October 20th, 1994 I don't know how many days it's been. Five? Six? Ten? The darkness outside this cave swallows time whole. My watch stopped sometime after I lost the arm. The stump still throbs. Sometimes I wake convinced I can feel my fingers scratching at the stone beside me. Then I remember. Then I remember why. I can hear it moving outside tonight. Slow. Heavy. Patient. Not hunting. Waiting. It knows I'm here. I think it enjoys knowing I'm afraid. But that isn't what keeps me awake. It isn't the thing in the woods. It isn't the blood loss. It isn't the hunger. It's what I saw. The prophecy. God, I wish I hadn't seen it. Three nights ago I finally slept. Really slept. The fever took me under and I found myself standing somewhere impossible. The sky was gone. Not dark. Not cloudy. Gone. Above me stretched an endless machinery of flesh and rusted metal. Vast gears made from bones larger than mountains turned endlessly through black rivers of blood. The grinding sound never stopped. It echoed through reality itself, shaking my teeth and rattling my skull. The Earth hung beneath it like a carcass suspended from a hook. I watched cities split open. Not explode. Open. As though something inside them had finally decided to hatch. Millions ran through streets that folded like paper. Buildings bent inward, forming impossible angles that stabbed into the heavens. Oceans drained upward into the empty sky. Then I saw them. The cattle. At first they looked normal. Thousands of cows standing silently upon the horizon. Then millions. Then billions. They stretched from one end of the world to the other. And they weren't facing us. They were facing something else. Something beyond the sky. Something that made them appear small. The thing emerged slowly. Not from the Earth. Not from space. From somewhere deeper. A place reality wasn't supposed to touch. Eyes opened across the heavens. Countless eyes. Each larger than continents. And every one of them stared at humanity with the same expression. Disgust. The cattle began to change. Their bodies unfolded. Legs multiplied. Ribs opened like flowers. Their hides peeled away to reveal endless mouths beneath. They began to sing. Not with voices. With screams. The sound tore people apart. I watched entire crowds dissolve into red mist. And then the machine above the world started moving faster. The gears turned. The bones cracked. The blood rivers surged. Something was waking up. I heard a voice. I don't know whose. Maybe God's. Maybe the machine's. Maybe the thing beyond the sky. It spoke a single sentence. "The harvest was never for meat." Then I understood. All of us. Every human being. Every war. Every kingdom. Every love. Every dream. Every death. We were never the purpose. We were livestock. A crop cultivated across thousands of years. Waiting for harvest. Waiting for consumption. Waiting for whatever lurks beyond the stars to finally become hungry. The sky split apart. The machine descended. The world screamed. And I woke up. The cave was shaking. Outside, something was standing at the entrance. I could only see its silhouette. Four legs. A head crowned with impossible antlers of bone. Too tall. Too thin. Too wrong. Its eyes glowed red in the darkness. Watching. Listening. Knowing. It stood there until sunrise. It never entered. It didn't need to. I think it already knows how this ends. I think the prophecy wasn't a dream. I think it was a warning. And I think whatever is out there in the woods... I think it's one of the first. God help us if the rest arrive. Something is moving outside again. Closer this time. I can hear hooves.
