Hey, this is Ali just a reminder to visit When the Night Comes Out
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our patrons and we can continue to make these terrifying episodes for you. Thanks
and enjoy. There's a moment when the sun disappears, when darkness falls,
and you're left with just your fears. That's the moment you feel your first
pang of doubt. That's the moment when the night comes out. When the
Night comes Out presents mirror war, as they say, is hell. There's
a little that can be achieved for the average soldier during a war. Most
of them end up dead or injured, and the mental wounds often extend well
past the physical. However, there are some who seem geared towards war.
They dream of conquest, They want endless power. Running into this type of
person can be devastating and dangerous, particularly when the Night comes out. The
mortar shell hit the ground just thirty yards from where the private and the lieutenant
were running. The explosion shook the earth enough to knock them off their feet,
then the shockwave hit and sent them flying. The lieutenant landed hard the
wind, flying out of his lungs in a great rush. For a moment,
he thought he was going to die, gasping and not able to pull
in any air at all. After what felt like an eternity but was probably
just a few seconds, his diaphragm hit the reset button and he took in
a huge, gasping, whooping breath. The lieutenant got to his feet,
but already the air over his head and all around him was buzzing with more
mortar shells. Explosions vibrated the ground beneath him from all over where was the
private? Lieutenant? He turned to see the private crawling up a small hill.
The young man's right leg was a bloody mess, barely held, attached
to the knee by sinew. Damn it. The lieutenant scrambled down to meet
the soldier and grabbed his arm. The private looked terrified, a wash and
pain, eyes wide and desperate. He wanted to believe the lieutenant would save
him, that he would not die. The lieutenant had no way of knowing.
Get up best he can. Let me help you stand. The lieutenant
helped the private get to his one good leg. The poor lad was already
soaked with sweat. Blood ran down his chin too internal wounds. The lieutenant
thought, not good. If only they hadn't gotten separated, If they could
find their unit again, the young man might have a chance. The lieutenant
could hear the sound of blood splattering softly against the ground. The private was
losing it all too fast. They humbled forward as best they could. The
field had once been full of trees, but the endless war, the non
stop shelling, had turned it into a waste land. Still not far,
just barely visible in the night sky and the flickering light of the flares,
the lieutenant could see the remains of a building. It was probably just three
walls and nothing more, but it was still better than being out in the
open. The lieutenant could set up a sniper's post and try to get them
through to Mourning, provided the private had until morning. The lieutenant was a
good soldier and a great shot with a rifle, but not a medic.
He'd do his best, but the truth was the private was probably a goner.
Can you see it, the lieutenant pointed, We're heading there. The
private nodded, unable to speak through the pane. They moved as fast as
they could. Lucky now, because the shells flew over their heads, landing
far behind them. The lieutenant had a dimming hope there might be a column
behind them, which would mean rescue was not far behind. It was a
dim hope, but it was something on which to hang. It took what
felt like hours. Finally they reached the bombed out building. To the lieutenant's
relief, there was more of the structure standing than he had fought. Even
much of the roof was still intact. The upper floors had fallen, but
there was enough of a clearing on the bottom floor for the private and the
lieutenant to find a place to rest. The lieutenant set the private down on
a pile of bricks. Not a comfortable hospital bed, but it was something.
When he looked around, there was no furniture, so this was the
best there was. He was tempted to start a fire. It had been
raining for nearly a week and they were soaked through to the bone. A
fire would have dried them made them both feel better, but the enemy was
too close. A fire might as well have been a signal for the enemy
to come find them. The lieutenant had no intention of an up dead or
in a prisoner of war camp. The lieutenant took his first really good look
at the private's leg. It was so much worse than he thought. The
entire bottom half was just barely hanging on. There was so much blood.
How the young man was even still alive, let alone capable of moving,
was beyond him. He did his best, but it was piss poor.
He tied a tourniquet around the leg with a belt. Then he did his
best to clean what little was still there. This completed, he gave the
private shots of painkillers and the hopes it would knock him out and maybe the
lad could die quietly in his sleep. When the medicine took effect, with
the private letting his head drop to his chest, the lieutenant sat down.
