantly responded and said that yes, I was interested. In response, they sent me a non-disclosure agreement that was the size of a small novel that I had to sign.
That was how I found myself on a private jet, flying out to an island in the middle of the vast blue ocean. I was never told the coordinates of the island or saw it on a map. It was all kept very secret.
A few hours later, we landed on a private airstrip. I looked out the window of the jet, seeing the tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean stretching off to the horizon in every direction. Below me stood an island with palm trees and sandy white beaches. An enormous Victorian mansion loomed directly in the center of it all. The mansion was painted black and looked like something straight out of a horror movie. It had no windows, and the turrets spiraled into blade-like points.
That was my first inkling that something might not be quite right about this trip.
***
As the stairs from the private jet descended, I looked out on this strange new world. Employees waited to greet us, looking like beaten dogs. Some had their heads down, their eyes blankly scanning the ground. Most of them were women wearing red dresses, reminding me of stewardesses on a plane. The jet strip was surrounded by palm trees and tropical brush. The chirping of insects sounded all around us, high and resonant.
I saw a strange patch engraved on all of the employees’ uniforms and jackets. It looked almost like a stick figure drawing of a man, the bottom of its body ending in a C. Its arms were long and jointed, almost spidery. Three symbols like repeated iron crosses connected to the left side of its body in a line. I wondered if it was the logo of some company. I put it out of my mind for now, but I would see that symbol again all over the island, painted on the sides of the mansion and even cut into the trees with a knife. It would only be later that night that I realized its connection to Moloch.
“Good day, sir, and welcome to the Island,” the server on my left said with glassy eyes and a fake smile plastered across her face. They all looked up at once, but it was like the workers all looked through me rather than at me. Their eyes looked flat and dead, like the painted-on eyes of a doll.
“The Island, huh?” I asked, curious. “They wouldn’t tell me where I was going. They said it was a secret. Is that what you call it?” The woman just nodded, the doll-like smile never leaving her lips.
“Officially, this island is unnamed and uninhabited,” the woman said. “In fact, all traces of it have been scrubbed from the internet. You won’t find it on Google Maps or in any publicly available satellite imagery.” She leaned forward towards me with heavily mascaraed eyes and ruby-red lipstick slashed across her lips. “This is a very special place. Only very special people are allowed here. You should be honored to work here under our Savior.”
“I hope you’re talking about Jesus or something,” I said jokingly. She just smiled blankly and motioned me forward.
“Just follow that trail for a few hundred feet-” she said, pointing at an opening in the palm trees where logs were laid down horizontally over the muggy jungle- “and you’ll find the mansion. Good luck!” I thought it was a somewhat strange thing to say, wishing a random stranger good luck.
But, by the end of that night, I realized that simply to make it off this island alive, I would need lots of it.
***
I followed the woman’s directions to the back of the brutalist mansion. A heavy metal door stood there with a small bullet-proof window built in the top. A tanned, Spanish face glowered out at me then rapidly drew back and disappeared. A few heartbeats later, the door slid to the side with a grinding of hidden gears.
The head of security at the Island was a heavily-tattooed ex-Marine named Mario. He wore a dark Kevlar vest over a black outfit, making him look like a walking shadow. I found the security had their own private complex in the mansion as he showed me around the site. Hundreds of hidden cameras covered every angle of the mansion and the surrounding parts of the island. Dozens of black-clad security agents swarmed over the screens, checking the monitors and computers constantly.
“Quite a set-up you have here,” I said to Mario, nodding at him. He smacked me on the shoulder, giving a confident grin.
“Money is no issue here, Richard,” he responded. “Security is paramount. There are things on this island that could rip apart the world if they ever escaped.” I raised an eyebrow.
“Like what?” I asked. “Nuclear weapons or something?” He laughed at that.
“You’ll see for yourself tonight,” he said, his dark eyes flashing with something cold and alien.
***
Mario led me and a couple other new hired guns around the Island. The place was certainly strange. It reminded me of some combination of a secret black-ops site and a playboy billionaire’s private heaven. All of the doors in the mansion looked like they were made of thick steel. They had wheels that would spin, like those on a submarine door. The mansion also had no windows at all that I could see, except for the small, shatter-proof glass openings on the steel doors. I didn’t want to ask too many questions, however. I couldn’t resist asking him about a couple small things, however- or at least, they seemed small to me at the time.
“What are those hatchways?” I asked Mario, pointing to rectangular covers built into the concrete walkway. They had heavy handles. “Are those manholes or something?”
“There are tunnels under the Island,” he responded vaguely. “Just for maintenance and security, you understand.”
“Wow, this place is certainly… well-developed,” I said. We came out through a grove of palm trees. A stone walkway led down to a white beach. Dozens of yachts were moored all across the shore, some of them looking like they must have cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
“There’s a lot of money and power here,” Mario said. “That’s why it’s important you never talk about what you see here. These are the people who control the world, the ones behind the government and the media. Not the elected officials who the people see, but the actual power.”
“Like who?” I asked. “You mean the Rothschilds and Soros?” He laughed again, a sarcastic, grinding laugh that grated my nerves.
“Trust me, the truly powerful ones don’t even have public personas. If you know their name, then they’re just one of the puppets.” I just shook my head at that, then asked the real question that had been bothering me since I first arrived here.
“Who is the Savior?” I asked. “Is that some codename or something?” Mario froze in place.
“He’s the one who runs everything here,” he whispered conspiratorially, looking around nervously. “But don’t be mentioning that kind of shit. You’ll probably see him tonight anyway. He’s the one who runs the show. He’ll be on the stage in his normal outfit.”
***
By the end of the day, I was suited up like the rest of the security staff, wearing the pure black pants and shirt with the symbol of Moloch engraved over the heart. Hundreds of the world’s most famous politicians, actors, businessmen and artists had gathered, streaming in the front doors with a soft, diffident susurration.
I stood by the open doorway of a side exit with an AR-15 and full body armor, next to one other soldier. They had also given me a sidearm. Every entrance or exit was manned by at least two armed men. The security at this place was some of the most intense I had ever seen. Beyond the door, there were rows and rows of the most comfortable seats, all gathered in a semi-circle around a massive stage made of pure mahogany. Blood-red curtains stood closed at the front of the room, concealing their secrets- for now, at least.
“Hail Satan!” I heard the elites cry inside in unison. I didn’t want to look in at the rows of high-ranking politicians, celebrities, influencers and artists, but my curiosity was high. I peeked around the corner of the stone archway, seeing the red curtains on the stage drawing apart. I saw one of my favorite actors standing in the front row, clapping excitedly and jumping up and down.
The crowd cheered as a naked female strapped to an obsidian altar lay there. She was beautiful and blonde, probably no older than twenty with the face of a supermodel. Her mouth was gagged, her arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross. Thin leather cords were tied around her wrists and ankles, biting deeply into the skin. Her eyes rolled wildly as she shook her head from side to side. She froze, and her eyes met mine for a brief moment. I saw the pleading expression there, the mortal terror and absolute horror.
A man in a goat mask wearing black robes slunk out from the side of the stage, carrying a wavy silver dagger engraved with strange symbols. The crowd erupted into a primal roar of pleasure and excitement that sounded like it came from one monstrous mouth.
“Worthy is the Lamb!” the man in the goat mask screamed with electronic amplification. He had a deep voice, as if he had rocks rolling around in his throat. The crowd roared and clapped. Scattered cries of “Hail Lucifer!” and “Ave Satanas!” echoed down the massive auditorium.
“Hey, pay attention,” the other security agent at my side said in a thick Finnish accent. He was a tall Scandinavian-looking guy named Kolmek. “You’re not getting paid to watch the show, new guy.” I tried to rip my gaze away from the stage, but it held my attention with an obsessive horror.
“The burnt bones of children and women have been offered to the ancient ones, to Moloch,” the man on the stage cried. “Under our feet, the burnt bodies of hundreds lay dreaming. This victim will be the 666th. Her blood will bring about the Gnosis that we seek, the direct experience of the divine held by the gods, by Lucifer and Moloch and Baal…” The roaring of the crowd temporarily drowned out his electronically-magnified voice. “Tonight, we will rip open the veil!”
I had stopped watching the show, instead staring blankly out at the beach and palm trees. At that moment, another black-clad security agent came up to my partner, whispered something in his ear, then immediately disappeared, heading off back in the direction of the main security office. Kolmek shook his head grimly.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Stay right here. Don’t move from this door no matter what. And pay attention.” I nodded and watched as he walked off in the same direction.
I immediately took the opportunity to continue watching the ceremony. I had missed something important, apparently. The woman now laid dead on the sacrificial table, a gaping hole in her chest. Blood spurted from the crater as the man in the goat mask held her beating heart grasped tightly in his hand, letting the blood stream down his naked fingers. The crowd cheered with a rising bloodlust and insanity. Most of them were standing, their eyes gleaming and wide with fanatical adoration. The entire spectacle reminded me of some kind of ancient Aztec ritual.
As the woman’s sightless eyes stared vacantly up in death, the man in a goat mask pulled out a can of gasoline. The clear liquid gurgled as he up-ended the canister over her pale, bloodless face, over her naked stomach and long legs. A moment later, he lit a match and dropped it. I heard the whooshing of the flames as they rose up.
The crowd went deathly silent as they watched the rippling flames. The man in the goat mask began chanting in some strange language I had never heard before. It sounded Semitic, but I knew it wasn’t Arabic or Hebrew. I felt something like electricity ripple through the air, almost like a feeling of falling pressure before a storm. I looked down at the hairs on my arms, seeing them rise up. I looked back up at the stage, and my eyes widened in horror.
The flaming body of the sacrificial victim had started to morph before my eyes and the eyes of the crowd. The dripping, blackening flesh jumped up and down, as if there were rats trapped in her body trying to escape the fire. There was a deafening hissing as if thousands of snakes were being burned alive.
The dead woman’s arms jerked up, the skin splitting open as if she had seams running along her skin. Something dark and muscular with curving, black talons ripped its way out of the dead, burning flesh. Behind it, a head appeared with long, curving horns and eyes that spun with whorls of fire. It looked like the offspring of a bull and a demon. Its imposing body rose up from the inferno, appearing like magic from the solid stone. It raised itself to its full height, looming over the crowd. The last of the woman’s blood hissed and boiled away, her flesh dissolving into ashes.
“Behold, Moloch rises!” the man in the goat mask screamed in a fanatical voice. The crowd’s cheering had stopped, though. Many of the faces in the crowd looked chalk-white with terror. The bull-god surveyed the crowd, its horns nearly scraping the ceiling twenty feet above the stage.
At that moment, I knew death was on its way with eyes of fire and a grin like a skull, ready to reap a field of human bodies.
***
I heard running behind me, but I didn’t dare turn away from the horrific sight in front of me. The last of the fire’s embers died, sending up thin wisps of gray smoke that spiraled around the bull-god’s monstrous face. Moloch stood as still as a statue, and if it weren’t for one thing, I might’ve thought it was some sort of sculpture or art project. He had two nostrils like a serpent’s. As his great lungs inhaled, the smoke billowed in and out of his mouth and nose.
Some of the people at the edges of the crowd had gotten up, hurrying towards the doors. Moloch’s head ratcheted to face them, his fiery eyes narrowing into slits.
“Do not leave!” the man in the goat mask pleaded. “Those who have fear are not worthy of life. Do not prove yourselves unworthy of life!” As the first of the fleeing men and women got to within a few steps of the door, Moloch gave a primal roar. In a blur of primal strength, he reached down and ripped the blackened sacrificial altar off the stage. It ripped from the wooden stage with a tremendous crack like a bullwhip. He hurled the heavy mass of stone at those heading towards the opposite exit from the one I guarded.
I watched it curve through the air. The people started screaming and clawing to escape as it smashed down on their heads with a grating crash. I could feel the floor shake from where I stood outside. Blood exploded from their smashed bodies. I saw arms and legs jerking and seizing under the heavy stone, but within a few moments, they slowed and then stopped.
Others were running towards the door I guarded, but Moloch leapt off the stage in a blur. In a few bounding steps, he reached the pale, terrified faces on the other side of the threshold. His massive clawed hand came down. I heard bones shatter as blood sprayed my face and the wall. Bone splinters and pieces of brain exploded from the screaming bodies. I backpedaled, wiping at my eyes, trying to get the blood off so I could see. No one had told me what to do in this situation. I didn’t know if I was supposed to shoot that massive abomination, or if this was all just part of the show.
“Richard!” a familiar voice cried from behind me. Panic oozed from every word. I spun, seeing Mario and Kolmek standing side by side, their pupils dilated and expressions grim.
“We have a major problem.” It was Mario. I recognized that voice, the one that sounded as if he had been gargling with rocks.
“I know,” I said, holding my rifle tightly. I pointed behind me at the scene of rampant death and destruction.
I had seen bloodshed and war before, but this was different. The Island itself seemed to feel it. The wind, which had been calm when I first landed, now whipped the Island in fast, circular currents. The breeze smelled of burnt matches and coppery blood. The static electricity which had caused the hairs on my arms to rise rippled over everything with tiny blue flashes, increasing in power by the second.
“No, no, not Moloch,” Kolmek said, looking much calmer than I felt. “The Savior lets Moloch thin the herd every year.”
“It’s Leviathan,” Mario continued grimly, “the beast from the waters. The smell of blood is drawing it from the depths of the ocean. We picked up the first blips on radar a few minutes ago. When it gets here, it won’t stop until everything is rubble. It will kill every single person on the Island.”
“All security personnel must report to the south beach immediately,” a cool robotic voice cried out over hidden loudspeakers all over the Island. The screaming from the auditorium had quieted behind me. I was afraid to look inside.
“There it is,” Kolmek said, his head jerking up as the emergency alert read. He motioned for me to follow. “It’s time to fight.”
***
We sprinted over curving trails of smooth logs between deathly quiet forests. All the insects and birds had gone silent. Ahead of us, the palm trees opened up onto the Pacific Ocean. But it was no longer a beautiful tropical blue. A black, swirling whirlpool like an ulcerous wound had opened up on its surface. It stretched hundreds of feet across, drawing closer to the shore by the second. Dead fish, sharks, dolphins, squids and even whales spun in the filthy, dark water.
Twenty black-clad security agents waited for the three of us on the beach, their eyes wide, their faces pale with terror. Like myself, they all had AR-15s and Glock 22s with extra magazines for both. I guess the Glock might be useful for blowing my brains out as a last resort if some beast from Hell rose out of the simmering waters, but I didn’t think it would stop anything from another dimension.
The clouds swirled overhead in a thick curtain as black as smoke. Flashes of blue lightning detonated every couple seconds. Mario raised his hands, screaming over the roaring of the wind. Kolmek stood by my side, his face grim and eyes narrowed.
“Your job is to fight off anything that tries to get on the Island,” he said, looking from one face to another with rapt attention. “Nothing can stand against high-caliber rifle fire. Shoot at the face and eyes when it comes up. We’ve dealt with creatures like this before, and they will retreat if you injure them badly enough.” I had the sense of being fed a line of bullshit as my mind processed this.
“What exactly is coming up?” one of the doe-eyed security men asked. He barely looked old enough to drink, a young, muscular hulk with a Marine Corps tattoo on his neck.
“They call it Leviathan,” Mario responded. “Sometimes the rituals here and the smell of blood can draw… strange things. Leviathan is one of those. We have encountered it before. The most important thing to remember is…” His voice was suddenly drowned out by a terrible cacophony that came from the center of the black whirlpool.
A screech like the detonation of a nuclear missile shook the ground. The ocean jumped and bubbled frantically. The beach heaved and cracked, the white sands disappearing in fissures that opened up like greedy mouths underneath my feet. I lost my balance, falling forwards. The screeching continued rising into a primal roar.
A green dragon head the color of an infected wound erupted from the surface of the thrashing water, rising up dozens of feet in the air. It had two enormous slitted eyes that dilated and constricted quickly as it glowered down at us. The screeching abruptly stopped, the pointed mouth of the dragon slamming shut with a sound like a gunshot.
Within moments, another cancerous green head shot up in a blur, its skin looking as hard as stone. Ridges that looked as sharp as swords ran the length of its reptilian skull, arcing over its eyes and pointed snout. More heads erupted from the ocean until all seven heads of Leviathan loomed over us.
Not one of us fired. No one even seemed to breathe as we surveyed the beast across the no-man’s land of the white sands. The slitted eyes and yellow irises of the seven heads had a demonic hunger, a reptilian coldness. Far behind us, I heard distant screams still echoing from the auditorium where Moloch held sway.
“Fire!” Mario cried. Instantly, a cacophony of gunshots exploded all around me. I jumped up on my feet, scrambling up as the seven-headed dragon leapt forward. Thousands of gallons of saltwater streamed down its massive body as it came up on the beach. Long, black paws with bone-white talons shot out of the surging ocean, followed by a tapering tail like that of a water snake.
I brought the rifle up and emptied my magazine as fast as I could, pulling the trigger over and over as I aimed at the many slitted eyes of Leviathan. But the bullets seemed to ping harmlessly off of its hard, obsidian-like scales.
It scrabbled onto the shore, the heads coming down in a blur. Rows and rows of vampiric fangs gleamed dully in each of the mouths. One security agent was bitten in half, the spurting stump of his lower body still standing for a long moment even as the rest of the body disappeared down the throat of the dragon.
Mario ran forwards, slamming another magazine in his rifle and opening fire point-blank. One of the heads came down in a blur towards him. Its great, staring eyes exploded in a shower of blue blood and thick vitreous fluid. The dragon head pulled back, its mouth opening in a primal scream of agony.
As I reloaded, I scanned the area around me, realizing that nearly half of the security agents were either dead or critically injured. I backpedaled away, keeping my eyes on the dragon. It continuously drew forward, killing more of its enemies with every step. I turned and ran into the forest, the sounds of shattering bones and dying men ringing through the air with a sickening clarity behind me.
Once I had reached the border of the trail, I heard Mario yell, “Retreat!” behind me. But by that point, it was far too late.
***
“Hey! Wait up!” a voice whispered from behind me. I turned my head, seeing Kolmek. Spatters of drying blood covered his face and uniform. As far as I could tell, none of it was his. “Mario’s dead. They’re all dead. We need to get out of here. We need to get off the Island.”
“How?” I asked.
“Find the Savior,” he answered, panting and out of breath. “We must find him. He can get us out of here.”
“I don’t even know what the guy looks like,” I muttered. “He was wearing a goat mask.”
“You’ll know him when you see him,” Kolmek said. “His body is covered in scars. Everything except his face. Stay close to me. We need to watch each other’s backs. It’s our only chance of survival.”
***
A trail of twisted, broken bodies led from the mansion to the surrounding trails and beaches. A decapitated woman with solid gold necklaces embedded with diamonds lay in front of me. It was strange on the Island, the way oblivion and ineffable wealth coexisted side by side. But everything was deathly silent, even in the mansion’s auditorium.
“Where’s the Savior?” I asked through gritted teeth. I peeked my head into the auditorium, but nothing moved. Hundreds of smashed and bloody bodies littered the floor.
“He’s around somewhere,” Kolmek answered. We started circling the mansion, looking for any signs of life. Kolmek went in the lead. As he turned the corner, an enormous black hand with sharp claws of fingers flitted forward in a blur, wrapping itself around his chest. Kolmek gave a strangled cry as it closed around him. I heard his bones crush as a spout of blood and gore flew from his mouth and nose, as if he were a toothpaste tube being squeezed.
I backpedaled away as Moloch threw the twitching corpse aside like a discarded toy. It smashed into the wall of the mansion, exploding wetly. A human-shaped, bloody stain languidly dripped down the wall above Kolmek’s mangled body.
Moloch slowly turned his head towards me, the fiery eyes flashing with hunger. He gnashed his fangs together, taking a step forward with a leg the size and shape of a tree trunk. With every step he took, I felt the ground tremble.
“Stop!” I cried, moving away from the monstrous creature. “Why are you doing this?”
“There is no why,” he gurgled, his voice monstrous and inhumanly slow. “There is only power. The weak deserve to die. Only the strong are worthy of life.” I raised my rifle in a last-ditch effort to save myself. Moloch saw it and started running towards me, every footstep crushing the paved walkway around the mansion into rubble and dust.
I aimed for his eyes and nose, emptying the entire magazine as quickly as I could. The bullets smashed into Moloch’s face. Dark red, clotted blood dripped out of the wounds, writhing with maggots. Drops of it fell around me, landing on my hair and face. I felt the small larvae twisting all over my skin. Moloch’s blood smelled nauseating, like some combination of stinkbugs and rotting bodies. He slowed, giving a roar of pain. I turned to run in the opposite direction, but as I looked out in the direction of the beach, my heart dropped.
Leviathan was moving in our direction, the giant dragon heads looming over the trees. Quickly, it swept towards me like a dark wind.
***
“You will suffer for that, worthless slave,” Moloch growled, wiping blood from his fiery eyes with his sharp talons of fingers. A sudden idea came to me. I ran in the direction of Leviathan. Moloch followed closely at my heels, only a few steps behind me.
Leviathan slithered forward over the sands and trees, its enormous body undulating like a water snake’s. I screamed at it, an incomprehensible wail of terror. Its seven heads snapped towards me. Its slitted eyes widened as it saw Moloch.
I heard the crashing of Moloch’s footsteps stop behind me, only feet away from crushing me into a paste. His massive lungs breathed quickly, exhaling the odor of sulfur and smoke.
“Leviathan,” Moloch growled in his demonic voice. “These are my tributes.” Leviathan’s dragon heads looked straight up at the Sun and screamed in response, their many voices rising and falling in a dissonant wail. As I sprinted into the trees, Leviathan and Moloch ran at each other, colliding with an ear-splitting crash. I glanced back, seeing Moloch ripping one of the dragon heads off its neck with his sharp fingers. The head screamed as blue blood exploded from the spurting stump. After a long moment, the neck fell limply forward.
The other dragon heads bit Moloch in a unified attack. They ripped deep holes in his shoulders and arms, snapping over and over like rabid dogs. As the two eldritch monstrosities attacked each other in fierce combat, I lost sight of them, but the sounds of fighting echoed over the entire island, crashing like lightning.
