How we were all imprisoned, locked in with monsters.
Our town was never a perfect town, but it was home. Nestled between thick pine forests and winding country roads, it had its share of troubles—arguments over property lines, old debts, the occasional bad seed stirring up trouble—but people got by. Kids rode their bikes in the summers, old men played chess in the park, and the diner’s neon sign flickered faithfully every night.
Life was good. Not great. Not utopian. But good.
Then the monsters came.
It started with the shadows. Dark things with too many arms, eyes that glowed like dying embers. They moved just beyond sight, flickering at the edges of alleyways, curling under doors. At first, the townsfolk dismissed them as tricks of the light, illusions born from exhaustion. But then the disappearances began. First a few drifters, then a schoolteacher, then the whole Henderson family, gone without a trace. Their houses remained, untouched, their meals half-eaten, their beds still warm.
The air grew thick with an uneasy silence. People stopped staying out late. Kids no longer rode their bikes after sunset. Parents locked their doors, drew the curtains, whispered in hushed tones about the shapes they saw moving behind in these mansions. And still, the town’s decent folk said nothing. The sheriff, a broad-shouldered man who once laughed louder than thunder, now spoke in measured tones, his hands trembling over his belt. The priest’s sermons turned darker, warning of unseen evils, of temptations creeping in through the cracks of a weakening faith.
Then came the real horrors.
A man was found at the edge of town, his face twisted in terror, his body contorted as though he had been crushed by invisible hands. Another, a mother of three, screamed about voices in her head before vanishing into the river. No one saw her go in, but her purse sat untouched on the riverbank, the water around it swirling unnaturally. People whispered about curses, about malevolent forces stirring beneath the earth, about something waking up.
It was only when the town was on the verge of collapse that the truth revealed itself.
The monsters had always been there. Not in the woods, not in the shadows, not creeping at the edge of vision. They were in the boardrooms, in the glass towers that rose over the town like watchful sentinels. They wore suits instead of scales, ties instead of talons. They didn’t devour flesh—they devoured livelihoods. They didn’t crush bones—they crushed dreams.
They are the Oligarchs. Billionaires. Corporations. Cartels.
They arrived with soft voices and smiles, talking about growth and efficiency. They built glass towers where there used to be mom-and-pop stores. They bought the factory and turned the workers against each other, whispering that some weren’t pulling their weight. They rewrote the town’s rules, but no one noticed until one day the air smelled different, like oil and smoke, and the sky never seemed quite as blue as it used to be.
People started changing.
The clerk at the gas station, old Mr. Duvall, once known for slipping an extra piece of candy to kids, suddenly became cold, calculating. He started eyeing customers like prey, his register drawer always short, his excuses always corporate. The mayor, a man who once shook hands at the farmer’s market, now held press conferences from behind locked doors, his words scripted by men in dark suits no one had ever seen before. The schools stopped teaching kids how to think and started teaching them how to obey.
Hate flourished in the streets. Neighbors turned on neighbors. Families sat in silent living rooms, staring at flickering screens that told them who to blame for their misery. The monsters didn’t just own the banks and the businesses; they owned people’s minds. They fed on greed, on cruelty, on the festering envy of the have-nots towards the have-too-much.
Some folks still tried to resist. A few spoke out, but they were drowned in the noise—labeled troublemakers, radicals, criminals. Some just disappeared. Others became something worse: drones, walking shadows of the people they used to be, their faces twisted in sneers, their hearts hollowed out to make room for the monsters’ whispers.
But here’s the thing about monsters—they can be fought.
They aren’t all-powerful. They’re parasites. They need you to believe they’re inevitable, that their way is the only way. They need you divided, too scared or too tired to fight back. But they can be burned out, carved away, exposed. The only thing they fear is people waking up. The only thing they hate more than resistance is solidarity.
So yes, we are all now in a horror movie, and it’s guaranteed to get much much worse. You are locked in somewhere and there’s no getting out. And everywhere there are monsters. Not many, and there’s more good people than there is monsters – but the monsters are playing divide so they can rule and they are poisoning the minds of people like you and me.
So the question is—what are you going to do?