He set out some of his food and dug in. The mre was horrible,
but he was so hungry he wolfed it down. Once he had finished,
he had almost licked all the packaging clean when a voice in erupted him
that soldier is going to die. It was deep, resonant, the kind
of voice that commanded attention. The lieutenant immediately pulled his pistols and pointed into
the shadows. Who's there, Identify yourself or I'll kill you. A figure
moved in the shadows, the lieutenant saw the man's hands and legs, part
of his chest. The stranger in the shadows was large, his arms muscular.
He wore a uniform colored a military green, but the lieutenant didn't recognize
it and could not see the man's face. Come out into the light.
Let me see your face. Who are you and where are you from?
I will not, But before you shoot, here's what I can tell you,
Lieutenant. I am not part of this war. I am not the
enemy against which you are currently fighting. I am a soldier from not too
far away, however, And finally, if you think I'd wander into a
battlefield without being armed as well, you are not the man I hoped you'd
be. The lieutenant gritted his teeth, but felt cold from his head down
to his toes. Did he fire and hope this man was not an innocent
Did he risk being shot himself? The lieutenant lowered his weapon. He was
tired, and there was a long night ahead of all of them. If
this stranger did make a move he didn't like, he could always do with
it. Then. Just know I can get to these weapons so much faster
than you can imagine, he told the stranger. That. How did you
get here? Why are you here in this building? The stranger receded a
bit further into the shadows. I'm a traveler, That's all you need to
know. I am from a place where there's a lot of war, more
war than this, Bigger and more horrifying than anything you've seen yet here.
The lieutenant scoffed, I find that hard to believe. This is the conflict
dominating our planet right now. I am unaware of any other war being waged
that includes weapons more devastating than what we have used so far. The stranger
scoffed, right back, you are not from where I am. The lieutenant
was already irritated. Just tell me where you're from and we can stop playing
word games. I'm tired. This man here is dying, and I have
a long night ahead of me. The enemy is all around us and can
burst in here at any time, or a shell might fall right on this
hideout and blow us all the kingdom come. The stranger heaved a great sigh,
always so impatient, no sense of the dramatic. Fine, I'm from
another world, another version of this reality. It was time for the lieutenant
to laugh. He did so, despite the risk of letting out such a
loud noise posed given the dangerous situation he had only moments before explained to this
stranger, Now I know you're either crazy or just having fun at my expense.
Perhaps I should just shoot you and be done with it. The stranger
grunted, as if considering this offer. You could, or you can pass
the night listening to a story. At the end, if you feel I
am still insane, you can still shoot me. The lieutenant considered this.
It was going to be a long night. He should fortify this place and
set up a sniper's nest, but he was intrigued. Now the shelling was
very distant and there was nothing moving outside. Fine, tell me your tale,
but keep in mind the terms of the contract you just made. Should
I find the story lacking, you may not see morning fair enough. Now
let me tell you about my home. Where I come from, there is
war all the time. I mean all the time. One country, one
ruler is always trying to invade or conquer someone else. This is a terrible
thing and not a great way for a person to grow up. But it
makes a person hard, It makes a person grow up strong. They trained
me to fight almost from birth. My father was a general and a respected
one, so I could reap the benefits of that privilege. I went to
the finest schools, was trained by the best. I thrived. I took
to the training like a duck to water. I assume they have ducks in
this world. Yes, funny, there seems to be ducks in all worlds,
maybe even the same ones. Who knows. There was a man in
charge of the war. He was called general, but he was much more
than that. He was a man as tall as a mountain and twice as
strong, who told us where to go, who to fight, and when
I followed him without question, and soon graduated out of the military academy.
And my country was the conquerors. We faced every enemy, and they went
down in rivers of blood, their women and children screaming and crying in our
wake. It looked as if we might defeat the entire planet, subjugate the
global population. Could it be that peace was near at hand? Of course
not. No. Instead, someone arose, someone had the idea that the
best way to bring permanent peace was to defeat those who had started and run
the war, impose an iron fisted rule, and force peace. A man
so brutal. He did not leave women and children screaming in his wake.
