Drumming In The Clouds | CreepCast

Monday on NBC US Marshals! All-new Line of Fire The thrilling new crime drama The world sees us as heroes But they don't know what the job really costs One family of federal agents It's one thing to put yourself in danger It's different when it's your family Balances duty to their country An assassin is still out there Stop! And each other How do you protect the world and the people you love at the same time? Every case hits home on Line of Fire Monday on NBC This episode is brought to you by PayPal You know how a mom's bag has everything? Sunscreen Snacks A stapler? The new PayPal app is like that, but for your money Shop, pay, manage your account, and earn rewards all in one place And with purchase protection on eligible items, biometric security, and pass keys You're protected at every step Download the new PayPal app to get started See paypal.com/protectionterms Download the new PayPal app to get started Download the new PayPal app to get started The first thing they see is the cloud isn't moving with all the other clouds. It just sets in spot. Kind of reminds me of that. Footage taken by a commercial pilot had gone viral. A band of dark mist stretching from horizon to horizon, bloated and heavy, blotting out the sun. It covered a region roughly the size of North America and appeared to be growing. Oh, well, in my head, I was like, I can see it taking a while for one cloud to be spotted, but it's the size of a continent. God. You know what? I take it back. The general's right. If you walked into a weather station, they're like, yeah, it's just a cloud. I'd be like, no. No, it's not. The shadow the cloud cast was immeasurable. On a clear day, the light would dim like a solar eclipse. The sky turned a dull gray. Shadows vanished and birds fell silent. Some areas experienced perpetual dusk. The night. Posing. It's darkness. People on the ground began reporting changes. Strange static humming in their teeth, tension, headaches, and a persistent low pressure in the ears. Online forms exploded. Hashtag the cloud trended within the hour. Dr. Finn kept working. She trained herself to remain clinical, methodical. Still, she couldn't shake the feeling that the air in the lab had gone stale. Something was very wrong and not a single thinking brain on the planet could provide answers to the impossible situation at exactly nine. 43. PM. GMT. The first sound was recorded a low frequency thump, thump deep, distant and another two hours apart and again and again, thunder someone offered, but the radar was clear, not a single weather system for a thousand kilometers. The thump came again, only minutes apart. It's not where the story's going. I know, but it's funny going off of what you said earlier about it being just a normal class. It like very clearly has a thunder noise and the general's like, what is that? What is that? Yeah. Wardrums call the army, but they have a band. There's a band in there led Zeppelins in the clouds. God forbid he witnesses a lightning strike. It's shooting at us married, sat perfectly still. Watching the sound wave roll across the monitor. It wasn't thunder. It wasn't seismic. It was airborne. High above our heads. Jesus. Whispered a young intern nearby. It's coming from inside the cloud. By midnight. I feel like I need to get it out of my system. I feel like I've been fucking this up. I mean, you just like said the same lines on top of each other for like three minutes. I can't believe you fucked it up. What's cracking me up is now it's stuck. If I had the idea, it's just a normal cloud and it's like it's coming from inside the cloud. The meteorologist is like, yeah, that's how thunder works. It comes from the cloud. Why is it talking by midnight? And it's settled into a rhythm, a slow, deep drumming sound. Thumb, thumb, thumb, thumb, thumb, thumb, regular, relentless, as though something far, far above was knocking from the other side of the sky. Almost sounds like a heartbeat with like the. Thumb, thumb, thumb, thumb, thumb, regular, relentless, as though something far, far above was knocking from the other side of the sky. The double rhythm like that. Project Cerberus Vale. Field Journal Entry. Dr. Maureen Finn, Lead Meteorologist. Classified. Level Omega. Day 1. 11.42 PM GMT. The cloud remains stationary. Its scale is beyond measurement. Its thick fog goes far beyond our atmosphere. The sound began tonight. Regular pulses. Low frequency. Origin unknown, but it triangulated within the formation. The collection of all data is incomplete at this time. Personal note. It is not weather. It is not man-made. You don't know what this is. Kind of fucking creepy. I would. You know, I kind of think it almost seems like a giant. Like whenever there's like a nuclear explosion, it almost seems like something like that, where it's like it just casts this giant, ominous, basically just smoke cloud for God knows how long. But for something to be that stationary and moving, that'd be fucked up. Well, I made the note comparison earlier, but now after the heartbeat thing, it might actually be like a creature in there. Yeah. You know, well, I mean, you'd have to, I mean, I don't know. I think that's where it's, it's leaning, but it, it'd be kind of sick. I love the idea of something floating to like, that's what I loved about. Nope. This idea of something floating there, but you just don't know what it is, or it's just this cloud formation. Yeah. Totally in disguise. Did you, did you ever read at the mountains of madness? No, but I know of it or no, no, I've read on the mountains of madness. You know how at the end of the story, they fly away in the plane and the giant like sail thing comes out of the. City. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. It's, it's, it's a, it's kind of like a stereotypical, like Lovecraft creature, but from his description of it, it's like, it's like a ship. It's almost like a living, breathing ship, the size of the city. I kind of have an image of that, like, um, I forget the author's name, the guy that did the old depictions of hell with like all the weird abstract images of different demons and stuff like that. But like a creature out of one of those paintings, like, uh, something not of our planet hiding in the cloud. Or maybe the cloud itself is the thing. That's just what the creature looks like. I'm assuming it's a creature. It could also just be a presence or a ship or something like that. Who knows? Phase two, the sound of God. By morning, the drumming was heard across the entire Northern hemisphere. It was no longer limited to the monitoring stations. People across Europe, the Eastern United States, parts of Western Africa, and even as far as Argentina reported hearing it, not just through the air, but through their bodies. Meteorologist is like. Again, that's how hearing works. You hear it in your body. In the base of the skull, the hollows of the chest are behind the eyes. The sound was felt just as much as it was heard. Entire cities reported the vibrations. Hospitals began to fill, not from injury, but from confusion. Migraines, tinnitus, bleeding noses. Some people began to lose their minds, tormented by a sound they couldn't escape. Others. Seemed unfazed by the strange phenomenon. A woman in Bordeaux began convulsing and screamed. I hear it. I hear it. I hear it for falling unconscious at 1 0 6 AM GMT, Dr. Finn watched from the roof of the North strand facility. As the light changed again, not dimmer, not quite. She struggled to name it. Shadows had lost their edges. Buildings looked slightly flat and colors were muted. Like the world had been submerged in water. She raised her hand and stared at her palm. Veins like rivers on a map. Skin was paler than before. Hairs on her arms stood up. The drumming continued. Dr. Finn, the man from the Department of anomalous phenomenon pushed through the steel door behind her. My name is Jonas, ma'am. I've been meaning to speak with you. He paused beside her eyes turned upward to the dreadful cloud, swallowed the entire skyline, hiding stars and moon alike. Quite the view. What can I do for you Jonas? She asked her tone, clipped unwilling to indulge small talk. I mean, to be fair. Well, yeah, quite the view. It's like, why don't you fuck off? And what do you not see this thing coming towards us? Exactly. It's like, this thing's like eating it's consuming the top half of the planet. Everyone can hear it in their skull. And then a guy from the department of anomalous phenomenon kicks open the door and says, I need to talk. I need to talk with you. Quite the view up here. Quite the view. Might as well make a little bit of light hearted. The, uh, what department is he in? Oh, anomalous. I don't know why. I thought you said McDonald's phenomena. What the fuck? Sorry. It'll be OB, OB, OB sprain. Yeah, Ronald McDonald comes in. Yeah, the secret. The only way to stop this cloud is to give it a cheeseburger. That would actually be way more. Fair, fine. If she's on top of the, she's on top of the roof and she turns around and through the little wire glass, you can just see Ron quite the view up here. I need to talk to you. Why does he sound like kicks open the house? What does Ronald sound like? Does he have a voice? I don't think he's ever, I think that if he speaks, uh, every, his, his voice is so low that if he speaks, children shit, their pants, that's what happens. So he has to. I mean, he just looks at me like this in the media. That Hamburglar wishes everything he