“The Night Everyone Died”

Blood was already on the walls.

No one knew whose it was.

It dripped down the wallpaper like ink, staining the village in red before dawn even broke. By the time the sun should’ve risen, it never did — only a thick, black sky hung above Black Hollow, a village already choking on screams.

It began in the town square, where a man was found gnawing on his own wrist, eyes wide and empty. People ran to help him—then started attacking each other. A woman tore out her sister’s hair and slammed her head into a bench. Children bit teachers. Neighbors turned into wolves. The entire village erupted like a volcano of rage.

No reason. No warning. Only blood.

Fathers stabbed their daughters with kitchen knives. Lovers poisoned each other’s tea. The church bell rang, not from a hand, but because someone threw a priest from the tower and his body bounced off the bell’s iron.

By midday, half the town was dead.

No one cried. No one begged.

They laughed. They screamed. They danced with knives.

Something ancient was awake — not in the woods, not in the sky — but inside them. A madness that spread like rot through their minds.

And still… it got worse.

In the school, the students locked the doors. They thought they were safe. But one girl stood up in the middle of the class and whispered, “We don’t need teachers anymore.” Then she opened her backpack and pulled out her father’s hunting rifle.

Twelve students died before she turned the barrel on herself.

In the hospital, the nurses injected bleach into patients' IV lines. One nurse clapped as a newborn baby stopped crying forever.

At the edge of the village, bonfires rose. Not of wood — of people. Bodies stacked and burned as groups danced around them, chanting in a language no one should’ve known.

And in the middle of it all was the fog.

Thick. Gray. Alive.

It seeped under doors, kissed throats, entered lungs. It didn’t kill. It whispered.

“You are the weapon.”

“You are the offering.”

“You are the end.”

They listened.

Mothers turned on children. Brothers hunted brothers. It wasn’t survival. It was ritual.

By sunset, the town square looked like a battlefield. Heads rolled across the stones. One man stood shirtless, painting symbols on his chest with the blood of his wife. He smiled. He said the sky had spoken. He said death was a gift.

In a ruined house at the edge of the village, a woman clutched a butcher knife. Her hands shook. Her dress was soaked in blood — not hers. Her child sat in the corner, eyes black, smile twisted.

“Mommy,” he said, “why are you crying?”

She stepped forward.

He didn’t move.

“I loved you,” she whispered, her voice cracked and distant.

The knife fell.

The fog laughed.

She stabbed again. Again. Again.

Until the small body stopped breathing.

Her scream was the loudest of the night — not from horror, but from release.

All around her, the others did the same. Those who were left. Those still breathing. They found their last ties to humanity — and snapped them.

Every child.

Every friend.

Every whisper silenced with violence.

And when the final blow was struck — when the last scream choked out into silence — the fog curled in satisfaction.

It lifted.

The sky turned pale.

The sun rose over the village of corpses.

No dogs barked. No birds sang.

Only wind.

Only stillness.

No survivors.

Black Hollow was gone.

Burned. Broken. Buried under its own blood.

And as the morning light spilled over the ruins, a single word was carved into the ground with bone:

“Again.”

“Next town.”




---

But Black Hollow wasn't done — not truly.

Miles away, in a quiet village where laughter still echoed through narrow alleys and the bakery opened before sunrise, a low fog began to creep in. No one noticed it at first. It was thin. Gentle. Just morning mist, they thought.

But the children were the first to hear it.

“Do you hear that?” asked a little boy, staring out his window into the pale white haze.

“Hear what?” his sister replied.

He didn’t answer.

He just smiled… a wide, unnatural smile.

By noon, birds stopped singing. Dogs howled without cause. Doors creaked on their hinges though no wind blew. People spoke softer, looking over their shoulders. They said the fog had a shape, a movement — like it breathed.

In the schoolyard, a girl began humming a tune no one had taught her. A lullaby in a language no one recognized. One by one, the other children began humming too.

By evening, the local church caught fire — but no one ran for water. They stood and watched it burn. Some whispered that Black Hollow was real. That they had heard about the “village that ate itself.” That maybe the fog was a warning.

It wasn’t.

It was a promise.

Because when midnight came, the fog grew thick. It seeped into mouths. Into lungs. Into dreams.

And then it began again.

A mother shoved her baby into the oven. A boy crushed his grandfather’s skull with a gardening stone. A teenager strung her family across the ceiling beams like paper lanterns and painted the walls with their blood.

And through it all, the fog whispered the same thing over and over:

“Next town.”

“Next town.”

“Next town.”

It wasn’t a curse. It wasn’t a demon.

It was a pattern.

And it had just begun.