MyHandInBandages

   My left hand is pretty much useless. The doctor said it would take months before I could use my fingers again.

   I am forced to admit that I am a runner. I run.

   A while ago, I met another runner, running from something else. He told me about it -- this creature he called the Slender Man -- and how it had no face and couldn't be killed. "We made it," he said, in a slightly crazed voice. "We made it with our minds."

   I don't agree with him. (For one, I have no idea if this Slender Man exists or not - I saw no proof, but then again, I have seen stranger things.) I don't think human minds could come up with such incomprehensible things.

  We seek order from chaos. We hope to comprehend. We are doomed to failure.

HarpSongOfTheDaneWomen

  They broke my fingers. Four fingers on my left hand are broken. They broke them without asking questions. They broke them just for fun.

  They broke into my hotel room (yeah, I didn't go back to my apartment - I'm crazy, not stupid) and grabbed me. I fought back hard - I'm pretty sure I busted one of their noses - but they clamped a chloroform rag over my mouth.

  Them that ask no questions isn't told a lie. They asked no questions. After they broke my fingers, one of them started tugging at my fingernail. And singing.

  "What is a woman that you forsake her,
   And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
   To go with the old grey Widow-maker?"

  One fingernail gone and one verse done. He started on the next one.

   "She has no house to lay a guest in,
   But one chill bed for all to rest in,
   That the pale suns and the stray bergs nest in."

  I cried out for him to stop. My pants were soaked with urine. My fingers were a bloody mess. I swore I would tell them everything, every detail of what I knew. I could bring them to another Door, take them into the City itself. They could raze it to the ground for all I cared.

  The man started on the third fingernail.

  "She has no strong white arms to fold you,
   But the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you,
   Out on the rocks where the tide has rolled you."

There was a bright light and a Door was there. I had never seen a Door just appear before (and hadn't now, since my eyes had been closed) and this wasn't like any Door I had seen. It was tall and majestic and golden. All of the Gentlemen stared at it with awe and rapture in their eyes.

  It swung open and a great darkness consumed them. It pulled them in and shut the Door behind it.

  I sat alone and breathed and cried as the Door softly vanished away.

LowMenInDarkCoats

   They found my apartment. Broke down the door and left me a note. They still think that shit like that scares me.

  I made the mistake once of helping them. I won't do it again.

  There are different Doors. Or maybe the Doors react differently to different people.

TrottingThroughTheDark

  A week after my wife and son entered the City they found me. The Gentlemen of the Dark. They dressed like businessmen and handed me a business card that said they were from the lawfirm of Ashland & Thorn. They represented someone who was interested in my story.

  I am not stupid. When the police questioned me, I said nothing about the Door or the City. What would I have said? No. Sometimes a lie is easier.

  But they found me anyway. I must have told someone. I could have muttered it in my sleep.

  They said if they could find another Door, they could help bring my wife and son back. (Sometimes a lie is easier.) "Those who see a Door and don't go through sometimes can find more Doors," they told me. I made a mistake. I helped them.

IfYouWakeAtMidnight

  I'm going to break the rule. I'm going to talk about the Gentlemen of the Dark.

  They will try to find me. They will try to break me. I do not care.

  They track the Doors. They have people everywhere looking for them. Wondering alleyways, the symbols of the Door tattooed to their arms for quick reference, so they know if they've found one. Why look? Why the search? Why the secrecy? They answer all questions the same:

  Them that ask no questions isn't told a lie.

TheLastWave

   There are those who claim that the City is by a sea or body of water. "Water changes," they say. "Water is change. It never takes the same form twice, just like the City."

  They are right and wrong. The City is like the sea. Constantly shifting. But it is not controlled by the moon, it has no tides, no ways to predict where it will land. There is no shore for the City.

  But we have fed the City and the sea for a thousand years and she calls us still, unfed.

OurProudAndAngryDust

   Sometimes I imagine them. Imagine what they are doing right now. Chasing each other through the winding streets, the twisting lanes that change as soon as you walk past them. They are running, laughing, never growing old. There is no time there.

  Sometimes there are traces. Fragments of a life consumed by the City. I still have their pictures in my breast pocket, close to my heart. And I've found others. A boy in Washington who was sent to his room by his parents and never came out. An group of illegal immigrants, lured by the promise of America, packed into the cramped cargo hold of a boat, all of them suddenly vanishing.

  I can see it now. They are sleepless, whispering to each other, wondering about when they will arrive, when they see a Door. A Door to the ultimate freedom, the endless labyrinth of the City.