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Hello
Happy Mothers Day!
Looking to move across the country and have to shed some weight. Only looking to sell, no trades at the moment. I am also open to local deals in the NY area, Queens, LI, Manhattan. Prices include shipping.
Timestamp
Lost Origin Booster Box 1x - $220
V-Star Universe Booster Box 3x - $70 ea
Paldea Evolved 2x - $110 ea
Obsidian Flames PC ETB 4x - $65 ea
Silver Tempest Build & Battle Stadium 4x - $32 ea
Morpeko V-UNION Playmat Premium Collection 6x - $25(Sealed)/$22(No Box) ea (Prefer to unseal these and discard packaging before shipping cause they’re huge)
2023 Trainers Tool Kit 2x - $15 ea
Black Ultra Pro Sleeves 50 count 6x - Will throw these in if you bundle a few items.

I had been hiking down the Appalachian Trail for over two weeks without issue on the day when the nightmare began. My friend, X, was by my side the entire time. It was, quite honestly, comforting to have someone who stood nearly six-and-a-half feet tall with me, especially during the long, dark nights when the howling of coyotes drew near. Black bears, too, were a constant presence in these dark mountains. As we got farther from towns and civilization, more ancient predators than human beings took over the land, stalking the night like creeping shadows.
For this trip, we both had bought as few supplies as possible. Included in our packs were MREs, two sleeping bags, some tarps and hammocks, some light clothing, and two pistols with a few boxes of ammo. We didn’t want to be too weighed down that we wouldn’t be able to move fast, after all. We would source water from the streams, waterfalls and lakes along the way and filter it using Lifestraws.
As the spring breeze blew past us, cooling the sweat on my face, I noticed the trail ahead of us weaving its way through thick swampland. The buzzing of flies and mosquitoes increased with every step. The green, fetid waters of the swamp bubbled constantly, as if it were whispering secrets to us.
“Ah, shit,” X said, glancing down the hill with his dark, serious eyes. His tanned skin was covered in a thin sheen of sweat as he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Another swamp. I hate swamps. You know there’s going to be a million mosquitoes and flies down there.” I pulled out the map, squinting down at it. I ran my finger down the trail, seeing the mountains and valleys we had already passed.
“The trail shouldn’t be going through any swamps,” I said. “They’re supposed to be marked. There’s no ponds or anything around here.” And yet there very clearly was. Either we were in a different spot than I thought we were, or the map was outdated. The trail also grew thinner as we descended. The sharp branches of the bushes stuck out like greedy hands, grabbing at our backpacks and clothes as we pressed forward.
“Well, whatever,” X said gruffly, plowing ahead. Twigs cracked under his massive bulk. The thin branches hanging across the path snapped as he plowed forward. I let him go first, since he was significantly bigger than myself. It was like following in the path of a bull.
“The faster we move, the faster we’ll be through it. We don’t want to camp anywhere around here when it gets dark,” X continued, looking grim. “We’ll be eaten alive by bugs by sunrise. We need to make it to the other side of these boglands before we can stop for the night.”
“Yeah, and I could use some more water,” I said, shaking my mostly empty canteen. “I wouldn’t drink this shit no matter what we did to it. It probably has brain-eating parasites crawling in it.” I checked my watch, realizing that dusk was only a half hour away. We would have to move fast indeed, especially as we didn’t know the size of the swamp. I was not enthusiastic about hiking in the dark with the many steep trails and sharp rocks that covered the surrounding land. A single misstep could lead to a very long, bone-shattering fall.
To my increasing dismay, I realized that the trail we were on no longer had the characteristic white markings of the Appalachian Trail. I kept checking the trees for the past fifteen minutes, and I definitely hadn’t seen a single one. I couldn’t remember the last time we had passed one, but I had a creeping suspicion it had been at least a couple hours ago.
“I think we have a problem, man,” I whispered. “I don’t know how it possibly could have happened, but I think we’re on the wrong trail.”
“There’s not supposed to be any other trails around here,” X argued. “Check the map.”
“Then where’s the white blazes? There’s not supposed to be any boglands around here, either, yet we’re walking through the middle of one,” I said. He shook his head.
“Listen, Ben, there’s not going to be markers on the entire Appalachian Trail,” he said. “Just trust me. We’re on the right path. Sometimes forests change. Swamps take over spots where forests used to lay. Hell, the Sahara Desert has been expanding for thousands of years, just eating the forests and plains all around it. There used to be lions and savannah in Morocco, and now it’s all dead and dry.”
I felt doubtful, but I continued forwards, following closely behind X. Neither one of us had ever done the full Appalachian Trail, after all. I hoped he was right. I was not enthusiastic about backtracking two or three hours if he wasn’t.
I thought back closely on our travels during the last few hours, wondering where we could have gone wrong. The trail had been rather overgrown and rocky on the peak of the last mountain. There had been a beautiful view spanning hundreds of miles, looking far off into state forests and winding roads. I remembered seeing the white marker near the top, but after we had started descending, it disappeared. That must have been where we went wrong, if we did, indeed, go off-course. But I couldn’t be sure, and I didn’t tell X about my suspicions.
We finished descending a steep, rocky trail into a valley where the boglands really started. The trees ended in a massive semi-circle around the open swamp. Thick peat covered the entire surface of it like rotted, grayish-brown skin. I saw water snakes quietly disappearing into the stagnant water, leaving behind slowly expanding ripples.
“This is pretty cool,” I said, stopping for a moment at the bottom of the trail to admire the boglands. Our trail continued directly through the center of it, no more than a raised patch of black earth surrounded by green swampy water. I could hear the many insects chirping and flying before we even took a step forward. Though the spring air felt warm and I was covered in sweat, I still reached into my bag, taking out a windbreaker that would cover up my arms and neck to help with the bugs. X did the same.
“Let’s move fast,” he said, giving me a knowing look. He was a much faster hiker than myself. He seemed like a machine sometimes, tireless and single-minded. I had seen him hike over twenty miles in a single day without looking too bent out of shape. I gave him a faint half-smile, picking up my pace.
“You know what they used to say about the boglands?” I asked X. He shook his head.
“I don’t read books,” he said. “If I have time to sit down and read, then it means I have time to go out and do something actually fun. But I’m sure you know all about it.” I gave a short bark of laughter at his off-handed insult. It sounded far too loud echoing back to us through the creepy swamp. The last rays of sunlight were disappearing behind the mountains now. Soon, we would be plunged into darkness.
“Well, in ancient times, people thought the boglands a place where the walls of reality were thin, where the gods would come through. They used to bring their victims out to swamps during rituals, then they would slice their throats or strangle them and dump their bodies into the bogs as an offering to the gods. They also said that strange, shape-shifting creatures would appear, sometimes to deceive travelers, other times to help them,” I said. “But as for human sacrifices, the bogs preserve bodies like nothing else, except maybe tar pits. Archaeologists keep finding victims with slashed throats or shattered skulls buried underneath the peat.”
X was silent for a long moment as we continued walking along the raised patch of earth that formed the trail. We got farther and farther from the forests, until the swamp seemed like a fetid ocean, spanning out to the horizon in every direction.
“Do you think they used to do that kind of stuff around here?” X asked.
“Used to?” I exclaimed, laughing. “I’m sure some psychopaths still do. This is a good place to dump a body, after all. Who the hell wants to trek through the muck and the snakes and mosquitoes out here looking for corpses?”
“The FBI and the cops will do it,” he said, “if they think there’s something to find.” I was about to respond when an ear-splitting shriek echoed out all around us. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from at first. X’s tan skin seemed to go pale as he spun, glancing in every direction.
“What the fuck is that?!” he screamed over the deafening wailing. I didn’t believe in cryptids, but my anxious mind immediately offered up an image of a banshee, a woman with chalk-white skin and black eyes whose shrieking jaw unhinged like a snake’s.
“I’m turning around!” I yelled, pointing back for emphasis. “Dude, fuck this! We need to get out of this swamp!” But X was no longer listening. He was looking past me, his mouth open and his eyes wild. He started backpedaling and nearly fell into the swamp. Windmilling his arms crazily, he turned and sprinted away without a word.
I was afraid to look back. The screaming was getting louder by the second, shaking the air all around me in deafening, crashing waves of sound. I felt like my head would explode if it got any worse. Instinctively, I took off after X, but I glanced back for a single moment before I did. Something loomed there from a nightmare, standing as tall as the trees. It moved through the swamp like a snake, its body slithering through the stagnant green waters towards us. When it met my eyes, the screaming stopped. The abrupt silence seemed deafening. I could hear the fervent pounding of my heart in my ears.
The creature’s skin looked honeycombed and rough, almost like a wasp’s nest. The thousands of tiny holes covering its body constantly opened and closed like hungry mouths. Its arms were long tentacles ending in sharp points of bone in the shape of scythes. The tentacles undulated like serpents. Its legs, too, were no more than four tentacles that alternatively slithered and stepped forward.
Its flesh was the color of peat, a sickly grayish-brown, and the smell that emanated from it was rancid and stagnant, the essence of all boglands and swamps. I nearly gagged as I ran. The putrefying stench seemed to follow me like a shadow.
Ahead of me, X was fumbling in his backpack as he ran, trying to grab his pistol. I knew he had a Glock 21 in that bag, and I had my Sig Sauer in mine. I cursed myself for not keeping it holstered on my body, but I had never had to use it before and hadn’t seriously thought I would need it for this trip. He glanced back at me, his eyes widening in horror.
“It’s right behind you!” he yelled. “Get down!” He dropped his backpack, revealing the sleek, black pistol clenched tightly in his hand. I barely had time to comprehend his words when an immense pressure and numbness radiated through my back. My head snapped backwards as a meaty thud resonated all around me. I went flying forward, feeling as if I had been struck by a car. As I flew through the air, the pain in my back exploded in burning pulses. I felt the deep slice open up from the sharp blade of bone that had slashed me like a knife. I felt trickles of blood pour from the open wound, making my stained shirt cling to my body.
I landed hard on the raised black earth of the trail, a bone-jarring impact that knocked the air out of me. At that same moment, X opened fire, pressing the trigger over and over, emptying the magazine as fast as he could. Something splashed over me, going in my eyes and mouth and nose. I crawled forward, moaning, my head spinning. I wiped my forehead, seeing spatters of green blood squirming with dark, maggot-like creatures covering my arms and face. It clung to my fingers, thick and rancid. I felt stinging sensations as the tiny worms bit me over and over. My ears rang with a high-pitched whine from the gunshots.
X was running towards me now. I continued to crawl towards him, shell-shocked and whimpering, trying to wipe the eldritch blood off my skin. With a muscular arm, he reached down and pulled me up.
“Where’d it go?” I mumbled, stumbling forward on unsteady feet. X put an arm around my shoulders and helped support me.
“It slunk back into the swamp,” he said. “Jesus, you’re bleeding really bad, buddy. We’re going to need to take care of that as soon as we get away from this hellhole.” I felt the deep slices from the creature’s blade-like hands across my back. The fabric of my shirt clung tightly to the skin as fresh blood soaked it.
“This isn’t the trail, X,” I gasped. “We went the wrong way. We need to go back.” He nodded grimly.
“We’re heading back right now. I know it’s the wrong trail now, it definitely is, but it’s dark. The trails back up the mountains are steep and dangerous, and we’ve already been hiking all day. How much longer can we really go?” he asked. In reality, I had a feeling X could go for quite a bit longer. I was the weak link in the chain, and we both knew it.
X took out a small, LED flashlight from his backpack, shining it ahead of us on the dark path. Across the center of the black earth, there was an obstruction, something that hadn’t been there when we passed this way originally.
“Shit! Is that a person?” X said, slowing down. He focused the light on it. As my eyes adjusted, I gave a gasp of horror as I saw a rough sacrificial table looming there, waiting with a ready victim.
Laying on the bare wooden planks in the center of the trail was an elderly man wearing the garb of a hunter. He was gagged, a bloody rag shoved deep into his mouth. I felt a sense of revulsion and terror as I realized his hands and feet were nailed to the planks, as if he were being crucified laying down. His eyes rolled wildly, white and insane, like a horse with a broken leg. When he saw us approaching, he tried to say something through the gag, pulling hard against the nails that bit so viciously into his flesh. Fresh rivers of blood spurted from his wounds.
I had my pistol in my hands. X had taken a fresh magazine out by now, throwing the empty one back in his backpack. Trembling, he went first, his shaking hand moving the flashlight around wildly. Its bright rays bounced off the dead, half-rotted trees that grew out of the boglands, the clouds of mosquitoes and moths that circled us constantly.
“Oh my God... he's like the victim of a serial killer or something,” he whispered, running a trembling hand over his face. “It looks like someone has set that poor guy up to have his heart cut out, like some sort of Aztec ritual.” He glanced worriedly over at me. We had both stopped cold in our tracks, looking around for any sign of danger, but we only saw the old man writhing on his rough table of torture.
“We have to keep going forward,” I whispered. “That thing is behind us. I don’t think it’s dead. I’m not sure it can even die.”
“But what’s ahead of us?” he asked grimly. “That’s the real question, isn’t it?” Far off down the trail, I saw small pinpoints of flickering light. They drew closer. We raised our pistols, waiting for the new arrivals to show themselves.
Dozens of people dressed in black, silky robes holding lamps slowly ambled their way towards us. They had their heads bowed, like monks on a holy pilgrimage. They drew close to the sacrifice. The one in the lead held a long, curving dagger whose blade looked like it was made of some kind of red volcanic rock. Its strange silver handle glittered in his pale, thin hand. At the end, I saw it was sculpted into the shape of a human heart.
“Stop right there!” X screamed, stepping forward. “Don’t come any closer! We are armed, I’m warning you.” The people in the black robes didn’t appear to hear or care in the slightest. They continued slowly following their leader with the strange dagger, almost floating forward in a nonchalant manner. Their leader began chanting in some strange, ancient language. It reminded me of Tibetan or Sanskrit in a way, like the chanting of some Vajrayana monk high up in the Himalayas. But it had a sinister, hissing quality to the words. Something ancient and powerful resonated in every syllable.
I raised the pistol, firing blankly into the dark, cloudless sky above. The smell of gunsmoke and fetid rot hung thick in the air. The leader of the group looked at me with his large, glassy eyes. His face looked sunken and pale, almost like a starving child. He had shaved all of the hair on his head, even his eyebrows. His lips were extremely thin and bloodless in his chalk-white face.
For a long moment, we stood staring at each other, my pistol aimed at his chest. X also had his pistol raised, aimed at one of those standing behind him. But the robed man didn’t speak. He gave me a faint grin.
“Let the old man go,” I commanded, my voice sounding hoarse and weak. The swamp quickly swallowed up my words, until only the buzzing of mosquitoes remained.
“I am sorry, my son, but I cannot do that,” the leader said in a voice as cold as endless space. “If we do not feed Mowdoroth, it will never sleep. The swamps will continue to expand, eating more and more of the surrounding forests and towns, and Mowdoroth, driven insane by hunger, will take far more victims in the process.
“This job has been passed down to us from generation to generation, from big hand to small, for over four centuries. Only twice has Mowdoroth not been fed on the New Moon, and each time, entire settlements full of people were wiped off the face of the Earth as if they had never existed. On one, they just had time to carve the word ‘CROATAN’ before they were taken.
“Mowdoroth looks for the place where the nightmares grow. It breaks open the chest and finds the place where the silent screams start, deep down at the base of the heart. All of the nightmares are planted there, like tiny seeds scattered during childhood. Those that fell on good soil in that abyss produced a great crop, yielding a hundredfold, sixtyfold, or thirtyfold. If you do not allow us to complete our holy mission, then you do it: cut open the man's chest and remove his beating heart. As it beats, squeeze it as hard as you can, and let all the blood drain onto the top of your head. Hold the heart above your head and close your eyes until the god appears and takes it.” The cult leader finished, looking at us with sparkling eyes, as if he had said something profound.
“This shit is just insane drivel,” X whispered in a voice as low as possible. “I say we open fire and save the old man now. Fuck these cultists.” I nodded grimly in agreement.
“You need to all turn around and leave immediately,” X yelled, stepping forward. “I will give you three seconds to turn around and get the hell out of my sight. Three…” At first, the cultists stood as still as statues, simply staring. Finally, the leader sighed and turned away. He shook his head, reminding me of a disappointed parent.
“I tried to warn you,” he said in his thin, quavering voice. “The time has come to give the offering. You must cut out this man’s heart and raise it to Mowdoroth, so he can get the seeds of nightmares freshly sown. The choice is yours now, as you have demanded this power with violence. You can leave this man here to be eaten by Mowdoroth, or free him and, in exchange, guarantee the deaths of hundreds of other people.”
With those last words, the black-robed figures continued down the curve of the trail. Within seconds, they had disappeared behind dead, half-rotted trees that still dotted the edges of the boglands. X and I ran forward toward the struggling old man. X reached into his pocket and pulled out a folding knife. He cut off the old man’s gag, pulling the spit-soaked chunk of filthy cloth out of his mouth. The old man spat and licked his dry lips.
“Get me out of here, please,” he whispered, his eyes rolling wildly. “Those cult members are all batshit insane. And there’s something not right in these swamps. I caught glimpses of something while I was waiting. There’s something in the water…”
“What’s your name, bud?” X said calmingly, looking at the old man’s hands and feet to try to decide how to best get the nails out without causing more damage.
“Winchester,” he said in a coarse voice. It sounded like he hadn’t had a drink of water in days. While X looked at his hands with the LED flashlight, I reached into my pack for the small canteen of filtered water I still had. I started pouring it into Winchester’s mouth. He gulped greedily, his throat working hard to drink down the rest of it.
“I got it!” X said, taking a flat stone he had found on the ground. “I’m going to try to pound these nails out from the bottom.”
“Oh, please, no,” Winchester said, his wrinkled face turning pale. X shook his head.
“We need to get you out of here,” he said. “It’s going to hurt, bud. But we don’t have any tools here. The nails are large, almost like railroad spikes, and once we get the top part, the bottom should slide out easily since it’s a lot narrower.” As he grabbed the rock to begin his work, a bone-chilling wailing started up again from the swamps. It was the scream of Mowdoroth, that abomination with the skin of a wasp’s nest.
“Cover us!” X yelled panickedly as he continued his grisly work. Winchester screamed in pain when X first struck the nail on his right hand. It shot up a fraction of an inch, fresh blood pooling all around it and dripping through the bare planks.
I turned, but the banshee wail seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. The swamp bubbled faster and faster all around us, as if thousands of corpses were coming back to life. I heard Winchester scream again, then the dull thud of another nail hitting the earth.
A face peeked out of the swamp, only twenty feet away. Its eyes were green, the color of a putrefying wound. Its lipless mouth opened wide, showing a spongy black mass of skin with concentric circles of tiny, razor-sharp teeth. It reminded me of the mouth of a lamprey.
I opened fire, shooting wildly at the face, aiming at the body hidden under the dark surface of the swamp. Luminescent drops of green blood exploded from a bullet hole in its upper right shoulder, floating across the surface of the water like radioactive waste.
Its screaming cut off instantly. All I could hear was the pounding of the rock behind me and Winchester’s pained, horrified pleas for mercy.
“Please, you’re hurting me!” he pleaded.
“Shut the fuck up, Winchester!” I whispered. “It’s here with us now.” With considerable effort, he did, only moaning and violently jerking his head now as the waves of pain ripped through him.
“I got it!” X said suddenly. A feeling of elation filled my heart.
“Let’s go then!” I yelled, turning to help the old man up. I heard something massive rise up behind us. It mixed with the sound of dripping water and babbling waves that arose from the disturbance.
Winchester was weak, stumbling up to his feet and nearly falling over immediately. Staggering, he took off down the trail with no shoes, but he immediately gave a curse of pain and tripped. X and I started running, and at that moment, I realized the flaw in our plan. We wouldn’t be able to get Winchester out of the swamp without carrying him, due to the extensive injuries to his feet. And I knew we didn’t have time.
Mowdoroth’s body stood as tall as the trees as it looked down at the three of us with its strange, infected eyes. Its tentacles undulated faster and faster, seeming to whip around its body until they flew out towards us.
“Run!” I screamed. X and I sprinted behind a cluster of dead trees hugging the path. The blade-like hand of Mowdoroth chopped them in a half, raining wood splinters down on our heads.
Winchester continued trying to crawl forward. Mowdoroth slithered behind him. Winchester looked up as a tentacle started coming down in his direction. He gave a short, panicked scream as the blade smashed through his back legs, chopping both of them off at the knees. The ground shook with the force of it. The stumps began spurting seemingly endless amounts of blood. Winchester pleaded and made incomprehensible gurgling sounds as he bled out. Mowdoroth ended Winchester’s cries when it wrapped its tentacle around Winchester’s torso. It slithered up into Winchester’s open mouth.
X and I shot as fast as we could while running forward in the dark, trying to hold a flashlight and a pistol. Most of my shots missed Mowdoroth, but with a sense of satisfaction and pride, I saw a few burst through its enormous body. Streams of radioactive green blood ran down its torso now. As its serpentine legs pumped furiously, it gained speed, coming behind us like a runaway train. I could feel the ground shaking with every thud of its tentacled feet.
A few hundred feet ahead of us, I caught a glimpse of the cultists. They were hurrying away from the area, not running but moving much faster than they had come in. Nearly out of breath already and exhausted from hiking all day, I pointed forward.
“Look!” I screamed. X saw them, his eyes widening. We sprinted in a blind panic, as fast as we could towards the stragglers in the black robes. Without warning, X raised his pistol and fired, aiming at the nearest of them.
The figure in the back of the pack fell forward without making a sound. He continued trying to crawl forward weakly for a few moments before he lost energy and lay still, no more than a bleeding black hump on the dark earth.
X gave a sudden cry of pain next to me as a tentacle came down like a guillotine blade. I heard it whip through the air with a high-pitched whine. A single breath later, I watched in horror as it sliced off his right arm. X looked down at the spurting stump for a long moment, his tanned face turning as pale as bones. He stumbled forward, then, with a hoarse cry, he fell.
Following X’s lead, I raised my gun and started shooting the cultists. They sprinted away in a random panic as bodies fell ahead of us. I jumped over the black lumps on the ground, hearing Mowdoroth shake the world as it gave chase. A long, snake-like tentacle reached down, picking up X’s spurting body and raising it towards Mowdoroth’s leech-like mouth. The massive abomination slowed, picking up the bodies of the dead cultists and crushing them. I heard the bones shatter as the wet gore exploded around Mowdoroth’s many sharp teeth.
I saw the woods again, living trees just a few hundred feet away. The trail of black earth ended abruptly, leading out of the boglands. Cultists sprinted blindly through the forest in every direction, scattering like cockroaches. I had nearly reached the border of the forest when I heard something whizzing past my head. I ducked, but the blur of a grayish tentacle coming down sent a jolt of fear like electricity sizzling through my body.
A moment later, a cold agony covered my left hand. In shock, I looked down, realizing that the blade-like appendage of Mowdoroth had neatly amputated all four of my fingers. If I hadn’t ducked, it would’ve probably gotten my head instead.
Stumbling and screaming, my mind in a blind panic, I staggered through the intersection of the boglands and the forest, falling forward. I knew I was dead. I closed my eyes, waiting. Yet nothing happened.
When I looked back, I saw something strange. Mowdoroth had stopped at the end of the boglands. It tried to push its body forward towards me, but it couldn’t enter the forest. It was as if an invisible barrier stood there.
I lay there for a long time. After a while, I heard Mowdoroth slink back into the fetid waters of the boglands. And then I was alone.
***
I wrapped my hand in bandages as much as I could, trying to stem the bleeding. I felt weak and sick from blood loss, so I lay there until the sun came up. The next day, I was able to slowly make my way out of the forest and back towards the nearest town.
Now I hear stories of people mysteriously going missing in the area. An entire family in a nearby farmhouse only a couple dozen miles away disappeared in the middle of the night without a trace, leaving only smeared trails of blood leading into the forest. No one saw anything, but these six victims were only the first in a long line of strange deaths. Oddly enough, all of the victims lived next to swamps.
And I have the feeling that I was the one responsible.

