I’m looking for more industrial bands but everywhere I look people always recommend Rob Zombie or Rammstein but I want something heavier and more raw, I like Godflesh a little bit but it still doesn’t scratch that itch.
Wish me luck this book is gonna be one of the longest I’ve ever read
The 4 at the top are my top 4 btw
I’m trying to get more into Hardcore specifically like 2000s up to today but I find that most of it is so overproduced it ruins the heaviness. I really like the songwriting in a lot of the songs but they only sound good live IMO because the mixing isn’t there.
I’m really into Chat Pile rn and I know they aren’t hardcore but they have some similarities.
One day the whole world turned.
It changed so subtly and yet so violently.
It happened slowly and grew exponentially over time.
People seemed different, maybe it was just me but everyone seemed a little bit less patient.
Drivers on the road seemed to be displeased with the way I was driving.
I couldn’t tell if I was the one who was driving bad but I could see people look at me through their tinted windows.
Then I noticed more concerning things.
I went to the pharmacy to pick up my prescription, something I had to do every month or so and I never had much of a problem with in the past.
I walked up to the kiosk and filled out my information and I heard an employee tell me they’ll help me out in just a second.
I was on my phone and I looked up away from my phone and I saw the strangest thing.
For a split second I swear I saw every single employee behind the desk all staring me down like a security camera, before all quickly turning back and returning to their normal routines as if nothing happened.
I knew I was going crazy but it seemed so real for that split second, but I reminded myself, as I do often, that my first reaction to something might not always be the proper reaction.
I received my medication and left the pharmacy and tried to forget about it, although I never did.
The next strange event came through my television.
I was sitting back late one night, staying up much later than I should have been, a habit I could never break, watching cartoons and eating whatever I could find in the cupboards.
I was looking down at my phone, caught in a maze of nostalgia while looking through my high school friend’s social media.
The TV was on commercial and so I tuned it out completely, but this time something happened that I couldn’t ignore.
The advertisement had suddenly gone quiet, but again I was distracted by my phone so I hadn’t really noticed.
In the back of my mind I heard the TV say my name.
I hadn’t registered it in my mind until a moment after it happened, but I heard it say very clearly after a long pause, “Dylan,” in a stern, cold, almost inhuman voice.
As I was trying to understand what was happening and come up with an explanation, I was looking directly into the TV where a man in an unassuming black suit in front of a red background, and he was looking directly at me with the soulless pixels of his eyes and he said, “Are you dreaming Dylan?”
I cant even tell you with certainty if that’s what he actually said but it’s what I remember.
I think I only considered the question much later, because at the time I was too scared to do anything, so I turned the TV off.
I heard the familiar sound of my cat jumping down from her tree in the other room, and as she turned the corner she rubbed her body against the wall and flicked her tail in the air.
I was happy to see her, to see something that can never hate me, that can never be out to get me, and I loved her more than anything for that.
My life for the following weeks was a haze, everything that happened made me think back to the strange events that have been occurring.
People only seemed to get stranger and more foreign, none of their behaviors made sense to me, not a whole lot made sense.
It felt as if the whole world was putting on a show for me specifically and that every time I turned away, the world behind me ceased to exist in any comprehensible way.
There was a day when I was driving to my college, and the highway I took was surrounded by open fields of sagebrush and tumbleweeds, and I swear I saw someone standing way out in the distance not moving at all.
I needed to tell all this to my therapist.
I scheduled an appointment about a week out, and in between those times I had been staying home much more often.
I went to the grocery store only at the latest hours where there was not much people, I bought more food and supplies than I usually do, and I got home quickly, the entire time I felt the eyes of everyone staring me down whenever I looked away, dropping the act of being friendly and reserved to show their true face of ugly hatred for me.
I stopped going to my classes, not even concerned with the consequences of doing so.
I was so pent up with caution that the future was only an obscure blot in my head.
In fact I had stopped thinking about the future because I had no way of knowing if all of this was going to change back, it only pained me to think about how much worse it might get.
When I finally saw my therapist I told him everything.
I think I sounded delusional and I don’t know how serious he took the issue, but he listened and offered advice, but I don’t think he believed me.
When I was leaving I turned around for a moment thinking I had left my keys in his office and I saw him staring at me blankly through the blinds on his door window.
That same lifeless stare filled with malice that had been haunting me for all this time.
I quickly walked away, maybe I ran I can’t remember.
That night I locked myself in my house and shut the lights off and watched TV to distract myself.
I mulled over my impending doom in my mind like a piece of gum that’s lost its flavor.
What was happening? Was I dreaming? Was I real?
I didn’t know, I knew it wasn’t a dream but I didn’t know what it was.
My dreams over the past few years have all blended together into a matrix of my deepest thoughts, it was so intricate that I could draw a map between where each dream took place, and point out the places that they had in common.
My dreams became a different reality, one similar to mine but abstracted into what my sleeping mind could understand.
That’s how I knew it wasn’t a dream, my dreams were concise and stable, in a bizarre type of way.
My reality was too intense and inconsistent to be a dream, all of it was just too real, too foreign.
I laid on my couch watching the TV, hoping that I could rely on it to distract me.
I got up to get a cup of milk when I looked out my kitchen window and saw through the neighbors window, glowing yellow in the backdrop of the night.
