We Are the Monitoring (Short Story)
[check out this short story on my personal page, where it looks better]
The salt flat extends to a bleached horizon under morning light. Polygonal crusts interlock beneath my boots, shallow brine pooling along their seams. At mid-distance, the rift hovers—vertical ellipse refracting the horizon with chromatic fringing, faint glow at its rim, reflection wavering in the wet surface below.
09:03. That’s when it changed.
Static to dynamic. First time since observation began.
The hum registers now—low-frequency oscillation, 60 to 80 Hz, felt in my sternum more than heard. The rift’s edges waver. Heat shimmer makes it difficult to isolate the distortion from atmospheric effects, but the pattern’s distinct. I’ve seen this before in industrial systems. Boilers don’t explode without warning. They hum first. They vibrate. They give you signatures if you’re watching.
My notebook’s open. Timestamp, temperature, oscillation patterns. Corporate monitoring hasn’t sent an alert.
Dylan’s trotting toward me across the flats, alternating his attention between me and the rift. Coffee mug in hand. Gray cap, tactical belt, field pants. His shadow stretches long in the morning light.
“Hey, Len, what the hell is going on with the tear?” he calls out. “You hear that hum?”
I don’t look up from my notes. Red ink now for the anomaly.
“Yeah, I hear it. Started approximately four minutes ago.”
He reaches me, extends the mug. The ceramic’s warm against my palm when I take it. His head’s turned toward the rift even as he hands it over.
“Here, in case you need a kick. I tried to contact HQ on the net earlier for a routine report, but they weren’t picking up. And now this.” He pauses. “What do we do other than jot down notes?”
I close the notebook, my thumb marking the page. HQ not responding. The rift exhibiting pre-failure signatures. The question hangs in the salt-bright air between us, and I don’t have a good answer yet.
“They weren’t picking up because they don’t monitor this thing in real time, Crace. We’re the monitoring. We’re what they check after something goes wrong.”
Dylan brings a hand to his head, fingers pressing against his temple. His eyes narrow.
“I saw something alive. In my head. Some strange shape.” His voice drops. “I don’t like this one bit, Elena. But of course we can’t do shit other than stay here and witness whatever is happening.”
09:07.
The moment he says it, color washes through my peripheral vision. Internal. Shapes that don’t resolve into coherent geometry. Something aware, looking back. There and gone in seconds, leaving the ghost of its presence like retinal afterburn.
“We document it,” I say. “Psychic intrusion, shared perception across multiple observers, timestamp oh-nine-oh-seven. I saw it too, Crace.”
I look up at him. His hand’s against his head, but his eyes are on me now instead of the rift.
“If it’s transmitting to us at this range, settlements are probably getting hit harder.”
The coffee’s going cold in my hand. I should drink it but I can’t look away from the rift. Dylan’s standing beside me, both of us waiting for the next escalation because that’s what this is now—not if, but when.
The hum drops in frequency. Lower. Felt more than heard now, resonating through the salt crust beneath my boots. The rift’s edges blur, shimmer, then—
09:12.
The oscillation stops. Like someone cut power to the system mid-cycle. The rift hangs there, frozen, its chromatic fringing locked in place. No wavering. No distortion beyond the baseline refraction I’ve been logging for weeks.
Dylan shifts beside me.
“Is it—”
The shape materializes.
Not through the rift. In front of it. The space between us and the ellipse contains mass where there was none, like reality forgot to render it until this exact moment. Building-sized. An inadequate term but it’s what my brain latches onto because I need scale, I need reference, I need something to anchor this in observable phenomenon.
Wriggling, translucent-gray skin stretched over impossible articulations. A massive eye, pupil-less amber, phosphorescent, unblinking, positioned where a face should be. Tentacles, dozens, purple-gray and suckered. Smaller eyes scattered across the surface in wrong colors. Membrane wings pulse bioluminescent blue-green. Compound eye stalks track in multiple directions.
Vestigial arms hang corpse-pale. Pink translucent sacs pulse along what might be a throat, pale internal organs visible through the membrane. Multiple lamprey mouths drool corrosive saliva that hisses on the salt.
The coffee cup slips from my hand.
Dylan’s gone pale. Wide-eyed. Voice tight when he speaks.
“Uh… That has to be a hallucination. Tell me you aren’t seeing what I’m seeing.”
He wants an out. Wants me to give him the rationalization, the explanation that lets this be anything other than what it is. But I can’t do that because I’m seeing it too, and if we’re both hallucinating the same impossible entity then the psychic intrusion went from transmission to full sensory override and that’s a third escalation in nine minutes.
“I’m seeing it,” I say, pen moving. “Building-sized mass, materialized at oh-nine-twelve.”
The thing pivots. That massive amber eye fixes on us. Active targeting. The smaller surface eyes track us from different angles. The compound stalks swivel, green facets catching the salt flat light.
