Ten years after the world suffered a nuclear winter, life was finally beginning to bounce back. You had lost your family, your friends, but you still breathed. And that had to be good enough, in this harsh world.
Human society wasn’t the same it once was. Only a fraction of the population had survived, and what little remained was bound together in settlements of various success. Your home city was once bustling, but now it was a scattered facsimile of order. You numbered amongst the mere-thousand population. Sizable, yes, but still a miniscule percentage of what life once was.
But it was safer together, rather than risking the wilderness alone. The nuclear fallout brought about a population of mutated life – insects, distorted into monstrous beasts that shared human intelligence, but outmatched mankind in strength and durability. At first, humans fought against these terrifying new lifeforms, but were quickly outmatched. So nowadays, most tried all they could to avoid contact with them.
They called themselves ‘Phyle’, a dark play on the concept of evolution. What few scientists remain hypothesize that the Phyle evolved from vespid wasps, still in their larvae stage, when the first bombs fell. Those insects did not become the Phyle, rather they infected humans with their eggs, or venom. And from those humans came a horrifying breed of half-insect, half-people. Phyle.
You had seen them, but rarely. They truly looked like monsters, towering 10-feet-tall in height, slim but terrifyingly muscular with exoskeleton shells covering their shoulders, back, and limbs, giving them the appearance of natural armour and bulking up their silhouette further. They had wings, too – membranous, and flapped rapidly when they were agitated. One time, you managed to take a close look at their faces, and caught a glimpse of something vaguely human-like in proportion, but with massive black compound eyes, and the lower half of their skull taken up by giant mandibles flanking a star-edged pincer mouth.
in which a seemingly harmless blackout proves to be an experience you have never considered existing beyond horror films: a monster ensuing a morbid game of tormenting you while vulnerable.
* * *
Nichole has taken the liberty of your phone passcode to snap an atrocious selfie and appoint it as her own contact portrait. Truth be told, you don’t have the heart nor incentive to change it. It had taken time to ignore the scrutiny thrown your way, many times which consisted of ducking out of vicinity and of the like. At least her ringtone compensates for the source of embarrassment and entertainment. The wistful chorus of Patrick Swayze’s “She’s Like the Wind” echoes through the wood of your nightstand, a patterned vibration joining the melody. It’s tempting to ignore her call, especially since it’s already 11 p.m. on the night before a breakfast date with Mom.
Monsters and Villains 