The mortuary has eight chambers. They branch out from a hallway like arms on a spider. Inside these chambers, a maximum of thirty-two cadavers are stored at temperatures not exceeding -2 degrees Celsius.

The corpses stay for hours, or days, and then go to funeral parlors, forensic facilities, and, occasionally, pathology labs. The dead come from many paths to the mortuary, and they leave on many paths.

The mortuary hired me to install the security cameras.

I worked quickly in the chilly light, my fingers going numb in the cold. I made mistakes. I kept forgetting the task in front of me, my brain wandering like a lost and scared dog to the bodies on the slabs. Eyes that were open, but not to see. Mouths that were open, but not to talk. That horrible feeling of being totally alone while in a room full of people.

These weren’t regular cameras.

The mortuary forbids CCTV video feeds in the chambers. There was an embarrassing incident, years ago. A former employee sold photos of an OD’d starlet to the press.

The video coming from these cameras are distorted and garbled. You can’t actually see anything on them.

Instead, the cameras track motion.

Every twentieth frame or so is referenced and compared against the previous frame. If there’s any difference – defined as a pixel that has changed color – then it puts a flag in the camera’s software, stored on a web server.

“One flag is okay – sometimes the software screws up,” the mortuary security chief told me. “Two flags in a row is a suspicious screw-up. Anything more than that, get in your truck and come down here at the double, because there’s been a break-in.”

“Who breaks into a mortuary?” I asked.

“Organ thieves. People who want to be with a loved one, one last time. Frat boys pledging for Alpha Kappa Dumbfuck. It doesn’t matter, you just get down there as fast as you can.”

I’ve been monitoring the motion cameras for the past three months.

Usually, the cameras generate between ten and twenty flags a day. False positives. Sometimes I get two flags coming in within seconds of each other, and hair stands up on my neck for a moment, and after nothing else happens after a minute I go back to reading Deadspin on the office computers.

Once, I had forty flags come from chamber 7. I drove down there, expecting the worst…

…and found a cockroach crawling across a camera lens.

Another time, I got a single flag from all the rooms, simultaneously. A fuse had blown, knocking out the power. I replaced it before any of the cadavers had a chance to warm. Got a nice pay bonus for that.

The job was boring. Losing focus was just a matter of time. I went from checking the flags every few minutes to checking it every half hour, then to every hour, then to…

Today, I was on my phone, arguing with some nimrod online about Brett Favre’s passing stats, when my inner conscience spoke.

How long since you checked the mortuary flags?

Shit. Two hours? Longer?

I logged in to the web server.

37,440 flags.

Oh no.

I got in my truck, and sped down to the mortuary. I sat my phone on the passenger seat and flicked an eye to it from time to time.

More flags kept coming in. Several a second.

Someone had broken into the mortuary, and they were still there.

And the flags were coming in from multiple cold chambers. There was more than one person.

What was I suppose to do here? Tough talk a bunch of drunken frat boys with crowbars and hammers?

I parked outside the mortuary, the truck slewing sideways in a spray of gravel. I got out, ran to the front door, and tried to open it.

It was still locked.

I stared stupidly at the doorknob, as if reality wasn’t letting me in on some kind of joke.

I looked around, noticing details I hadn’t seen before. Like how there were no other cars in the parking lot, other than me. And no footprints in the gravel, other than mine.

Then, I went on a slow and steady walk around the mortuary.

No broken windows.

No forced-open doors.

No way in whatsoever.

I let that same slow and steady walk take me from the building back to my truck, where I sat in the cabin, phone in my lap.

The number of disturbances inside the building was now at 40,528, and climbing.

I watched more and more flags come through on my phone, wondering how long it would take before I turned on the ignition, picked a direction, and just kept driving forever.

From his snowbound manse in Portland, Maine, Stephen King has unleashed his most horrifying work yet. A terrifying look at man’s inner heart, a raw and beating extrusion of pure horror.

I refer, of course, to his Twitter account, which is just the drizzling shits.

Imagine a hacky 1930s vaudeville comic with buck teeth, a spinning bow-tie, and a lapel flower that squirts water. Imagine “topical” humor that was growing only slightly musty in the early years of the Bush presidency. Imagine forwards from your grandma that are forwards from her grandma. Welcome to the Stephen King twitter feed.

The handful of pity retweets/favs renew one’s faith in humanity. Some people are taking a stand against this abomination. But there’s no time to relax, the assault has only just begun.

His jokes are best read with a trombone player supply the “waah waah waah” at each punch line.

What the fuck is this happy horseshit? I want to take the Twitter social media platform to a rape crisis center of some kind, whispering reassurances in its ear. “Everything will be OK. You’re being very brave right now. Just remember…it’s not your fault.”

