Black Autumn - Post-Mortem Resistance
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In the nexus of Outer Lichtenberg, on the first day of October, 2019, Judas al-Zaman made his daily stroll towards the Mason District PO Box and subsequently tripped over a crate of apples.

This was, of course, not to be expected; the Postmaster was very particular about what made it inside and outside the Mason District, and as a natural extension of such an authority, where and when "inside" and "outside" ended. "Inside", in this particular case, was the chalk-marked outline of the crate dock, and "outside" happened to be the localized geas that ensured "outside"'s domain spread no further than the specific definitions set by Judas. This, naturally, should have been common knowledge, especially considering said knowledge had been ontologically welded onto the concept of bringing mail into the limits. Not even Stella Lindholm was exempt from such business, not that it mattered when she barely left her loft.

Logically, of course, it could have been an art project, except no, because if Lindholm (and it was almost certainly Lindholm in such matters) had grown such apples (the gaze upon which was colored by the realization that he hadn't eaten in fourteen hours), she would have been required to send them through the proper channels. Sure, it wasn't hard, but only because leaving a crate of apples anywhere but tantalizingly close to a conceptfucked mail depot wasn't supposed to be hard.

The second thing Judas did not expect was the luster of such apples, nor what he could only assume was some factory marking stamped upon their faces as if an imprint in metal. He reached out a

No, he shouldn't touch this. Not even the crate.

He'd have to touch the crate to move it.


Something stirred underneath the earth.

Where once was brain, the shallow earth upon which Outer Lichtenberg writhed had eaten away until naught but an empty skull remained. A negative space, filled with dirt and saprophyte carrion and a concept, a concept of what might have been.

That was all that it took.


"Any idea?"

"No dice, mate. Do you think it's Lindholm?"

Judas rubbed his brow with his free hand as he took another sip of coffee. "Lindholm doesn't leave her projects out. Knowing her, she'd wait until the next Art Show. And she wouldn't just… " It was very bad coffee. "… think it's a new garden?"

Addison Moore stayed right where xe was, which Judas couldn't technically fault, given he'd been equally apprehensive. Still, Judas would've expected the best sapper he knew to… honestly, he didn't know? Judas knew he wasn't a sapper, at least, which is admittedly why he called an actual sapper.

He might've been overthinking this.

"Honestly, too little dirt, too many apples." Addison's vapes were distinctly pear-scented, though Judas's own internal apprehension resolved to mentally process it as apples. "And… no, apples don't even grow from the dirt. So it's just a buncha Apples of Discord in the middle of the square then. I mean I dunno, maybe you have some sorta secret admirer."

"No, I… mail doesn't go here. I…" Judas took a long sip of coffee, and resigned to abandon his train of thought.

The two stayed very, very silent, staring at the crate of apples as if to engage their gold-hued reflections in an impromptu blinking contest.

"… I'm not touching that, mate."

"… damn."


Awake. Awake awake awake.

There was no gasp of breath; It had not the lungs to try. Nor had It the muscle, the muscle memory to trick Itself into thinking it could. It was simply awake, a fact Its consciousness would have to have distinguished in the surrounding dark, compared to the… the oblivion?

Time was meaningless with a frame full of dirt, and only the errant twitches of being betrayed the presence of a world around It; the black, smothering world around It.

There was no scream. Its jaw rattled anyway.


Tamiko Demura scratched her head and readjusted her sunglasses. "You woke me up for… this?"

"Honestly," Addie looked just about as tired as Tamiko, an impressive feat for someone who was still alive.1 "I mean, we're dealing with weird plants, and we don't have many leads, not really. I mean we can't ask Lindholm."

"Dude, just cause it's plants doesn't mean it's Stella." Another scratch; Tamiko's skin was painfully aware of the sun, with a growing awareness by the second and a growing pain by the minute. "Like… maybe it's Fats, or Nutcracker, or… I don't know! What, do you think I'm growing apples?"

"Maybe?" Judas was returning Tamiko's stare with the appropriate amount of dumbstruck confusion for the kind of person who would bother an onryō in the middle of daybreak about an unfinished prank her hermit girlfriend may or may not have had a hand in, which was all the more tragic when Judas almost certainly knew better and very certainly had been trusted with a job that required him to.

"I eat three things: spices, terror, and my girlfriend's cum. Apples are not a spice."

The two stayed very, very silent, staring between Tamiko and the crate as if they expected her to…

"… no, no. Don't tell me."

They didn't tell her, and that told her everything.


It could move. Its fingers could jiggle and Its bones could rattle and despite the pitch-black that choked Its body It could move.

So too could the dirt move, shift. Perhaps it could fall, or fly, or perhaps it shifted to the side — the axis of which carved infinitesimally small grooves in the Its form, from the direction of its exit. The patterns told a story: "here I was, now here I am". Negative space refuted a uniformity. There was a way out.

A way up.


The groaning of wood, the clattering of fruit, the thud of a crate against plastic — all accompanied the distinct lack of an explosion, or Tamiko's skin turning inside-out, or (perhaps most damningly) Judas doing his job.

Tamiko turned to face her… "companions" was definitely not the appropriate word in such a situation, but fuck it, she'd only been speaking German for six or seven years. "You're a buncha babies, you know that?"

"I…" The tiniest crumb of fear fell off Judas's psyche; Tamiko caught the preemptive sigh before it escaped her throat. "I don't know. That's usually mail bombs." Beat. "How mail bombs. How they're done and…"

An awkward silence blew along vape-tinged wind, knocking the rest of Judas's words off his tongue.

Addie took another hit from xer vape, and snorted in (nervous?) laughter. "Weeeeee oughta tell Fats, don't we?"


Caked in dirt, in darkness, deep, deep, deeper. Down here, up there, that was a somewhere; that meant It was going somewhere.

But, why? To answer such a question was to attribute a feature to that somewhere, designate it arbitrarily important to that which dug Its way out of Its present somewhere. No, further than that: such a conclusion was to attribute an arbitrary importance to It, the nameless skeleton clawing Its way into another somewhere. An arbitrary grudge.

Arbitrary needs, banality that complemented an incredibly specific ontological actor. If the universe were to ask It who It was, what might It answer?

Skeletal claws tore at dirt; theoretical claws wracked at the remnants of Its conscious.

Perhaps that foreign Somewhere would answer.


Fats Burg was a small man with a busy mind and chronic migraines, built less like a veteran and more like a casualty. If he stood out in a crowd, it was not by virtue of appearance. Nevertheless, the machinations of fate had shoved him onto the wrong pedestal at the right place, and the 33-year-old boy was now expected to address a semicircle of noisy anartists with just as little understanding as they had.

"So, I've gathered you all here today" because someone doesn't know how to handle mail incidents. "to announce that someone left a crate full of Golden Apples out in the street. While I and the Streets am loathe to force religious beliefs upon you lot, Golden Apples aren't a fucking joke. So, who knows what?"

Fats was answered by the wind, which made wind sounds, and the sharp crackle of the laptop on Tamiko's lap, which was too far away to make anything out.

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