touches would turn to McDonald's cheeseburger. What would, what would Ronald have to say? I swear. I've heard him say this burger's tasty. That's what I know. No, I've heard that. And every, and every video is just smiling and like a mime. And he's like, dude, there's like one. I feel like there was like an ad campaign where he's like just giving the shush sign. And I was like, what the fuck? Yeah, I know. Right. I don't like that. You're in the play place between us now. You're in the play place. This is between us now, Billy. You're in the play place crawling around. You're in the play place crawling. Also, I love the rocker rock reference. The, uh. That's where I've heard that. That's what you're thinking of. That's it. You're thinking of the rocker rocker video where he's like. What's in there, Billy? Is that Angry Jacks, Billy? What the fuck? Don't tell me to fucking calm down. Starts beating the shit out of the kid. What the fuck are you looking at? Is that Angry Jacks? Yeah. That's so good. Yeah, I, uh. Got something to say, Billy. All right, obviously It's not McDonald's. All right. Even though I kind of wish it was. Note for the author, maybe include Ronald McDonald. Note for the author, should have had Ronald McDonald show up on top. But specifically the Rocka Rocka version of Ronald McDonald. Yeah, Jonah enters the room and sets down his Blu-ray copy of The Founder on the table. You're going to want to see this. This will tell us everything. Okay. What can I do for you, Jonas? She asked, her tone clipped, unwilling to indulge small talk. You know who I work for? The clown. Okay. She nodded once, offering him a cigarette from a nearby empty pack. No, thanks. I quit. Fresh air for me. Can this guy get to the point? I'm going to need Jonas. I mean, I'm going to say this. It's been two lines, but it's felt like two years. All right, Jonas, you have got to get to the point, please. The cloud is getting closer. No, thanks. I quit. Only fresh air for me. Behind him is just a giant cloud. He laughed awkwardly as Dr. Finn lit her smoke. They're relocating me. I'll sit. Out of the world. A counterpart facility in the Southern Hemisphere. They want simultaneous readings, mirrored data sets. Honestly, it feels like I'm just being moved out of the blast zone. The department guy's like, hey, so they're sending me a South America. Kind of like an arc. Yeah, there's all kinds of double of every animal and stuff. And I don't know. It seems kind of weird. Yeah. The guy, he really likes lemurs. I don't know. If I like him. He paused for a moment. If this thing is global, it keeps growing. We need to know if it behaves the same way everywhere. Otherwise, we're flying blind. Finn studied him. The shadows across his face blurred and trembling in the wrong light. So you'll be chasing the other horizon? Something like that. He gave a thin smile, but his eyes stayed locked on the sky. I'll send you everything I find. Maybe between the two of us, we'll make sense of it. Her gaze lingered on him a moment longer than she. He intended. Then he looked back to the cloud. Maybe. Drumming echoed. Low. Cavernous. Endless. Dum-dum. Dum-dum. Dum-dum. Dum-dum. It's a giant heartbeat. It's got to be a giant heartbeat. That's what I think it is. I think it's a heartbeat. Yeah. I wish it was just Neil Peart in the clouds doing drum solos. My God. All right. I love the idea. Because with some of these videos, it's like, it wouldn't be funny if the author watched this episode, but we know the author's going to watch this episode, right? Yeah. So they're like, Hunter and Isaiah are reading my story? Wow. And then they get on and it's like, Oh, yeah. I really wish there was like a guy in the cloud. That's what you have to say. The most empty-brained reaction content. That's okay. First off, I just want to say, we're just, the story's kicking off. If you haven't expected this by now, then you have not been listening to the show very long. What happens is you start off, you joke around. And then as, as you keep reading, you get more and more bought in. This is just, just pound around. All right. I I'm still bought in. I still like the giant idea of a huge cloud with a mysterious, I'm guessing creature inside of it. All right. And then you have a little moment with Jonas that makes you have a little McDonald's me moment. Why not? This is just how it happens on the show. What if, what if the cloud, what if the cloud was grimace? If the cloud was grimace, I would get on my knees and I would start bowing to the story. And I would say, God bless you. He's just like, Ooh, in the clouds. And then that's where Ronald comes out. Ronald's like, kill it. Kill it. You have no idea. God, go ahead. No, no, I was just going to say during that, the entire dialogue segment, I was thinking that it was Ronald the whole time. And I didn't say anything. I was being good. We can for, for us and not for the audience audience. You don't listen to this for us. If Jonas comes back, it's Ronald McDonald. That's just between us. It would be very funny though. If grimace was in the clouds and Ronald sat there and he's like, you have to shoot it down. You have no idea what he's going to do to the burger supply chain on planet earth. If we don't kill him now. I wouldn't take a quick moment to think today's sponsor rocket money. It's easy to spend money, but the hard part is to not spend as much money, especially when you have recurring bills or subscriptions, you've completely forgotten about. 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To start speaking a new language in three weeks, click the link in the description or go to babbel.com/creepcast and you'll get up to 55% off your subscription. That's up to 55% off your subscription when you use our link and join the millions of Babbel learners breaking the language barrier every day at babbel.com/creepcast. Hey, danke to Babbel for sponsoring this video. Back to the episode. Neither of them spoke after that. The emergency broadcast systems went live just afternoon. News anchors read pre-written statements. No questions, no speculation. Authorities are aware of the atmospheric anomaly currently positioned over the Atlantic. Remain indoors, limit direct observation of the phenomenon. Further information will be provided when available. Definitely a nice little, also, I was going to say, and I know it's kind of becoming a bit of a meme and I don't appreciate it, but it is very Lovecraftian. If you look at the cloud, you pretty much go fucking insane. This one is Lovecraftian. You can say that without it being a meme, I think. It's very clearly like something that big, something indescribable, you know, kind of thing. But looking at a, looking at a beautiful fluffy cloud and going insane from it really is a, uh, that's fucked up to not be able to look at a beautiful sky. If you look up, you basically go insane. That's kind of crazy. That was pretty hot. That does get my goat, so to speak. Are you chubbed up in the pants? I'm not answering that. And no. Oh, I think that means. Yes. Okay. All right. Let's get to the next one. I'm going to go with the black screen. ship showed the cloud expanding, spilling outward and curling tendrils. Vast sections of dark mist swirled within the cloud, like black sand in clear water. The crew's final log simply read, God has returned to us. 2.42 AM, Dr. Finn stepped into the soundproof chamber to listen to the unfiltered live feed. She sat in the center of the small white room, strapped on the over-ear monitors, and listened. Here it was. Thump, thump, thump. Drumming from the cloud. Clearer now. More spacious. More thoughtful. There were pauses between the beats. Pauses long enough to create the illusion it had stopped, before it came again. She felt it deep in her ribcage, her heart sinking to the aerial phenomenon. The drumming had become a presence. Not sound alone, but a tidal force pressing at it. against the earth. Every beat made her stomach alerge as if something vast was stirring within the planet itself. ravel that's pretty sweet like that's kind of that's kind of a cool little way of blending in with like natural with like i guess your surroundings like instead of like a like you know like a gecko or something getting on like a a branch or whatever and then blending in with or chameleon whatever blending in with its surroundings it would just be that but yes just with the sky pretty much yeah it's creepy to imagine that just keeps getting bigger and bigger under our like it went it went from nothing to just being the size of north america in one day almost instantly like you didn't see it arrive or anything like that what um they haven't mentioned anyone trying to fly into it or anything yet right okay i think they've just been flying around it if i remember or they've just been like flying near it i don't know but i don't think they've gone inside so real real world yeah how long on a clock before the united states military military throws some kind of drone into it i would immediately just hits that thing with hell storm missiles i don't know if they would do missiles but they would definitely they'd at least be like amazon's fucking flying a couple fucking drones and see if we can make sense of this thing yeah surely right what would be the most disturbing thing if you flew a drone into a cloud that you would see i i think grimace i think that'd be pretty grimace besides north america that'd be pretty alarming i think that would be that would be pretty