Dylan goes rigid beside me, barely breathing the words.
“It’s fucking looking at us, Len.”
09:14.
“Entity exhibiting directed attention. Confirmed observer awareness.”
The entity lurches.
Not a drift. Not passive movement. A deliberate lurch of those massive tentacles against the salt crust. Closer. The distance contracts—hundred twenty meters, maybe less. Bioluminescence stutters across its surface. Corrosive saliva dripping from those lamprey mouths hisses when it hits the ground.
And then, a jolt hits my brain like neural feedback. Wet. Intrusive. A voice that doesn’t come through my ears, doesn’t follow any normal acoustic pathway, there inside my head with the texture of something speaking through biological tissue.
Hey, you two. Are you simple animals, or are you sentient?
Dylan’s face goes white. Eyes locked on the approaching mass, but his voice threads out toward me.
“This fucking thing is talking to me, Len.”
09:16.
Bidirectional telepathic communication. Linguistic capability confirmed. It’s assessing us. Threat level, utility, food value, I don’t fucking know, but it’s categorizing and that means intent.
Dylan’s waiting for me to react. To have answers. To tell him what we do when the impossible thing asks us questions inside our heads. But what I have is a waterproof field notebook and the muscle-memory discipline of someone who’s documented enough system failures to know that the record is the only thing that survives the aftermath. When this goes to hell—when, not if—someone needs to know exactly when and how we lost containability.
The entity stops. The locomotion arrests mid-movement, those massive tentacles planted against the salt crust, holding position. Its outline keeps wriggling, contracting, like the surface can’t decide on a stable configuration. Sacs pulse. Smaller appendages twist. The whole thing screams structural instability, but it holds position fifteen meters closer.
The eye locks onto us. Onto Dylan specifically, then sweeping to me. Back to Dylan. Active assessment.
The voice returns. Same texture—biological, intrusive, like something speaking through tissue and fluid directly into my neural pathways. But different tone now. Impatient.
Well, are you going to say something to me or what? Hello?
Dylan blinks. His face has gone beyond pale into that gray-green shade that means nausea’s imminent. But his mouth opens anyway.
“Uh… Hello, mister. This can’t possibly be happening, can it.”
The pattern’s accelerating. Static to movement to psychic transmission to physical manifestation to linguistic contact, all in fourteen minutes.
My hand moves toward the notebook. This is what I do when reality breaks the last structural support. I document the collapse in real time with methodical precision so that when they write the incident report that erases what actually happened, there will be one waterproof notebook that tells the truth.
Sunny world you have. My home is always in twilight. And so wet all the damn time. It smells hot here, too. What’s with this rip in reality, huh? I wonder why that happened.
The words arrive in gurgly, wet waves—louder and quieter in oscillating patterns. Like listening through biological tissue, through membrane and fluid. The question—what’s with this rip in reality—phrased like we’re discussing facility maintenance instead of spacetime rupture. Genuine curiosity, or probing to see what we know. Either way, it doesn’t know the rift’s origin. Or it’s testing us.
Dylan shifts beside me. Still pale, but his eyes are fully open now, locked on the entity. His mouth opens. Steady. Procedural.
“Sir, what’s your purpose here? I don’t believe you have permission.”
Like we’re dealing with a contractor who forgot their site badge. Like there’s some cosmic HR department that issues clearance for interdimensional manifestation.
My industrial framework says this is the moment you call for evacuation and shutdown procedures. But HQ’s not on comms. The nearest settlement’s too far for radio contact. And the entity’s already here, talking, asking questions about real estate like we’re conducting a fucking site inspection.
The wriggling mass bulges, the entire body contorting as what could loosely be called a shoulder turns, allowing that massive amber eye to sweep from us to the rift, then back. The wet voice slams into my brain again, grating and intrusive, like something speaking through layers of mucous membrane.
My purpose? I saw that door, and I figured I may as well cross it. It’s nicer over here, so I’m going to stick around for a while, I think. Why are you two so small?
Dylan shifts beside me. His mouth opens.
“Why are you so fucking huge is the real question.”
That phosphorescent orb rotates in its socket with muscular precision that shouldn’t be possible given the lack of visible supporting structure. The eye fixes on me specifically. Not Dylan. Me.
Every smaller eye on the thing’s surface follows the targeting shift. Compound stalks swivel. Human-colored irises in wrong locations all orient toward my position with synchronized tracking that makes my scalp prickle.
It’s watching me document.
The voice comes quieter now, like it’s attempting volume control.
What’s that one saying? I can’t make out all the words.
“Entity demonstrated awareness of my documentation at oh-nine-twenty. Indicates surface thought-reading capability.”
The voice shifts to Dylan.
Anyway, you asked why am I so huge? I’m normal sized. I’m even smaller than some of my brethren. Are creatures this small over here? Then your world must seem enormous to you.
