Dark Fantasy · Horror · The Plot Calls Anthology · 18 août, 2025

The Plot Calls #23 : "The Hoard Between"

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and/or Ai-assisted-content-generation. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

____

Grayson Dwyer didn’t hoard for pleasure. He hoarded for survival. The old belief—that scarcity lurked around every corner—was all he ever knew.

Raised in poverty, Grayson learned young: stockpile, stash, prepare.

It didn’t help that lunatics like Peter Thance, a name that seemed to have vanished, were proof enough that people needed to prep. Pallid’s Tear was the boogeyman that kept Grayson up at night, alongside the end of fresh air, clean water, World War III, Planet X, and so on, and so forth.

It wasn’t just poverty he was prepping for. It wasn’t just the end of the world either. He was filling the void he avoided. People just weren’t enough.

Talking to anyone other than himself—or characters in books Grayson re-read—was painful. He could only discuss other peoples’ pets, grandkids, poorly understood religion, or politics for so long.

In addition to being raised in poverty, Grayson was in the military. He’d done several tours. Tours he couldn’t talk about.

The VA didn’t help. Therapy required an actual conversation. A person who didn’t know couldn’t help. They could listen. They could assess. They could try to relate. But, ultimately, they wouldn’t understand.

He was a fish telling birds his problems. No matter how hard he tried, their exchanges were just intersections where he was gasping for oxygen he didn’t breathe.

But at least he had a checklist: Canned food. Bottled water. Batteries. And buckets stacked to the ceiling.

If the world collapsed—and it would—Grayson was, and would be, ready. Even if he was alone.

But readiness became obsession. Obsession became compulsion. Compulsion became hunger.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t just food. It was fear—gnawing dread that no matter how much he stored, it wasn’t enough.

Grayson’s house shrank beneath the towers of supplies and provisions. He was sure he was ready for anything. Still, it wasn’t enough.

Hunger hummed at the edges of his mind. Quiet at first. Then constant.

He hoarded and hoarded more. Piling more and more MREs, gear, beans, bullets, and dehydrated rations.

His bedroom blurred beneath crates. The windows disappeared behind plywood and blackout curtains.

Grayson couldn’t—but needed to—stash more. He needed to be safe and prepared.

What if the bombs dropped tonight? What if civil war broke out today? What if AI went rogue? What if… What if… and, what if… If only he could fill the spaces between spaces.

Then, as if by fate, came the whisper. It was low. Voiceless. Familiar.

It came from the basement, behind the towers of food buckets and crates of bottled water.

Then Grayson found it: a warped patch of concrete. Bulging. Breathing.

He peeled the slabs aside. A patch of black-violet soil pulsed faintly. At its center, a porcelain hand. Pale. Delicate. Open. Expectant.

Grayson didn’t flinch. He knew what to do. The soil—something, or someone beneath it—wanted the same thing he did. Escape. Escape through hoarding. Escape through consumption.

Grayson gazed at the shimmering plot. Without hesitation, he offered what he loved most—a pasta MRE he was saving as his first doomsday meal. His light in the darkness.

The porcelain hand accepted. It sank into the soil. The hunger quieted.

The next morning, his house stretched impossibly wide. Cabinets overflowing. Basement deepening into impossible dimensions. Supplies self-replenishing. Shelves multiplying. Cans, crates, weapons, water, and tools.

Grayson had enough. He was finally safe. For a while.

Then, in sync with Grayson's unexamined yearning, the soil called again. No one else ever did.

Naturally, Grayson answered. More food. More batteries. More valuables. His father’s field watch. His mother’s wedding ring. Pieces of himself: awards, keepsakes, mementos.

His home grew cavernous. The pantry never emptied. The closet deepened into blackness.

The cycle repeated. Grayson lost time. The days blurred.

His walls had no corners. It had no ceiling. The rooms had no doors. His bed floated in a space between the provisions. Safe.

Then, Grayson saw himself in the mirror. His skin paled. His limbs thinned. His already thinning hair had fallen out.

Grayson was indifferent to his blurring reflection. His sunken eyes weren’t as important as the end of the world. There were more pressing matters. His heartbeat faded beneath the quiet hum of the house.

Friends knocked. He ignored them. A cousin called. He shut off his phone. The void roared louder.

Eventually, Grayson’s house was empty. The rations were unboxed. Placed on the soil, one by one, or into the porcelain palm.

One night, gaunt and hollow, Grayson collapsed beside the soil. Barely human. Skin and bones. Eyes like glass.

Then he noticed—when he offered something, he got something in return. Only to care about it, imprint it with his emotions, or a semblance of them, and then offer it to the plot.

Towers of survival collapsing inward.

A tall, robed figure stood beside him. Pale. Hollow. Neither waiting nor expecting. Idle.

The porcelain hand resurfaced. Empty. Hungry.

Grayson stared at it. Then at the Idle Man. Blank-eyed. Silent. It held a faded photograph of Grayson’s childhood home. A house stripped bare by poverty.

Grayson understood. All of it. Too late.

His voice broke into a whisper: “I was never ready.”

The Idle Man remained silent. His—or its, whatever it was—skin stretched tight over brittle bones.

“It was never coming. I just wanted it to. I wanted an ending that would be a new beginning,” Grayson muttered.

He sighed.

From outside Grayson’s house, a gunshot echoed.

The soil accepted. The house collapsed inward. Supplies vanishing. Walls closing. The air devoured.

Only the Idle Man remained. And the plot. Pulsing. Endless.

The Idle Man and the plot slowly faded, turning in an unnatural direction—a direction beyond comprehension.

As they disappeared into a space between, somewhere that ran sideways between life, death, dreams, emotions, and imagination, the Idle Man responded to a whisper with no voice. “Yes.”

Then, the One Beneath exhaled. The Idle Man paused, then whispered, “The Plot Thickens.”