I had been hiking down the Appalachian Trail for over two weeks without issue on the day when the nightmare began. My friend, X, was by my side the entire time. It was, quite honestly, comforting to have someone who stood nearly six-and-a-half feet tall with me, especially during the long, dark nights when the howling of coyotes drew near. Black bears, too, were a constant presence in these dark mountains. As we got farther from towns and civilization, more ancient predators than human beings took over the land, stalking the night like creeping shadows.
For this trip, we both had bought as few supplies as possible. Included in our packs were MREs, two sleeping bags, some tarps and hammocks, some light clothing, and two pistols with a few boxes of ammo. We didn’t want to be too weighed down that we wouldn’t be able to move fast, after all. We would source water from the streams, waterfalls and lakes along the way and filter it using Lifestraws.
As the spring breeze blew past us, cooling the sweat on my face, I noticed the trail ahead of us weaving its way through thick swampland. The buzzing of flies and mosquitoes increased with every step. The green, fetid waters of the swamp bubbled constantly, as if it were whispering secrets to us.
“Ah, shit,” X said, glancing down the hill with his dark, serious eyes. His tanned skin was covered in a thin sheen of sweat as he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Another swamp. I hate swamps. You know there’s going to be a million mosquitoes and flies down there.” I pulled out the map, squinting down at it. I ran my finger down the trail, seeing the mountains and valleys we had already passed.
“The trail shouldn’t be going through any swamps,” I said. “They’re supposed to be marked. There’s no ponds or anything around here.” And yet there very clearly was. Either we were in a different spot than I thought we were, or the map was outdated. The trail also grew thinner as we descended. The sharp branches of the bushes stuck out like greedy hands, grabbing at our backpacks and clothes as we pressed forward.
“Well, whatever,” X said gruffly, plowing ahead. Twigs cracked under his massive bulk. The thin branches hanging across the path snapped as he plowed forward. I let him go first, since he was significantly bigger than myself. It was like following in the path of a bull.
“The faster we move, the faster we’ll be through it. We don’t want to camp anywhere around here when it gets dark,” X continued, looking grim. “We’ll be eaten alive by bugs by sunrise. We need to make it to the other side of these boglands before we can stop for the night.”
“Yeah, and I could use some more water,” I said, shaking my mostly empty canteen. “I wouldn’t drink this shit no matter what we did to it. It probably has brain-eating parasites crawling in it.” I checked my watch, realizing that dusk was only a half hour away. We would have to move fast indeed, especially as we didn’t know the size of the swamp. I was not enthusiastic about hiking in the dark with the many steep trails and sharp rocks that covered the surrounding land. A single misstep could lead to a very long, bone-shattering fall.
To my increasing dismay, I realized that the trail we were on no longer had the characteristic white markings of the Appalachian Trail. I kept checking the trees for the past fifteen minutes, and I definitely hadn’t seen a single one. I couldn’t remember the last time we had passed one, but I had a creeping suspicion it had been at least a couple hours ago.
“I think we have a problem, man,” I whispered. “I don’t know how it possibly could have happened, but I think we’re on the wrong trail.”
“There’s not supposed to be any other trails around here,” X argued. “Check the map.”
“Then where’s the white blazes? There’s not supposed to be any boglands around here, either, yet we’re walking through the middle of one,” I said. He shook his head.
“Listen, Ben, there’s not going to be markers on the entire Appalachian Trail,” he said. “Just trust me. We’re on the right path. Sometimes forests change. Swamps take over spots where forests used to lay. Hell, the Sahara Desert has been expanding for thousands of years, just eating the forests and plains all around it. There used to be lions and savannah in Morocco, and now it’s all dead and dry.”
I felt doubtful, but I continued forwards, following closely behind X. Neither one of us had ever done the full Appalachian Trail, after all. I hoped he was right. I was not enthusiastic about backtracking two or three hours if he wasn’t.
I thought back closely on our travels during the last few hours, wondering where we could have gone wrong. The trail had been rather overgrown and rocky on the peak of the last mountain. There had been a beautiful view spanning hundreds of miles, looking far off into state forests and winding roads. I remembered seeing the white marker near the top, but after we had started descending, it disappeared. That must have been where we went wrong, if we did, indeed, go off-course. But I couldn’t be sure, and I didn’t tell X about my suspicions.
We finished descending a steep, rocky trail into a valley where the boglands really started. The trees ended in a massive semi-circle around the open swamp. Thick peat covered the entire surface of it like rotted, grayish-brown skin. I saw water snakes quietly disappearing into the stagnant water, leaving behind slowly expanding ripples.
“This is pretty cool,” I said, stopping for a moment at the bottom of the trail to admire the boglands. Our trail continued directly through the center of it, no more than a raised patch of black earth surrounded by green swampy water. I could hear the many insects chirping and flying before we even took a step forward. Though the spring air felt warm and I was covered in sweat, I still reached into my bag, taking out a windbreaker that would cover up my arms and neck to help with the bugs. X did the same.
“Let’s move fast,” he said, giving me a knowing look. He was a much faster hiker than myself. He seemed like a machine sometimes, tireless and single-minded. I had seen him hike over twenty miles in a single day without looking too bent out of shape. I gave him a faint half-smile, picking up my pace.
“You know what they used to say about the boglands?” I asked X. He shook his head.
“I don’t read books,” he said. “If I have time to sit down and read, then it means I have time to go out and do something actually fun. But I’m sure you know all about it.” I gave a short bark of laughter at his off-handed insult. It sounded far too loud echoing back to us through the creepy swamp. The last rays of sunlight were disappearing behind the mountains now. Soon, we would be plunged into darkness.
“Well, in ancient times, people thought the boglands a place where the walls of reality were thin, where the gods would come through. They used to bring their victims out to swamps during rituals, then they would slice their throats or strangle them and dump their bodies into the bogs as an offering to the gods. They also said that strange, shape-shifting creatures would appear, sometimes to deceive travelers, other times to help them,” I said. “But as for human sacrifices, the bogs preserve bodies like nothing else, except maybe tar pits. Archaeologists keep finding victims with slashed throats or shattered skulls buried underneath the peat.”
X was silent for a long moment as we continued walking along the raised patch of earth that formed the trail. We got farther and farther from the forests, until the swamp seemed like a fetid ocean, spanning out to the horizon in every direction.
“Do you think they used to do that kind of stuff around here?” X asked.
“Used to?” I exclaimed, laughing. “I’m sure some psychopaths still do. This is a good place to dump a body, after all. Who the hell wants to trek through the muck and the snakes and mosquitoes out here looking for corpses?”
“The FBI and the cops will do it,” he said, “if they think there’s something to find.” I was about to respond when an ear-splitting shriek echoed out all around us. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from at first. X’s tan skin seemed to go pale as he spun, glancing in every direction.
“What the fuck is that?!” he screamed over the deafening wailing. I didn’t believe in cryptids, but my anxious mind immediately offered up an image of a banshee, a woman with chalk-white skin and black eyes whose shrieking jaw unhinged like a snake’s.
“I’m turning around!” I yelled, pointing back for emphasis. “Dude, fuck this! We need to get out of this swamp!” But X was no longer listening. He was looking past me, his mouth open and his eyes wild. He started backpedaling and nearly fell into the swamp. Windmilling his arms crazily, he turned and sprinted away without a word.
I was afraid to look back. The screaming was getting louder by the second, shaking the air all around me in deafening, crashing waves of sound. I felt like my head would explode if it got any worse. Instinctively, I took off after X, but I glanced back for a single moment before I did. Something loomed there from a nightmare, standing as tall as the trees. It moved through the swamp like a snake, its body slithering through the stagnant green waters towards us. When it met my eyes, the screaming stopped. The abrupt silence seemed deafening. I could hear the fervent pounding of my heart in my ears.
The creature’s skin looked honeycombed and rough, almost like a wasp’s nest. The thousands of tiny holes covering its body constantly opened and closed like hungry mouths. Its arms were long tentacles ending in sharp points of bone in the shape of scythes. The tentacles undulated like serpents. Its legs, too, were no more than four tentacles that alternatively slithered and stepped forward.
Its flesh was the color of peat, a sickly grayish-brown, and the smell that emanated from it was rancid and stagnant, the essence of all boglands and swamps. I nearly gagged as I ran. The putrefying stench seemed to follow me like a shadow.
Ahead of me, X was fumbling in his backpack as he ran, trying to grab his pistol. I knew he had a Glock 21 in that bag, and I had my Sig Sauer in mine. I cursed myself for not keeping it holstered on my body, but I had never had to use it before and hadn’t seriously thought I would need it for this trip. He glanced back at me, his eyes widening in horror.
“It’s right behind you!” he yelled. “Get down!” He dropped his backpack, revealing the sleek, black pistol clenched tightly in his hand. I barely had time to comprehend his words when an immense pressure and numbness radiated through my back. My head snapped backwards as a meaty thud resonated all around me. I went flying forward, feeling as if I had been struck by a car. As I flew through the air, the pain in my back exploded in burning pulses. I felt the deep slice open up from the sharp blade of bone that had slashed me like a knife. I felt trickles of blood pour from the open wound, making my stained shirt cling to my body.
I landed hard on the raised black earth of the trail, a bone-jarring impact that knocked the air out of me. At that same moment, X opened fire, pressing the trigger over and over, emptying the magazine as fast as he could. Something splashed over me, going in my eyes and mouth and nose. I crawled forward, moaning, my head spinning. I wiped my forehead, seeing spatters of green blood squirming with dark, maggot-like creatures covering my arms and face. It clung to my fingers, thick and rancid. I felt stinging sensations as the tiny worms bit me over and over. My ears rang with a high-pitched whine from the gunshots.
X was running towards me now. I continued to crawl towards him, shell-shocked and whimpering, trying to wipe the eldritch blood off my skin. With a muscular arm, he reached down and pulled me up.
“Where’d it go?” I mumbled, stumbling forward on unsteady feet. X put an arm around my shoulders and helped support me.
“It slunk back into the swamp,” he said. “Jesus, you’re bleeding really bad, buddy. We’re going to need to take care of that as soon as we get away from this hellhole.” I felt the deep slices from the creature’s blade-like hands across my back. The fabric of my shirt clung tightly to the skin as fresh blood soaked it.
“This isn’t the trail, X,” I gasped. “We went the wrong way. We need to go back.” He nodded grimly.
“We’re heading back right now. I know it’s the wrong trail now, it definitely is, but it’s dark. The trails back up the mountains are steep and dangerous, and we’ve already been hiking all day. How much longer can we really go?” he asked. In reality, I had a feeling X could go for quite a bit longer. I was the weak link in the chain, and we both knew it.
X took out a small, LED flashlight from his backpack, shining it ahead of us on the dark path. Across the center of the black earth, there was an obstruction, something that hadn’t been there when we passed this way originally.
“Shit! Is that a person?” X said, slowing down. He focused the light on it. As my eyes adjusted, I gave a gasp of horror as I saw a rough sacrificial table looming there, waiting with a ready victim.
Laying on the bare wooden planks in the center of the trail was an elderly man wearing the garb of a hunter. He was gagged, a bloody rag shoved deep into his mouth. I felt a sense of revulsion and terror as I realized his hands and feet were nailed to the planks, as if he were being crucified laying down. His eyes rolled wildly, white and insane, like a horse with a broken leg. When he saw us approaching, he tried to say something through the gag, pulling hard against the nails that bit so viciously into his flesh. Fresh rivers of blood spurted from his wounds.
I had my pistol in my hands. X had taken a fresh magazine out by now, throwing the empty one back in his backpack. Trembling, he went first, his shaking hand moving the flashlight around wildly. Its bright rays bounced off the dead, half-rotted trees that grew out of the boglands, the clouds of mosquitoes and moths that circled us constantly.
“Oh my God... he's like the victim of a serial killer or something,” he whispered, running a trembling hand over his face. “It looks like someone has set that poor guy up to have his heart cut out, like some sort of Aztec ritual.” He glanced worriedly over at me. We had both stopped cold in our tracks, looking around for any sign of danger, but we only saw the old man writhing on his rough table of torture.
“We have to keep going forward,” I whispered. “That thing is behind us. I don’t think it’s dead. I’m not sure it can even die.”
“But what’s ahead of us?” he asked grimly. “That’s the real question, isn’t it?” Far off down the trail, I saw small pinpoints of flickering light. They drew closer. We raised our pistols, waiting for the new arrivals to show themselves.
Dozens of people dressed in black, silky robes holding lamps slowly ambled their way towards us. They had their heads bowed, like monks on a holy pilgrimage. They drew close to the sacrifice. The one in the lead held a long, curving dagger whose blade looked like it was made of some kind of red volcanic rock. Its strange silver handle glittered in his pale, thin hand. At the end, I saw it was sculpted into the shape of a human heart.
“Stop right there!” X screamed, stepping forward. “Don’t come any closer! We are armed, I’m warning you.” The people in the black robes didn’t appear to hear or care in the slightest. They continued slowly following their leader with the strange dagger, almost floating forward in a nonchalant manner. Their leader began chanting in some strange, ancient language. It reminded me of Tibetan or Sanskrit in a way, like the chanting of some Vajrayana monk high up in the Himalayas. But it had a sinister, hissing quality to the words. Something ancient and powerful resonated in every syllable.
I raised the pistol, firing blankly into the dark, cloudless sky above. The smell of gunsmoke and fetid rot hung thick in the air. The leader of the group looked at me with his large, glassy eyes. His face looked sunken and pale, almost like a starving child. He had shaved all of the hair on his head, even his eyebrows. His lips were extremely thin and bloodless in his chalk-white face.
For a long moment, we stood staring at each other, my pistol aimed at his chest. X also had his pistol raised, aimed at one of those standing behind him. But the robed man didn’t speak. He gave me a faint grin.
“Let the old man go,” I commanded, my voice sounding hoarse and weak. The swamp quickly swallowed up my words, until only the buzzing of mosquitoes remained.
“I am sorry, my son, but I cannot do that,” the leader said in a voice as cold as endless space. “If we do not feed Mowdoroth, it will never sleep. The swamps will continue to expand, eating more and more of the surrounding forests and towns, and Mowdoroth, driven insane by hunger, will take far more victims in the process.
“This job has been passed down to us from generation to generation, from big hand to small, for over four centuries. Only twice has Mowdoroth not been fed on the New Moon, and each time, entire settlements full of people were wiped off the face of the Earth as if they had never existed. On one, they just had time to carve the word ‘CROATAN’ before they were taken.
“Mowdoroth looks for the place where the nightmares grow. It breaks open the chest and finds the place where the silent screams start, deep down at the base of the heart. All of the nightmares are planted there, like tiny seeds scattered during childhood. Those that fell on good soil in that abyss produced a great crop, yielding a hundredfold, sixtyfold, or thirtyfold. If you do not allow us to complete our holy mission, then you do it: cut open the man's chest and remove his beating heart. As it beats, squeeze it as hard as you can, and let all the blood drain onto the top of your head. Hold the heart above your head and close your eyes until the god appears and takes it.” The cult leader finished, looking at us with sparkling eyes, as if he had said something profound.
“This shit is just insane drivel,” X whispered in a voice as low as possible. “I say we open fire and save the old man now. Fuck these cultists.” I nodded grimly in agreement.
“You need to all turn around and leave immediately,” X yelled, stepping forward. “I will give you three seconds to turn around and get the hell out of my sight. Three…” At first, the cultists stood as still as statues, simply staring. Finally, the leader sighed and turned away. He shook his head, reminding me of a disappointed parent.
“I tried to warn you,” he said in his thin, quavering voice. “The time has come to give the offering. You must cut out this man’s heart and raise it to Mowdoroth, so he can get the seeds of nightmares freshly sown. The choice is yours now, as you have demanded this power with violence. You can leave this man here to be eaten by Mowdoroth, or free him and, in exchange, guarantee the deaths of hundreds of other people.”
With those last words, the black-robed figures continued down the curve of the trail. Within seconds, they had disappeared behind dead, half-rotted trees that still dotted the edges of the boglands. X and I ran forward toward the struggling old man. X reached into his pocket and pulled out a folding knife. He cut off the old man’s gag, pulling the spit-soaked chunk of filthy cloth out of his mouth. The old man spat and licked his dry lips.
“Get me out of here, please,” he whispered, his eyes rolling wildly. “Those cult members are all batshit insane. And there’s something not right in these swamps. I caught glimpses of something while I was waiting. There’s something in the water…”
“What’s your name, bud?” X said calmingly, looking at the old man’s hands and feet to try to decide how to best get the nails out without causing more damage.
“Winchester,” he said in a coarse voice. It sounded like he hadn’t had a drink of water in days. While X looked at his hands with the LED flashlight, I reached into my pack for the small canteen of filtered water I still had. I started pouring it into Winchester’s mouth. He gulped greedily, his throat working hard to drink down the rest of it.
“I got it!” X said, taking a flat stone he had found on the ground. “I’m going to try to pound these nails out from the bottom.”
“Oh, please, no,” Winchester said, his wrinkled face turning pale. X shook his head.
“We need to get you out of here,” he said. “It’s going to hurt, bud. But we don’t have any tools here. The nails are large, almost like railroad spikes, and once we get the top part, the bottom should slide out easily since it’s a lot narrower.” As he grabbed the rock to begin his work, a bone-chilling wailing started up again from the swamps. It was the scream of Mowdoroth, that abomination with the skin of a wasp’s nest.
“Cover us!” X yelled panickedly as he continued his grisly work. Winchester screamed in pain when X first struck the nail on his right hand. It shot up a fraction of an inch, fresh blood pooling all around it and dripping through the bare planks.
I turned, but the banshee wail seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. The swamp bubbled faster and faster all around us, as if thousands of corpses were coming back to life. I heard Winchester scream again, then the dull thud of another nail hitting the earth.
A face peeked out of the swamp, only twenty feet away. Its eyes were green, the color of a putrefying wound. Its lipless mouth opened wide, showing a spongy black mass of skin with concentric circles of tiny, razor-sharp teeth. It reminded me of the mouth of a lamprey.
I opened fire, shooting wildly at the face, aiming at the body hidden under the dark surface of the swamp. Luminescent drops of green blood exploded from a bullet hole in its upper right shoulder, floating across the surface of the water like radioactive waste.
Its screaming cut off instantly. All I could hear was the pounding of the rock behind me and Winchester’s pained, horrified pleas for mercy.
“Please, you’re hurting me!” he pleaded.
“Shut the fuck up, Winchester!” I whispered. “It’s here with us now.” With considerable effort, he did, only moaning and violently jerking his head now as the waves of pain ripped through him.
“I got it!” X said suddenly. A feeling of elation filled my heart.
“Let’s go then!” I yelled, turning to help the old man up. I heard something massive rise up behind us. It mixed with the sound of dripping water and babbling waves that arose from the disturbance.
Winchester was weak, stumbling up to his feet and nearly falling over immediately. Staggering, he took off down the trail with no shoes, but he immediately gave a curse of pain and tripped. X and I started running, and at that moment, I realized the flaw in our plan. We wouldn’t be able to get Winchester out of the swamp without carrying him, due to the extensive injuries to his feet. And I knew we didn’t have time.
Mowdoroth’s body stood as tall as the trees as it looked down at the three of us with its strange, infected eyes. Its tentacles undulated faster and faster, seeming to whip around its body until they flew out towards us.
“Run!” I screamed. X and I sprinted behind a cluster of dead trees hugging the path. The blade-like hand of Mowdoroth chopped them in a half, raining wood splinters down on our heads.
Winchester continued trying to crawl forward. Mowdoroth slithered behind him. Winchester looked up as a tentacle started coming down in his direction. He gave a short, panicked scream as the blade smashed through his back legs, chopping both of them off at the knees. The ground shook with the force of it. The stumps began spurting seemingly endless amounts of blood. Winchester pleaded and made incomprehensible gurgling sounds as he bled out. Mowdoroth ended Winchester’s cries when it wrapped its tentacle around Winchester’s torso. It slithered up into Winchester’s open mouth.
X and I shot as fast as we could while running forward in the dark, trying to hold a flashlight and a pistol. Most of my shots missed Mowdoroth, but with a sense of satisfaction and pride, I saw a few burst through its enormous body. Streams of radioactive green blood ran down its torso now. As its serpentine legs pumped furiously, it gained speed, coming behind us like a runaway train. I could feel the ground shaking with every thud of its tentacled feet.
A few hundred feet ahead of us, I caught a glimpse of the cultists. They were hurrying away from the area, not running but moving much faster than they had come in. Nearly out of breath already and exhausted from hiking all day, I pointed forward.
“Look!” I screamed. X saw them, his eyes widening. We sprinted in a blind panic, as fast as we could towards the stragglers in the black robes. Without warning, X raised his pistol and fired, aiming at the nearest of them.
The figure in the back of the pack fell forward without making a sound. He continued trying to crawl forward weakly for a few moments before he lost energy and lay still, no more than a bleeding black hump on the dark earth.
X gave a sudden cry of pain next to me as a tentacle came down like a guillotine blade. I heard it whip through the air with a high-pitched whine. A single breath later, I watched in horror as it sliced off his right arm. X looked down at the spurting stump for a long moment, his tanned face turning as pale as bones. He stumbled forward, then, with a hoarse cry, he fell.
Following X’s lead, I raised my gun and started shooting the cultists. They sprinted away in a random panic as bodies fell ahead of us. I jumped over the black lumps on the ground, hearing Mowdoroth shake the world as it gave chase. A long, snake-like tentacle reached down, picking up X’s spurting body and raising it towards Mowdoroth’s leech-like mouth. The massive abomination slowed, picking up the bodies of the dead cultists and crushing them. I heard the bones shatter as the wet gore exploded around Mowdoroth’s many sharp teeth.
I saw the woods again, living trees just a few hundred feet away. The trail of black earth ended abruptly, leading out of the boglands. Cultists sprinted blindly through the forest in every direction, scattering like cockroaches. I had nearly reached the border of the forest when I heard something whizzing past my head. I ducked, but the blur of a grayish tentacle coming down sent a jolt of fear like electricity sizzling through my body.
A moment later, a cold agony covered my left hand. In shock, I looked down, realizing that the blade-like appendage of Mowdoroth had neatly amputated all four of my fingers. If I hadn’t ducked, it would’ve probably gotten my head instead.
Stumbling and screaming, my mind in a blind panic, I staggered through the intersection of the boglands and the forest, falling forward. I knew I was dead. I closed my eyes, waiting. Yet nothing happened.
When I looked back, I saw something strange. Mowdoroth had stopped at the end of the boglands. It tried to push its body forward towards me, but it couldn’t enter the forest. It was as if an invisible barrier stood there.
I lay there for a long time. After a while, I heard Mowdoroth slink back into the fetid waters of the boglands. And then I was alone.
***
I wrapped my hand in bandages as much as I could, trying to stem the bleeding. I felt weak and sick from blood loss, so I lay there until the sun came up. The next day, I was able to slowly make my way out of the forest and back towards the nearest town.
Now I hear stories of people mysteriously going missing in the area. An entire family in a nearby farmhouse only a couple dozen miles away disappeared in the middle of the night without a trace, leaving only smeared trails of blood leading into the forest. No one saw anything, but these six victims were only the first in a long line of strange deaths. Oddly enough, all of the victims lived next to swamps.
And I have the feeling that I was the one responsible.