Instead, he just slaughtered them, as well as the men and soldiers.
Yes, I know, I can see from your faith that you were wondering
why this differed from what the General was already planning. He had conquered all
the known world and was going to bring peace that way. Well, this
young up and comer wanted his own army, his own lands. Fortunately,
the General had grown fat and lazy over the years. It was easy for
this newcomer to defeat him and take over that world, all of it.
Every man, woman and child knew of him and feared him. He made
sure the streets ran with blood, and the world trembled at his feet,
begged him for mercy, and he built his throne from the bones of their
children. So our new friend took over. He swept through and burned everything
in his wake, And when the entire planet was subjugated, he looked around
at his creation and thought, I am so bored. This is not enough.
Fortunately this monster had employed scientists. They had one mission, find other
worlds to conquer. Although they spent a lot of time looking into space,
they found nothing which would suit our monster clothed in human skin. So they
turned toward the idea of inner space, and lo and behold, they found
there were alternate realities, other dimensions, parallel universes where there was peace and
new planets to conquer this monster. This brute of a man looked upon those
new worlds. Some of them were so primitive he knew he could take it.
In an afternoon, he saw those wonders, and he saw red because
he needed more blood. He needed to see live shattered before him and the
world quakened fear at his steps. So he gathered his armies and he invaded.
He took and took. While doing so, he also discovered something interesting.
Each of us carries with us multiple worlds. Yes, even you right
now carry with you multiple universes. Each step you take and decision you make
spawns another world, another reality. However, another person cannot enter your realities.
But there are those of us who appear in some version in world after
world, each just a hair different, but somehow, all of them on
similar paths, headed towards similar destinies. Our monstrous hero in my story found
this out. He found there were other versions of himself in each world,
all of them great military minds, all of them with the desire for war,
for battle, for watching an enemy die before them. Some of them
had achieved some level of greatness, but others were still in uniform, working
their way up. Each of them was a mirror image in some way,
like seeing a friend you have not seen in a long time. You recognize
them even as their faces change. You can see the ambition, the desire
to take over behind the eyes. Knowing that each of those alternate versions of
himself would mean should he take over this world, there would be someone with
the ambition to take it from him, as he had done so, our
friend made a decision. That decision was to find the alternate versions of himself
and kill them. First. World after world fell, our man, our
monster, gathered knowledge and weapons, and his armies grew. I can see
it in your face. You're wondering what I was doing during all of this?
Was I just a follower? Did I just stand and let this man
slaughter hundreds than thousands, than millions across the various worlds? Well, tell
me what you would have done. Would you have tried to face off against
the greatest military mind this or any universe had ever seen? Would you dare
to stand up to the face of the devil himself and tried to defy him?
If you did, what do you think the devil would have said back
to you? Perhaps you would have just laughed right before he ripped out your
soul and then promised to do the same to your family. No, I
want to tell you I was brave and that I faced down this monster and
killed him. I want to tell you that when this man arose to fight
against the general I had been with from childhood, I stayed loyal. No,
I joined with the monster until it was all too much. Then I
ran. I figured out how to use the devices our scientists invented, and
I jumped to another place. Another time I came here. I've been here
for weeks now, watching and looking around. Once again, I found a
world at war, a true global conflict, Except this one seems to be
unfocused. I don't see just one man in power trying to take it from
the rest of the world. We're all so much alike, we humans.
You cannot imagine the horrors I have seen. Even worse, you cannot imagine
the horrors I committed. You see, there's something that happens when you hold
a person's life in your hands. When the person, no matter who they
are, looks at you with that last glimmer of hope in their eyes,
they're hoping you'll just let them live. They want you to let them go.
Sometimes you do, just to try to remember what it's like to be
a human being with actually feelings. You let them go. They will remember
you for the rest of their lives. You think they will speak of you
for generations and hushed tones, But remember how you let them go. There
is power and mercy, but there is genuine passion, a true high from
violence. I wish it were not so, but it triggers something in the
brain when you grab someone by their throat and watch that person's light go out,
the look in their eyes as they face eternity and realize all of the
things they thought about life, about themselves are vanishing. We all spend our
time in this bubble. We all walk around convinced we are the main character
in our own stories as the hero and the rest of the world are secondary
characters or villains. The insane thing is every single person thinks that about themselves.