***
I felt like the survivor of an Apocalypse. I couldn’t find a single other living person on the Island. Hundreds of crushed, broken and decapitated bodies surrounded me. Over the cacophony of fighting, I heard a new noise: the whirring of helicopter blades nearby. It was coming from the other side of the mansion.
Frantically, I sprinted around the other side, seeing a Black Hawk helicopter getting ready to leave. A man in black robes sat at the pilot’s seat, his green eyes gleaming and a wide smile plastered across his face. I smashed my fist into the door over and over until he opened it.
“Holy shit, you’re still alive?” he asked. I hadn’t seen this man before. He had a face like a Calvin Klein model, all sharp angles and high cheekbones, perfectly proportioned in every way. But his scalp looked melted and scarred, as if someone had thrown gasoline on his hair and ignited it. His ears were stunted, twisted growths of scar tissue. His hands, too, were covered in deep, folding burn scars.
“Are you the Savior?” I responded quickly. “Please, get me out of here.”
“They do call me that,” he said wistfully. “The Savior. Yes, I guess I am. Get in.”
***
The Savior stared at me with his strange green eyes, the color of swamps where monstrous things swam under the surface.
“Some people just need to learn the hard way,” he said. The helicopter took off into a dark night covered with bright, twinkling stars. “There is no great power without great responsibility, after all. Those of us who seek the ancient ones know it comes with a cost.” I just stared out the window, gazing down at the countless mutilated, broken bodies that littered the beach.
Below us, the face of a bull stared up with eyes of fiery cyclones. The broken, still body of Leviathan lay at his feet. As we made it over the great waters of the Pacific Ocean, the bull-god raised a hand and waved. At that moment, I thought I could almost see a hurricane of translucent souls circling around him, spiraling up into the sky.

After high school, having no better ideas, I joined the Navy SEALs. I never really liked any of it, but it was a job, after all. I loved the guns and airplanes and grenades, but having to run all the time while some scumbag with a chip on his shoulder yells in my face isn’t my idea of fun.
Things got a lot more interesting after my term of service ended. I still had a high-security clearance, so I used it to take temporary jobs as a mercenary, a hired gun. I did some stints in Iraq with Blackwater, where they set me out in the middle of the desert. A watchtower and oil refinery loomed over the burning sands. Along with a few other guys, they told us, “Guard this area with your life.” While better than the SEALs, working for Blackwater was extremely boring. The other mercenaries and I would mostly just chainsmoke cigarettes and drink coffee all night, staring out across the dead, empty desert.
Over time, I worked my way up. Things started to get more interesting when a job offer arrived in my email one freezing cold winter’s morning. This is what it said.
“Mr. Chase,
“I am the head of security for a private group of entrepreneurs and investors. Through some mutual contacts, I have heard of your professionalism and experience. We are currently putting together a small crew to guard a private event on [REDACTED] Island out in the Pacific Ocean that will run from January 9th to January 26th. Would you be interested in this job? The pay rate is $900 a day.
“Once you are on the island, it will be impossible to leave until the period of employment has ended. If you are interested, please respond to this email as soon as possible.
“Sincerely,
“Mario Antonin, Head of Security.”
I was working piecemeal jobs like this one at the time, but none of them were paying that well. At most, I would usually get $350 to $500 a day, which was still good money when I was working seven days a week until the job finished. I instantly responded and said that yes, I was interested. In response, they sent me a non-disclosure agreement that was the size of a small novel that I had to sign.
That was how I found myself on a private jet, flying out to an island in the middle of the vast blue ocean. I was never told the coordinates of the island or saw it on a map. It was all kept very secret.
A few hours later, we landed on a private airstrip. I looked out the window of the jet, seeing the tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean stretching off to the horizon in every direction. Below me stood an island with palm trees and sandy white beaches. An enormous Victorian mansion loomed directly in the center of it all. The mansion was painted black and looked like something straight out of a horror movie. It had no windows, and the turrets spiraled into blade-like points.
That was my first inkling that something might not be quite right about this trip.
***
As the stairs from the private jet descended, I looked out on this strange new world. Employees waited to greet us, looking like beaten dogs. Some had their heads down, their eyes blankly scanning the ground. Most of them were women wearing red dresses, reminding me of stewardesses on a plane. The jet strip was surrounded by palm trees and tropical brush. The chirping of insects sounded all around us, high and resonant.
I saw a strange patch engraved on all of the employees’ uniforms and jackets. It looked almost like a stick figure drawing of a man, the bottom of its body ending in a C. Its arms were long and jointed, almost spidery. Three symbols like repeated iron crosses connected to the left side of its body in a line. I wondered if it was the logo of some company. I put it out of my mind for now, but I would see that symbol again all over the island, painted on the sides of the mansion and even cut into the trees with a knife. It would only be later that night that I realized its connection to Moloch.
“Good day, sir, and welcome to the Island,” the server on my left said with glassy eyes and a fake smile plastered across her face. They all looked up at once, but it was like the workers all looked through me rather than at me. Their eyes looked flat and dead, like the painted-on eyes of a doll.
“The Island, huh?” I asked, curious. “They wouldn’t tell me where I was going. They said it was a secret. Is that what you call it?” The woman just nodded, the doll-like smile never leaving her lips.
“Officially, this island is unnamed and uninhabited,” the woman said. “In fact, all traces of it have been scrubbed from the internet. You won’t find it on Google Maps or in any publicly available satellite imagery.” She leaned forward towards me with heavily mascaraed eyes and ruby-red lipstick slashed across her lips. “This is a very special place. Only very special people are allowed here. You should be honored to work here under our Savior.”
“I hope you’re talking about Jesus or something,” I said jokingly. She just smiled blankly and motioned me forward.
“Just follow that trail for a few hundred feet-” she said, pointing at an opening in the palm trees where logs were laid down horizontally over the muggy jungle- “and you’ll find the mansion. Good luck!” I thought it was a somewhat strange thing to say, wishing a random stranger good luck.
But, by the end of that night, I realized that simply to make it off this island alive, I would need lots of it.
***
I followed the woman’s directions to the back of the brutalist mansion. A heavy metal door stood there with a small bullet-proof window built in the top. A tanned, Spanish face glowered out at me then rapidly drew back and disappeared. A few heartbeats later, the door slid to the side with a grinding of hidden gears.
The head of security at the Island was a heavily-tattooed ex-Marine named Mario. He wore a dark Kevlar vest over a black outfit, making him look like a walking shadow. I found the security had their own private complex in the mansion as he showed me around the site. Hundreds of hidden cameras covered every angle of the mansion and the surrounding parts of the island. Dozens of black-clad security agents swarmed over the screens, checking the monitors and computers constantly.
“Quite a set-up you have here,” I said to Mario, nodding at him. He smacked me on the shoulder, giving a confident grin.
“Money is no issue here, Richard,” he responded. “Security is paramount. There are things on this island that could rip apart the world if they ever escaped.” I raised an eyebrow.
“Like what?” I asked. “Nuclear weapons or something?” He laughed at that.
“You’ll see for yourself tonight,” he said, his dark eyes flashing with something cold and alien.
***
Mario led me and a couple other new hired guns around the Island. The place was certainly strange. It reminded me of some combination of a secret black-ops site and a playboy billionaire’s private heaven. All of the doors in the mansion looked like they were made of thick steel. They had wheels that would spin, like those on a submarine door. The mansion also had no windows at all that I could see, except for the small, shatter-proof glass openings on the steel doors. I didn’t want to ask too many questions, however. I couldn’t resist asking him about a couple small things, however- or at least, they seemed small to me at the time.
“What are those hatchways?” I asked Mario, pointing to rectangular covers built into the concrete walkway. They had heavy handles. “Are those manholes or something?”
“There are tunnels under the Island,” he responded vaguely. “Just for maintenance and security, you understand.”
“Wow, this place is certainly… well-developed,” I said. We came out through a grove of palm trees. A stone walkway led down to a white beach. Dozens of yachts were moored all across the shore, some of them looking like they must have cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
“There’s a lot of money and power here,” Mario said. “That’s why it’s important you never talk about what you see here. These are the people who control the world, the ones behind the government and the media. Not the elected officials who the people see, but the actual power.”
“Like who?” I asked. “You mean the Rothschilds and Soros?” He laughed again, a sarcastic, grinding laugh that grated my nerves.
“Trust me, the truly powerful ones don’t even have public personas. If you know their name, then they’re just one of the puppets.” I just shook my head at that, then asked the real question that had been bothering me since I first arrived here.
“Who is the Savior?” I asked. “Is that some codename or something?” Mario froze in place.
“He’s the one who runs everything here,” he whispered conspiratorially, looking around nervously. “But don’t be mentioning that kind of shit. You’ll probably see him tonight anyway. He’s the one who runs the show. He’ll be on the stage in his normal outfit.”
***
By the end of the day, I was suited up like the rest of the security staff, wearing the pure black pants and shirt with the symbol of Moloch engraved over the heart. Hundreds of the world’s most famous politicians, actors, businessmen and artists had gathered, streaming in the front doors with a soft, diffident susurration.
I stood by the open doorway of a side exit with an AR-15 and full body armor, next to one other soldier. They had also given me a sidearm. Every entrance or exit was manned by at least two armed men. The security at this place was some of the most intense I had ever seen. Beyond the door, there were rows and rows of the most comfortable seats, all gathered in a semi-circle around a massive stage made of pure mahogany. Blood-red curtains stood closed at the front of the room, concealing their secrets- for now, at least.
“Hail Satan!” I heard the elites cry inside in unison. I didn’t want to look in at the rows of high-ranking politicians, celebrities, influencers and artists, but my curiosity was high. I peeked around the corner of the stone archway, seeing the red curtains on the stage drawing apart. I saw one of my favorite actors standing in the front row, clapping excitedly and jumping up and down.
The crowd cheered as a naked female strapped to an obsidian altar lay there. She was beautiful and blonde, probably no older than twenty with the face of a supermodel. Her mouth was gagged, her arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross. Thin leather cords were tied around her wrists and ankles, biting deeply into the skin. Her eyes rolled wildly as she shook her head from side to side. She froze, and her eyes met mine for a brief moment. I saw the pleading expression there, the mortal terror and absolute horror.
A man in a goat mask wearing black robes slunk out from the side of the stage, carrying a wavy silver dagger engraved with strange symbols. The crowd erupted into a primal roar of pleasure and excitement that sounded like it came from one monstrous mouth.
“Worthy is the Lamb!” the man in the goat mask screamed with electronic amplification. He had a deep voice, as if he had rocks rolling around in his throat. The crowd roared and clapped. Scattered cries of “Hail Lucifer!” and “Ave Satanas!” echoed down the massive auditorium.
“Hey, pay attention,” the other security agent at my side said in a thick Finnish accent. He was a tall Scandinavian-looking guy named Kolmek. “You’re not getting paid to watch the show, new guy.” I tried to rip my gaze away from the stage, but it held my attention with an obsessive horror.
“The burnt bones of children and women have been offered to the ancient ones, to Moloch,” the man on the stage cried. “Under our feet, the burnt bodies of hundreds lay dreaming. This victim will be the 666th. Her blood will bring about the Gnosis that we seek, the direct experience of the divine held by the gods, by Lucifer and Moloch and Baal…” The roaring of the crowd temporarily drowned out his electronically-magnified voice. “Tonight, we will rip open the veil!”
I had stopped watching the show, instead staring blankly out at the beach and palm trees. At that moment, another black-clad security agent came up to my partner, whispered something in his ear, then immediately disappeared, heading off back in the direction of the main security office. Kolmek shook his head grimly.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Stay right here. Don’t move from this door no matter what. And pay attention.” I nodded and watched as he walked off in the same direction.
I immediately took the opportunity to continue watching the ceremony. I had missed something important, apparently. The woman now laid dead on the sacrificial table, a gaping hole in her chest. Blood spurted from the crater as the man in the goat mask held her beating heart grasped tightly in his hand, letting the blood stream down his naked fingers. The crowd cheered with a rising bloodlust and insanity. Most of them were standing, their eyes gleaming and wide with fanatical adoration. The entire spectacle reminded me of some kind of ancient Aztec ritual.
As the woman’s sightless eyes stared vacantly up in death, the man in a goat mask pulled out a can of gasoline. The clear liquid gurgled as he up-ended the canister over her pale, bloodless face, over her naked stomach and long legs. A moment later, he lit a match and dropped it. I heard the whooshing of the flames as they rose up.
The crowd went deathly silent as they watched the rippling flames. The man in the goat mask began chanting in some strange language I had never heard before. It sounded Semitic, but I knew it wasn’t Arabic or Hebrew. I felt something like electricity ripple through the air, almost like a feeling of falling pressure before a storm. I looked down at the hairs on my arms, seeing them rise up. I looked back up at the stage, and my eyes widened in horror.
The flaming body of the sacrificial victim had started to morph before my eyes and the eyes of the crowd. The dripping, blackening flesh jumped up and down, as if there were rats trapped in her body trying to escape the fire. There was a deafening hissing as if thousands of snakes were being burned alive.
The dead woman’s arms jerked up, the skin splitting open as if she had seams running along her skin. Something dark and muscular with curving, black talons ripped its way out of the dead, burning flesh. Behind it, a head appeared with long, curving horns and eyes that spun with whorls of fire. It looked like the offspring of a bull and a demon. Its imposing body rose up from the inferno, appearing like magic from the solid stone. It raised itself to its full height, looming over the crowd. The last of the woman’s blood hissed and boiled away, her flesh dissolving into ashes.
“Behold, Moloch rises!” the man in the goat mask screamed in a fanatical voice. The crowd’s cheering had stopped, though. Many of the faces in the crowd looked chalk-white with terror. The bull-god surveyed the crowd, its horns nearly scraping the ceiling twenty feet above the stage.
At that moment, I knew death was on its way with eyes of fire and a grin like a skull, ready to reap a field of human bodies.
***
I heard running behind me, but I didn’t dare turn away from the horrific sight in front of me. The last of the fire’s embers died, sending up thin wisps of gray smoke that spiraled around the bull-god’s monstrous face. Moloch stood as still as a statue, and if it weren’t for one thing, I might’ve thought it was some sort of sculpture or art project. He had two nostrils like a serpent’s. As his great lungs inhaled, the smoke billowed in and out of his mouth and nose.
Some of the people at the edges of the crowd had gotten up, hurrying towards the doors. Moloch’s head ratcheted to face them, his fiery eyes narrowing into slits.
“Do not leave!” the man in the goat mask pleaded. “Those who have fear are not worthy of life. Do not prove yourselves unworthy of life!” As the first of the fleeing men and women got to within a few steps of the door, Moloch gave a primal roar. In a blur of primal strength, he reached down and ripped the blackened sacrificial altar off the stage. It ripped from the wooden stage with a tremendous crack like a bullwhip. He hurled the heavy mass of stone at those heading towards the opposite exit from the one I guarded.
I watched it curve through the air. The people started screaming and clawing to escape as it smashed down on their heads with a grating crash. I could feel the floor shake from where I stood outside. Blood exploded from their smashed bodies. I saw arms and legs jerking and seizing under the heavy stone, but within a few moments, they slowed and then stopped.
Others were running towards the door I guarded, but Moloch leapt off the stage in a blur. In a few bounding steps, he reached the pale, terrified faces on the other side of the threshold. His massive clawed hand came down. I heard bones shatter as blood sprayed my face and the wall. Bone splinters and pieces of brain exploded from the screaming bodies. I backpedaled, wiping at my eyes, trying to get the blood off so I could see. No one had told me what to do in this situation. I didn’t know if I was supposed to shoot that massive abomination, or if this was all just part of the show.
“Richard!” a familiar voice cried from behind me. Panic oozed from every word. I spun, seeing Mario and Kolmek standing side by side, their pupils dilated and expressions grim.
“We have a major problem.” It was Mario. I recognized that voice, the one that sounded as if he had been gargling with rocks.
“I know,” I said, holding my rifle tightly. I pointed behind me at the scene of rampant death and destruction.
I had seen bloodshed and war before, but this was different. The Island itself seemed to feel it. The wind, which had been calm when I first landed, now whipped the Island in fast, circular currents. The breeze smelled of burnt matches and coppery blood. The static electricity which had caused the hairs on my arms to rise rippled over everything with tiny blue flashes, increasing in power by the second.
“No, no, not Moloch,” Kolmek said, looking much calmer than I felt. “The Savior lets Moloch thin the herd every year.”
“It’s Leviathan,” Mario continued grimly, “the beast from the waters. The smell of blood is drawing it from the depths of the ocean. We picked up the first blips on radar a few minutes ago. When it gets here, it won’t stop until everything is rubble. It will kill every single person on the Island.”
“All security personnel must report to the south beach immediately,” a cool robotic voice cried out over hidden loudspeakers all over the Island. The screaming from the auditorium had quieted behind me. I was afraid to look inside.
“There it is,” Kolmek said, his head jerking up as the emergency alert read. He motioned for me to follow. “It’s time to fight.”
***
We sprinted over curving trails of smooth logs between deathly quiet forests. All the insects and birds had gone silent. Ahead of us, the palm trees opened up onto the Pacific Ocean. But it was no longer a beautiful tropical blue. A black, swirling whirlpool like an ulcerous wound had opened up on its surface. It stretched hundreds of feet across, drawing closer to the shore by the second. Dead fish, sharks, dolphins, squids and even whales spun in the filthy, dark water.
Twenty black-clad security agents waited for the three of us on the beach, their eyes wide, their faces pale with terror. Like myself, they all had AR-15s and Glock 22s with extra magazines for both. I guess the Glock might be useful for blowing my brains out as a last resort if some beast from Hell rose out of the simmering waters, but I didn’t think it would stop anything from another dimension.
The clouds swirled overhead in a thick curtain as black as smoke. Flashes of blue lightning detonated every couple seconds. Mario raised his hands, screaming over the roaring of the wind. Kolmek stood by my side, his face grim and eyes narrowed.
“Your job is to fight off anything that tries to get on the Island,” he said, looking from one face to another with rapt attention. “Nothing can stand against high-caliber rifle fire. Shoot at the face and eyes when it comes up. We’ve dealt with creatures like this before, and they will retreat if you injure them badly enough.” I had the sense of being fed a line of bullshit as my mind processed this.
“What exactly is coming up?” one of the doe-eyed security men asked. He barely looked old enough to drink, a young, muscular hulk with a Marine Corps tattoo on his neck.
“They call it Leviathan,” Mario responded. “Sometimes the rituals here and the smell of blood can draw… strange things. Leviathan is one of those. We have encountered it before. The most important thing to remember is…” His voice was suddenly drowned out by a terrible cacophony that came from the center of the black whirlpool.
A screech like the detonation of a nuclear missile shook the ground. The ocean jumped and bubbled frantically. The beach heaved and cracked, the white sands disappearing in fissures that opened up like greedy mouths underneath my feet. I lost my balance, falling forwards. The screeching continued rising into a primal roar.
A green dragon head the color of an infected wound erupted from the surface of the thrashing water, rising up dozens of feet in the air. It had two enormous slitted eyes that dilated and constricted quickly as it glowered down at us. The screeching abruptly stopped, the pointed mouth of the dragon slamming shut with a sound like a gunshot.
Within moments, another cancerous green head shot up in a blur, its skin looking as hard as stone. Ridges that looked as sharp as swords ran the length of its reptilian skull, arcing over its eyes and pointed snout. More heads erupted from the ocean until all seven heads of Leviathan loomed over us.
Not one of us fired. No one even seemed to breathe as we surveyed the beast across the no-man’s land of the white sands. The slitted eyes and yellow irises of the seven heads had a demonic hunger, a reptilian coldness. Far behind us, I heard distant screams still echoing from the auditorium where Moloch held sway.
“Fire!” Mario cried. Instantly, a cacophony of gunshots exploded all around me. I jumped up on my feet, scrambling up as the seven-headed dragon leapt forward. Thousands of gallons of saltwater streamed down its massive body as it came up on the beach. Long, black paws with bone-white talons shot out of the surging ocean, followed by a tapering tail like that of a water snake.
I brought the rifle up and emptied my magazine as fast as I could, pulling the trigger over and over as I aimed at the many slitted eyes of Leviathan. But the bullets seemed to ping harmlessly off of its hard, obsidian-like scales.
It scrabbled onto the shore, the heads coming down in a blur. Rows and rows of vampiric fangs gleamed dully in each of the mouths. One security agent was bitten in half, the spurting stump of his lower body still standing for a long moment even as the rest of the body disappeared down the throat of the dragon.
Mario ran forwards, slamming another magazine in his rifle and opening fire point-blank. One of the heads came down in a blur towards him. Its great, staring eyes exploded in a shower of blue blood and thick vitreous fluid. The dragon head pulled back, its mouth opening in a primal scream of agony.
As I reloaded, I scanned the area around me, realizing that nearly half of the security agents were either dead or critically injured. I backpedaled away, keeping my eyes on the dragon. It continuously drew forward, killing more of its enemies with every step. I turned and ran into the forest, the sounds of shattering bones and dying men ringing through the air with a sickening clarity behind me.
Once I had reached the border of the trail, I heard Mario yell, “Retreat!” behind me. But by that point, it was far too late.
***
“Hey! Wait up!” a voice whispered from behind me. I turned my head, seeing Kolmek. Spatters of drying blood covered his face and uniform. As far as I could tell, none of it was his. “Mario’s dead. They’re all dead. We need to get out of here. We need to get off the Island.”
“How?” I asked.
“Find the Savior,” he answered, panting and out of breath. “We must find him. He can get us out of here.”
“I don’t even know what the guy looks like,” I muttered. “He was wearing a goat mask.”
“You’ll know him when you see him,” Kolmek said. “His body is covered in scars. Everything except his face. Stay close to me. We need to watch each other’s backs. It’s our only chance of survival.”
***
A trail of twisted, broken bodies led from the mansion to the surrounding trails and beaches. A decapitated woman with solid gold necklaces embedded with diamonds lay in front of me. It was strange on the Island, the way oblivion and ineffable wealth coexisted side by side. But everything was deathly silent, even in the mansion’s auditorium.
“Where’s the Savior?” I asked through gritted teeth. I peeked my head into the auditorium, but nothing moved. Hundreds of smashed and bloody bodies littered the floor.