I had been hiking down the Appalachian Trail for over two weeks without issue on the day when the nightmare began. My friend, X, was by my side the entire time. It was, quite honestly, comforting to have someone who stood nearly six-and-a-half feet tall with me, especially during the long, dark nights when the howling of coyotes drew near. Black bears, too, were a constant presence in these dark mountains. As we got farther from towns and civilization, more ancient predators than human beings took over the land, stalking the night like creeping shadows.
For this trip, we both had bought as few supplies as possible. Included in our packs were MREs, two sleeping bags, some tarps and hammocks, some light clothing, and two pistols with a few boxes of ammo. We didn’t want to be too weighed down that we wouldn’t be able to move fast, after all. We would source water from the streams, waterfalls and lakes along the way and filter it using Lifestraws.
As the spring breeze blew past us, cooling the sweat on my face, I noticed the trail ahead of us weaving its way through thick swampland. The buzzing of flies and mosquitoes increased with every step. The green, fetid waters of the swamp bubbled constantly, as if it were whispering secrets to us.
“Ah, shit,” X said, glancing down the hill with his dark, serious eyes. His tanned skin was covered in a thin sheen of sweat as he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Another swamp. I hate swamps. You know there’s going to be a million mosquitoes and flies down there.” I pulled out the map, squinting down at it. I ran my finger down the trail, seeing the mountains and valleys we had already passed.
“The trail shouldn’t be going through any swamps,” I said. “They’re supposed to be marked. There’s no ponds or anything around here.” And yet there very clearly was. Either we were in a different spot than I thought we were, or the map was outdated. The trail also grew thinner as we descended. The sharp branches of the bushes stuck out like greedy hands, grabbing at our backpacks and clothes as we pressed forward.
“Well, whatever,” X said gruffly, plowing ahead. Twigs cracked under his massive bulk. The thin branches hanging across the path snapped as he plowed forward. I let him go first, since he was significantly bigger than myself. It was like following in the path of a bull.
“The faster we move, the faster we’ll be through it. We don’t want to camp anywhere around here when it gets dark,” X continued, looking grim. “We’ll be eaten alive by bugs by sunrise. We need to make it to the other side of these boglands before we can stop for the night.”
“Yeah, and I could use some more water,” I said, shaking my mostly empty canteen. “I wouldn’t drink this shit no matter what we did to it. It probably has brain-eating parasites crawling in it.” I checked my watch, realizing that dusk was only a half hour away. We would have to move fast indeed, especially as we didn’t know the size of the swamp. I was not enthusiastic about hiking in the dark with the many steep trails and sharp rocks that covered the surrounding land. A single misstep could lead to a very long, bone-shattering fall.
To my increasing dismay, I realized that the trail we were on no longer had the characteristic white markings of the Appalachian Trail. I kept checking the trees for the past fifteen minutes, and I definitely hadn’t seen a single one. I couldn’t remember the last time we had passed one, but I had a creeping suspicion it had been at least a couple hours ago.
“I think we have a problem, man,” I whispered. “I don’t know how it possibly could have happened, but I think we’re on the wrong trail.”
“There’s not supposed to be any other trails around here,” X argued. “Check the map.”
“Then where’s the white blazes? There’s not supposed to be any boglands around here, either, yet we’re walking through the middle of one,” I said. He shook his head.
“Listen, Ben, there’s not going to be markers on the entire Appalachian Trail,” he said. “Just trust me. We’re on the right path. Sometimes forests change. Swamps take over spots where forests used to lay. Hell, the Sahara Desert has been expanding for thousands of years, just eating the forests and plains all around it. There used to be lions and savannah in Morocco, and now it’s all dead and dry.”
I felt doubtful, but I continued forwards, following closely behind X. Neither one of us had ever done the full Appalachian Trail, after all. I hoped he was right. I was not enthusiastic about backtracking two or three hours if he wasn’t.
I thought back closely on our travels during the last few hours, wondering where we could have gone wrong. The trail had been rather overgrown and rocky on the peak of the last mountain. There had been a beautiful view spanning hundreds of miles, looking far off into state forests and winding roads. I remembered seeing the white marker near the top, but after we had started descending, it disappeared. That must have been where we went wrong, if we did, indeed, go off-course. But I couldn’t be sure, and I didn’t tell X about my suspicions.
We finished descending a steep, rocky trail into a valley where the boglands really started. The trees ended in a massive semi-circle around the open swamp. Thick peat covered the entire surface of it like rotted, grayish-brown skin. I saw water snakes quietly disappearing into the stagnant water, leaving behind slowly expanding ripples.
“This is pretty cool,” I said, stopping for a moment at the bottom of the trail to admire the boglands. Our trail continued directly through the center of it, no more than a raised patch of black earth surrounded by green swampy water. I could hear the many insects chirping and flying before we even took a step forward. Though the spring air felt warm and I was covered in sweat, I still reached into my bag, taking out a windbreaker that would cover up my arms and neck to help with the bugs. X did the same.
“Let’s move fast,” he said, giving me a knowing look. He was a much faster hiker than myself. He seemed like a machine sometimes, tireless and single-minded. I had seen him hike over twenty miles in a single day without looking too bent out of shape. I gave him a faint half-smile, picking up my pace.
“You know what they used to say about the boglands?” I asked X. He shook his head.
“I don’t read books,” he said. “If I have time to sit down and read, then it means I have time to go out and do something actually fun. But I’m sure you know all about it.” I gave a short bark of laughter at his off-handed insult. It sounded far too loud echoing back to us through the creepy swamp. The last rays of sunlight were disappearing behind the mountains now. Soon, we would be plunged into darkness.
“Well, in ancient times, people thought the boglands a place where the walls of reality were thin, where the gods would come through. They used to bring their victims out to swamps during rituals, then they would slice their throats or strangle them and dump their bodies into the bogs as an offering to the gods. They also said that strange, shape-shifting creatures would appear, sometimes to deceive travelers, other times to help them,” I said. “But as for human sacrifices, the bogs preserve bodies like nothing else, except maybe tar pits. Archaeologists keep finding victims with slashed throats or shattered skulls buried underneath the peat.”
X was silent for a long moment as we continued walking along the raised patch of earth that formed the trail. We got farther and farther from the forests, until the swamp seemed like a fetid ocean, spanning out to the horizon in every direction.
“Do you think they used to do that kind of stuff around here?” X asked.
“Used to?” I exclaimed, laughing. “I’m sure some psychopaths still do. This is a good place to dump a body, after all. Who the hell wants to trek through the muck and the snakes and mosquitoes out here looking for corpses?”
“The FBI and the cops will do it,” he said, “if they think there’s something to find.” I was about to respond when an ear-splitting shriek echoed out all around us. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from at first. X’s tan skin seemed to go pale as he spun, glancing in every direction.
“What the fuck is that?!” he screamed over the deafening wailing. I didn’t believe in cryptids, but my anxious mind immediately offered up an image of a banshee, a woman with chalk-white skin and black eyes whose shrieking jaw unhinged like a snake’s.
“I’m turning around!” I yelled, pointing back for emphasis. “Dude, fuck this! We need to get out of this swamp!” But X was no longer listening. He was looking past me, his mouth open and his eyes wild. He started backpedaling and nearly fell into the swamp. Windmilling his arms crazily, he turned and sprinted away without a word.
I was afraid to look back. The screaming was getting louder by the second, shaking the air all around me in deafening, crashing waves of sound. I felt like my head would explode if it got any worse. Instinctively, I took off after X, but I glanced back for a single moment before I did. Something loomed there from a nightmare, standing as tall as the trees. It moved through the swamp like a snake, its body slithering through the stagnant green waters towards us. When it met my eyes, the screaming stopped. The abrupt silence seemed deafening. I could hear the fervent pounding of my heart in my ears.
The creature’s skin looked honeycombed and rough, almost like a wasp’s nest. The thousands of tiny holes covering its body constantly opened and closed like hungry mouths. Its arms were long tentacles ending in sharp points of bone in the shape of scythes. The tentacles undulated like serpents. Its legs, too, were no more than four tentacles that alternatively slithered and stepped forward.
Its flesh was the color of peat, a sickly grayish-brown, and the smell that emanated from it was rancid and stagnant, the essence of all boglands and swamps. I nearly gagged as I ran. The putrefying stench seemed to follow me like a shadow.
Ahead of me, X was fumbling in his backpack as he ran, trying to grab his pistol. I knew he had a Glock 21 in that bag, and I had my Sig Sauer in mine. I cursed myself for not keeping it holstered on my body, but I had never had to use it before and hadn’t seriously thought I would need it for this trip. He glanced back at me, his eyes widening in horror.
“It’s right behind you!” he yelled. “Get down!” He dropped his backpack, revealing the sleek, black pistol clenched tightly in his hand. I barely had time to comprehend his words when an immense pressure and numbness radiated through my back. My head snapped backwards as a meaty thud resonated all around me. I went flying forward, feeling as if I had been struck by a car. As I flew through the air, the pain in my back exploded in burning pulses. I felt the deep slice open up from the sharp blade of bone that had slashed me like a knife. I felt trickles of blood pour from the open wound, making my stained shirt cling to my body.
I landed hard on the raised black earth of the trail, a bone-jarring impact that knocked the air out of me. At that same moment, X opened fire, pressing the trigger over and over, emptying the magazine as fast as he could. Something splashed over me, going in my eyes and mouth and nose. I crawled forward, moaning, my head spinning. I wiped my forehead, seeing spatters of green blood squirming with dark, maggot-like creatures covering my arms and face. It clung to my fingers, thick and rancid. I felt stinging sensations as the tiny worms bit me over and over. My ears rang with a high-pitched whine from the gunshots.
X was running towards me now. I continued to crawl towards him, shell-shocked and whimpering, trying to wipe the eldritch blood off my skin. With a muscular arm, he reached down and pulled me up.
“Where’d it go?” I mumbled, stumbling forward on unsteady feet. X put an arm around my shoulders and helped support me.
“It slunk back into the swamp,” he said. “Jesus, you’re bleeding really bad, buddy. We’re going to need to take care of that as soon as we get away from this hellhole.” I felt the deep slices from the creature’s blade-like hands across my back. The fabric of my shirt clung tightly to the skin as fresh blood soaked it.
“This isn’t the trail, X,” I gasped. “We went the wrong way. We need to go back.” He nodded grimly.
“We’re heading back right now. I know it’s the wrong trail now, it definitely is, but it’s dark. The trails back up the mountains are steep and dangerous, and we’ve already been hiking all day. How much longer can we really go?” he asked. In reality, I had a feeling X could go for quite a bit longer. I was the weak link in the chain, and we both knew it.
X took out a small, LED flashlight from his backpack, shining it ahead of us on the dark path. Across the center of the black earth, there was an obstruction, something that hadn’t been there when we passed this way originally.
“Shit! Is that a person?” X said, slowing down. He focused the light on it. As my eyes adjusted, I gave a gasp of horror as I saw a rough sacrificial table looming there, waiting with a ready victim.
Laying on the bare wooden planks in the center of the trail was an elderly man wearing the garb of a hunter. He was gagged, a bloody rag shoved deep into his mouth. I felt a sense of revulsion and terror as I realized his hands and feet were nailed to the planks, as if he were being crucified laying down. His eyes rolled wildly, white and insane, like a horse with a broken leg. When he saw us approaching, he tried to say something through the gag, pulling hard against the nails that bit so viciously into his flesh. Fresh rivers of blood spurted from his wounds.
I had my pistol in my hands. X had taken a fresh magazine out by now, throwing the empty one back in his backpack. Trembling, he went first, his shaking hand moving the flashlight around wildly. Its bright rays bounced off the dead, half-rotted trees that grew out of the boglands, the clouds of mosquitoes and moths that circled us constantly.
“Oh my God... he's like the victim of a serial killer or something,” he whispered, running a trembling hand over his face. “It looks like someone has set that poor guy up to have his heart cut out, like some sort of Aztec ritual.” He glanced worriedly over at me. We had both stopped cold in our tracks, looking around for any sign of danger, but we only saw the old man writhing on his rough table of torture.
“We have to keep going forward,” I whispered. “That thing is behind us. I don’t think it’s dead. I’m not sure it can even die.”
“But what’s ahead of us?” he asked grimly. “That’s the real question, isn’t it?” Far off down the trail, I saw small pinpoints of flickering light. They drew closer. We raised our pistols, waiting for the new arrivals to show themselves.
Dozens of people dressed in black, silky robes holding lamps slowly ambled their way towards us. They had their heads bowed, like monks on a holy pilgrimage. They drew close to the sacrifice. The one in the lead held a long, curving dagger whose blade looked like it was made of some kind of red volcanic rock. Its strange silver handle glittered in his pale, thin hand. At the end, I saw it was sculpted into the shape of a human heart.
“Stop right there!” X screamed, stepping forward. “Don’t come any closer! We are armed, I’m warning you.” The people in the black robes didn’t appear to hear or care in the slightest. They continued slowly following their leader with the strange dagger, almost floating forward in a nonchalant manner. Their leader began chanting in some strange, ancient language. It reminded me of Tibetan or Sanskrit in a way, like the chanting of some Vajrayana monk high up in the Himalayas. But it had a sinister, hissing quality to the words. Something ancient and powerful resonated in every syllable.
I raised the pistol, firing blankly into the dark, cloudless sky above. The smell of gunsmoke and fetid rot hung thick in the air. The leader of the group looked at me with his large, glassy eyes. His face looked sunken and pale, almost like a starving child. He had shaved all of the hair on his head, even his eyebrows. His lips were extremely thin and bloodless in his chalk-white face.
For a long moment, we stood staring at each other, my pistol aimed at his chest. X also had his pistol raised, aimed at one of those standing behind him. But the robed man didn’t speak. He gave me a faint grin.
“Let the old man go,” I commanded, my voice sounding hoarse and weak. The swamp quickly swallowed up my words, until only the buzzing of mosquitoes remained.
“I am sorry, my son, but I cannot do that,” the leader said in a voice as cold as endless space. “If we do not feed Mowdoroth, it will never sleep. The swamps will continue to expand, eating more and more of the surrounding forests and towns, and Mowdoroth, driven insane by hunger, will take far more victims in the process.
“This job has been passed down to us from generation to generation, from big hand to small, for over four centuries. Only twice has Mowdoroth not been fed on the New Moon, and each time, entire settlements full of people were wiped off the face of the Earth as if they had never existed. On one, they just had time to carve the word ‘CROATAN’ before they were taken.
“Mowdoroth looks for the place where the nightmares grow. It breaks open the chest and finds the place where the silent screams start, deep down at the base of the heart. All of the nightmares are planted there, like tiny seeds scattered during childhood. Those that fell on good soil in that abyss produced a great crop, yielding a hundredfold, sixtyfold, or thirtyfold. If you do not allow us to complete our holy mission, then you do it: cut open the man's chest and remove his beating heart. As it beats, squeeze it as hard as you can, and let all the blood drain onto the top of your head. Hold the heart above your head and close your eyes until the god appears and takes it.” The cult leader finished, looking at us with sparkling eyes, as if he had said something profound.
“This shit is just insane drivel,” X whispered in a voice as low as possible. “I say we open fire and save the old man now. Fuck these cultists.” I nodded grimly in agreement.
“You need to all turn around and leave immediately,” X yelled, stepping forward. “I will give you three seconds to turn around and get the hell out of my sight. Three…” At first, the cultists stood as still as statues, simply staring. Finally, the leader sighed and turned away. He shook his head, reminding me of a disappointed parent.
“I tried to warn you,” he said in his thin, quavering voice. “The time has come to give the offering. You must cut out this man’s heart and raise it to Mowdoroth, so he can get the seeds of nightmares freshly sown. The choice is yours now, as you have demanded this power with violence. You can leave this man here to be eaten by Mowdoroth, or free him and, in exchange, guarantee the deaths of hundreds of other people.”
With those last words, the black-robed figures continued down the curve of the trail. Within seconds, they had disappeared behind dead, half-rotted trees that still dotted the edges of the boglands. X and I ran forward toward the struggling old man. X reached into his pocket and pulled out a folding knife. He cut off the old man’s gag, pulling the spit-soaked chunk of filthy cloth out of his mouth. The old man spat and licked his dry lips.
“Get me out of here, please,” he whispered, his eyes rolling wildly. “Those cult members are all batshit insane. And there’s something not right in these swamps. I caught glimpses of something while I was waiting. There’s something in the water…”
“What’s your name, bud?” X said calmingly, looking at the old man’s hands and feet to try to decide how to best get the nails out without causing more damage.
“Winchester,” he said in a coarse voice. It sounded like he hadn’t had a drink of water in days. While X looked at his hands with the LED flashlight, I reached into my pack for the small canteen of filtered water I still had. I started pouring it into Winchester’s mouth. He gulped greedily, his throat working hard to drink down the rest of it.
“I got it!” X said, taking a flat stone he had found on the ground. “I’m going to try to pound these nails out from the bottom.”
“Oh, please, no,” Winchester said, his wrinkled face turning pale. X shook his head.
“We need to get you out of here,” he said. “It’s going to hurt, bud. But we don’t have any tools here. The nails are large, almost like railroad spikes, and once we get the top part, the bottom should slide out easily since it’s a lot narrower.” As he grabbed the rock to begin his work, a bone-chilling wailing started up again from the swamps. It was the scream of Mowdoroth, that abomination with the skin of a wasp’s nest.
“Cover us!” X yelled panickedly as he continued his grisly work. Winchester screamed in pain when X first struck the nail on his right hand. It shot up a fraction of an inch, fresh blood pooling all around it and dripping through the bare planks.
I turned, but the banshee wail seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. The swamp bubbled faster and faster all around us, as if thousands of corpses were coming back to life. I heard Winchester scream again, then the dull thud of another nail hitting the earth.
A face peeked out of the swamp, only twenty feet away. Its eyes were green, the color of a putrefying wound. Its lipless mouth opened wide, showing a spongy black mass of skin with concentric circles of tiny, razor-sharp teeth. It reminded me of the mouth of a lamprey.
I opened fire, shooting wildly at the face, aiming at the body hidden under the dark surface of the swamp. Luminescent drops of green blood exploded from a bullet hole in its upper right shoulder, floating across the surface of the water like radioactive waste.
Its screaming cut off instantly. All I could hear was the pounding of the rock behind me and Winchester’s pained, horrified pleas for mercy.
“Please, you’re hurting me!” he pleaded.
“Shut the fuck up, Winchester!” I whispered. “It’s here with us now.” With considerable effort, he did, only moaning and violently jerking his head now as the waves of pain ripped through him.
“I got it!” X said suddenly. A feeling of elation filled my heart.
“Let’s go then!” I yelled, turning to help the old man up. I heard something massive rise up behind us. It mixed with the sound of dripping water and babbling waves that arose from the disturbance.
Winchester was weak, stumbling up to his feet and nearly falling over immediately. Staggering, he took off down the trail with no shoes, but he immediately gave a curse of pain and tripped. X and I started running, and at that moment, I realized the flaw in our plan. We wouldn’t be able to get Winchester out of the swamp without carrying him, due to the extensive injuries to his feet. And I knew we didn’t have time.
Mowdoroth’s body stood as tall as the trees as it looked down at the three of us with its strange, infected eyes. Its tentacles undulated faster and faster, seeming to whip around its body until they flew out towards us.
“Run!” I screamed. X and I sprinted behind a cluster of dead trees hugging the path. The blade-like hand of Mowdoroth chopped them in a half, raining wood splinters down on our heads.
Winchester continued trying to crawl forward. Mowdoroth slithered behind him. Winchester looked up as a tentacle started coming down in his direction. He gave a short, panicked scream as the blade smashed through his back legs, chopping both of them off at the knees. The ground shook with the force of it. The stumps began spurting seemingly endless amounts of blood. Winchester pleaded and made incomprehensible gurgling sounds as he bled out. Mowdoroth ended Winchester’s cries when it wrapped its tentacle around Winchester’s torso. It slithered up into Winchester’s open mouth.
X and I shot as fast as we could while running forward in the dark, trying to hold a flashlight and a pistol. Most of my shots missed Mowdoroth, but with a sense of satisfaction and pride, I saw a few burst through its enormous body. Streams of radioactive green blood ran down its torso now. As its serpentine legs pumped furiously, it gained speed, coming behind us like a runaway train. I could feel the ground shaking with every thud of its tentacled feet.
A few hundred feet ahead of us, I caught a glimpse of the cultists. They were hurrying away from the area, not running but moving much faster than they had come in. Nearly out of breath already and exhausted from hiking all day, I pointed forward.
“Look!” I screamed. X saw them, his eyes widening. We sprinted in a blind panic, as fast as we could towards the stragglers in the black robes. Without warning, X raised his pistol and fired, aiming at the nearest of them.
The figure in the back of the pack fell forward without making a sound. He continued trying to crawl forward weakly for a few moments before he lost energy and lay still, no more than a bleeding black hump on the dark earth.
X gave a sudden cry of pain next to me as a tentacle came down like a guillotine blade. I heard it whip through the air with a high-pitched whine. A single breath later, I watched in horror as it sliced off his right arm. X looked down at the spurting stump for a long moment, his tanned face turning as pale as bones. He stumbled forward, then, with a hoarse cry, he fell.
Following X’s lead, I raised my gun and started shooting the cultists. They sprinted away in a random panic as bodies fell ahead of us. I jumped over the black lumps on the ground, hearing Mowdoroth shake the world as it gave chase. A long, snake-like tentacle reached down, picking up X’s spurting body and raising it towards Mowdoroth’s leech-like mouth. The massive abomination slowed, picking up the bodies of the dead cultists and crushing them. I heard the bones shatter as the wet gore exploded around Mowdoroth’s many sharp teeth.
I saw the woods again, living trees just a few hundred feet away. The trail of black earth ended abruptly, leading out of the boglands. Cultists sprinted blindly through the forest in every direction, scattering like cockroaches. I had nearly reached the border of the forest when I heard something whizzing past my head. I ducked, but the blur of a grayish tentacle coming down sent a jolt of fear like electricity sizzling through my body.
A moment later, a cold agony covered my left hand. In shock, I looked down, realizing that the blade-like appendage of Mowdoroth had neatly amputated all four of my fingers. If I hadn’t ducked, it would’ve probably gotten my head instead.
Stumbling and screaming, my mind in a blind panic, I staggered through the intersection of the boglands and the forest, falling forward. I knew I was dead. I closed my eyes, waiting. Yet nothing happened.
When I looked back, I saw something strange. Mowdoroth had stopped at the end of the boglands. It tried to push its body forward towards me, but it couldn’t enter the forest. It was as if an invisible barrier stood there.
I lay there for a long time. After a while, I heard Mowdoroth slink back into the fetid waters of the boglands. And then I was alone.
***
I wrapped my hand in bandages as much as I could, trying to stem the bleeding. I felt weak and sick from blood loss, so I lay there until the sun came up. The next day, I was able to slowly make my way out of the forest and back towards the nearest town.
Now I hear stories of people mysteriously going missing in the area. An entire family in a nearby farmhouse only a couple dozen miles away disappeared in the middle of the night without a trace, leaving only smeared trails of blood leading into the forest. No one saw anything, but these six victims were only the first in a long line of strange deaths. Oddly enough, all of the victims lived next to swamps.
And I have the feeling that I was the one responsible.

I had been hiking down the Appalachian Trail for over two weeks without issue on the day when the nightmare began. My friend, X, was by my side the entire time. It was, quite honestly, comforting to have someone who stood nearly six-and-a-half feet tall with me, especially during the long, dark nights when the howling of coyotes drew near. Black bears, too, were a constant presence in these dark mountains. As we got farther from towns and civilization, more ancient predators than human beings took over the land, stalking the night like creeping shadows.
For this trip, we both had bought as few supplies as possible. Included in our packs were MREs, two sleeping bags, some tarps and hammocks, some light clothing, and two pistols with a few boxes of ammo. We didn’t want to be too weighed down that we wouldn’t be able to move fast, after all. We would source water from the streams, waterfalls and lakes along the way and filter it using Lifestraws.
As the spring breeze blew past us, cooling the sweat on my face, I noticed the trail ahead of us weaving its way through thick swampland. The buzzing of flies and mosquitoes increased with every step. The green, fetid waters of the swamp bubbled constantly, as if it were whispering secrets to us.
“Ah, shit,” X said, glancing down the hill with his dark, serious eyes. His tanned skin was covered in a thin sheen of sweat as he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Another swamp. I hate swamps. You know there’s going to be a million mosquitoes and flies down there.” I pulled out the map, squinting down at it. I ran my finger down the trail, seeing the mountains and valleys we had already passed.
“The trail shouldn’t be going through any swamps,” I said. “They’re supposed to be marked. There’s no ponds or anything around here.” And yet there very clearly was. Either we were in a different spot than I thought we were, or the map was outdated. The trail also grew thinner as we descended. The sharp branches of the bushes stuck out like greedy hands, grabbing at our backpacks and clothes as we pressed forward.
“Well, whatever,” X said gruffly, plowing ahead. Twigs cracked under his massive bulk. The thin branches hanging across the path snapped as he plowed forward. I let him go first, since he was significantly bigger than myself. It was like following in the path of a bull.
“The faster we move, the faster we’ll be through it. We don’t want to camp anywhere around here when it gets dark,” X continued, looking grim. “We’ll be eaten alive by bugs by sunrise. We need to make it to the other side of these boglands before we can stop for the night.”
“Yeah, and I could use some more water,” I said, shaking my mostly empty canteen. “I wouldn’t drink this shit no matter what we did to it. It probably has brain-eating parasites crawling in it.” I checked my watch, realizing that dusk was only a half hour away. We would have to move fast indeed, especially as we didn’t know the size of the swamp. I was not enthusiastic about hiking in the dark with the many steep trails and sharp rocks that covered the surrounding land. A single misstep could lead to a very long, bone-shattering fall.
To my increasing dismay, I realized that the trail we were on no longer had the characteristic white markings of the Appalachian Trail. I kept checking the trees for the past fifteen minutes, and I definitely hadn’t seen a single one. I couldn’t remember the last time we had passed one, but I had a creeping suspicion it had been at least a couple hours ago.
“I think we have a problem, man,” I whispered. “I don’t know how it possibly could have happened, but I think we’re on the wrong trail.”
“There’s not supposed to be any other trails around here,” X argued. “Check the map.”
“Then where’s the white blazes? There’s not supposed to be any boglands around here, either, yet we’re walking through the middle of one,” I said. He shook his head.
“Listen, Ben, there’s not going to be markers on the entire Appalachian Trail,” he said. “Just trust me. We’re on the right path. Sometimes forests change. Swamps take over spots where forests used to lay. Hell, the Sahara Desert has been expanding for thousands of years, just eating the forests and plains all around it. There used to be lions and savannah in Morocco, and now it’s all dead and dry.”
I felt doubtful, but I continued forwards, following closely behind X. Neither one of us had ever done the full Appalachian Trail, after all. I hoped he was right. I was not enthusiastic about backtracking two or three hours if he wasn’t.
I thought back closely on our travels during the last few hours, wondering where we could have gone wrong. The trail had been rather overgrown and rocky on the peak of the last mountain. There had been a beautiful view spanning hundreds of miles, looking far off into state forests and winding roads. I remembered seeing the white marker near the top, but after we had started descending, it disappeared. That must have been where we went wrong, if we did, indeed, go off-course. But I couldn’t be sure, and I didn’t tell X about my suspicions.
We finished descending a steep, rocky trail into a valley where the boglands really started. The trees ended in a massive semi-circle around the open swamp. Thick peat covered the entire surface of it like rotted, grayish-brown skin. I saw water snakes quietly disappearing into the stagnant water, leaving behind slowly expanding ripples.
“This is pretty cool,” I said, stopping for a moment at the bottom of the trail to admire the boglands. Our trail continued directly through the center of it, no more than a raised patch of black earth surrounded by green swampy water. I could hear the many insects chirping and flying before we even took a step forward. Though the spring air felt warm and I was covered in sweat, I still reached into my bag, taking out a windbreaker that would cover up my arms and neck to help with the bugs. X did the same.
“Let’s move fast,” he said, giving me a knowing look. He was a much faster hiker than myself. He seemed like a machine sometimes, tireless and single-minded. I had seen him hike over twenty miles in a single day without looking too bent out of shape. I gave him a faint half-smile, picking up my pace.
“You know what they used to say about the boglands?” I asked X. He shook his head.
“I don’t read books,” he said. “If I have time to sit down and read, then it means I have time to go out and do something actually fun. But I’m sure you know all about it.” I gave a short bark of laughter at his off-handed insult. It sounded far too loud echoing back to us through the creepy swamp. The last rays of sunlight were disappearing behind the mountains now. Soon, we would be plunged into darkness.
“Well, in ancient times, people thought the boglands a place where the walls of reality were thin, where the gods would come through. They used to bring their victims out to swamps during rituals, then they would slice their throats or strangle them and dump their bodies into the bogs as an offering to the gods. They also said that strange, shape-shifting creatures would appear, sometimes to deceive travelers, other times to help them,” I said. “But as for human sacrifices, the bogs preserve bodies like nothing else, except maybe tar pits. Archaeologists keep finding victims with slashed throats or shattered skulls buried underneath the peat.”
X was silent for a long moment as we continued walking along the raised patch of earth that formed the trail. We got farther and farther from the forests, until the swamp seemed like a fetid ocean, spanning out to the horizon in every direction.
“Do you think they used to do that kind of stuff around here?” X asked.
“Used to?” I exclaimed, laughing. “I’m sure some psychopaths still do. This is a good place to dump a body, after all. Who the hell wants to trek through the muck and the snakes and mosquitoes out here looking for corpses?”
“The FBI and the cops will do it,” he said, “if they think there’s something to find.” I was about to respond when an ear-splitting shriek echoed out all around us. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from at first. X’s tan skin seemed to go pale as he spun, glancing in every direction.
“What the fuck is that?!” he screamed over the deafening wailing. I didn’t believe in cryptids, but my anxious mind immediately offered up an image of a banshee, a woman with chalk-white skin and black eyes whose shrieking jaw unhinged like a snake’s.
“I’m turning around!” I yelled, pointing back for emphasis. “Dude, fuck this! We need to get out of this swamp!” But X was no longer listening. He was looking past me, his mouth open and his eyes wild. He started backpedaling and nearly fell into the swamp. Windmilling his arms crazily, he turned and sprinted away without a word.
I was afraid to look back. The screaming was getting louder by the second, shaking the air all around me in deafening, crashing waves of sound. I felt like my head would explode if it got any worse. Instinctively, I took off after X, but I glanced back for a single moment before I did. Something loomed there from a nightmare, standing as tall as the trees. It moved through the swamp like a snake, its body slithering through the stagnant green waters towards us. When it met my eyes, the screaming stopped. The abrupt silence seemed deafening. I could hear the fervent pounding of my heart in my ears.
The creature’s skin looked honeycombed and rough, almost like a wasp’s nest. The thousands of tiny holes covering its body constantly opened and closed like hungry mouths. Its arms were long tentacles ending in sharp points of bone in the shape of scythes. The tentacles undulated like serpents. Its legs, too, were no more than four tentacles that alternatively slithered and stepped forward.
Its flesh was the color of peat, a sickly grayish-brown, and the smell that emanated from it was rancid and stagnant, the essence of all boglands and swamps. I nearly gagged as I ran. The putrefying stench seemed to follow me like a shadow.
Ahead of me, X was fumbling in his backpack as he ran, trying to grab his pistol. I knew he had a Glock 21 in that bag, and I had my Sig Sauer in mine. I cursed myself for not keeping it holstered on my body, but I had never had to use it before and hadn’t seriously thought I would need it for this trip. He glanced back at me, his eyes widening in horror.
“It’s right behind you!” he yelled. “Get down!” He dropped his backpack, revealing the sleek, black pistol clenched tightly in his hand. I barely had time to comprehend his words when an immense pressure and numbness radiated through my back. My head snapped backwards as a meaty thud resonated all around me. I went flying forward, feeling as if I had been struck by a car. As I flew through the air, the pain in my back exploded in burning pulses. I felt the deep slice open up from the sharp blade of bone that had slashed me like a knife. I felt trickles of blood pour from the open wound, making my stained shirt cling to my body.
I landed hard on the raised black earth of the trail, a bone-jarring impact that knocked the air out of me. At that same moment, X opened fire, pressing the trigger over and over, emptying the magazine as fast as he could. Something splashed over me, going in my eyes and mouth and nose. I crawled forward, moaning, my head spinning. I wiped my forehead, seeing spatters of green blood squirming with dark, maggot-like creatures covering my arms and face. It clung to my fingers, thick and rancid. I felt stinging sensations as the tiny worms bit me over and over. My ears rang with a high-pitched whine from the gunshots.
X was running towards me now. I continued to crawl towards him, shell-shocked and whimpering, trying to wipe the eldritch blood off my skin. With a muscular arm, he reached down and pulled me up.
“Where’d it go?” I mumbled, stumbling forward on unsteady feet. X put an arm around my shoulders and helped support me.
“It slunk back into the swamp,” he said. “Jesus, you’re bleeding really bad, buddy. We’re going to need to take care of that as soon as we get away from this hellhole.” I felt the deep slices from the creature’s blade-like hands across my back. The fabric of my shirt clung tightly to the skin as fresh blood soaked it.
“This isn’t the trail, X,” I gasped. “We went the wrong way. We need to go back.” He nodded grimly.
“We’re heading back right now. I know it’s the wrong trail now, it definitely is, but it’s dark. The trails back up the mountains are steep and dangerous, and we’ve already been hiking all day. How much longer can we really go?” he asked. In reality, I had a feeling X could go for quite a bit longer. I was the weak link in the chain, and we both knew it.
X took out a small, LED flashlight from his backpack, shining it ahead of us on the dark path. Across the center of the black earth, there was an obstruction, something that hadn’t been there when we passed this way originally.
“Shit! Is that a person?” X said, slowing down. He focused the light on it. As my eyes adjusted, I gave a gasp of horror as I saw a rough sacrificial table looming there, waiting with a ready victim.
Laying on the bare wooden planks in the center of the trail was an elderly man wearing the garb of a hunter. He was gagged, a bloody rag shoved deep into his mouth. I felt a sense of revulsion and terror as I realized his hands and feet were nailed to the planks, as if he were being crucified laying down. His eyes rolled wildly, white and insane, like a horse with a broken leg. When he saw us approaching, he tried to say something through the gag, pulling hard against the nails that bit so viciously into his flesh. Fresh rivers of blood spurted from his wounds.
I had my pistol in my hands. X had taken a fresh magazine out by now, throwing the empty one back in his backpack. Trembling, he went first, his shaking hand moving the flashlight around wildly. Its bright rays bounced off the dead, half-rotted trees that grew out of the boglands, the clouds of mosquitoes and moths that circled us constantly.
“Oh my God... he's like the victim of a serial killer or something,” he whispered, running a trembling hand over his face. “It looks like someone has set that poor guy up to have his heart cut out, like some sort of Aztec ritual.” He glanced worriedly over at me. We had both stopped cold in our tracks, looking around for any sign of danger, but we only saw the old man writhing on his rough table of torture.
“We have to keep going forward,” I whispered. “That thing is behind us. I don’t think it’s dead. I’m not sure it can even die.”
“But what’s ahead of us?” he asked grimly. “That’s the real question, isn’t it?” Far off down the trail, I saw small pinpoints of flickering light. They drew closer. We raised our pistols, waiting for the new arrivals to show themselves.
Dozens of people dressed in black, silky robes holding lamps slowly ambled their way towards us. They had their heads bowed, like monks on a holy pilgrimage. They drew close to the sacrifice. The one in the lead held a long, curving dagger whose blade looked like it was made of some kind of red volcanic rock. Its strange silver handle glittered in his pale, thin hand. At the end, I saw it was sculpted into the shape of a human heart.
“Stop right there!” X screamed, stepping forward. “Don’t come any closer! We are armed, I’m warning you.” The people in the black robes didn’t appear to hear or care in the slightest. They continued slowly following their leader with the strange dagger, almost floating forward in a nonchalant manner. Their leader began chanting in some strange, ancient language. It reminded me of Tibetan or Sanskrit in a way, like the chanting of some Vajrayana monk high up in the Himalayas. But it had a sinister, hissing quality to the words. Something ancient and powerful resonated in every syllable.
I raised the pistol, firing blankly into the dark, cloudless sky above. The smell of gunsmoke and fetid rot hung thick in the air. The leader of the group looked at me with his large, glassy eyes. His face looked sunken and pale, almost like a starving child. He had shaved all of the hair on his head, even his eyebrows. His lips were extremely thin and bloodless in his chalk-white face.
For a long moment, we stood staring at each other, my pistol aimed at his chest. X also had his pistol raised, aimed at one of those standing behind him. But the robed man didn’t speak. He gave me a faint grin.
“Let the old man go,” I commanded, my voice sounding hoarse and weak. The swamp quickly swallowed up my words, until only the buzzing of mosquitoes remained.
“I am sorry, my son, but I cannot do that,” the leader said in a voice as cold as endless space. “If we do not feed Mowdoroth, it will never sleep. The swamps will continue to expand, eating more and more of the surrounding forests and towns, and Mowdoroth, driven insane by hunger, will take far more victims in the process.
“This job has been passed down to us from generation to generation, from big hand to small, for over four centuries. Only twice has Mowdoroth not been fed on the New Moon, and each time, entire settlements full of people were wiped off the face of the Earth as if they had never existed. On one, they just had time to carve the word ‘CROATAN’ before they were taken.
“Mowdoroth looks for the place where the nightmares grow. It breaks open the chest and finds the place where the silent screams start, deep down at the base of the heart. All of the nightmares are planted there, like tiny seeds scattered during childhood. Those that fell on good soil in that abyss produced a great crop, yielding a hundredfold, sixtyfold, or thirtyfold. If you do not allow us to complete our holy mission, then you do it: cut open the man's chest and remove his beating heart. As it beats, squeeze it as hard as you can, and let all the blood drain onto the top of your head. Hold the heart above your head and close your eyes until the god appears and takes it.” The cult leader finished, looking at us with sparkling eyes, as if he had said something profound.
“This shit is just insane drivel,” X whispered in a voice as low as possible. “I say we open fire and save the old man now. Fuck these cultists.” I nodded grimly in agreement.
“You need to all turn around and leave immediately,” X yelled, stepping forward. “I will give you three seconds to turn around and get the hell out of my sight. Three…” At first, the cultists stood as still as statues, simply staring. Finally, the leader sighed and turned away. He shook his head, reminding me of a disappointed parent.
“I tried to warn you,” he said in his thin, quavering voice. “The time has come to give the offering. You must cut out this man’s heart and raise it to Mowdoroth, so he can get the seeds of nightmares freshly sown. The choice is yours now, as you have demanded this power with violence. You can leave this man here to be eaten by Mowdoroth, or free him and, in exchange, guarantee the deaths of hundreds of other people.”
With those last words, the black-robed figures continued down the curve of the trail. Within seconds, they had disappeared behind dead, half-rotted trees that still dotted the edges of the boglands. X and I ran forward toward the struggling old man. X reached into his pocket and pulled out a folding knife. He cut off the old man’s gag, pulling the spit-soaked chunk of filthy cloth out of his mouth. The old man spat and licked his dry lips.
“Get me out of here, please,” he whispered, his eyes rolling wildly. “Those cult members are all batshit insane. And there’s something not right in these swamps. I caught glimpses of something while I was waiting. There’s something in the water…”
“What’s your name, bud?” X said calmingly, looking at the old man’s hands and feet to try to decide how to best get the nails out without causing more damage.
“Winchester,” he said in a coarse voice. It sounded like he hadn’t had a drink of water in days. While X looked at his hands with the LED flashlight, I reached into my pack for the small canteen of filtered water I still had. I started pouring it into Winchester’s mouth. He gulped greedily, his throat working hard to drink down the rest of it.
“I got it!” X said, taking a flat stone he had found on the ground. “I’m going to try to pound these nails out from the bottom.”
“Oh, please, no,” Winchester said, his wrinkled face turning pale. X shook his head.
“We need to get you out of here,” he said. “It’s going to hurt, bud. But we don’t have any tools here. The nails are large, almost like railroad spikes, and once we get the top part, the bottom should slide out easily since it’s a lot narrower.” As he grabbed the rock to begin his work, a bone-chilling wailing started up again from the swamps. It was the scream of Mowdoroth, that abomination with the skin of a wasp’s nest.
“Cover us!” X yelled panickedly as he continued his grisly work. Winchester screamed in pain when X first struck the nail on his right hand. It shot up a fraction of an inch, fresh blood pooling all around it and dripping through the bare planks.
I turned, but the banshee wail seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. The swamp bubbled faster and faster all around us, as if thousands of corpses were coming back to life. I heard Winchester scream again, then the dull thud of another nail hitting the earth.
A face peeked out of the swamp, only twenty feet away. Its eyes were green, the color of a putrefying wound. Its lipless mouth opened wide, showing a spongy black mass of skin with concentric circles of tiny, razor-sharp teeth. It reminded me of the mouth of a lamprey.
I opened fire, shooting wildly at the face, aiming at the body hidden under the dark surface of the swamp. Luminescent drops of green blood exploded from a bullet hole in its upper right shoulder, floating across the surface of the water like radioactive waste.
Its screaming cut off instantly. All I could hear was the pounding of the rock behind me and Winchester’s pained, horrified pleas for mercy.
“Please, you’re hurting me!” he pleaded.
“Shut the fuck up, Winchester!” I whispered. “It’s here with us now.” With considerable effort, he did, only moaning and violently jerking his head now as the waves of pain ripped through him.
“I got it!” X said suddenly. A feeling of elation filled my heart.
“Let’s go then!” I yelled, turning to help the old man up. I heard something massive rise up behind us. It mixed with the sound of dripping water and babbling waves that arose from the disturbance.
Winchester was weak, stumbling up to his feet and nearly falling over immediately. Staggering, he took off down the trail with no shoes, but he immediately gave a curse of pain and tripped. X and I started running, and at that moment, I realized the flaw in our plan. We wouldn’t be able to get Winchester out of the swamp without carrying him, due to the extensive injuries to his feet. And I knew we didn’t have time.
Mowdoroth’s body stood as tall as the trees as it looked down at the three of us with its strange, infected eyes. Its tentacles undulated faster and faster, seeming to whip around its body until they flew out towards us.
“Run!” I screamed. X and I sprinted behind a cluster of dead trees hugging the path. The blade-like hand of Mowdoroth chopped them in a half, raining wood splinters down on our heads.
Winchester continued trying to crawl forward. Mowdoroth slithered behind him. Winchester looked up as a tentacle started coming down in his direction. He gave a short, panicked scream as the blade smashed through his back legs, chopping both of them off at the knees. The ground shook with the force of it. The stumps began spurting seemingly endless amounts of blood. Winchester pleaded and made incomprehensible gurgling sounds as he bled out. Mowdoroth ended Winchester’s cries when it wrapped its tentacle around Winchester’s torso. It slithered up into Winchester’s open mouth.
X and I shot as fast as we could while running forward in the dark, trying to hold a flashlight and a pistol. Most of my shots missed Mowdoroth, but with a sense of satisfaction and pride, I saw a few burst through its enormous body. Streams of radioactive green blood ran down its torso now. As its serpentine legs pumped furiously, it gained speed, coming behind us like a runaway train. I could feel the ground shaking with every thud of its tentacled feet.
A few hundred feet ahead of us, I caught a glimpse of the cultists. They were hurrying away from the area, not running but moving much faster than they had come in. Nearly out of breath already and exhausted from hiking all day, I pointed forward.
“Look!” I screamed. X saw them, his eyes widening. We sprinted in a blind panic, as fast as we could towards the stragglers in the black robes. Without warning, X raised his pistol and fired, aiming at the nearest of them.
The figure in the back of the pack fell forward without making a sound. He continued trying to crawl forward weakly for a few moments before he lost energy and lay still, no more than a bleeding black hump on the dark earth.
X gave a sudden cry of pain next to me as a tentacle came down like a guillotine blade. I heard it whip through the air with a high-pitched whine. A single breath later, I watched in horror as it sliced off his right arm. X looked down at the spurting stump for a long moment, his tanned face turning as pale as bones. He stumbled forward, then, with a hoarse cry, he fell.
Following X’s lead, I raised my gun and started shooting the cultists. They sprinted away in a random panic as bodies fell ahead of us. I jumped over the black lumps on the ground, hearing Mowdoroth shake the world as it gave chase. A long, snake-like tentacle reached down, picking up X’s spurting body and raising it towards Mowdoroth’s leech-like mouth. The massive abomination slowed, picking up the bodies of the dead cultists and crushing them. I heard the bones shatter as the wet gore exploded around Mowdoroth’s many sharp teeth.
I saw the woods again, living trees just a few hundred feet away. The trail of black earth ended abruptly, leading out of the boglands. Cultists sprinted blindly through the forest in every direction, scattering like cockroaches. I had nearly reached the border of the forest when I heard something whizzing past my head. I ducked, but the blur of a grayish tentacle coming down sent a jolt of fear like electricity sizzling through my body.
A moment later, a cold agony covered my left hand. In shock, I looked down, realizing that the blade-like appendage of Mowdoroth had neatly amputated all four of my fingers. If I hadn’t ducked, it would’ve probably gotten my head instead.
Stumbling and screaming, my mind in a blind panic, I staggered through the intersection of the boglands and the forest, falling forward. I knew I was dead. I closed my eyes, waiting. Yet nothing happened.
When I looked back, I saw something strange. Mowdoroth had stopped at the end of the boglands. It tried to push its body forward towards me, but it couldn’t enter the forest. It was as if an invisible barrier stood there.
I lay there for a long time. After a while, I heard Mowdoroth slink back into the fetid waters of the boglands. And then I was alone.
***
I wrapped my hand in bandages as much as I could, trying to stem the bleeding. I felt weak and sick from blood loss, so I lay there until the sun came up. The next day, I was able to slowly make my way out of the forest and back towards the nearest town.
Now I hear stories of people mysteriously going missing in the area. An entire family in a nearby farmhouse only a couple dozen miles away disappeared in the middle of the night without a trace, leaving only smeared trails of blood leading into the forest. No one saw anything, but these six victims were only the first in a long line of strange deaths. Oddly enough, all of the victims lived next to swamps.
And I have the feeling that I was the one responsible.