If everyone is a main character, then there are are no main characters.
Do you want to know the truth? Do you want to know the
harsh, terrifying, sad truth about the universe? There are only a few
who are main characters. There are always a few who are at the top
of the heap. The vast majority of the world of every world is meant
for sport, are meant to be prey for those at the top. Most
of us are the sidekicks home may be worse, most of us are the
chattel. I mean, think about it. There are apex predators throughout the
natural world. I have seen them on every world, in every dimension.
Too. Many of them look like what you have here, but with slight
differences. There are bears, lions, and sharks. They are praying mantises,
all of them, perfect ruthless hunters. They kill without thinking, without
questioning whether they should. They kill most of the time to feed. But
there are always some who kill just for the sport of it. They kill
because it's what they do, what they were built for. Only in our
arrogance do we as humans tell ourselves we are the apex of all of them.
Can you imagine what hubris all of those predators with their claws and teeth
muscles and enhanced senses, all designed for killing, and we, nearly hairless,
almost defenseless, claim dominion over them. All. All humans are good
for is deluding ourselves and making things that kill. I bet the very first
murder a human ever did involved using a weapon. However, we have no
natural defenses, some sort of pathology, I think, because humans were dropped
naked, defenseless, but with big brains. The first emotion we felt must
have been jealousy, and the jealousy that us to becoming killers. Anyway,
I realized this truth of mine as I stood there next to the man who
had subjugated thousands of worlds. I realized I was just a sidekick. I
was there as a supporting character in his story. He might have been the
villain, but I was not the hero of that, I was certain.
So I found a scientist who was willing to work with me. In fact,
he wanted to come with me make the jump. We met in secret,
repeatedly searching over and over for a world that we could jump to and
hopefully not be seen. We planned to destroy the machines which opened the portals.
As we did so, I jumped My scientist friend attempted but his trigger
device went off too soon. I ended up in a new world with his
head, right, shoulder, and hand and nothing else. The shock had
killed him before half of his body hit the ground. The lieutenant breathed deeply,
inhaling the smell of the churned earth around the broken house. He also
smelled blood from the private, who still bled onto the cement. He could
also smell the odors of this strange man, with his fantastical tale of alternate
realities amuse him. He thought the night was very long and very dark,
and the story had been compelling for sure. How many did you kill?
He asked. There was silence from the man in the shadows. The lieutenant
imagined his new friend with one eyebrow raised. What do you mean, the
lieutenant grinned. You tell me you were born into a world where you were
trained by a tyrant to conquer and kill, Like the spartans of old.
Here on our world, you were taught from birth to fight and destroy.
You then betrayed your first master and spent your entire adult life beside someone who
did all of those horrible things. You mean to tell me, you jumped
into this new world and did not kill anyone you were taught to seek out
your double and murder them straight away, were you not. There was a
soft, rhythmic noise from the stranger in the shadows. It took the lieutenant
a moment to realize this was how the man laughed. It sounded very much
like a machine trying to learn how to laugh. This was a person not
accustomed to humor or laughter in general. He thought, you are very clever.
The man in the shadows replied, I can see you are a man
who is going places. Yes, of course, the first thing I did
was find my doppelganger and kill that man. I tried to live my life
there, but it was very hard to shake off the things which were taught
to us, isn't it. The lieutenant took a deep breath. Yes,
it is. How long before you began amassing your own army before you decided
the best way to deal with the situation was to attack the man for whom
you had been his right hand. I can tell this is where the story
is going, really, And how can you tell? Because it's what I
would do. The strange gurgling laughter filtered from the shadows. The stranger moved
the sound of his feet and clothing rustled in the darkness. Slowly, the
lieutenant saw more and more of the man there, his legs clad in thick
military boots and wearing more of that green colored fabric than his arms, thick
with muscle and covered in scars. The lieutenant reached for his side arm,
but the stranger's voice cut through the darkness. Don't even try. The bullets
you use in this reality won't even penetrate my shields. The lieutenant didn't stop.