“He’s around somewhere,” Kolmek answered. We started circling the mansion, looking for any signs of life. Kolmek went in the lead. As he turned the corner, an enormous black hand with sharp claws of fingers flitted forward in a blur, wrapping itself around his chest. Kolmek gave a strangled cry as it closed around him. I heard his bones crush as a spout of blood and gore flew from his mouth and nose, as if he were a toothpaste tube being squeezed.
I backpedaled away as Moloch threw the twitching corpse aside like a discarded toy. It smashed into the wall of the mansion, exploding wetly. A human-shaped, bloody stain languidly dripped down the wall above Kolmek’s mangled body.
Moloch slowly turned his head towards me, the fiery eyes flashing with hunger. He gnashed his fangs together, taking a step forward with a leg the size and shape of a tree trunk. With every step he took, I felt the ground tremble.
“Stop!” I cried, moving away from the monstrous creature. “Why are you doing this?”
“There is no why,” he gurgled, his voice monstrous and inhumanly slow. “There is only power. The weak deserve to die. Only the strong are worthy of life.” I raised my rifle in a last-ditch effort to save myself. Moloch saw it and started running towards me, every footstep crushing the paved walkway around the mansion into rubble and dust.
I aimed for his eyes and nose, emptying the entire magazine as quickly as I could. The bullets smashed into Moloch’s face. Dark red, clotted blood dripped out of the wounds, writhing with maggots. Drops of it fell around me, landing on my hair and face. I felt the small larvae twisting all over my skin. Moloch’s blood smelled nauseating, like some combination of stinkbugs and rotting bodies. He slowed, giving a roar of pain. I turned to run in the opposite direction, but as I looked out in the direction of the beach, my heart dropped.
Leviathan was moving in our direction, the giant dragon heads looming over the trees. Quickly, it swept towards me like a dark wind.
***
“You will suffer for that, worthless slave,” Moloch growled, wiping blood from his fiery eyes with his sharp talons of fingers. A sudden idea came to me. I ran in the direction of Leviathan. Moloch followed closely at my heels, only a few steps behind me.
Leviathan slithered forward over the sands and trees, its enormous body undulating like a water snake’s. I screamed at it, an incomprehensible wail of terror. Its seven heads snapped towards me. Its slitted eyes widened as it saw Moloch.
I heard the crashing of Moloch’s footsteps stop behind me, only feet away from crushing me into a paste. His massive lungs breathed quickly, exhaling the odor of sulfur and smoke.
“Leviathan,” Moloch growled in his demonic voice. “These are my tributes.” Leviathan’s dragon heads looked straight up at the Sun and screamed in response, their many voices rising and falling in a dissonant wail. As I sprinted into the trees, Leviathan and Moloch ran at each other, colliding with an ear-splitting crash. I glanced back, seeing Moloch ripping one of the dragon heads off its neck with his sharp fingers. The head screamed as blue blood exploded from the spurting stump. After a long moment, the neck fell limply forward.
The other dragon heads bit Moloch in a unified attack. They ripped deep holes in his shoulders and arms, snapping over and over like rabid dogs. As the two eldritch monstrosities attacked each other in fierce combat, I lost sight of them, but the sounds of fighting echoed over the entire island, crashing like lightning.
***
I felt like the survivor of an Apocalypse. I couldn’t find a single other living person on the Island. Hundreds of crushed, broken and decapitated bodies surrounded me. Over the cacophony of fighting, I heard a new noise: the whirring of helicopter blades nearby. It was coming from the other side of the mansion.
Frantically, I sprinted around the other side, seeing a Black Hawk helicopter getting ready to leave. A man in black robes sat at the pilot’s seat, his green eyes gleaming and a wide smile plastered across his face. I smashed my fist into the door over and over until he opened it.
“Holy shit, you’re still alive?” he asked. I hadn’t seen this man before. He had a face like a Calvin Klein model, all sharp angles and high cheekbones, perfectly proportioned in every way. But his scalp looked melted and scarred, as if someone had thrown gasoline on his hair and ignited it. His ears were stunted, twisted growths of scar tissue. His hands, too, were covered in deep, folding burn scars.
“Are you the Savior?” I responded quickly. “Please, get me out of here.”
“They do call me that,” he said wistfully. “The Savior. Yes, I guess I am. Get in.”
***
The Savior stared at me with his strange green eyes, the color of swamps where monstrous things swam under the surface.
“Some people just need to learn the hard way,” he said. The helicopter took off into a dark night covered with bright, twinkling stars. “There is no great power without great responsibility, after all. Those of us who seek the ancient ones know it comes with a cost.” I just stared out the window, gazing down at the countless mutilated, broken bodies that littered the beach.
Below us, the face of a bull stared up with eyes of fiery cyclones. The broken, still body of Leviathan lay at his feet. As we made it over the great waters of the Pacific Ocean, the bull-god raised a hand and waved. At that moment, I thought I could almost see a hurricane of translucent souls circling around him, spiraling up into the sky.

After high school, having no better ideas, I joined the Navy SEALs. I never really liked any of it, but it was a job, after all. I loved the guns and airplanes and grenades, but having to run all the time while some scumbag with a chip on his shoulder yells in my face isn’t my idea of fun.
Things got a lot more interesting after my term of service ended. I still had a high-security clearance, so I used it to take temporary jobs as a mercenary, a hired gun. I did some stints in Iraq with Blackwater, where they set me out in the middle of the desert. A watchtower and oil refinery loomed over the burning sands. Along with a few other guys, they told us, “Guard this area with your life.” While better than the SEALs, working for Blackwater was extremely boring. The other mercenaries and I would mostly just chainsmoke cigarettes and drink coffee all night, staring out across the dead, empty desert.
Over time, I worked my way up. Things started to get more interesting when a job offer arrived in my email one freezing cold winter’s morning. This is what it said.
“Mr. Chase,
“I am the head of security for a private group of entrepreneurs and investors. Through some mutual contacts, I have heard of your professionalism and experience. We are currently putting together a small crew to guard a private event on [REDACTED] Island out in the Pacific Ocean that will run from January 9th to January 26th. Would you be interested in this job? The pay rate is $900 a day.
“Once you are on the island, it will be impossible to leave until the period of employment has ended. If you are interested, please respond to this email as soon as possible.
“Sincerely,
“Mario Antonin, Head of Security.”
I was working piecemeal jobs like this one at the time, but none of them were paying that well. At most, I would usually get $350 to $500 a day, which was still good money when I was working seven days a week until the job finished. I instantly responded and said that yes, I was interested. In response, they sent me a non-disclosure agreement that was the size of a small novel that I had to sign.
That was how I found myself on a private jet, flying out to an island in the middle of the vast blue ocean. I was never told the coordinates of the island or saw it on a map. It was all kept very secret.
A few hours later, we landed on a private airstrip. I looked out the window of the jet, seeing the tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean stretching off to the horizon in every direction. Below me stood an island with palm trees and sandy white beaches. An enormous Victorian mansion loomed directly in the center of it all. The mansion was painted black and looked like something straight out of a horror movie. It had no windows, and the turrets spiraled into blade-like points.
That was my first inkling that something might not be quite right about this trip.
***
As the stairs from the private jet descended, I looked out on this strange new world. Employees waited to greet us, looking like beaten dogs. Some had their heads down, their eyes blankly scanning the ground. Most of them were women wearing red dresses, reminding me of stewardesses on a plane. The jet strip was surrounded by palm trees and tropical brush. The chirping of insects sounded all around us, high and resonant.
I saw a strange patch engraved on all of the employees’ uniforms and jackets. It looked almost like a stick figure drawing of a man, the bottom of its body ending in a C. Its arms were long and jointed, almost spidery. Three symbols like repeated iron crosses connected to the left side of its body in a line. I wondered if it was the logo of some company. I put it out of my mind for now, but I would see that symbol again all over the island, painted on the sides of the mansion and even cut into the trees with a knife. It would only be later that night that I realized its connection to Moloch.
“Good day, sir, and welcome to the Island,” the server on my left said with glassy eyes and a fake smile plastered across her face. They all looked up at once, but it was like the workers all looked through me rather than at me. Their eyes looked flat and dead, like the painted-on eyes of a doll.
“The Island, huh?” I asked, curious. “They wouldn’t tell me where I was going. They said it was a secret. Is that what you call it?” The woman just nodded, the doll-like smile never leaving her lips.
“Officially, this island is unnamed and uninhabited,” the woman said. “In fact, all traces of it have been scrubbed from the internet. You won’t find it on Google Maps or in any publicly available satellite imagery.” She leaned forward towards me with heavily mascaraed eyes and ruby-red lipstick slashed across her lips. “This is a very special place. Only very special people are allowed here. You should be honored to work here under our Savior.”
“I hope you’re talking about Jesus or something,” I said jokingly. She just smiled blankly and motioned me forward.
“Just follow that trail for a few hundred feet-” she said, pointing at an opening in the palm trees where logs were laid down horizontally over the muggy jungle- “and you’ll find the mansion. Good luck!” I thought it was a somewhat strange thing to say, wishing a random stranger good luck.
But, by the end of that night, I realized that simply to make it off this island alive, I would need lots of it.
***
I followed the woman’s directions to the back of the brutalist mansion. A heavy metal door stood there with a small bullet-proof window built in the top. A tanned, Spanish face glowered out at me then rapidly drew back and disappeared. A few heartbeats later, the door slid to the side with a grinding of hidden gears.
The head of security at the Island was a heavily-tattooed ex-Marine named Mario. He wore a dark Kevlar vest over a black outfit, making him look like a walking shadow. I found the security had their own private complex in the mansion as he showed me around the site. Hundreds of hidden cameras covered every angle of the mansion and the surrounding parts of the island. Dozens of black-clad security agents swarmed over the screens, checking the monitors and computers constantly.
“Quite a set-up you have here,” I said to Mario, nodding at him. He smacked me on the shoulder, giving a confident grin.
“Money is no issue here, Richard,” he responded. “Security is paramount. There are things on this island that could rip apart the world if they ever escaped.” I raised an eyebrow.
“Like what?” I asked. “Nuclear weapons or something?” He laughed at that.
“You’ll see for yourself tonight,” he said, his dark eyes flashing with something cold and alien.
***
Mario led me and a couple other new hired guns around the Island. The place was certainly strange. It reminded me of some combination of a secret black-ops site and a playboy billionaire’s private heaven. All of the doors in the mansion looked like they were made of thick steel. They had wheels that would spin, like those on a submarine door. The mansion also had no windows at all that I could see, except for the small, shatter-proof glass openings on the steel doors. I didn’t want to ask too many questions, however. I couldn’t resist asking him about a couple small things, however- or at least, they seemed small to me at the time.
“What are those hatchways?” I asked Mario, pointing to rectangular covers built into the concrete walkway. They had heavy handles. “Are those manholes or something?”
“There are tunnels under the Island,” he responded vaguely. “Just for maintenance and security, you understand.”
“Wow, this place is certainly… well-developed,” I said. We came out through a grove of palm trees. A stone walkway led down to a white beach. Dozens of yachts were moored all across the shore, some of them looking like they must have cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
“There’s a lot of money and power here,” Mario said. “That’s why it’s important you never talk about what you see here. These are the people who control the world, the ones behind the government and the media. Not the elected officials who the people see, but the actual power.”
“Like who?” I asked. “You mean the Rothschilds and Soros?” He laughed again, a sarcastic, grinding laugh that grated my nerves.
“Trust me, the truly powerful ones don’t even have public personas. If you know their name, then they’re just one of the puppets.” I just shook my head at that, then asked the real question that had been bothering me since I first arrived here.
“Who is the Savior?” I asked. “Is that some codename or something?” Mario froze in place.
“He’s the one who runs everything here,” he whispered conspiratorially, looking around nervously. “But don’t be mentioning that kind of shit. You’ll probably see him tonight anyway. He’s the one who runs the show. He’ll be on the stage in his normal outfit.”
***
By the end of the day, I was suited up like the rest of the security staff, wearing the pure black pants and shirt with the symbol of Moloch engraved over the heart. Hundreds of the world’s most famous politicians, actors, businessmen and artists had gathered, streaming in the front doors with a soft, diffident susurration.
I stood by the open doorway of a side exit with an AR-15 and full body armor, next to one other soldier. They had also given me a sidearm. Every entrance or exit was manned by at least two armed men. The security at this place was some of the most intense I had ever seen. Beyond the door, there were rows and rows of the most comfortable seats, all gathered in a semi-circle around a massive stage made of pure mahogany. Blood-red curtains stood closed at the front of the room, concealing their secrets- for now, at least.
“Hail Satan!” I heard the elites cry inside in unison. I didn’t want to look in at the rows of high-ranking politicians, celebrities, influencers and artists, but my curiosity was high. I peeked around the corner of the stone archway, seeing the red curtains on the stage drawing apart. I saw one of my favorite actors standing in the front row, clapping excitedly and jumping up and down.
The crowd cheered as a naked female strapped to an obsidian altar lay there. She was beautiful and blonde, probably no older than twenty with the face of a supermodel. Her mouth was gagged, her arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross. Thin leather cords were tied around her wrists and ankles, biting deeply into the skin. Her eyes rolled wildly as she shook her head from side to side. She froze, and her eyes met mine for a brief moment. I saw the pleading expression there, the mortal terror and absolute horror.
A man in a goat mask wearing black robes slunk out from the side of the stage, carrying a wavy silver dagger engraved with strange symbols. The crowd erupted into a primal roar of pleasure and excitement that sounded like it came from one monstrous mouth.
“Worthy is the Lamb!” the man in the goat mask screamed with electronic amplification. He had a deep voice, as if he had rocks rolling around in his throat. The crowd roared and clapped. Scattered cries of “Hail Lucifer!” and “Ave Satanas!” echoed down the massive auditorium.
“Hey, pay attention,” the other security agent at my side said in a thick Finnish accent. He was a tall Scandinavian-looking guy named Kolmek. “You’re not getting paid to watch the show, new guy.” I tried to rip my gaze away from the stage, but it held my attention with an obsessive horror.
“The burnt bones of children and women have been offered to the ancient ones, to Moloch,” the man on the stage cried. “Under our feet, the burnt bodies of hundreds lay dreaming. This victim will be the 666th. Her blood will bring about the Gnosis that we seek, the direct experience of the divine held by the gods, by Lucifer and Moloch and Baal…” The roaring of the crowd temporarily drowned out his electronically-magnified voice. “Tonight, we will rip open the veil!”
I had stopped watching the show, instead staring blankly out at the beach and palm trees. At that moment, another black-clad security agent came up to my partner, whispered something in his ear, then immediately disappeared, heading off back in the direction of the main security office. Kolmek shook his head grimly.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Stay right here. Don’t move from this door no matter what. And pay attention.” I nodded and watched as he walked off in the same direction.
I immediately took the opportunity to continue watching the ceremony. I had missed something important, apparently. The woman now laid dead on the sacrificial table, a gaping hole in her chest. Blood spurted from the crater as the man in the goat mask held her beating heart grasped tightly in his hand, letting the blood stream down his naked fingers. The crowd cheered with a rising bloodlust and insanity. Most of them were standing, their eyes gleaming and wide with fanatical adoration. The entire spectacle reminded me of some kind of ancient Aztec ritual.
As the woman’s sightless eyes stared vacantly up in death, the man in a goat mask pulled out a can of gasoline. The clear liquid gurgled as he up-ended the canister over her pale, bloodless face, over her naked stomach and long legs. A moment later, he lit a match and dropped it. I heard the whooshing of the flames as they rose up.
The crowd went deathly silent as they watched the rippling flames. The man in the goat mask began chanting in some strange language I had never heard before. It sounded Semitic, but I knew it wasn’t Arabic or Hebrew. I felt something like electricity ripple through the air, almost like a feeling of falling pressure before a storm. I looked down at the hairs on my arms, seeing them rise up. I looked back up at the stage, and my eyes widened in horror.
The flaming body of the sacrificial victim had started to morph before my eyes and the eyes of the crowd. The dripping, blackening flesh jumped up and down, as if there were rats trapped in her body trying to escape the fire. There was a deafening hissing as if thousands of snakes were being burned alive.
The dead woman’s arms jerked up, the skin splitting open as if she had seams running along her skin. Something dark and muscular with curving, black talons ripped its way out of the dead, burning flesh. Behind it, a head appeared with long, curving horns and eyes that spun with whorls of fire. It looked like the offspring of a bull and a demon. Its imposing body rose up from the inferno, appearing like magic from the solid stone. It raised itself to its full height, looming over the crowd. The last of the woman’s blood hissed and boiled away, her flesh dissolving into ashes.
“Behold, Moloch rises!” the man in the goat mask screamed in a fanatical voice. The crowd’s cheering had stopped, though. Many of the faces in the crowd looked chalk-white with terror. The bull-god surveyed the crowd, its horns nearly scraping the ceiling twenty feet above the stage.
At that moment, I knew death was on its way with eyes of fire and a grin like a skull, ready to reap a field of human bodies.
***
I heard running behind me, but I didn’t dare turn away from the horrific sight in front of me. The last of the fire’s embers died, sending up thin wisps of gray smoke that spiraled around the bull-god’s monstrous face. Moloch stood as still as a statue, and if it weren’t for one thing, I might’ve thought it was some sort of sculpture or art project. He had two nostrils like a serpent’s. As his great lungs inhaled, the smoke billowed in and out of his mouth and nose.
Some of the people at the edges of the crowd had gotten up, hurrying towards the doors. Moloch’s head ratcheted to face them, his fiery eyes narrowing into slits.
“Do not leave!” the man in the goat mask pleaded. “Those who have fear are not worthy of life. Do not prove yourselves unworthy of life!” As the first of the fleeing men and women got to within a few steps of the door, Moloch gave a primal roar. In a blur of primal strength, he reached down and ripped the blackened sacrificial altar off the stage. It ripped from the wooden stage with a tremendous crack like a bullwhip. He hurled the heavy mass of stone at those heading towards the opposite exit from the one I guarded.
I watched it curve through the air. The people started screaming and clawing to escape as it smashed down on their heads with a grating crash. I could feel the floor shake from where I stood outside. Blood exploded from their smashed bodies. I saw arms and legs jerking and seizing under the heavy stone, but within a few moments, they slowed and then stopped.
Others were running towards the door I guarded, but Moloch leapt off the stage in a blur. In a few bounding steps, he reached the pale, terrified faces on the other side of the threshold. His massive clawed hand came down. I heard bones shatter as blood sprayed my face and the wall. Bone splinters and pieces of brain exploded from the screaming bodies. I backpedaled, wiping at my eyes, trying to get the blood off so I could see. No one had told me what to do in this situation. I didn’t know if I was supposed to shoot that massive abomination, or if this was all just part of the show.
“Richard!” a familiar voice cried from behind me. Panic oozed from every word. I spun, seeing Mario and Kolmek standing side by side, their pupils dilated and expressions grim.
“We have a major problem.” It was Mario. I recognized that voice, the one that sounded as if he had been gargling with rocks.
“I know,” I said, holding my rifle tightly. I pointed behind me at the scene of rampant death and destruction.
I had seen bloodshed and war before, but this was different. The Island itself seemed to feel it. The wind, which had been calm when I first landed, now whipped the Island in fast, circular currents. The breeze smelled of burnt matches and coppery blood. The static electricity which had caused the hairs on my arms to rise rippled over everything with tiny blue flashes, increasing in power by the second.
“No, no, not Moloch,” Kolmek said, looking much calmer than I felt. “The Savior lets Moloch thin the herd every year.”
“It’s Leviathan,” Mario continued grimly, “the beast from the waters. The smell of blood is drawing it from the depths of the ocean. We picked up the first blips on radar a few minutes ago. When it gets here, it won’t stop until everything is rubble. It will kill every single person on the Island.”
“All security personnel must report to the south beach immediately,” a cool robotic voice cried out over hidden loudspeakers all over the Island. The screaming from the auditorium had quieted behind me. I was afraid to look inside.
“There it is,” Kolmek said, his head jerking up as the emergency alert read. He motioned for me to follow. “It’s time to fight.”
***
We sprinted over curving trails of smooth logs between deathly quiet forests. All the insects and birds had gone silent. Ahead of us, the palm trees opened up onto the Pacific Ocean. But it was no longer a beautiful tropical blue. A black, swirling whirlpool like an ulcerous wound had opened up on its surface. It stretched hundreds of feet across, drawing closer to the shore by the second. Dead fish, sharks, dolphins, squids and even whales spun in the filthy, dark water.
Twenty black-clad security agents waited for the three of us on the beach, their eyes wide, their faces pale with terror. Like myself, they all had AR-15s and Glock 22s with extra magazines for both. I guess the Glock might be useful for blowing my brains out as a last resort if some beast from Hell rose out of the simmering waters, but I didn’t think it would stop anything from another dimension.
The clouds swirled overhead in a thick curtain as black as smoke. Flashes of blue lightning detonated every couple seconds. Mario raised his hands, screaming over the roaring of the wind. Kolmek stood by my side, his face grim and eyes narrowed.
“Your job is to fight off anything that tries to get on the Island,” he said, looking from one face to another with rapt attention. “Nothing can stand against high-caliber rifle fire. Shoot at the face and eyes when it comes up. We’ve dealt with creatures like this before, and they will retreat if you injure them badly enough.” I had the sense of being fed a line of bullshit as my mind processed this.
“What exactly is coming up?” one of the doe-eyed security men asked. He barely looked old enough to drink, a young, muscular hulk with a Marine Corps tattoo on his neck.
“They call it Leviathan,” Mario responded. “Sometimes the rituals here and the smell of blood can draw… strange things. Leviathan is one of those. We have encountered it before. The most important thing to remember is…” His voice was suddenly drowned out by a terrible cacophony that came from the center of the black whirlpool.
A screech like the detonation of a nuclear missile shook the ground. The ocean jumped and bubbled frantically. The beach heaved and cracked, the white sands disappearing in fissures that opened up like greedy mouths underneath my feet. I lost my balance, falling forwards. The screeching continued rising into a primal roar.
A green dragon head the color of an infected wound erupted from the surface of the thrashing water, rising up dozens of feet in the air. It had two enormous slitted eyes that dilated and constricted quickly as it glowered down at us. The screeching abruptly stopped, the pointed mouth of the dragon slamming shut with a sound like a gunshot.
