Leo understood then. The creatures weren’t monsters. They were the universe’s backlog of ignored things: grief, possibility, the seconds between heartbeats, the shape of a dream you wake from and instantly lose. They couldn’t be killed or blocked because they were already inside. Every wall he built was just a wall inside himself.
“You’ve been ignoring us,” it said. Its voice was the rustle of dry leaves, the hum of a refrigerator at 3 a.m.
He stood up. The creatures tensed—not with fear, but with anticipation. unblockable creatures
Then it moved on, because the door wasn’t ready yet. But it would be.
“Alright,” Leo said. He walked to the front door of his apartment. The one with the deadbolt, the chain, the three aftermarket locks. He opened it. Beyond was not the hallway. Beyond was a field under a purple sky, and in that field, thousands of unblockable creatures—some beautiful, some terrible, all of them waiting. Leo understood then
That worked fine until the day the creature in the library sat down across from him. It was tall, human-shaped, but with a face like a shattered mirror—each shard reflecting a different version of Leo: Leo crying at his father’s funeral, Leo laughing at a bad joke, Leo asleep, Leo screaming. It placed a hand on the table between them. The hand went through the wood without disturbing a single grain.
He was one of them.
The creature paused. It looked at her with something like hope.