I had been hiking down the Appalachian Trail for over two weeks without issue on the day when the nightmare began. My friend, X, was by my side the entire time. It was, quite honestly, comforting to have someone who stood nearly six-and-a-half feet tall with me, especially during the long, dark nights when the howling of coyotes drew near. Black bears, too, were a constant presence in these dark mountains. As we got farther from towns and civilization, more ancient predators than human beings took over the land, stalking the night like creeping shadows.
For this trip, we both had bought as few supplies as possible. Included in our packs were MREs, two sleeping bags, some tarps and hammocks, some light clothing, and two pistols with a few boxes of ammo. We didn’t want to be too weighed down that we wouldn’t be able to move fast, after all. We would source water from the streams, waterfalls and lakes along the way and filter it using Lifestraws.
As the spring breeze blew past us, cooling the sweat on my face, I noticed the trail ahead of us weaving its way through thick swampland. The buzzing of flies and mosquitoes increased with every step. The green, fetid waters of the swamp bubbled constantly, as if it were whispering secrets to us.
“Ah, shit,” X said, glancing down the hill with his dark, serious eyes. His tanned skin was covered in a thin sheen of sweat as he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Another swamp. I hate swamps. You know there’s going to be a million mosquitoes and flies down there.” I pulled out the map, squinting down at it. I ran my finger down the trail, seeing the mountains and valleys we had already passed.
“The trail shouldn’t be going through any swamps,” I said. “They’re supposed to be marked. There’s no ponds or anything around here.” And yet there very clearly was. Either we were in a different spot than I thought we were, or the map was outdated. The trail also grew thinner as we descended. The sharp branches of the bushes stuck out like greedy hands, grabbing at our backpacks and clothes as we pressed forward.
“Well, whatever,” X said gruffly, plowing ahead. Twigs cracked under his massive bulk. The thin branches hanging across the path snapped as he plowed forward. I let him go first, since he was significantly bigger than myself. It was like following in the path of a bull.
“The faster we move, the faster we’ll be through it. We don’t want to camp anywhere around here when it gets dark,” X continued, looking grim. “We’ll be eaten alive by bugs by sunrise. We need to make it to the other side of these boglands before we can stop for the night.”
“Yeah, and I could use some more water,” I said, shaking my mostly empty canteen. “I wouldn’t drink this shit no matter what we did to it. It probably has brain-eating parasites crawling in it.” I checked my watch, realizing that dusk was only a half hour away. We would have to move fast indeed, especially as we didn’t know the size of the swamp. I was not enthusiastic about hiking in the dark with the many steep trails and sharp rocks that covered the surrounding land. A single misstep could lead to a very long, bone-shattering fall.
To my increasing dismay, I realized that the trail we were on no longer had the characteristic white markings of the Appalachian Trail. I kept checking the trees for the past fifteen minutes, and I definitely hadn’t seen a single one. I couldn’t remember the last time we had passed one, but I had a creeping suspicion it had been at least a couple hours ago.
“I think we have a problem, man,” I whispered. “I don’t know how it possibly could have happened, but I think we’re on the wrong trail.”
“There’s not supposed to be any other trails around here,” X argued. “Check the map.”
“Then where’s the white blazes? There’s not supposed to be any boglands around here, either, yet we’re walking through the middle of one,” I said. He shook his head.
“Listen, Ben, there’s not going to be markers on the entire Appalachian Trail,” he said. “Just trust me. We’re on the right path. Sometimes forests change. Swamps take over spots where forests used to lay. Hell, the Sahara Desert has been expanding for thousands of years, just eating the forests and plains all around it. There used to be lions and savannah in Morocco, and now it’s all dead and dry.”
I felt doubtful, but I continued forwards, following closely behind X. Neither one of us had ever done the full Appalachian Trail, after all. I hoped he was right. I was not enthusiastic about backtracking two or three hours if he wasn’t.
I thought back closely on our travels during the last few hours, wondering where we could have gone wrong. The trail had been rather overgrown and rocky on the peak of the last mountain. There had been a beautiful view spanning hundreds of miles, looking far off into state forests and winding roads. I remembered seeing the white marker near the top, but after we had started descending, it disappeared. That must have been where we went wrong, if we did, indeed, go off-course. But I couldn’t be sure, and I didn’t tell X about my suspicions.
We finished descending a steep, rocky trail into a valley where the boglands really started. The trees ended in a massive semi-circle around the open swamp. Thick peat covered the entire surface of it like rotted, grayish-brown skin. I saw water snakes quietly disappearing into the stagnant water, leaving behind slowly expanding ripples.
“This is pretty cool,” I said, stopping for a moment at the bottom of the trail to admire the boglands. Our trail continued directly through the center of it, no more than a raised patch of black earth surrounded by green swampy water. I could hear the many insects chirping and flying before we even took a step forward. Though the spring air felt warm and I was covered in sweat, I still reached into my bag, taking out a windbreaker that would cover up my arms and neck to help with the bugs. X did the same.
“Let’s move fast,” he said, giving me a knowing look. He was a much faster hiker than myself. He seemed like a machine sometimes, tireless and single-minded. I had seen him hike over twenty miles in a single day without looking too bent out of shape. I gave him a faint half-smile, picking up my pace.
“You know what they used to say about the boglands?” I asked X. He shook his head.
“I don’t read books,” he said. “If I have time to sit down and read, then it means I have time to go out and do something actually fun. But I’m sure you know all about it.” I gave a short bark of laughter at his off-handed insult. It sounded far too loud echoing back to us through the creepy swamp. The last rays of sunlight were disappearing behind the mountains now. Soon, we would be plunged into darkness.
“Well, in ancient times, people thought the boglands a place where the walls of reality were thin, where the gods would come through. They used to bring their victims out to swamps during rituals, then they would slice their throats or strangle them and dump their bodies into the bogs as an offering to the gods. They also said that strange, shape-shifting creatures would appear, sometimes to deceive travelers, other times to help them,” I said. “But as for human sacrifices, the bogs preserve bodies like nothing else, except maybe tar pits. Archaeologists keep finding victims with slashed throats or shattered skulls buried underneath the peat.”
X was silent for a long moment as we continued walking along the raised patch of earth that formed the trail. We got farther and farther from the forests, until the swamp seemed like a fetid ocean, spanning out to the horizon in every direction.
“Do you think they used to do that kind of stuff around here?” X asked.
“Used to?” I exclaimed, laughing. “I’m sure some psychopaths still do. This is a good place to dump a body, after all. Who the hell wants to trek through the muck and the snakes and mosquitoes out here looking for corpses?”
“The FBI and the cops will do it,” he said, “if they think there’s something to find.” I was about to respond when an ear-splitting shriek echoed out all around us. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from at first. X’s tan skin seemed to go pale as he spun, glancing in every direction.
“What the fuck is that?!” he screamed over the deafening wailing. I didn’t believe in cryptids, but my anxious mind immediately offered up an image of a banshee, a woman with chalk-white skin and black eyes whose shrieking jaw unhinged like a snake’s.
“I’m turning around!” I yelled, pointing back for emphasis. “Dude, fuck this! We need to get out of this swamp!” But X was no longer listening. He was looking past me, his mouth open and his eyes wild. He started backpedaling and nearly fell into the swamp. Windmilling his arms crazily, he turned and sprinted away without a word.
I was afraid to look back. The screaming was getting louder by the second, shaking the air all around me in deafening, crashing waves of sound. I felt like my head would explode if it got any worse. Instinctively, I took off after X, but I glanced back for a single moment before I did. Something loomed there from a nightmare, standing as tall as the trees. It moved through the swamp like a snake, its body slithering through the stagnant green waters towards us. When it met my eyes, the screaming stopped. The abrupt silence seemed deafening. I could hear the fervent pounding of my heart in my ears.
The creature’s skin looked honeycombed and rough, almost like a wasp’s nest. The thousands of tiny holes covering its body constantly opened and closed like hungry mouths. Its arms were long tentacles ending in sharp points of bone in the shape of scythes. The tentacles undulated like serpents. Its legs, too, were no more than four tentacles that alternatively slithered and stepped forward.
Its flesh was the color of peat, a sickly grayish-brown, and the smell that emanated from it was rancid and stagnant, the essence of all boglands and swamps. I nearly gagged as I ran. The putrefying stench seemed to follow me like a shadow.
Ahead of me, X was fumbling in his backpack as he ran, trying to grab his pistol. I knew he had a Glock 21 in that bag, and I had my Sig Sauer in mine. I cursed myself for not keeping it holstered on my body, but I had never had to use it before and hadn’t seriously thought I would need it for this trip. He glanced back at me, his eyes widening in horror.
“It’s right behind you!” he yelled. “Get down!” He dropped his backpack, revealing the sleek, black pistol clenched tightly in his hand. I barely had time to comprehend his words when an immense pressure and numbness radiated through my back. My head snapped backwards as a meaty thud resonated all around me. I went flying forward, feeling as if I had been struck by a car. As I flew through the air, the pain in my back exploded in burning pulses. I felt the deep slice open up from the sharp blade of bone that had slashed me like a knife. I felt trickles of blood pour from the open wound, making my stained shirt cling to my body.
I landed hard on the raised black earth of the trail, a bone-jarring impact that knocked the air out of me. At that same moment, X opened fire, pressing the trigger over and over, emptying the magazine as fast as he could. Something splashed over me, going in my eyes and mouth and nose. I crawled forward, moaning, my head spinning. I wiped my forehead, seeing spatters of green blood squirming with dark, maggot-like creatures covering my arms and face. It clung to my fingers, thick and rancid. I felt stinging sensations as the tiny worms bit me over and over. My ears rang with a high-pitched whine from the gunshots.
X was running towards me now. I continued to crawl towards him, shell-shocked and whimpering, trying to wipe the eldritch blood off my skin. With a muscular arm, he reached down and pulled me up.
“Where’d it go?” I mumbled, stumbling forward on unsteady feet. X put an arm around my shoulders and helped support me.
“It slunk back into the swamp,” he said. “Jesus, you’re bleeding really bad, buddy. We’re going to need to take care of that as soon as we get away from this hellhole.” I felt the deep slices from the creature’s blade-like hands across my back. The fabric of my shirt clung tightly to the skin as fresh blood soaked it.
“This isn’t the trail, X,” I gasped. “We went the wrong way. We need to go back.” He nodded grimly.
“We’re heading back right now. I know it’s the wrong trail now, it definitely is, but it’s dark. The trails back up the mountains are steep and dangerous, and we’ve already been hiking all day. How much longer can we really go?” he asked. In reality, I had a feeling X could go for quite a bit longer. I was the weak link in the chain, and we both knew it.
X took out a small, LED flashlight from his backpack, shining it ahead of us on the dark path. Across the center of the black earth, there was an obstruction, something that hadn’t been there when we passed this way originally.
“Shit! Is that a person?” X said, slowing down. He focused the light on it. As my eyes adjusted, I gave a gasp of horror as I saw a rough sacrificial table looming there, waiting with a ready victim.
Laying on the bare wooden planks in the center of the trail was an elderly man wearing the garb of a hunter. He was gagged, a bloody rag shoved deep into his mouth. I felt a sense of revulsion and terror as I realized his hands and feet were nailed to the planks, as if he were being crucified laying down. His eyes rolled wildly, white and insane, like a horse with a broken leg. When he saw us approaching, he tried to say something through the gag, pulling hard against the nails that bit so viciously into his flesh. Fresh rivers of blood spurted from his wounds.
I had my pistol in my hands. X had taken a fresh magazine out by now, throwing the empty one back in his backpack. Trembling, he went first, his shaking hand moving the flashlight around wildly. Its bright rays bounced off the dead, half-rotted trees that grew out of the boglands, the clouds of mosquitoes and moths that circled us constantly.
“Oh my God... he's like the victim of a serial killer or something,” he whispered, running a trembling hand over his face. “It looks like someone has set that poor guy up to have his heart cut out, like some sort of Aztec ritual.” He glanced worriedly over at me. We had both stopped cold in our tracks, looking around for any sign of danger, but we only saw the old man writhing on his rough table of torture.
“We have to keep going forward,” I whispered. “That thing is behind us. I don’t think it’s dead. I’m not sure it can even die.”
“But what’s ahead of us?” he asked grimly. “That’s the real question, isn’t it?” Far off down the trail, I saw small pinpoints of flickering light. They drew closer. We raised our pistols, waiting for the new arrivals to show themselves.
Dozens of people dressed in black, silky robes holding lamps slowly ambled their way towards us. They had their heads bowed, like monks on a holy pilgrimage. They drew close to the sacrifice. The one in the lead held a long, curving dagger whose blade looked like it was made of some kind of red volcanic rock. Its strange silver handle glittered in his pale, thin hand. At the end, I saw it was sculpted into the shape of a human heart.
“Stop right there!” X screamed, stepping forward. “Don’t come any closer! We are armed, I’m warning you.” The people in the black robes didn’t appear to hear or care in the slightest. They continued slowly following their leader with the strange dagger, almost floating forward in a nonchalant manner. Their leader began chanting in some strange, ancient language. It reminded me of Tibetan or Sanskrit in a way, like the chanting of some Vajrayana monk high up in the Himalayas. But it had a sinister, hissing quality to the words. Something ancient and powerful resonated in every syllable.
I raised the pistol, firing blankly into the dark, cloudless sky above. The smell of gunsmoke and fetid rot hung thick in the air. The leader of the group looked at me with his large, glassy eyes. His face looked sunken and pale, almost like a starving child. He had shaved all of the hair on his head, even his eyebrows. His lips were extremely thin and bloodless in his chalk-white face.
For a long moment, we stood staring at each other, my pistol aimed at his chest. X also had his pistol raised, aimed at one of those standing behind him. But the robed man didn’t speak. He gave me a faint grin.
“Let the old man go,” I commanded, my voice sounding hoarse and weak. The swamp quickly swallowed up my words, until only the buzzing of mosquitoes remained.
“I am sorry, my son, but I cannot do that,” the leader said in a voice as cold as endless space. “If we do not feed Mowdoroth, it will never sleep. The swamps will continue to expand, eating more and more of the surrounding forests and towns, and Mowdoroth, driven insane by hunger, will take far more victims in the process.
“This job has been passed down to us from generation to generation, from big hand to small, for over four centuries. Only twice has Mowdoroth not been fed on the New Moon, and each time, entire settlements full of people were wiped off the face of the Earth as if they had never existed. On one, they just had time to carve the word ‘CROATAN’ before they were taken.
“Mowdoroth looks for the place where the nightmares grow. It breaks open the chest and finds the place where the silent screams start, deep down at the base of the heart. All of the nightmares are planted there, like tiny seeds scattered during childhood. Those that fell on good soil in that abyss produced a great crop, yielding a hundredfold, sixtyfold, or thirtyfold. If you do not allow us to complete our holy mission, then you do it: cut open the man's chest and remove his beating heart. As it beats, squeeze it as hard as you can, and let all the blood drain onto the top of your head. Hold the heart above your head and close your eyes until the god appears and takes it.” The cult leader finished, looking at us with sparkling eyes, as if he had said something profound.
“This shit is just insane drivel,” X whispered in a voice as low as possible. “I say we open fire and save the old man now. Fuck these cultists.” I nodded grimly in agreement.
“You need to all turn around and leave immediately,” X yelled, stepping forward. “I will give you three seconds to turn around and get the hell out of my sight. Three…” At first, the cultists stood as still as statues, simply staring. Finally, the leader sighed and turned away. He shook his head, reminding me of a disappointed parent.
“I tried to warn you,” he said in his thin, quavering voice. “The time has come to give the offering. You must cut out this man’s heart and raise it to Mowdoroth, so he can get the seeds of nightmares freshly sown. The choice is yours now, as you have demanded this power with violence. You can leave this man here to be eaten by Mowdoroth, or free him and, in exchange, guarantee the deaths of hundreds of other people.”
With those last words, the black-robed figures continued down the curve of the trail. Within seconds, they had disappeared behind dead, half-rotted trees that still dotted the edges of the boglands. X and I ran forward toward the struggling old man. X reached into his pocket and pulled out a folding knife. He cut off the old man’s gag, pulling the spit-soaked chunk of filthy cloth out of his mouth. The old man spat and licked his dry lips.
“Get me out of here, please,” he whispered, his eyes rolling wildly. “Those cult members are all batshit insane. And there’s something not right in these swamps. I caught glimpses of something while I was waiting. There’s something in the water…”
“What’s your name, bud?” X said calmingly, looking at the old man’s hands and feet to try to decide how to best get the nails out without causing more damage.
“Winchester,” he said in a coarse voice. It sounded like he hadn’t had a drink of water in days. While X looked at his hands with the LED flashlight, I reached into my pack for the small canteen of filtered water I still had. I started pouring it into Winchester’s mouth. He gulped greedily, his throat working hard to drink down the rest of it.
“I got it!” X said, taking a flat stone he had found on the ground. “I’m going to try to pound these nails out from the bottom.”
“Oh, please, no,” Winchester said, his wrinkled face turning pale. X shook his head.
“We need to get you out of here,” he said. “It’s going to hurt, bud. But we don’t have any tools here. The nails are large, almost like railroad spikes, and once we get the top part, the bottom should slide out easily since it’s a lot narrower.” As he grabbed the rock to begin his work, a bone-chilling wailing started up again from the swamps. It was the scream of Mowdoroth, that abomination with the skin of a wasp’s nest.
“Cover us!” X yelled panickedly as he continued his grisly work. Winchester screamed in pain when X first struck the nail on his right hand. It shot up a fraction of an inch, fresh blood pooling all around it and dripping through the bare planks.
I turned, but the banshee wail seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. The swamp bubbled faster and faster all around us, as if thousands of corpses were coming back to life. I heard Winchester scream again, then the dull thud of another nail hitting the earth.
A face peeked out of the swamp, only twenty feet away. Its eyes were green, the color of a putrefying wound. Its lipless mouth opened wide, showing a spongy black mass of skin with concentric circles of tiny, razor-sharp teeth. It reminded me of the mouth of a lamprey.
I opened fire, shooting wildly at the face, aiming at the body hidden under the dark surface of the swamp. Luminescent drops of green blood exploded from a bullet hole in its upper right shoulder, floating across the surface of the water like radioactive waste.
Its screaming cut off instantly. All I could hear was the pounding of the rock behind me and Winchester’s pained, horrified pleas for mercy.
“Please, you’re hurting me!” he pleaded.
“Shut the fuck up, Winchester!” I whispered. “It’s here with us now.” With considerable effort, he did, only moaning and violently jerking his head now as the waves of pain ripped through him.
“I got it!” X said suddenly. A feeling of elation filled my heart.
“Let’s go then!” I yelled, turning to help the old man up. I heard something massive rise up behind us. It mixed with the sound of dripping water and babbling waves that arose from the disturbance.
Winchester was weak, stumbling up to his feet and nearly falling over immediately. Staggering, he took off down the trail with no shoes, but he immediately gave a curse of pain and tripped. X and I started running, and at that moment, I realized the flaw in our plan. We wouldn’t be able to get Winchester out of the swamp without carrying him, due to the extensive injuries to his feet. And I knew we didn’t have time.
Mowdoroth’s body stood as tall as the trees as it looked down at the three of us with its strange, infected eyes. Its tentacles undulated faster and faster, seeming to whip around its body until they flew out towards us.
“Run!” I screamed. X and I sprinted behind a cluster of dead trees hugging the path. The blade-like hand of Mowdoroth chopped them in a half, raining wood splinters down on our heads.
Winchester continued trying to crawl forward. Mowdoroth slithered behind him. Winchester looked up as a tentacle started coming down in his direction. He gave a short, panicked scream as the blade smashed through his back legs, chopping both of them off at the knees. The ground shook with the force of it. The stumps began spurting seemingly endless amounts of blood. Winchester pleaded and made incomprehensible gurgling sounds as he bled out. Mowdoroth ended Winchester’s cries when it wrapped its tentacle around Winchester’s torso. It slithered up into Winchester’s open mouth.
X and I shot as fast as we could while running forward in the dark, trying to hold a flashlight and a pistol. Most of my shots missed Mowdoroth, but with a sense of satisfaction and pride, I saw a few burst through its enormous body. Streams of radioactive green blood ran down its torso now. As its serpentine legs pumped furiously, it gained speed, coming behind us like a runaway train. I could feel the ground shaking with every thud of its tentacled feet.
A few hundred feet ahead of us, I caught a glimpse of the cultists. They were hurrying away from the area, not running but moving much faster than they had come in. Nearly out of breath already and exhausted from hiking all day, I pointed forward.
“Look!” I screamed. X saw them, his eyes widening. We sprinted in a blind panic, as fast as we could towards the stragglers in the black robes. Without warning, X raised his pistol and fired, aiming at the nearest of them.
The figure in the back of the pack fell forward without making a sound. He continued trying to crawl forward weakly for a few moments before he lost energy and lay still, no more than a bleeding black hump on the dark earth.
X gave a sudden cry of pain next to me as a tentacle came down like a guillotine blade. I heard it whip through the air with a high-pitched whine. A single breath later, I watched in horror as it sliced off his right arm. X looked down at the spurting stump for a long moment, his tanned face turning as pale as bones. He stumbled forward, then, with a hoarse cry, he fell.
Following X’s lead, I raised my gun and started shooting the cultists. They sprinted away in a random panic as bodies fell ahead of us. I jumped over the black lumps on the ground, hearing Mowdoroth shake the world as it gave chase. A long, snake-like tentacle reached down, picking up X’s spurting body and raising it towards Mowdoroth’s leech-like mouth. The massive abomination slowed, picking up the bodies of the dead cultists and crushing them. I heard the bones shatter as the wet gore exploded around Mowdoroth’s many sharp teeth.
I saw the woods again, living trees just a few hundred feet away. The trail of black earth ended abruptly, leading out of the boglands. Cultists sprinted blindly through the forest in every direction, scattering like cockroaches. I had nearly reached the border of the forest when I heard something whizzing past my head. I ducked, but the blur of a grayish tentacle coming down sent a jolt of fear like electricity sizzling through my body.
A moment later, a cold agony covered my left hand. In shock, I looked down, realizing that the blade-like appendage of Mowdoroth had neatly amputated all four of my fingers. If I hadn’t ducked, it would’ve probably gotten my head instead.
Stumbling and screaming, my mind in a blind panic, I staggered through the intersection of the boglands and the forest, falling forward. I knew I was dead. I closed my eyes, waiting. Yet nothing happened.
When I looked back, I saw something strange. Mowdoroth had stopped at the end of the boglands. It tried to push its body forward towards me, but it couldn’t enter the forest. It was as if an invisible barrier stood there.
I lay there for a long time. After a while, I heard Mowdoroth slink back into the fetid waters of the boglands. And then I was alone.
***
I wrapped my hand in bandages as much as I could, trying to stem the bleeding. I felt weak and sick from blood loss, so I lay there until the sun came up. The next day, I was able to slowly make my way out of the forest and back towards the nearest town.
Now I hear stories of people mysteriously going missing in the area. An entire family in a nearby farmhouse only a couple dozen miles away disappeared in the middle of the night without a trace, leaving only smeared trails of blood leading into the forest. No one saw anything, but these six victims were only the first in a long line of strange deaths. Oddly enough, all of the victims lived next to swamps.
And I have the feeling that I was the one responsible.

