Monsters live on anti-sugar, hugging into the anti-light, coolly deciding that good souls are the anti-matter. Vampires drinking up toxic shadows, waxing and waning only in degrees of antipathy, watch with unmoving eyes. Zombies in hunger mode learn to consumer every aroma that every flower of Earth doth breathe. Ghouls and ghosts, marauding mind-mobsters, multiply the shadows to darken the gloom.

September 2026.

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Into the crepuscular dim, into a night that yawns with ice and serenades to rotten cores, come the monsters, vampires and zombies. The air no longer spring-aromas carries, neither does Evil tarry, yet strides the night with steps un-hushed. And all around the once singing streets comes warbled arias of Hope's defeat. Even moonbeams withered-wan and coldness itself learned a cooler song.

September 2026.

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From darkness evil pupates,

From fear soul-sickness elevates,

From despair suffering regenerates,

Birthing monsters, vampires & zombies.

September 2026.

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Misery malingered, warping, contorting as if its thrashing could anaesthetise. What was icy sank colder, ice spreading as skeletal mould. This pernicious mood, this mist of severed energy, this scratch of scar-tissue pain, did writhe until a wretched wraith was meanly shadow-born. ‘Twas barely a thread of thing at first, a waspish wisp of dread most vile. The beast slunk unaided, unbreathing it skulked, sulked, sobbed. Darker was desired, least light was best, and so it dialled down until it mistook gloam for dayshine. At full liberty and yet fully locked fast, prisoner and warden it was. As faux righteous anger burned, eyes a-glower, toxic breath festering into fog, it preached to itself the grandiose glories of its stench-saturated bog.

December 18, 2025.

 

Gaunt, famished, wan: the shadow realm twisted into rope-tentacles, tentacles that clung as poison ivy to cold stone walls. Spring’s budding trees fared no better, tender bark slashed deep enough to bleed its heart-wood, deep enough to permit bitter winds to whip in, icy, raw. For this is how darkness births monsters, ne'er from the void, yet from the meanest struggling dim. 'Tis here, sinking in the frigid tide of fading rays, where the gloam ebbs to pitch dark that beasts are built from pain’s very sinews, from foulest fibres of putrified torment, from long silenced screams. Yet once this gremlin is given breath, beware, beware, for it lurks evermore.

December 18, 2025.

 

Monstrous hubris, extolled vanity, ‘twas the beasts favoured pedestal. Glowering darkly as an orc tiara topped, glittering diamonds as stolen stars, feet jammed into slivers of stilettos, every exposed inch ‘twas oozing scaly reptilian folds. Fork tongue lashed. Eyes narrowed. Head tossed. Nose a-wrinkle, anger embossed. Chest rumbling, breath a neon stank, it emitted a jarring whine of a song. Screech. Hiss. Croak. Growl. Ego, it seems, has ugly vibrating jowls. Spittle drenched. Halitosis marauding, deodorant for its tongue needs sorting.

December 18, 2025.

 

To the grim unflinching light that seared the unguarded retinas, came a form of shadow’s breath that brought the stank of rotten fish. Of form, it had none. Of eyes and mouth, it had none. Yet this beast grabbed and consumed all things as if it were both black-hole and tornado in one. Upon the sweat-slickened tile floor, I slipped. Clunk. Gasp. Heart racing. With neither footsteps nor sound, it neared. Only its stench intensified with proximity. Eyes on the door I locked into a sprinters pose - now or never, live or die, this was it. Go.

October 20, 2024.

 

Beasts grill unicorn burgers with relish and a bunny. Yes, a baby bunny-kit. Demons gorge on rainbow slurpees - never ever content with a few, but guzzling ‘til there’s none for little ‘ol me and you. Fiends roast fluffy friends on a spit all topped with snicker bars. ‘Tis their way. ‘Tis their creed, such rancid pernicious greed. ‘Tis the lot of those suffering advanced brain rot.

December 18, 2025.

 

Upon seven feet of dense ice stood the monster. From arachnid fists pulsed cleaver-claws. Its one eye was locked onto my form, though I had become as still as the stalagmites. Its chest heaved as its tail switched this way and that, flicking in the manner of an angry cat. My thoughts ran to the thinner ice, danger though it could be. At twelve feet and a canary tall, it would be drowned by its own footfalls. With a flick each of my feet grew a blade and the chase began.

October 8, 2024.

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