alarming you're not wrong you were not wrong did you see that footage that went around of that um i think it was over the persian gulf or something one one of the waterways around middle east there was uh a ufo that was not like an alien like the traditional sense of the word like we just didn't know what kind of aerial vehicle it was um was like rocketing over the water and we like u.s government sees it instantly shoots a health storm missile at it uh and it just tinks off it like it hits it and just like the missile spins off the side that's not very uh that it keeps going that must made that probably let every other nation be like dude their fucking missiles suck you should just fucking like we should go in there and just fuck them up their missiles suck and everyone's like no that thing's gotta be like an alien or something this is like an arson that's definitely like an alien dude that's definitely whatever i i think it's funny to imagine that there's just a terrified russian mig pilot in there like that got a one in a million like the missile hit just right off one piece of metal to deflect and he's in there like oh my gosh i was i was talking to a friend of mine who's in um like does like a lot of the secret world letter agency stuff and he said that he can talk about that that one since it leaked in his public info now but he said when that came out like the video of it and everything every high ranking agency was freaking out over it they're like who is this what is this how do we kill it we need a bigger weapon blah blah blah so again even funnier to imagine it's just a really scared russian pilot that somehow survived also to answer my own question too the scariest thing i've ever seen is when you're in a giant cloud and you're in a giant cloud if you were flying a drone into a giant cloud if i saw a giant and it's so that the cloud is the size of north america right right if it was a giant italian-american slurping spaghetti that would be uh that might that might be my greatest fear so by italian-american do you mean like uh hey i'm walking here kind or like uh mamma mia it could be anything sweaty sweating profusely sweating olive oil everyone's like it's raining olive oil it's because that's the sweat for the italian-american guy he's slurping it up do you have some do you have some beef with italians no definitely not no what gives you that idea what no so you you fly the drone to the cloud and he said there's a he looks his his his because he's huge right he sits he's yeah okay that's that's gonna be my next question so he's the size of the fourth america his giant nose turns towards the camera he looks at it he does he's a pretty good he's good that was okay that wasn't an italian you're like what are those sounds oh what also also after the no specification i don't think you can say you don't have a problem with the i don't man not at all which also what what voice is that it's not an italian that's a classic italian-american accent dude no no pretty good no what okay i should did you ask that question originally so you could set up an italian joke no okay i don't use minor situations like this to further prove that i dislike italian americans that's not you don't have to prove anything to me buddy you ain't gotta prove that i know all right that's not what i'm about okay hey that's not what i'm about he's a pretty goody okay and then he said and then he has the thing he has a giant uh he's a giant pepper cracker whatever he does and the people are screaming because they're getting better at her eyes more pepper tell me when to stop tell me when to stop is what he says just like that who who is this an attack on who are you targeting with this tell me when to stop you run the you run the drawer the drone to his eye he frowns at you he's wiping his hand he's wiping his hand on his eye he quickly gets his bowl of spaghetti back oh good one man it's a long day all right okay buddy we'll get through this look at me and you it's all right we'll get there we'll get there then it shifted the sound broke free of rhythm a single elongated groan wet and guttural sound and then it shifted the sound broke free of rhythm a single elongated groan wet and guttural groan wet and guttural sound and then it shifted the sound broke free of rhythm a single elongated groan wet and guttural poured from the cloud it rippled across the slurping spaghetti dude sorry good it rippled across the atmosphere like thick it rippled across the atmosphere like thick it rippled across the atmosphere like thick viscous is is is a pretty good shut up a pretty good shut up a pretty good shut up shut up i was i was i psyched myself out waiting on i was i was i psyched myself out waiting on i was i was i psyched myself out waiting on you to say that you to say that you to say that i started reading i started reading i started reading it rippled across the atmosphere like it rippled across the atmosphere like it rippled across the atmosphere like thick viscous liquid thick viscous liquid thick viscous liquid sloshing into every crag or crevice it sloshing into every crag or crevice it sloshing into every crag or crevice it could find could find could find ground itself vibrating under the sonic ground itself vibrating under the sonic ground itself vibrating under the sonic pressure pressure pressure it was enormous it was enormous it was enormous impossible impossible impossible something malignant something so vast something malignant something so vast something malignant something so vast that its moan reshaped the sky that its moan reshaped the sky that its moan reshaped the sky the pitch was almost beyond hearing the pitch was almost beyond hearing the pitch was almost beyond hearing subsonic yet torturously present subsonic yet torturously present subsonic yet torturously present low dragging reverberating with the low dragging reverberating with the low dragging reverberating with the weight of mass she could not comprehend weight of mass she could not comprehend weight of mass she could not comprehend the groan slithered and pulsed like the the groan slithered and pulsed like the the groan slithered and pulsed like the wet crack of Muscle tearing, sinew stretching, a predator yawning across the heavens. Her chest heaved, her stomach twisted, her fingers tingled with the pressure of sound. Her mind screamed against the comprehension. The noise was alive, shapeless yet aware. It hung in the room like a storm that could devour everything, pausing only to let its presence sink further into her bones before dragging itself back into a wet, shuddering growl. She ripped the headphones off, trembling, sweat prickling across her skin. The chamber was silent, but not really. The sound lingered, imprinted on her ribs and skull, crawling through her blood. Was that a voice? The intern monitoring the signal turned to her, pale and crying. No, it wasn't a voice. Then what was it? She stood slowly and left the room without speaking another word. The drumming resumed as normal. Project Cerberus Veil. Field Journal Entry. Dr. Mary Finn. Lead Meteorologist. Classified Level Omega. Date 2. 317 AM. GMT. Cloud remains stationary. Estimated diameter now exceeds 5,000 kilometers. Audio patterns continue. Rhythmic. Biological. Possibly vocal. Global symptoms reported. Neurological disruption. Auditory hallucinations. Emotional volatility. Mass hysteria. Thousands of casualties across different countries. Burst eardrums and internal hemorrhaging. Public unrest increasing. Governmental control deteriorating. A plan was initiated to obtain a visual of the sound source. Jonah's team ran three LiDAR sweeps from orbit, from a U-2 spy plane and from a modified weather balloon. Orbital scan. Returned no depth readings. Not zero, just nothing, as if struck open air for a thousand meters, then refused return. Plane scan. Logged one frame of internal structure. Looked like bone. A moment later, the image glitched, reloaded, and showed a perfect sphere the size of a mountain in static. What? Can we run that back one more time? Plane? Can you get another picture, please? Looked like bone. It glitched. Nothing was there. So we just said, fuck it. Nevermind. Balloons. Well, it kind of looked like blown, but then the picture finished and it was actually just a sphere the size of a mountain, which is perfectly reasonable given. Yeah. Yeah. Given the condition. Balloon feed. 20 minutes of telemetry before loss of signal, internal layers visible, fibrous, twitching. Once again, I'm going to need a clarification on that, Mr. Balloon. Final frame, a shape in the center, spindled, bowl-like, covered in Parmesan and marinara. Spindled. Elongated. Symmetrical. But wrong. Our analyst ran it through the edge detection software. The results were disturbing. They resembled a face, but only when you didn't look at it directly. The convergence of lines, folds, and textures that formed something odd. One technician collapsed during image review. She said she felt like he could see her. I saw it too, just once. It didn't scare me. It just made me feel ashamed. We've locked the files. Project code, servers veil. Access, visual AI system only. No human review permitted. Effective immediately. Personal note, Jonas agrees. There's something in there. He's gone south into the dark. I don't know when I'll see him again. I think it's stretching. I like, um, I like that entry a lot. I like the mention that it's like fibrous in there. Like they get close to it. It looks like these long like veins and arteries and stuff. Something I did think about when I look at it, I feel ashamed. And the mention of, uh, it looks like a face, but when you don't look directly at it, I don't think this is where the story is going, but this would be a cool way to write like the appearance of an angel, right? On earth, because they can be theoretically any size, right? Um, and they have like unlimited powers. So perhaps when like judgment day comes and they come to destroy the earth, they're the size of the planet, right? This giant structure that stretches over it. I don't think that's where it's going, but that could be a cool interpretation. It could also tie into like the boat off Africa saying God has returned and stuff like that. Yeah. All right. Phase three, the arms. Dr. Finn jolted from her sleep, her phone vibrating on the steel table. She had passed out at her desk, overworked and exhausted. She grabbed her phone. The screen read Jonas DAP. Jonas's voice came sharp, urgent. Are you seeing the last readings? Her pulse quickened. Cloud had been. Behaving differently. The drumming was heavier, more insistent. Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump. I'm watching. It's intense, but nothing new yet. Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump. Intense? Intense doesn't cover this. There's no sonic pulses. Every monitoring station on every continent, they're aligning. The underside of the cloud, it's splitting along a straight vertical seam. The satellites caught it just before it closed again. A seam? Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump. Like, it's preparing to open, and I don't mean metaphorically. The voice dropped, urgent. There's a pattern in the pulses. Rhythm's building. I don't know how else to say this. The drumming? It's a fucking heartbeat, Married. It's getting faster. You need to be ready. Something is happening. Whatever you do, don't go outside. Whatever happens next, it's not just a sound. It's alive. She felt it in her chest. Before she could reply, a vibration deep in bone and blood. The wet resonance of something enormous stirring. Jonas, I- Stay calm. Lock yourself in. Go to the bunker, now. The monitors are there. You can observe. Whatever you do, do not fucking step outside. Then the line went dead. A heartbeat later, across the northern hemisphere, a vertical fracture tore through the sky like a wound. It widened with deliberate slowness. Layers of mist, peeled back in fleshy folds. Shadows deepened, bending the space around it. A deafening, sticky squelch like tearing flesh echoed across the hemisphere. Behind it was a darkness that seemed to breathe, vast and unfathomable. A darkness that bent perception. No camera could capture it. No eye on the planet was built to perceive such a biblical event. Without trimmer or trumpet, a cloud opened. I like that, without trimmer or trumpet. That calls back to the whole, biblical rapture, end times kind of imagery. What lay inside was not lightless, but unknowable. Some said it was a mouth. Some said it was a wound. And from it came the sound again. Louder now. Clearer. Something wet and vast and pulsing. Something impossible. Not breathing. Mawing. Across the world, people looked up in unison. Some screamed. Some dropped to their knees. Others stood still and watched, transfixed, as the first of the arms descended. Long, tapering limbs like serpents. Oily. Black and glistening. Emerging from the wound in the sky in slow spirals. Some were miles long, others kilometers. They swam through the air like they were underwater. Languid. Elegant. Hypnotic. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands. They moved across the sky like a nest of worms. Worms poured through a funnel. Coiling. Searching. One by one, the arms reached down into the earth, slithering through cities, across oceans, over fields. It didn't take long for the first to be taken. A man in Tokyo screamed as an arm squirmed its way around him. His fingers dug into the strange meat as the grip around his waist tightened, pulling him skyward. His cry split the morning air. In a European city, a young couple ran through the streets, hand in hand, a woman tripped, an arm twisted around her ankle. Her boyfriend tried to pull her free. The arm retracted, twisting her upward with such force that his hands tore away from hers. He fell back on his back, begging only for the arm to return for him. This is sick, dude. Like the giant shape. These hands come down and grab. This feels very Edo. It reminds me of Hellstar Remina. The one about the giant, the planet. The planet that shows up and people panic, try to sacrifice someone to it. The doomsday planet. Yeah, yeah. I love the idea of like a rapture almost, but it's like the arms of this entity swallow you up, comes down like tongues and pulls you towards its mouth. In a Venezuelan village, a mother was snatched from her courtyard. Her young daughter clung desperately to her leg, screaming for her mother to come back down. Her tiny hands gripped her mother's ankle in desperation to save her, but the child's fingers cannot. Hold. They were ripped upward hundreds of feet in a matter of seconds. Her mother's body ascended, twisting elegantly like a dancer in midair. Gravity did not forgive the child. She fell, limbs flailing, hair whipping across her face, gliding with the unforgiving earth. The sickening thump echoed across the village. Some were taken screaming. Others laughed, lifted as if ascending into a dark ecstasy. Cultists, convinced of divine favor, threw themselves towards the putrid appendages. Arms outstretched, their voices raised in hymns or chants. dance of joy begging for rapture the arms took only a few of them with the same cold precision pulling them upward as their ecstasy transformed into terror mid-flight that's also a terrifying notion that as it's pulling you up even people that wanted to be taken by it have this realization yeah post-up clarity kind of thing yeah yeah i guess in the way of like they're crazed and they think that they want this and then as soon as it starts happening they're like oh shit wait never mind kind of thing the view from halfway down across continents people fought clawed resisted but it was futile each arm performed the same ritual one human at a time spiraling upward towards the yawning darkness then returning to the earth for its next selection cities became theaters of chaos streets emptied in seconds traffic snarled and stalled windows rattled under the roar of thousands being drawn skyward as humanity unleashed below you parents clawed for their children children screamed for their parents people tried to leap from balconies bridges and rooftops only to be grabbed mid-fall last moments of tangled damps of limbs and terror in remote fields farmers and herders watched as the arms swept across the horizon livestock scattered terrified the ground shaking under the thrumming resonance of the arms one farmer caught a glimpse of his wife being lifted screaming crying his name he tried to run the arm retracted she was gone leaving him kneeling in mud screaming into the indifferent sky over the first 12 hours over 40 million were gone more than the entire population of canada by 48 hours estimates climbed past 90 million entire nations devoured by the sky children the elderly the healthy the sick criminals priests lovers the lost the arms moved like a living tide slow but inexorable elegant in motion but grotesque in function each human was treated as a singular prize twisted upward toward the infinite process horrifyingly meticulous dr finn watched from the bunker as the monitors flared with the screams of abductions faces contorted in panic joy or disbelief she could hear them through the cameras screams and prayer that layered upon one another like a living symphony of terror the arms paused briefly over cities observing coiling and uncoiling their thick veins pulsate seemed to savor the fear then with chilling patience they selected again dragging the living toward the maw over the 57 hours the northern hemisphere emptied in a relentless mechanical almost ritualistic harvest every arm returned repeatedly to the sky's wound each human plucked and lifted until the air was thick with echoes of terror and awe by the final hour dr finn could only stare at the screens numb the arms paused at last holding their harvest law for a long silent moment as if counting observing savoring then they began the slow deliberate retreat one by one carrying their captives towards the unknowable darkness that had given them form over four hours the sky was filled with the darkness the sky had closed and survivors emerged from false shelters the world was left in silence only the sound of the drums remained um um the thumb project cerberus veil field journal entry dr marie fan lead meteorologist classified level omega day 3 11 11 pm gmt the formation opened an aperture as to diameters 3 000 kilometers across arms tongues emerged thousands movements suggest intelligence not random selection appeared non-biological we can't predict it i watched them be taken god forgive me we tried everything interference signal jamming sonic weapons russia sent a nuke to hell with the aftermath of that it didn't go off it was just swallowed by the cloud the arms are not affected the world is hollow the monitors lie dead their screens froze with faces i will never forget even the saved recordings failed to convey the scale of what happened the