The couple on the sofa, their faces illuminated by the screens in their hands, are unaware of what stands between door and jamb behind them. They are deaf to the hinges creaking compliance as it slips into the room: a seething mass of blackest black, dense with nightmares from beyond the veil. Not so long ago they might have sensed its insidious presence, hairs prickling as a sinister chill crawled under their skin causing their muscles to atrophy, their nervous systems to flood with fright. But with this new ignorance, their death will be sudden.
The man rubs his bare arms, stands and strides in his shorts to the thermostat on the wall. With a click, the boiler kicks in, and the man resumes his seat, his attention never straying from the phone in his hand.
In the terrible wake of the seething mass, the wall, the picture frames, the threadbare carpet are swallowed whole by the blackness, every molecule sucked from existence like flesh from the bone. And still, it nears unnoticed. A pitch-black tendril unfurls from the centre and stretches toward the couple. Stilted and graceless at first – a skinny shadow puppet on unsure legs – the delicate limb swells thick and brawny and slithers through the air with muscular precision. A black tentacle devouring the space between itself and the sofa, until only a few inches remain.
It rears back as if to strike.
Then pauses. Wavers like a mesmerised snake. Caught by the screen in the man’s hand. The entity sees but cannot wholly comprehend the flickering stream of information. There are…
images of crazy cats, chasing tails and scaling walls;
a rocket launching—organic annihilation hand-in-hand with exploration;
daring curves in the male gaze, pouting women flashing flesh;
distant shots fired in a distant village (near the school), celebrating or gunning down the fleeing people. Both, perhaps;
self-satisfied cats;
people being pranked for others’ hearts, the life-affirming tap;
comfortable people seeking death-defying thrills because comfort equals dull;
towers of smoke, shattered cities strewn with the blood-caked, dusted bodies of the innocent dead;
young girls with their legs flung wide – or perched on worn-out knees – gazing up with painted smiles on out-of-it faces;
animals slaughtered by privileged hunts on horses, great grazing beasts gunned down from a comfortable distance;
cats being cats being cats being cats;
point-blank shots to a sack-covered head;
trailers packed with flying punches, loosened teeth in bloody streamers, and flecks of slo-mo sweat;
revenge in all its shame and glory;
vigorous fucking, carpet bombing;
vengeance and fetish;
genocide and…
cats.
The Vantablack limb droops behind the sofa, dazed by these visions. While others of its kind knelt as supplicants before this new breed of people, this summoner of shadows, this restless spirit, this demon held itself proud. It could not believe its reign to be over. But the evidence proclaims it. Megapixels cascading in endless mockery, feeding the appetite of the apathetic and the numb.
The man stops swiping as the phone vibrates, and taps on the message. Got time to napalm those MFs? He glances across at the woman lost in the pallid light of her own screen. She seems happy enough.
And now the malignant presence understands, or begins to. And – unable to infect the couple with a terror that rots their sanity – it finds that same fear trickling back into its own blackened depths. The tentacle retracts completely, sucked back into the mass.
“Hey Siri/Alexa/Cortana/whatever, turn the TV on.”
The man leans toward the coffee table as the wall screen wakens. He thumbs a reply on his phone – Time to die!!!!!! – then shoves aside a bucket of half-eaten fried chicken and drags the games console nearer. He flicks a switch and slips on his headphones. Their game resumes: a flattened city, distant gun shots fired, a departing chopper ascends, after deploying the avatars and the rest of the squad. He spots movement from the ruins. Kill or be killed. From his comfortable sofa, he rains bullets down upon them in a frenzy of blood-lust.
The arid air of the central heating starts to desiccate the outer layer of the seething mass of blackest black. Flakes of impotent nightmare fall away, crumbling to dust as the presence retreats, sinking back into the hallway. Tiny droplets of exhaled moisture cling briefly to the living room wall, then skate down to collect on the wood skirting or seep into the carpet. The stain the only evidence of the presence ever existing in the room.
Twice it knocks on the basement door, chastened and weak. A tall and faceless man-but-not-a-man answers it wordlessly then turns and curls up in the gap between forgotten boxes, all hope crushed by their last attempt. The now fading mass of greyest grey climbs upwards, passing through ceiling and floor until it reaches the bogeyman cowering beneath a child’s bed. The gruesome mouth parts, pallid eyes water, and it turns its bony back with a heavy sigh. And up in the attic, where moribund ghosts dress in dust sheets, the light of the city shines in through the eaves, bright and insistent. There is no refuge, no return to the dark old days. The human light is strong enough to blot out the stars. In lieu of darkness there is only despair.
Eric Nash (he/him) is a short story writer from South West England. His dark tales have been published in numerous venues including Horror Library 8 by Dark Moon Books, Coffin Bell Journal, Dark Horses magazine, and Demain’s Short Sharp Shocks! series. His work also made Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year recommended list vol 16.
His short fiction collection, Corpse Road Blues: an exploration of contemporary hauntings, is out now from Demain Publishing: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Corpse-Road-Blues-exploration-contemporary-ebook/dp/B0DWLY16SN/
Follow: https://eric-nash-inked-up-and-earthbound.com/
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Published 10/30/25