PREFACE: The start of an idea…

So here I am, another day in LA.

Just another normal day. Which, for me, usually means the fuse is already lit, and I am the only idiot standing close enough to smell the smoke. I used to think strange things happened around me by accident. Bad luck. Wrong place, wrong time. Maybe the universe had a sense of humor, and my name was written on a bathroom wall somewhere between HELP ME and CALL THIS GUY FIRST.

The unexplained. The impossible. The ugly little cracks in the world where something reaches through and starts pulling. I do not understand why it always seems to be me standing there when it happens. Still, I have accepted one thing: if something crawls, flies, melts, whispers, bites, curses, or decides humanity looks better from the inside out, sooner or later, it knocks on my door, sometimes literally. Why do I say that? That is simple. I feel like I am a magnet for the unexplained and the unknown. And when those things show up, they usually do not come with a polite note or a return address. They come hungry, angry, enchanted, half-rotted, half-hidden, or wearing a face they borrowed from something that should have stayed dead. How do I deal with them? Well, it's also simple. I remove them from the planet. Yeah, sometimes that means I kill, maim, break, burn, crush, or destroy. Occasionally, that involves a building. Sometimes fire. I haven't heard of anyone else handling this every month, but I know one thing for sure. It is always me they come looking for. So I have decided I will start documenting. Just a note. An account. Something written down before memory gets brave enough to start lying to me. I am calling them the Kolchak Papers or Files. The name hasn't been settled yet, anyway. It can wait until there are more of them. If I live long enough, maybe I will even pick one. And yes, you are probably wondering how you are reading this if these pages are supposed to be for my own collection. Here is the truth. When writers write, they want someone to read what they put their time into. We can pretend otherwise, but that is just another kind of fiction.

So I know that someday I will feel the pull to set this straight for the world. To explain what was out there before someone else gives it a cleaner name, locks it in a file cabinet, or calls it mass hysteria with a straight face. This will be the first file. So when that day comes, I will remember exactly what I was thinking on the twentieth day of October, 2014.

I will close this file now, as I believe it will eventually be filled with a Thing. 'Thing' seems to cover it when you lack information, as it has many teeth and wants me dead. I wait for the next Thing that wants me dead, probably starting on the next page, because that's how this works. I'm here, minding my own business, then poof, there it is. No, . These are the first words from he who will be hunted by many. With that, I bid farewell from my 36-year-old self. Metal Madness Monster

Chapter 1

So it feels like I just said hello to you, but it has been about a week. As you can see, I am writing on the page. However, one idea has changed. I picked up a secondhand Sony portable tape deck with good sound, so I can record while I am running, or at least record it safely, maybe while I am running like I am now. So let's start this the pro way, I think:

Sunday, the 26th of October:

I am sitting behind a dumpster, for lack of a better word, hiding from whatever the thing is that is after me now. It's big. It has the appendages of a human, but it is green and almost 8 feet tall. Now you see why I am hiding. And why a dumpster, because the scent of the garbage might cover up my own if it is tracking my scent. As I am here, I will let you know this all started because it was my day to search the garbage papers, the papers in town, saying they have information that we might want to expand on. Ya, welcome to the NEWS industry…

LA GLOBE NEWS
By John Jolsen

Los Angeles appears to have joined the growing list of cities where even the garbage is beginning to develop a life of its own.

On Thursday evening, a local resident, identified only as Mary, who lives across from the city’s garbage processing center, contacted police with an unusual complaint, even by urban standards. In her report, she stated, “There is a large man making holes in the garbage pile and causing an odor far stronger than the normal smell. Please send someone to tell him to stop tunneling.”

The call was dispatched to a local patrol unit, Officers Evans and Daniels, who reported witnessing what they described as a strange occurrence upon arrival. According to their initial statements, they observed what appeared to be a large man interacting with the trash pile in a way that suggested he was physically sinking into it.

However, the situation took an unexpected turn when the owners of the facility arrived and opened the main gate. At that point, the figure could no longer be located. What remained, officers said, was an opening in the garbage mound large enough to suggest that something—or someone—had moved through it. No further evidence was found.

This report has been filed and shared with the community as a precaution, with officials advising residents near the Fourth Avenue dump to remain aware of unusual activity. As for conclusions, this reporter will refrain from drawing any firm ones. Believe what you choose, act as you must, and trust your instincts.

That said, if an eight-foot pile of garbage ever starts moving in your direction, the recommended response is simple.Run.