My hand’s steady but my brain’s trying to calculate how you evacuate settlements when the thing currently occupying the salt flats is the small version. The answer is: you don’t. You document the contact sequence and hope someone figures out interdimensional diplomacy before the big ones decide our sunny world looks appealing.
What is there to do around here?
Dylan’s elbow connects with my arm.
“Talk to this fucking thing, will you?”
He wants me to handle the verbal exchange—maybe because I’ve been maintaining steady documentation while he processes the shock of having philosophical debates with something that drools corrosive saliva. Either way, he’s delegating negotiation to the person with the pen while he tries to metabolize the fact that we’re standing in preferred real estate for a population of interdimensional entities that view our morphology as novelty-scale miniatures.
The voice hits again, oscillating in volume. Like listening through fluid-filled cavities that keep reshaping mid-transmission.
Is that creature talking to me? Do you not understand me? Maybe we’re not breaching through the language barrier here.
The massive amber eye swivels. Not toward me this time—past me, scanning the salt flats, the horizon line, then stopping. Focused. One of the compound stalks rotates with deliberate precision.
Why are you two doing here anyway? It’s nothing but this strange ground in all directions. Apart from that strange building over there.
Four hundred meters back—the prefab structure, solar panels, communications array.
Dylan’s elbow connects with my ribs again. Sharper this time. But he’s not looking at me—his attention’s locked on the wriggling mass, and when he speaks, his voice comes out dry. Controlled. Like he’s found solid procedural ground to stand on even while everything else liquefies.
“We hear you loud and clear.” He pauses. Professional courtesy even while addressing a telepathic horror. “You said ‘why’ are you two doing here. It’s ‘what.’ What are you two doing here.”
Standing on salt flats while a building-sized horror asks tourism questions and Dylan provides linguistic instruction like we’re conducting employee orientation. But there’s tactical logic underneath the surreal veneer. He’s establishing conversational parameters. Equal exchange. Human sets linguistic standards, entity adjusts. Small assertion of control in a situation where we have exactly none.
Dylan’s voice continues, steady and procedural.
“And the answer is that we were sent to guard this place. To monitor the rip in reality. Which you’ve just broken through.”
“Entity identified the guard station,” I say, writing.
The wet voice slams back into my skull. Louder. Gurgly. Bouncing around in wavy patterns like it’s reverberating through neural tissue instead of air.
That one is stuck on a loop or what? I can’t make out what’s saying half of the time.
That phosphorescent orb fixes on me specifically. The entity lurches—deliberate locomotive movement, tentacles articulating against salt crust. Sixty meters. Close enough now that I can see individual suckers, the way the membrane wings pulse with bioluminescent patterns.
Hey, you.
All the smaller eyes track me. Compound stalks swivel in synchronized precision. The thing’s entire observational apparatus oriented toward my position.
What are you doing with your appendage? Scribbles? I understand you creatures have your habits, but we’ve just met each other for the first time and you keep doing scribbles on that thing. It’s rude, don’t you think?
My pen’s still moving. The thing has concepts of politeness. Social rules. It thinks I’m violating those rules by writing instead of engaging, which means I’ve been categorized as “the rude one who won’t look up from her work” in whatever taxonomy it’s building.
Dylan’s breath hits my ear—sharp whisper, urgent, threaded with panic he’s been suppressing for the last eighteen minutes.
“Stop fucking taking notes. If this thing fucking kills us because you’re pissing him off, I swear I’m going to kick your ass.”
He thinks the complaint is pre-attack warning. Prioritizes de-escalation over documentation preservation. And maybe he’s right—maybe the entity interprets my continued note-taking as disrespect, provocation, refusal to acknowledge its presence with proper attention hierarchy. Maybe it kills us for the perceived slight and my waterproof field notebook becomes evidence of what poor social skills look like in interdimensional first contact.
Or maybe stopping would be worse. Maybe cessation signals submission, fear, categorization as the one who backed down. Maybe I’ve already been tagged as the documenting one and changing behavior now just confirms I’m responding to threat intimidation.
“Entity complained about my note-taking,” I say. “Called it ‘rude.’ Dylan instructed me to stop.”
Dylan speaks louder. Public address. Tactical deflection in real time.
“Don’t mind my partner. It’s her trauma response, I believe. You’re too big and… horrifying.”
“Dylan characterized my note-taking as ‘trauma response.’ Public pathologization.”
The wet voice slams back into my skull. Gurgly, wavy oscillations that make my teeth ache.
Strange interaction. Are social meetings this awkward in your world? I’m struggling here to have a conversation with you two creatures but I’m not seeing much in terms of reciprocity.
Dylan’s shifts beside me. Apologetic. Like he’s explaining a malfunctioning employee to upper management.
