Dark.

Try to imagine the dark.

Much of the island has disappeared amidst the endless swish and sway of sea. Two decades. For two decades the island's beaches have dissolved into the relentless spray, its palm trees and wild grasses have shriveled up and disappeared with rot. The irradiated water killed whatever survived the four months of nuclear winter. Black soot had covered the sky like a prison, and little light had bled through its bars.

But the dark.

The island has disappeared, but a ruin remains, submerged. Even before the Day of Fire, the sprawling complex had hid beneath the earth like the maze of a schizophrenic ant colony. Endless hallways intended to confuse and conceal. Airtight walls of sleek white metal. Secure. The only light found within the facility had come from the fixtures overhead and atop the many cluttered desks.

Now turn off those lights.

The facility has become a ruin. There is no electricity. Elsewhere, man has learned, has struggled. Homes are illuminated by the glow of bulb once more, but not here. Try to imagine. Buried deep underground. Without the light of the sun nor even the luminous glow of algae or plant. You must remember the water, the irradiated water. Nothing lives in these ruins.

Nothing should.

But we must delve deeper.

Deeper still.

Even deeper!

To the very bowels of the earth we venture, to where there is scarcely even air to breathe. Try to imagine the quiet. A place so deep even the rush of ocean failed to reach. A place so deep and barren that even the radiation scarcely tickles.

Try to imagine the quiet, and then be surprised...

There is movement everywhere and anywhere, blind and groping. A thousand hundred tendrils of writhing flesh. There is no light in this hellscape, only touch, and so the creatures that dwell beneath the sun move in a constant scurry.

Cast aside the overwhelming black and you will see them, and little else. Their forms are sluglike, black and rubbery. They cover every surface like a fresh coat of paint. The floors and walls are perpetually covered in the bleeding black of their ichor. And these are the runts. If you watch, if you can withstand the endless skitter of a thousand hundred mandible legs, you will see the others.

Larger than the slugs. More defined. They, too, are blind. What use are eyes in this sunless abyss? Some have claws. Others gaping maws. And they feast. They snatch up the rubbery sluglike runts like popcorn. They scoop the skittering rats and force them into mouths wet with acid and salivascious want. They consume. They grow. They devour the newborn without care or thought. They are stronger. They have no thoughts but for growth.

Follow these others down the destroyed hallways. The black slugs are endless, mindless.

Still deeper we delve, but pray that the black covers your eyes. You do not want to see what homes these creatures of pure gluttony and greed have wrought, what haunts these creatures born of a most heinous rape have tendered in this godless sanctum.

Because they have a father. And a mother, but the two are deeper still.

Their horrible homes are small and transient. For there is another that lurks here. And she hungers.

Before the Day of Fire, the humans had called her Zero-Nine.

Before the Day of Fire, she had called herself Urska.

But now... Do not look. Pray the black remains. But if you must... Imagine.

She has devolved.

For two decades she has decayed, and she does not call herself Urska anymore.

She does not remember who she is.

She does not know what she is.

She thought herself immune.

She thought herself powerful.

But two decades was too much. Trapped in the black. Trapped with her sister.

Urska could have left at any time.

Zero-Nine could have escaped when she first started to realize.

But she could not.

But she refused to abandon her treasure.

And so she succumbed to her sister's maddening spell.

Slowly she forgot her names.

Slowly she forgot what she was.

Slowly she dissolved, a mutated amalgamation of all the faces she once wore, tinted white with madness.

And she hungers.

She eats whatever moves. When she remembers to have a mouth, she chews. When she remembers to have claws, she grabs.

Endlessly, she wanders. Blind. Confused. She hungers but finds no satisfaction. She searches, but for what?

We must delve deeper.

The slugs crawl over the floors and walls, but in a horrified scamper. There is no intellect to these creatures. There is no light within their putrid black souls. But the runts scurry away from the womb that birthed them with an instinctual fear. They flee.

The humans had called her Zero-Zero, and she has no name for herself.

She was lonely.

But no more!

She delights. Of all the wretched horrors that dwell within the ruins, only she delights. Because she has found herself a treasure, and she will n̵̯̯͘͝ě̶͈̬͘v̷̙͊̕e̵̳͝r̴ allow it to leave her den of black and relentless death.

But do not look. Do not listen. Do not breathe in the foul odor.

Because for two decades...

For three thousand six hundred and fifty days...

For eighty seven thousand and six hundred hours...

Petre Predav has lived within the belly of this beast.

The thousands and thousands of sluglike daemons that crawl and roil with blackest ichor are his children, and still more spew forth from his corrupted seed. Every hour. Every day. Every week. Every month. Every year.

He does not sleep. He is scarcely even awake. He merely exists as an extension of Zero-Zero's maw of putrid flesh. Within the deepest depth of this forsaken hell, the human Petre Predav melds with the eldritch horrors of nightmare. The children are not Zero-Zero's. Another is made to share in Petre's endless torment.

The humans had called her Zero-One.

Her human had called her Blurb.

And she has become one with her husband in this unfair undeath, a bloated womb of rotten flesh, a totem of purest decadence that pump, pump, spuuuuurts Petre Predav's corrupted white essence with a mechanical obsession. She has dissolved onto her husband. The black of her goo has hardened and anchored itself to his papery human flesh.

The sun shall never reach them.

Death will never reach them.

Their story shall never end.

A mere two decades have passed. A measly twenty years. These horrors have lived for hundreds. These creatures have lurked for thousands.

And so...

...the end...

...is far from near...

...they will suffer...

...in mindless torment...

...their flesh intertwined...

...but you mustn't look...

...no matter the depths of your curiosity...

...you...

...must...

...not...

...look...

...not...

...must...

...you need to...

...you must...

...obscenely...

...relentlessly...

...endlessly...

...never...

...release...