Within moments, another cancerous green head shot up in a blur, its skin looking as hard as stone. Ridges that looked as sharp as swords ran the length of its reptilian skull, arcing over its eyes and pointed snout. More heads erupted from the ocean until all seven heads of Leviathan loomed over us.
Not one of us fired. No one even seemed to breathe as we surveyed the beast across the no-man’s land of the white sands. The slitted eyes and yellow irises of the seven heads had a demonic hunger, a reptilian coldness. Far behind us, I heard distant screams still echoing from the auditorium where Moloch held sway.
“Fire!” Mario cried. Instantly, a cacophony of gunshots exploded all around me. I jumped up on my feet, scrambling up as the seven-headed dragon leapt forward. Thousands of gallons of saltwater streamed down its massive body as it came up on the beach. Long, black paws with bone-white talons shot out of the surging ocean, followed by a tapering tail like that of a water snake.
I brought the rifle up and emptied my magazine as fast as I could, pulling the trigger over and over as I aimed at the many slitted eyes of Leviathan. But the bullets seemed to ping harmlessly off of its hard, obsidian-like scales.
It scrabbled onto the shore, the heads coming down in a blur. Rows and rows of vampiric fangs gleamed dully in each of the mouths. One security agent was bitten in half, the spurting stump of his lower body still standing for a long moment even as the rest of the body disappeared down the throat of the dragon.
Mario ran forwards, slamming another magazine in his rifle and opening fire point-blank. One of the heads came down in a blur towards him. Its great, staring eyes exploded in a shower of blue blood and thick vitreous fluid. The dragon head pulled back, its mouth opening in a primal scream of agony.
As I reloaded, I scanned the area around me, realizing that nearly half of the security agents were either dead or critically injured. I backpedaled away, keeping my eyes on the dragon. It continuously drew forward, killing more of its enemies with every step. I turned and ran into the forest, the sounds of shattering bones and dying men ringing through the air with a sickening clarity behind me.
Once I had reached the border of the trail, I heard Mario yell, “Retreat!” behind me. But by that point, it was far too late.
***
“Hey! Wait up!” a voice whispered from behind me. I turned my head, seeing Kolmek. Spatters of drying blood covered his face and uniform. As far as I could tell, none of it was his. “Mario’s dead. They’re all dead. We need to get out of here. We need to get off the Island.”
“How?” I asked.
“Find the Savior,” he answered, panting and out of breath. “We must find him. He can get us out of here.”
“I don’t even know what the guy looks like,” I muttered. “He was wearing a goat mask.”
“You’ll know him when you see him,” Kolmek said. “His body is covered in scars. Everything except his face. Stay close to me. We need to watch each other’s backs. It’s our only chance of survival.”
***
A trail of twisted, broken bodies led from the mansion to the surrounding trails and beaches. A decapitated woman with solid gold necklaces embedded with diamonds lay in front of me. It was strange on the Island, the way oblivion and ineffable wealth coexisted side by side. But everything was deathly silent, even in the mansion’s auditorium.
“Where’s the Savior?” I asked through gritted teeth. I peeked my head into the auditorium, but nothing moved. Hundreds of smashed and bloody bodies littered the floor.
“He’s around somewhere,” Kolmek answered. We started circling the mansion, looking for any signs of life. Kolmek went in the lead. As he turned the corner, an enormous black hand with sharp claws of fingers flitted forward in a blur, wrapping itself around his chest. Kolmek gave a strangled cry as it closed around him. I heard his bones crush as a spout of blood and gore flew from his mouth and nose, as if he were a toothpaste tube being squeezed.
I backpedaled away as Moloch threw the twitching corpse aside like a discarded toy. It smashed into the wall of the mansion, exploding wetly. A human-shaped, bloody stain languidly dripped down the wall above Kolmek’s mangled body.
Moloch slowly turned his head towards me, the fiery eyes flashing with hunger. He gnashed his fangs together, taking a step forward with a leg the size and shape of a tree trunk. With every step he took, I felt the ground tremble.
“Stop!” I cried, moving away from the monstrous creature. “Why are you doing this?”
“There is no why,” he gurgled, his voice monstrous and inhumanly slow. “There is only power. The weak deserve to die. Only the strong are worthy of life.” I raised my rifle in a last-ditch effort to save myself. Moloch saw it and started running towards me, every footstep crushing the paved walkway around the mansion into rubble and dust.
I aimed for his eyes and nose, emptying the entire magazine as quickly as I could. The bullets smashed into Moloch’s face. Dark red, clotted blood dripped out of the wounds, writhing with maggots. Drops of it fell around me, landing on my hair and face. I felt the small larvae twisting all over my skin. Moloch’s blood smelled nauseating, like some combination of stinkbugs and rotting bodies. He slowed, giving a roar of pain. I turned to run in the opposite direction, but as I looked out in the direction of the beach, my heart dropped.
Leviathan was moving in our direction, the giant dragon heads looming over the trees. Quickly, it swept towards me like a dark wind.
***
“You will suffer for that, worthless slave,” Moloch growled, wiping blood from his fiery eyes with his sharp talons of fingers. A sudden idea came to me. I ran in the direction of Leviathan. Moloch followed closely at my heels, only a few steps behind me.
Leviathan slithered forward over the sands and trees, its enormous body undulating like a water snake’s. I screamed at it, an incomprehensible wail of terror. Its seven heads snapped towards me. Its slitted eyes widened as it saw Moloch.
I heard the crashing of Moloch’s footsteps stop behind me, only feet away from crushing me into a paste. His massive lungs breathed quickly, exhaling the odor of sulfur and smoke.
“Leviathan,” Moloch growled in his demonic voice. “These are my tributes.” Leviathan’s dragon heads looked straight up at the Sun and screamed in response, their many voices rising and falling in a dissonant wail. As I sprinted into the trees, Leviathan and Moloch ran at each other, colliding with an ear-splitting crash. I glanced back, seeing Moloch ripping one of the dragon heads off its neck with his sharp fingers. The head screamed as blue blood exploded from the spurting stump. After a long moment, the neck fell limply forward.
The other dragon heads bit Moloch in a unified attack. They ripped deep holes in his shoulders and arms, snapping over and over like rabid dogs. As the two eldritch monstrosities attacked each other in fierce combat, I lost sight of them, but the sounds of fighting echoed over the entire island, crashing like lightning.
***
I felt like the survivor of an Apocalypse. I couldn’t find a single other living person on the Island. Hundreds of crushed, broken and decapitated bodies surrounded me. Over the cacophony of fighting, I heard a new noise: the whirring of helicopter blades nearby. It was coming from the other side of the mansion.
Frantically, I sprinted around the other side, seeing a Black Hawk helicopter getting ready to leave. A man in black robes sat at the pilot’s seat, his green eyes gleaming and a wide smile plastered across his face. I smashed my fist into the door over and over until he opened it.
“Holy shit, you’re still alive?” he asked. I hadn’t seen this man before. He had a face like a Calvin Klein model, all sharp angles and high cheekbones, perfectly proportioned in every way. But his scalp looked melted and scarred, as if someone had thrown gasoline on his hair and ignited it. His ears were stunted, twisted growths of scar tissue. His hands, too, were covered in deep, folding burn scars.
“Are you the Savior?” I responded quickly. “Please, get me out of here.”
“They do call me that,” he said wistfully. “The Savior. Yes, I guess I am. Get in.”
***
The Savior stared at me with his strange green eyes, the color of swamps where monstrous things swam under the surface.
“Some people just need to learn the hard way,” he said. The helicopter took off into a dark night covered with bright, twinkling stars. “There is no great power without great responsibility, after all. Those of us who seek the ancient ones know it comes with a cost.” I just stared out the window, gazing down at the countless mutilated, broken bodies that littered the beach.
Below us, the face of a bull stared up with eyes of fiery cyclones. The broken, still body of Leviathan lay at his feet. As we made it over the great waters of the Pacific Ocean, the bull-god raised a hand and waved. At that moment, I thought I could almost see a hurricane of translucent souls circling around him, spiraling up into the sky.

After high school, having no better ideas, I joined the Navy SEALs. I never really liked any of it, but it was a job, after all. I loved the guns and airplanes and grenades, but having to run all the time while some scumbag with a chip on his shoulder yells in my face isn’t my idea of fun.
Things got a lot more interesting after my term of service ended. I still had a high-security clearance, so I used it to take temporary jobs as a mercenary, a hired gun. I did some stints in Iraq with Blackwater, where they set me out in the middle of the desert. A watchtower and oil refinery loomed over the burning sands. Along with a few other guys, they told us, “Guard this area with your life.” While better than the SEALs, working for Blackwater was extremely boring. The other mercenaries and I would mostly just chainsmoke cigarettes and drink coffee all night, staring out across the dead, empty desert.
Over time, I worked my way up. Things started to get more interesting when a job offer arrived in my email one freezing cold winter’s morning. This is what it said.
“Mr. Chase,
“I am the head of security for a private group of entrepreneurs and investors. Through some mutual contacts, I have heard of your professionalism and experience. We are currently putting together a small crew to guard a private event on [REDACTED] Island out in the Pacific Ocean that will run from January 9th to January 26th. Would you be interested in this job? The pay rate is $900 a day.
“Once you are on the island, it will be impossible to leave until the period of employment has ended. If you are interested, please respond to this email as soon as possible.
“Sincerely,
“Mario Antonin, Head of Security.”
I was working piecemeal jobs like this one at the time, but none of them were paying that well. At most, I would usually get $350 to $500 a day, which was still good money when I was working seven days a week until the job finished. I instantly responded and said that yes, I was interested. In response, they sent me a non-disclosure agreement that was the size of a small novel that I had to sign.
That was how I found myself on a private jet, flying out to an island in the middle of the vast blue ocean. I was never told the coordinates of the island or saw it on a map. It was all kept very secret.
A few hours later, we landed on a private airstrip. I looked out the window of the jet, seeing the tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean stretching off to the horizon in every direction. Below me stood an island with palm trees and sandy white beaches. An enormous Victorian mansion loomed directly in the center of it all. The mansion was painted black and looked like something straight out of a horror movie. It had no windows, and the turrets spiraled into blade-like points.
That was my first inkling that something might not be quite right about this trip.
***
As the stairs from the private jet descended, I looked out on this strange new world. Employees waited to greet us, looking like beaten dogs. Some had their heads down, their eyes blankly scanning the ground. Most of them were women wearing red dresses, reminding me of stewardesses on a plane. The jet strip was surrounded by palm trees and tropical brush. The chirping of insects sounded all around us, high and resonant.
I saw a strange patch engraved on all of the employees’ uniforms and jackets. It looked almost like a stick figure drawing of a man, the bottom of its body ending in a C. Its arms were long and jointed, almost spidery. Three symbols like repeated iron crosses connected to the left side of its body in a line. I wondered if it was the logo of some company. I put it out of my mind for now, but I would see that symbol again all over the island, painted on the sides of the mansion and even cut into the trees with a knife. It would only be later that night that I realized its connection to Moloch.
“Good day, sir, and welcome to the Island,” the server on my left said with glassy eyes and a fake smile plastered across her face. They all looked up at once, but it was like the workers all looked through me rather than at me. Their eyes looked flat and dead, like the painted-on eyes of a doll.
“The Island, huh?” I asked, curious. “They wouldn’t tell me where I was going. They said it was a secret. Is that what you call it?” The woman just nodded, the doll-like smile never leaving her lips.
“Officially, this island is unnamed and uninhabited,” the woman said. “In fact, all traces of it have been scrubbed from the internet. You won’t find it on Google Maps or in any publicly available satellite imagery.” She leaned forward towards me with heavily mascaraed eyes and ruby-red lipstick slashed across her lips. “This is a very special place. Only very special people are allowed here. You should be honored to work here under our Savior.”
“I hope you’re talking about Jesus or something,” I said jokingly. She just smiled blankly and motioned me forward.
“Just follow that trail for a few hundred feet-” she said, pointing at an opening in the palm trees where logs were laid down horizontally over the muggy jungle- “and you’ll find the mansion. Good luck!” I thought it was a somewhat strange thing to say, wishing a random stranger good luck.
But, by the end of that night, I realized that simply to make it off this island alive, I would need lots of it.
***
I followed the woman’s directions to the back of the brutalist mansion. A heavy metal door stood there with a small bullet-proof window built in the top. A tanned, Spanish face glowered out at me then rapidly drew back and disappeared. A few heartbeats later, the door slid to the side with a grinding of hidden gears.
The head of security at the Island was a heavily-tattooed ex-Marine named Mario. He wore a dark Kevlar vest over a black outfit, making him look like a walking shadow. I found the security had their own private complex in the mansion as he showed me around the site. Hundreds of hidden cameras covered every angle of the mansion and the surrounding parts of the island. Dozens of black-clad security agents swarmed over the screens, checking the monitors and computers constantly.
“Quite a set-up you have here,” I said to Mario, nodding at him. He smacked me on the shoulder, giving a confident grin.
“Money is no issue here, Richard,” he responded. “Security is paramount. There are things on this island that could rip apart the world if they ever escaped.” I raised an eyebrow.
“Like what?” I asked. “Nuclear weapons or something?” He laughed at that.
“You’ll see for yourself tonight,” he said, his dark eyes flashing with something cold and alien.
***
Mario led me and a couple other new hired guns around the Island. The place was certainly strange. It reminded me of some combination of a secret black-ops site and a playboy billionaire’s private heaven. All of the doors in the mansion looked like they were made of thick steel. They had wheels that would spin, like those on a submarine door. The mansion also had no windows at all that I could see, except for the small, shatter-proof glass openings on the steel doors. I didn’t want to ask too many questions, however. I couldn’t resist asking him about a couple small things, however- or at least, they seemed small to me at the time.
“What are those hatchways?” I asked Mario, pointing to rectangular covers built into the concrete walkway. They had heavy handles. “Are those manholes or something?”
“There are tunnels under the Island,” he responded vaguely. “Just for maintenance and security, you understand.”
“Wow, this place is certainly… well-developed,” I said. We came out through a grove of palm trees. A stone walkway led down to a white beach. Dozens of yachts were moored all across the shore, some of them looking like they must have cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
“There’s a lot of money and power here,” Mario said. “That’s why it’s important you never talk about what you see here. These are the people who control the world, the ones behind the government and the media. Not the elected officials who the people see, but the actual power.”
“Like who?” I asked. “You mean the Rothschilds and Soros?” He laughed again, a sarcastic, grinding laugh that grated my nerves.
“Trust me, the truly powerful ones don’t even have public personas. If you know their name, then they’re just one of the puppets.” I just shook my head at that, then asked the real question that had been bothering me since I first arrived here.
“Who is the Savior?” I asked. “Is that some codename or something?” Mario froze in place.
“He’s the one who runs everything here,” he whispered conspiratorially, looking around nervously. “But don’t be mentioning that kind of shit. You’ll probably see him tonight anyway. He’s the one who runs the show. He’ll be on the stage in his normal outfit.”
***
By the end of the day, I was suited up like the rest of the security staff, wearing the pure black pants and shirt with the symbol of Moloch engraved over the heart. Hundreds of the world’s most famous politicians, actors, businessmen and artists had gathered, streaming in the front doors with a soft, diffident susurration.
I stood by the open doorway of a side exit with an AR-15 and full body armor, next to one other soldier. They had also given me a sidearm. Every entrance or exit was manned by at least two armed men. The security at this place was some of the most intense I had ever seen. Beyond the door, there were rows and rows of the most comfortable seats, all gathered in a semi-circle around a massive stage made of pure mahogany. Blood-red curtains stood closed at the front of the room, concealing their secrets- for now, at least.
“Hail Satan!” I heard the elites cry inside in unison. I didn’t want to look in at the rows of high-ranking politicians, celebrities, influencers and artists, but my curiosity was high. I peeked around the corner of the stone archway, seeing the red curtains on the stage drawing apart. I saw one of my favorite actors standing in the front row, clapping excitedly and jumping up and down.
The crowd cheered as a naked female strapped to an obsidian altar lay there. She was beautiful and blonde, probably no older than twenty with the face of a supermodel. Her mouth was gagged, her arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross. Thin leather cords were tied around her wrists and ankles, biting deeply into the skin. Her eyes rolled wildly as she shook her head from side to side. She froze, and her eyes met mine for a brief moment. I saw the pleading expression there, the mortal terror and absolute horror.
A man in a goat mask wearing black robes slunk out from the side of the stage, carrying a wavy silver dagger engraved with strange symbols. The crowd erupted into a primal roar of pleasure and excitement that sounded like it came from one monstrous mouth.
“Worthy is the Lamb!” the man in the goat mask screamed with electronic amplification. He had a deep voice, as if he had rocks rolling around in his throat. The crowd roared and clapped. Scattered cries of “Hail Lucifer!” and “Ave Satanas!” echoed down the massive auditorium.
“Hey, pay attention,” the other security agent at my side said in a thick Finnish accent. He was a tall Scandinavian-looking guy named Kolmek. “You’re not getting paid to watch the show, new guy.” I tried to rip my gaze away from the stage, but it held my attention with an obsessive horror.
“The burnt bones of children and women have been offered to the ancient ones, to Moloch,” the man on the stage cried. “Under our feet, the burnt bodies of hundreds lay dreaming. This victim will be the 666th. Her blood will bring about the Gnosis that we seek, the direct experience of the divine held by the gods, by Lucifer and Moloch and Baal…” The roaring of the crowd temporarily drowned out his electronically-magnified voice. “Tonight, we will rip open the veil!”
I had stopped watching the show, instead staring blankly out at the beach and palm trees. At that moment, another black-clad security agent came up to my partner, whispered something in his ear, then immediately disappeared, heading off back in the direction of the main security office. Kolmek shook his head grimly.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Stay right here. Don’t move from this door no matter what. And pay attention.” I nodded and watched as he walked off in the same direction.
I immediately took the opportunity to continue watching the ceremony. I had missed something important, apparently. The woman now laid dead on the sacrificial table, a gaping hole in her chest. Blood spurted from the crater as the man in the goat mask held her beating heart grasped tightly in his hand, letting the blood stream down his naked fingers. The crowd cheered with a rising bloodlust and insanity. Most of them were standing, their eyes gleaming and wide with fanatical adoration. The entire spectacle reminded me of some kind of ancient Aztec ritual.
As the woman’s sightless eyes stared vacantly up in death, the man in a goat mask pulled out a can of gasoline. The clear liquid gurgled as he up-ended the canister over her pale, bloodless face, over her naked stomach and long legs. A moment later, he lit a match and dropped it. I heard the whooshing of the flames as they rose up.
The crowd went deathly silent as they watched the rippling flames. The man in the goat mask began chanting in some strange language I had never heard before. It sounded Semitic, but I knew it wasn’t Arabic or Hebrew. I felt something like electricity ripple through the air, almost like a feeling of falling pressure before a storm. I looked down at the hairs on my arms, seeing them rise up. I looked back up at the stage, and my eyes widened in horror.
The flaming body of the sacrificial victim had started to morph before my eyes and the eyes of the crowd. The dripping, blackening flesh jumped up and down, as if there were rats trapped in her body trying to escape the fire. There was a deafening hissing as if thousands of snakes were being burned alive.
The dead woman’s arms jerked up, the skin splitting open as if she had seams running along her skin. Something dark and muscular with curving, black talons ripped its way out of the dead, burning flesh. Behind it, a head appeared with long, curving horns and eyes that spun with whorls of fire. It looked like the offspring of a bull and a demon. Its imposing body rose up from the inferno, appearing like magic from the solid stone. It raised itself to its full height, looming over the crowd. The last of the woman’s blood hissed and boiled away, her flesh dissolving into ashes.
“Behold, Moloch rises!” the man in the goat mask screamed in a fanatical voice. The crowd’s cheering had stopped, though. Many of the faces in the crowd looked chalk-white with terror. The bull-god surveyed the crowd, its horns nearly scraping the ceiling twenty feet above the stage.
At that moment, I knew death was on its way with eyes of fire and a grin like a skull, ready to reap a field of human bodies.
***
I heard running behind me, but I didn’t dare turn away from the horrific sight in front of me. The last of the fire’s embers died, sending up thin wisps of gray smoke that spiraled around the bull-god’s monstrous face. Moloch stood as still as a statue, and if it weren’t for one thing, I might’ve thought it was some sort of sculpture or art project. He had two nostrils like a serpent’s. As his great lungs inhaled, the smoke billowed in and out of his mouth and nose.
Some of the people at the edges of the crowd had gotten up, hurrying towards the doors. Moloch’s head ratcheted to face them, his fiery eyes narrowing into slits.
“Do not leave!” the man in the goat mask pleaded. “Those who have fear are not worthy of life. Do not prove yourselves unworthy of life!” As the first of the fleeing men and women got to within a few steps of the door, Moloch gave a primal roar. In a blur of primal strength, he reached down and ripped the blackened sacrificial altar off the stage. It ripped from the wooden stage with a tremendous crack like a bullwhip. He hurled the heavy mass of stone at those heading towards the opposite exit from the one I guarded.
I watched it curve through the air. The people started screaming and clawing to escape as it smashed down on their heads with a grating crash. I could feel the floor shake from where I stood outside. Blood exploded from their smashed bodies. I saw arms and legs jerking and seizing under the heavy stone, but within a few moments, they slowed and then stopped.
Others were running towards the door I guarded, but Moloch leapt off the stage in a blur. In a few bounding steps, he reached the pale, terrified faces on the other side of the threshold. His massive clawed hand came down. I heard bones shatter as blood sprayed my face and the wall. Bone splinters and pieces of brain exploded from the screaming bodies. I backpedaled, wiping at my eyes, trying to get the blood off so I could see. No one had told me what to do in this situation. I didn’t know if I was supposed to shoot that massive abomination, or if this was all just part of the show.
“Richard!” a familiar voice cried from behind me. Panic oozed from every word. I spun, seeing Mario and Kolmek standing side by side, their pupils dilated and expressions grim.
“We have a major problem.” It was Mario. I recognized that voice, the one that sounded as if he had been gargling with rocks.
“I know,” I said, holding my rifle tightly. I pointed behind me at the scene of rampant death and destruction.
