The city streets looked like moth-eaten cloth, tearing open one hole at a time.Moisture seeped from the walls—but it wasn't water. It was a transparent mist, one that breathed.When people walked past, their shoes left ripples, as if they were stepping across a lake.
No one could define the borders of human society anymore.Was it the barricades at the end of the street?The news anchors on TV repeating "stay calm"?Or the social media accounts that had begun to distort, typing replies all on their own?
Ethan stood beneath a crumbling bus stop sign, staring at the billboard across the street:—"Buy one, get one free. Souls on installment. Zero interest."He gave a bitter chuckle, finding it more honest than the Bureau's "Nightmare Prevention Manual."
"See that?" his partner Vic pointed at the horizon.The sky's edge was no longer clouds, but a torn black curtain, behind which flickered a light too sharp for the human eye.Some said it was the gaze of the Old Gods. Others insisted it was just the government's latest projection ad.Either way, human society was like a stale loaf of bread—the corners molding first, before the whole thing collapsed.
On the street, beggars were selling dreams."Ten dollars a session, guaranteed to make you forget reality."Ethan watched the queue forming, as if he were watching volunteers line up to leap into a meat grinder."People alive today don't even deserve to be called human," he muttered.
Vic lit a cigarette, but the smoke twisted into black serpents, slithering back into his nostrils. He coughed."Maybe society's already dead," he said, "and all that's left is a line of corpses still punching their time cards."
They walked into the old quarter.Buildings had begun to merge into one another; the walls and streets were covered in a single fleshy material.A man tried to walk into his house—only to find the doorframe had sprouted teeth.With a crunch, the door swallowed him whole.Passersby stopped and clapped, as though it were a weekend street performance.
An absurd thought struck Ethan:Maybe the dissolution of society's boundaries wasn't caused by nightmares at all.Maybe people wanted to rip them down. They didn't want rules, or responsibility—they just wanted something more stimulating, to sell themselves to whatever entity promised "meaning."
"What a masterpiece of black humor," Ethan whispered, eyes torn between fear and mockery.
"You mean the humor of us still trying to 'maintain order'?" Vic laughed like a madman. "Order's been a joke for a long time."
Night fell. Streetlamps died one by one.But darkness didn't come.Instead, a strange phosphorescent mist lit the city like an operating theater.
Everyone lay upon that surgical table, waiting to be dissected.
Ethan and Vic leaned against a wall—a wall that pulsed slowly, like a beating heart.They both knew the truth:The Bureau, nightmare energy, the Old Gods… none of that mattered anymore.The real crisis was that human society itself was devouring its own flesh.
And they were just two pieces of meat the feast had yet to swallow.