I had been hiking down the Appalachian Trail for over two weeks without issue on the day when the nightmare began. My friend, X, was by my side the entire time. It was, quite honestly, comforting to have someone who stood nearly six-and-a-half feet tall with me, especially during the long, dark nights when the howling of coyotes drew near. Black bears, too, were a constant presence in these dark mountains. As we got farther from towns and civilization, more ancient predators than human beings took over the land, stalking the night like creeping shadows.
For this trip, we both had bought as few supplies as possible. Included in our packs were MREs, two sleeping bags, some tarps and hammocks, some light clothing, and two pistols with a few boxes of ammo. We didn’t want to be too weighed down that we wouldn’t be able to move fast, after all. We would source water from the streams, waterfalls and lakes along the way and filter it using Lifestraws.
As the spring breeze blew past us, cooling the sweat on my face, I noticed the trail ahead of us weaving its way through thick swampland. The buzzing of flies and mosquitoes increased with every step. The green, fetid waters of the swamp bubbled constantly, as if it were whispering secrets to us.
“Ah, shit,” X said, glancing down the hill with his dark, serious eyes. His tanned skin was covered in a thin sheen of sweat as he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Another swamp. I hate swamps. You know there’s going to be a million mosquitoes and flies down there.” I pulled out the map, squinting down at it. I ran my finger down the trail, seeing the mountains and valleys we had already passed.
“The trail shouldn’t be going through any swamps,” I said. “They’re supposed to be marked. There’s no ponds or anything around here.” And yet there very clearly was. Either we were in a different spot than I thought we were, or the map was outdated. The trail also grew thinner as we descended. The sharp branches of the bushes stuck out like greedy hands, grabbing at our backpacks and clothes as we pressed forward.
“Well, whatever,” X said gruffly, plowing ahead. Twigs cracked under his massive bulk. The thin branches hanging across the path snapped as he plowed forward. I let him go first, since he was significantly bigger than myself. It was like following in the path of a bull.
“The faster we move, the faster we’ll be through it. We don’t want to camp anywhere around here when it gets dark,” X continued, looking grim. “We’ll be eaten alive by bugs by sunrise. We need to make it to the other side of these boglands before we can stop for the night.”
“Yeah, and I could use some more water,” I said, shaking my mostly empty canteen. “I wouldn’t drink this shit no matter what we did to it. It probably has brain-eating parasites crawling in it.” I checked my watch, realizing that dusk was only a half hour away. We would have to move fast indeed, especially as we didn’t know the size of the swamp. I was not enthusiastic about hiking in the dark with the many steep trails and sharp rocks that covered the surrounding land. A single misstep could lead to a very long, bone-shattering fall.
To my increasing dismay, I realized that the trail we were on no longer had the characteristic white markings of the Appalachian Trail. I kept checking the trees for the past fifteen minutes, and I definitely hadn’t seen a single one. I couldn’t remember the last time we had passed one, but I had a creeping suspicion it had been at least a couple hours ago.
“I think we have a problem, man,” I whispered. “I don’t know how it possibly could have happened, but I think we’re on the wrong trail.”
“There’s not supposed to be any other trails around here,” X argued. “Check the map.”
“Then where’s the white blazes? There’s not supposed to be any boglands around here, either, yet we’re walking through the middle of one,” I said. He shook his head.
“Listen, Ben, there’s not going to be markers on the entire Appalachian Trail,” he said. “Just trust me. We’re on the right path. Sometimes forests change. Swamps take over spots where forests used to lay. Hell, the Sahara Desert has been expanding for thousands of years, just eating the forests and plains all around it. There used to be lions and savannah in Morocco, and now it’s all dead and dry.”
I felt doubtful, but I continued forwards, following closely behind X. Neither one of us had ever done the full Appalachian Trail, after all. I hoped he was right. I was not enthusiastic about backtracking two or three hours if he wasn’t.
I thought back closely on our travels during the last few hours, wondering where we could have gone wrong. The trail had been rather overgrown and rocky on the peak of the last mountain. There had been a beautiful view spanning hundreds of miles, looking far off into state forests and winding roads. I remembered seeing the white marker near the top, but after we had started descending, it disappeared. That must have been where we went wrong, if we did, indeed, go off-course. But I couldn’t be sure, and I didn’t tell X about my suspicions.
We finished descending a steep, rocky trail into a valley where the boglands really started. The trees ended in a massive semi-circle around the open swamp. Thick peat covered the entire surface of it like rotted, grayish-brown skin. I saw water snakes quietly disappearing into the stagnant water, leaving behind slowly expanding ripples.
“This is pretty cool,” I said, stopping for a moment at the bottom of the trail to admire the boglands. Our trail continued directly through the center of it, no more than a raised patch of black earth surrounded by green swampy water. I could hear the many insects chirping and flying before we even took a step forward. Though the spring air felt warm and I was covered in sweat, I still reached into my bag, taking out a windbreaker that would cover up my arms and neck to help with the bugs. X did the same.
“Let’s move fast,” he said, giving me a knowing look. He was a much faster hiker than myself. He seemed like a machine sometimes, tireless and single-minded. I had seen him hike over twenty miles in a single day without looking too bent out of shape. I gave him a faint half-smile, picking up my pace.
“You know what they used to say about the boglands?” I asked X. He shook his head.
“I don’t read books,” he said. “If I have time to sit down and read, then it means I have time to go out and do something actually fun. But I’m sure you know all about it.” I gave a short bark of laughter at his off-handed insult. It sounded far too loud echoing back to us through the creepy swamp. The last rays of sunlight were disappearing behind the mountains now. Soon, we would be plunged into darkness.
“Well, in ancient times, people thought the boglands a place where the walls of reality were thin, where the gods would come through. They used to bring their victims out to swamps during rituals, then they would slice their throats or strangle them and dump their bodies into the bogs as an offering to the gods. They also said that strange, shape-shifting creatures would appear, sometimes to deceive travelers, other times to help them,” I said. “But as for human sacrifices, the bogs preserve bodies like nothing else, except maybe tar pits. Archaeologists keep finding victims with slashed throats or shattered skulls buried underneath the peat.”
X was silent for a long moment as we continued walking along the raised patch of earth that formed the trail. We got farther and farther from the forests, until the swamp seemed like a fetid ocean, spanning out to the horizon in every direction.
“Do you think they used to do that kind of stuff around here?” X asked.
“Used to?” I exclaimed, laughing. “I’m sure some psychopaths still do. This is a good place to dump a body, after all. Who the hell wants to trek through the muck and the snakes and mosquitoes out here looking for corpses?”
“The FBI and the cops will do it,” he said, “if they think there’s something to find.” I was about to respond when an ear-splitting shriek echoed out all around us. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from at first. X’s tan skin seemed to go pale as he spun, glancing in every direction.
“What the fuck is that?!” he screamed over the deafening wailing. I didn’t believe in cryptids, but my anxious mind immediately offered up an image of a banshee, a woman with chalk-white skin and black eyes whose shrieking jaw unhinged like a snake’s.
“I’m turning around!” I yelled, pointing back for emphasis. “Dude, fuck this! We need to get out of this swamp!” But X was no longer listening. He was looking past me, his mouth open and his eyes wild. He started backpedaling and nearly fell into the swamp. Windmilling his arms crazily, he turned and sprinted away without a word.
I was afraid to look back. The screaming was getting louder by the second, shaking the air all around me in deafening, crashing waves of sound. I felt like my head would explode if it got any worse. Instinctively, I took off after X, but I glanced back for a single moment before I did. Something loomed there from a nightmare, standing as tall as the trees. It moved through the swamp like a snake, its body slithering through the stagnant green waters towards us. When it met my eyes, the screaming stopped. The abrupt silence seemed deafening. I could hear the fervent pounding of my heart in my ears.
The creature’s skin looked honeycombed and rough, almost like a wasp’s nest. The thousands of tiny holes covering its body constantly opened and closed like hungry mouths. Its arms were long tentacles ending in sharp points of bone in the shape of scythes. The tentacles undulated like serpents. Its legs, too, were no more than four tentacles that alternatively slithered and stepped forward.
Its flesh was the color of peat, a sickly grayish-brown, and the smell that emanated from it was rancid and stagnant, the essence of all boglands and swamps. I nearly gagged as I ran. The putrefying stench seemed to follow me like a shadow.
Ahead of me, X was fumbling in his backpack as he ran, trying to grab his pistol. I knew he had a Glock 21 in that bag, and I had my Sig Sauer in mine. I cursed myself for not keeping it holstered on my body, but I had never had to use it before and hadn’t seriously thought I would need it for this trip. He glanced back at me, his eyes widening in horror.
“It’s right behind you!” he yelled. “Get down!” He dropped his backpack, revealing the sleek, black pistol clenched tightly in his hand. I barely had time to comprehend his words when an immense pressure and numbness radiated through my back. My head snapped backwards as a meaty thud resonated all around me. I went flying forward, feeling as if I had been struck by a car. As I flew through the air, the pain in my back exploded in burning pulses. I felt the deep slice open up from the sharp blade of bone that had slashed me like a knife. I felt trickles of blood pour from the open wound, making my stained shirt cling to my body.
I landed hard on the raised black earth of the trail, a bone-jarring impact that knocked the air out of me. At that same moment, X opened fire, pressing the trigger over and over, emptying the magazine as fast as he could. Something splashed over me, going in my eyes and mouth and nose. I crawled forward, moaning, my head spinning. I wiped my forehead, seeing spatters of green blood squirming with dark, maggot-like creatures covering my arms and face. It clung to my fingers, thick and rancid. I felt stinging sensations as the tiny worms bit me over and over. My ears rang with a high-pitched whine from the gunshots.
X was running towards me now. I continued to crawl towards him, shell-shocked and whimpering, trying to wipe the eldritch blood off my skin. With a muscular arm, he reached down and pulled me up.
“Where’d it go?” I mumbled, stumbling forward on unsteady feet. X put an arm around my shoulders and helped support me.
“It slunk back into the swamp,” he said. “Jesus, you’re bleeding really bad, buddy. We’re going to need to take care of that as soon as we get away from this hellhole.” I felt the deep slices from the creature’s blade-like hands across my back. The fabric of my shirt clung tightly to the skin as fresh blood soaked it.
“This isn’t the trail, X,” I gasped. “We went the wrong way. We need to go back.” He nodded grimly.
“We’re heading back right now. I know it’s the wrong trail now, it definitely is, but it’s dark. The trails back up the mountains are steep and dangerous, and we’ve already been hiking all day. How much longer can we really go?” he asked. In reality, I had a feeling X could go for quite a bit longer. I was the weak link in the chain, and we both knew it.
X took out a small, LED flashlight from his backpack, shining it ahead of us on the dark path. Across the center of the black earth, there was an obstruction, something that hadn’t been there when we passed this way originally.
“Shit! Is that a person?” X said, slowing down. He focused the light on it. As my eyes adjusted, I gave a gasp of horror as I saw a rough sacrificial table looming there, waiting with a ready victim.
Laying on the bare wooden planks in the center of the trail was an elderly man wearing the garb of a hunter. He was gagged, a bloody rag shoved deep into his mouth. I felt a sense of revulsion and terror as I realized his hands and feet were nailed to the planks, as if he were being crucified laying down. His eyes rolled wildly, white and insane, like a horse with a broken leg. When he saw us approaching, he tried to say something through the gag, pulling hard against the nails that bit so viciously into his flesh. Fresh rivers of blood spurted from his wounds.
I had my pistol in my hands. X had taken a fresh magazine out by now, throwing the empty one back in his backpack. Trembling, he went first, his shaking hand moving the flashlight around wildly. Its bright rays bounced off the dead, half-rotted trees that grew out of the boglands, the clouds of mosquitoes and moths that circled us constantly.
“Oh my God... he's like the victim of a serial killer or something,” he whispered, running a trembling hand over his face. “It looks like someone has set that poor guy up to have his heart cut out, like some sort of Aztec ritual.” He glanced worriedly over at me. We had both stopped cold in our tracks, looking around for any sign of danger, but we only saw the old man writhing on his rough table of torture.
“We have to keep going forward,” I whispered. “That thing is behind us. I don’t think it’s dead. I’m not sure it can even die.”
“But what’s ahead of us?” he asked grimly. “That’s the real question, isn’t it?” Far off down the trail, I saw small pinpoints of flickering light. They drew closer. We raised our pistols, waiting for the new arrivals to show themselves.
Dozens of people dressed in black, silky robes holding lamps slowly ambled their way towards us. They had their heads bowed, like monks on a holy pilgrimage. They drew close to the sacrifice. The one in the lead held a long, curving dagger whose blade looked like it was made of some kind of red volcanic rock. Its strange silver handle glittered in his pale, thin hand. At the end, I saw it was sculpted into the shape of a human heart.
“Stop right there!” X screamed, stepping forward. “Don’t come any closer! We are armed, I’m warning you.” The people in the black robes didn’t appear to hear or care in the slightest. They continued slowly following their leader with the strange dagger, almost floating forward in a nonchalant manner. Their leader began chanting in some strange, ancient language. It reminded me of Tibetan or Sanskrit in a way, like the chanting of some Vajrayana monk high up in the Himalayas. But it had a sinister, hissing quality to the words. Something ancient and powerful resonated in every syllable.
I raised the pistol, firing blankly into the dark, cloudless sky above. The smell of gunsmoke and fetid rot hung thick in the air. The leader of the group looked at me with his large, glassy eyes. His face looked sunken and pale, almost like a starving child. He had shaved all of the hair on his head, even his eyebrows. His lips were extremely thin and bloodless in his chalk-white face.
For a long moment, we stood staring at each other, my pistol aimed at his chest. X also had his pistol raised, aimed at one of those standing behind him. But the robed man didn’t speak. He gave me a faint grin.
“Let the old man go,” I commanded, my voice sounding hoarse and weak. The swamp quickly swallowed up my words, until only the buzzing of mosquitoes remained.
“I am sorry, my son, but I cannot do that,” the leader said in a voice as cold as endless space. “If we do not feed Mowdoroth, it will never sleep. The swamps will continue to expand, eating more and more of the surrounding forests and towns, and Mowdoroth, driven insane by hunger, will take far more victims in the process.
“This job has been passed down to us from generation to generation, from big hand to small, for over four centuries. Only twice has Mowdoroth not been fed on the New Moon, and each time, entire settlements full of people were wiped off the face of the Earth as if they had never existed. On one, they just had time to carve the word ‘CROATAN’ before they were taken.
“Mowdoroth looks for the place where the nightmares grow. It breaks open the chest and finds the place where the silent screams start, deep down at the base of the heart. All of the nightmares are planted there, like tiny seeds scattered during childhood. Those that fell on good soil in that abyss produced a great crop, yielding a hundredfold, sixtyfold, or thirtyfold. If you do not allow us to complete our holy mission, then you do it: cut open the man's chest and remove his beating heart. As it beats, squeeze it as hard as you can, and let all the blood drain onto the top of your head. Hold the heart above your head and close your eyes until the god appears and takes it.” The cult leader finished, looking at us with sparkling eyes, as if he had said something profound.
“This shit is just insane drivel,” X whispered in a voice as low as possible. “I say we open fire and save the old man now. Fuck these cultists.” I nodded grimly in agreement.
“You need to all turn around and leave immediately,” X yelled, stepping forward. “I will give you three seconds to turn around and get the hell out of my sight. Three…” At first, the cultists stood as still as statues, simply staring. Finally, the leader sighed and turned away. He shook his head, reminding me of a disappointed parent.
“I tried to warn you,” he said in his thin, quavering voice. “The time has come to give the offering. You must cut out this man’s heart and raise it to Mowdoroth, so he can get the seeds of nightmares freshly sown. The choice is yours now, as you have demanded this power with violence. You can leave this man here to be eaten by Mowdoroth, or free him and, in exchange, guarantee the deaths of hundreds of other people.”
With those last words, the black-robed figures continued down the curve of the trail. Within seconds, they had disappeared behind dead, half-rotted trees that still dotted the edges of the boglands. X and I ran forward toward the struggling old man. X reached into his pocket and pulled out a folding knife. He cut off the old man’s gag, pulling the spit-soaked chunk of filthy cloth out of his mouth. The old man spat and licked his dry lips.
“Get me out of here, please,” he whispered, his eyes rolling wildly. “Those cult members are all batshit insane. And there’s something not right in these swamps. I caught glimpses of something while I was waiting. There’s something in the water…”
“What’s your name, bud?” X said calmingly, looking at the old man’s hands and feet to try to decide how to best get the nails out without causing more damage.
“Winchester,” he said in a coarse voice. It sounded like he hadn’t had a drink of water in days. While X looked at his hands with the LED flashlight, I reached into my pack for the small canteen of filtered water I still had. I started pouring it into Winchester’s mouth. He gulped greedily, his throat working hard to drink down the rest of it.
“I got it!” X said, taking a flat stone he had found on the ground. “I’m going to try to pound these nails out from the bottom.”
“Oh, please, no,” Winchester said, his wrinkled face turning pale. X shook his head.
“We need to get you out of here,” he said. “It’s going to hurt, bud. But we don’t have any tools here. The nails are large, almost like railroad spikes, and once we get the top part, the bottom should slide out easily since it’s a lot narrower.” As he grabbed the rock to begin his work, a bone-chilling wailing started up again from the swamps. It was the scream of Mowdoroth, that abomination with the skin of a wasp’s nest.
“Cover us!” X yelled panickedly as he continued his grisly work. Winchester screamed in pain when X first struck the nail on his right hand. It shot up a fraction of an inch, fresh blood pooling all around it and dripping through the bare planks.
I turned, but the banshee wail seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. The swamp bubbled faster and faster all around us, as if thousands of corpses were coming back to life. I heard Winchester scream again, then the dull thud of another nail hitting the earth.
A face peeked out of the swamp, only twenty feet away. Its eyes were green, the color of a putrefying wound. Its lipless mouth opened wide, showing a spongy black mass of skin with concentric circles of tiny, razor-sharp teeth. It reminded me of the mouth of a lamprey.
I opened fire, shooting wildly at the face, aiming at the body hidden under the dark surface of the swamp. Luminescent drops of green blood exploded from a bullet hole in its upper right shoulder, floating across the surface of the water like radioactive waste.
Its screaming cut off instantly. All I could hear was the pounding of the rock behind me and Winchester’s pained, horrified pleas for mercy.
“Please, you’re hurting me!” he pleaded.
“Shut the fuck up, Winchester!” I whispered. “It’s here with us now.” With considerable effort, he did, only moaning and violently jerking his head now as the waves of pain ripped through him.
“I got it!” X said suddenly. A feeling of elation filled my heart.
“Let’s go then!” I yelled, turning to help the old man up. I heard something massive rise up behind us. It mixed with the sound of dripping water and babbling waves that arose from the disturbance.
Winchester was weak, stumbling up to his feet and nearly falling over immediately. Staggering, he took off down the trail with no shoes, but he immediately gave a curse of pain and tripped. X and I started running, and at that moment, I realized the flaw in our plan. We wouldn’t be able to get Winchester out of the swamp without carrying him, due to the extensive injuries to his feet. And I knew we didn’t have time.
Mowdoroth’s body stood as tall as the trees as it looked down at the three of us with its strange, infected eyes. Its tentacles undulated faster and faster, seeming to whip around its body until they flew out towards us.
“Run!” I screamed. X and I sprinted behind a cluster of dead trees hugging the path. The blade-like hand of Mowdoroth chopped them in a half, raining wood splinters down on our heads.
Winchester continued trying to crawl forward. Mowdoroth slithered behind him. Winchester looked up as a tentacle started coming down in his direction. He gave a short, panicked scream as the blade smashed through his back legs, chopping both of them off at the knees. The ground shook with the force of it. The stumps began spurting seemingly endless amounts of blood. Winchester pleaded and made incomprehensible gurgling sounds as he bled out. Mowdoroth ended Winchester’s cries when it wrapped its tentacle around Winchester’s torso. It slithered up into Winchester’s open mouth.
X and I shot as fast as we could while running forward in the dark, trying to hold a flashlight and a pistol. Most of my shots missed Mowdoroth, but with a sense of satisfaction and pride, I saw a few burst through its enormous body. Streams of radioactive green blood ran down its torso now. As its serpentine legs pumped furiously, it gained speed, coming behind us like a runaway train. I could feel the ground shaking with every thud of its tentacled feet.
A few hundred feet ahead of us, I caught a glimpse of the cultists. They were hurrying away from the area, not running but moving much faster than they had come in. Nearly out of breath already and exhausted from hiking all day, I pointed forward.
“Look!” I screamed. X saw them, his eyes widening. We sprinted in a blind panic, as fast as we could towards the stragglers in the black robes. Without warning, X raised his pistol and fired, aiming at the nearest of them.
The figure in the back of the pack fell forward without making a sound. He continued trying to crawl forward weakly for a few moments before he lost energy and lay still, no more than a bleeding black hump on the dark earth.
X gave a sudden cry of pain next to me as a tentacle came down like a guillotine blade. I heard it whip through the air with a high-pitched whine. A single breath later, I watched in horror as it sliced off his right arm. X looked down at the spurting stump for a long moment, his tanned face turning as pale as bones. He stumbled forward, then, with a hoarse cry, he fell.
Following X’s lead, I raised my gun and started shooting the cultists. They sprinted away in a random panic as bodies fell ahead of us. I jumped over the black lumps on the ground, hearing Mowdoroth shake the world as it gave chase. A long, snake-like tentacle reached down, picking up X’s spurting body and raising it towards Mowdoroth’s leech-like mouth. The massive abomination slowed, picking up the bodies of the dead cultists and crushing them. I heard the bones shatter as the wet gore exploded around Mowdoroth’s many sharp teeth.
I saw the woods again, living trees just a few hundred feet away. The trail of black earth ended abruptly, leading out of the boglands. Cultists sprinted blindly through the forest in every direction, scattering like cockroaches. I had nearly reached the border of the forest when I heard something whizzing past my head. I ducked, but the blur of a grayish tentacle coming down sent a jolt of fear like electricity sizzling through my body.
A moment later, a cold agony covered my left hand. In shock, I looked down, realizing that the blade-like appendage of Mowdoroth had neatly amputated all four of my fingers. If I hadn’t ducked, it would’ve probably gotten my head instead.
Stumbling and screaming, my mind in a blind panic, I staggered through the intersection of the boglands and the forest, falling forward. I knew I was dead. I closed my eyes, waiting. Yet nothing happened.
When I looked back, I saw something strange. Mowdoroth had stopped at the end of the boglands. It tried to push its body forward towards me, but it couldn’t enter the forest. It was as if an invisible barrier stood there.
I lay there for a long time. After a while, I heard Mowdoroth slink back into the fetid waters of the boglands. And then I was alone.
***
I wrapped my hand in bandages as much as I could, trying to stem the bleeding. I felt weak and sick from blood loss, so I lay there until the sun came up. The next day, I was able to slowly make my way out of the forest and back towards the nearest town.
Now I hear stories of people mysteriously going missing in the area. An entire family in a nearby farmhouse only a couple dozen miles away disappeared in the middle of the night without a trace, leaving only smeared trails of blood leading into the forest. No one saw anything, but these six victims were only the first in a long line of strange deaths. Oddly enough, all of the victims lived next to swamps.
And I have the feeling that I was the one responsible.