“I’m not sure what I could say to you, sir. I’m a guard. Used to be military. Handled incursions into areas with terrorists and the likes. Not used to talking to a building-sized creature from another dimension.”
The voice comes back, genuinely curious. The tone shifts even through the gurgly telepathic transmission.
Terrorists, you say? What’s that? I’m not familiar with that notion. Is that a creature that does horror?
Dylan’s mouth opens before I can stop him. Before I can think through what constitutes appropriate cultural introduction to an interdimensional entity that complained about our poor conversation skills.
“Well, it’s mostly bearded fanatics from a religion we have in this world. I used to go door-to-door to kill them with guns. It’s just a thing we do here.”
My brain’s trying to calculate threat assessment implications while my hand stays frozen over the notebook. The entity now has these data points: humans are small, humans live in hot sunny environments with buildings, humans engage in systematic killing of other humans based on ideological categories, and humans think this is normal enough to mention conversationally when explaining inadequate response to eldritch manifestation.
The horrifying mass pulls back. Not subtle drift. Actual recoil—the whole form shifting backward. The amber eye widens, somehow conveying shocked recognition.
The voice changes. Distressed.
You creatures go home-to-home to kill other creatures? Why do you do such things? Is that a common thing of the creatures of this world, entering other creatures’ abodes and ending their lives? That’s horrifying.
Dylan shifts beside me. Defensive.
“No, sir, it’s necessary. Either them or us, you know? We hit them first before they get to us.”
Pre-emptive strike justification. Dylan told a morally distressed interdimensional entity that humans solve ideological conflicts with anticipatory violence because waiting means dying.
That massive eye sweeps from Dylan to me, then back. The whole form shifts—not recoil this time, but something else. Rotation. The building-sized form pivoting with deliberate muscular articulation of those enormous tentacles, orienting itself back toward the rift.
The weather’s nice, but I’m not okay with this level of murder. I guess I shouldn’t venture through every door I see, no matter how curious they look. See you around. No, let’s not do that again. Don’t come over either. Please enjoy your sunny, flat land and keep scribbling on devices or whatever the fuck you like to do. Godspeed.
The thing moves fast, tentacles driving it backward across the salt flats toward the rift with locomotive speed that shouldn’t be possible for something building-sized.
The thing reaches the rift. That massive form positioned directly in front of the vertical ellipse, chromatic fringing washing across its translucent-gray skin. The eye sweeps the salt flats—tracking us, the guard station, the horizon—and then the whole mass compresses.
Tentacles, wings, stalks, eyes, lamprey mouths—all of it folds through impossible geometries, collapsing into the rift until there’s nothing left.
Gone. No hum. Just corrosive residue hissing on the salt.
Dylan’s standing there, staring at the empty space. He turns toward me.
“Well, that was something. Are you going to drink that coffee?”
I look at Dylan. His crazed eyes asking about coffee like the entity didn’t just flee in moral horror.
My pen keeps moving.
“Dylan asked about coffee immediately after entity retreat. Dissociation response.”
“Len, for fuck’s sake, put that fucking notebook away or I’m going to slap the trauma or shock or whatever out of you.”
“Entity retreated because of your terrorism explanation, Crace. Not my notes.”
Dylan’s hand clamps around my wrist. Hard. The notebook jerks in my grip but I don’t drop it.
“Stop,” Dylan says. “Len, snap out of it. I swear, I’ll confiscate every single one of your pens.”
I pull my wrist free. My hand moves. Automatic. This goes in the record.
“Dylan Crace physically escalated at oh-nine-twenty-six. Grabbed my wrist to stop documentation, threatened to confiscate pens.”
Dylan’s hands rub his face. When he removes them, his gaze drops to the salt.
The rift hangs there, static ellipse refracting the horizon.
Dylan’s voice goes flat.
“I’m over this. I’ll be in my bunk. Don’t bother me for a while.”
He turns and marches toward the guard station. His silhouette contracts against the bleached horizon until heat shimmer swallows him.
I look down at the notebook. At the incomplete entry. At Dylan’s threat to confiscate my pens still written in black ink, his physical assault logged in red, the exact timestamp preserved because that’s what I do—I document the collapse in real time while everyone else walks away.
I write the last entry.
“Dylan abandoned perimeter position. Single observer at active rift site.”
Then I close the notebook.
The space where the entity stood is empty. Salt crust and morning light and the shimmer of heat distortion rising off the flats. We were judged by something vastly older and found catastrophically wanting.
Dylan’s a small shape three hundred meters out.
The rift hangs there, vertical ellipse glowing faintly, crackling like a living wound in reality.
Ten seconds before I stop being the person taking notes and become the person deciding what happens when you’re alone at an active rift site with no protocol, no partner, and the complete historical record of humanity’s failure preserved in waterproof ink that no one will ever believe.
Just ten more seconds. Then I figure out who I am when I’m not documenting the collapse.
