There was only a sliver of space between the floorboards and the door under the stairs. It wasn't even really a door. To the naked eye, it appeared to only be another wall, another wasted space in the sprawling mansion. They crushed their faces to the hardwood floor, straining to see beyond the door, but they couldn't. It was just to thin.

"Let's pry it open," Jason said, pointing to one of the banister arms. It hung onto the rest of its siblings by a sliver of fragmented wood, conveniently shaped similar to a crowbar. "I'll even do it myself....

The air raid sirens were going off. I could tell. Even from the thousands of feet above, I could hear the wailing of the sirens call. And that was fine. Most of the people below us would be dead by morning anyway. The tell tale rumble of the US sky-boats shook the fuselage of the Junker we were in, signalling our commanding officer to greenlight our jump. In the dwindling light of evening we leaped from our Ju-88, nicknamed Hati, and plummeted towards the blooming flowers below.

Allied parachutes blew up below us as we rocketed towards the earth. I...

It was the fifth night in cell 16, my reflection staring back at me. The lights had gone out on the evening of the second day, leaving me and the rest of the people here shrouded in darkness after 4pm. No one has come to check on us since then, and the food they left me ran out yesterday morning. There were sirens outside, but they stopped yesterday too. I don't know what's going on, or if I'll even find a way out of here, but I hope the family is okay. Jesse always was the dumb one, getting into...

She'd always come running when I called. That one girl I relied on throughout the toughest of times. I couldn't imagine a day without her. Beautiful tawny eyes that stared at me with loyal knowing. Full of wisdom and life. I'll never forget her.

The tousled mane of golden locks always framed her just right when I saw her. She looked delightful, so happy and bursting with youthful energy. Her smile lit up my world, my lonely, oh so lonely world.

There was no one else around me, but for her... My dearest friend. I look at her now and...

It stayed there, staring... Just staring him down. There was no motion for what seemed like an eternity. He kept his eyes on the beast, unblinking for fear of its immense unstoppable powers.

And then the second of peace was over. He reeled back, shock rolling up his arms from the knowledge that he in fact, no longer had fingers with which to grasp the beast as arm's length. The black pit of teeth consumed the digits and sought more. Clutching the stumps to his chest, the victim scrambled for ground; an escape from the vivid Death that lapped up...

The room kept spinning for the delicate human. You could tell by the way it swayed in its place on the floor beneath the feet of the beast. It only had seconds to live before the creature dug into its chest cavity for meat. "M-make it quick..." the feeble meat-sack uttered in its primitive language.

The demon snickered in its own language and burrowed its snout into the stomach of the human, tossing blood-soaked pieces of security guard this way and that. The animal was a mad thing, unknown to any kingdom or phylum on the planet, Earth.

And it...

The rain had been pounding the east coast for days now. Floods crept closer to our compound, but for now, the levies held. For all intents and purposes, it was a good day. Just once, we had not had any incidents with any of our items. No alarms, no casualties, and no Class D riots.

But, we could only be lucky for so long.

It was late afternoon when the first anomaly appeared on the security screen in front of me. I only caught it out of the corner of my eye, but it was clear as day the second...

"It was just like all the others.

"Fear. Defense. Anonymity.

"Just enough of the subject's face had been blurred so we couldn't discern their identity. Another one of the Foundation's pieces of work, no doubt.

"It was just too much. Too many people had turned in photos like this. The same damn camera, and the same damn style. Always in the middle of nowhere, with one person fearing for their life, as if the camera itself were the entity attacking.

"There were other varying problems with this one, that the other pictures did not display. This subject's head was turned...

It was the one. He had to be. There was no one else in the room who dared to stand against the flow of society. It had to be him. He was it. It was now or never.

She pulled back the flaxen tendrils from her narrow face, and inhaled nervously. The thin frames of her glasses made her crystalline blue eyes glisten. With one single glance, anyone around her could see the fear and predatory excitement that tugged at the corners of her defined lips.

But no one would look. She was the no one of the assembly. Literally....

Through the files, there were instances going as far back as ancient Egypt. This creature had been in the human world for centuries. Amut, the Heart Eater, fated to consume the hearts of men who were evil and corrupt.

All across time the demon roamed, scraping its existence into the memory of mankind. But something was off about this log file in particular. 'Encounter Log No. 682-426-1991' it read. Where did this page come from, though? It was not in the database, nor in any files that had been scoured previously.

It had the normal redacted information for security measures,...