Inside I could see a group of people all sitting blankly at their dinner table, looking forward into each other’s eyes, not moving or talking just sitting there like mannequins.
They all turned their heads in an instant and stared me down like everyone else had.
I quickly shut the blinds, then the curtains.
My panicked mind told me to do that with all the windows and I quickly darted around the house doing so.
I was in the middle of closing my living room window when I heard rapid pounding on the door.
Rapid, violent, angry crashes on my door, shaking the frame and rattling the doorknob.
THUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDUDTHUD
it was so sudden and so rapid that I nearly fell backwards.
I clambered back to the kitchen and hid behind the island, the pounding still continuing at an inhuman pace.
I was hiding in the kitchen when I heard the same noise now coming from both the front door and back door.
THUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDUDTHUD
I didn’t know what to do, should I call 911? Who’s to say they are safe?
I assessed my situation and came to the conclusion that the only logical thing I could do was call 911.
As the line was ringing I peeked out the blinds to look into the neighbors window again, and saw they were all gone.
Then a dark figure blocked my view and the window in front of me began to pound rapidly.
Three sources of the pounding now, front door, back door, kitchen window.
I ran to my room, noticing more sources of the pounding.
THUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDUDTHUD
THUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDUDTHUD THUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDUDTHUD THUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDUDTHUD
It was all over my house, and it this point I was hiding in my bathroom with the lights off when the call finally went through.
I heard no voice through my phone, only silence, then pounding.
THUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDUDTHUD
Through the crackling speaker of my phone.
It was everywhere, surrounding me.
The weight of everyone’s malice all bearing down on the walls of my house, trying to get to me like a pack of wild dogs.
I hung up my phone immediately and put my hands over my ears as I cowered in the bathtub, crying like a baby, the pounding beginning to sound like mocking laughs.
Then it stopped.
All of the pounding stopped.
I still didn’t move but I kept quiet.
I couldn’t trust the world to give me relief so I kept my guard up and stayed in the bathtub.
I stayed up all night waiting for the storm to return, but it never did, and I fell asleep in the tub.
I woke up the next morning exhausted but all the panic flooded back to me immediately.
I had to leave.
I don’t know where just somewhere else.
I was no longer safe.
I was no longer welcome in the world.
I threw all my stuff together, only the stuff I would need, and a Bible.
I had never been religious and still remain that way, but the Bible brought me some comfort so I took it.
I had no idea where I was going, just far away.
I knew that life was never going to be the same, I was leaving everything behind, including my beloved cat.
I dumped her food onto the counter in one big pile, and I picked her up and rubbed my tears into her warm fur and held onto that moment for an eternity in my heart.
“I love you,” I told her.
She looked back at me with a deep and gentle understanding in her sweet green eyes.
Then I set her down, and I walked out the door, propping it open with a large rock so she could leave whenever she wanted to.
Where I lived was a large city placed in the center of a huge open plateau, covered in sagebrush that constantly whipped around in the violent winds.
You wouldn’t have to walk far to get to this desolation.
So I walked and I met the edge of the city and stared deep into the wasteland ahead of me.
I did a mental reset and thought about everything leading up to this moment.
The aggression, the hatred, the aliens that shared the same species as me, all of it was so much and so overwhelming.
I decided I could only go forward.
I walked into the isolation that awaited me.
I think I walked for about a day but I walked until I could no longer see the lights of the city or any of the weight they carried with them.
All of it was behind me now, the good and the bad.
Strangely I stumbled across a random brick shack in the middle of the desert, covered in graffiti and dirt and aged like a flag by the sea.
It was small, and I had no idea what it was for but it was empty inside except for some random trash lying around.
I accepted this as a gift from the land and I stayed there for the night, using my backpack as a pillow.
That night I dreamt that it all went back to normal, that the world was never a place to be feared or left behind but instead a place to inhabit and thrive in.
All the people in the dream were real, they had real emotions and real empathy.
But all dreams end and this one did when the morning sun shone in my eyes through a crack in the ceiling.
I got up and stretched, took a drink of water and pulled out a can of beans from my bag.
I stepped outside and felt the warmth of the sun shining on my face.
Then I looked up and saw it.
All of them.
Every single one.
A wall of people.
A wall of people about 200 yards away from me and the shack.
All staring me down like the barrel of a gun.
I backed up slowly, grasping the open can of beans in my hand with a vice grip.
They were all so menacing.
They all wanted to hurt me.
They wanted to end me.
I felt it deep in my gut.
I slowly turned around and saw the strangest thing of all.
The land directly behind the shack had vanished, leaving a steep cliff where it was.
The sky was so bright, and so shiny.
I looked all around, left and right and saw the face of the cliff extend into eternity on both sides.
I looked down and saw there was no bottom of it, just more of the strange patterns that covered the sky.
They weren’t even colors I had seen before, or shapes, physical patterns that I didn’t think the human mind could possibly comprehend.
I saw the gears of existence in front of me, covering what my brain understood as the sky.
None of it seemed real, but I felt my existence shifting and churning to make me understand that it was all real.
I couldn’t care less about the herd of people who were out to get me, I only stared into the barrel of my maker.
I saw the mechanism before my human eyes, and I did not know whether I should rejoice and feel relief or to get down on my knees and weep into oblivion.
So I jumped off the face of the cliff.
