October... He shifted uncomfortably, one eye on the clock, wishing that church could be over with. He really wasn't in the mood for it today, but he couldn't just shirk his duty, could he? Besides, how could you have a sermon without a preacher? Father Raleigh droned through his sermon on autopilot, his mind flitting from subject to subject as his mouth rambled on and on. The clock seemed to be broken, and he had just decided that he would take some of the money from the collection plate and...

Click-flash, and the whole scene was bathed in stark white light, making it all the more gruesome. Skeletons, sitting lined up on a park bench, their sightless eyes staring up at the sky. Arthur stood up, wound the film to the next slot, and got to one knee again. He lined up the shot through the viewfinder, thought better of it, and lay prone to maximize the effect. Yes, this shot was better. This shot told a story. Park bench up close, looming in the foreground of the image, massive. Four s...

The dog was growling softly, a deep rumbling that made my bowels quiver. He was a big dog, probably about waist high on me, and I was no short-stack myself. His legs were thick with coiled, ropy muscles, and he looked like he wanted nothing more than to lunge at me, maybe see what my windpipe looked like when it wasn't nestled safely in my throat. I'd had this all planned out perfectly. And then the Allens had gotten a dog. Or maybe they'd had it all along and I just hadn't known it. I don't ...

I look up at the clock on the wall, see that it's nearly noon. Six hours until Stacy gets off work. I miss her. For some reason, I feel as though I haven't seen her for ages, even though she left barely two hours ago. I get up and pace around the kitchen for a while, my coffee too hot to drink for the moment. I look in the fridge, not really hungry, just trying to kill time for Stacy to get home. It's our anniversary tonight. I've already ordered the flowers. The delivery man should be here ...

Each day we go down into the pit, and each day one less person comes back up. We don't know why it's happening, but we're scared. Our numbers continue to dwindle, day by day. At first, we didn't even realize it was happening. Reisman was the first to disappear, and at first we didn't worry too much. We figured that he'd just snuck off to take a snooze somewhere, take a break from the monotony of the pit. That was before we found him. Or rather, his arm. That's all we ever found of him, and so...

It's three a.m., and I can't sleep. I can't sleep because of the dog. It's not a real dog, mind you; at least not in the way you or I would think of it as being real. I could go over there and try to to touch it, but I think my hand would pass right through it. I say "think" because I've never had the guts to try it. That's because I can see it just fine from where I'm sitting right now, and it's nothing that I would want to touch. It looks like a normal dog, like one of those little froo-fr...