A Terrifying Invasion Feels Eerily Acquainted in This Brief Horror Story

io9 is proud to current fiction from Lightspeed Magazine. Once a month, we feature a story from Lightspeed’s present situation. This month’s choice is “Hell is Empty” by J.R. Dawson. Get pleasure from!

Hell is Empty

by J.R. Dawson

And all of the devils are right here.

“What’s that from?” Millie asks as she will get her coat.

I stand on the again window, searching. Normally, you possibly can see the downtown skyline from this place. Right now, it’s simply the hellmouth. A protracted tube that appears like an esophagus that’s been yanked out of a kaiju and dangles from the bottom. Bloody, meaty, smoking.

“It’s Shakespeare,” I say. “I don’t bear in mind which play. I feel one of many Henrys.”

Millie follows my gaze to the hellmouth. She zips her coat. She purses her lip.

“Effectively,” she says, “we’d like pet food. We have to work out if I’m gonna hit my minimal for reimbursement.”

“I do know,” I say.

“It’s far sufficient from us I feel we’ll be okay, if we make it fast,” she says.

Our telephones ping once more.

I look down.

A brand new girl has been killed by the devils. Executed, I ought to say.

I look out to the hellmouth once more. Twenty minutes away.

Once I was a child, again earlier than all this, when issues had been peaceable, we had twister warnings. And I bear in mind standing behind the sofa, my total nervous system on fireplace, as I listened to my mother and father resolve if we must always go watch the funnel cloud from the porch or if we must always go down within the basement.

The Midwestern ambivalence to lethal issues coming straight for us, however we have to maintain our heads about it.

“It’s transferring a little bit,” I say as we step out onto the porch. And Millie checks her monitoring app.

“A bit of,” she says. “The hellmouth is usually downtown but it surely seems to be just like the devils are fanning out.”

“Right here?”

“Solely a pair.” She seems to be to me. “We’ll be okay.”

Those in Chicago didn’t transfer. The one in Portland didn’t transfer. The one in New York solely moved a little bit. However the one in DC multiplied.

“Fucking asshole,” Millie mutters as we slowly make our approach off the porch and to the again storage. We haven’t had the vitality to ice the pathway to the storage.

The fucking asshole is the man who made the take care of one thing under and darkish and terrible. As a result of like anybody who makes offers, he needed energy. And now we’ve got devils.

As soon as we get into the automobile and activate the warmth, we duck onto the normalcy of the neighborhood streets, the place you possibly can’t see the hellmouth anymore. However I maintain my eyes open.

Millie seems to be at her cellphone. “It says the lady was yanked proper by way of her windshield,” she says. “Her spouse was proper subsequent to her.” She provides a little bit gasp and lets her cellphone fall into her lap, her arm limp. Her eyes the arduous form of scared, the place you don’t let your self cry. She seems to be up on the sky, just like the devils are going to descend proper onto me.

“We’re okay,” I say. “We’re simply getting pet food and going to the fitness center.”

And the grocery retailer’s car parking zone continues to be crowded. There are nonetheless individuals asking for change on the sliding doorways. Teenage boys in lime inexperienced vests nonetheless accumulate wayward carts. We nonetheless battle to discover a parking spot. And we go inside and there’s nonetheless Purina canine chow, in a giant smelly plastic bag for our dalmatian.

The provision chains are nonetheless open. The vehicles are nonetheless going. Persons are nonetheless working.

No devils right here. All simply downtown.

And it looks like lots of people within the retailer don’t even care {that a} hellmouth has opened. Perhaps it’s one thing we’ve all come to resolve we’ll work round, like a squeaky stair. I feel after I was a child, a hellmouth would have been sufficient trigger for a grocery retailer to shut. However now we’re all so silent as we wrap our scarves round our faces to maintain out the chilly as we jog to our automobiles.

Perhaps we’re all numb.

That onerous form of scared.

And on the best way to the fitness center, we see busses choosing individuals up from bus stops and for those who don’t look to the sky the place the purple and black smoke at the moment are churning right into a Chernobog-esque swirl . . . or how a winged bat-looking factor shoots over the intersection on their solution to assault somebody . . . they sound like helicopters and . . . it might virtually be prefer it was.

I stare on the satan above because it disappears and goes north.

We’re okay, this time.

The devils already killed many of the poets on the town. I’m not a poet. I can’t put all these phrases and pictures and contrasts collectively into one thing coherent. However my physique begs me to make sense of it, to swallow all of it down and digest it and regurgitate one thing lovely.