TRIGGER WARNINGS‼️ -explicit child abuse, implied sexual abuse of a child, domestic abuse.
The Boy always wore a burlap sack over his head, with one hole punched in the left side for him to see out of. He wore it because he looked different than his brothers, because he didn’t like when Father would stare at him with deep judgement piercing through the silence, because he knew that anyone he met would be scared of him, scared like Momma was when he was born, or at least that’s what Father said. The burlap sack was his buffer between his panicked mind and the loud outside world, although it was his own idea to wear it in the first place, Father never liked seeing him with it off.
Ever since the Boys oldest brother moved to the big city to go to school, the Boy had no more friends at home to play with. Sam was the Boys best friend and was the only person who ever called him by his real name, and they often would be by each other’s side doing chores around the farm, petting the cows and goats. Now that he was gone, he had to follow around his other older brother, Mike, who was always mean to him and never wanted to pet the animals, saying they were filthy and stupid. But today Mike was at school and Father was in town at the Casino, spending the money the government gave them for the Boys disability, and Momma was never mean to the Boy, only when he makes the house messy. The Boy had the whole farm to himself and he planned to make the most of it by running around in the warm grey atmosphere that early Spring brought to central Oregon, by picking the yellow dandelions and daffodils, by pretending he was King Arthur from the books Momma would read him, and that the hard trunk of a spruce tree was a mighty dragon with huge green wings. He played until he lost track of time and lost track of the bruises and cuts on his arms and legs, when eventually he got tired and wanted to relax for a little bit, so he walked over to the fence gate that kept the cows in and walked in making sure to remember how to close it tight, like Sam taught him. The Boy sat down next to the large cows that varied in color, they all glanced at him and continued to graze mindlessly, the Boy looked at all of them and smiled, and only then did he decide he didn’t want to wear the burlap sack anymore, and so he took it off and threw it on the dirt beside him, squinting his eyes at the brightness of the sky but once he adjusted he began to stare at all the cows. He rarely ever took off the sack, he knew that if he did, Fathers would be mad at him, maybe even hurt him. Mike never hurt him when he didn’t wear it but he always made fun of how he looked, always making fun of his small eyes. Momma never seemed to care whether he wore it or not and neither did the cows, and since he was alone with the cows and momma inside the house, he could breathe freely, see the word without the shroud of darkness from his mask.
The boy felt the cool grass on his legs and arms as he laid down and faced the cloudy sky, he thought about what he wanted to be when he grew up, he thought about his brother Sam who he missed with all his heart, he thought about going to school like Mike did and hoped that maybe eventually he could go to adult school like Sam, maybe get a girlfriend like Sam did. His thoughts of life in the city (Salem to be specific as that was the only proper city The Boy had ever visited) were interrupted when he felt a warm puff of air blow on his forehead. He opened his eyes and right above him was one of the younger cows, not quite a calf but still young, sniffing him playfully. She was covered in warm brown fur and her eyes looked into The Boy’s and they traded a mutual secret that only they two could understand, the secret of innocence and purity and the nature of their encounter. The Boy stood up and watched the cow playfully jump around, he reached his hand out to pet her head but she lightly rammed her head into his hip, knocking him onto his rear. He giggled and held his hands up and felt the warm bundle of fur push up against him as the cow began licking his face. The Boy couldn’t see it but a few of the other cows were watching them carefully, watching the ritual of childhood unfold before them through sound of laughter in the breeze.
The Boy continued to play with his Bovine friend and the other grown cows returned to mindlessly grazing, but none of them were aware of the approaching storm, the storm that took the shape of a drunken man driving his steel carriage angrily down the highway with a boy in the back seat awaiting the wrath of punishment, the man was Father and the boy was brother Mike.
The Boy was too far from the house and too distracted by the animals to hear or see Father pull up to the house in his rusty car. Father aggressively stepped out onto the gravel and eyed down Mike like a hawk.
“You gonna get the fuck outta my car or what?” He exclaimed with mockery in his tone.
Mike awkwardly exited the car with his backpack slung over his left shoulder. He was scared, he felt like a little kid, because little kids get in trouble, because little kids get yelled at, and Mike was 14, so he wasn’t a little kid anymore, and his father made damn sure he knew that.
“You better get the hell inside boy, you got a lotta hell to pay, ‘nd your momma id’nt gonna be happy with you,” he pointed at the front door and Mike shuffled towards the house. Father stayed outside for a moment and pissed on the gravel, not caring to turn away from the open road.
When Mike entered the house, his mother was confused as to why he was home from school so early and when she asked him why, he looked up at her with tears forming in his eyes. Before he could form any words, father walked in.
“D’ya tell her whatcha did? Huh?” He asked, slamming the door behind him.
“Did ya tell her that you’re a pussy who can’t win a fight with a god damn girl?”
Mother only stood in the kitchen and stared at the two of them like a deer in headlights. Mike tried to control his tears, now that Father was right in front of him, he would see it, he would see him cry, he would see him be vulnerable. Even though he didn’t cry, Father still saw the tremble in his lip and the redness in his eyes,
“Oh what you gonna cry now? Did she hit you that hard? Huh? How hard did she hit you? Was it this hard?” Father lightly pushed mike back, “Was it this hard?” He mocked again this time pushing harder. “Huh boy? How hard was it? Did she hit you like a girl or did she hit you like this?” He said before punching Mike in the shoulder. Mike said nothing but held his tears back,
“James…” mother muttered from the kitchen, “James stop it,” but Father didn’t hear her, or just didn’t listen to her.