I had been hiking down the Appalachian Trail for over two weeks without issue on the day when the nightmare began. My friend, X, was by my side the entire time. It was, quite honestly, comforting to have someone who stood nearly six-and-a-half feet tall with me, especially during the long, dark nights when the howling of coyotes drew near. Black bears, too, were a constant presence in these dark mountains. As we got farther from towns and civilization, more ancient predators than human beings took over the land, stalking the night like creeping shadows.
For this trip, we both had bought as few supplies as possible. Included in our packs were MREs, two sleeping bags, some tarps and hammocks, some light clothing, and two pistols with a few boxes of ammo. We didn’t want to be too weighed down that we wouldn’t be able to move fast, after all. We would source water from the streams, waterfalls and lakes along the way and filter it using Lifestraws.
As the spring breeze blew past us, cooling the sweat on my face, I noticed the trail ahead of us weaving its way through thick swampland. The buzzing of flies and mosquitoes increased with every step. The green, fetid waters of the swamp bubbled constantly, as if it were whispering secrets to us.
“Ah, shit,” X said, glancing down the hill with his dark, serious eyes. His tanned skin was covered in a thin sheen of sweat as he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Another swamp. I hate swamps. You know there’s going to be a million mosquitoes and flies down there.” I pulled out the map, squinting down at it. I ran my finger down the trail, seeing the mountains and valleys we had already passed.
“The trail shouldn’t be going through any swamps,” I said. “They’re supposed to be marked. There’s no ponds or anything around here.” And yet there very clearly was. Either we were in a different spot than I thought we were, or the map was outdated. The trail also grew thinner as we descended. The sharp branches of the bushes stuck out like greedy hands, grabbing at our backpacks and clothes as we pressed forward.
“Well, whatever,” X said gruffly, plowing ahead. Twigs cracked under his massive bulk. The thin branches hanging across the path snapped as he plowed forward. I let him go first, since he was significantly bigger than myself. It was like following in the path of a bull.
“The faster we move, the faster we’ll be through it. We don’t want to camp anywhere around here when it gets dark,” X continued, looking grim. “We’ll be eaten alive by bugs by sunrise. We need to make it to the other side of these boglands before we can stop for the night.”
“Yeah, and I could use some more water,” I said, shaking my mostly empty canteen. “I wouldn’t drink this shit no matter what we did to it. It probably has brain-eating parasites crawling in it.” I checked my watch, realizing that dusk was only a half hour away. We would have to move fast indeed, especially as we didn’t know the size of the swamp. I was not enthusiastic about hiking in the dark with the many steep trails and sharp rocks that covered the surrounding land. A single misstep could lead to a very long, bone-shattering fall.
To my increasing dismay, I realized that the trail we were on no longer had the characteristic white markings of the Appalachian Trail. I kept checking the trees for the past fifteen minutes, and I definitely hadn’t seen a single one. I couldn’t remember the last time we had passed one, but I had a creeping suspicion it had been at least a couple hours ago.
“I think we have a problem, man,” I whispered. “I don’t know how it possibly could have happened, but I think we’re on the wrong trail.”
“There’s not supposed to be any other trails around here,” X argued. “Check the map.”
“Then where’s the white blazes? There’s not supposed to be any boglands around here, either, yet we’re walking through the middle of one,” I said. He shook his head.
“Listen, Ben, there’s not going to be markers on the entire Appalachian Trail,” he said. “Just trust me. We’re on the right path. Sometimes forests change. Swamps take over spots where forests used to lay. Hell, the Sahara Desert has been expanding for thousands of years, just eating the forests and plains all around it. There used to be lions and savannah in Morocco, and now it’s all dead and dry.”
I felt doubtful, but I continued forwards, following closely behind X. Neither one of us had ever done the full Appalachian Trail, after all. I hoped he was right. I was not enthusiastic about backtracking two or three hours if he wasn’t.
I thought back closely on our travels during the last few hours, wondering where we could have gone wrong. The trail had been rather overgrown and rocky on the peak of the last mountain. There had been a beautiful view spanning hundreds of miles, looking far off into state forests and winding roads. I remembered seeing the white marker near the top, but after we had started descending, it disappeared. That must have been where we went wrong, if we did, indeed, go off-course. But I couldn’t be sure, and I didn’t tell X about my suspicions.
We finished descending a steep, rocky trail into a valley where the boglands really started. The trees ended in a massive semi-circle around the open swamp. Thick peat covered the entire surface of it like rotted, grayish-brown skin. I saw water snakes quietly disappearing into the stagnant water, leaving behind slowly expanding ripples.
“This is pretty cool,” I said, stopping for a moment at the bottom of the trail to admire the boglands. Our trail continued directly through the center of it, no more than a raised patch of black earth surrounded by green swampy water. I could hear the many insects chirping and flying before we even took a step forward. Though the spring air felt warm and I was covered in sweat, I still reached into my bag, taking out a windbreaker that would cover up my arms and neck to help with the bugs. X did the same.
“Let’s move fast,” he said, giving me a knowing look. He was a much faster hiker than myself. He seemed like a machine sometimes, tireless and single-minded. I had seen him hike over twenty miles in a single day without looking too bent out of shape. I gave him a faint half-smile, picking up my pace.
“You know what they used to say about the boglands?” I asked X. He shook his head.
“I don’t read books,” he said. “If I have time to sit down and read, then it means I have time to go out and do something actually fun. But I’m sure you know all about it.” I gave a short bark of laughter at his off-handed insult. It sounded far too loud echoing back to us through the creepy swamp. The last rays of sunlight were disappearing behind the mountains now. Soon, we would be plunged into darkness.
“Well, in ancient times, people thought the boglands a place where the walls of reality were thin, where the gods would come through. They used to bring their victims out to swamps during rituals, then they would slice their throats or strangle them and dump their bodies into the bogs as an offering to the gods. They also said that strange, shape-shifting creatures would appear, sometimes to deceive travelers, other times to help them,” I said. “But as for human sacrifices, the bogs preserve bodies like nothing else, except maybe tar pits. Archaeologists keep finding victims with slashed throats or shattered skulls buried underneath the peat.”
X was silent for a long moment as we continued walking along the raised patch of earth that formed the trail. We got farther and farther from the forests, until the swamp seemed like a fetid ocean, spanning out to the horizon in every direction.
“Do you think they used to do that kind of stuff around here?” X asked.
“Used to?” I exclaimed, laughing. “I’m sure some psychopaths still do. This is a good place to dump a body, after all. Who the hell wants to trek through the muck and the snakes and mosquitoes out here looking for corpses?”
“The FBI and the cops will do it,” he said, “if they think there’s something to find.” I was about to respond when an ear-splitting shriek echoed out all around us. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from at first. X’s tan skin seemed to go pale as he spun, glancing in every direction.
“What the fuck is that?!” he screamed over the deafening wailing. I didn’t believe in cryptids, but my anxious mind immediately offered up an image of a banshee, a woman with chalk-white skin and black eyes whose shrieking jaw unhinged like a snake’s.
“I’m turning around!” I yelled, pointing back for emphasis. “Dude, fuck this! We need to get out of this swamp!” But X was no longer listening. He was looking past me, his mouth open and his eyes wild. He started backpedaling and nearly fell into the swamp. Windmilling his arms crazily, he turned and sprinted away without a word.
I was afraid to look back. The screaming was getting louder by the second, shaking the air all around me in deafening, crashing waves of sound. I felt like my head would explode if it got any worse. Instinctively, I took off after X, but I glanced back for a single moment before I did. Something loomed there from a nightmare, standing as tall as the trees. It moved through the swamp like a snake, its body slithering through the stagnant green waters towards us. When it met my eyes, the screaming stopped. The abrupt silence seemed deafening. I could hear the fervent pounding of my heart in my ears.
The creature’s skin looked honeycombed and rough, almost like a wasp’s nest. The thousands of tiny holes covering its body constantly opened and closed like hungry mouths. Its arms were long tentacles ending in sharp points of bone in the shape of scythes. The tentacles undulated like serpents. Its legs, too, were no more than four tentacles that alternatively slithered and stepped forward.
Its flesh was the color of peat, a sickly grayish-brown, and the smell that emanated from it was rancid and stagnant, the essence of all boglands and swamps. I nearly gagged as I ran. The putrefying stench seemed to follow me like a shadow.
Ahead of me, X was fumbling in his backpack as he ran, trying to grab his pistol. I knew he had a Glock 21 in that bag, and I had my Sig Sauer in mine. I cursed myself for not keeping it holstered on my body, but I had never had to use it before and hadn’t seriously thought I would need it for this trip. He glanced back at me, his eyes widening in horror.
“It’s right behind you!” he yelled. “Get down!” He dropped his backpack, revealing the sleek, black pistol clenched tightly in his hand. I barely had time to comprehend his words when an immense pressure and numbness radiated through my back. My head snapped backwards as a meaty thud resonated all around me. I went flying forward, feeling as if I had been struck by a car. As I flew through the air, the pain in my back exploded in burning pulses. I felt the deep slice open up from the sharp blade of bone that had slashed me like a knife. I felt trickles of blood pour from the open wound, making my stained shirt cling to my body.
I landed hard on the raised black earth of the trail, a bone-jarring impact that knocked the air out of me. At that same moment, X opened fire, pressing the trigger over and over, emptying the magazine as fast as he could. Something splashed over me, going in my eyes and mouth and nose. I crawled forward, moaning, my head spinning. I wiped my forehead, seeing spatters of green blood squirming with dark, maggot-like creatures covering my arms and face. It clung to my fingers, thick and rancid. I felt stinging sensations as the tiny worms bit me over and over. My ears rang with a high-pitched whine from the gunshots.
X was running towards me now. I continued to crawl towards him, shell-shocked and whimpering, trying to wipe the eldritch blood off my skin. With a muscular arm, he reached down and pulled me up.
“Where’d it go?” I mumbled, stumbling forward on unsteady feet. X put an arm around my shoulders and helped support me.
“It slunk back into the swamp,” he said. “Jesus, you’re bleeding really bad, buddy. We’re going to need to take care of that as soon as we get away from this hellhole.” I felt the deep slices from the creature’s blade-like hands across my back. The fabric of my shirt clung tightly to the skin as fresh blood soaked it.
“This isn’t the trail, X,” I gasped. “We went the wrong way. We need to go back.” He nodded grimly.
“We’re heading back right now. I know it’s the wrong trail now, it definitely is, but it’s dark. The trails back up the mountains are steep and dangerous, and we’ve already been hiking all day. How much longer can we really go?” he asked. In reality, I had a feeling X could go for quite a bit longer. I was the weak link in the chain, and we both knew it.
X took out a small, LED flashlight from his backpack, shining it ahead of us on the dark path. Across the center of the black earth, there was an obstruction, something that hadn’t been there when we passed this way originally.
“Shit! Is that a person?” X said, slowing down. He focused the light on it. As my eyes adjusted, I gave a gasp of horror as I saw a rough sacrificial table looming there, waiting with a ready victim.
Laying on the bare wooden planks in the center of the trail was an elderly man wearing the garb of a hunter. He was gagged, a bloody rag shoved deep into his mouth. I felt a sense of revulsion and terror as I realized his hands and feet were nailed to the planks, as if he were being crucified laying down. His eyes rolled wildly, white and insane, like a horse with a broken leg. When he saw us approaching, he tried to say something through the gag, pulling hard against the nails that bit so viciously into his flesh. Fresh rivers of blood spurted from his wounds.
I had my pistol in my hands. X had taken a fresh magazine out by now, throwing the empty one back in his backpack. Trembling, he went first, his shaking hand moving the flashlight around wildly. Its bright rays bounced off the dead, half-rotted trees that grew out of the boglands, the clouds of mosquitoes and moths that circled us constantly.
“Oh my God... he's like the victim of a serial killer or something,” he whispered, running a trembling hand over his face. “It looks like someone has set that poor guy up to have his heart cut out, like some sort of Aztec ritual.” He glanced worriedly over at me. We had both stopped cold in our tracks, looking around for any sign of danger, but we only saw the old man writhing on his rough table of torture.
“We have to keep going forward,” I whispered. “That thing is behind us. I don’t think it’s dead. I’m not sure it can even die.”
“But what’s ahead of us?” he asked grimly. “That’s the real question, isn’t it?” Far off down the trail, I saw small pinpoints of flickering light. They drew closer. We raised our pistols, waiting for the new arrivals to show themselves.
Dozens of people dressed in black, silky robes holding lamps slowly ambled their way towards us. They had their heads bowed, like monks on a holy pilgrimage. They drew close to the sacrifice. The one in the lead held a long, curving dagger whose blade looked like it was made of some kind of red volcanic rock. Its strange silver handle glittered in his pale, thin hand. At the end, I saw it was sculpted into the shape of a human heart.
“Stop right there!” X screamed, stepping forward. “Don’t come any closer! We are armed, I’m warning you.” The people in the black robes didn’t appear to hear or care in the slightest. They continued slowly following their leader with the strange dagger, almost floating forward in a nonchalant manner. Their leader began chanting in some strange, ancient language. It reminded me of Tibetan or Sanskrit in a way, like the chanting of some Vajrayana monk high up in the Himalayas. But it had a sinister, hissing quality to the words. Something ancient and powerful resonated in every syllable.
I raised the pistol, firing blankly into the dark, cloudless sky above. The smell of gunsmoke and fetid rot hung thick in the air. The leader of the group looked at me with his large, glassy eyes. His face looked sunken and pale, almost like a starving child. He had shaved all of the hair on his head, even his eyebrows. His lips were extremely thin and bloodless in his chalk-white face.
For a long moment, we stood staring at each other, my pistol aimed at his chest. X also had his pistol raised, aimed at one of those standing behind him. But the robed man didn’t speak. He gave me a faint grin.
“Let the old man go,” I commanded, my voice sounding hoarse and weak. The swamp quickly swallowed up my words, until only the buzzing of mosquitoes remained.
“I am sorry, my son, but I cannot do that,” the leader said in a voice as cold as endless space. “If we do not feed Mowdoroth, it will never sleep. The swamps will continue to expand, eating more and more of the surrounding forests and towns, and Mowdoroth, driven insane by hunger, will take far more victims in the process.
“This job has been passed down to us from generation to generation, from big hand to small, for over four centuries. Only twice has Mowdoroth not been fed on the New Moon, and each time, entire settlements full of people were wiped off the face of the Earth as if they had never existed. On one, they just had time to carve the word ‘CROATAN’ before they were taken.
“Mowdoroth looks for the place where the nightmares grow. It breaks open the chest and finds the place where the silent screams start, deep down at the base of the heart. All of the nightmares are planted there, like tiny seeds scattered during childhood. Those that fell on good soil in that abyss produced a great crop, yielding a hundredfold, sixtyfold, or thirtyfold. If you do not allow us to complete our holy mission, then you do it: cut open the man's chest and remove his beating heart. As it beats, squeeze it as hard as you can, and let all the blood drain onto the top of your head. Hold the heart above your head and close your eyes until the god appears and takes it.” The cult leader finished, looking at us with sparkling eyes, as if he had said something profound.
“This shit is just insane drivel,” X whispered in a voice as low as possible. “I say we open fire and save the old man now. Fuck these cultists.” I nodded grimly in agreement.
“You need to all turn around and leave immediately,” X yelled, stepping forward. “I will give you three seconds to turn around and get the hell out of my sight. Three…” At first, the cultists stood as still as statues, simply staring. Finally, the leader sighed and turned away. He shook his head, reminding me of a disappointed parent.
“I tried to warn you,” he said in his thin, quavering voice. “The time has come to give the offering. You must cut out this man’s heart and raise it to Mowdoroth, so he can get the seeds of nightmares freshly sown. The choice is yours now, as you have demanded this power with violence. You can leave this man here to be eaten by Mowdoroth, or free him and, in exchange, guarantee the deaths of hundreds of other people.”
With those last words, the black-robed figures continued down the curve of the trail. Within seconds, they had disappeared behind dead, half-rotted trees that still dotted the edges of the boglands. X and I ran forward toward the struggling old man. X reached into his pocket and pulled out a folding knife. He cut off the old man’s gag, pulling the spit-soaked chunk of filthy cloth out of his mouth. The old man spat and licked his dry lips.
“Get me out of here, please,” he whispered, his eyes rolling wildly. “Those cult members are all batshit insane. And there’s something not right in these swamps. I caught glimpses of something while I was waiting. There’s something in the water…”
“What’s your name, bud?” X said calmingly, looking at the old man’s hands and feet to try to decide how to best get the nails out without causing more damage.
“Winchester,” he said in a coarse voice. It sounded like he hadn’t had a drink of water in days. While X looked at his hands with the LED flashlight, I reached into my pack for the small canteen of filtered water I still had. I started pouring it into Winchester’s mouth. He gulped greedily, his throat working hard to drink down the rest of it.
“I got it!” X said, taking a flat stone he had found on the ground. “I’m going to try to pound these nails out from the bottom.”
“Oh, please, no,” Winchester said, his wrinkled face turning pale. X shook his head.
“We need to get you out of here,” he said. “It’s going to hurt, bud. But we don’t have any tools here. The nails are large, almost like railroad spikes, and once we get the top part, the bottom should slide out easily since it’s a lot narrower.” As he grabbed the rock to begin his work, a bone-chilling wailing started up again from the swamps. It was the scream of Mowdoroth, that abomination with the skin of a wasp’s nest.
“Cover us!” X yelled panickedly as he continued his grisly work. Winchester screamed in pain when X first struck the nail on his right hand. It shot up a fraction of an inch, fresh blood pooling all around it and dripping through the bare planks.
I turned, but the banshee wail seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. The swamp bubbled faster and faster all around us, as if thousands of corpses were coming back to life. I heard Winchester scream again, then the dull thud of another nail hitting the earth.
A face peeked out of the swamp, only twenty feet away. Its eyes were green, the color of a putrefying wound. Its lipless mouth opened wide, showing a spongy black mass of skin with concentric circles of tiny, razor-sharp teeth. It reminded me of the mouth of a lamprey.
I opened fire, shooting wildly at the face, aiming at the body hidden under the dark surface of the swamp. Luminescent drops of green blood exploded from a bullet hole in its upper right shoulder, floating across the surface of the water like radioactive waste.
Its screaming cut off instantly. All I could hear was the pounding of the rock behind me and Winchester’s pained, horrified pleas for mercy.
“Please, you’re hurting me!” he pleaded.
“Shut the fuck up, Winchester!” I whispered. “It’s here with us now.” With considerable effort, he did, only moaning and violently jerking his head now as the waves of pain ripped through him.
“I got it!” X said suddenly. A feeling of elation filled my heart.
“Let’s go then!” I yelled, turning to help the old man up. I heard something massive rise up behind us. It mixed with the sound of dripping water and babbling waves that arose from the disturbance.
Winchester was weak, stumbling up to his feet and nearly falling over immediately. Staggering, he took off down the trail with no shoes, but he immediately gave a curse of pain and tripped. X and I started running, and at that moment, I realized the flaw in our plan. We wouldn’t be able to get Winchester out of the swamp without carrying him, due to the extensive injuries to his feet. And I knew we didn’t have time.
Mowdoroth’s body stood as tall as the trees as it looked down at the three of us with its strange, infected eyes. Its tentacles undulated faster and faster, seeming to whip around its body until they flew out towards us.
“Run!” I screamed. X and I sprinted behind a cluster of dead trees hugging the path. The blade-like hand of Mowdoroth chopped them in a half, raining wood splinters down on our heads.
Winchester continued trying to crawl forward. Mowdoroth slithered behind him. Winchester looked up as a tentacle started coming down in his direction. He gave a short, panicked scream as the blade smashed through his back legs, chopping both of them off at the knees. The ground shook with the force of it. The stumps began spurting seemingly endless amounts of blood. Winchester pleaded and made incomprehensible gurgling sounds as he bled out. Mowdoroth ended Winchester’s cries when it wrapped its tentacle around Winchester’s torso. It slithered up into Winchester’s open mouth.
X and I shot as fast as we could while running forward in the dark, trying to hold a flashlight and a pistol. Most of my shots missed Mowdoroth, but with a sense of satisfaction and pride, I saw a few burst through its enormous body. Streams of radioactive green blood ran down its torso now. As its serpentine legs pumped furiously, it gained speed, coming behind us like a runaway train. I could feel the ground shaking with every thud of its tentacled feet.
A few hundred feet ahead of us, I caught a glimpse of the cultists. They were hurrying away from the area, not running but moving much faster than they had come in. Nearly out of breath already and exhausted from hiking all day, I pointed forward.
“Look!” I screamed. X saw them, his eyes widening. We sprinted in a blind panic, as fast as we could towards the stragglers in the black robes. Without warning, X raised his pistol and fired, aiming at the nearest of them.
The figure in the back of the pack fell forward without making a sound. He continued trying to crawl forward weakly for a few moments before he lost energy and lay still, no more than a bleeding black hump on the dark earth.
X gave a sudden cry of pain next to me as a tentacle came down like a guillotine blade. I heard it whip through the air with a high-pitched whine. A single breath later, I watched in horror as it sliced off his right arm. X looked down at the spurting stump for a long moment, his tanned face turning as pale as bones. He stumbled forward, then, with a hoarse cry, he fell.
Following X’s lead, I raised my gun and started shooting the cultists. They sprinted away in a random panic as bodies fell ahead of us. I jumped over the black lumps on the ground, hearing Mowdoroth shake the world as it gave chase. A long, snake-like tentacle reached down, picking up X’s spurting body and raising it towards Mowdoroth’s leech-like mouth. The massive abomination slowed, picking up the bodies of the dead cultists and crushing them. I heard the bones shatter as the wet gore exploded around Mowdoroth’s many sharp teeth.
I saw the woods again, living trees just a few hundred feet away. The trail of black earth ended abruptly, leading out of the boglands. Cultists sprinted blindly through the forest in every direction, scattering like cockroaches. I had nearly reached the border of the forest when I heard something whizzing past my head. I ducked, but the blur of a grayish tentacle coming down sent a jolt of fear like electricity sizzling through my body.
A moment later, a cold agony covered my left hand. In shock, I looked down, realizing that the blade-like appendage of Mowdoroth had neatly amputated all four of my fingers. If I hadn’t ducked, it would’ve probably gotten my head instead.
Stumbling and screaming, my mind in a blind panic, I staggered through the intersection of the boglands and the forest, falling forward. I knew I was dead. I closed my eyes, waiting. Yet nothing happened.
When I looked back, I saw something strange. Mowdoroth had stopped at the end of the boglands. It tried to push its body forward towards me, but it couldn’t enter the forest. It was as if an invisible barrier stood there.
I lay there for a long time. After a while, I heard Mowdoroth slink back into the fetid waters of the boglands. And then I was alone.
***
I wrapped my hand in bandages as much as I could, trying to stem the bleeding. I felt weak and sick from blood loss, so I lay there until the sun came up. The next day, I was able to slowly make my way out of the forest and back towards the nearest town.
Now I hear stories of people mysteriously going missing in the area. An entire family in a nearby farmhouse only a couple dozen miles away disappeared in the middle of the night without a trace, leaving only smeared trails of blood leading into the forest. No one saw anything, but these six victims were only the first in a long line of strange deaths. Oddly enough, all of the victims lived next to swamps.
And I have the feeling that I was the one responsible.

