Filth and Humans

We warned you of what crawls out of 3AM. It gets in your head. From your head, it gets to the rest of you. The dreams of the Dreamers have a particularly volatile reaction to the minds of humanity. Your clay becomes so malleable. It starts in the mind. Self-perception erodes. The more of Their perception you absorb, the harder it is for your brain to remember its human self. Then the body follows. Self-perception, sweetling. Once that gravity dissolves, your molecules flow, and then whole new vistas of horrible possibility open.

We see the Filthy Swarm. The first stage. It starts as an odd tick. Maybe your neighbour starts speaking gibberish, small bouts of word salad. Then the black tar explodes from every orifice, covering them in nightmare. They chase you. Even if you escape, even if you hide behind a sturdy door, the things they say cause you to vomit or pass out or consider opening your veins. Well…not you, sweetling. We protect you. We scar your mind with the right patterns.

We see the Filth Evolved. Those exposed to the Zero Point Pathogen in Tokyo received a highly concentrated dose. They have had longer to incubate. The Filth devises bodily weapons. Claws and blades and clubs. They see more of the Dreaming Ones’ dreams.

We see the Filthy Hulk. Sometimes, the infected takes in more Filth than their meat frame can contain. Muscles swell and tear and swell again. Bones strain. A titan monster is achieved. But the black hole that devours twice as ferociously collapses twice as fast. The life of these brutes is short. A surge of power that comes apart. They are unlikely to evolve to any further phases. The dream digests them.

We see the Bestial Filth. Some minds are more open to the Black Worm Jism than others — sociopaths and those already disassociated from identity. The Filth makes rapid change, it syncs with this sort of mind, there is less resistance, less ripping, the metamorphosis flows smoothly. Filth and human form a symbiosis. It’s like dancing. They accept the dream with more horrible grace.

We see the Filth Shade. The Dreamers’ dreams dissolve both bone and the fetter of identity. The infected human might eventually become a shade. They hearken to the mutable signal. They can melt into puddles of pure Filth and take on new shapes. They can join into composite monstrosities. They are ready for new stages of blasphemous ascension. They realise that they are the dream.

We see the Shade Stalker. Reality bubbles and drips where they step. Did you know they were human once, sweetling? It is hard to tell, harder to fathom. They have become so like the Dreamers, little fractal effigies. The changes you see are only the tip of the black iceberg. They have grown appendages in dimensions you cannot perceive.