So I got approval to go and see what I could find on the story of the lumpy, dumpy guy. I started by talking to Mary, and I could tell right away the smell from the dump was clinging to her no matter how she turned. It was in her clothes, her hair, her breath. Worse than that, I realized if I had been standing where she had been standing when it happened, breathing what she breathed, I might not have walked away at all.

I asked Mary if she could tell me what she was seeing and how the thing acted. She took a slow breath and then started walking me through it.

“Well, Karl, I was right here, looking over at the mess the city built on the vacant lot. You know, Karl, that was going to be a water park until the city grabbed the land because it was cheap and took away all our water dreams we had here.”

“And the garbage man, Mary?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“Yes,” she said, nodding too fast. “That was it. The beast with a sour taste for the dead and rusting. He was standing right there by the front gate, and I could see him walking, and he almost hit that light by the gate with his head as he moved. Then the strangest thing, you know, Karl… he seemed to be absorbed by the garbage pile. Just sank into it. And then he popped back up through the pile again.”

She swallowed hard. “I saw him do that like five times before I called for help for the noises. Because every time he popped out, the smell got worse. Like rotten water mixed with dead things. You know. Right, Karl?”

I did know.

After that account, I thanked poor Mary for her time and left her standing there with the smell still hanging on her. I headed over to the dumping area myself. I found locked gates, heavy chains, and machines sitting idle, engines cold, no people anywhere running the place at all. The silence there felt wrong, like something had chased everyone off and stayed behind.

I figured the best way in would be after hours.

So I left, went home, and started getting ready for a night discovery, knowing full well that whatever was sinking into that garbage and coming back out again wasn’t going to care about locks, gates, or what time the city thought it should be asleep.

On the way, since I hadn’t done this before, I stopped at a couple of small hardware stores to pick up supplies, splitting it between two places so there wouldn’t be a clear question about what I planned on doing. I wanted to be forgotten almost as soon as I left their stores, my face slipping out of their minds the moment the door shut behind me.

I waited for the day to fall and the moon to rise overhead. I picked a good one—a full moon—bright enough to stain the clouds and turn metal pale. I let my eyes adjust slowly, careful not to look at direct lights, and when I had to, I kept one eye closed to preserve whatever night vision I could. The world flattened into shades of silver and black, every edge sharper, every shadow deeper.

So there I was, cutting my way through a fence, using the tools I brought to make a man-sized hole so I could go exactly where I shouldn’t have even been thinking about. The wire complained softly with every snip. The whole time I was cutting, I’m pretty sure I said “stupid” about twenty times, fully aware that I was. But there was a pull, low and steady, like a hook set somewhere behind my ribs, telling me I needed to stop this thing. I had no idea why. Only that it was there, and it wasn’t letting go.

I got inside and started to walk, slow and deliberate, listening for anything—footsteps, breathing, even dogs—since I didn’t know if they kept any inside like some scrap yards do after hours. The place smelled of rust and oil and old rainwater trapped where it shouldn’t be. As I walked, I noticed I kept turning around, over and over, as if something was following me just out of sight. There was nothing there. Nothing I could see.

I finally stopped and threw a stick behind me.

It stopped in midair.

Not abruptly, not slammed—just arrested, like it had leaned against something solid—and then it dropped straight down, hitting the ground as if it had bounced off an invisible chest. There was nothing there. No outline. No shimmer. Just absence shaped like a presence.

I started moving faster.

Behind me, things began to shift. Metal scraped metal. Something heavy bumped into something else and didn’t fall the way it should have. I took the chance and ran, boots slapping hard now, and I headed for the byway crane where a rope hung loose from the top, swaying slightly like it had been disturbed recently.

For some stupid reason, the thought hit me: go higher so you can see more.

So I started up the rope, leaving my Bags of Tricks on the ground below me. Halfway up, my arms burning, my breath loud in my own ears, I thought stupid again. I call myself stupid more than anyone else ever does.

That was when I saw it.

A hole opened in the distance.

Not on the ground. But in the top of the scrap pile itself. It peeled open like a wound, edges soft and wrong, breathing out a cloud of thick, stinking fog that looked like steam but clung too long. Inside it was nothing but depth, like looking down a throat that didn’t belong to anything alive. Then the hole closed again, the fog sucked back in, leaving the night pretending it had never happened.

I dropped from the rope, hit the ground hard, grabbed my bag, and ran toward the bad thing anyway. That’s when I noticed the metal beneath my feet—sections welded together at angles no machine should need, conduits fused into scrap, paths worn smooth that hadn’t been made by boots or tires. Whatever was here was not a man with a shovel. It was something that moved through the place, not over it.

