I’m not even sure this post will go through, but I have to try. Even iF it’s up for only a sIngle second, surely one oF the 13 million plus people here will see. Please see. Please.

It doesn’T allow anyonE to take picturEs of it. Not only do cameras Not work up close (pictures taken oF it end up just solid black), picturEs taken from afar producE nothing but images so blurry you can’T tell what they’re supposed to be of.

People Tried driving out of town to get the word out, but on the way, their cArs were vioLently flipped off the road. People tried waLking, a group of three, but as they turned onto the road that leads out, they all dropped to the ground, and if Amber Cameron’s view through her binoculars was accurate, bleeding from their nose, mouth, ears, and eyes.

Everyone in town has spent their time trying to make calls about it, but once they start talking about it, the calls drop. Emails sent about it turn to Gibberish upon the clicking of the send button.

Any descRiption of it is chAnged to describe something it’s not (for example, it is not a papier-mâché bust of a certain iconic, Yellow father, as Dr. NeBel’s email to the nearest city’s news team may have suggested, and it certainLy isn’t a pile of pinto beans with the flAg of a certain South American country planted in it as desCribed by a text message from Kim Brunner to her sister).

Any attempt to identify the time and date of its arrival is also altered, with the sentences changing completely, to a sentence that no longer attempts to identify any time or date, or at the very least, changes it to make the sentence describe another event and the according time and date of it.

It somehow knows when it’s being talKed about, when its existence is at risk of being revealed, but I believe it only knows so through a series of trigger words, so forgive Me if I use certain turns of phrAse that would be better seRved by talking like a normal person would.

Because of this, you understand, no reports know about it. No one outside of our town knows about it. The name of our town is oBviously a trigger word, as are the latitudinal and longitudinaL coordinates. Even if this post goes up as intEnded, I don’t know how I can request…aid…if I can’t say where we are.

A hand, another hand, another hand, and a finger’s worth of…sun…ago, it appeared. The oWner of the town’s main diner wAs the first to see it. She called her husband, and by the time he got theRe most of the town was in the Middle of Olson Boulevard.

Due to the sheer size of iT, the hardware store and the candy stOre on the west side of the street were effectively desTroyed, as were the record/book store, tHe auto repair shop, and the florist on the east side.

I don’t understand. It hasn’t moved. It’s just…therE. Doing nothing.

No one has come through town, either. Usually we’ll have people driving through on their way from one place to anoTher, maybe stopping for food or a night at our motel, but there’s been nothing. I can only presume that peOple have died doing so.

In the time that has passed, oUr town has gone to chaos. Small towns in the…central part of this…united country…can have a tendenCy to be very religious; as such, there is a group of about 60 townspeople who have begun worsHipping it as if it is a god. Other, frightened townspeople demanded they stop “bowing to the false idol”.

Those townspeoPle who objected were quickly and mercilessly slaughtered, and their bodies piled around…it.

Moments after the last of the victims feLl to the ground, the only other thing that’s happened with it, is that hundreds, maybe thousands of…etchings…appeared on it, shapes I’ve nEver seen. That was on the…finger more than a single hAnd’s worth…day. No one knows what they mean, and our librarian has scoured every poSsible book that may have had answers, and found nothing, much like those of us that have looked thEm up online.

Something else tHat is undoubtedly connEcted to all this is the random…perishings. We are a town of about 190; since this began, two peopLe have…expired…every day. Some have gone they were asleep, being found by loved ones, while others, such as my neighbor, have just been stricken and droPped where they stood.

Those who have passed appear to have been stricken by the same thing as those who attempted to leave, bleeding from the various orifices on their heads. Our town doctor hasn’t been able to offer any kind of informed opinion, only the hypothesis that what’s happening is something akin to a severe brain traUma. Fuck I hope that’s not a trigger word.

Also of particular concern iS the fact that the farms on the northwest edge of town have all been rendered infertile. Just those ones, though. It’s not just that the crops stopped growing, but they look like they were at one moment flourIshing and the next…like the life had just Been drained from them in an instant.

_____

I wrote all that two nights ago. Yesterday morning, thEre was a…development. People showed up. They’re wearing what essentially amounts to black sheets. There are no eye holes cut out, and the sheets are lonG; each sheet drags behind its wearer about four to five feet.

No one saw them approach, theY were just all of a sudden there. They don’t speak, and they pushed everyone from the residential areas of town to the main strip on Olson Boulevard and a couple surrounding streets. I’ve been hOled up in the Smith’s house, a street behind and not far north of what was the bookstore until a couple weeks ago.

The people in the sheets have formed a big circle around Us, keeping us in the area they apparently want us to be. A group of townspeople tried to talk to them, but they were ignored. The clothing store owner and his wife tried getting past them, and they were put down immediately. More confusing yet, the people revering the thing as a god went up to the people in the sheets and offered…themselves, like to be in the service of it (or something), and they too were immediately…terminated.

But the most substantial thing that happened once they arrived…and it’s something all of us townspeople agree on, the religious wackos and all, is this…feeling. It’s hard to explain, but the best way I can put it is that..I know I’m going to…expire…soon. It’s a sort of depression, an empty feeling, like if nihilism was something physical that could actually weigh a person down. I can’t begin to speculate as to how it will happen, or why, but I can say with as much certainty as possible, I will be gone soon.

None of this makes sense and I don’t know what to do. Please notice. I’ve made it pretty apparent. And if you can find out anything I couldn’t, please tell the world. Everyone needs to know what’s going on. I hope you can make it so this doesn’t happen again.