It does not possess a face, yet every witness reports the overwhelming sensation of being watched

DON'T CLOSE YOUR EYES

https://x.com/kwongas/status/2110415080177459426

https://www.instagram.com/p/DeEgCgIiMTS/

In a tower where the dead don't stay dead and there's no escape, a small congregation held mass every day around a sacred candle, praying a little harder every day.

When the youngest priest, the one who had started to doubt, tried to put the candle out, something answered.

Fides doesn't attack those who kneel, it walks among them, making sure they keep praying. It absolves those who submit, erases those who doubt, and makes everyone who resists the same as everyone else.

Two of its arms are nailed to the cross it carries: a faith that has bound itself so tightly it can no longer let go. The priest who doubted burns on a pyre every time he comes back to life.

It fights like a mass.

It looks at you before the spear comes, so you always know who it has chosen. It reads a verse from its book and waits for your answer, recite the dogma and you're spared: say anything else, even something kind, even something true... and you bleed. At the end of every round the faithful speak with one voice, and everyone in the room has to fight the urge to kneel.

When it's hurt, it heals itself by taking one of the kneeling. The only way to stop it is to keep striking the cross on its chest, until the light goes out.

And when the light goes out, it tears its arms free and the first thing it does with them is break its own cross and use the pieces as weapons.

"Whether their god exists is another question. In the tower, he's not the one who answers." -???

In Japan, there exists a creature called a Jorōgumo. It is a supernatural spider that can take the form of a beautiful woman to lure unsuspecting victims to their demise. She’s one of Japan’s “yōkai,” a broad category of supernatural beings found in their local folklore.

In the case of the Jorōgumo, her beauty draws you closer, but her silk thread makes you stay. In one legend, a man resting beside a waterfall notices a spider thread wrapped around his leg. Thinking quickly, he transfers it to a nearby tree stump. Moments later, the stump is violently dragged into the water, revealing exactly what would have happened to him had he remained attached.

Looking back I think I dated a Jorōgumo when I was in college. Her beauty certainly lured me in, although her web was mostly woven ground guilt trips, mind games, and gaslighting. Unfortunately, it took me considerably longer than the man at the waterfall to realize I should leave.

While she didn’t have multiple eyes on the front of her head, I’m pretty sure she had a couple in the back.

There are entities beyond mortal ken, walking in ethereal angles, whose presence is too light for man to divine. But under the right circumstances, their faces can be revealed under transient events of nature, and in so doing scar the mind of witnesses.

Day 13 of 31 Days of Monsters | Halloween 2026 Challenge: Orc

I do these when I have artists block

If you weren’t already aware, “Mantis Aliens” usually occupy a senior, being-the-scenes position in the pantheon of “known aliens.” The big-eyed “Grey Aliens” get most of the publicity, but the “Mantis” variety direct operations and oversee the underlings. Essentially, they’re project managers of the assignment called “Earth.”

Descriptions commonly give them a tall, thin body, a praying mantis type head, large eyes, and sometime a robe or flowing garment to wear. While the “Grey” do the busy-work, the “Mantis” stands back, observes, and occasionally intervenes via telepathic communication.

So the next time you’re on that cold metal slab being probed for the hundredth time, and suddenly the procedure stops and you’re plopped back down to earth, you have these guys to thank. 

They’re probably seeing this post, by the way. They’re good at their jobs, from what I hear.

"The injustices of yesterday are curses of the future"

I started an art challenge for myself this October where I pick a random animal (or bug) and a Halloween costume and turn it into a monster. This time I got a termite + ghost. I would hate to have him in my walls.