arms the screams the sounds that followed entire populations take the precision of a surgeon the cruelty of a predator the indifference of an animal 90 million more perhaps a hundred million i can't be certain the northern hemisphere is a graveyard with no corpses in the middle of the sky and yet the sky is calm deceptively calm the wound has closed the drum it continues always beneath everything a low insistent pulse that will not be ignored personally i don't know what to do next every theory every model every calculation is meaningless against this we are observers of an event we are its remnants survivors only in technical sense and every other way we are gone there's nothing to fight nothing to flee only to record only to bear witness and i will until the end what else is there to do i really love that segment that was sick yeah that whole last hand is coming down and pulling everyone up yeah that was very uh engaging i have a couple thoughts after like i'm curious after like i want to finish the story to see how it wraps up before i like start asking questions but yeah i mean that was a great way to like cement you know i guess just the action of the story this big mass event a really fun way to do a rapture by the way and cool you know like we see that a lot but that's a fun way of having like kind of a uh doomsday event or a rapture or cleansing taking kind of what we know or predictions of what we think will happen and using that uh against us in a fun way so yeah this episode's sponsored by cash app some of us on this podcast have been scammed i'm not going to go into who exactly but we're furious they were tricked into giving sensitive information and then locked out of their account okay thank god it's about isaiah isaiah not me and that only gets worse this time of year scammers know the holidays are busy for everyone which can make us all targets for scams that's why cash app builds in protection to help you keep your money safe while you're checking off your shopping list if you're about to send money to someone for 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didn't tell us it just says terms apply i don't know what the terms are that's money that's cash app that's how we're ending that one too are you serious that's how we're ending that phase four the belch oh it's gonna spit up all the bones and stuff excellent one month and four days passed no arms no movement from the sky cloud remained hanging impossibly still above the atlantic like a wound that refused to heal most nations had abandoned any attempt to engage with it some still broadcast official statements hollow robotic reassurances but no one listened the world had been held in place breathless afraid to look up held hostage by our new god cities went dark markets crashed faiths fractured people starved millions gathered in open fields begging to be taken millions took their own lives in the face of the inevitable others locked the doors and prayed to be forgotten dr marie finn stayed she slept inside the bunker beneath the north strain climate facility she hadn't left in weeks the others were gone some taken when the arms descended some fled some too broken to continue she kept her notes her logs her rituals and tools of data and control but every day it grew harder to believe that any of it mattered ben's console crackled life at 3 58 a.m the signal was faint washed and static but the voice on the other end was unmistakable finn jonas said quick and hushed like he was afraid of the sound itself might carry tell me you're awake i'm awake her voice was brittle syllables clipped she had been awake for days what is it i've been tracking something pressure readings from the south atlantic buoy network they're tanking a storm not a current shift it's like the air itself is leaking you've said that before well this is different his breath was uneven shaky the drop isn't local it's global everything is bleeding toward the cloud that wins everything it's pulling like like it's he stopped himself and said it anyway like it's inhaling phoenix sailed through her nose we don't know what it's doing i do know it's hungry and it's patient but a low laugh broke out that wasn't joy christ i can't believe we're still pretending this is about data this is about survival jonas she said doubt in her own words is it There was a pause before he spoke again. We're all dead anyway. It's just a matter of time before it gets hungry again. And when it does. He trailed off, static filling the gap. You've seen the fields. You've seen the ones begging for it to take them. That's not living. That's meat waiting to be picked up. Stop. Why? You want the truth, Married? There's no stopping it. There's no bargaining. We're not even ants to it. Ants get noticed before they're stepped on. Or, sorry, this thing. He stopped abruptly. The next sound, a sharp hiss in the line. Jonas? Silence. She waited another three seconds and set the receiver down, her fingers trembling against the console. She clasped her hands together, lowered her head, and for the first time in her life, she began to pray. She waited. Nothing. At exactly 4.17 a.m., one month, 14 days since the cloud arrived, the sky opened again. No warning. No signal. Just a sudden shifting of the cloud's center. Folds drawing back, parting like lips peeled open by invisible hands. The drumming was constant, but this time something new came. The sound began low, wet, rolling, like a cauldron of bile tipping somewhere beyond the stratosphere. Pressure dropped. The wind died. Then came a vast guttural exhalation that seemed to surge from the planet's core and shatter the sky above. A noise like the entire sky dry heaving, viscous and phlegm-soaked. The kind of sound that makes the stomach knot before the ears understand. A single, cataclysmic guttural bellow that cracked windows on every continent and shattered the upper atmosphere. The ground shook, tides recoiled, and birds fell from the sky. It wasn't just sound, it was force. A pressure wave of wet breath and raw heat, like an open furnace filled with rotting flesh. It swept the globe within minutes. People clutched their heads and screamed as their ears bled. Animals bolted and dropped dead mid-run. Birds fell in flocks. Machines died. Satellites blinked out. Those at the epicenter could only scream as the force burst them into nothingness. And the smell. Cinched so vast, so cellular. It soaked through walls. It crawled into lungs and stayed there. The taste of spoiled meat and copper. People vomited. Others tore at their flesh, trying to escape it. Most were dead in seconds. And then came the blood. From deep within the beast, beyond the gauze and folds of mist, something ruptured. A pressure valve? A gullet? A wound? No one knows. A tidal wave of thick, arterial blood. Expelled with such volume and speed that it fell like monsoon rain over half the globe. Red soaked the ocean and rivers. Red splashed across rooftops and deserts and jungles. Half the earth painted in blood. It steamed where it landed, hot and thick. And it reeked of iron and something sweet. Something wrong. Some said they heard whispers in the rain. The clouds peeled back and for the first and only time, Bean was seen. Truly seen. For exactly ninety-three seconds, the sky was clear. Not in fragments, not distorted. It filled the sky. It was the sky. Its shape defied thought. Impossibly symmetrical, yet shifting as though the universe itself was trying and failing to remember it. Its surface was a chaos of textures. Pinkish-gray membranes that pulsed with a rhythm older than time. Boneplate ridges spiraling in geometries our minds cannot hold. Spindled nerves that writhed like lightning frozen mid-strike. Each wrinkle, each twitch seemed to hum with awareness, as if the cosmos itself had been stitched into its flesh. Its face, or what passed for one, stared down through a million lidless, goat-like eyes. Some were as vast as mountains. Some flickered like dying stars, all simultaneously seeing and knowing. Our thoughts recoiled. Our vision trembled. And yet, we could not look away. Then it did something impossible. It smiled. No teeth. No lips. No gesture that humans could recognize. Just a slow, dreadful unfurling of facial tissue. An imitation of something it had only ever observed in our species. A suggestion of amusement aimed at the futility of existence. The motion folded in on itself in ways that should have torn it apart, yet held. We felt it. Not just in our eyes. But in our blood. In our marrow. At the corners of thought we didn't know existed. And then the sky swallowed itself once more. The memory lingered. Shapes impossible to describe etched themselves into our minds. Geometry that should not exist haunted our dreams. And the faint, impossible smile echoed in every shadow we have ever crossed again. Silence fell. Not peace. But silence. And then, nothing. No arms. No sound. Just the repetition of fear felt through the drum of the cloud. The wind returning at last. The stench never faded. Never fully gone. The red rain soaked into everything. No government spoke publicly again after that. People stopped going outside. Entire towns were found empty. Dead. Others worshipped. Others killed themselves. The world faded. Project Cerberus Bell, Dr. Maureen Finn. Classified. Day 44. It belched. I don't know how else to describe it. It expelled something vast and foul into our atmosphere. Not an attack. Not a gesture of dominance. A function. A bodily function. Like