He fired four times and was sure he hit the stranger. There were
bright yellow flashes and the shadows, but the stranger kept moving. The man
seemed so much larger than he had until then. As he stepped from the
shadows, the lieutenant realized the stranger was wearing some kind of armor, and
there were electronic flashes lights. As he stepped into the light, the stranger
did two things almost at the same time. First, he fired some kind
of weapon, which created a searing pain in the lieutenant's gut. The second
was he removed a helmet the lieutenant hadn't even realized the stranger was wearing.
The stranger stepped into the light, and the lieutenant realized he was not a
stranger. Of course it was him, some part of him knew it would
be. He was taller, more muscular, and his hair was gray on
top a wicked scar like some kind of lightning bolt ran down the right side
of his face, bisected his right eye, which was a milky white.
His face was hard, a man who had done much, killed many,
and seen horrors beyond anything the lieutenant could imagine. Staring into this unfeeling,
uncaring, hard face, the lieutenant realized something else. You lied the entire
story, all of it. You never tried to live peacefully. You didn't
run. Perhaps someone did, but not you. The pain in his gut
was spreading, like the time he had anesthetic delivered before a surgery. There
was a tingling, a kind of warmth, spreading in all directions. You
are the man. You are the dictator, the brute, the man who
has killed across dimensions, the stranger wearing the lieutenant's face heaved a heavy sigh,
as if he wore the weaves of many worlds on his shoulders. Yes,
as I said, you were far too clever. All the versions of
me are, you see, in order to allow my forces to come through,
so I can destroy and conquer this world. I always have to first
destroy myself, otherwise I risk my own self destroying me. It's an endless
loop. The lieutenant tried to stand, only to realize he could not.
As he looked down, he saw his feet vanish, then his calves.
He was disappearing. I am no monster, the lieutenant said, his voice
growing dim. Perhaps you are not, his other self said coldly, but
I am. The lieutenant made one last attempt to bring his own weapon to
bear, but by the time he reached for his rifle, his arms were
vanishing. He turned his head, stared in horror at the eyes of the
brutal mirror image of the man standing before him. He opened his mouth to
scream, only to find he had no voice. Then he was gone.
The general shook his head almost sadly, but so used to this plan of
action he barely registered that his other self was gone. He had spent many
days, years now, looking into the mirror of his own face and destroying,
and it was no more a problem than squashing an annoying fly. In
every world, the versions of himself were military men, some climbing their way
up, but many were already at the top. This was why he had
to kill them. They were all as potentially dangerous as he was. The
private, still clinging to life, moaned on the ground. The general took
out his pistol and shot him in the head. Soon he was gone as
well, dissolved into nothingness. Outside, the firing had started again. The
general stepped out. As the ground shook beneath his feet from more shelling.
He could hear soldiers voices. Time to decimate this world, he thought,
and pressed a button on his belt buckle. Behind him, the air itself
shimmered, then glowed white than orange. Then a hole appeared within the fabric
of reality itself. It extended from the ground to thirty feet in the air.
Beyond it, standing in regimented order, were thousands of soldiers, all
of them dressed in armor. Advance, the general called. His armies moved
forward without hesitation. The earth shook beneath their feet. Behold a man destined
to bathe in blood and conquer worlds, A man alone and trying hard to
remain alone across this world and countless others. When we stare into the mirror,
what do we see? Do we see the person we really are?
Or do we delude ourselves into thinking where the person we aspire to be.
Sometimes, cold, dead, dark eyes stare back at you, locking eyes,
boring into the soul, and we are forced to contend with the darkness
within. Sometimes when the Night Comes Out. You've been listening to When the
Night Comes Out, a weekly horror anthology podcast with stories by Brian w Alaspa
and narrated and produced by Ali James, music by Viveka Bishek. For Brian's
work, visit his website at Brianwlaspa dot com or visit Amazon dot com to
find his works of fiction and nonfiction. For Ali's work, find her on
Facebook at Ali James Projects. Don't forget to check out our website When the
Night Comes Out dot com to learn how to support us on Patreon