My stress climbed fast.

Ahead of me, the ground shifted and an active hole opened, tearing up through the scrap just as a thick burst of foul fog erupted out of it. The smell was unbearable—rotted water, burned oil, and something organic that should not have been exposed to air. I didn’t jump in. Instead, I grabbed a long pipe from the ground and threw it into the hole.

It hit something.

Not the bottom. Something moving.

The pipe jerked, then started to rise back out of the hole, dragged upward by something that did not want to stay hidden. And then it came into view.

It had two eyes, if you could call them that—deep cavities with small, twitching outer sensors set inside, adjusting, focusing. The surface around them wasn’t skin so much as layered material, like compacted sludge and fused debris, wet in places, crusted in others. Its shape was wrong, unfinished, like it had been built from whatever it passed through. And it was climbing out.

I ran.

Behind me, the ground vibrated, not with footsteps exactly, but with pressure, like something heavy moving too fast through places not meant to hold it. I could feel it gaining. I slid under a pile, scraped through a narrow wall of stacked cars, tearing fabric and skin, and kept moving, lungs screaming.

I looked up and saw the large truck suspended over the compactor, hanging there like a threat waiting for permission. And that’s when I got another stupid idea.

I dropped to my back, slid under the control panel, and started feeling for the release knob by touch alone. When I found it, I rolled clear, putting myself on the far side, positioning just far enough away that if the thing chased me again, it would have to come under the truck to reach me.

That was when I realized it had stopped.

The vibrations faded. The air settled.

Which meant one thing.

I was no longer interesting enough.

So now I had to decide how to make myself worth chasing again. Or decide that I was done for the night. The truth was, I had accomplished the goal I set for myself this evening. I found what was causing this. I just did not understand it yet.

I knew something was doing it, but I was nowhere near a solution. Was it a machine it carried with it, some tool that allowed it to open space and melt metal? Or was it the thing itself? That mattered more than anything else. If it was the thing, if it could melt metal just by being there, then dropping a car on it would do nothing. But if it was a machine, if it had to use something, if it ever let that thing go, then maybe—just maybe—I could kill it.

Then my mind, already running hot, took the turn it always does. What if it only wanted old metal? What if it was feeding, not hunting? What harm was it really doing, except keeping scrap from the dumps? Was this even a threat yet, or just something wrong that didn’t belong here? The questions stacked up fast, each one heavier than the last, until they pressed down hard enough that I could feel my pulse in my ears.

That was when I knew I was done for tonight.

I backed away slowly, every step measured, listening for any change in the air, any vibration that said I had been noticed again. When nothing came, I took the spool of metal fiber and closed my human-sized hole in the fence, tying it back together as neatly as I could. I made it look untouched, or close enough that no one would question it in daylight.

I stood there a moment longer, breathing in rust and cold moonlight, and thought that whatever this thing was, tomorrow night would be more fun.

So when I got home, I put my bag on the table and fell on the loveseat in my place. And I got my pad and wrote this down to be sure I got the facts before they were forgotten.

So there you go, my first entry in my first case file number 1, and so many more to go.

So one thing I noticed when I read back what I wrote down and recorded was simple, and that simplicity bothered me more than anything else. Did I have two creatures, or did one creature come off as looking like different animals depending on how and where it moved? I did not know, but that question stayed with me longer than the fear did. Fear fades. Unanswered patterns do not.

I kept seeing the moments side by side in my head—the way the hole opened like metal had forgotten how to be solid, the way the fog breathed out of it like something exhaling after a long hold. The way the thing felt different depending on distance, like it was choosing how to be perceived. That is what finally pushed me to look for information instead of answers.

CHAPTER 2
could capture it?

And when you need information, you go where people argue about things that do not officially exist.

A college.

Being in LA, I went to the biggest one first and got nothing at all. Blank looks. Polite smiles that shut down as soon as I described heat without flame, movement without shape. One place actually threw me out once I said what I was looking for, like the words themselves were contagious. It was only later, standing in a hallway that smelled like cleaner and old paper, that someone finally stopped me and said I was not looking for zoology.

“You want cryptozoology,” they told me. “The study of what never was, but could be.” The way they said it made it sound less like a field of study and more like a warning.

