The Singing Children

It is only a matter of time before they find me, and I have little hope of escaping this alive. Maybe one day these writings will be found, I am intend to place them in a container to keep them safe from the weather.

I found the village quite by accident, my car gave out on the road and I caught a ride to the village of (insert name). It was a queer village, most of the folk kept to themselves, but moreso. The few I spoke to, at the garage and then at the pub had teh same heavy weariness to them, and I asked about it over a pint. They weren't interested much in talking to a stranger, but i overheard some of their own conversations. They were worried about their children, as there had been some sickness going around, it started as a fever, chills, and they would have the worst little red rimmed eyes. Then, the fever would break, but they seemed a different child, the most rambunctious kid became a placid creature, content to stare out windows for hours if allowed, and they lost all interest in childish things like toys and television, and everyone's mothers and wives and baby mommas were in a fuss over it.

I paid it no mind, because eff them for being dense enough to breed, the world already had enough children, and besides they did the vaccinations knowing the links to autism, and fluoridated water, processed food and sugary beverages for every meal, they broke their own kids with their bad habits and the poisonous fruit of the mega-farming companies. Boo effing hoo.

I crashed for the night in one of those skid row looking flophouse hotels. You know the type, I can only hope that this thing is contained, and stopped, so that one day whomever reads this will know about that type of hotel. It was a trashy type place, $19 a night with a promise of clean sheets. My car was out for at least two days, so I was there for the duration. I had enough money to keep me in cheap beer, clean sheets, and QuikBurgers. I encountered several people at the hotel who later become important to the story, a young black mother with the prettiest hair and her son. There was something wrong with him, in the head, he was autistic or Down Syndrome, I'm not a doctor, but I knew a broken potato when I saw one. It was a callous thing I would say, before.

The next day the pub was half empty, and those who were there were all the more tired looking, and they spoke less. A few seemed almost mechanical in the empty way they drank their beers and turned their vacant eyes to watch televisions stuck on the wall. I was weirded out by this point because half of the units were off, and they were just going through the motions of blokes out for a pint, catching the match on television at the pub.

I found the first singing child at the garage. The little puke immediately creeped me out, his little red rimmed mouth working as he sang like a little choir boy, his eyes were red rimmed too, like a nasty little hung over zombie drunk. He was pale, and those eyes burned into my flesh like lasers. He had obscene words scrawled on his pale clammy face, I can't tell you what the word was, I couldn't read the language or reproduce the strange letters, but the word was unmistakably foul. I backed away from him, and when he saw that his song had no effect on me, he moved away, into the garage. I wanted my car back, and I would just take jugs of water with me, and refill the radiator every five miles rather than stay another day in this place.

My car was in pieces, all of the cars were in pieces and the mechanic was just standing there, looking stoned out of his mind, his shop assistant was just standing there drooling, and he'd pissed all over himself. They saw me, the kid gestured at me, and they started walking towards me, all zombie robot like. I left. Quickly

Back in the heart of the village, the children were out in force, a dozen of them, all with those horrible little bleary red eyes, and their raspy little singing voices. Their song had a peculiar ability, those who were struck by it were pulled into some sort of thrall, unable to move, and they would be surrounded by several of the children. They would get this atonal melody, really horrible, and you could see the person's eyes get all glassy like they had just taken a monstrous hit of Zed, that raver club drug. A few people seemed immune to the song, those people I saw the other zombiebot adults take down with cudgel fists and a scattering of weapons.

I retreated to the hotel to get my things, never more thankful for my headphones. I remain certain that either the sheer presence of the earbuds or the music I was listening to (Aphex Twin, Crystal Method, the Chemical Bros) had prevented their song from penetrating into my head. At the hotel, I found several people scared and hiding in the lobby, they said they knew I was okay because I had a hunched run, looked freaked out, and had my headphones in. One was a lawyer type, the black woman and her son, whom everyone regarded with the same wariness one gives a loaded gun or a snake, a couple of teenagers who had shacked up at the hotel, probably locals looking for some privacy, he looked nervous enough, and she was certainly hot enough.

We argued over what to do, how to escape this little slice of Hell and were eventually interrupted because we had shouted too long and too loud and had drawn them to us. They sang, we ran, but the guy got caught, he was half stuck in their song when one of their drone parents took him down with a stick of wood to the head.

We ran for our lives, the teenage girl ran over one of the kids and it started shrieking like the devil itself. She went into convulsions and the last time i saw her alive, there was blood squirting out of her nose, and her eyes were rolled into her head like a demon. That bothered me for a long time because I was sure that she hot as a taco fart, and I had a notion of seeing how far I could get with her.

We found a new place to shelter, not much more than one of those lame camp cabins. But it was a place to stay.

I don't know how, but the singing children found us, and I was seriously scared at that point, because the batteries in my phone were almost gone, and all I had done was listen to music. I never called out for help, I was just panicked, and the music calmed me down. The lawyer had a pistol on him, and he shot one of them dead, right between the eyes. They backed away, but changed their song. My phone had died, and I could hear it, I waited for whatever it was going to feel like when they hacked my brain, but it didn't happen, nothing happened. The black kid cried, and his mother tried to console him, and the lawyer guy started to get this funny look on his face, like he was going to be sick.

Then he was, he puked all over the place, and his skin was the wrong color. I can't really describe what happened next because I'm not really sure if it happened, or I just lost my mind for a while. He changed, he grew claws and spines, and one of his arms and hands just became this serrated scythe looking insect claw, and he turned on us. He went after the little black kid first, hooked him with that claw and cut his head off. His mother lost it then, and attacked the lawyer. Last thing I saw when I was running away was the insect lawyer monster guy unzip the black mother, he swung that claw and she screamed and her guts all came sliding out of her.

Needless to say I ran like Satan and the police were chasing me.

I now realize that the singing children were after the black kid, for whatever reason, he wouldn't join their choir. I think it was because of whatever was wrong with him, and they scented him out. I feel like there was a greater story that was at work, and that we failed, we failed horribly. I didn't protect the kid who needed to be protected, and that is a bad thing.

I don't know why these kids started acting like this, why they started their horrible song, and I don't know how far this has spread. I've got a place burrowed out for myself, safe houses and roof tents that no one looks for, and I'm surviving frying my own QuikBurgers and pouring my own pints. The adults and the singing children have largely left me alone, and I leave them completely alone.

I pray for the army to show up, or a black plane to fly over and turn this place into fire and glass.

I pray there is still an army, and that the little singing monsters haven't won everywhere else too. I don't want it to end like this, stuck on top of a gs station, jerking it to skin magazines, stealing beer, and eating fast food. Why haven't I run you ask? All the cars have been ruined, sabotaged. The phone lines are down, and my phone won't connect to the internet. I haven't left because I cant.

That lawyer, sometimes I see him wandering around, and there are others like him, not many, but there are others. They dig out the survivors, one by one. Most join the song, but those who don't, they get that big claw.

Between the cigarettes and heavy drinking, there's no way I can outrun them.

I'm going to die here, and its because I couldn't save that little black boy.