I forgot we were here. The sound, I cannot put it into words. I felt it in the roots of my teeth. In the gaps between cells. It broke something in the sky. And the smell. The smell is still here. Clinging to the vents. To my skin. It soaked its way into the bunker. The blood is everywhere. We've confirmed it's organic. Human and something else. For ninety-three seconds it let us see it. I don't think we were supposed to. But I don't think it cares. I haven't slept since. I don't believe it. I don't believe anyone is left to read this. But I'm still writing. There's no scientific language left for what's happening. This is not an anomaly. This is a presence. This is an extinction event. This is such an interesting, like you see this impossible thing, again, similar to Hellstar. And it's not really like there's some, oh, how do we beat it? Or how do we survive? We're not even like an I am legend. Like this is the last person writing to valiantly hold the line for humanity. It's just like, yeah, so this thing's going to end the world. And that's it. That's all you get. Yeah. Very likely it's going to happen. A hopeless kind. Which I mean, for an extinction event, that's what it should feel like, which I will give the story a lot of credit for is that it feels utterly hopeless. And I think that like it's conveyed really well in the doctor too. It also like, like, like, yes, insert joke, left crafty and, uh, and cosmic horror and whatnot, but it is cosmic horror. It's a, it's a, it's, and cosmic horror and whatnot but it is cosmic horror in the way most people overlook because a lot of the time people just focus on the aesthetic of it because that's like what Lovecraft talked about and stuff like things that are hard to describe the imagery of it but more so cosmic horror is the idea which I got into it some of my most recent YouTube videos I'm not going to rehash the same points but it's more often the concept of something that either we can't perceive or a thing that doesn't care to perceive us right the the analogy I used in my video was a fish understanding a license plate like imagine what a bug what a beetle would think of a computer right it would have no if a beetle was able to understand it would come across like electricity electricity and servers and you know interfaces and all these things that are so far beyond its understanding because it's finding something that doesn't care about beetles right so scale that up humanity has a creature that comes across that uses us as a food source but like she says it forgot we were there like it belched and the belch annihilated people it destroyed you know millions it destroyed part of the earth but it's just it doesn't care about us why would it care about us we're like smaller than ants to it it's no different from bacteria that are on the floor as you walk through a room um I I like that horror the idea of like things that have a disregard for humanity yeah even even like the people that are religiously worshiping it it's almost like there is a comfort in worshiping something this powerful because then at least it's like well even if it kills me even if it ruins me I still mattered like it still cares about me to some degree rather than being totally disregarded like even in world religions you may not have a say in the end of the world but you were at least a part of it it at least knew about you to some degree yeah but to have something in the world that doesn't even consider your existence that's terrifying I think it's hard for humans to comprehend that too with just like the level of consciousness we have and stuff yeah and how we disregard are things that have like a lower self like sense of consciousness and everything yeah it puts the shoe on the other foot yeah it like turns you know where we are to them because there's never been other than like the cosmos which we're just like kind of tapping into as far as we've seen there's never been something discovered or something built so to speak that hasn't had humanity in mind right like even if we see an image of some far-off galaxy it's like well we built the camera that took the picture or if we you know every invention that's ever been made was by humans for humans or like in relation to humans or whatever but to come across something that we are completely inconsequential to that's terrifying it's never happened to us before right i think that's where like cosmic war really shines in instances like this phase five after birth it began to harden not all at once but gradually day by day as the blood congealed under heat and rain the bright red stains that had covered oceans cities forests darkened thickened with reddish clots then began to bond what had first been described as organic blood now revealed itself to be something more a precursor a fluid waiting to become on the 15th day after the belch the first major surface scan from what remained of of the leo satellites returned images of the images of a continuous sheet forming across the atlantic basin fibrous pale rigid in places like cooled wax spread over the surface of the earth at first it seemed like sediment or ice but it flexed beneath solar radiation it tightened beneath a lunar light it swelled seismic equipment registered subtle movement microscopic contractions as if breathing through the crust the red had become pink gray the pink gray was becoming skin a skin that now stretched uninterrupted from portugal to the eastern edge of the caribbean the scientists who remain debated this transformation and hushed mechanical tones no conclusions were reached there was no baseline no comparative models but dr marie finn understood this was not an invasion this was not a divine punishment this was gestation earth or what remained of it was being blanketed in something alive not absorbed not consumed prepared and then at 8 46 pm on the 46th day the cloud moved it shifted without sound without storm without effort not blown not carried not pulled by gravity it simply drifted as if an unseen cord had been cut as if the process in the west had reached some threshold it took six hours to traverse the ocean six hours of silence people in asia and australia watched an approach the spiraling gauze blotting out the sky as if it was swallowing it whole they had seen the videos they knew what would come still they watched some hoped it would pass it didn't at 2 17 local time the cloud settled above the indian ocean the sky began to open again and the arms began their terrible descent project cerberus veil dr marie finn classified day 46 11 44 pm cerberus veil final transmission the blood is not inert it is a matrix a forming tissue something between placenta and a cocoon still soft in parts but solidifying already three quarters of the atlantic sea floor is covered in a single sheet our instruments can't pierce it it's warm it pulses every seven minutes it is alive the cloud has moved to the indian ocean the initial sign suggests the process is starting again the same pattern same altitude same shape same silence i believe this is the reproductive behavior a life cycle this thing or system or entity is using the atmosphere to sew itself it does not need us it does not hear us it does not need us we were not chosen we were not rejected we were incidentally present what we thought was anomaly was a phase a part of something older larger maybe a million years old maybe eternal it doesn't matter what matters is what's being left behind a blanket a membrane a womb stretched across the earth there is no rescue coming there's no top of the food chain there is only the shape behind the clouds and what it leaves in its wake i am writing this from a world already half covered in skin already half dead tomorrow i will step outside and feel it for myself i want to know if it responds i want to know if it knows i'm here that that's so hard i love that she's she's come to the point that it's um it's meaningless like the world's gonna end one way or the other but that last line about i want to know if it knows i'm here goes back to what i was saying it's like at least if you worship it you can be a part right at least you you weren't just an incident an accident it feels like there feels like one last ditch effort of having some kind of conclusion to this that it like that it mattered to you in a way like kind of just a bit of a selfish desire to be like i need i needed to know that i was here whatever yeah you know i'm i mattered i'm a person i exist yeah it's a desperate it's like fighting i mean the reference people make with most cosmic stuff is like it's a it's a god figure right it's like yelling out at god you know a desperation to be known to exist that your existence mattered uh in the face of something that doesn't care it'd be like if the bug in your house like the the way a bug feels about you is indifferent to you if if your ladybug refers the ladybug in your home refers to you as some deity or some devil or something it doesn't matter because you don't think about it it's like a desperation to need to be known need to be seen so finally phase six final breath the surface of the planet is no longer visible a thick swirling fog blankets every inhospitable continent every ocean rising miles into the sky doesn't move with the wind ignores the weather simply clings dense luminous and unnaturally still satellite feeds what few remain show the same impossible formations above earth's surface layered mist spiraling but unmoving no rotation no eye