Almost fifteen years ago, the world changed. Of course, people took a while to realize. They continued on with their monotonous lives; they went to work, ate with their families, cleaned the kitchen and repeated the cycle.

  To be fair, it didn't happen all at once. Not with fire raining from the sky or trumpets blaring or portals ripping open in the clouds. It was quieter than that, slower. Like a trickle of water that eventually becomes a flood, only no one notices until they’re chest-deep and the current’s pulling too strong to fight.

  At first, it was so easy to ignore the strange occurrences. I mean, why would anyone assume that a particularly large man was a shifter? Or that the ridiculously gorgeous man on the subway was an incubi? It was so easy for everyone to just ignore it all.

  But the stories started. Quiet ones, passed in whispers. A friend of a friend’s sister went missing. A couple was found, her body never recovered and his turned inside out, left like a warning. Something inhuman. Something deliberate.

  I’ve been told that the real trouble started about a year or two after the first portals appeared. Not that anyone knew they were portals at the time. People saying that they saw strange shadows in the wood, weird weather, a burst of energy that fried electronics in a five-mile radius. You know, normal stuff.

  It was then that my family moved away from the city. Of course, Grandma didn't clue in to the new beings when they packed up and left. It was still so easy to find some other issue to blame this all on, rather than that the world had changed and previously-thought fictional beings were now wandering the Earth. She can lie all she wants to in her journal that she moved away from the city to “see the sky better”, but I don't think anyone would believe her.

  Eventually, people smarter than my family realized what was actually happening. The existence of the new beings was broadcasted globally, and if there was google I am sure that there would have been a massive spike in people googling where the nearest succubus brothel was.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  What? People are horny.

  When my family moved out, they started stocking up on supplies. They built a root cellar and filled it with cans of food, added five deadbolts to each door, found an old radio somewhere, and stocked the house with games. They were in such a panic when they were moving and grabbing things, I wouldn’t be surprised if I found a flamingo costume under one of the beds.

  For a while, it worked. Sort of. My family lived off-grid, stockpiled food, learned how to mend clothes and snare rabbits. They told ourselves the chaos outside wouldn’t reach us. That we were the lucky ones.

  Outside of our cabin, there was mass confusion. Some reports said that the new beings wanted global domination, and others said that they were here to plant their babies in us all as incubators. Some rumours spread that they came in peace - yeah right Randy, I’m not an idiot.

  My family tried their best to increase our rations over time and to pretend that everything was normal. My grandparents lived for a while, and passed when I was around ten. Quietly.

  My parents didn’t get so lucky.

  They tried. Harder than anyone. My mom taught me how to trap and gut a rabbit before I could spell “February.” My dad reinforced the cabin every spring like it was the Alamo.

  But in the end, it wasn’t monsters or magic that got them.

  Just the world being what it is now: dangerous, unstable, full of accidents no one comes to fix. A windstorm hit hard one year. My dad was on the roof patching it when the beam gave way. Mom made it two months after that, but she was gone long before I found her body.

  I buried them both under the cedar tree. The one that still creaks when the wind shifts, like it’s trying to talk to me.

  After that, it was just me and Bagel. She’s a cat, and not a particularly helpful one, unless you count moral support delivered through slow blinking and passive-aggressive purring. When I found her as a kitten, I caught her eating the last bagel I was ever able to make, using the very last of my flour, mind you.

  Didn’t even hesitate. It was still warm. She looked me dead in the eye while she did it, too.

  She’s my inspiration and my role model.