“Ya can’t talk now huh, just like your retard brother? What good is having two kids if they’re both fuckin’ dumbasses,” Father said louder.
“I’m not a retard,” Mike trembled.
“Oh so you can talk, you were just being a bitch is that it?” He stared Mike down like a bull and held a long dominating pause. “So then tell me boy! How hard did the bitch hit you!?” He yelled, liquor and spit coming out of his hideous maw.
Mike pushed him. He pushed father back with a weak thrust of his arms but it was enough to set him off. Father attacked Mike, and there was yelling and crying and thrashing of limbs and in their scuffle, the weight of both of them broke a couch leg.
The Boy was outside, still playing with the calf, still bare faced to the world, not even aware of where his burlap mask even was relative to him. He only noticed the chaos unfolding inside the house when the back door opened, where The Boy heard his Fathers drunken roar echo through the valley, followed by the slamming of the door.
He wielded a bottle of something in one hand and his hat in the other, he didn’t see The Boy at first and was distracted by the booze he was downing. The Boy panicked, knowing that his father would be furious if he saw him out there with the cows, and he would be furious at seeing his ugly face. He scrambled around to find his mask only to see another calf, this one with black fur and much younger, sniffing at the mask and then chewing on it. He dashed over to it, scrambling to grab it and when he did, the cow wouldn’t yield. The cow had pulled on the mask the way dogs do when they play, but The Boy wasn’t playing, he was terrified.
“Give it back,” he tried to say quietly as he could. The cow continued pulling and The Boy heard a small tear as he pulled back.
“Please just give it back!” He cried out, not noticing his Father storming towards him through the fields of grass and dandelions.
“The hell’re you doin?” He yelled when he reached the fence.
The Boy felt his stomach sink, he felt his shoulders give way to the weight of his fear, he turned around and faced his Fathers rage.
“You’re ugly as shit,” Father said quietly but still loud enough for The Boy to hear it. The Calf dropped the burlap mask and The Boy scrambled to pick it up, and by the time he was up off the ground, Father was walking towards him like a predator.
“Put that back on right now boy, You’re a damned idiot if you think these fuckin things are your friends,” he gestured at the cows.
The Boy slipped the mask over his head and began to quietly weep behind it.
“Now are you gonna tell me what in the hell you were doin out here?” He grabbed his shirt collar and stared into the one hole cut into the burlap mask. “Were you doin your chores? ‘Cause it sure as hell didn’t look like it,”
“I-I was- was playing with them,” The Boy sniffled.
“Y-y-you were p-p-playing with them,” Father mocked him. “You’re a dumbass ya know that?” He berated him, “I already told you a billion times now these things aren’t your friends, they’re meat, nothing but meat,” he let the boy go and he tumbled to the ground.
He looked up at Father, tired of feeling small, and he said to him, “Well at least I like them! I hate you! I hate you and I hate momma and I hate Mike and I hate you!”
Father was surprised to see The Boy yell at him, especially with such vulgarity.
He stared down The Boy with the most sinister look, a drunken, sinister pleasure. “You like those cows so much why don’t you just fuck one?” He retorted.
The Boy didn’t know what he meant, but he knew Father was making fun of him, and making fun of the cows at the same time. He yelled out, “leave me alone! I hate you!” He tried to get up but father grabbed him by the back of the neck.
“I don’t think you heard me boy. I said if you like em so much…why don’t you just go ahead and fuck one?” Father jerked him around to look at the brown cow he was playing with earlier.
“That’s the one you like huh? Real pretty one,” he pushed The Boy towards it while speaking in a low, devilish voice. “She’s a young one too, you’re a nasty dog, boy, nasty.” He chuckled with sick satisfaction.
Fathers glanced over to one of the stable buildings where they would milk the cows. He had built a wooden pillory type contraption that would hold the cows head in place whenever he milked them. Only he ever had to use it though, for the boys they were still and calm as a cloud but whenever Father even touched them they would go all types of crazy, bucking back and forth and mooing restlessly. He pushed The Boy over there and turned to the brown cow.
“Go over in that stable, you’re gonna get some of what every boy wants,”
The Boy was still confused but he complied, because he didn’t know what father was going to make him do.
Father grabbed the cow by her neck and dragged her to the stable. She didn’t fight much but she didn’t cooperate either, she too had no clue what Father was going to do to her. He pulled her into the stable and put her head in the wooden contraption, holding her in place. She had never been in this device before as she was too young to be milked, but she listened to the generational instinct to trust her people to look out for her, so she didn’t fight it.
Father turned to The Boy who was standing in the corner, his burlap mask hiding his fear and his overalls hiding his body. “Take em off,” he said blankly.
The Boy began to process what his father wanted him to do, and he was starting to feel sick. He resisted naturally, he had no idea what he was going to do and what it meant, but he knew he felt ashamed, so he didn’t do what Father told him to. Father wasn’t happy about that, he had finished his bottle of alcohol and now had a handheld sledge hammer in his right hand, and he insisted with a sick spell in his voice, and when The Boy resisted further, he raised the hammer.