just folds just gauze stacked and suspended jonas no longer checks the time he hasn't for days his oxygen mask kisses its final shallow breaths each one thinner than the last the generators have gone silent the lights burn only in intermittent flickers casting the facility in a pulse of dim goes like hues every room is empty everyone else is dead jonas lies flat on the cold concrete floor cheek pressed against it one hand spread wide as if to hold the earth steady his lips move forming soundless words but he stops he doesn't need words he needs to listen thumb thumb thumb thumb thumb a heartbeat it was in the cloud it was in the sky now it's here beneath his bones inside the crust deep in the dark belly of the world jonas let out a broken laugh that cracked into a sob his eyes glistened unfocused staring at the ceiling as if he could see through it to the sky above there are two of them now he whispers barely audible fog outside pulses with a faint internal light not lightning not fire something vascular something alive his throat tightens his chest is heavy the hiss of his mask is a thin trickle of air barely enough to maintain hope pulls it away as i fall beside him silence rushes in he smiles weak and delirious teeth streaked with blood from biting his tongue raw in his sleep we were the womb jonas had never been a religious man used to scoff at prayer a ritual but now on the floor of a dying world the last man standing a gun trembling in his hand he moused the words anyway fragments of hymns half-remembered psalms apologies to no one turns the gun on himself comforted by the realization it will all be over soon the fog above glows brighter it folds pulsing with rhythm like veins like lungs jonas closes his eyes the weight of suffocation pressing him into the floor his last thought is not of escape not of resistance only awe far beyond earth the silence of space first cloud drifts on searching for the next world the earth excels its final breath and becomes something new man how sick was that it's not that it was hard to get bought in it was just like how many times have we seen the thing where it's like doctors doing into a log of some kind right and then we we're getting into this part with a lot of a lot of love a lot lot of lovecraftian things which is like the tentacles all that kind of stuff right that we see a lot and with with lovecraftian monster stuff that just kind of goes hand in hand um but i feel like it really picked up and i feel like i was like really cemented in when after the the rapture part but then when you find out that it kind of feels like this rapture end time thing is actually a creature coming prepping a planet to become basically itself i like to think that that creature is another planet right it feeds off a planet yeah and then it molds and shifts and then it flies away and kind of does the same thing so almost like these prophecies that were man-made were true and that this rapture was coming but it just means something completely different which i think is cool it was about it yeah i'm curious what you think though of this idea of could you think you could have done this without having the like kind of stereotypical lovecraftian and not to say stereotypical because i wouldn't say that like i mean like eventually the rapture is off into some fun stuff with like you see the eyes and you see like it's smiling it doesn't really have like a face it's just muscle tissue that it's mimicking and then it understands and it's like expressing emotion in that way but could it be done in a way where it doesn't have this like i don't know like the very stereotypical lovecraftian like you know the tentacle type thing and people going mad do you think like the people going mad or insane is that something that's like necessary when tackling these like very large existential like leaps and bounds that kind of goes hand in hand with lovecraft you know i think if you're describing a creature the size of the earth that is going to be the death of everyone i think you kind of got to mention people go insane because i feel like any rationality would go right out the window right like i think so i guess it's that it's like you look at it and you go insane almost like there was like a mystical property to it versus the inevitability of like oh this i'm going to die that leaves you insane to me those are two different things i think like no matter what you definitely do go insane but i guess there was like a mysticism to that before where it's like if you even looked at it it was so appalling that you went insane you know that's very that's like a very lovecraft thing yeah i i don't think it's the look of it they go insane now granted it would be terrifying to see a creature that big right the size of the sky that would probably be alarming especially if it was shapes that like you can't really like it's something the way it's described as like it's a mist or a fog around the earth i like the idea that when it's over the earth it's like things are just a different color it's not even on the same realm of existence that we are entirely we just kind of see glimpses of it so i feel like that's certainly imagery that would make you like go mad but i feel like it's more so the impending doom of humanity you know whatever religion you follow that doesn't matter whatever connections you made with your life doesn't matter i feel like that's where the insanity comes in more so maybe not necessarily insanity but panic would maybe be a bit more fitting you know no i mean i think that's not really the people's minds breaks just that they become so desperate i guess it was it's just before it was like don't go out and don't look at it i'm just it was just a it was just a it was just a it's a very standard lovecraftian thing i don't know i mean like the the love to me if i had any criticism for the story was that the weakest part was just the lovecraftian nature of the beast itself everything else was so fun you're talking about the physical appearance yes yes yeah that that that's kind of here or there i think it'd probably be a bit stronger if you just left the physical appearance of it as the mention that it's like a shape and then when it cut when it gets closer to the ground things are a different color the idea i feel like that's more effective than the giant shapes in the sky the the the different colors impactful i like that idea that's just like a hue that's placed over everything this the the story i think does well with what it's trying to achieve which is basically like re-identifying what a rapture is and i think like it feels like even the ending is the earth becomes impregnated and becomes a human being and then it's like it's like it's like it's like it's like it becomes its own entity if you looked at the creature like a sperm cell going into the earth like a womb and that was the mass event it's like a thing hitting the earth and like impregnates the earth in that way and then it like spores out or does something i feel like that would have been a really fun way to go about it because really like i said the only criticism is that we get a lot of like similar imagery and things granted like you were saying very uh junji ito of the guy being there isn't just people floating up into a light it's tentacles coming down and grabbing people i think that's fun and like the way that it went and it is you get all these different people on earth and different scenarios was really fun and horrifying i just don't know and this is just me as like feedback or just like you know food for thought obviously it's like i after reading the story it's easy to make these it's easy to say these things but just wondering if if that could have been or like you know for future work if it's we're looking at ways of like there's a traditional way of this of doing this love crafty and thing how do you continuously flip it on its head you know how do you do a love crafty and thing where there is no tentacles where there is no kind of like thing where people are like i look at it and i go completely mad which these are all things i love but i'm just wondering because the idea is so cool that i'm wondering uh could it have just been a thing where it's like out in the cosmos almost like a sperm cell hits you know the earth like a meteor like the like a meteor hitting earth is actually like i don't think it's necessarily like a sperm and egg metaphor as much as it is like a bacterial thing almost i mean it doesn't have to be i'm just saying in my in my rendition if you had to do this thing of like earth regrowing i'm just saying it like that's another kind of unknown kind of thing of it's like an asteroid hitting earth is an asteroid hitting the earth and causing like a cataclysmic event is something very similar to what we're doing here which is just like an end of time things that was just like it wasn't even it just happened because you were there you know it just happened because like you it there was no divine intervention of why it hit your planet you were just in a way and to me that also taps into that like you know meaning the almost like the very nihilistic view of like life as we know it and like humans trying to comprehend like a larger part of the story that they're a part of which is like nothing you know i think well i yeah i think you can do you can certainly do it without like the standard visuals like hell hell star remnant as an example of one that's just a planet that eats other planets but