THE END
The salt flat extends to a bleached horizon under morning light. Polygonal crusts interlock beneath my boots, shallow brine pooling along their seams. At mid-distance, the rift hovers—vertical ellipse refracting the horizon with chromatic fringing, faint glow at its rim, reflection wavering in the wet surface below.
09:03. That’s when it changed.
Static to dynamic. First time since observation began.
The hum registers now—low-frequency oscillation, 60 to 80 Hz, felt in my sternum more than heard. The rift’s edges waver. Heat shimmer makes it difficult to isolate the distortion from atmospheric effects, but the pattern’s distinct. I’ve seen this before in industrial systems. Boilers don’t explode without warning. They hum first. They vibrate. They give you signatures if you’re watching.
My notebook’s open. Timestamp, temperature, oscillation patterns. Corporate monitoring hasn’t sent an alert.
Dylan’s trotting toward me across the flats, alternating his attention between me and the rift. Coffee mug in hand. Gray cap, tactical belt, field pants. His shadow stretches long in the morning light.
“Hey, Len, what the hell is going on with the tear?” he calls out. “You hear that hum?”
I don’t look up from my notes. Red ink now for the anomaly.
“Yeah, I hear it. Started approximately four minutes ago.”
He reaches me, extends the mug. The ceramic’s warm against my palm when I take it. His head’s turned toward the rift even as he hands it over.
“Here, in case you need a kick. I tried to contact HQ on the net earlier for a routine report, but they weren’t picking up. And now this.” He pauses. “What do we do other than jot down notes?”
I close the notebook, my thumb marking the page. HQ not responding. The rift exhibiting pre-failure signatures. The question hangs in the salt-bright air between us, and I don’t have a good answer yet.
“They weren’t picking up because they don’t monitor this thing in real time, Crace. We’re the monitoring. We’re what they check after something goes wrong.”
Dylan brings a hand to his head, fingers pressing against his temple. His eyes narrow.
“I saw something alive. In my head. Some strange shape.” His voice drops. “I don’t like this one bit, Elena. But of course we can’t do shit other than stay here and witness whatever is happening.”
09:07.
The moment he says it, color washes through my peripheral vision. Internal. Shapes that don’t resolve into coherent geometry. Something aware, looking back. There and gone in seconds, leaving the ghost of its presence like retinal afterburn.
“We document it,” I say. “Psychic intrusion, shared perception across multiple observers, timestamp oh-nine-oh-seven. I saw it too, Crace.”
I look up at him. His hand’s against his head, but his eyes are on me now instead of the rift.
“If it’s transmitting to us at this range, settlements are probably getting hit harder.”
The coffee’s going cold in my hand. I should drink it but I can’t look away from the rift. Dylan’s standing beside me, both of us waiting for the next escalation because that’s what this is now—not if, but when.
The hum drops in frequency. Lower. Felt more than heard now, resonating through the salt crust beneath my boots. The rift’s edges blur, shimmer, then—
09:12.
The oscillation stops. Like someone cut power to the system mid-cycle. The rift hangs there, frozen, its chromatic fringing locked in place. No wavering. No distortion beyond the baseline refraction I’ve been logging for weeks.
Dylan shifts beside me.
“Is it—”
The shape materializes.
Not through the rift. In front of it. The space between us and the ellipse contains mass where there was none, like reality forgot to render it until this exact moment. Building-sized. An inadequate term but it’s what my brain latches onto because I need scale, I need reference, I need something to anchor this in observable phenomenon.
Wriggling, translucent-gray skin stretched over impossible articulations. A massive eye, pupil-less amber, phosphorescent, unblinking, positioned where a face should be. Tentacles, dozens, purple-gray and suckered. Smaller eyes scattered across the surface in wrong colors. Membrane wings pulse bioluminescent blue-green. Compound eye stalks track in multiple directions.
Vestigial arms hang corpse-pale. Pink translucent sacs pulse along what might be a throat, pale internal organs visible through the membrane. Multiple lamprey mouths drool corrosive saliva that hisses on the salt.
The coffee cup slips from my hand.
Dylan’s gone pale. Wide-eyed. Voice tight when he speaks.
“Uh… That has to be a hallucination. Tell me you aren’t seeing what I’m seeing.”
He wants an out. Wants me to give him the rationalization, the explanation that lets this be anything other than what it is. But I can’t do that because I’m seeing it too, and if we’re both hallucinating the same impossible entity then the psychic intrusion went from transmission to full sensory override and that’s a third escalation in nine minutes.
“I’m seeing it,” I say, pen moving. “Building-sized mass, materialized at oh-nine-twelve.”
The thing pivots. That massive amber eye fixes on us. Active targeting. The smaller surface eyes track us from different angles. The compound stalks swivel, green facets catching the salt flat light.