I had seen bloodshed and war before, but this was different. The Island itself seemed to feel it. The wind, which had been calm when I first landed, now whipped the Island in fast, circular currents. The breeze smelled of burnt matches and coppery blood. The static electricity which had caused the hairs on my arms to rise rippled over everything with tiny blue flashes, increasing in power by the second.
“No, no, not Moloch,” Kolmek said, looking much calmer than I felt. “The Savior lets Moloch thin the herd every year.”
“It’s Leviathan,” Mario continued grimly, “the beast from the waters. The smell of blood is drawing it from the depths of the ocean. We picked up the first blips on radar a few minutes ago. When it gets here, it won’t stop until everything is rubble. It will kill every single person on the Island.”
“All security personnel must report to the south beach immediately,” a cool robotic voice cried out over hidden loudspeakers all over the Island. The screaming from the auditorium had quieted behind me. I was afraid to look inside.
“There it is,” Kolmek said, his head jerking up as the emergency alert read. He motioned for me to follow. “It’s time to fight.”
***
We sprinted over curving trails of smooth logs between deathly quiet forests. All the insects and birds had gone silent. Ahead of us, the palm trees opened up onto the Pacific Ocean. But it was no longer a beautiful tropical blue. A black, swirling whirlpool like an ulcerous wound had opened up on its surface. It stretched hundreds of feet across, drawing closer to the shore by the second. Dead fish, sharks, dolphins, squids and even whales spun in the filthy, dark water.
Twenty black-clad security agents waited for the three of us on the beach, their eyes wide, their faces pale with terror. Like myself, they all had AR-15s and Glock 22s with extra magazines for both. I guess the Glock might be useful for blowing my brains out as a last resort if some beast from Hell rose out of the simmering waters, but I didn’t think it would stop anything from another dimension.
The clouds swirled overhead in a thick curtain as black as smoke. Flashes of blue lightning detonated every couple seconds. Mario raised his hands, screaming over the roaring of the wind. Kolmek stood by my side, his face grim and eyes narrowed.
“Your job is to fight off anything that tries to get on the Island,” he said, looking from one face to another with rapt attention. “Nothing can stand against high-caliber rifle fire. Shoot at the face and eyes when it comes up. We’ve dealt with creatures like this before, and they will retreat if you injure them badly enough.” I had the sense of being fed a line of bullshit as my mind processed this.
“What exactly is coming up?” one of the doe-eyed security men asked. He barely looked old enough to drink, a young, muscular hulk with a Marine Corps tattoo on his neck.
“They call it Leviathan,” Mario responded. “Sometimes the rituals here and the smell of blood can draw… strange things. Leviathan is one of those. We have encountered it before. The most important thing to remember is…” His voice was suddenly drowned out by a terrible cacophony that came from the center of the black whirlpool.
A screech like the detonation of a nuclear missile shook the ground. The ocean jumped and bubbled frantically. The beach heaved and cracked, the white sands disappearing in fissures that opened up like greedy mouths underneath my feet. I lost my balance, falling forwards. The screeching continued rising into a primal roar.
A green dragon head the color of an infected wound erupted from the surface of the thrashing water, rising up dozens of feet in the air. It had two enormous slitted eyes that dilated and constricted quickly as it glowered down at us. The screeching abruptly stopped, the pointed mouth of the dragon slamming shut with a sound like a gunshot.
Within moments, another cancerous green head shot up in a blur, its skin looking as hard as stone. Ridges that looked as sharp as swords ran the length of its reptilian skull, arcing over its eyes and pointed snout. More heads erupted from the ocean until all seven heads of Leviathan loomed over us.
Not one of us fired. No one even seemed to breathe as we surveyed the beast across the no-man’s land of the white sands. The slitted eyes and yellow irises of the seven heads had a demonic hunger, a reptilian coldness. Far behind us, I heard distant screams still echoing from the auditorium where Moloch held sway.
“Fire!” Mario cried. Instantly, a cacophony of gunshots exploded all around me. I jumped up on my feet, scrambling up as the seven-headed dragon leapt forward. Thousands of gallons of saltwater streamed down its massive body as it came up on the beach. Long, black paws with bone-white talons shot out of the surging ocean, followed by a tapering tail like that of a water snake.
I brought the rifle up and emptied my magazine as fast as I could, pulling the trigger over and over as I aimed at the many slitted eyes of Leviathan. But the bullets seemed to ping harmlessly off of its hard, obsidian-like scales.
It scrabbled onto the shore, the heads coming down in a blur. Rows and rows of vampiric fangs gleamed dully in each of the mouths. One security agent was bitten in half, the spurting stump of his lower body still standing for a long moment even as the rest of the body disappeared down the throat of the dragon.
Mario ran forwards, slamming another magazine in his rifle and opening fire point-blank. One of the heads came down in a blur towards him. Its great, staring eyes exploded in a shower of blue blood and thick vitreous fluid. The dragon head pulled back, its mouth opening in a primal scream of agony.
As I reloaded, I scanned the area around me, realizing that nearly half of the security agents were either dead or critically injured. I backpedaled away, keeping my eyes on the dragon. It continuously drew forward, killing more of its enemies with every step. I turned and ran into the forest, the sounds of shattering bones and dying men ringing through the air with a sickening clarity behind me.
Once I had reached the border of the trail, I heard Mario yell, “Retreat!” behind me. But by that point, it was far too late.
***
“Hey! Wait up!” a voice whispered from behind me. I turned my head, seeing Kolmek. Spatters of drying blood covered his face and uniform. As far as I could tell, none of it was his. “Mario’s dead. They’re all dead. We need to get out of here. We need to get off the Island.”
“How?” I asked.
“Find the Savior,” he answered, panting and out of breath. “We must find him. He can get us out of here.”
“I don’t even know what the guy looks like,” I muttered. “He was wearing a goat mask.”
“You’ll know him when you see him,” Kolmek said. “His body is covered in scars. Everything except his face. Stay close to me. We need to watch each other’s backs. It’s our only chance of survival.”
***
A trail of twisted, broken bodies led from the mansion to the surrounding trails and beaches. A decapitated woman with solid gold necklaces embedded with diamonds lay in front of me. It was strange on the Island, the way oblivion and ineffable wealth coexisted side by side. But everything was deathly silent, even in the mansion’s auditorium.
“Where’s the Savior?” I asked through gritted teeth. I peeked my head into the auditorium, but nothing moved. Hundreds of smashed and bloody bodies littered the floor.
“He’s around somewhere,” Kolmek answered. We started circling the mansion, looking for any signs of life. Kolmek went in the lead. As he turned the corner, an enormous black hand with sharp claws of fingers flitted forward in a blur, wrapping itself around his chest. Kolmek gave a strangled cry as it closed around him. I heard his bones crush as a spout of blood and gore flew from his mouth and nose, as if he were a toothpaste tube being squeezed.
I backpedaled away as Moloch threw the twitching corpse aside like a discarded toy. It smashed into the wall of the mansion, exploding wetly. A human-shaped, bloody stain languidly dripped down the wall above Kolmek’s mangled body.
Moloch slowly turned his head towards me, the fiery eyes flashing with hunger. He gnashed his fangs together, taking a step forward with a leg the size and shape of a tree trunk. With every step he took, I felt the ground tremble.
“Stop!” I cried, moving away from the monstrous creature. “Why are you doing this?”
“There is no why,” he gurgled, his voice monstrous and inhumanly slow. “There is only power. The weak deserve to die. Only the strong are worthy of life.” I raised my rifle in a last-ditch effort to save myself. Moloch saw it and started running towards me, every footstep crushing the paved walkway around the mansion into rubble and dust.
I aimed for his eyes and nose, emptying the entire magazine as quickly as I could. The bullets smashed into Moloch’s face. Dark red, clotted blood dripped out of the wounds, writhing with maggots. Drops of it fell around me, landing on my hair and face. I felt the small larvae twisting all over my skin. Moloch’s blood smelled nauseating, like some combination of stinkbugs and rotting bodies. He slowed, giving a roar of pain. I turned to run in the opposite direction, but as I looked out in the direction of the beach, my heart dropped.
Leviathan was moving in our direction, the giant dragon heads looming over the trees. Quickly, it swept towards me like a dark wind.
***
“You will suffer for that, worthless slave,” Moloch growled, wiping blood from his fiery eyes with his sharp talons of fingers. A sudden idea came to me. I ran in the direction of Leviathan. Moloch followed closely at my heels, only a few steps behind me.
Leviathan slithered forward over the sands and trees, its enormous body undulating like a water snake’s. I screamed at it, an incomprehensible wail of terror. Its seven heads snapped towards me. Its slitted eyes widened as it saw Moloch.
I heard the crashing of Moloch’s footsteps stop behind me, only feet away from crushing me into a paste. His massive lungs breathed quickly, exhaling the odor of sulfur and smoke.
“Leviathan,” Moloch growled in his demonic voice. “These are my tributes.” Leviathan’s dragon heads looked straight up at the Sun and screamed in response, their many voices rising and falling in a dissonant wail. As I sprinted into the trees, Leviathan and Moloch ran at each other, colliding with an ear-splitting crash. I glanced back, seeing Moloch ripping one of the dragon heads off its neck with his sharp fingers. The head screamed as blue blood exploded from the spurting stump. After a long moment, the neck fell limply forward.
The other dragon heads bit Moloch in a unified attack. They ripped deep holes in his shoulders and arms, snapping over and over like rabid dogs. As the two eldritch monstrosities attacked each other in fierce combat, I lost sight of them, but the sounds of fighting echoed over the entire island, crashing like lightning.
***
I felt like the survivor of an Apocalypse. I couldn’t find a single other living person on the Island. Hundreds of crushed, broken and decapitated bodies surrounded me. Over the cacophony of fighting, I heard a new noise: the whirring of helicopter blades nearby. It was coming from the other side of the mansion.
Frantically, I sprinted around the other side, seeing a Black Hawk helicopter getting ready to leave. A man in black robes sat at the pilot’s seat, his green eyes gleaming and a wide smile plastered across his face. I smashed my fist into the door over and over until he opened it.
“Holy shit, you’re still alive?” he asked. I hadn’t seen this man before. He had a face like a Calvin Klein model, all sharp angles and high cheekbones, perfectly proportioned in every way. But his scalp looked melted and scarred, as if someone had thrown gasoline on his hair and ignited it. His ears were stunted, twisted growths of scar tissue. His hands, too, were covered in deep, folding burn scars.
“Are you the Savior?” I responded quickly. “Please, get me out of here.”
“They do call me that,” he said wistfully. “The Savior. Yes, I guess I am. Get in.”
***
The Savior stared at me with his strange green eyes, the color of swamps where monstrous things swam under the surface.
“Some people just need to learn the hard way,” he said. The helicopter took off into a dark night covered with bright, twinkling stars. “There is no great power without great responsibility, after all. Those of us who seek the ancient ones know it comes with a cost.” I just stared out the window, gazing down at the countless mutilated, broken bodies that littered the beach.
Below us, the face of a bull stared up with eyes of fiery cyclones. The broken, still body of Leviathan lay at his feet. As we made it over the great waters of the Pacific Ocean, the bull-god raised a hand and waved. At that moment, I thought I could almost see a hurricane of translucent souls circling around him, spiraling up into the sky.

After high school, having no better ideas, I joined the Navy SEALs. I never really liked any of it, but it was a job, after all. I loved the guns and airplanes and grenades, but having to run all the time while some scumbag with a chip on his shoulder yells in my face isn’t my idea of fun.
Things got a lot more interesting after my term of service ended. I still had a high-security clearance, so I used it to take temporary jobs as a mercenary, a hired gun. I did some stints in Iraq with Blackwater, where they set me out in the middle of the desert. A watchtower and oil refinery loomed over the burning sands. Along with a few other guys, they told us, “Guard this area with your life.” While better than the SEALs, working for Blackwater was extremely boring. The other mercenaries and I would mostly just chainsmoke cigarettes and drink coffee all night, staring out across the dead, empty desert.
Over time, I worked my way up. Things started to get more interesting when a job offer arrived in my email one freezing cold winter’s morning. This is what it said.
“Mr. Chase,
“I am the head of security for a private group of entrepreneurs and investors. Through some mutual contacts, I have heard of your professionalism and experience. We are currently putting together a small crew to guard a private event on [REDACTED] Island out in the Pacific Ocean that will run from January 9th to January 26th. Would you be interested in this job? The pay rate is $900 a day.
“Once you are on the island, it will be impossible to leave until the period of employment has ended. If you are interested, please respond to this email as soon as possible.
“Sincerely,
“Mario Antonin, Head of Security.”
I was working piecemeal jobs like this one at the time, but none of them were paying that well. At most, I would usually get $350 to $500 a day, which was still good money when I was working seven days a week until the job finished. I instantly responded and said that yes, I was interested. In response, they sent me a non-disclosure agreement that was the size of a small novel that I had to sign.
That was how I found myself on a private jet, flying out to an island in the middle of the vast blue ocean. I was never told the coordinates of the island or saw it on a map. It was all kept very secret.
A few hours later, we landed on a private airstrip. I looked out the window of the jet, seeing the tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean stretching off to the horizon in every direction. Below me stood an island with palm trees and sandy white beaches. An enormous Victorian mansion loomed directly in the center of it all. The mansion was painted black and looked like something straight out of a horror movie. It had no windows, and the turrets spiraled into blade-like points.
That was my first inkling that something might not be quite right about this trip.
***
As the stairs from the private jet descended, I looked out on this strange new world. Employees waited to greet us, looking like beaten dogs. Some had their heads down, their eyes blankly scanning the ground. Most of them were women wearing red dresses, reminding me of stewardesses on a plane. The jet strip was surrounded by palm trees and tropical brush. The chirping of insects sounded all around us, high and resonant.
I saw a strange patch engraved on all of the employees’ uniforms and jackets. It looked almost like a stick figure drawing of a man, the bottom of its body ending in a C. Its arms were long and jointed, almost spidery. Three symbols like repeated iron crosses connected to the left side of its body in a line. I wondered if it was the logo of some company. I put it out of my mind for now, but I would see that symbol again all over the island, painted on the sides of the mansion and even cut into the trees with a knife. It would only be later that night that I realized its connection to Moloch.
“Good day, sir, and welcome to the Island,” the server on my left said with glassy eyes and a fake smile plastered across her face. They all looked up at once, but it was like the workers all looked through me rather than at me. Their eyes looked flat and dead, like the painted-on eyes of a doll.
“The Island, huh?” I asked, curious. “They wouldn’t tell me where I was going. They said it was a secret. Is that what you call it?” The woman just nodded, the doll-like smile never leaving her lips.
“Officially, this island is unnamed and uninhabited,” the woman said. “In fact, all traces of it have been scrubbed from the internet. You won’t find it on Google Maps or in any publicly available satellite imagery.” She leaned forward towards me with heavily mascaraed eyes and ruby-red lipstick slashed across her lips. “This is a very special place. Only very special people are allowed here. You should be honored to work here under our Savior.”
“I hope you’re talking about Jesus or something,” I said jokingly. She just smiled blankly and motioned me forward.
“Just follow that trail for a few hundred feet-” she said, pointing at an opening in the palm trees where logs were laid down horizontally over the muggy jungle- “and you’ll find the mansion. Good luck!” I thought it was a somewhat strange thing to say, wishing a random stranger good luck.
But, by the end of that night, I realized that simply to make it off this island alive, I would need lots of it.
***
I followed the woman’s directions to the back of the brutalist mansion. A heavy metal door stood there with a small bullet-proof window built in the top. A tanned, Spanish face glowered out at me then rapidly drew back and disappeared. A few heartbeats later, the door slid to the side with a grinding of hidden gears.
The head of security at the Island was a heavily-tattooed ex-Marine named Mario. He wore a dark Kevlar vest over a black outfit, making him look like a walking shadow. I found the security had their own private complex in the mansion as he showed me around the site. Hundreds of hidden cameras covered every angle of the mansion and the surrounding parts of the island. Dozens of black-clad security agents swarmed over the screens, checking the monitors and computers constantly.
“Quite a set-up you have here,” I said to Mario, nodding at him. He smacked me on the shoulder, giving a confident grin.
“Money is no issue here, Richard,” he responded. “Security is paramount. There are things on this island that could rip apart the world if they ever escaped.” I raised an eyebrow.
“Like what?” I asked. “Nuclear weapons or something?” He laughed at that.
“You’ll see for yourself tonight,” he said, his dark eyes flashing with something cold and alien.
***
Mario led me and a couple other new hired guns around the Island. The place was certainly strange. It reminded me of some combination of a secret black-ops site and a playboy billionaire’s private heaven. All of the doors in the mansion looked like they were made of thick steel. They had wheels that would spin, like those on a submarine door. The mansion also had no windows at all that I could see, except for the small, shatter-proof glass openings on the steel doors. I didn’t want to ask too many questions, however. I couldn’t resist asking him about a couple small things, however- or at least, they seemed small to me at the time.
“What are those hatchways?” I asked Mario, pointing to rectangular covers built into the concrete walkway. They had heavy handles. “Are those manholes or something?”
“There are tunnels under the Island,” he responded vaguely. “Just for maintenance and security, you understand.”
“Wow, this place is certainly… well-developed,” I said. We came out through a grove of palm trees. A stone walkway led down to a white beach. Dozens of yachts were moored all across the shore, some of them looking like they must have cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
“There’s a lot of money and power here,” Mario said. “That’s why it’s important you never talk about what you see here. These are the people who control the world, the ones behind the government and the media. Not the elected officials who the people see, but the actual power.”
“Like who?” I asked. “You mean the Rothschilds and Soros?” He laughed again, a sarcastic, grinding laugh that grated my nerves.
“Trust me, the truly powerful ones don’t even have public personas. If you know their name, then they’re just one of the puppets.” I just shook my head at that, then asked the real question that had been bothering me since I first arrived here.
“Who is the Savior?” I asked. “Is that some codename or something?” Mario froze in place.
“He’s the one who runs everything here,” he whispered conspiratorially, looking around nervously. “But don’t be mentioning that kind of shit. You’ll probably see him tonight anyway. He’s the one who runs the show. He’ll be on the stage in his normal outfit.”
***
By the end of the day, I was suited up like the rest of the security staff, wearing the pure black pants and shirt with the symbol of Moloch engraved over the heart. Hundreds of the world’s most famous politicians, actors, businessmen and artists had gathered, streaming in the front doors with a soft, diffident susurration.
I stood by the open doorway of a side exit with an AR-15 and full body armor, next to one other soldier. They had also given me a sidearm. Every entrance or exit was manned by at least two armed men. The security at this place was some of the most intense I had ever seen. Beyond the door, there were rows and rows of the most comfortable seats, all gathered in a semi-circle around a massive stage made of pure mahogany. Blood-red curtains stood closed at the front of the room, concealing their secrets- for now, at least.
“Hail Satan!” I heard the elites cry inside in unison. I didn’t want to look in at the rows of high-ranking politicians, celebrities, influencers and artists, but my curiosity was high. I peeked around the corner of the stone archway, seeing the red curtains on the stage drawing apart. I saw one of my favorite actors standing in the front row, clapping excitedly and jumping up and down.
The crowd cheered as a naked female strapped to an obsidian altar lay there. She was beautiful and blonde, probably no older than twenty with the face of a supermodel. Her mouth was gagged, her arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross. Thin leather cords were tied around her wrists and ankles, biting deeply into the skin. Her eyes rolled wildly as she shook her head from side to side. She froze, and her eyes met mine for a brief moment. I saw the pleading expression there, the mortal terror and absolute horror.
A man in a goat mask wearing black robes slunk out from the side of the stage, carrying a wavy silver dagger engraved with strange symbols. The crowd erupted into a primal roar of pleasure and excitement that sounded like it came from one monstrous mouth.
“Worthy is the Lamb!” the man in the goat mask screamed with electronic amplification. He had a deep voice, as if he had rocks rolling around in his throat. The crowd roared and clapped. Scattered cries of “Hail Lucifer!” and “Ave Satanas!” echoed down the massive auditorium.
“Hey, pay attention,” the other security agent at my side said in a thick Finnish accent. He was a tall Scandinavian-looking guy named Kolmek. “You’re not getting paid to watch the show, new guy.” I tried to rip my gaze away from the stage, but it held my attention with an obsessive horror.
“The burnt bones of children and women have been offered to the ancient ones, to Moloch,” the man on the stage cried. “Under our feet, the burnt bodies of hundreds lay dreaming. This victim will be the 666th. Her blood will bring about the Gnosis that we seek, the direct experience of the divine held by the gods, by Lucifer and Moloch and Baal…” The roaring of the crowd temporarily drowned out his electronically-magnified voice. “Tonight, we will rip open the veil!”
I had stopped watching the show, instead staring blankly out at the beach and palm trees. At that moment, another black-clad security agent came up to my partner, whispered something in his ear, then immediately disappeared, heading off back in the direction of the main security office. Kolmek shook his head grimly.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Stay right here. Don’t move from this door no matter what. And pay attention.” I nodded and watched as he walked off in the same direction.
I immediately took the opportunity to continue watching the ceremony. I had missed something important, apparently. The woman now laid dead on the sacrificial table, a gaping hole in her chest. Blood spurted from the crater as the man in the goat mask held her beating heart grasped tightly in his hand, letting the blood stream down his naked fingers. The crowd cheered with a rising bloodlust and insanity. Most of them were standing, their eyes gleaming and wide with fanatical adoration. The entire spectacle reminded me of some kind of ancient Aztec ritual.
As the woman’s sightless eyes stared vacantly up in death, the man in a goat mask pulled out a can of gasoline. The clear liquid gurgled as he up-ended the canister over her pale, bloodless face, over her naked stomach and long legs. A moment later, he lit a match and dropped it. I heard the whooshing of the flames as they rose up.
The crowd went deathly silent as they watched the rippling flames. The man in the goat mask began chanting in some strange language I had never heard before. It sounded Semitic, but I knew it wasn’t Arabic or Hebrew. I felt something like electricity ripple through the air, almost like a feeling of falling pressure before a storm. I looked down at the hairs on my arms, seeing them rise up. I looked back up at the stage, and my eyes widened in horror.
The flaming body of the sacrificial victim had started to morph before my eyes and the eyes of the crowd. The dripping, blackening flesh jumped up and down, as if there were rats trapped in her body trying to escape the fire. There was a deafening hissing as if thousands of snakes were being burned alive.