there's also uh like the the thing i just covered on the main channel that which gave chase you never see any visual there it's just a creature that's implied to be beneath or above the ice maybe that like it's not even called a creature just a presence that like contorts people's memories but you never see anything of it um and i do want to say i give props to you author too for describing the creature and that kind of thing i think that like an easy way out a lot of the time is that you do get that thing that you don't ever see it and you kind of like lean on the person's imagination which is effective because you can never be disappointed because you're kind of like making the own you're you're making your own visual that satisfies you in your head but i do have a lot of respect for people who do put themselves out there and they're like this is what i think would be the creepiest weirdest thing or like this is what i think visually when when he was describing the clouds broke open and it was like a series of shapes and stuff that were symmetrical but not right and stuff like that i was almost imagining like a kaleidoscope yeah and like as the kaleidoscope is moving you can see different like bones and stuff appear then disappear and stuff like that like it's here but it's not here that's what made me whenever you said the angel appearing that's kind of what i like when i think of like a kaleidoscope it almost has that kind of like heavenly vibe to it just the way that it's like twisting and you know just the shape conveying it's almost beautiful you know yeah um the millions of eyes too that's also leans back on angel imagery i was trying to see if the day count had anything to do with like revelation but the the days of revelation are what mentioned is like 70 weeks that's like the imagery people use so i didn't really see that well what i found too is after you said that i thought something similar was like well maybe this is kind of like a it does have like a almost like a biblical aspect to it but it's kind of fun because then it completely disregards it in the same way that like the people in the story start to disregard that too or they're just like oh this has no meaning like there's no kind of like there's no grand plan to any of this you know like i i enjoyed that the futility kind of fell into our lap as well it's like the reader um with the characters yeah the idea of like um it starts out just like maybe we can figure it out maybe we can there's not really like you figure it out from descriptions but there's not really explanation given to it i imagine this is like some parasite some giant creature that its life cycle is just going to a planet and impregnating the earth with like its offspring then moving on to another planet almost like the way um a is it a bot fly that plants their eggs on or a grabber fly or whatever it plants its eggs on other things comes to a planet lays it and goes which implies there could be a whole other world of these creatures that size or maybe these things are the small parasites to something much larger we're a speck of a speck like again it gets into the idea of humanity's unimportance in the universe which is something we're very unfamiliar with which i think is cool and where a lot of the fear comes from um but i liked a lot of the individual moments i like the idea of jonas being the last man standing i think that's a cool idea the it reminded me of soma at the end of that game where it's one person alone at the bottom of the ocean being kept alive by machines um it's like the last person of the planet killing themselves before this planet becomes whatever it's going to be next another one of these parasite things perhaps the uh the idea too that the idea too that the planet probably was just flying by and then it noticed that there was life on our planet and then it needed that life to reproduce is fun because it also means that because that creature is flying around there was other planets with life that spawned itself it's just kind of like an even i don't know like that that cycle is just interesting to where you think about it you're like oh fuck it probably fed off somebody else you know like we're not alone in this universe and stuff and like it's all just it's it's just so fucking hopeless or like you know it's just people like you just don't even comprehend these things i don't know it's a big big existential questions which are which is just really fun but it's just it's just a fun uh fun visual fun story really well written too i just want to say there's a lot of great little segments of like yeah beautiful beautiful uh descriptions and just like the the flow of uh ideas and just yeah like i said descriptions and stuff it was just really really really nice i really like a lot of the imagery i really love a lot of the references to the rapture and stuff not just because it's me but also because i just think that's a fun tie-in between the two um and i also really dug like pretty much all the descriptors for stuff like the hands coming down or the belch and stuff i thought those were sick honestly if i had one critique for the whole story the only thing that i'm like yeah you could have done without that is the mention of the anomalous agency or whatever that didn't really come up anywhere and i think it's cooler if he's just like another meteorologist or another scientist because it's not like that anomalous group offered any deeper insight into what was happening here um so it didn't really come up anywhere so i think it's cooler if humanity's even more unprepared and he's just in the i don't know the weather service or something like that yeah other than that i think it was a stellar story with great writing and i really love the creature i love how futile everything was i like how inventive the creature is it's like a giant bacteria or mold that lays over the earth and pulls everyone up then reproduces um it was sick i really loved it again this offer this author pitiful scream 97 has two more stories i sleep with my window closed down a thousand morning people we'll have his stuff linked in the description be sure to support him because he deserves it and of course pitiful scream thank you for posting an r slash creepcast it means a lot if i had any uh critique i don't think i have any critique i think just subjective thoughts kind of going off what you're saying just to tie it up to is i'd like and this is just a personal preference i kind of i like when stories don't go like the giant government route whatever like i know we were joking about like the meteorologist thing but it would be kind of cool if it was just like this is just a single person like this is just somebody in a field where it's like they they can still see this anomaly and they can still see this anomaly and they can still see this anomaly happening and they don't comprehend it there's no way that we'll ever comprehend it so like having them be scientists too feels not irrelevant but just like you know because having them be scientists helps them be like trying to make under make sense of everything but i still think you can do that with like a smaller just like a yeah i don't know if that makes sense that's just but that's once again it's just subjective that's just me being like oh my personal preference so who gives a fuck but that's just the one thought i had um otherwise it was awesome man yeah i appreciate you writing it thank you for posting it and i'll see you next time bye thank you for posting it to the creepcast subreddit we'll leave a link in the description as well to that post and if you guys want to write stuff fucking put it up on the server man there's people and please please for the love of god keep writing yes you're this good like one month in oh my gosh dude yeah and that's and that's the thing too is like i mean every story you write you're just going to figure more and more stuff more more and more uh stuff out about what you enjoy and like ways that you wish you could take stories so this is another opportunity as well to just tell people write things be be upset with what you wrote and just continue to write and use this hopefully as like just an experience just to be creative and make something fucking cool because your story is something we want to read so uh until next time guys thank you so much to our audio listeners if you're listening right now on spotify or apple podcast thanks for giving us a good reading there and also thank you to our patrons we appreciate you um and we will see you guys in the next one bye to you guys later uh yeah it's real shame that hunter you guys getting here right now but he's telling me on my headset that he thinks this story is stupid and he hates all of you for uploading stories to a creepcaster are you sure are you sure you want me to tell everyone that okay yeah he says he says he doesn't appreciate you he says that you're awful he says that you should get a life or a job and more importantly get out of his uh and also uh he hates his mother and wife yeah bye you all new line of fire the thrilling new crime drama the world sees us as heroes but they don't know what the job really costs one family of federal agents it's one thing to put yourself in danger it's different when it's your family balance's duty to their country an assassin is still out there and each other how do you protect yourself the world and the people you love at the same time every case hits home on line of fire monday on nbc