Dylan goes rigid beside me, barely breathing the words.
“It’s fucking looking at us, Len.”
09:14.
“Entity exhibiting directed attention. Confirmed observer awareness.”
The entity lurches.
Not a drift. Not passive movement. A deliberate lurch of those massive tentacles against the salt crust. Closer. The distance contracts—hundred twenty meters, maybe less. Bioluminescence stutters across its surface. Corrosive saliva dripping from those lamprey mouths hisses when it hits the ground.
And then, a jolt hits my brain like neural feedback. Wet. Intrusive. A voice that doesn’t come through my ears, doesn’t follow any normal acoustic pathway, there inside my head with the texture of something speaking through biological tissue.
Hey, you two. Are you simple animals, or are you sentient?
Dylan’s face goes white. Eyes locked on the approaching mass, but his voice threads out toward me.
“This fucking thing is talking to me, Len.”
09:16.
Bidirectional telepathic communication. Linguistic capability confirmed. It’s assessing us. Threat level, utility, food value, I don’t fucking know, but it’s categorizing and that means intent.
Dylan’s waiting for me to react. To have answers. To tell him what we do when the impossible thing asks us questions inside our heads. But what I have is a waterproof field notebook and the muscle-memory discipline of someone who’s documented enough system failures to know that the record is the only thing that survives the aftermath. When this goes to hell—when, not if—someone needs to know exactly when and how we lost containability.
The entity stops. The locomotion arrests mid-movement, those massive tentacles planted against the salt crust, holding position. Its outline keeps wriggling, contracting, like the surface can’t decide on a stable configuration. Sacs pulse. Smaller appendages twist. The whole thing screams structural instability, but it holds position fifteen meters closer.
The eye locks onto us. Onto Dylan specifically, then sweeping to me. Back to Dylan. Active assessment.
The voice returns. Same texture—biological, intrusive, like something speaking through tissue and fluid directly into my neural pathways. But different tone now. Impatient.
Well, are you going to say something to me or what? Hello?
Dylan blinks. His face has gone beyond pale into that gray-green shade that means nausea’s imminent. But his mouth opens anyway.
“Uh… Hello, mister. This can’t possibly be happening, can it.”
The pattern’s accelerating. Static to movement to psychic transmission to physical manifestation to linguistic contact, all in fourteen minutes.
My hand moves toward the notebook. This is what I do when reality breaks the last structural support. I document the collapse in real time with methodical precision so that when they write the incident report that erases what actually happened, there will be one waterproof notebook that tells the truth.
Sunny world you have. My home is always in twilight. And so wet all the damn time. It smells hot here, too. What’s with this rip in reality, huh? I wonder why that happened.
The words arrive in gurgly, wet waves—louder and quieter in oscillating patterns. Like listening through biological tissue, through membrane and fluid. The question—what’s with this rip in reality—phrased like we’re discussing facility maintenance instead of spacetime rupture. Genuine curiosity, or probing to see what we know. Either way, it doesn’t know the rift’s origin. Or it’s testing us.
Dylan shifts beside me. Still pale, but his eyes are fully open now, locked on the entity. His mouth opens. Steady. Procedural.
“Sir, what’s your purpose here? I don’t believe you have permission.”
Like we’re dealing with a contractor who forgot their site badge. Like there’s some cosmic HR department that issues clearance for interdimensional manifestation.
My industrial framework says this is the moment you call for evacuation and shutdown procedures. But HQ’s not on comms. The nearest settlement’s too far for radio contact. And the entity’s already here, talking, asking questions about real estate like we’re conducting a fucking site inspection.
The wriggling mass bulges, the entire body contorting as what could loosely be called a shoulder turns, allowing that massive amber eye to sweep from us to the rift, then back. The wet voice slams into my brain again, grating and intrusive, like something speaking through layers of mucous membrane.
My purpose? I saw that door, and I figured I may as well cross it. It’s nicer over here, so I’m going to stick around for a while, I think. Why are you two so small?
Dylan shifts beside me. His mouth opens.
“Why are you so fucking huge is the real question.”
That phosphorescent orb rotates in its socket with muscular precision that shouldn’t be possible given the lack of visible supporting structure. The eye fixes on me specifically. Not Dylan. Me.
Every smaller eye on the thing’s surface follows the targeting shift. Compound stalks swivel. Human-colored irises in wrong locations all orient toward my position with synchronized tracking that makes my scalp prickle.
It’s watching me document.
The voice comes quieter now, like it’s attempting volume control.
What’s that one saying? I can’t make out all the words.
“Entity demonstrated awareness of my documentation at oh-nine-twenty. Indicates surface thought-reading capability.”
The voice shifts to Dylan.
Anyway, you asked why am I so huge? I’m normal sized. I’m even smaller than some of my brethren. Are creatures this small over here? Then your world must seem enormous to you.