The dead woman’s arms jerked up, the skin splitting open as if she had seams running along her skin. Something dark and muscular with curving, black talons ripped its way out of the dead, burning flesh. Behind it, a head appeared with long, curving horns and eyes that spun with whorls of fire. It looked like the offspring of a bull and a demon. Its imposing body rose up from the inferno, appearing like magic from the solid stone. It raised itself to its full height, looming over the crowd. The last of the woman’s blood hissed and boiled away, her flesh dissolving into ashes.
“Behold, Moloch rises!” the man in the goat mask screamed in a fanatical voice. The crowd’s cheering had stopped, though. Many of the faces in the crowd looked chalk-white with terror. The bull-god surveyed the crowd, its horns nearly scraping the ceiling twenty feet above the stage.
At that moment, I knew death was on its way with eyes of fire and a grin like a skull, ready to reap a field of human bodies.
***
I heard running behind me, but I didn’t dare turn away from the horrific sight in front of me. The last of the fire’s embers died, sending up thin wisps of gray smoke that spiraled around the bull-god’s monstrous face. Moloch stood as still as a statue, and if it weren’t for one thing, I might’ve thought it was some sort of sculpture or art project. He had two nostrils like a serpent’s. As his great lungs inhaled, the smoke billowed in and out of his mouth and nose.
Some of the people at the edges of the crowd had gotten up, hurrying towards the doors. Moloch’s head ratcheted to face them, his fiery eyes narrowing into slits.
“Do not leave!” the man in the goat mask pleaded. “Those who have fear are not worthy of life. Do not prove yourselves unworthy of life!” As the first of the fleeing men and women got to within a few steps of the door, Moloch gave a primal roar. In a blur of primal strength, he reached down and ripped the blackened sacrificial altar off the stage. It ripped from the wooden stage with a tremendous crack like a bullwhip. He hurled the heavy mass of stone at those heading towards the opposite exit from the one I guarded.
I watched it curve through the air. The people started screaming and clawing to escape as it smashed down on their heads with a grating crash. I could feel the floor shake from where I stood outside. Blood exploded from their smashed bodies. I saw arms and legs jerking and seizing under the heavy stone, but within a few moments, they slowed and then stopped.
Others were running towards the door I guarded, but Moloch leapt off the stage in a blur. In a few bounding steps, he reached the pale, terrified faces on the other side of the threshold. His massive clawed hand came down. I heard bones shatter as blood sprayed my face and the wall. Bone splinters and pieces of brain exploded from the screaming bodies. I backpedaled, wiping at my eyes, trying to get the blood off so I could see. No one had told me what to do in this situation. I didn’t know if I was supposed to shoot that massive abomination, or if this was all just part of the show.
“Richard!” a familiar voice cried from behind me. Panic oozed from every word. I spun, seeing Mario and Kolmek standing side by side, their pupils dilated and expressions grim.
“We have a major problem.” It was Mario. I recognized that voice, the one that sounded as if he had been gargling with rocks.
“I know,” I said, holding my rifle tightly. I pointed behind me at the scene of rampant death and destruction.
I had seen bloodshed and war before, but this was different. The Island itself seemed to feel it. The wind, which had been calm when I first landed, now whipped the Island in fast, circular currents. The breeze smelled of burnt matches and coppery blood. The static electricity which had caused the hairs on my arms to rise rippled over everything with tiny blue flashes, increasing in power by the second.
“No, no, not Moloch,” Kolmek said, looking much calmer than I felt. “The Savior lets Moloch thin the herd every year.”
“It’s Leviathan,” Mario continued grimly, “the beast from the waters. The smell of blood is drawing it from the depths of the ocean. We picked up the first blips on radar a few minutes ago. When it gets here, it won’t stop until everything is rubble. It will kill every single person on the Island.”
“All security personnel must report to the south beach immediately,” a cool robotic voice cried out over hidden loudspeakers all over the Island. The screaming from the auditorium had quieted behind me. I was afraid to look inside.
“There it is,” Kolmek said, his head jerking up as the emergency alert read. He motioned for me to follow. “It’s time to fight.”
***
We sprinted over curving trails of smooth logs between deathly quiet forests. All the insects and birds had gone silent. Ahead of us, the palm trees opened up onto the Pacific Ocean. But it was no longer a beautiful tropical blue. A black, swirling whirlpool like an ulcerous wound had opened up on its surface. It stretched hundreds of feet across, drawing closer to the shore by the second. Dead fish, sharks, dolphins, squids and even whales spun in the filthy, dark water.
Twenty black-clad security agents waited for the three of us on the beach, their eyes wide, their faces pale with terror. Like myself, they all had AR-15s and Glock 22s with extra magazines for both. I guess the Glock might be useful for blowing my brains out as a last resort if some beast from Hell rose out of the simmering waters, but I didn’t think it would stop anything from another dimension.
The clouds swirled overhead in a thick curtain as black as smoke. Flashes of blue lightning detonated every couple seconds. Mario raised his hands, screaming over the roaring of the wind. Kolmek stood by my side, his face grim and eyes narrowed.
“Your job is to fight off anything that tries to get on the Island,” he said, looking from one face to another with rapt attention. “Nothing can stand against high-caliber rifle fire. Shoot at the face and eyes when it comes up. We’ve dealt with creatures like this before, and they will retreat if you injure them badly enough.” I had the sense of being fed a line of bullshit as my mind processed this.
“What exactly is coming up?” one of the doe-eyed security men asked. He barely looked old enough to drink, a young, muscular hulk with a Marine Corps tattoo on his neck.
“They call it Leviathan,” Mario responded. “Sometimes the rituals here and the smell of blood can draw… strange things. Leviathan is one of those. We have encountered it before. The most important thing to remember is…” His voice was suddenly drowned out by a terrible cacophony that came from the center of the black whirlpool.
A screech like the detonation of a nuclear missile shook the ground. The ocean jumped and bubbled frantically. The beach heaved and cracked, the white sands disappearing in fissures that opened up like greedy mouths underneath my feet. I lost my balance, falling forwards. The screeching continued rising into a primal roar.
A green dragon head the color of an infected wound erupted from the surface of the thrashing water, rising up dozens of feet in the air. It had two enormous slitted eyes that dilated and constricted quickly as it glowered down at us. The screeching abruptly stopped, the pointed mouth of the dragon slamming shut with a sound like a gunshot.
Within moments, another cancerous green head shot up in a blur, its skin looking as hard as stone. Ridges that looked as sharp as swords ran the length of its reptilian skull, arcing over its eyes and pointed snout. More heads erupted from the ocean until all seven heads of Leviathan loomed over us.
Not one of us fired. No one even seemed to breathe as we surveyed the beast across the no-man’s land of the white sands. The slitted eyes and yellow irises of the seven heads had a demonic hunger, a reptilian coldness. Far behind us, I heard distant screams still echoing from the auditorium where Moloch held sway.
“Fire!” Mario cried. Instantly, a cacophony of gunshots exploded all around me. I jumped up on my feet, scrambling up as the seven-headed dragon leapt forward. Thousands of gallons of saltwater streamed down its massive body as it came up on the beach. Long, black paws with bone-white talons shot out of the surging ocean, followed by a tapering tail like that of a water snake.
I brought the rifle up and emptied my magazine as fast as I could, pulling the trigger over and over as I aimed at the many slitted eyes of Leviathan. But the bullets seemed to ping harmlessly off of its hard, obsidian-like scales.
It scrabbled onto the shore, the heads coming down in a blur. Rows and rows of vampiric fangs gleamed dully in each of the mouths. One security agent was bitten in half, the spurting stump of his lower body still standing for a long moment even as the rest of the body disappeared down the throat of the dragon.
Mario ran forwards, slamming another magazine in his rifle and opening fire point-blank. One of the heads came down in a blur towards him. Its great, staring eyes exploded in a shower of blue blood and thick vitreous fluid. The dragon head pulled back, its mouth opening in a primal scream of agony.
As I reloaded, I scanned the area around me, realizing that nearly half of the security agents were either dead or critically injured. I backpedaled away, keeping my eyes on the dragon. It continuously drew forward, killing more of its enemies with every step. I turned and ran into the forest, the sounds of shattering bones and dying men ringing through the air with a sickening clarity behind me.
Once I had reached the border of the trail, I heard Mario yell, “Retreat!” behind me. But by that point, it was far too late.
***
“Hey! Wait up!” a voice whispered from behind me. I turned my head, seeing Kolmek. Spatters of drying blood covered his face and uniform. As far as I could tell, none of it was his. “Mario’s dead. They’re all dead. We need to get out of here. We need to get off the Island.”
“How?” I asked.
“Find the Savior,” he answered, panting and out of breath. “We must find him. He can get us out of here.”
“I don’t even know what the guy looks like,” I muttered. “He was wearing a goat mask.”
“You’ll know him when you see him,” Kolmek said. “His body is covered in scars. Everything except his face. Stay close to me. We need to watch each other’s backs. It’s our only chance of survival.”
***
A trail of twisted, broken bodies led from the mansion to the surrounding trails and beaches. A decapitated woman with solid gold necklaces embedded with diamonds lay in front of me. It was strange on the Island, the way oblivion and ineffable wealth coexisted side by side. But everything was deathly silent, even in the mansion’s auditorium.
“Where’s the Savior?” I asked through gritted teeth. I peeked my head into the auditorium, but nothing moved. Hundreds of smashed and bloody bodies littered the floor.
“He’s around somewhere,” Kolmek answered. We started circling the mansion, looking for any signs of life. Kolmek went in the lead. As he turned the corner, an enormous black hand with sharp claws of fingers flitted forward in a blur, wrapping itself around his chest. Kolmek gave a strangled cry as it closed around him. I heard his bones crush as a spout of blood and gore flew from his mouth and nose, as if he were a toothpaste tube being squeezed.
I backpedaled away as Moloch threw the twitching corpse aside like a discarded toy. It smashed into the wall of the mansion, exploding wetly. A human-shaped, bloody stain languidly dripped down the wall above Kolmek’s mangled body.
Moloch slowly turned his head towards me, the fiery eyes flashing with hunger. He gnashed his fangs together, taking a step forward with a leg the size and shape of a tree trunk. With every step he took, I felt the ground tremble.
“Stop!” I cried, moving away from the monstrous creature. “Why are you doing this?”
“There is no why,” he gurgled, his voice monstrous and inhumanly slow. “There is only power. The weak deserve to die. Only the strong are worthy of life.” I raised my rifle in a last-ditch effort to save myself. Moloch saw it and started running towards me, every footstep crushing the paved walkway around the mansion into rubble and dust.
I aimed for his eyes and nose, emptying the entire magazine as quickly as I could. The bullets smashed into Moloch’s face. Dark red, clotted blood dripped out of the wounds, writhing with maggots. Drops of it fell around me, landing on my hair and face. I felt the small larvae twisting all over my skin. Moloch’s blood smelled nauseating, like some combination of stinkbugs and rotting bodies. He slowed, giving a roar of pain. I turned to run in the opposite direction, but as I looked out in the direction of the beach, my heart dropped.
Leviathan was moving in our direction, the giant dragon heads looming over the trees. Quickly, it swept towards me like a dark wind.
***
“You will suffer for that, worthless slave,” Moloch growled, wiping blood from his fiery eyes with his sharp talons of fingers. A sudden idea came to me. I ran in the direction of Leviathan. Moloch followed closely at my heels, only a few steps behind me.
Leviathan slithered forward over the sands and trees, its enormous body undulating like a water snake’s. I screamed at it, an incomprehensible wail of terror. Its seven heads snapped towards me. Its slitted eyes widened as it saw Moloch.
I heard the crashing of Moloch’s footsteps stop behind me, only feet away from crushing me into a paste. His massive lungs breathed quickly, exhaling the odor of sulfur and smoke.
“Leviathan,” Moloch growled in his demonic voice. “These are my tributes.” Leviathan’s dragon heads looked straight up at the Sun and screamed in response, their many voices rising and falling in a dissonant wail. As I sprinted into the trees, Leviathan and Moloch ran at each other, colliding with an ear-splitting crash. I glanced back, seeing Moloch ripping one of the dragon heads off its neck with his sharp fingers. The head screamed as blue blood exploded from the spurting stump. After a long moment, the neck fell limply forward.
The other dragon heads bit Moloch in a unified attack. They ripped deep holes in his shoulders and arms, snapping over and over like rabid dogs. As the two eldritch monstrosities attacked each other in fierce combat, I lost sight of them, but the sounds of fighting echoed over the entire island, crashing like lightning.
***
I felt like the survivor of an Apocalypse. I couldn’t find a single other living person on the Island. Hundreds of crushed, broken and decapitated bodies surrounded me. Over the cacophony of fighting, I heard a new noise: the whirring of helicopter blades nearby. It was coming from the other side of the mansion.
Frantically, I sprinted around the other side, seeing a Black Hawk helicopter getting ready to leave. A man in black robes sat at the pilot’s seat, his green eyes gleaming and a wide smile plastered across his face. I smashed my fist into the door over and over until he opened it.
“Holy shit, you’re still alive?” he asked. I hadn’t seen this man before. He had a face like a Calvin Klein model, all sharp angles and high cheekbones, perfectly proportioned in every way. But his scalp looked melted and scarred, as if someone had thrown gasoline on his hair and ignited it. His ears were stunted, twisted growths of scar tissue. His hands, too, were covered in deep, folding burn scars.
“Are you the Savior?” I responded quickly. “Please, get me out of here.”
“They do call me that,” he said wistfully. “The Savior. Yes, I guess I am. Get in.”
***
The Savior stared at me with his strange green eyes, the color of swamps where monstrous things swam under the surface.
“Some people just need to learn the hard way,” he said. The helicopter took off into a dark night covered with bright, twinkling stars. “There is no great power without great responsibility, after all. Those of us who seek the ancient ones know it comes with a cost.” I just stared out the window, gazing down at the countless mutilated, broken bodies that littered the beach.
Below us, the face of a bull stared up with eyes of fiery cyclones. The broken, still body of Leviathan lay at his feet. As we made it over the great waters of the Pacific Ocean, the bull-god raised a hand and waved. At that moment, I thought I could almost see a hurricane of translucent souls circling around him, spiraling up into the sky.

After high school, having no better ideas, I joined the Navy SEALs. I never really liked any of it, but it was a job, after all. I loved the guns and airplanes and grenades, but having to run all the time while some scumbag with a chip on his shoulder yells in my face isn’t my idea of fun.
Things got a lot more interesting after my term of service ended. I still had a high-security clearance, so I used it to take temporary jobs as a mercenary, a hired gun. I did some stints in Iraq with Blackwater, where they set me out in the middle of the desert. A watchtower and oil refinery loomed over the burning sands. Along with a few other guys, they told us, “Guard this area with your life.” While better than the SEALs, working for Blackwater was extremely boring. The other mercenaries and I would mostly just chainsmoke cigarettes and drink coffee all night, staring out across the dead, empty desert.
Over time, I worked my way up. Things started to get more interesting when a job offer arrived in my email one freezing cold winter’s morning. This is what it said.
“Mr. Chase,
“I am the head of security for a private group of entrepreneurs and investors. Through some mutual contacts, I have heard of your professionalism and experience. We are currently putting together a small crew to guard a private event on [REDACTED] Island out in the Pacific Ocean that will run from January 9th to January 26th. Would you be interested in this job? The pay rate is $900 a day.
“Once you are on the island, it will be impossible to leave until the period of employment has ended. If you are interested, please respond to this email as soon as possible.
“Sincerely,
“Mario Antonin, Head of Security.”
I was working piecemeal jobs like this one at the time, but none of them were paying that well. At most, I would usually get $350 to $500 a day, which was still good money when I was working seven days a week until the job finished. I instantly responded and said that yes, I was interested. In response, they sent me a non-disclosure agreement that was the size of a small novel that I had to sign.
That was how I found myself on a private jet, flying out to an island in the middle of the vast blue ocean. I was never told the coordinates of the island or saw it on a map. It was all kept very secret.
A few hours later, we landed on a private airstrip. I looked out the window of the jet, seeing the tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean stretching off to the horizon in every direction. Below me stood an island with palm trees and sandy white beaches. An enormous Victorian mansion loomed directly in the center of it all. The mansion was painted black and looked like something straight out of a horror movie. It had no windows, and the turrets spiraled into blade-like points.
That was my first inkling that something might not be quite right about this trip.
***
As the stairs from the private jet descended, I looked out on this strange new world. Employees waited to greet us, looking like beaten dogs. Some had their heads down, their eyes blankly scanning the ground. Most of them were women wearing red dresses, reminding me of stewardesses on a plane. The jet strip was surrounded by palm trees and tropical brush. The chirping of insects sounded all around us, high and resonant.
I saw a strange patch engraved on all of the employees’ uniforms and jackets. It looked almost like a stick figure drawing of a man, the bottom of its body ending in a C. Its arms were long and jointed, almost spidery. Three symbols like repeated iron crosses connected to the left side of its body in a line. I wondered if it was the logo of some company. I put it out of my mind for now, but I would see that symbol again all over the island, painted on the sides of the mansion and even cut into the trees with a knife. It would only be later that night that I realized its connection to Moloch.
“Good day, sir, and welcome to the Island,” the server on my left said with glassy eyes and a fake smile plastered across her face. They all looked up at once, but it was like the workers all looked through me rather than at me. Their eyes looked flat and dead, like the painted-on eyes of a doll.
“The Island, huh?” I asked, curious. “They wouldn’t tell me where I was going. They said it was a secret. Is that what you call it?” The woman just nodded, the doll-like smile never leaving her lips.
“Officially, this island is unnamed and uninhabited,” the woman said. “In fact, all traces of it have been scrubbed from the internet. You won’t find it on Google Maps or in any publicly available satellite imagery.” She leaned forward towards me with heavily mascaraed eyes and ruby-red lipstick slashed across her lips. “This is a very special place. Only very special people are allowed here. You should be honored to work here under our Savior.”
“I hope you’re talking about Jesus or something,” I said jokingly. She just smiled blankly and motioned me forward.
“Just follow that trail for a few hundred feet-” she said, pointing at an opening in the palm trees where logs were laid down horizontally over the muggy jungle- “and you’ll find the mansion. Good luck!” I thought it was a somewhat strange thing to say, wishing a random stranger good luck.
But, by the end of that night, I realized that simply to make it off this island alive, I would need lots of it.
***
I followed the woman’s directions to the back of the brutalist mansion. A heavy metal door stood there with a small bullet-proof window built in the top. A tanned, Spanish face glowered out at me then rapidly drew back and disappeared. A few heartbeats later, the door slid to the side with a grinding of hidden gears.
The head of security at the Island was a heavily-tattooed ex-Marine named Mario. He wore a dark Kevlar vest over a black outfit, making him look like a walking shadow. I found the security had their own private complex in the mansion as he showed me around the site. Hundreds of hidden cameras covered every angle of the mansion and the surrounding parts of the island. Dozens of black-clad security agents swarmed over the screens, checking the monitors and computers constantly.
“Quite a set-up you have here,” I said to Mario, nodding at him. He smacked me on the shoulder, giving a confident grin.
“Money is no issue here, Richard,” he responded. “Security is paramount. There are things on this island that could rip apart the world if they ever escaped.” I raised an eyebrow.
“Like what?” I asked. “Nuclear weapons or something?” He laughed at that.
“You’ll see for yourself tonight,” he said, his dark eyes flashing with something cold and alien.
***
Mario led me and a couple other new hired guns around the Island. The place was certainly strange. It reminded me of some combination of a secret black-ops site and a playboy billionaire’s private heaven. All of the doors in the mansion looked like they were made of thick steel. They had wheels that would spin, like those on a submarine door. The mansion also had no windows at all that I could see, except for the small, shatter-proof glass openings on the steel doors. I didn’t want to ask too many questions, however. I couldn’t resist asking him about a couple small things, however- or at least, they seemed small to me at the time.
“What are those hatchways?” I asked Mario, pointing to rectangular covers built into the concrete walkway. They had heavy handles. “Are those manholes or something?”
“There are tunnels under the Island,” he responded vaguely. “Just for maintenance and security, you understand.”
“Wow, this place is certainly… well-developed,” I said. We came out through a grove of palm trees. A stone walkway led down to a white beach. Dozens of yachts were moored all across the shore, some of them looking like they must have cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
“There’s a lot of money and power here,” Mario said. “That’s why it’s important you never talk about what you see here. These are the people who control the world, the ones behind the government and the media. Not the elected officials who the people see, but the actual power.”
“Like who?” I asked. “You mean the Rothschilds and Soros?” He laughed again, a sarcastic, grinding laugh that grated my nerves.
“Trust me, the truly powerful ones don’t even have public personas. If you know their name, then they’re just one of the puppets.” I just shook my head at that, then asked the real question that had been bothering me since I first arrived here.
“Who is the Savior?” I asked. “Is that some codename or something?” Mario froze in place.
“He’s the one who runs everything here,” he whispered conspiratorially, looking around nervously. “But don’t be mentioning that kind of shit. You’ll probably see him tonight anyway. He’s the one who runs the show. He’ll be on the stage in his normal outfit.”
***
By the end of the day, I was suited up like the rest of the security staff, wearing the pure black pants and shirt with the symbol of Moloch engraved over the heart. Hundreds of the world’s most famous politicians, actors, businessmen and artists had gathered, streaming in the front doors with a soft, diffident susurration.
I stood by the open doorway of a side exit with an AR-15 and full body armor, next to one other soldier. They had also given me a sidearm. Every entrance or exit was manned by at least two armed men. The security at this place was some of the most intense I had ever seen. Beyond the door, there were rows and rows of the most comfortable seats, all gathered in a semi-circle around a massive stage made of pure mahogany. Blood-red curtains stood closed at the front of the room, concealing their secrets- for now, at least.
“Hail Satan!” I heard the elites cry inside in unison. I didn’t want to look in at the rows of high-ranking politicians, celebrities, influencers and artists, but my curiosity was high. I peeked around the corner of the stone archway, seeing the red curtains on the stage drawing apart. I saw one of my favorite actors standing in the front row, clapping excitedly and jumping up and down.
