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The Screamers

Sat 02 Oct 2021

jmcbray@carcosa.net

A bunch of stuff changed, after Yellow Wednesday. We all know it, though a lot of folks like to pretend nothing happened, like everything is just like it was before. Like all the weird things we didn't used to get before aren't real, like they're some sort of fake news. Though some things we all have seen or heard, sometimes all the time almost, so you can't help but talk about them with your neighbors that are still around and your coworkers who are still coming in. I don't know how they square that with it all being fake. Maybe they just figure those things are a coincidence?

Like the screamers. Everybody talks about the screamers. Most of the time, we get two or three of them a day around here. You'll be out walking your dog or whatever, dogs still have to poop even if everything else changed, and you'll be stopping by the neighbor's bushes, maybe looking around uncomfortably in case someone walks by, or worse, your neighbor opens up their door to say something, so you maybe guiltily hope they're one of the ones who's gone to Carcosa. And then you hear the screaming. Not every screamer is the same, but they're all pretty bad. They start off far away, you can always hear them in the distance no matter where you are. Sometimes they don't even sound so bad then, like maybe kids are running around screaming while they play, or somebody got surprised and dropped the groceries they were carrying because they thought they saw a snake. But if you hear one getting closer, it always gets worse. Like the kids were running from their drunken dad and now he's caught them, like it *was* a snake after all, and it bit you, and you think maybe it was a cottonmouth the way its body is so thick. And it gets closer, and it gets worse. Louder, and sounding like real suffering. Maybe somebody's being tortured, whipped with a length of barbed wire, or they're on fire while they are running toward you, getting louder and closer. Or somebody heard the worst thing; their baby they had been joyfully awaiting for eight months wouldn't be coming home with them, ever. All that pain, one kind or another, and it gets closer, maybe half the time it's coming right toward you.

And it passes by, and starts getting softer and lower, moving away fast like a car whipped past you on the side of the highway. And you just are grateful that you didn't have to feel that pain yourself, that the screamer passed you by. Everybody wonders if that's something that happens, the screamer doesn't pass, but comes right to you, but I've never heard of it happening. So, they're just a thing that happens these days. Nobody knows where they come from or what they are, really, and like I said, a lot of people just aren't too curious, either. There's a lot worse out there, and it takes a lot of work to pretend there's not, and sometimes folks just want to have something to talk about.