What The boy did to the poor brown calf, in which he had found a friend in, could not be pinned on him, as he was only acting out of self preservation and survival. He was face to face with the monsters from the King Arthur books that kept him up some nights, and though he thought he would be brave enough to fend them off, he was not, and his act of perverse violence towards a helpless animal was not his fault. He didn’t know how long it lasted for, he just melted away behind his burlap mask and pretended he was somewhere else, but the cow had no mask to hide behind, and when she began to buck around, Father held her in place. When he was trying to control her, she had bit his chest and made Father furious. He lifted his sledge hammer and crashed it down on the cows head. Hearing the loud crack, the boy snapped back and looked forward as the cow violently seized and Father brought the mallet down once again, this time the body of the animal going limp, falling back towards the boy where he stumbled backwards as the cows body got caught by the wooden trap its neck was in.
“Fuckin bitch! That’s what you get! Fuckin thing bit me!” Father screamed as he walked away from the scene hurriedly towards the house, bleeding from his chest.
The Boy was in tears, drowning behind his burlap cage, drowning in shame and fear and disgust and anger all at once. He threw his overalls back over his mud covered body, closing his eyes when he looked down towards his feet. He balled up in the corner and cried as the body of his cow friend who he had violated so deeply was hanging limply in its wooden frame. The Boy didn’t know what he did was only out of survival, he was sure that god would smite him down for being a perverse monster that rapes animals. He was ashamed, and he could not bear that burden.
That night, Momma was concerned when The Boy didn’t come in to grab dinner. She walked out to look around and didn’t see him anywhere. Not even in the stable where the body of the cow had began to stiffen and gather flies.
When she entered the house again she looked at her husband with anger in her eyes. “What in the hell did you do to that cow?” She snapped at him.
He looked at her and was worried she knew of his cruel punishment towards his disappointment son, then he realized what she meant. “I told you the fucker bit me,”
She looked at him with a secret hatred burning behind her eyes, then she changed the subject. “I still can’t find him anywhere,”
“Who?” Father replied with a mouth full of food.
“Randy. I thought he’d be outside but he’s not there.” She looked out the window at the blue evening sky. “I’m worried James, what if he’s lost or something,”
“He’ll turn up, always does,” Father replied.
“Can you at least go out and look for me?” She asked him.
Father dropped his fork and looked up at his wife and knew he had to listen, because if he didn’t she might get suspicious.
“Mike!” He yelled towards the living room. “Get your shoes on we gotta go find your brother!” He exclaimed as he stood up and grabbed his coat.
That night they both searched the forests around their property, neither of them having enough emotional strength to care about actually finding him, this was more about helping the family, because that’s what Men do.
Before they returned, Momma walked out into the nighttime air, feeling the cool breeze blow her dress around. She walked back towards the cow that she had found dead in the stable. She was disgusted by it, but more scared of her husband so she didn’t push it. She walked out in front of the stable where she stared at the cows broken skull, dripping with dark, syrupy blood, covered in flies. She wept. She wept because she knew she would spend the rest of her life pretending that this poor animal was brutally murdered, just like she would pretend that her husband never assaulted her son in front of her, or the many other burdens she carried, she would have to pretend it never happened.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a gross squelching noise coming from inside the stable. It churned and squelched until it suddenly stopped as she heard something wet hitting the ground. She walked into the stable, slowly moving around the wooden beams and peering into the stable. She was disgusted yet amazed by what she saw. Something had come out of the cow, something alive. It was inside of a birth sac that was attached to an umbilical cord going into the cow. She didn’t know what she was seeing, maybe the cow was pregnant and the baby was forcing its way out of her rotten body. But she would know if her cow was pregnant, and this one was still too young to be bred. She shined her light on the sac as she approached it. Inside she saw something squirming, she instinctively forced a finger into the sac, tearing it open with ease, and what she saw inside was something unholy.
A human baby, with a black cows head, crying an uncanny mix of human wailing and the scream of cattle. It was so alien, it looked wrong, like something that she would see on one of Mikes video games. But this was real, and it was alive, and it was crying for help. She didn’t know what to do, but somewhere inside her she knew she couldn’t leave this thing to die. So she picked it up, she felt the tender and soft skin of the baby, reminding her of her three boys, and that was when she knew that this inhuman being would be her secret, her secret to keep from everyone, not a secret that her husband knew or a secret that her sons knew, but something only she knew. Maybe this was her way of getting back at him, all these years of hiding their ugly truth from the world, and now she gets to hide her ugly truth from him.
And that’s what she did, she hid her bestial son from her family, and it was a secret that she kept hidden away for years to come, locked tight behind doors and sealed away in the corridors of her mind.
I’m not even single and he’s making me jealous of relationships, very beautifully worded post
I’m maybe less than 100 pages into Blindsight by Peter Watts and I’m not sure how I feel about it. On one hand I like the cosmic horror being set up and I like the dystopian future that the world is set in but I find the writing style to be very disjointed and hard to follow, sometimes I can’t really tell what is happening or who’s perspective I’m reading but every time I feel like just giving up, the story progresses a little bit more and keeps me going. So should I keep going with it or is it not worth it?
I’m looking for books that feel kinda like Revival by Stephen King where a character begins to find that reality is not what it seems or something along those lines, I find this concept very scary especially when it has a personal connection to the character discovering it
TRIGGER WARNINGS‼️ -explicit child abuse, implied sexual abuse of a child, domestic abuse.
