Survival

the bar other than some tables and chairs being knocked over and thrown to the side. The Barman was as adamant as everyone else that what he saw had been real. The officers still doubted the specifics of the accounts, they had to, they had never heard anything like it. There had clearly been some mass hallucination going on here. They had heard of these kinds of things happening before, so that seemed to be their best guess as to what was going on. The chairs and tables were knocked over by scared people as they had this shared delusion, that's what they would write up on their report.  Someone had already tipped off a local TV station and a reporter nearby had already made it to the bar and began questioning everyone about this. She was as sceptical about their tales of monsters and vanishing people as the police. It seemed too incredible to be true, like dragons and unicorns, it was just plain silly and there was nothing to report other than a bunch of crazy people sharing some mass hallucination.

“I have a video camera set up in the corner” The Barman said to one of the Officers, “That will prove what we're saying is true”.

The so far unimpressed reporter overheard this and dashed over to him.

BRANDON’S HOUSE

“There” Danny said pointing to Brandon's TV, “Can you see them?”

Brandon was too busy looking at whatever was going on in the middle of the screen to notice anything else, but looked over to where Danny's finger was pointing.

That's when he saw them; Shadowy forms that seemed to flicker in and out briefly for the odd second, before vanishing again.

The afternoon had become like something out of a movie. Brandon had been sitting down, chilling out watching the local game on TV, pizza and beer in hand, when there was a furious banging at his front door. When he opened it, Danny was there, looking dishevelled, dried blood covering his head and T-shirt, a terrified look in his eyes. He welcomed him in and his first question was obviously what on earth had happened to him. Danny sat down on the sofa, fidgeting wildly, looking both confused and angry. He picked up Brandon's remote and changed the channel.

“Hey I was watching the Falcons game” exclaimed Brandon angrily.

“This is what happened to me” He said pointing at the screen as a local channel flashed up headlines of the breaking news.

Brandon sat down and watched the news forecaster seemingly as bewildered as Danny, as she recounted a tall tale of a mysterious creature that no one could fully describe in any meaningful detail, that appeared in a local bar, devoured some customers and then set off to turn a cab and its occupants inside out, making them vanish into thin air. This was crazy, this was surely some kind of joke Brandon thought.

“It was Monique” Danny said as the news coverage continued unabated.

“What? The monster? What are you talking about?”

“In the cab, it was Monique” Danny said as he put his head in his hands.

“I don't understand Danny”.

“That thing they're talking about on the news, it was going for Monique. I tried to chase them and do something, but I just couldn't get there” Danny replied, his voice starting to show cracks in its fluency and tears beginning to emerge from his eyes.

Brandon couldn't believe any of this. He looked back at the news  as the reporter showed clip after clip of eye witnesses, all of them claiming to have seen this complete madness.

“It's all true Brandon, I was there, it happened” Danny said as the news reporter, Jane, told everyone watching that they had exclusive video of the carnage from the bar.

This piqued Brandon's curiosity, making sure he studied what came next closely. The camera set up in the bar showed a terrified Monique appear from the restrooms, grabbing Danny who was sat at a table and then running out of the Bar. Danny looked in the direction of the restrooms before taking off straight after Monique. The camera then showed what looked like interference in the video, possibly some malfunction, but what came next caught Brandon completely off-guard, despite what he had just been told by eye witnesses. The 'interference' seemed to be some kind of creature. It certainly moved like a creature, as it bounded through the bar, morphing and changing its shape fluidly and continually, seeming to grab people in its path and absorb them. After a few seconds, it had whirled across the room like a tornado, sucked up anyone in its path and then disappeared through the entrance, drifting through the glass without any resistance. Brandon was stunned. If it was a hoax it was a very realistic one. But it couldn't have been a hoax, Danny said he had witnessed it and he just saw him sat there in the video.

“I don't understand Dan, what the fuck was that?”

“I don't know” He replied shaking his head, tears falling into all the aged grooves on his face, “When I got outside, I tried to catch up with Monique, with that thing following us both, and then it overtook me. She got in a taxi, but it caught up with them and it got them. They were there one minute, the next they had been twisted out of shape, the whole damn thing, them and the cab moulded together.... then they just vanished man, they just disappeared into thin air”

Brandon sat there open mouthed as the news report went on,  recounting the almost unbelievable details of what happened to the cab, in more detail than Danny had just wanted to relay and then they started to show the video again.

“There” Danny said pointing to Brandon's TV, “Can you see them?”

Brandon had been looking at the Interference monster with such horrified fascination that he hadn't noticed what Danny had seen on the rest of the screen. Every few seconds there appeared to be some kind of wispy