My hand’s steady but my brain’s trying to calculate how you evacuate settlements when the thing currently occupying the salt flats is the small version. The answer is: you don’t. You document the contact sequence and hope someone figures out interdimensional diplomacy before the big ones decide our sunny world looks appealing.
What is there to do around here?
Dylan’s elbow connects with my arm.
“Talk to this fucking thing, will you?”
He wants me to handle the verbal exchange—maybe because I’ve been maintaining steady documentation while he processes the shock of having philosophical debates with something that drools corrosive saliva. Either way, he’s delegating negotiation to the person with the pen while he tries to metabolize the fact that we’re standing in preferred real estate for a population of interdimensional entities that view our morphology as novelty-scale miniatures.
The voice hits again, oscillating in volume. Like listening through fluid-filled cavities that keep reshaping mid-transmission.
Is that creature talking to me? Do you not understand me? Maybe we’re not breaching through the language barrier here.
The massive amber eye swivels. Not toward me this time—past me, scanning the salt flats, the horizon line, then stopping. Focused. One of the compound stalks rotates with deliberate precision.
Why are you two doing here anyway? It’s nothing but this strange ground in all directions. Apart from that strange building over there.
Four hundred meters back—the prefab structure, solar panels, communications array.
Dylan’s elbow connects with my ribs again. Sharper this time. But he’s not looking at me—his attention’s locked on the wriggling mass, and when he speaks, his voice comes out dry. Controlled. Like he’s found solid procedural ground to stand on even while everything else liquefies.
“We hear you loud and clear.” He pauses. Professional courtesy even while addressing a telepathic horror. “You said ‘why’ are you two doing here. It’s ‘what.’ What are you two doing here.”
Standing on salt flats while a building-sized horror asks tourism questions and Dylan provides linguistic instruction like we’re conducting employee orientation. But there’s tactical logic underneath the surreal veneer. He’s establishing conversational parameters. Equal exchange. Human sets linguistic standards, entity adjusts. Small assertion of control in a situation where we have exactly none.
Dylan’s voice continues, steady and procedural.
“And the answer is that we were sent to guard this place. To monitor the rip in reality. Which you’ve just broken through.”
“Entity identified the guard station,” I say, writing.
The wet voice slams back into my skull. Louder. Gurgly. Bouncing around in wavy patterns like it’s reverberating through neural tissue instead of air.
That one is stuck on a loop or what? I can’t make out what’s saying half of the time.
That phosphorescent orb fixes on me specifically. The entity lurches—deliberate locomotive movement, tentacles articulating against salt crust. Sixty meters. Close enough now that I can see individual suckers, the way the membrane wings pulse with bioluminescent patterns.
Hey, you.
All the smaller eyes track me. Compound stalks swivel in synchronized precision. The thing’s entire observational apparatus oriented toward my position.
What are you doing with your appendage? Scribbles? I understand you creatures have your habits, but we’ve just met each other for the first time and you keep doing scribbles on that thing. It’s rude, don’t you think?
My pen’s still moving. The thing has concepts of politeness. Social rules. It thinks I’m violating those rules by writing instead of engaging, which means I’ve been categorized as “the rude one who won’t look up from her work” in whatever taxonomy it’s building.
Dylan’s breath hits my ear—sharp whisper, urgent, threaded with panic he’s been suppressing for the last eighteen minutes.
“Stop fucking taking notes. If this thing fucking kills us because you’re pissing him off, I swear I’m going to kick your ass.”
He thinks the complaint is pre-attack warning. Prioritizes de-escalation over documentation preservation. And maybe he’s right—maybe the entity interprets my continued note-taking as disrespect, provocation, refusal to acknowledge its presence with proper attention hierarchy. Maybe it kills us for the perceived slight and my waterproof field notebook becomes evidence of what poor social skills look like in interdimensional first contact.
Or maybe stopping would be worse. Maybe cessation signals submission, fear, categorization as the one who backed down. Maybe I’ve already been tagged as the documenting one and changing behavior now just confirms I’m responding to threat intimidation.
“Entity complained about my note-taking,” I say. “Called it ‘rude.’ Dylan instructed me to stop.”
Dylan speaks louder. Public address. Tactical deflection in real time.
“Don’t mind my partner. It’s her trauma response, I believe. You’re too big and… horrifying.”
“Dylan characterized my note-taking as ‘trauma response.’ Public pathologization.”
The wet voice slams back into my skull. Gurgly, wavy oscillations that make my teeth ache.
Strange interaction. Are social meetings this awkward in your world? I’m struggling here to have a conversation with you two creatures but I’m not seeing much in terms of reciprocity.
Dylan’s shifts beside me. Apologetic. Like he’s explaining a malfunctioning employee to upper management.