I had been hiking down the Appalachian Trail for over two weeks without issue on the day when the nightmare began. My friend, X, was by my side the entire time. It was, quite honestly, comforting to have someone who stood nearly six-and-a-half feet tall with me, especially during the long, dark nights when the howling of coyotes drew near. Black bears, too, were a constant presence in these dark mountains. As we got farther from towns and civilization, more ancient predators than human beings took over the land, stalking the night like creeping shadows.
For this trip, we both had bought as few supplies as possible. Included in our packs were MREs, two sleeping bags, some tarps and hammocks, some light clothing, and two pistols with a few boxes of ammo. We didn’t want to be too weighed down that we wouldn’t be able to move fast, after all. We would source water from the streams, waterfalls and lakes along the way and filter it using Lifestraws.
As the spring breeze blew past us, cooling the sweat on my face, I noticed the trail ahead of us weaving its way through thick swampland. The buzzing of flies and mosquitoes increased with every step. The green, fetid waters of the swamp bubbled constantly, as if it were whispering secrets to us.
“Ah, shit,” X said, glancing down the hill with his dark, serious eyes. His tanned skin was covered in a thin sheen of sweat as he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Another swamp. I hate swamps. You know there’s going to be a million mosquitoes and flies down there.” I pulled out the map, squinting down at it. I ran my finger down the trail, seeing the mountains and valleys we had already passed.
“The trail shouldn’t be going through any swamps,” I said. “They’re supposed to be marked. There’s no ponds or anything around here.” And yet there very clearly was. Either we were in a different spot than I thought we were, or the map was outdated. The trail also grew thinner as we descended. The sharp branches of the bushes stuck out like greedy hands, grabbing at our backpacks and clothes as we pressed forward.
“Well, whatever,” X said gruffly, plowing ahead. Twigs cracked under his massive bulk. The thin branches hanging across the path snapped as he plowed forward. I let him go first, since he was significantly bigger than myself. It was like following in the path of a bull.
“The faster we move, the faster we’ll be through it. We don’t want to camp anywhere around here when it gets dark,” X continued, looking grim. “We’ll be eaten alive by bugs by sunrise. We need to make it to the other side of these boglands before we can stop for the night.”
“Yeah, and I could use some more water,” I said, shaking my mostly empty canteen. “I wouldn’t drink this shit no matter what we did to it. It probably has brain-eating parasites crawling in it.” I checked my watch, realizing that dusk was only a half hour away. We would have to move fast indeed, especially as we didn’t know the size of the swamp. I was not enthusiastic about hiking in the dark with the many steep trails and sharp rocks that covered the surrounding land. A single misstep could lead to a very long, bone-shattering fall.
To my increasing dismay, I realized that the trail we were on no longer had the characteristic white markings of the Appalachian Trail. I kept checking the trees for the past fifteen minutes, and I definitely hadn’t seen a single one. I couldn’t remember the last time we had passed one, but I had a creeping suspicion it had been at least a couple hours ago.
“I think we have a problem, man,” I whispered. “I don’t know how it possibly could have happened, but I think we’re on the wrong trail.”
“There’s not supposed to be any other trails around here,” X argued. “Check the map.”
“Then where’s the white blazes? There’s not supposed to be any boglands around here, either, yet we’re walking through the middle of one,” I said. He shook his head.
“Listen, Ben, there’s not going to be markers on the entire Appalachian Trail,” he said. “Just trust me. We’re on the right path. Sometimes forests change. Swamps take over spots where forests used to lay. Hell, the Sahara Desert has been expanding for thousands of years, just eating the forests and plains all around it. There used to be lions and savannah in Morocco, and now it’s all dead and dry.”
I felt doubtful, but I continued forwards, following closely behind X. Neither one of us had ever done the full Appalachian Trail, after all. I hoped he was right. I was not enthusiastic about backtracking two or three hours if he wasn’t.
I thought back closely on our travels during the last few hours, wondering where we could have gone wrong. The trail had been rather overgrown and rocky on the peak of the last mountain. There had been a beautiful view spanning hundreds of miles, looking far off into state forests and winding roads. I remembered seeing the white marker near the top, but after we had started descending, it disappeared. That must have been where we went wrong, if we did, indeed, go off-course. But I couldn’t be sure, and I didn’t tell X about my suspicions.
We finished descending a steep, rocky trail into a valley where the boglands really started. The trees ended in a massive semi-circle around the open swamp. Thick peat covered the entire surface of it like rotted, grayish-brown skin. I saw water snakes quietly disappearing into the stagnant water, leaving behind slowly expanding ripples.
“This is pretty cool,” I said, stopping for a moment at the bottom of the trail to admire the boglands. Our trail continued directly through the center of it, no more than a raised patch of black earth surrounded by green swampy water. I could hear the many insects chirping and flying before we even took a step forward. Though the spring air felt warm and I was covered in sweat, I still reached into my bag, taking out a windbreaker that would cover up my arms and neck to help with the bugs. X did the same.
“Let’s move fast,” he said, giving me a knowing look. He was a much faster hiker than myself. He seemed like a machine sometimes, tireless and single-minded. I had seen him hike over twenty miles in a single day without looking too bent out of shape. I gave him a faint half-smile, picking up my pace.
“You know what they used to say about the boglands?” I asked X. He shook his head.
“I don’t read books,” he said. “If I have time to sit down and read, then it means I have time to go out and do something actually fun. But I’m sure you know all about it.” I gave a short bark of laughter at his off-handed insult. It sounded far too loud echoing back to us through the creepy swamp. The last rays of sunlight were disappearing behind the mountains now. Soon, we would be plunged into darkness.
“Well, in ancient times, people thought the boglands a place where the walls of reality were thin, where the gods would come through. They used to bring their victims out to swamps during rituals, then they would slice their throats or strangle them and dump their bodies into the bogs as an offering to the gods. They also said that strange, shape-shifting creatures would appear, sometimes to deceive travelers, other times to help them,” I said. “But as for human sacrifices, the bogs preserve bodies like nothing else, except maybe tar pits. Archaeologists keep finding victims with slashed throats or shattered skulls buried underneath the peat.”
X was silent for a long moment as we continued walking along the raised patch of earth that formed the trail. We got farther and farther from the forests, until the swamp seemed like a fetid ocean, spanning out to the horizon in every direction.
“Do you think they used to do that kind of stuff around here?” X asked.
“Used to?” I exclaimed, laughing. “I’m sure some psychopaths still do. This is a good place to dump a body, after all. Who the hell wants to trek through the muck and the snakes and mosquitoes out here looking for corpses?”
“The FBI and the cops will do it,” he said, “if they think there’s something to find.” I was about to respond when an ear-splitting shriek echoed out all around us. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from at first. X’s tan skin seemed to go pale as he spun, glancing in every direction.
“What the fuck is that?!” he screamed over the deafening wailing. I didn’t believe in cryptids, but my anxious mind immediately offered up an image of a banshee, a woman with chalk-white skin and black eyes whose shrieking jaw unhinged like a snake’s.
“I’m turning around!” I yelled, pointing back for emphasis. “Dude, fuck this! We need to get out of this swamp!” But X was no longer listening. He was looking past me, his mouth open and his eyes wild. He started backpedaling and nearly fell into the swamp. Windmilling his arms crazily, he turned and sprinted away without a word.
I was afraid to look back. The screaming was getting louder by the second, shaking the air all around me in deafening, crashing waves of sound. I felt like my head would explode if it got any worse. Instinctively, I took off after X, but I glanced back for a single moment before I did. Something loomed there from a nightmare, standing as tall as the trees. It moved through the swamp like a snake, its body slithering through the stagnant green waters towards us. When it met my eyes, the screaming stopped. The abrupt silence seemed deafening. I could hear the fervent pounding of my heart in my ears.
The creature’s skin looked honeycombed and rough, almost like a wasp’s nest. The thousands of tiny holes covering its body constantly opened and closed like hungry mouths. Its arms were long tentacles ending in sharp points of bone in the shape of scythes. The tentacles undulated like serpents. Its legs, too, were no more than four tentacles that alternatively slithered and stepped forward.
Its flesh was the color of peat, a sickly grayish-brown, and the smell that emanated from it was rancid and stagnant, the essence of all boglands and swamps. I nearly gagged as I ran. The putrefying stench seemed to follow me like a shadow.
Ahead of me, X was fumbling in his backpack as he ran, trying to grab his pistol. I knew he had a Glock 21 in that bag, and I had my Sig Sauer in mine. I cursed myself for not keeping it holstered on my body, but I had never had to use it before and hadn’t seriously thought I would need it for this trip. He glanced back at me, his eyes widening in horror.
“It’s right behind you!” he yelled. “Get down!” He dropped his backpack, revealing the sleek, black pistol clenched tightly in his hand. I barely had time to comprehend his words when an immense pressure and numbness radiated through my back. My head snapped backwards as a meaty thud resonated all around me. I went flying forward, feeling as if I had been struck by a car. As I flew through the air, the pain in my back exploded in burning pulses. I felt the deep slice open up from the sharp blade of bone that had slashed me like a knife. I felt trickles of blood pour from the open wound, making my stained shirt cling to my body.
I landed hard on the raised black earth of the trail, a bone-jarring impact that knocked the air out of me. At that same moment, X opened fire, pressing the trigger over and over, emptying the magazine as fast as he could. Something splashed over me, going in my eyes and mouth and nose. I crawled forward, moaning, my head spinning. I wiped my forehead, seeing spatters of green blood squirming with dark, maggot-like creatures covering my arms and face. It clung to my fingers, thick and rancid. I felt stinging sensations as the tiny worms bit me over and over. My ears rang with a high-pitched whine from the gunshots.
X was running towards me now. I continued to crawl towards him, shell-shocked and whimpering, trying to wipe the eldritch blood off my skin. With a muscular arm, he reached down and pulled me up.
“Where’d it go?” I mumbled, stumbling forward on unsteady feet. X put an arm around my shoulders and helped support me.
“It slunk back into the swamp,” he said. “Jesus, you’re bleeding really bad, buddy. We’re going to need to take care of that as soon as we get away from this hellhole.” I felt the deep slices from the creature’s blade-like hands across my back. The fabric of my shirt clung tightly to the skin as fresh blood soaked it.
“This isn’t the trail, X,” I gasped. “We went the wrong way. We need to go back.” He nodded grimly.
“We’re heading back right now. I know it’s the wrong trail now, it definitely is, but it’s dark. The trails back up the mountains are steep and dangerous, and we’ve already been hiking all day. How much longer can we really go?” he asked. In reality, I had a feeling X could go for quite a bit longer. I was the weak link in the chain, and we both knew it.
X took out a small, LED flashlight from his backpack, shining it ahead of us on the dark path. Across the center of the black earth, there was an obstruction, something that hadn’t been there when we passed this way originally.
“Shit! Is that a person?” X said, slowing down. He focused the light on it. As my eyes adjusted, I gave a gasp of horror as I saw a rough sacrificial table looming there, waiting with a ready victim.
Laying on the bare wooden planks in the center of the trail was an elderly man wearing the garb of a hunter. He was gagged, a bloody rag shoved deep into his mouth. I felt a sense of revulsion and terror as I realized his hands and feet were nailed to the planks, as if he were being crucified laying down. His eyes rolled wildly, white and insane, like a horse with a broken leg. When he saw us approaching, he tried to say something through the gag, pulling hard against the nails that bit so viciously into his flesh. Fresh rivers of blood spurted from his wounds.
I had my pistol in my hands. X had taken a fresh magazine out by now, throwing the empty one back in his backpack. Trembling, he went first, his shaking hand moving the flashlight around wildly. Its bright rays bounced off the dead, half-rotted trees that grew out of the boglands, the clouds of mosquitoes and moths that circled us constantly.
“Oh my God... he's like the victim of a serial killer or something,” he whispered, running a trembling hand over his face. “It looks like someone has set that poor guy up to have his heart cut out, like some sort of Aztec ritual.” He glanced worriedly over at me. We had both stopped cold in our tracks, looking around for any sign of danger, but we only saw the old man writhing on his rough table of torture.
“We have to keep going forward,” I whispered. “That thing is behind us. I don’t think it’s dead. I’m not sure it can even die.”
“But what’s ahead of us?” he asked grimly. “That’s the real question, isn’t it?” Far off down the trail, I saw small pinpoints of flickering light. They drew closer. We raised our pistols, waiting for the new arrivals to show themselves.
Dozens of people dressed in black, silky robes holding lamps slowly ambled their way towards us. They had their heads bowed, like monks on a holy pilgrimage. They drew close to the sacrifice. The one in the lead held a long, curving dagger whose blade looked like it was made of some kind of red volcanic rock. Its strange silver handle glittered in his pale, thin hand. At the end, I saw it was sculpted into the shape of a human heart.
“Stop right there!” X screamed, stepping forward. “Don’t come any closer! We are armed, I’m warning you.” The people in the black robes didn’t appear to hear or care in the slightest. They continued slowly following their leader with the strange dagger, almost floating forward in a nonchalant manner. Their leader began chanting in some strange, ancient language. It reminded me of Tibetan or Sanskrit in a way, like the chanting of some Vajrayana monk high up in the Himalayas. But it had a sinister, hissing quality to the words. Something ancient and powerful resonated in every syllable.
I raised the pistol, firing blankly into the dark, cloudless sky above. The smell of gunsmoke and fetid rot hung thick in the air. The leader of the group looked at me with his large, glassy eyes. His face looked sunken and pale, almost like a starving child. He had shaved all of the hair on his head, even his eyebrows. His lips were extremely thin and bloodless in his chalk-white face.
For a long moment, we stood staring at each other, my pistol aimed at his chest. X also had his pistol raised, aimed at one of those standing behind him. But the robed man didn’t speak. He gave me a faint grin.
“Let the old man go,” I commanded, my voice sounding hoarse and weak. The swamp quickly swallowed up my words, until only the buzzing of mosquitoes remained.
“I am sorry, my son, but I cannot do that,” the leader said in a voice as cold as endless space. “If we do not feed Mowdoroth, it will never sleep. The swamps will continue to expand, eating more and more of the surrounding forests and towns, and Mowdoroth, driven insane by hunger, will take far more victims in the process.
“This job has been passed down to us from generation to generation, from big hand to small, for over four centuries. Only twice has Mowdoroth not been fed on the New Moon, and each time, entire settlements full of people were wiped off the face of the Earth as if they had never existed. On one, they just had time to carve the word ‘CROATAN’ before they were taken.
“Mowdoroth looks for the place where the nightmares grow. It breaks open the chest and finds the place where the silent screams start, deep down at the base of the heart. All of the nightmares are planted there, like tiny seeds scattered during childhood. Those that fell on good soil in that abyss produced a great crop, yielding a hundredfold, sixtyfold, or thirtyfold. If you do not allow us to complete our holy mission, then you do it: cut open the man's chest and remove his beating heart. As it beats, squeeze it as hard as you can, and let all the blood drain onto the top of your head. Hold the heart above your head and close your eyes until the god appears and takes it.” The cult leader finished, looking at us with sparkling eyes, as if he had said something profound.
“This shit is just insane drivel,” X whispered in a voice as low as possible. “I say we open fire and save the old man now. Fuck these cultists.” I nodded grimly in agreement.
“You need to all turn around and leave immediately,” X yelled, stepping forward. “I will give you three seconds to turn around and get the hell out of my sight. Three…” At first, the cultists stood as still as statues, simply staring. Finally, the leader sighed and turned away. He shook his head, reminding me of a disappointed parent.
“I tried to warn you,” he said in his thin, quavering voice. “The time has come to give the offering. You must cut out this man’s heart and raise it to Mowdoroth, so he can get the seeds of nightmares freshly sown. The choice is yours now, as you have demanded this power with violence. You can leave this man here to be eaten by Mowdoroth, or free him and, in exchange, guarantee the deaths of hundreds of other people.”
With those last words, the black-robed figures continued down the curve of the trail. Within seconds, they had disappeared behind dead, half-rotted trees that still dotted the edges of the boglands. X and I ran forward toward the struggling old man. X reached into his pocket and pulled out a folding knife. He cut off the old man’s gag, pulling the spit-soaked chunk of filthy cloth out of his mouth. The old man spat and licked his dry lips.
“Get me out of here, please,” he whispered, his eyes rolling wildly. “Those cult members are all batshit insane. And there’s something not right in these swamps. I caught glimpses of something while I was waiting. There’s something in the water…”
“What’s your name, bud?” X said calmingly, looking at the old man’s hands and feet to try to decide how to best get the nails out without causing more damage.
“Winchester,” he said in a coarse voice. It sounded like he hadn’t had a drink of water in days. While X looked at his hands with the LED flashlight, I reached into my pack for the small canteen of filtered water I still had. I started pouring it into Winchester’s mouth. He gulped greedily, his throat working hard to drink down the rest of it.
“I got it!” X said, taking a flat stone he had found on the ground. “I’m going to try to pound these nails out from the bottom.”
“Oh, please, no,” Winchester said, his wrinkled face turning pale. X shook his head.
“We need to get you out of here,” he said. “It’s going to hurt, bud. But we don’t have any tools here. The nails are large, almost like railroad spikes, and once we get the top part, the bottom should slide out easily since it’s a lot narrower.” As he grabbed the rock to begin his work, a bone-chilling wailing started up again from the swamps. It was the scream of Mowdoroth, that abomination with the skin of a wasp’s nest.
“Cover us!” X yelled panickedly as he continued his grisly work. Winchester screamed in pain when X first struck the nail on his right hand. It shot up a fraction of an inch, fresh blood pooling all around it and dripping through the bare planks.
I turned, but the banshee wail seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. The swamp bubbled faster and faster all around us, as if thousands of corpses were coming back to life. I heard Winchester scream again, then the dull thud of another nail hitting the earth.
A face peeked out of the swamp, only twenty feet away. Its eyes were green, the color of a putrefying wound. Its lipless mouth opened wide, showing a spongy black mass of skin with concentric circles of tiny, razor-sharp teeth. It reminded me of the mouth of a lamprey.
I opened fire, shooting wildly at the face, aiming at the body hidden under the dark surface of the swamp. Luminescent drops of green blood exploded from a bullet hole in its upper right shoulder, floating across the surface of the water like radioactive waste.
Its screaming cut off instantly. All I could hear was the pounding of the rock behind me and Winchester’s pained, horrified pleas for mercy.
“Please, you’re hurting me!” he pleaded.
“Shut the fuck up, Winchester!” I whispered. “It’s here with us now.” With considerable effort, he did, only moaning and violently jerking his head now as the waves of pain ripped through him.
“I got it!” X said suddenly. A feeling of elation filled my heart.
“Let’s go then!” I yelled, turning to help the old man up. I heard something massive rise up behind us. It mixed with the sound of dripping water and babbling waves that arose from the disturbance.
Winchester was weak, stumbling up to his feet and nearly falling over immediately. Staggering, he took off down the trail with no shoes, but he immediately gave a curse of pain and tripped. X and I started running, and at that moment, I realized the flaw in our plan. We wouldn’t be able to get Winchester out of the swamp without carrying him, due to the extensive injuries to his feet. And I knew we didn’t have time.
Mowdoroth’s body stood as tall as the trees as it looked down at the three of us with its strange, infected eyes. Its tentacles undulated faster and faster, seeming to whip around its body until they flew out towards us.
“Run!” I screamed. X and I sprinted behind a cluster of dead trees hugging the path. The blade-like hand of Mowdoroth chopped them in a half, raining wood splinters down on our heads.
Winchester continued trying to crawl forward. Mowdoroth slithered behind him. Winchester looked up as a tentacle started coming down in his direction. He gave a short, panicked scream as the blade smashed through his back legs, chopping both of them off at the knees. The ground shook with the force of it. The stumps began spurting seemingly endless amounts of blood. Winchester pleaded and made incomprehensible gurgling sounds as he bled out. Mowdoroth ended Winchester’s cries when it wrapped its tentacle around Winchester’s torso. It slithered up into Winchester’s open mouth.
X and I shot as fast as we could while running forward in the dark, trying to hold a flashlight and a pistol. Most of my shots missed Mowdoroth, but with a sense of satisfaction and pride, I saw a few burst through its enormous body. Streams of radioactive green blood ran down its torso now. As its serpentine legs pumped furiously, it gained speed, coming behind us like a runaway train. I could feel the ground shaking with every thud of its tentacled feet.
A few hundred feet ahead of us, I caught a glimpse of the cultists. They were hurrying away from the area, not running but moving much faster than they had come in. Nearly out of breath already and exhausted from hiking all day, I pointed forward.
“Look!” I screamed. X saw them, his eyes widening. We sprinted in a blind panic, as fast as we could towards the stragglers in the black robes. Without warning, X raised his pistol and fired, aiming at the nearest of them.
The figure in the back of the pack fell forward without making a sound. He continued trying to crawl forward weakly for a few moments before he lost energy and lay still, no more than a bleeding black hump on the dark earth.
X gave a sudden cry of pain next to me as a tentacle came down like a guillotine blade. I heard it whip through the air with a high-pitched whine. A single breath later, I watched in horror as it sliced off his right arm. X looked down at the spurting stump for a long moment, his tanned face turning as pale as bones. He stumbled forward, then, with a hoarse cry, he fell.
Following X’s lead, I raised my gun and started shooting the cultists. They sprinted away in a random panic as bodies fell ahead of us. I jumped over the black lumps on the ground, hearing Mowdoroth shake the world as it gave chase. A long, snake-like tentacle reached down, picking up X’s spurting body and raising it towards Mowdoroth’s leech-like mouth. The massive abomination slowed, picking up the bodies of the dead cultists and crushing them. I heard the bones shatter as the wet gore exploded around Mowdoroth’s many sharp teeth.
I saw the woods again, living trees just a few hundred feet away. The trail of black earth ended abruptly, leading out of the boglands. Cultists sprinted blindly through the forest in every direction, scattering like cockroaches. I had nearly reached the border of the forest when I heard something whizzing past my head. I ducked, but the blur of a grayish tentacle coming down sent a jolt of fear like electricity sizzling through my body.
A moment later, a cold agony covered my left hand. In shock, I looked down, realizing that the blade-like appendage of Mowdoroth had neatly amputated all four of my fingers. If I hadn’t ducked, it would’ve probably gotten my head instead.
Stumbling and screaming, my mind in a blind panic, I staggered through the intersection of the boglands and the forest, falling forward. I knew I was dead. I closed my eyes, waiting. Yet nothing happened.
When I looked back, I saw something strange. Mowdoroth had stopped at the end of the boglands. It tried to push its body forward towards me, but it couldn’t enter the forest. It was as if an invisible barrier stood there.
I lay there for a long time. After a while, I heard Mowdoroth slink back into the fetid waters of the boglands. And then I was alone.
***
I wrapped my hand in bandages as much as I could, trying to stem the bleeding. I felt weak and sick from blood loss, so I lay there until the sun came up. The next day, I was able to slowly make my way out of the forest and back towards the nearest town.
Now I hear stories of people mysteriously going missing in the area. An entire family in a nearby farmhouse only a couple dozen miles away disappeared in the middle of the night without a trace, leaving only smeared trails of blood leading into the forest. No one saw anything, but these six victims were only the first in a long line of strange deaths. Oddly enough, all of the victims lived next to swamps.
And I have the feeling that I was the one responsible.

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All State - PICK 4 List Performance for 2024-05-11
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State	Draw Date	Draw Time	Winning Number	BOX Number	VTRAC Number
DC	2024-05-11	Evening	4394	3449	4555
FL	2024-05-11	Midday	6501	0156	1122
GA	2024-05-11	Evening	4654	4456	1255
MA	2024-05-11	Evening	5510	0155	1112
MI	2024-05-11	Midday	8309	0389	1445
MO	2024-05-11	Midday	8488	4888	4445
NJ	2024-05-11	Evening	2621	1226	2233
NY	2024-05-11	Midday	8440	0448	1455
OH	2024-05-11	Midday	0443	0344	1455
OR	2024-05-11	Morning	6848	4688	2445
OR	2024-05-11	Evening	1343	1334	2445
OR	2024-05-11	Night	1641	1146	2225
PR	2024-05-11	Midday	3506	0356	1124
TX	2024-05-11	Evening	5046	0456	1125
TX	2024-05-11	Night	9011	0119	1225
TX	2024-05-11	Midday	4214	1244	2355
VA	2024-05-11	Midday	4656	4566	1225
WI	2024-05-11	Evening	5004	0045	1115
WV	2024-05-11	Evening	1684	1468	2245

Congrats all Winners and Followers.

Lottery Website for Workouts and Tools - Lets Make Billion
All State - PICK 3 List Performance for 2024-05-11
Numbers:('000','001','004','005','006','008','011','014','015','016','018','023','029','038','044','045','046','047','048','055','056','058','059','066','068','077','088','111','113','114','115','116','118','119','122','128','137','144','145','146','148','149','155','156','158','166','167','168','188','227','236','239','245','248','257','266','299','335','338','344','347','356','389','444','445','446','448','455','456','458','466','468','479','488','555','556','558','566','568','569','578','588','666','668','677','688','888')

State	Draw Date	Draw Time	Winning Number	BOX Number	VTRAC Number
CA	2024-05-11	Evening	055	055	111
DC	2024-05-11	Evening	542	245	135
DE	2024-05-11	Evening	854	458	145
GA	2024-05-11	Evening	248	248	345
IA	2024-05-11	Midday	066	066	122
IL	2024-05-11	Evening	568	568	124
KY	2024-05-11	Evening	051	015	112
MD	2024-05-11	Evening	501	015	112
MI	2024-05-11	Midday	085	058	114
MS	2024-05-11	Midday	856	568	124
MS	2024-05-11	Evening	605	056	112
NC	2024-05-11	Evening	005	005	111
NJ	2024-05-11	Evening	004	004	115
NJ	2024-05-11	Midday	191	119	225
NY	2024-05-11	Evening	398	389	445
OK	2024-05-11	Evening	248	248	345
PR	2024-05-11	Evening	338	338	444
SC	2024-05-11	Evening	965	569	125
SC	2024-05-11	Midday	713	137	234
TX	2024-05-11	Evening	514	145	125
VA	2024-05-11	Evening	145	145	125

Congrats all Winners and Followers.

There was another post earlier about the maybank new ezycash offer for cash out with 6 months instalment at 0% interest rate, and I notice some people dismiss it or think it's too little benefit to care.
For people that think it's dumb to take advantage of these kind of offer for just few hundreds bucks, that is because you don't have a full strategy to utilize these offers.
But before I continue I must note this isn't meant for people that lack self discipline and self control, all financials tools are neither good or bad, it's entirely up for the users.

My Strategy

Bank offers 0% interest of ezycash/instalment/balance transfer from time to time, here's how I personally use them:

1. On my CCRIS I have a ~78% utilization on all my credit limits from a few banks, the outstanding total is RM102,335
2. Most of these outstanding are either 0% interest instalment from balance transfer promo, or convert your spend to instalment promo.
3. Now HERE is the where the real strategy comes in, I rollover those outstanding whenever I clear up some limits, in plain words which means every month let say i pay RM 8k, this RM8k is then return to available credit limit, I then look for another promo like this, and extract that money out again with 0% interest, this means I'm constantly rolling the RM100k debt, which you can see it as bank lend me RM100k indefinitely, and I have been doing this for years.
4. Now how you utilize this RM100k is completely up to you, if you are risk averse, put them in ASB or US short term treasury for that sweet 5% with low risk, which is RM5k free every year, but personally I see those outstanding as an advanced salary paid to me, which i can just return the payment with next month salary, so I am basically just invest earlier with my salary, and I invested most of them in US index funds like CSPX, if you look at the return of S&P500 and the weakening MYR against USD, you can prolly tell I made roughly about RM 100k with these offers.

Note

• The key here is to rollover your debt, the goal is to roll until the time you die and owes your bank RM100k and you win LOL, (or until that RM100k capital is nothing to you.)
• Pay your monthly statement on time, my CCRIS are all 0, of course the high utilization does impact your ability to apply for new credit cards and new loan, so make sure you plan around that, or decrease utilization by stopping the rollover if you plan to buy house or something in next year, because most of these debt are instalment of 12 months, some 18 months, you can easily clear off majority of the debt and reduce utilization back to normal level in just a year or max 2 years.
• THIS IS NOT SUITABLE FOR PEOPLE THAT LACK DISCIPLINE AND SELF CONTROL OBVIOUSLY.

By the way, taking advantage with these offer are way easier when most e-wallet doesn't charge you 1% for credit card top up, so now it may be harder with the increase cost, but there are other ways to achieve the same without e-wallet, just use credit card for regular day life spending works too.
I wrote more about this in my blog post:
Balance Transfer: The Interest Free Capital You Should Know - MalaysianPF.com

After coming back to the game in 2020 I discovered an "interesting" feature where occasionally, when someone whispers me, I don't see it in chat.
I discovered this thanks to ToolBox which has a pop up icon when GW is reduced to icon.
I tried everything in GW settings but it seems nothing is capable of making my chat work properly; on a first instance I tought it was the creation of ChatFilter.ini file, but it isn't.
Any ideas people? :D