The crowd cheered as a naked female strapped to an obsidian altar lay there. She was beautiful and blonde, probably no older than twenty with the face of a supermodel. Her mouth was gagged, her arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross. Thin leather cords were tied around her wrists and ankles, biting deeply into the skin. Her eyes rolled wildly as she shook her head from side to side. She froze, and her eyes met mine for a brief moment. I saw the pleading expression there, the mortal terror and absolute horror.
A man in a goat mask wearing black robes slunk out from the side of the stage, carrying a wavy silver dagger engraved with strange symbols. The crowd erupted into a primal roar of pleasure and excitement that sounded like it came from one monstrous mouth.
“Worthy is the Lamb!” the man in the goat mask screamed with electronic amplification. He had a deep voice, as if he had rocks rolling around in his throat. The crowd roared and clapped. Scattered cries of “Hail Lucifer!” and “Ave Satanas!” echoed down the massive auditorium.
“Hey, pay attention,” the other security agent at my side said in a thick Finnish accent. He was a tall Scandinavian-looking guy named Kolmek. “You’re not getting paid to watch the show, new guy.” I tried to rip my gaze away from the stage, but it held my attention with an obsessive horror.
“The burnt bones of children and women have been offered to the ancient ones, to Moloch,” the man on the stage cried. “Under our feet, the burnt bodies of hundreds lay dreaming. This victim will be the 666th. Her blood will bring about the Gnosis that we seek, the direct experience of the divine held by the gods, by Lucifer and Moloch and Baal…” The roaring of the crowd temporarily drowned out his electronically-magnified voice. “Tonight, we will rip open the veil!”
I had stopped watching the show, instead staring blankly out at the beach and palm trees. At that moment, another black-clad security agent came up to my partner, whispered something in his ear, then immediately disappeared, heading off back in the direction of the main security office. Kolmek shook his head grimly.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “Stay right here. Don’t move from this door no matter what. And pay attention.” I nodded and watched as he walked off in the same direction.
I immediately took the opportunity to continue watching the ceremony. I had missed something important, apparently. The woman now laid dead on the sacrificial table, a gaping hole in her chest. Blood spurted from the crater as the man in the goat mask held her beating heart grasped tightly in his hand, letting the blood stream down his naked fingers. The crowd cheered with a rising bloodlust and insanity. Most of them were standing, their eyes gleaming and wide with fanatical adoration. The entire spectacle reminded me of some kind of ancient Aztec ritual.
As the woman’s sightless eyes stared vacantly up in death, the man in a goat mask pulled out a can of gasoline. The clear liquid gurgled as he up-ended the canister over her pale, bloodless face, over her naked stomach and long legs. A moment later, he lit a match and dropped it. I heard the whooshing of the flames as they rose up.
The crowd went deathly silent as they watched the rippling flames. The man in the goat mask began chanting in some strange language I had never heard before. It sounded Semitic, but I knew it wasn’t Arabic or Hebrew. I felt something like electricity ripple through the air, almost like a feeling of falling pressure before a storm. I looked down at the hairs on my arms, seeing them rise up. I looked back up at the stage, and my eyes widened in horror.
The flaming body of the sacrificial victim had started to morph before my eyes and the eyes of the crowd. The dripping, blackening flesh jumped up and down, as if there were rats trapped in her body trying to escape the fire. There was a deafening hissing as if thousands of snakes were being burned alive.
The dead woman’s arms jerked up, the skin splitting open as if she had seams running along her skin. Something dark and muscular with curving, black talons ripped its way out of the dead, burning flesh. Behind it, a head appeared with long, curving horns and eyes that spun with whorls of fire. It looked like the offspring of a bull and a demon. Its imposing body rose up from the inferno, appearing like magic from the solid stone. It raised itself to its full height, looming over the crowd. The last of the woman’s blood hissed and boiled away, her flesh dissolving into ashes.
“Behold, Moloch rises!” the man in the goat mask screamed in a fanatical voice. The crowd’s cheering had stopped, though. Many of the faces in the crowd looked chalk-white with terror. The bull-god surveyed the crowd, its horns nearly scraping the ceiling twenty feet above the stage.
At that moment, I knew death was on its way with eyes of fire and a grin like a skull, ready to reap a field of human bodies.
***
I heard running behind me, but I didn’t dare turn away from the horrific sight in front of me. The last of the fire’s embers died, sending up thin wisps of gray smoke that spiraled around the bull-god’s monstrous face. Moloch stood as still as a statue, and if it weren’t for one thing, I might’ve thought it was some sort of sculpture or art project. He had two nostrils like a serpent’s. As his great lungs inhaled, the smoke billowed in and out of his mouth and nose.
Some of the people at the edges of the crowd had gotten up, hurrying towards the doors. Moloch’s head ratcheted to face them, his fiery eyes narrowing into slits.
“Do not leave!” the man in the goat mask pleaded. “Those who have fear are not worthy of life. Do not prove yourselves unworthy of life!” As the first of the fleeing men and women got to within a few steps of the door, Moloch gave a primal roar. In a blur of primal strength, he reached down and ripped the blackened sacrificial altar off the stage. It ripped from the wooden stage with a tremendous crack like a bullwhip. He hurled the heavy mass of stone at those heading towards the opposite exit from the one I guarded.
I watched it curve through the air. The people started screaming and clawing to escape as it smashed down on their heads with a grating crash. I could feel the floor shake from where I stood outside. Blood exploded from their smashed bodies. I saw arms and legs jerking and seizing under the heavy stone, but within a few moments, they slowed and then stopped.
Others were running towards the door I guarded, but Moloch leapt off the stage in a blur. In a few bounding steps, he reached the pale, terrified faces on the other side of the threshold. His massive clawed hand came down. I heard bones shatter as blood sprayed my face and the wall. Bone splinters and pieces of brain exploded from the screaming bodies. I backpedaled, wiping at my eyes, trying to get the blood off so I could see. No one had told me what to do in this situation. I didn’t know if I was supposed to shoot that massive abomination, or if this was all just part of the show.
“Richard!” a familiar voice cried from behind me. Panic oozed from every word. I spun, seeing Mario and Kolmek standing side by side, their pupils dilated and expressions grim.
“We have a major problem.” It was Mario. I recognized that voice, the one that sounded as if he had been gargling with rocks.
“I know,” I said, holding my rifle tightly. I pointed behind me at the scene of rampant death and destruction.
I had seen bloodshed and war before, but this was different. The Island itself seemed to feel it. The wind, which had been calm when I first landed, now whipped the Island in fast, circular currents. The breeze smelled of burnt matches and coppery blood. The static electricity which had caused the hairs on my arms to rise rippled over everything with tiny blue flashes, increasing in power by the second.
“No, no, not Moloch,” Kolmek said, looking much calmer than I felt. “The Savior lets Moloch thin the herd every year.”
“It’s Leviathan,” Mario continued grimly, “the beast from the waters. The smell of blood is drawing it from the depths of the ocean. We picked up the first blips on radar a few minutes ago. When it gets here, it won’t stop until everything is rubble. It will kill every single person on the Island.”
“All security personnel must report to the south beach immediately,” a cool robotic voice cried out over hidden loudspeakers all over the Island. The screaming from the auditorium had quieted behind me. I was afraid to look inside.
“There it is,” Kolmek said, his head jerking up as the emergency alert read. He motioned for me to follow. “It’s time to fight.”
***
We sprinted over curving trails of smooth logs between deathly quiet forests. All the insects and birds had gone silent. Ahead of us, the palm trees opened up onto the Pacific Ocean. But it was no longer a beautiful tropical blue. A black, swirling whirlpool like an ulcerous wound had opened up on its surface. It stretched hundreds of feet across, drawing closer to the shore by the second. Dead fish, sharks, dolphins, squids and even whales spun in the filthy, dark water.
Twenty black-clad security agents waited for the three of us on the beach, their eyes wide, their faces pale with terror. Like myself, they all had AR-15s and Glock 22s with extra magazines for both. I guess the Glock might be useful for blowing my brains out as a last resort if some beast from Hell rose out of the simmering waters, but I didn’t think it would stop anything from another dimension.
The clouds swirled overhead in a thick curtain as black as smoke. Flashes of blue lightning detonated every couple seconds. Mario raised his hands, screaming over the roaring of the wind. Kolmek stood by my side, his face grim and eyes narrowed.
“Your job is to fight off anything that tries to get on the Island,” he said, looking from one face to another with rapt attention. “Nothing can stand against high-caliber rifle fire. Shoot at the face and eyes when it comes up. We’ve dealt with creatures like this before, and they will retreat if you injure them badly enough.” I had the sense of being fed a line of bullshit as my mind processed this.
“What exactly is coming up?” one of the doe-eyed security men asked. He barely looked old enough to drink, a young, muscular hulk with a Marine Corps tattoo on his neck.
“They call it Leviathan,” Mario responded. “Sometimes the rituals here and the smell of blood can draw… strange things. Leviathan is one of those. We have encountered it before. The most important thing to remember is…” His voice was suddenly drowned out by a terrible cacophony that came from the center of the black whirlpool.
A screech like the detonation of a nuclear missile shook the ground. The ocean jumped and bubbled frantically. The beach heaved and cracked, the white sands disappearing in fissures that opened up like greedy mouths underneath my feet. I lost my balance, falling forwards. The screeching continued rising into a primal roar.
A green dragon head the color of an infected wound erupted from the surface of the thrashing water, rising up dozens of feet in the air. It had two enormous slitted eyes that dilated and constricted quickly as it glowered down at us. The screeching abruptly stopped, the pointed mouth of the dragon slamming shut with a sound like a gunshot.
Within moments, another cancerous green head shot up in a blur, its skin looking as hard as stone. Ridges that looked as sharp as swords ran the length of its reptilian skull, arcing over its eyes and pointed snout. More heads erupted from the ocean until all seven heads of Leviathan loomed over us.
Not one of us fired. No one even seemed to breathe as we surveyed the beast across the no-man’s land of the white sands. The slitted eyes and yellow irises of the seven heads had a demonic hunger, a reptilian coldness. Far behind us, I heard distant screams still echoing from the auditorium where Moloch held sway.
“Fire!” Mario cried. Instantly, a cacophony of gunshots exploded all around me. I jumped up on my feet, scrambling up as the seven-headed dragon leapt forward. Thousands of gallons of saltwater streamed down its massive body as it came up on the beach. Long, black paws with bone-white talons shot out of the surging ocean, followed by a tapering tail like that of a water snake.
I brought the rifle up and emptied my magazine as fast as I could, pulling the trigger over and over as I aimed at the many slitted eyes of Leviathan. But the bullets seemed to ping harmlessly off of its hard, obsidian-like scales.
It scrabbled onto the shore, the heads coming down in a blur. Rows and rows of vampiric fangs gleamed dully in each of the mouths. One security agent was bitten in half, the spurting stump of his lower body still standing for a long moment even as the rest of the body disappeared down the throat of the dragon.
Mario ran forwards, slamming another magazine in his rifle and opening fire point-blank. One of the heads came down in a blur towards him. Its great, staring eyes exploded in a shower of blue blood and thick vitreous fluid. The dragon head pulled back, its mouth opening in a primal scream of agony.
As I reloaded, I scanned the area around me, realizing that nearly half of the security agents were either dead or critically injured. I backpedaled away, keeping my eyes on the dragon. It continuously drew forward, killing more of its enemies with every step. I turned and ran into the forest, the sounds of shattering bones and dying men ringing through the air with a sickening clarity behind me.
Once I had reached the border of the trail, I heard Mario yell, “Retreat!” behind me. But by that point, it was far too late.
***
“Hey! Wait up!” a voice whispered from behind me. I turned my head, seeing Kolmek. Spatters of drying blood covered his face and uniform. As far as I could tell, none of it was his. “Mario’s dead. They’re all dead. We need to get out of here. We need to get off the Island.”
“How?” I asked.
“Find the Savior,” he answered, panting and out of breath. “We must find him. He can get us out of here.”
“I don’t even know what the guy looks like,” I muttered. “He was wearing a goat mask.”
“You’ll know him when you see him,” Kolmek said. “His body is covered in scars. Everything except his face. Stay close to me. We need to watch each other’s backs. It’s our only chance of survival.”
***
A trail of twisted, broken bodies led from the mansion to the surrounding trails and beaches. A decapitated woman with solid gold necklaces embedded with diamonds lay in front of me. It was strange on the Island, the way oblivion and ineffable wealth coexisted side by side. But everything was deathly silent, even in the mansion’s auditorium.
“Where’s the Savior?” I asked through gritted teeth. I peeked my head into the auditorium, but nothing moved. Hundreds of smashed and bloody bodies littered the floor.
“He’s around somewhere,” Kolmek answered. We started circling the mansion, looking for any signs of life. Kolmek went in the lead. As he turned the corner, an enormous black hand with sharp claws of fingers flitted forward in a blur, wrapping itself around his chest. Kolmek gave a strangled cry as it closed around him. I heard his bones crush as a spout of blood and gore flew from his mouth and nose, as if he were a toothpaste tube being squeezed.
I backpedaled away as Moloch threw the twitching corpse aside like a discarded toy. It smashed into the wall of the mansion, exploding wetly. A human-shaped, bloody stain languidly dripped down the wall above Kolmek’s mangled body.
Moloch slowly turned his head towards me, the fiery eyes flashing with hunger. He gnashed his fangs together, taking a step forward with a leg the size and shape of a tree trunk. With every step he took, I felt the ground tremble.
“Stop!” I cried, moving away from the monstrous creature. “Why are you doing this?”
“There is no why,” he gurgled, his voice monstrous and inhumanly slow. “There is only power. The weak deserve to die. Only the strong are worthy of life.” I raised my rifle in a last-ditch effort to save myself. Moloch saw it and started running towards me, every footstep crushing the paved walkway around the mansion into rubble and dust.
I aimed for his eyes and nose, emptying the entire magazine as quickly as I could. The bullets smashed into Moloch’s face. Dark red, clotted blood dripped out of the wounds, writhing with maggots. Drops of it fell around me, landing on my hair and face. I felt the small larvae twisting all over my skin. Moloch’s blood smelled nauseating, like some combination of stinkbugs and rotting bodies. He slowed, giving a roar of pain. I turned to run in the opposite direction, but as I looked out in the direction of the beach, my heart dropped.
Leviathan was moving in our direction, the giant dragon heads looming over the trees. Quickly, it swept towards me like a dark wind.
***
“You will suffer for that, worthless slave,” Moloch growled, wiping blood from his fiery eyes with his sharp talons of fingers. A sudden idea came to me. I ran in the direction of Leviathan. Moloch followed closely at my heels, only a few steps behind me.
Leviathan slithered forward over the sands and trees, its enormous body undulating like a water snake’s. I screamed at it, an incomprehensible wail of terror. Its seven heads snapped towards me. Its slitted eyes widened as it saw Moloch.
I heard the crashing of Moloch’s footsteps stop behind me, only feet away from crushing me into a paste. His massive lungs breathed quickly, exhaling the odor of sulfur and smoke.
“Leviathan,” Moloch growled in his demonic voice. “These are my tributes.” Leviathan’s dragon heads looked straight up at the Sun and screamed in response, their many voices rising and falling in a dissonant wail. As I sprinted into the trees, Leviathan and Moloch ran at each other, colliding with an ear-splitting crash. I glanced back, seeing Moloch ripping one of the dragon heads off its neck with his sharp fingers. The head screamed as blue blood exploded from the spurting stump. After a long moment, the neck fell limply forward.
The other dragon heads bit Moloch in a unified attack. They ripped deep holes in his shoulders and arms, snapping over and over like rabid dogs. As the two eldritch monstrosities attacked each other in fierce combat, I lost sight of them, but the sounds of fighting echoed over the entire island, crashing like lightning.
***
I felt like the survivor of an Apocalypse. I couldn’t find a single other living person on the Island. Hundreds of crushed, broken and decapitated bodies surrounded me. Over the cacophony of fighting, I heard a new noise: the whirring of helicopter blades nearby. It was coming from the other side of the mansion.
Frantically, I sprinted around the other side, seeing a Black Hawk helicopter getting ready to leave. A man in black robes sat at the pilot’s seat, his green eyes gleaming and a wide smile plastered across his face. I smashed my fist into the door over and over until he opened it.
“Holy shit, you’re still alive?” he asked. I hadn’t seen this man before. He had a face like a Calvin Klein model, all sharp angles and high cheekbones, perfectly proportioned in every way. But his scalp looked melted and scarred, as if someone had thrown gasoline on his hair and ignited it. His ears were stunted, twisted growths of scar tissue. His hands, too, were covered in deep, folding burn scars.
“Are you the Savior?” I responded quickly. “Please, get me out of here.”
“They do call me that,” he said wistfully. “The Savior. Yes, I guess I am. Get in.”
***
The Savior stared at me with his strange green eyes, the color of swamps where monstrous things swam under the surface.
“Some people just need to learn the hard way,” he said. The helicopter took off into a dark night covered with bright, twinkling stars. “There is no great power without great responsibility, after all. Those of us who seek the ancient ones know it comes with a cost.” I just stared out the window, gazing down at the countless mutilated, broken bodies that littered the beach.
Below us, the face of a bull stared up with eyes of fiery cyclones. The broken, still body of Leviathan lay at his feet. As we made it over the great waters of the Pacific Ocean, the bull-god raised a hand and waved. At that moment, I thought I could almost see a hurricane of translucent souls circling around him, spiraling up into the sky.

In manga/light novels, they rarely seem to get otome games right, whether it be for men, or women.
There's so many villain otome manga, and this has lead to not a small potion of readers actually wanting to play the games they believe they're based on. Time and time again they're told there simply isn't a huge genre of "villain" games. I have never personally played one either. A common trope, "the bullying call out," I have never ever seen. The bully, if they exist, are typically faceless and in one cutscene. A lot of otome games aren't in a Victorian setting either, other settings exist too. I've never seen an execution, which while extremely common in villain manga, in my experience happens only in bad ends to the heroine or her love interest. I'm not saying it has to be exact, but it is a little weird all these comics are parodying something that doesn't exist. It makes me wonder if any of the authors have played an otome game.
I find it interesting that in some male aimed media about otome games, they seem to believe women are written as the dominant ones. Maybe the author doesn't truly believe it, but the fans do. It's extremely rare to see women dominate over men in otome games, and I can think of only one game in which women were sort of "higher class" than the men. (It's usually dominant LI's over women) Guys (the majority who read these things, but other groups can as well) actually think otome games are like this too, which isn't true for the vast majority. (I have met several thinking this way) It rubs me the wrong way, the assumption that in a women oriented game, women oppress men commonly. I don't know if it changes much in later chapters, but The World of Otome Games is Tough For Mobs seems to be a good example. (It starts off insulting, and supposedly becomes a different kind of insulting later, with women not really having any true power and existing to weaken their partners in the story. This is secondhand info) I know it doesn't have to be an exact replica of otome games, but the story doesn't speak well of the people who play these games. Many men have no exposure to otome besides through this media, and may assume it to be like described. (Oh, but they'd never play anyway!) Even if they never would've played anyway, many take away a negative look on the real people who play these games. The one I listed seems to be popular from what I can tell, which is why I brought it up.
What are your thoughts on otome adaptations? There may be exceptions, but in my personal experience, it's how the majority are.

Ok, so gender is a social construct, right? No, I don't mean it's not real, it's very real, just made up you know? Just like money, you get money and you can spend them and they are real but they are still made up, they do nothing. No? Ok but still, it is a social construct which means it can change with society, time and whatever. Sure ok, it's mostly women and men, vaginas and penises but it doesn't have to be that way. It hasn't been that way in many societies, ok fine I can't name one but I'm pretty sure I read it somewhere.
Ok but let's go back to the social construct thing because turns out that sex is also a social construct. Yes sorry they are two different things, well not so much different there is very much an overlap but still let's pretend for a second. Ok, gender is like what you feel and sex is like physical characteristics. Ok maybe it doesn't matter that sex is a social construct right now, sorry, forget about it. Ok, but they are two different things. With some people they align, right? Like for example you were assigned male at birth and... Sorry, yeah it means you have like male parts and the doctor is like "look: a boy". Yes ok, so you were assigned male at birth, or amab. AMAB, assigned male at... ok no forget it, don't worry about it. So the doctor was like here is a boy, and growing up you are fine with it and like feel like a man and everything. Yes, I get you don't really "feel like a man" but still, being a man is fine for you right? Ok, like people see you as a man, address you like a man and you are fine with it right? Well, that's like that for the majority of people, well I think but, still, probably. That's called being cisgender, like the opposite of transgender. No, I know you heard it's a slur but it's just the opposite of trans. Like Cisalpine Gaul and Tansalpine Gaul. What? Oh, it's a Roman thing, like a province. One was on one side of the Alps, the other on the other side, so trans and cis. It's not a slur is my point.
Anyway, I was saying that most people are fine with the gender that they were "born with" let's say even if that's not really how it works. Fine, though, for some people however that's not the case, like the doctor assigned them a gender that doesn't feel like their own. I can't explain what it means to feel a gender, but like it's feelings and stuff? Ok like you feel good as a gender and bad as another. It's fine if you don't get it, it's complicated, I'll continue and maybe I'll make it clearer. So, for some people, their "sex" and "gender" don't align, well it's not exactly like that but it's fine for now, let's talk about the "standard" case. Well not really "standard", sorry forget about it.
Where was I? Right, dysphoria. Sorry, no I mean this "mismatch" is called dysphoria, gender dysphoria to be precise. Well it's the negative feelings that come from this mismatch, it's the opposite of euphoria. Yes like being happy and stuff, the opposite. Ok right, some people experience this discomfort, and usually people that do identify as transgender. Sorry, like you were assigned female at birth but you don't like being a woman, you would prefer looking like a man, doing manly stuff... Yes, you can do that while being a woman but that's not the point, you are not a woman so... No I don't mean that women who do manly stuff are actually men. You also don't have to do manly stuff to be a man, but... You know what, my mistake sorry, let me go back to the dysphoria thingy, no actually to the gender as a social construct thing, I forgot I was telling you about that.
