After chanting the ritual described in the cluttered pages of the grimoire, I began to relies the creature I have summoned. The trees rattle like twigs in mud, and the earth shutters a ghostly shriek.

Running to my mom’s car, I power it on. The reliable, white Honda Civic sputters to life, and I leave the area. Behind me, I see a shadow eclipse the moon, It’s outline raises above even the tree l...

These others will fall from the sky

With their rickety legs

And razor teeth

And consume us all at once.

Us, with our toy weapons

And single minded ways

Will do nothing but let them take us

Let them wrap their jaws around our bodies and eat.

With all this practice

Fighting one another tooth and nail

You’d think we’d be prepared

But a meal already cut and divided

Is all the more easier to dige...

‘Funny, look at this!’

I stopped editing the newsreel and squinted, trying to figure out what Francesca wanted me to see.

She paused the video and pointed at one of the aliens.

‘There,’ she said.

The huge insect-like figures, clad in silk robes, strode across the square, alongside human dignitaries and military officials in ceremonial uniform.

The video was Francesca’s footage of the “G20+” i...

Screams filled the air as the ground shook. I looked around frantically as building began to crumble, running to avoid instant death as debris fell and crashed into itself. The sirens had begun to sound about 10 minutes prior to the shaking but we all just thought it was an earth quake which would have been bad enough given the intensity. It wasn’t until everything around us began to fall apart an...

The world is ending. We cannot stop it. This is not the only monster to appear ... there are so many others ... and they won’t stop coming. Something is wrong with the sea, as it’s slowly shrinking, because whatever’s been sleeping deep beneath the surface is rising. The world for us is about to end, the life we know will come to an end....

50 years. 50 long years of being Put into our place.

When the first one appeared we gunned it down. I remember that day, I wasn’t prepared for that. Hearing it scream loudly out of its two mouths while it gurgled and slumped to the ground. My gun was empty and my uniform covered in the creatures blood. We thought that was the end of it.

2 days later, twenty more appeared from the ground off Br...