Just annoying.

Shut up.

I had a small Mogutu-style breakdown when I saw this. How’s this funny or clever? He just took a famous quote and changed it so it’s about Twitter. Yeah, and Gandhi would be like “be the RT you wish to see in the world.” Scary funny!

But there’s more! Are you a fan of low-effort dumbfuck political pandering? Especially of the left-wing variety? Stevie’s got you covered, my friend.

Somewhere, there is a politburo meeting in secret. They are compiling evidence, and building a case. Their thesis is nothing more than this: Twitter must be destroyed.

Obviously, if they rise to power they’ll close Twitter, bulldoze the corporate headquarters, imprison everyone involve, and grind the hard drives into a fine metal powder. But what will happen to the people who use Twitter? They’re the real problem. Final solution: lobotomies all around. They’ll insert a sharp metal rod under your eyelid, gently (or not) insert it past the sphenoid structure, and sever your frontal brain lobe. Not too far, though, or it might be fatal, and we still need people to drive lorries and empty rubbish bins and things. I’m not saying I support this plan. All I’m saying is that it’s real, it’s happening, and right now @StephenKing’s tweets are in the prosecution’s brief.

Is it too much to ask for some entertaining cornball, such as “The man in black created a Twitter account, and the gunslinger followed”?

[I won’t tell you to read this book or go to hell, I’ll tell you to read this book and THEN go to hell]

Prelude 1 – Entrance to the Inferno…

“I am the punishment of God… If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.”
– Genghis Khan

New York, New Year’s Eve, 2024…

The white van turned the corner into Times Square and merged into late-morning traffic.

A man lolled back in the driver’s seat—no hands on the steering wheel.

He had touched the wheel of the self-driving vehicle exactly once since crossing the GWB—just a gentle touch, as if to remind the machine of his mastery, and then he’d pulled the hand away.

He studied New York through two layers of glass – the tinted dash, and the glasses on his nose. Rows of billboards, marquees, and coloured lights, all of them calculated to skirt just beneath the edge of the city’s light pollution limits.

A glaze of neon covered the city. Cheap. Thrilling. Saccharine for eyes.

During the day, Times Square had the dead gleam of fake jewellery. At night, it shone like a star too modest to rise into the sky. Even inside the car, he heard the buzz of thousands of voices. Tourists came from everywhere to ring in the new year.

Everyone wanted something from New York – memories, culture, experiences.

The driver didn’t come to New York to take. He considered himself more of a giver.

He pulled in to a metered parking spot and was about to get out when he heard and felt a banging fist on the side of his van.

He turned his head. A NYPD cop.

The big black cop shouted something, and spun his forefinger in a circle. The universal “roll down your window” gesture.

He obeyed. “Can I help, officer?”

“Yeah, buddy, you can. I saw you enter the street without using your turn signal.”

“This is a self-driving car. The computer should have thrown the signal for me.”

“It didn’t. I was watching. Step out of the vehicle for a moment.”

The driver got out. He had a small remote control on a keychain that allowed him to control the van without being inside it.

“Activate your left turn signal.”

The driver tried. The light remained dead. “Hmm. Bulb’s gone. I wonder how long it’s been like that.”

The cop scowled. “Are you the owner of this vehicle?”

“I am.”

“Can I see some paperwork?”

The driver produced his license and registration. The cop unclipped a RFID scanner from his belt and ran it over a microchip on the license paper. He looked over the cop’s shoulder at the LED readout as it checked the NYPD database for tickets, demerits, and other offenses.

There weren’t any.

The cop nodded and handed back the paperwork. “That’s fine. You’re free to go.”

“Will I get a ticket?”

“Naw, I couldn’t do that to a man on New Year’s Eve. Just get that light fixed, okay? There’s a mechanic on East Thirty-Fifth that’s open over the holidays. Best to get these things sorted out, right?”

“Sure, I will. And thanks.” The driver smiled.

“Say, where are you from? I can’t place your accent.”

“I’m from Portland. I’m actually not here to celebrate. My daughter’s coming from back from a vacation in Cancun, and she asked if I could pick her up.”

“Cancun? Aw, that’s such a kid place to go. I’ve got some time off coming up, and I hope to spend it in the Adirondacks wearing orange. You much of a huntin’ man?”

“Can’t say I am.”

“Well, it kicks the shit out of police work. Have a good day, man.”

“You too. And all the best with your hunting trip. It’ll be a good one, I’m sure.”

He reached into his pocket and pressed a button.

The uranium bomb in the van went off.

[Transmission of Vanadium Dark endeth, for now.]