Why do the floorboards creak in perfect Fibonacci sequences? What's causing those iridescent stains that move across walls? How do empty rooms echo with phantom conversations? What makes the broken security cameras capture impossible images, and why do mice travel in perfectly geometric patterns through the walls?
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I don’t do drugs. I am drugs.
― Salvador Dali
The house on Elm Street had been abandoned for months, yet smoke still curled from its chimney at odd hours of the night. Detective Sarah Chen stood across the street, watching the steady stream of hollow-eyed visitors shuffle through the front door. They entered as desperate addicts; they left changed.
Inside, Marcus stirred the bubbling solution with mechanical precision. His hands moved without conscious thought, following instructions that had been carved into his mind three weeks ago. The formula wasn’t written in any chemistry textbook---the symbols surrounding the makeshift laboratory pulsed with their own dim light, and the containers holding the base ingredients seemed to breathe.
The drug they called “Communion” didn’t just alter perception---it opened doors. Users reported seeing loved ones who had been dead for years, hearing voices from empty rooms, feeling watched by invisible eyes. But Marcus knew the truth. The dead weren’t visiting; the users were being invited elsewhere.
Jenny collapsed in the corner, her latest hit coursing through her veins. The dingy walls of the drug house faded away, replaced by vast underground chambers filled with architectural impossibilities. Beings of shadow and hunger welcomed her with grotesque warmth, their whispers promising eternal unity. She tried to scream, but her vocal cords belonged to something else now.
As dawn broke, Detective Chen counted seven people entering the house overnight. Only three had emerged. The missing persons reports would pile up, as they had in twelve other cities where similar operations had sprouted like spores from some central source. The authorities called it an epidemic, but Chen suspected it was something far more deliberate---a harvesting.