The Boy always wore a burlap sack over his head, with one hole punched in the left side for him to see out of. He wore it because he looked different than his brothers, because he didn’t like when Father would stare at him with deep judgement piercing through the silence, because he knew that anyone he met would be scared of him, scared like Momma was when he was born, or at least that’s what Father said. The burlap sack was his buffer between his panicked mind and the loud outside world, although it was his own idea to wear it in the first place, Father never liked seeing him with it off.
Ever since the Boys oldest brother moved to the big city to go to school, the Boy had no more friends at home to play with. Sam was the Boys best friend and was the only person who ever called him by his real name, and they often would be by each other’s side doing chores around the farm, petting the cows and goats. Now that he was gone, he had to follow around his other older brother, Mike, who was always mean to him and never wanted to pet the animals, saying they were filthy and stupid. But today Mike was at school and Father was in town at the Casino, spending the money the government gave them for the Boys disability, and Momma was never mean to the Boy, only when he makes the house messy. The Boy had the whole farm to himself and he planned to make the most of it by running around in the warm grey atmosphere that early Spring brought to central Oregon, by picking the yellow dandelions and daffodils, by pretending he was King Arthur from the books Momma would read him, and that the hard trunk of a spruce tree was a mighty dragon with huge green wings. He played until he lost track of time and lost track of the bruises and cuts on his arms and legs, when eventually he got tired and wanted to relax for a little bit, so he walked over to the fence gate that kept the cows in and walked in making sure to remember how to close it tight, like Sam taught him. The Boy sat down next to the large cows that varied in color, they all glanced at him and continued to graze mindlessly, the Boy looked at all of them and smiled, and only then did he decide he didn’t want to wear the burlap sack anymore, and so he took it off and threw it on the dirt beside him, squinting his eyes at the brightness of the sky but once he adjusted he began to stare at all the cows. He rarely ever took off the sack, he knew that if he did, Fathers would be mad at him, maybe even hurt him. Mike never hurt him when he didn’t wear it but he always made fun of how he looked, always making fun of his small eyes. Momma never seemed to care whether he wore it or not and neither did the cows, and since he was alone with the cows and momma inside the house, he could breathe freely, see the word without the shroud of darkness from his mask.
The boy felt the cool grass on his legs and arms as he laid down and faced the cloudy sky, he thought about what he wanted to be when he grew up, he thought about his brother Sam who he missed with all his heart, he thought about going to school like Mike did and hoped that maybe eventually he could go to adult school like Sam, maybe get a girlfriend like Sam did. His thoughts of life in the city (Salem to be specific as that was the only proper city The Boy had ever visited) were interrupted when he felt a warm puff of air blow on his forehead. He opened his eyes and right above him was one of the younger cows, not quite a calf but still young, sniffing him playfully. She was covered in warm brown fur and her eyes looked into The Boy’s and they traded a mutual secret that only they two could understand, the secret of innocence and purity and the nature of their encounter. The Boy stood up and watched the cow playfully jump around, he reached his hand out to pet her head but she lightly rammed her head into his hip, knocking him onto his rear. He giggled and held his hands up and felt the warm bundle of fur push up against him as the cow began licking his face. The Boy couldn’t see it but a few of the other cows were watching them carefully, watching the ritual of childhood unfold before them through sound of laughter in the breeze.
The Boy continued to play with his Bovine friend and the other grown cows returned to mindlessly grazing, but none of them were aware of the approaching storm, the storm that took the shape of a drunken man driving his steel carriage angrily down the highway with a boy in the back seat awaiting the wrath of punishment, the man was Father and the boy was brother Mike.
The Boy was too far from the house and too distracted by the animals to hear or see Father pull up to the house in his rusty car. Father aggressively stepped out onto the gravel and eyed down Mike like a hawk.
“You gonna get the fuck outta my car or what?” He exclaimed with mockery in his tone.
Mike awkwardly exited the car with his backpack slung over his left shoulder. He was scared, he felt like a little kid, because little kids get in trouble, because little kids get yelled at, and Mike was 14, so he wasn’t a little kid anymore, and his father made damn sure he knew that.
“You better get the hell inside boy, you got a lotta hell to pay, ‘nd your momma id’nt gonna be happy with you,” he pointed at the front door and Mike shuffled towards the house. Father stayed outside for a moment and pissed on the gravel, not caring to turn away from the open road.
When Mike entered the house, his mother was confused as to why he was home from school so early and when she asked him why, he looked up at her with tears forming in his eyes. Before he could form any words, father walked in.
“D’ya tell her whatcha did? Huh?” He asked, slamming the door behind him.
“Did ya tell her that you’re a pussy who can’t win a fight with a god damn girl?”
Mother only stood in the kitchen and stared at the two of them like a deer in headlights. Mike tried to control his tears, now that Father was right in front of him, he would see it, he would see him cry, he would see him be vulnerable. Even though he didn’t cry, Father still saw the tremble in his lip and the redness in his eyes,
“Oh what you gonna cry now? Did she hit you that hard? Huh? How hard did she hit you? Was it this hard?” Father lightly pushed mike back, “Was it this hard?” He mocked again this time pushing harder. “Huh boy? How hard was it? Did she hit you like a girl or did she hit you like this?” He said before punching Mike in the shoulder. Mike said nothing but held his tears back,
“James…” mother muttered from the kitchen, “James stop it,” but Father didn’t hear her, or just didn’t listen to her.