“I’m not sure what I could say to you, sir. I’m a guard. Used to be military. Handled incursions into areas with terrorists and the likes. Not used to talking to a building-sized creature from another dimension.”
The voice comes back, genuinely curious. The tone shifts even through the gurgly telepathic transmission.
Terrorists, you say? What’s that? I’m not familiar with that notion. Is that a creature that does horror?
Dylan’s mouth opens before I can stop him. Before I can think through what constitutes appropriate cultural introduction to an interdimensional entity that complained about our poor conversation skills.
“Well, it’s mostly bearded fanatics from a religion we have in this world. I used to go door-to-door to kill them with guns. It’s just a thing we do here.”
My brain’s trying to calculate threat assessment implications while my hand stays frozen over the notebook. The entity now has these data points: humans are small, humans live in hot sunny environments with buildings, humans engage in systematic killing of other humans based on ideological categories, and humans think this is normal enough to mention conversationally when explaining inadequate response to eldritch manifestation.
The horrifying mass pulls back. Not subtle drift. Actual recoil—the whole form shifting backward. The amber eye widens, somehow conveying shocked recognition.
The voice changes. Distressed.
You creatures go home-to-home to kill other creatures? Why do you do such things? Is that a common thing of the creatures of this world, entering other creatures’ abodes and ending their lives? That’s horrifying.
Dylan shifts beside me. Defensive.
“No, sir, it’s necessary. Either them or us, you know? We hit them first before they get to us.”
Pre-emptive strike justification. Dylan told a morally distressed interdimensional entity that humans solve ideological conflicts with anticipatory violence because waiting means dying.
That massive eye sweeps from Dylan to me, then back. The whole form shifts—not recoil this time, but something else. Rotation. The building-sized form pivoting with deliberate muscular articulation of those enormous tentacles, orienting itself back toward the rift.
The weather’s nice, but I’m not okay with this level of murder. I guess I shouldn’t venture through every door I see, no matter how curious they look. See you around. No, let’s not do that again. Don’t come over either. Please enjoy your sunny, flat land and keep scribbling on devices or whatever the fuck you like to do. Godspeed.
The thing moves fast, tentacles driving it backward across the salt flats toward the rift with locomotive speed that shouldn’t be possible for something building-sized.
The thing reaches the rift. That massive form positioned directly in front of the vertical ellipse, chromatic fringing washing across its translucent-gray skin. The eye sweeps the salt flats—tracking us, the guard station, the horizon—and then the whole mass compresses.
Tentacles, wings, stalks, eyes, lamprey mouths—all of it folds through impossible geometries, collapsing into the rift until there’s nothing left.
Gone. No hum. Just corrosive residue hissing on the salt.
Dylan’s standing there, staring at the empty space. He turns toward me.
“Well, that was something. Are you going to drink that coffee?”
I look at Dylan. His crazed eyes asking about coffee like the entity didn’t just flee in moral horror.
My pen keeps moving.
“Dylan asked about coffee immediately after entity retreat. Dissociation response.”
“Len, for fuck’s sake, put that fucking notebook away or I’m going to slap the trauma or shock or whatever out of you.”
“Entity retreated because of your terrorism explanation, Crace. Not my notes.”
Dylan’s hand clamps around my wrist. Hard. The notebook jerks in my grip but I don’t drop it.
“Stop,” Dylan says. “Len, snap out of it. I swear, I’ll confiscate every single one of your pens.”
I pull my wrist free. My hand moves. Automatic. This goes in the record.
“Dylan Crace physically escalated at oh-nine-twenty-six. Grabbed my wrist to stop documentation, threatened to confiscate pens.”
Dylan’s hands rub his face. When he removes them, his gaze drops to the salt.
The rift hangs there, static ellipse refracting the horizon.
Dylan’s voice goes flat.
“I’m over this. I’ll be in my bunk. Don’t bother me for a while.”
He turns and marches toward the guard station. His silhouette contracts against the bleached horizon until heat shimmer swallows him.
I look down at the notebook. At the incomplete entry. At Dylan’s threat to confiscate my pens still written in black ink, his physical assault logged in red, the exact timestamp preserved because that’s what I do—I document the collapse in real time while everyone else walks away.
I write the last entry.
“Dylan abandoned perimeter position. Single observer at active rift site.”
Then I close the notebook.
The space where the entity stood is empty. Salt crust and morning light and the shimmer of heat distortion rising off the flats. We were judged by something vastly older and found catastrophically wanting.
Dylan’s a small shape three hundred meters out.
The rift hangs there, vertical ellipse glowing faintly, crackling like a living wound in reality.
Ten seconds before I stop being the person taking notes and become the person deciding what happens when you’re alone at an active rift site with no protocol, no partner, and the complete historical record of humanity’s failure preserved in waterproof ink that no one will ever believe.
Just ten more seconds. Then I figure out who I am when I’m not documenting the collapse.
THE END
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