Greetings again. My previous two posts about my world weren't particularly popular, but now I decided to continue the story anyway. Long story short: this is an alternate world that has deposits of metastable metallic hydrogen, concentrated at deep waters and in cold regions. Hydrogen, not oil, is the basis of the world's economy here, the corporations that have grown from its extraction and use have more power than governments. The political map of the world is different from our own, with different forces at play than we are used to.
The main setting is the city of Neone, located somewhere on the coast of the Balkan Peninsula. I won't specify a particular place or pick a certain country for its location. Instead, I will take some features from some various ones to add local flavor. As one of the largest trading hubs in the world, this city is very wealthy, but it's the kind of wealth that easily slips through your fingers. Everything is buying and selling here, and human life is just as much a bargaining chip. Life in Neone is determined by the actions that the Players, the main political forces in the city, take with one another. Relations between them can swing from friendship to hostility... Or sometimes a combination of both at the same time. So, here's a preliminary list of the ones I've already come up with:
CORPORATIONS:
Astara Industries is the “beauty industry” in all its forms. Silk and gold, perfume and cosmetics. Modeling, music, entertainment, plastic surgery, and escort services. Rumored to be involved in much darker affairs, but that doesn't stop a lot of young guys and especially girls from trying their luck and signing another cabal contract with Astara. The higher the ranks of their employees, the more the corporation seems to be a kind of cult that worships the very idea of beauty itself. Recently, this company has been investing colossal amounts of money into an ambitious project designed to stop aging and mortality.
Change Inc. is a pretty mysterious organization that primarily provides construction and design services as well as financial operations and data protection services. On deeper layers lies espionage and information trading to anyone who can offer a more interesting price for it.
Chapek's Clockworks is the other major robotics company that has dominated the market for quite a while. Now they are more famous for their retro designs and sponsorship of the theatrical scene.
Chimera Chemicals is a biochemical giant that once started out as a fertilizer manufacturer. Now they deal in just about everything chemical related, including weapons, and also sponsor gene modifications.
Dragonfruit Digital is a world famous software and electronics developer that was leading the market before the rapid... well, rise of Risen Robotics.
Friture Science is a food concern dedicated to the mission of feeding the world. In addition to natural products, they develop synthetic ones as well as a number of associated products.
Fortuna Fishing - seafood production in Neone coastal waters and also beyond and deeper. Some of the things they found deep in the waters made them a little bit... Well, superstitious.
Greenfield Gardens - Similar in many ways to the previous one, this company focuses on environmental protection and recycling methods. Owns many farms and gardens in the city and beyond. Genetic modifications, too.
Hecate Guaranty is a law and insurance company. Deals with all possible disputes of their clients, property issues, and more. When required and paid decently, can provide a person or group of people a new life and a new home.
International Inc. is the most boring company in the world. Originally a construction contractor they pioneered the technology of rapid modular building. Because of this, International Inc. quickly built up capital and influence by rebuilding cities after wars. Eventually they expanded into selling associated products and services, then logistics, recruiting personnel... And now International Inc. provides half of the world's products. Each of their products is completely featureless, but they get the job done at an acceptable price.
Keller & Crow is one of Europe's largest arms manufacturers, dating back to World War I, or maybe even earlier. Known for their high quality and appropriate prices.
Keller-Tec is, in more than one sense, a daughter corporation of Keller & Crow. It develops the most cutting-edge custom weapon and gear systems. It works closely with Risen Robotics and actively funds the Fountain of Good.
Kiki Courier Company is a network of independent couriers working through the app. Moving around the roofs of Neone, they are able to deliver a small cargo personally in their hands for those who don't trust big companies.
Matsubayashi Motors is a Japanese vehicle manufacturer. Raised on defense contracts, they now make anything that can carry a human in it, from scooters and cars to aircraft and bolides.
MOLOT manufactures is another major arms manufacturer in Europe. In fact a franchise that sells to factories around the world the rights to produce copies of their world famous models. Their designs are a bit crude, but reliable and durable.
Poseidon's Possibilities - A marine transportation company that plays an important role in city and global shipping. Considering the high risk of piracy, possess pretty good assets to protect themselves, and sometimes execute third-party orders in coastal zones.
Risen Robotics is one of the world's important corporations. Creating innovative neural chip technology, Risen Robotics quickly earned financial and political capital and aiming for more. They were the first to commercialize a truly cheap and mass-produced android called the Peacebringer, and these robots can be seen in the military, security companies, and even as security guards in the market and malls and as bouncers in nightclubs. Building its influence, Risen Robotics aims to actively bring its tech into the lives of everyone in the world... And then their gaze will be directed higher into the skies and to the stars.
Royal Arms - Once a major weapons company, they are now more focused on the civilian market and support tools. Their high-precision tools and cybernetic limbs are widely used in civilian and military markets, as well as the medicine and even space industries.
Strigoi Sovereign is a company with a long history of working with private customers. They originally focused on hunting and harvesting of high-value resources, but gradually expanded. Nowadays, they are known for their customized combat enhancements, whether it be tough training and gear customization as well as biological, chemical, and cybernetic enhancements. Among all forms of payment, they prefer transactions in precious metals.
Van Nueve Innovations is another deep genetic research company. After their role in human trafficking and criminal experiments was revealed, their assets were mostly shut and sold down. Now their stuff keeps popping up on the black market - though, in this city, the difference between the regular and black market is barely noticeable.
Vulcan Weaponry is another firearm company with a long history, with a good reputation for their trusted builds, high quality and classy designs. Among the mercenary world, their weapons and equipment is considered indicators of prestige and good taste.
PRIVATE MILITARY COMPANIES:
Deepwater is a notorious American PMC with a well-deserved dirty reputation. Their Sigma division deployed in Neone has been caught in the middle of scandals more than once.
FIREBIЯD - Russian PMC, looking after order in and around Neone. Having a small size they are all carefully selected by their leader and follow him into both fire and water.
Ryujin - Japanese PMC, which has a good social image and actively finances all kinds of entertainment.
Schwarzwald is a German PMC with a long-standing reputation and connections. It usually works for the benefit of Western European clients and has a long history of cooperation with the Keller family.
Keller's Claws is a passion project of Alex Keller, CEO of Keller-Tec. A small and elite female PMC, operating in the interests of their mistress or executing carefully selected contracts around the world.
This is not all PMCs in the city, but only those that are not directly linked to specific corporations that were listed above.
GANGS:
The Blazer is a broad and diverse group of radical anarchists. They are mostly drawn to the destruction of corporate property and speculation about “power of the people”, but some of their members are not averse to almost any type of work.
The Crooked Circle is another cult-like gang, or vice versa. They focus on collecting unique technology, but aren't particularly successful at it. But they're still alive and kicking, praying that their mechanical messiah will save them.
The Grey Court Syndicate is the largest criminal organization in the city, and one of the largest in Europe, maybe even in the entire world. Reminiscent of the classic Mafia. On one side they have the exterior gloss, protecting order and running legal businesses, but on the other side they have human and organ trafficking, prostitution and assassinations for hire. The Grey Court is one of the main sources of migrants in Neone.
The Himmelreich is a disorganized gang fighting for the “purity of humanity”. They oppose the very fact of existence of chimeras and cyborgs in this world. In fact are useful fools for the real Players in the city.
The Tulips are something between a gang and a religious sect. Spoken with Christian-like mottos, they attract beggars and cripples to their ranks, especially focusing on PMC veterans and former corporate workers, but in fact they accept all the desperate. They have squatted some ruins on the outskirts of the city, including the abandoned greenhouse that gave them their name. However... They are rapidly expanding their influence and their source of funding remains unknown.
OTHERS:
The City Council is the primary administration of the city. They manage, but they don't reign. They are a handful of exhausted clerks, doing the hard work that no one else accepted to do. Basically maintain the city's communications and keep the Players away from killing each other and too many ordinary citizens.
The Forge is a secret organization that exists for a very long time and runs deeply secured operations all over the world. They believe it's their duty to protect humanity from dangerous ideas, technologies, and obscure subjects such as [UNKNOWN]. Forge is often found to be a puppeteer, directing the actions of other Players or certain individuals.
The Fountain of Good is a globally respected charity organization primarily focused on orphanages. One of the few Players who maintains truly bright ideals. The children who grow up usually become corporate employees afterwards. Other Players fund them mainly to launder money, calm their karma and create a positive public image for themselves.
The Nuevians are a deep-covered organization slowly gaining influence in the city. They are led by an artificially created living entity known only as "The Queen" that seeks to bring prosperity to the planet. They have good intentions, but fear to repeat the fate of the Zero Cycle.
The Union of Nations Peacekeepers - maintaining a shred of peace in the aftermath of the Incident, a massive earthquake that recently struck Neone. Many urban areas have since descended into chaos and lawlessness, while others live as if nothing has happened or are experiencing minimal inconvenience. The competency of these soldiers is questionable and they are barely supplied.
The Volunteer Vanguards are an organization that maintains order in those Neone districts where the City Council or other Players do not. Generally a barely trained and armed militia, but there are some skilled veterans and former corporate workers in their ranks.
The Workers Ring is Neone's major blue collar association. They support city communications so they have a lot of influence. Individual members may or may not be involved in working for other Players and illegal activities. The second meaning of the "Ring" word is also utilized - many members of this community are known for their passion for arena fighting.
The Zero Cycle is a secret organization of intelligent machines once created by a rogue AI. Several Players united to destroy this threat, leading to the Incident. Now, shards of the Cycle's technology, superior to anything created by humanity, is the most valuable hunting treasure in Neone. Owning one of them means risking the lives of yourself and your loved ones, but that rarely stops hunters who desire wealth or driven by some personal reasons.
Well, that's the draft. Any ideas, suggestions, any other feedback?

Hi, today I (Lily, 4f, half terrier half corgi) was minding my own business when I was attacked! I was standing in my kitchen, and suddenly something came in! It was a box and it made strange noises and moved across the floor. Suddenly it came right up to me and then it squirted water right at my pawses!! Everybody knows I hate getting wet! Water is gross and disgusting! This was clearly an attack. So I jump on box and roll it over. Box made noise and died, so I won! Then my best friend M came in and said I shouldn't attack box, but it attacked first! Anyway, he says I am the C and I say box is the C. What do you think?

Hey I hope this will not end in a shitshow because it’s serious. First of all i like Steinbergs tools. This will be a long post and not a rent but rather helping question at the bottom. Over two decades ago I used Cubase and Nuendo for the first time its was a experience I could never forget. Last year I started again with making music started and invested into bunch of libraries as well as cubasis the Cubase version for IPad. I really love the way the interface is build for iPad, it’s clear, the fonts have the right size to not getting eye cancer and the overall look and feel is natural. This year I told myself hey, it’s time to combine the power of the iPad as well as a pc based daw, and of course I should go with Steinberg again. After installation of Cubase 13 pro test version as well as elements I was brutally shocked about how unpleasant the interface is compared to the iPad version. It’s unintuitive over complicated, a thousand windows. And simple things like previewing midi‘s and samples are really covered behind a thousand windows. After that experience I deleted both for a while. I tested bigwig, Logic and of course Ableton 12 and bam.. I was shocked for the second time. The usability and interface of Ableton 12 the easy to use midi piano roll tools as well as easy splitting of midi notes are very very similar compared to the iPad version of Cubase. Of course I purchased Ableton 12 the full shit. It’s great. However we all know that for Instrumental Soundtrack Music Steinbergs Libraries have the high ground. They are top notch. Yesterday I purchased Cubase 13 Elements just because of the fact to get halion selection and iconic sketch.. I seriously tried to match the interface and usability of Ableton and cubasis with Cubase but it dosent work….
So my question: Are there any Interface preset mods available somewhere which basically exchange my entire Cubase interface?I know this from Ableton 12 which is great. I seriously want to give Cubase a chance but not with that interface - even the fonts are a mess and unreadable.
Second question. Are there any final mastering chains which have automatic driven equalization and compression and limiting driven by keys and sound dynamics such as available in Ableton? Right now I see only a few vst dynamic stuff and brickwork and even lesser than what I have in Cubasis? Are there any mastering chains available on the internet?
Big Thanks in Advanced…

Tomorrow is Mother's Day. I forgot. My son's father never has him make me a card or buy me a box of chocolates or call me. And I won't have my own mother to call. So it slipped my mind until I looked over my sales numbers last night and realized customers were stockpiling for something. And today was strange and brought up a lot of thoughts Ive had over the last few years so Im posting them to meander while i wander and to get it off my chest.
And today was a strange day indeed. I woke up to a call from my brother. Usually that ringtone is reserved for my boss so when I rolled over in bed and realized it was my brother calling I was confused. My brother and I haven't spoken in nearly 6 months since we had a conversation where he said I'm "just like mom". The meme on its surface was benign and I know he didn't mean any malice behind it, simply the banter of two abused siblings and their patter, but the words stung. I didn't handle myself with grace and dignity at the time - I lost my temper, wrote him a barrage of messages about how insulting it was to be compared to the woman who had emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and sometimes physically ruined us to the point that none of her three children speak to her, none of which have the same reason,, and that I wouldn't be speaking to him until an apology had been given in good faith. I waited a few days and when no apology came, I blocked him on all but one app, texted our dad about the situation and how hurt I was, and moved on. Christmas, New Years, his birthday came and went, and we haven't spoken.
Back in 2021 when the world was ending, my mother fell down the QAnon rabbit hole. She has always been a religious woman which was the crux of our constant loggerheads, but she fell further into the ideology of Trump as saviour, 5G microchips, vaccinations. Despite her verbal and emotional abuse, my mother was always a believer in medicine which I respected so to see this contrast was abrupt and alarming. She had us vaccinated as children and young adults, she works as a care aide in a palliative care ward. And yet suddenly she was touting that the vaccinations were being forced, started sending me Trump memes. The irony of us being Canadian vis a vis her Trump support wasn't lost on my child who asked me if she was okay after one of her unhinged rants about how Donny was gonna save us all. When your then 5 year old asks you if grammy is mentally well you take stock.
And my mother herself grew up in an abusive home. Her parents raised foster children for additional income that her father molested, he deliberately gave her Hepatitis C, they came from noblesse but were the black sheep. Hours long "tea parties" where we learned etiquette were drilled into us early, a stagnant reminder of her parents familial orbit in political circles; out of a sense of loyalty she remained close to her mother at the least until the old womans death. So it's not shocking that she would perpetrate the abusive behaviour on her own children. I somehow got the worst of it being born with two X chromosomes when she "hated little girls because little girls grow into little bitches" but my brothers had their struggles too. My older brother left home at 18 because she somehow managed to parentify him and hold him under lock and key to the point he enlisted in the navy to get away from her. His last straw was when she called his wife a cunt (of all the things she ever said to him that was the one that MAYBE might have been 90% accurate, fuck you KK). That was in 2009. In 2011, my dad finally grew tired of her abuse of him specifically. He wasn't even AWARE of what was happening with us kids bc she'd conditioned us that if we said anything he wouldnt believe us - to this day, after hearing us tell him the truth, he feels such second hand guilt he spoils us rotten. He left her - my younger brother chose to live with my dad so she sold his car that he'd inherited from her parents (I got nothing in the inheritance because of those pesky xx chromosomes) to "pay [her] back" for all the money "[she] spent raising him". Never mind that he was 18, the car was in his name, and it was her duty to raise him as, you know, a parent. I held on desperately wanting my mother to love me, to treat me well. I begged my brothers to give her another chance, to let her back in. I gave up by 2013 but kept in contact for my son who was born in 2015. By 2021 I was starting to crack.
Late in 2021, just shy of my 31st birthday, I finally snapped in half. My mother posted a meme to Facebook where she compared the mask mandates to the holocaust and used a real photo of real people who died in the showers at Auschwitz as a shock tactic. My skin burned as I looked at the post and I wrote a scathing remark. I made very sure to do it in her comments because I knew when people asked why I'd gone scorched earth she would twist my words because she has done so a million times. I made it extremely clear that her ideology and mine had finally collapsed like a black star and I could not have her near my child's malleable brain spewing her filth and untruths. That I would not allow him to grow up with her hateful heart influencing him and that I was choosing to be a better mother than she'd been by first protecting him from her and her dangerous views.
She'd already endangered his paternal nana's life once (she's a transplantee) by showing up at my house unvaxxed and maskless when she works in a fucking hospital. That I put up with quite a lot of her shit over the years because she is my MOM and i love her but I cannot do this anymore. I then blocked her, called my ex to let him know what I had done since they live in the same town so she might try to circumvent me to see our son so he was prepared (and he was fully on board for bc he trusts my dad wholeheartedly but trusts my mom as much as he trusts a scorpion in his palm) and left it alone. She left me a few vms but by January I stopped hearing from her.
So today I rolled over in bed to see my brothers name and well....we haven't talked since our fight so....it's probably important. I hesitated to pick up but what if it's about dad? I answered and gave a tight "hello", my first in months. His voice was so familiar and my chest felt so tight.
The convo started as I expected - he had something important to tell me. I braced for it and then he said "uncle rodger passed away last week". I couldn't help but laugh. Uncle rodger was my moms oldest sibling, I think he was like 15 years older than her so he'd be nearly 80? I met him a grand total of MAYBE 5 times in my entire life, we had exactly ONE conversation in 2011 at my moms father's funeral. Her dad abused rodger badly and he'd gone to the funeral to basically spit on his dads grave, his daughter knitted during the funeral and mockingly laughed whenever anyone said a kind word - a sentiment shared by all his granddaughters equally. mom forced me to attend for "family optics" as her dad was related to several politicians who were in attendance. Uncle rodg and I had a smoke on the balcony and talked about what a giant piece of shit Andrew was in life and how funny it was everyone was pretending to be sad over him being dead. He said "ur just as smart as mom says u are" and I said "idk how the fuck she'd know that she can't even spell my name properly and she's my own grandmother" and he laughed ironically. It was a bonding moment for sure but we'd never spoken before and haven't since so i was confused as to why my brother thought I'd even care about poor old Uncle rodg.
When my son was born, my ex and I agreed on one thing- our son would be raised agnostically and that we would teach him about religion, but that he'd be free to choose on his own what he believes in and we would be supportive if he did eventually choose to follow religion but not actively participate. To that end, we forbade my mother from bringing him to church or Bible study. On one occasion where I trusted her to babysit she sent me a photo of my son, then aged 3, with a small child. "They're having a great time!" She captioned. "Where are you?" I inquired. She did not respond. The next day, when I picked him up she elaborated that they'd had an "impromptu" bible study session and brought him along. I flashed back to all the times I'd said I don't believe in God and she'd slapped me across the face. I decided not to let him spend the night at grammys anymore.
I laughed into the phone. "Oh noooooo I'm devastated about my uncle who died that I barely knew". My brother managed a half laugh - they HAD been in touch over the years and were adversaries. My brother, seeking some form of family had reached out over the years and met with antagonism and hostility which he would deliver back incisively.
Rodg was the oldest of 5, mom was the baby, and because of the age difference, the older 3 had their little clique and mom and the second youngest were always quite close, so by proxy my brother and I were quite close to uncle Henri. I grew apart from him after one too many rants about how much he loved Harper but my brother, always dutiful, has kept in somewhat touch. After broaching the news my brother let me know he'd also called uncle Henri to give his condolences.
And then he said something very interesting. He told me uncle Henri said "you know, your mother misses you. You should get in touch with her. She has three children and none of them speak to her and she doesn't understand why". My brother obviously brushed him off; he hasn't spoken to her in over a decade, why would he now? Then my brother gently said to me "you know, there's an irony, that she was treated badly and did the same thing to her own children but doesn't recognize it.". It wasn't a direct apology, but I recognized it for what it was - a tacit admission that we'd both endured hell, and he'd chosen this moment to tackle this subject with me without using the words "im sorry", but also to let the gates of communication reopen again so we could go back to whatever normal we had. He was acknowledging my abuse for real, something he'd never done. He was sorry.
The rest of the conversation was brief. We each gave a quick update of our lives as if nothing ever happened and said we'd chat soon; I suppose thats how it goes when you love someone very much but have a stupid argument where you're not mad at each other but take it out on each other.
I relayed the conversation to my partner and as I did so something struck me - when my uncle said "she doesn't understand". All three of us explicitly told her exactly why we were cutting her off when we did so, so there's nothing to misunderstand. My partner said "some people think the world is happening to them". If my uncle had said "she feels badly about everything and wants to apologize or start over" that would be a completely different beast, but she truly sees this as something the world has done to her rather than something she has created. The irony is the best lesson my mother ever taught me is that when you point a finger at someone, there are three pointing back at yourself. It's a shame she can't see it.
So tomorrow is mothers day. I won't be celebrating, I'll be thinking about ways I can do things differently for my own son. There will be no benediction for my mother, but maybe I can save myself.
And to those of you who also have narcissistic mothers, may you have a day of peace, may you not feel guilty if you cut her off, may you tell your own story and find some catharis

This is going to be a bit chaotic, so my apologies. I feel ashamed to write this as I feel like I’m betraying my partner somehow. But I don’t know what else to do. I need some perspective on how to fix this rift. I apologise if my writing is a bit confusing, I’m just trying to get my thoughts out all at once. This all happened this week, Monday - Sunday (now). For context we are 22F 22M, both working and studying at university. He’s currently doing placement for his course which costs him most of the week. We’ve been dating about a year and a half and were friends before we dated. I want to know if I’m wrong and what I can do to fix our issue.
My partner seems to struggle with sticking to his word, particularly when it comes to plans he makes with me. My partner has done this before and I’ve told him how much it hurts me and he always says sorry. But that’s all he seems to do, say sorry. I forgive him and I hope that next time he’ll show me that he wants to do better. But then he does the same behaviour he said he was sorry for and wouldn’t do again. Sometimes he’ll do it hours later, multiple times in a row. I don’t need to talk to him all the time, but we don’t live together. Nor do we live close by. And so I feel really disconnected when he flakes on our plans. I try and engage in text conversations with him, but there’s a similar story there too where he’ll say he’ll talk at a certain time but then he won’t. It makes me feel really alone when I can’t rely on him to be there when he says he will. Last week he had a family member from overseas visit, and he told me this family member was coming over. I felt a little nervous because the last few times he had family over he would ignore me for days, bail on his plans with me, the most recent time he ghosted me fully for a few days the night before he was meant to spend the day with me. That day was the first full day in two months we had both free to spend together. I felt incredibly afraid and alone and it’s made me feel like I’m constantly walking on eggshells hoping I stay “fun” enough for him to not want to ditch me. So when he told me his cousin was coming over for a week long visit I felt a little apprehensive. I didn’t want to interfere with his time with them, but I also was worried that I’d end up being ghosted for a week with no explanation or indication when or if he would talk to me again. I asked him if he was going to go awol on me again, and assured me he wouldn’t. The day he went to pick up this cousin from the airport, he then drove to a bottle shop close to his house and he went radio silence for a bit and told me he would text more when he got home. Four hours later he texted me saying he was in the middle of a conversation that he would talk about later. Two and a half hours later he finally got back to me and said he was about to fall asleep and apologised for not coming back like he said he would. I told him to find a middle ground next time, and that I didn’t mind if he couldn’t talk but it made me feel stressed when he had people over he will tell me he’ll talk later but then never follows through. He said okay, and he agreed he would text me in the morning. That was Monday. Tuesday morning he did text me a message about what he ate the night before. I texted him asking what he talked about last night, and he responded in the afternoon saying that he didn’t mean to say he wanted to tell me, only that he had a lot to talk about with this cousin. He started asking about plans (originally I was meant to come over that night after work) and I offered to come over another night that week so he had more one on one time with his cousin. I wanted to make sure he had ample time and didn’t feel like I was monopolising him. He said he’d like that. I texted him saying I don’t mind not being around as much this week, but that I would really like better communication even if that was telling me he couldn’t talk. Rather than leave me waiting wondering if he was going to text me this time. He said sorry again and I brushed it away just hoping that he wouldn’t do it again. He relayed that he was working every single day this cousin was over, and I offered to compensate him financially if he took off a shift to spend with his cousin. In the past he’s seemed to have a lot of anxiety around taking time off work, even if it’s for something important. I think it makes him anxious to not have consistent income, and he was doing unpaid work placement for uni on days that he’d usually get paid to work. I’ve offered this before when he had work overlapping some time I asked him to take off for us, and I’m happy to. He agreed to it this time too and he took one of his paid weekend shifts off so he could spend it with his cousin. He told me he had to drive home from his placement and would text me when he got home. I asked if we could catch up briefly when he did and he agreed. Over an hour later he texted me to say he was home. I then asked what he was up to, and after twenty minutes he texted me to say he was talking to his cousin and mum. I asked if we were still catching up and he said yes, and asked me about my day. We exchanged a couple of texts, although he was slow to respond and looked to be distracted. When I asked if everything was okay he told me he was just talking to his cousin. I asked if he wanted to reschedule the catch up to later, and he said he would talk in an hour and forty five minutes. I said okay, and left him alone. Then the time he picked rolled around, and he didn’t text. I waited for a while, thinking that maybe he was just wrapping up, but then twenty minutes passed and I texted him just a quick “Hello”. He responded thirty minutes later than he said he was in the middle of looking at family photos and would respond after dinner. I said okay, and asked when abouts that would be. He then responded an hour later saying he would be back in “halfa”. I asked if that meant he’d be back in half an hour, and forty minutes later he said yes he meant half an hour. I asked him if he meant half an hour when he texted “halfa” or half an hour from now, forty minutes later. Twenty minutes later he said he was happy to talk now and that he’d go to bed in half an hour, and then immediately retracted that saying he had to go say goodbye to someone. Thirty minutes later he texted me saying he got busy with cleaning up after dinner, and was ready for bed. We started a little catch up, I was just grateful to hear from him although I was worried he’d cut things short. I also tried communicating my irritation about the back and forth changing of when he would talk to me. I said i didn’t want to interfere too much but that I felt like he didn’t respect my time when he wouldn’t stick to his word. I told him I would rather him tell me a realistic time rather than promising me a time that he would end up bailing on, I didn’t like anxiously waiting by the phone. He apologised and said he’d be more realistic. He then texted me that he was really tired and that he wanted to go to bed, cutting the conversation short. I will admit I told him that I was frustrated because I predicted he would do this and that I felt irritated waiting for him all day yesterday and today and still ending up back on square one. He apologised and I tried to brush things off so we could say goodnight. I texted him after he went to sleep, nothing major just little things that I was doing or watching. It makes me feel connected even if he doesn’t reciprocate. He texted in the morning letting me know he was on his way to placement, and I asked if it was a good idea for me to come over. I felt anxious that I would be invisible again, and it would be a lot more hurtful when it was when I was physically present but still being ignored. He’s done this before a lot, I don’t think it’s on purpose but he gets so caught up that I kind of get left in the corner. I do try to engage with other people, but I feel really isolated when he’ll monopolise the conversation and not acknowledge me the entire time. I didn’t tell him this but told him I would feel like a bit of a wallflower being there and asked if I could come over Thursday night instead. I had a late shift and was hoping that by the time I arrived most people would be winding down for bed and I would feel less left out. He didn’t text me until seven hours later, telling me he didn’t want me to be unhappy and not spend meaningful time with him. I texted him asking if I could come over Thursday evening instead. He didn’t respond and I just rambled over text for a bit, just talking about stuff. Like before I do this just to try and connect with him, I like telling him about my life. I wish he was with me to experience it, even the mundane bits. About three hours passed and he texted me saying he had to do some work and was with his cousin and that he would talk soon. Three hours passed and he apologised for being MIA and said he would text me in the morning. I texted him saying it was three days in a row being MIA, and that I didn’t want to take up all of his time but I was feeling frustrated that he would say he would be back and then wouldn’t come back. I texted him saying I felt like he wasn’t going to text me in the morning and that I felt frustrated. Regardless I said goodnight and that I loved him, and brushed it off texting other stuff about what I was doing. Sure enough he didn’t text me that morning and waited until 3:30 in the afternoon before he texted me. Bearing in mind, I was meant to come over that evening. He said he was on his way home from placement. I texted him a couple of times asking if he got home safe, but I didn’t get a response. He responded an hour before my shift ended, around four hours later. By that point in time I had assumed he didn’t want to see me, and I didn’t feel safe travelling on public transport in the dark not knowing if I would be allowed in his house. I got home and noticed he posted a story about a club he was in at around ten. He hadn’t called me or texted me, and hadn’t tried to organise seeing me. I felt really upset and frustrated knowing that this was now the fourth day in a row feeling like I’ve been stood up. He texted at 1:00 PM the next day saying he had been MIA because he was doing placement and preparing for placement. I texted him saying I knew he went to a club last night and that I didn’t appreciate being ignored. I said I wouldn’t mind if he had actually set some time aside to talk or tried to communicate, but that I was feeling constantly let down by him this week when he would bail on me. I said I was frustrated that he was unreachable for the whole day essentially and that I felt frustrated and sad by being ignored. He didn’t respond. The following day I was still being given radio silence at midday. I texted him saying that this was making me feel like an object, shelving me for later or bookmarking me knowing he could come back and start right where he left off. I told him how sad and scary it was not knowing now when he would talk and how it felt like he was punishing me for something. I reiterated that I didn’t want to monopolise his time, but that I just wanted to catch up and see him one evening. I told him that he was treating me like I wasn’t his equal, and that I had to be here for him whenever but that he wasn’t offering the same courtesy. I texted him saying that I never knew when I’d next talk to him because he wasn’t keeping his word, and sometimes he would just flat out go radio silent. When I still didn’t hear from him, I called. He didn’t answer but then texted saying he was busy and would talk later. I told him how that wasn’t a time, and that I felt like he was still keeping me on a short leash by the phone because his narrow window of free time wasn’t clear at all. He texted hours later apologising and agreeing that it wasn’t fair on me. And that I didn’t deserve to be treated like an afterthought. I responded trying to talk about how this isn’t the first time, and how much this made me feel like I didn’t matter. He barely responded, and his responses got tetchier. He tried to switch it back on me, telling me that he couldn’t just ignore his cousin. I felt really upset by this because I never wanted that. And I actually paid for him to spend more time. I just didn’t like being treated like a thing that he could shove away in a box for later. I wanted just regular communication, even if it was just brief. I wanted to know I was wanted, that I could come over. He said he had to go, and I asked if he was coming back. He said he’d take the following afternoon. I said that I thought we needed some space. I said that he should talk to me when he wanted to show me he wanted a relationship. That I felt like he was behaving like he wasn’t in one, and that it was up to him. He simply responded with “Okay”.
I don’t really know what to do. We’ve had these issues before and it doesn’t seem to matter how I bring them up he always reward the behaviour. He’s done things to violate my boundaries and make me feel like I can’t rely on him when I need him, emotionally or physically. I know he loves me and he’s a good and kind person. But he just doesn’t seem to want to change. He seems sorry that it’s hurt me, but doesn’t do anything to change his behaviour. It makes me feel like I have to either choose to remain unhappy silently to avoid incurring his anger and silent treatment, or break up with him. Otherwise we’re really compatible. And I cannot state enough how much I love him. He’s good and kind, and aside from these kinds of issues and some past behaviours engaging with people who were being flirty and trying to sleep with him, he’s been really fantastic. I don’t understand why he does this and I want to be a better partner for him so we can work through this, but when this happens it feels like he’s just not interested in me. It feels like he only wants to engage with me when there’s nothing better to do, and that I’m the lowest priority. But I also don’t know if that’s true or if I’m overreacting. I’ve been cheated on before and was heavily traumatised from a prior abusive relationship that cost me a lot of my mental health. I want to go to relationship counselling because I want to fight for us. We can’t do it until after his placement for uni, and he seems very uncomfortable with going anyway. I don’t know if my perspective is wrong or selfish and I don’t think I’m getting unbiased information from my friends. They’ve told me to break up with him, but they also don’t see what a kind and loving person he is. I want to know what I can do other than a break up, to help repair our relationship. I want to understand why he’s doing this, I want to try and understand him so I can try and mend this rift. So far he still isn’t talking to me. I asked him this morning if he had made up his mind about the relationship and he hasn’t responded. I don’t know what to do. Please give me some advice other than breaking up, because this is a good relationship otherwise with a wonderful person. I know he’s not perfect but neither am I, and I want to be able to do better for him and if I can repair this I would really like to. Am I right for feeling this way? And how can I repair this rift in our relationship?
tl;dr My boyfriend seems to flake on me and apologise but not change his behaviour no matter how much it upsets me, and I don’t know if I’m overreacting or how I can mend our relationship