“Ya can’t talk now huh, just like your retard brother? What good is having two kids if they’re both fuckin’ dumbasses,” Father said louder.
“I’m not a retard,” Mike trembled.
“Oh so you can talk, you were just being a bitch is that it?” He stared Mike down like a bull and held a long dominating pause. “So then tell me boy! How hard did the bitch hit you!?” He yelled, liquor and spit coming out of his hideous maw.
Mike pushed him. He pushed father back with a weak thrust of his arms but it was enough to set him off. Father attacked Mike, and there was yelling and crying and thrashing of limbs and in their scuffle, the weight of both of them broke a couch leg.
The Boy was outside, still playing with the calf, still bare faced to the world, not even aware of where his burlap mask even was relative to him. He only noticed the chaos unfolding inside the house when the back door opened, where The Boy heard his Fathers drunken roar echo through the valley, followed by the slamming of the door.
He wielded a bottle of something in one hand and his hat in the other, he didn’t see The Boy at first and was distracted by the booze he was downing. The Boy panicked, knowing that his father would be furious if he saw him out there with the cows, and he would be furious at seeing his ugly face. He scrambled around to find his mask only to see another calf, this one with black fur and much younger, sniffing at the mask and then chewing on it. He dashed over to it, scrambling to grab it and when he did, the cow wouldn’t yield. The cow had pulled on the mask the way dogs do when they play, but The Boy wasn’t playing, he was terrified.
“Give it back,” he tried to say quietly as he could. The cow continued pulling and The Boy heard a small tear as he pulled back.
“Please just give it back!” He cried out, not noticing his Father storming towards him through the fields of grass and dandelions.
“The hell’re you doin?” He yelled when he reached the fence.
The Boy felt his stomach sink, he felt his shoulders give way to the weight of his fear, he turned around and faced his Fathers rage.
“You’re ugly as shit,” Father said quietly but still loud enough for The Boy to hear it. The Calf dropped the burlap mask and The Boy scrambled to pick it up, and by the time he was up off the ground, Father was walking towards him like a predator.
“Put that back on right now boy, You’re a damned idiot if you think these fuckin things are your friends,” he gestured at the cows.
The Boy slipped the mask over his head and began to quietly weep behind it.
“Now are you gonna tell me what in the hell you were doin out here?” He grabbed his shirt collar and stared into the one hole cut into the burlap mask. “Were you doin your chores? ‘Cause it sure as hell didn’t look like it,”
“I-I was- was playing with them,” The Boy sniffled.
“Y-y-you were p-p-playing with them,” Father mocked him. “You’re a dumbass ya know that?” He berated him, “I already told you a billion times now these things aren’t your friends, they’re meat, nothing but meat,” he let the boy go and he tumbled to the ground.
He looked up at Father, tired of feeling small, and he said to him, “Well at least I like them! I hate you! I hate you and I hate momma and I hate Mike and I hate you!”
Father was surprised to see The Boy yell at him, especially with such vulgarity.
He stared down The Boy with the most sinister look, a drunken, sinister pleasure. “You like those cows so much why don’t you just fuck one?” He retorted.
The Boy didn’t know what he meant, but he knew Father was making fun of him, and making fun of the cows at the same time. He yelled out, “leave me alone! I hate you!” He tried to get up but father grabbed him by the back of the neck.
“I don’t think you heard me boy. I said if you like em so much…why don’t you just go ahead and fuck one?” Father jerked him around to look at the brown cow he was playing with earlier.
“That’s the one you like huh? Real pretty one,” he pushed The Boy towards it while speaking in a low, devilish voice. “She’s a young one too, you’re a nasty dog, boy, nasty.” He chuckled with sick satisfaction.
Fathers glanced over to one of the stable buildings where they would milk the cows. He had built a wooden pillory type contraption that would hold the cows head in place whenever he milked them. Only he ever had to use it though, for the boys they were still and calm as a cloud but whenever Father even touched them they would go all types of crazy, bucking back and forth and mooing restlessly. He pushed The Boy over there and turned to the brown cow.
“Go over in that stable, you’re gonna get some of what every boy wants,”
The Boy was still confused but he complied, because he didn’t know what father was going to make him do.
Father grabbed the cow by her neck and dragged her to the stable. She didn’t fight much but she didn’t cooperate either, she too had no clue what Father was going to do to her. He pulled her into the stable and put her head in the wooden contraption, holding her in place. She had never been in this device before as she was too young to be milked, but she listened to the generational instinct to trust her people to look out for her, so she didn’t fight it.
Father turned to The Boy who was standing in the corner, his burlap mask hiding his fear and his overalls hiding his body. “Take em off,” he said blankly.
The Boy began to process what his father wanted him to do, and he was starting to feel sick. He resisted naturally, he had no idea what he was going to do and what it meant, but he knew he felt ashamed, so he didn’t do what Father told him to. Father wasn’t happy about that, he had finished his bottle of alcohol and now had a handheld sledge hammer in his right hand, and he insisted with a sick spell in his voice, and when The Boy resisted further, he raised the hammer.