So, I told you that gender is a social construct, right? But it's still a real thing. So there still are things like "women have longer hair and like pink things". Look I'm not saying that it's set in stone, I'm not a fan of rigid gender roles but they still somewhat exist. So like, a child who experiences gender dysphoria might want to play with toys that are stereo-typically of the opposite sex. Sure it's fine if a boy plays with dolls that's not what I mean, it's fine but since dolls are still somewhat gendered, children pick up on this and try to conform to gender roles. No a boy that plays with dolls it's not a girl, that's not what I mean. No, I don't think teachers actually do that, I don't think your cousin was "transed" by them. Sorry, I need a glass of water, do you want anything to drink? Ok, I'll be back in a second.
Ok, I don't remember what I was talking about. No, not your cousin, I actually wanted to make some point. Oh right, dysphoria. Are you kinda getting it? Ok, it's fine but it's still a thing for some people. Ok, you don't really need dysphoria to be trans, or actually euphoria is still a sign that things weren't that good before, maybe. Like it's hard to know that you aren't feeling as good as you could feel if it's everything you have ever experienced. No, I don't mean feel good in that way, it's not a fetish thing. Well, it can also be about feeling good in that way, you know what sorry forget about this, I'm still kinda tipsy from before.
Ok, so maybe if I talk about my experience I can make it clearer, it's hard to paint a broader picture because everyone experiences these things differently, you know. Personally, I don't really feel like either a man or a woman. Like I don't care about how I look... Ok fine, I do hate my body but not in a dysphoric way, just in a generally unhealthy way. Maybe it is sorta dysphoric at times but not way too much. But what I care about is mostly the way I'm perceived, like I would like to not be perceived at all, haha. Yeah sorry it's kind of a joke but not really, I'm not a fan of existing physically, I don't know if it's a gender thing. Still, I would like to be seen as a human of indefinite gender, like you know Fallen London? It's a game, well a text-based game, set in Victorian London but underground because the queen sold the city to these mysterious entities called Masters of the Bazaar in exchange for the life of Prince Albert who was dying or something. Ok, it doesn't matter, but there were options at the start to choose your gender and the third one went something like "individual of mysterious and indistinct gender". Yeah that blew my mind when I was younger, I still didn't know about all this gender stuff but it felt really good to choose that option. It's fine if you don't know it, it was just an example. It doesn't mean I want to conform to an androgynous look, not that there is anything wrong with that. It's just not for me I guess, well ok I'm still envious of some androgynous hotties out there but that is not necessarily what I want to look like. Maybe I just want to feel "hot" and desirable, idk.
Mmh, I should play Fallen London again, I played Sunless Sea but I didn't really get it, I liked Sunless Skies more. Oh sorry, they are spin-offs of the game I was talking about. So what was I talking about? It's fine if you don't remember, I was ranting quite a bit there. Look I'll just put a random Friends episode on and I'll suck you off, alright? We'll never see each other again after this, ok?
Right...

I became interested in the “Jack the Ripper” cases years ago. I had went with my Dad on a business trip to the UK when I was a child where I had first heard about the murders. Since that time I have checked out every library book that my city library has to offer on the matter, I have subscribed to several different genealogy sites along with various others from that region. I am an active member on various different forums and sites, I have read thousands of theories, and been involved in thousands of debates regarding everything from the identity of the killer, to the victims personal lives. Today, just like the many that came before me, I too am no closer to saying with any confidence that I have gained any ground in identifying the killer. I have came across some suspects that interest me, and of course some which I consider preposterous and others unlikely but still plausible. Somewhat recently I have started an investigation into a man who inserted himself into one of the murdered victims. To be more specific, the last man to see the last victim Mary Jane Kelly alive. I find him to be a very interesting suspect for several reasons which I will elaborate on in this thread. This person of course is the man who came forward on the evening of November 12th 1888 and gave inspector Abberline a very, very interesting account of what he claimed to have witnessed. This man of course is the man who identified himself as George Hutchinson.
George Hutchinson History:
We know very little of Hutchinson before he came forward on November 12th 1888. We do know that the census has him as an unemployed groom living at the Victorian home for working men. He was described being a SHORT and STOUT man having a military appearance.
Hutchinson inserted himself into the case, just as FBI profiler claims that the killer may do, when he gave a very detailed and almost too good to be true statement to inspector Frederick Abberline in regards to what he had observed on the early morning hours just before the last canonical victim Mary Jane Kelly was murdered.
Hutchinson’s statement to Abberline:
Hutchinson claimed that he had seen Mary Kelly, the victim, on the night of her death, 9th November 1888. He said that he was actually friends with the victim, having known her for three years, and bumped into her on Commercial Street at around 2am after finding that he no longer had a bed available at his home. She requested a sixpence from him, which he claimed he didn’t have, to which she bid him good morning and continued on her way.
Hutchinson told Abberline that after parting ways, he turned to see her get stopped by a man coming in the opposite direction. Supposedly, the man said something to Kelly which Hutchinson couldn’t hear and then they laughed. Afterwards, Kelly said “Alright,” and the man responded with “you will be alright for what I have told you,” before they turned around to walk back down the street, back towards Hutchinson.
Hutchinson claimed that he was intrigued by the man as he appeared wealthy and so stood against a lamp in front of the Queen’s House pub and waited for them to pass. As they passed, Hutchinson’s statement says that the man pulled his hat down to try and cover his face but Hutchinson stooped to ensure he could see him clearly.
Hutchinson claimed that the man was between 34 and 35 years of age, 5 feet and 6 inches tall with a small moustache which curled upwards at the edges and dark hair. He also specified that the man’s eyelashes and eyes were dark in colour, though he had a pale complexion. Beyond this, he wore a long, collared coat which was dark in colour but featured astrakhan cuffs; it was this trait which defined the man’s title of ‘The Astrakhan Man’ in Ripperology circles. Additionally, in this single glance, Hutchinson also noticed that the man was wearing boots and gaiters with white buttons, alongside a thick gold chain around his neck and a black tie with a horseshoe pin attached to it. He also identified that the man was holding a small parcel in his left hand with a strap around it.
All in all, a very highly detailed description given by George Hutchinson.
At around 2:15 AM the pair walked past him, Hutchinson claimed that he tried to follow them, heading towards the Miller’s Court, where Kelly lived and was found brutally murdered hours later. George elaborated, claiming he saw them stand and talk at the entrance to the courtyard, during which time he heard specifics of their conversation, saw them kiss and described how Kelly claimed she had lost her handkerchief, to which the man handed her a red handkerchief of his own.
Afterwards, Hutchinson waited in Miller’s Court to see if they would leave Kelly’s home. He waited for 45 minutes before departing, which is the only part of the statement corroborated by another eyewitness, Sarah Lewis, who claimed to see a man standing opposite Miller’s Court at this time. This concluded his statement.
Just before Hutchinson we have another eye witness who observed Kelly that evening. This is her statement. MARY ANN COX: “She last saw deceased alive about a quarter to 12 on Thursday night. Deceased was very much intoxicated at that time and was with a SHORT, STOUT man, shabbily dressed, with a round billycock hat on. He had a can of beer in his hand. He had a blotchy face and a heavy carroty moustache. Witness followed them into the court and said, "good night", to the deceased, who replied, "Good night; I am going to sing."
The door was shut and witness heard the deceased singing, "Only a violet I plucked from mother's grave."
Witness went to her room and remained there about a quarter of an hour, and then went out. Deceased was still singing at that time.
It was raining, and witness returned home at 3:10 a.m., and the light in the deceased's room was then out and there was no noise
Another eye witness was Sarah Lewis (as seen in the latter part of George Hutchinson’s statement) this is her statement.
SARAH LEWIS : “Sarah Lewis, Great Pearl Street, stated:- I visited a friend at Miller's Court on Friday morning at half-past two o'clock. I saw a man standing on the pavement. He was SHORT and STOUT but she could not see his face”
Are you noticing a pattern?
-Hutchinson admittedly puts himself in the exact spot at the exact time that Sarah Lewis sees a man she describes as SHORT and STOUT. This meaning that this man was Hutchinson. However, Hutchinson tells Abberline that he did not see Kelly until around 2AM when she asked him for sixpence. Hutchinson claims that that he spent all his money going down to Romford.
But, Mary Ann cox sees Kelly in the company of a SHORT and STOUT man at 11:45 PM.
How many SHORT and STOUT men “by description” came into Mary Kelly’s life within the course of a few hours?
Somebody using the description of “STOUT” is a unique physical description. For instance would anybody describe the current United States president as “Stout”? No, absolutely not. That is not a physical trait that he holds. What about a man who is 5’5 and weighs 185lbs? This may be considered as stout. Likewise, what is a man is 5’5 and has a square face with broad shoulders? Could we call him “Stout”. Yes, I would think so.
Nowhere in the eyewitness, police, or any other reports in these cases is ANYBODY else described as being stout. But this unique physical characteristic plagues this case, and is even more reported than that of the foreign or Jewish man. At least 6 different eyewitness from different cases of the canonical victims describe the SHORT and STOUT man with reddish hair and mustache.
QUESTIONING HUTCHINSONS STATEMENT:
1) Why did Mary Kelly who was broke and behind on her rent only ask Hutchinson for sixpence? Why not more? Why this specific amount? Oddly, this would be the same amount that Kelly would have charged.
2) A man with a big gold chain and dressed to the nines looking like he just walked off the monopoly board is walking around Commercial and Thrawl street (one of the roughest areas in Whitechapel) at 2AM and he is not worried about getting robbed, or worse? I don’t buy it.
3) Why did Hutchinson wait 3 days to come in? Is it because he knew that he had been spotted by Lewis and perhaps others and wanted to take the spotlight off the short stout man?
4) Dr Bond puts Kelly’s death between 3AM - 4AM. Ironically this is the same time that Hutchinson “claimed” to have left the court.
5) Hutchinson claimed that he had spent all his money going down to Romford. So we are to believe that Hutchinson walked roughly 16 miles back to Whitechapel in the cold and rain only to get back and have no lodging? Sixpence could also be the amount agreed for somebody to stay the night with no sexual favors.
6) Mary Ann cox says that when Kelly took the short stout man into her room that Kelly did not seem to engage in any sexual activities with him, but rather sand to him for over an hour and then more than likely shared a meal of fish and potatoes with him.
7) Where did Hutchinson go after he “claimed” to have left the court? He had no lodging, and he just witnessed what he described to Abberline as a very mysterious man walk into a room with his friend who he claimed to have known for the better part of three years.
8) If Hutchinson only wanted to get his five minutes of fame he certainly would have came forward a lot sooner than three days later.
9) Hutchinson lived on Commercial street, this is located in the heart of Jack the rippers kill zone.
10) The majority of Hutchinson’s witnesses statement seems made up and seems to piggy back off of bits and pieces of reports from the newspapers. The final blow was describing a foreign or Jewish man to Abberline, which by this time probably had Abberline drooling. Many researchers today consider Hutchinson’s statement to be overly embellished.
11) Kelly was the last canonical victim, and the last victim to have been so severely mutilated in this fashion around that area. Researchers have often speculated on why the killer stopped so suddenly after Kelly. Was it because he was sent to prison on an unrelated charge? If so, he would have started again after getting out. Could it be because he moved away? If so we would have seen more victims from another region but same MO. Could it be that he died? It’s possible. Or, it could be that he got so close to getting caught with Kelly that he stopped killing. After all, there was nothing that could top what he did to that poor girl.
I could keep going, but it is my opinion that when Hutchinson came forward on the evening of November 12th that Abberline only questioned him as a witness and did not interview him as a suspect.
It is my opinion that Hutchinson made an arrangement with Kelly to sleep at her place, possibly around the same time Cox observed he and Kelly drinking together, in exchange for sixpence. Kelly takes another client and tells Hutchinson to wait outside. Hutchison comes back into Kelly’s room after the client leaves around 3AM and murders her shortly after.
I am not saying that George Hutchinson is Jack the Ripper. Only that the man who identified himself as George Hutchinson was the man who killed Mary Jane Kelly.
Thank you for your time.

https://www.premier.vic.gov.au/statement-premier-126
Premier Jacinta Allan has announced a new parliamentary role in the Victorian government to change men’s behaviour and encourage more respectful relationships within the community.
The Premier appointed Tim Richardson MP, the member for Mordialloc, as the inaugural Parliamentary Secretary for Men’s Behaviour Change
​

My Understanding Of "A Rose for Emily"
After reading “A Rose for Emily”, I have the impression that William Faulkner is attempting to highlight specific changeovers that are taking place regarding the roles that women play in the twentieth century. A specific context is the final phase of the Victorian era, which extensively portrayed improved endeavors in steering the rights of women in society. The publishing of “A Rose for Emily” took place in nineteen thirty, and within this year, women had already showcased their baseline capabilities of undertaking activity roles that extended outside their homes (Jansson, 2018). This basis was significant within World War I and was epitome by women being accorded the recognition of voting.
Women were taking significant strides in showcasing that they had the capability of taking charge of their own lives. In this regard, “A Rose for Emily” strives to symbolize what we currently perceive as feminism within society. An example is when William Faulkner writes about Emily’s dismissal of the Board of Aldermen’s directive to ensure that she had proceeded to pay her taxes (Jansson, 2018). This part demonstrates women's growing belief that they had the will to refuse to be tied to total submission towards men, who had the final say regarding what to do or what not to do within the town.
Nevertheless, William Faulkner attempts to highlight that the new role that women were taking in having a say in their lives was in fact, not meriting. Faulkner specifically undermines and attempts to rebuke women's character trait of being founded on attempting to grasp power from men, who are the patriarchs. On this note, Faulkner relates female power to a form of madness (Jansson, 2018). The example is symbolized when Barron’s life is taken away through Emily’s “insanity”.
Personal Argument for Compelling Other Readers to Read “A Rose for Emily”
In attempting to persuade others to read "A Rose for Emily" I would make the argument that William Faulkner chooses to use a story structure that controls the mood that the reader will feel and understand. A significant context is when William Faulkner moves away from the customary and victorian narrative-founded framework. In this regard, the author starts the story at the final phase of Miss Emily's living and then uses the aspect of flashbacks in developing the story's plot (Bai et al., 2020). The framework that William Faulkner uses tends to be baffling and complicated to the person reading the story.
In every progressive sequence that relays to the subsequent story component, and inevitably within almost the introductory part of the subsequent paragraph, there is the feeling that the reader is compelled by the author to retrace their steps. The reader is then compelled to re-evaluate the baseline continually evolving storyline. The context creates a form of suspense that keeps the reader focused in attempting to understand the life that Miss Emily is living (Bai et al., 2020). The basis is the inspired sense of discomfort that William Faulkner creates, with a disorganized depiction of Miss Emily’s way of life.
A specific example of disorganization is through the author’s initial depiction of smell. Later on, the author highlights the meeting that Miss Emily has with Homer, which eventually leads to the buying of arsenic. Homer is subsequently removed from the story when the actions leading to his loss of life are revealed (Bai et al., 2020). Nevertheless, the reader is not shown why Homer died. The created chain of events through the story structure, therefore, creates a sense of "plot thickening" that drives the reader to be focused on how the story will eventually end.
References
Bai, X., Zhang, X., & Li, Y. (2020). An Analysis of Emily's Characters in A Rose for Emily from the Perspective of Narration. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 11(4), 611–615. https://doi.org/ http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/jltr.1104.12
Jansson, M. (2018). In the Traces of Modernism: William Faulkner in Swedish Criticism 1932–1950. Humanities, 7(4), 96. https://doi.org/ https://doi.org/10.3390/h7040096

My Understanding Of "A Rose for Emily"
After reading “A Rose for Emily”, I have the impression that William Faulkner is attempting to highlight specific changeovers that are taking place regarding the roles that women play in the twentieth century. A specific context is the final phase of the Victorian era, which extensively portrayed improved endeavors in steering the rights of women in society. The publishing of “A Rose for Emily” took place in nineteen thirty, and within this year, women had already showcased their baseline capabilities of undertaking activity roles that extended outside their homes (Jansson, 2018). This basis was significant within World War I and was epitome by women being accorded the recognition of voting.
Women were taking significant strides in showcasing that they had the capability of taking charge of their own lives. In this regard, “A Rose for Emily” strives to symbolize what we currently perceive as feminism within society. An example is when William Faulkner writes about Emily’s dismissal of the Board of Aldermen’s directive to ensure that she had proceeded to pay her taxes (Jansson, 2018). This part demonstrates women's growing belief that they had the will to refuse to be tied to total submission towards men, who had the final say regarding what to do or what not to do within the town.
Nevertheless, William Faulkner attempts to highlight that the new role that women were taking in having a say in their lives was in fact, not meriting. Faulkner specifically undermines and attempts to rebuke women's character trait of being founded on attempting to grasp power from men, who are the patriarchs. On this note, Faulkner relates female power to a form of madness (Jansson, 2018). The example is symbolized when Barron’s life is taken away through Emily’s “insanity”.
Personal Argument for Compelling Other Readers to Read “A Rose for Emily”
In attempting to persuade others to read "A Rose for Emily" I would make the argument that William Faulkner chooses to use a story structure that controls the mood that the reader will feel and understand. A significant context is when William Faulkner moves away from the customary and victorian narrative-founded framework. In this regard, the author starts the story at the final phase of Miss Emily's living and then uses the aspect of flashbacks in developing the story's plot (Bai et al., 2020). The framework that William Faulkner uses tends to be baffling and complicated to the person reading the story.
In every progressive sequence that relays to the subsequent story component, and inevitably within almost the introductory part of the subsequent paragraph, there is the feeling that the reader is compelled by the author to retrace their steps. The reader is then compelled to re-evaluate the baseline continually evolving storyline. The context creates a form of suspense that keeps the reader focused in attempting to understand the life that Miss Emily is living (Bai et al., 2020). The basis is the inspired sense of discomfort that William Faulkner creates, with a disorganized depiction of Miss Emily’s way of life.
A specific example of disorganization is through the author’s initial depiction of smell. Later on, the author highlights the meeting that Miss Emily has with Homer, which eventually leads to the buying of arsenic. Homer is subsequently removed from the story when the actions leading to his loss of life are revealed (Bai et al., 2020). Nevertheless, the reader is not shown why Homer died. The created chain of events through the story structure, therefore, creates a sense of "plot thickening" that drives the reader to be focused on how the story will eventually end.
References
Bai, X., Zhang, X., & Li, Y. (2020). An Analysis of Emily's Characters in A Rose for Emily from the Perspective of Narration. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 11(4), 611–615. https://doi.org/ http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/jltr.1104.12
Jansson, M. (2018). In the Traces of Modernism: William Faulkner in Swedish Criticism 1932–1950. Humanities, 7(4), 96. https://doi.org/ https://doi.org/10.3390/h7040096

Hello night owls and fashion enthusiasts,
After seeing many inquiries about how to thrift goth girl fashion effectively, I've decided to share some strategies for finding the perfect clothing, accessories, and footwear in second-hand stores and online platforms.
1. Understand the Aesthetic: Before you start your thrifting journey, it's crucial to understand the goth aesthetic. The goth subculture has its roots in the post-punk movement, with music playing a significant role. Goth fashion draws inspiration from punk, glam, and other alternative styles, mixing traditional and borrowed elements. It helps to research different substyles (like Victorian goth, cybergoth, or pastel goth) and decide which resonates with you most.
2. Think Versatile: The key to a successful goth wardrobe isn't buying tons of pieces—it's having versatile items that can be mixed and matched to create different outfits. Look for items like black dresses, trench coats, and staple pieces in different styles. One good find can be a base for many different looks.
3. Don't Ignore Mainstream Stores: When you're thrifting, don't limit yourself to stores that explicitly sell goth or alternative clothing. Often, you can find excellent pieces at mainstream thrift stores, online marketplaces, or even garage sales. It's all about spotting the potential in pieces, such as seeing how a vintage lace dress could work in a goth outfit.
4. DIY Is Your Friend: Part of the goth culture is a DIY ethos. If you find an item that's close but not perfect, think about how you could alter it to fit your aesthetic. This could be as simple as changing buttons, adding patches, or even using dye to darken a garment. With a bit of creativity and a DIY spirit, you can transform seemingly ordinary clothes into goth fashion. Simple customizations can add a personal touch to your outfits. A basic black shirt can be transformed with some fabric paint or patches. A simple skirt can be made edgier with some added lace or chains. And never underestimate the power of safety pins!
5. Patience and Persistence: Thrifting is not always a quick process. It might take multiple trips to find pieces that work for you. But that's part of the fun – the thrill of the hunt and the joy when you finally discover that perfect piece.
6. Try Online Thrifting: Don't forget to check out online platforms like eBay, Poshmark, and Depop. These platforms often have a good variety of goth and alternative fashion items. Use specific keywords for what you're looking for, like "goth", "punk", "alternative", "leather jacket", "lace dress", etc., to narrow down the search results.
7. Check for Quality: Be sure to check the quality of items before buying. Sometimes, clothing at thrift stores can be worn out or have minor damage. It's crucial to ensure the items you buy are in good condition and will last. Invest in good quality staple pieces, like a trench coat or combat boots, which you can use with multiple outfits. Fast fashion might be tempting due to its affordability, but quality items will last you much longer and usually fit and look better.
8. Join the Community: Become part of the online goth community. Subreddits like GothFashion and goth are great places to share, learn, and engage with others about goth fashion.
9. Hit Thrift Stores on Delivery Days
Some thrift stores have specific days or times when they put out new merchandise. If you can figure out these days/times, you increase your chances of scoring the best finds before others get to them. If you're unsure, don't be afraid to ask the staff. They'll often be happy to tell you when new merchandise typically hits the floor.
10. Look Beyond the Women’s Section
This tip applies to anyone, not just girls. Thrift stores aren’t perfectly organized, and it's common to find women’s clothing in the men’s section or vice versa. Also, men's clothing can be a great source of oversized or unique items that you can incorporate into your style.
11. Use Online Platforms
If you can't find what you're looking for in physical stores, don't forget about online thrift stores and platforms like Depop, Poshmark, or eBay. These can be excellent resources for finding goth fashion pieces, though it's important to always check the seller's reputation and the item description for any potential issues.
And lastly, enjoy the process. Thrifting is like a treasure hunt. It's about the thrill of the hunt and the satisfaction of finding something awesome. So, have fun with it!
Happy thrifting, darklings!
Goth Girl Clothing & Outfits Video Playlist