“Hell is empty, and all of the devils are right here,” I whisper once more. The one semblance of artwork I can grasp proper now. A poet, a very long time in the past, earlier than the tornadoes I noticed or the times like at this time, mentioned one thing I can maintain on to.

Millie seems to be at her cellphone as I drive. And she or he says, “The Tempest. It’s from The Tempest.”

“That is smart,” I agree.

We park within the fitness center lot. We stroll inside. The one proof of the hellmouth inside our little cocoon of treadmills and ellipticals is on tv screens hanging above the weightlifting tools. Prefer it’s a film. Prefer it’s occurring elsewhere.

After which the sky goes black exterior.

And I seize Millie’s hand and I maintain it very tight and I watch for the devils to shatter the glass, rush inside, attempt to take her.

Allow them to attempt to take her.

I’ll fucking homicide them, I’ll claw them with my nails till I’m nothing however mud.

Then the solar returns.

And no home windows are damaged. No devils arrive. The TVs solely flicker for a second, after which they’re tremendous.

And that ready, the ready for the strike, it fills my nerves with an undesirable horror. The anticipation of one thing.

Simply get it over with, I need to say.

However nothing comes. No absolution. Simply extra notifications on our telephones, and the newsroom on the TV retains spinning how the hellmouth is definitely a very good factor for the economic system.

• • •

I need the day to be over. My physique is on fireplace.

I open my cellphone once more as we buckle into the automobile to go house.

Millie places her hand over my display screen. And she or he says, “Take a look at me.”

I have a look at her.

Her massive inexperienced eyes, her curly ringlets, they’re all right here in entrance of me attempting to floor me to a house I’m so afraid of shedding.

“Once we are on our telephones,” she says, “are we utilizing it to attach with somebody, to get data, or are we doomscrolling?” We each know the reply. “So simply take a second, and be right here with me.”

How can I “be right here along with her” when the sky is purple?

She gently places her hand on my shoulder. “We’re nonetheless right here. On our approach house, we’re going to textual content our neighbors and see if there’s something they want whereas we’re out. We’re going to go house and make yummy meals that’s good for our our bodies, and we’re going to get an excellent evening’s relaxation, so we will present up tomorrow. The neighborhood will want us. Even when it’s simply placing a door again on its body or donating an extinguisher. And after we do all that, we’re going to crawl into mattress once more, and we’re going to get again up. Time and again. Sturdy. And prepared.”

“They’ll take all of it from us,” I say. “Any of that may be interrupted by . . .” I wave exterior. The air is chilly and dry and tense. I can really feel it like a dybbuk latching onto my shoulders, digging into my backbone.

She nods. “They’ll,” she says.

That’s all she says.

No buts.

No resolutions.

She begins driving, although. We name our neighbor, they ask if we will drive by way of and get one thing to eat for them. They inform us about their neighbor, who may want us to run an errand tomorrow. We drive by way of Burger King. We ship a heat assortment of children meals and whoppers.

Then Millie and I haul our pet food in by way of the porch and the again room to the kitchen the place our canine waits. I numbly observe. She doesn’t pull the curtains closed, we will nonetheless see the hellmouth.

And we quietly make some rooster noodle soup. We watch She-Ra and we hum alongside to the theme music. We crawl into mattress. And the sky continues to be purple. And I’m nonetheless scared. And she or he touches my pores and skin.

I feel to myself, as she holds me near her heat chest and abdomen and I really feel one other human in opposition to my again, that each one the devils are nonetheless right here, however so are we.

In regards to the Creator

J.R. Dawson (she/they) is the Golden Crown award-winning writer of The First Vivid Factor. Their brief story, “Six Individuals to Revise You,” is a 2026 Nebula finalist. She has different brief work in locations similar to F&SF, Uncanny, and Reactor. Dawson presently lives on Dakota land in Minnesota along with her loving spouse. She teaches at Drexel College’s MFA program for inventive writing, and fills her free time with holding her three chaotic canines out of bother. Her newest e book, The Lighthouse on the Fringe of the World, is a sapphic Orpheus retelling.

Please go to Lightspeed Magazine to learn extra nice science fiction and fantasy. This story first appeared within the April 2026 situation, which additionally options brief fiction by Justin C. Key, V.M. Ayala, Ashok Ok. Banker, Andrew Dana Hudson, Andrea Kriz, P.A. Cornell, and extra. You may watch for this month’s contents to be serialized on-line, or you should buy the entire situation proper now in handy e book format for simply $4.99 or subscribe to the e book version here.

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