What The boy did to the poor brown calf, in which he had found a friend in, could not be pinned on him, as he was only acting out of self preservation and survival. He was face to face with the monsters from the King Arthur books that kept him up some nights, and though he thought he would be brave enough to fend them off, he was not, and his act of perverse violence towards a helpless animal was not his fault. He didn’t know how long it lasted for, he just melted away behind his burlap mask and pretended he was somewhere else, but the cow had no mask to hide behind, and when she began to buck around, Father held her in place. When he was trying to control her, she had bit his chest and made Father furious. He lifted his sledge hammer and crashed it down on the cows head. Hearing the loud crack, the boy snapped back and looked forward as the cow violently seized and Father brought the mallet down once again, this time the body of the animal going limp, falling back towards the boy where he stumbled backwards as the cows body got caught by the wooden trap its neck was in.
“Fuckin bitch! That’s what you get! Fuckin thing bit me!” Father screamed as he walked away from the scene hurriedly towards the house, bleeding from his chest.
The Boy was in tears, drowning behind his burlap cage, drowning in shame and fear and disgust and anger all at once. He threw his overalls back over his mud covered body, closing his eyes when he looked down towards his feet. He balled up in the corner and cried as the body of his cow friend who he had violated so deeply was hanging limply in its wooden frame. The Boy didn’t know what he did was only out of survival, he was sure that god would smite him down for being a perverse monster that rapes animals. He was ashamed, and he could not bear that burden.
That night, Momma was concerned when The Boy didn’t come in to grab dinner. She walked out to look around and didn’t see him anywhere. Not even in the stable where the body of the cow had began to stiffen and gather flies.
When she entered the house again she looked at her husband with anger in her eyes. “What in the hell did you do to that cow?” She snapped at him.
He looked at her and was worried she knew of his cruel punishment towards his disappointment son, then he realized what she meant. “I told you the fucker bit me,”
She looked at him with a secret hatred burning behind her eyes, then she changed the subject. “I still can’t find him anywhere,”
“Who?” Father replied with a mouth full of food.
“Randy. I thought he’d be outside but he’s not there.” She looked out the window at the blue evening sky. “I’m worried James, what if he’s lost or something,”
“He’ll turn up, always does,” Father replied.
“Can you at least go out and look for me?” She asked him.
Father dropped his fork and looked up at his wife and knew he had to listen, because if he didn’t she might get suspicious.
“Mike!” He yelled towards the living room. “Get your shoes on we gotta go find your brother!” He exclaimed as he stood up and grabbed his coat.
That night they both searched the forests around their property, neither of them having enough emotional strength to care about actually finding him, this was more about helping the family, because that’s what Men do.
Before they returned, Momma walked out into the nighttime air, feeling the cool breeze blow her dress around. She walked back towards the cow that she had found dead in the stable. She was disgusted by it, but more scared of her husband so she didn’t push it. She walked out in front of the stable where she stared at the cows broken skull, dripping with dark, syrupy blood, covered in flies. She wept. She wept because she knew she would spend the rest of her life pretending that this poor animal was brutally murdered, just like she would pretend that her husband never assaulted her son in front of her, or the many other burdens she carried, she would have to pretend it never happened.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a gross squelching noise coming from inside the stable. It churned and squelched until it suddenly stopped as she heard something wet hitting the ground. She walked into the stable, slowly moving around the wooden beams and peering into the stable. She was disgusted yet amazed by what she saw. Something had come out of the cow, something alive. It was inside of a birth sac that was attached to an umbilical cord going into the cow. She didn’t know what she was seeing, maybe the cow was pregnant and the baby was forcing its way out of her rotten body. But she would know if her cow was pregnant, and this one was still too young to be bred. She shined her light on the sac as she approached it. Inside she saw something squirming, she instinctively forced a finger into the sac, tearing it open with ease, and what she saw inside was something unholy.
A human baby, with a black cows head, crying an uncanny mix of human wailing and the scream of cattle. It was so alien, it looked wrong, like something that she would see on one of Mikes video games. But this was real, and it was alive, and it was crying for help. She didn’t know what to do, but somewhere inside her she knew she couldn’t leave this thing to die. So she picked it up, she felt the tender and soft skin of the baby, reminding her of her three boys, and that was when she knew that this inhuman being would be her secret, her secret to keep from everyone, not a secret that her husband knew or a secret that her sons knew, but something only she knew. Maybe this was her way of getting back at him, all these years of hiding their ugly truth from the world, and now she gets to hide her ugly truth from him.
And that’s what she did, she hid her bestial son from her family, and it was a secret that she kept hidden away for years to come, locked tight behind doors and sealed away in the corridors of her mind.
Chat Pile recently dropped an amazing cover of Sifting and it made me realize how sludgy some Nirvana songs can be, so I was wondering if any other sludge bands have done covers of Nirvana songs?
I know a lot of people, including me, were very bummed about Hicks and Newt being killed off screen in Alien 3, but I think it was necessary to make the movie what it was.
When Ripley finds out they’re dead it sets the tone for the whole movie that there isn’t much worth fighting for, and then dying off screen highlights how out of control it was for Ripley in the first place which is a huge part of the themes of evolution and humanities defenselessness against nature and death.
My point is that if Hicks and Newt were in Alien 3, the movie would be completely different and dishonest to the vision of the movie.
I also wonder if people would prefer if they were killed on screen in Alien 3 but people didn’t like that in Nightmare on elm street 4.