Beyond Memory
I found this one looking in the mirror. So, I looked as well. I will go hide behind the shelves for a bit.
Once upon a time, long before history became a memory and myth. Before electricity ruled your kind, your ancestors sat across the fire. They shared stories about life and trust. They laughed and hoped. They knew the faces around them. They knew the voices. They knew the way each person smiled when something was funny. And yet, that night, one familiar face seemed to linger too long in the firelight.
Same broad face. Same dark eyes. Same shape of mouth. But something was wrong. Not enough to scream, and not enough to run. Just a subtle unease, like the skin didn’t quite fit the skeleton beneath. No one did anything. Why would they? There was no reason to. And when everyine gathered around the fire that night, the one who did not quite belong smiled.
Then the carnage began.
That moment left a scar so deep that you still feel it, though you’ve never seen it. It’s etched into your very bones, little human. That crawling shiver when you see something almost wrong. A figure too still. A face too perfect. Someone blinking at the wrong rhythm.
When your brain sttuters and something deeper, something older growls, “Run”. That's the reason your hands sweat when you meet a gaze that feels almost human.
Your psychologists call it the “Uncanny Valley”. They’ll tell you it’s just your brain’s way of flagging mistakes in the faces. They will say it helped your ancestors identify the living from the dead. But they are explaining the smoke without finding the fire.
Show an adult a face smiling too broadly and they run before they know why.
Long before you called yourselves “human,” you weren’t alone. You shared this world with others; Neanderthals, Denisovans; these you know well. But you also shared the world with those you have forgotten. Some you called kin. Your science already learned to admit you mixed with those you found friendly enough. They left echoes of their own in your blood.
Others were...
something else.
When they ruled this world, they left something behind in your kind. Your youngest still fear the faces that should frighten them least. Tell Us, little one, what other memory can be passed down like so, if not one born from experience?
How "you" to think your kind evolved such a fear simply from sickness or corpses. Maybe was never about you. Maybe it has always been about Us.
Perhaps, We ruled this world before you.
Perhaps, We learned how to look like you.
And perhaps, We taught your bones how to fear.
Those old stories you tell about what you call Skinwalkers, Wendigos, Pukwudgie and Nuckelavee – such beautiful names. Did you try to pray to Us, little ones? Or were they curses you screamed when We laughed? Whispers of truth so old, it turned into folklore.
We wear your faces, sit at your fires, and wait. Patient, until the time was right to strike when you trusted the most. Not because We were too weak, little one. How could We be weak when our bones remember the nights the firelight bled. When the most innocent remeber a smile that didn’t match. The laughter before the scream. No, dearest, the hunt was always more fun this way.
So, next time you see a face too still or a smile too wide. When your heart stutters before your mind finds the reason, maybe you are remembering the time We reigned. And when your myth becomes flesh again, We will remember too.
Sleep tight, little human.
Remember Us tonight.
The story said they taught humans how to fear. I asked whether humans ever taught them anything. It smiled. I don’t think I like that answer.
Cross-Referenced by the Archive
Cinder was supposed to bring the proper references. He found these instead. He insisted that they seemed important, so We kept them. Whether they’re related is… enthusiastically disputed.
wind transducer • uncanny valley • evolutionary psychology • vescera • collective memory •
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