So off I went to the Central LA College department of Cryptozoology and Creature Studies, tucked out near the Angeles National Forest, far enough away that no one had to explain why they were there. When I found the lab, I was surprised by how small it was. A few rooms. Old equipment. Shelves that looked like they had been inherited rather than purchased. There are not many people willing to spend their lives studying things that the world insists are impossible.

I got lucky. The director was on his lunch break.

I walked in and said, “Sir—”

“Doctor Walter Smithlord,” he corrected without looking up. “And who, my sir, are you?”

I introduced myself as an investigator of the strange and said, “I had a story I wanted to describe to you and see what you could make out of it, sir.”

He finally looked at me, annoyance already settled in his face. “With the Griffin Park Creature, the Chatsworth Dogman, the Billiwhack Monster, and not to forget the Watts Dog Woman, just to say a few that we are actively studying, why should I want another fantasy creature you made up in your dreams, Mr…?”

“Karl,” I said. “And I did not make this up.”

I took out the paper story that started this all and put it on the table, scratching off the location as well as the publication name so it would not become bait for students looking for their next project. Then I said, “Sir, you see, I was there just last night. And there were two creature descriptions. The one in that article, and the one that chased me. The thing would open a hole as if it instantly melted scrap metal, then a fog of disgusting smell would come out, thick and alive, and then the spot would seal again as if it had never been disturbed. It felt like it was searching. Does anything you’ve ever studied come into that category, sir?”

The old man leaned back and went quiet. Not dismissive quiet—thinking quiet. He stared at the ceiling for a long moment, fingers steepled, like he was walking through a memory he did not like revisiting.

“If I tell you or help you catch this thing,” he said slowly, “you have to allow us to study it before anyone else does. Something like that might fund us for years to come. As you can see, we work on leftovers from everywhere else. I am surprised we are not writing on the backs of failed exam papers yet. Do we have a deal, Karl?”

I took his hand and shook it without hesitation. “You have a deal. And can I record what you might be ready to tell me for my notes?”

I got a nod. I pressed record.

“You see, Karl,” he said, settling back, “what you are asking about sounds like a creature that would only need a specific type of metal. One present in the location you described, but not everywhere. When it finds that material, it is liquified and absorbed—consumed. Not destroyed. Eaten. No different than us eating a strawberry if we were lucky enough to find one growing wild.”

He paused, then continued, his voice lower. “I could not even guess why it is here now, or where it came from, but I would suspect it comes from a time when that material was abundant. Common. Lying on the ground the way grass is now. To it, what we throw away might be a feeding ground.”

“As for catching such a thing,” he said, shaking his head, “it would be hard. You would need samples of the material it seeks and place them deliberately, hoping it is hungry enough to take only one so you can observe its behavior. But trapping something that melts metal presents a problem. What do you trap it in?”

Then his eyes sharpened. “Fields, Karl. Energy fields. If it is generating a field at the right frequency and heat, that could explain how it melts metal so quickly. If that is the case, your best weapon would not be solid at all.”

He leaned forward. “A very highly conductive liquid. Saltwater. Ocean water. Something that would conduct and disrupt the field. Short it out. That might stop it from being able to harm you long enough to contain it. Or at the very least, give you time. If you succeed, call me. We will come get it and begin an evidence trail of contact.”

I thanked the overworked professor and left him sitting there, staring at his notes like he had just realized he might be right.

On the way out, I bought two three-gallon jugs and two big bags of salt.

If the thing lived by melting metal, I was going to drown it in a sea of my making.

So I took my spoils home and mixed my liquid death for the creature I saw. The salt dissolved slowly, stubbornly, as if it did not want to belong to the water, and I remember thinking that if this worked, it would not be clean or quick. While I stirred, I kept turning over the thing that still bothered me most—that he never answered why there were two descriptions of this beast. One that slipped through metal like fog, and one could chase me like a solid animal, according to the witness I interviewed. I pushed that thought aside, not because it was resolved, but because I could not afford to let it slow my hands now.

When everything was mixed, I returned to the site of the metal-munching man and lugged the containers into the yard. The place felt wrong even in daylight, the piles arranged like they had shifted on their own when no one was looking. I set the jugs down and waited, listening for something that did not belong—metal settling the wrong way, air moving where there should be none. I knew something unnatural was happening here; I just did not know where it would announce itself.

After a while, I decided to move one container next to the hanging truck that was still suspended over the compactor. It creaked faintly when I set the jug down, a tired sound, like it had been waiting for this. The second container I carried with me to the top of the pile and waited there, exposed, scanning for any sound or movement at all. The wind was dead. Even birds avoided the place.

As I stood there, I thought about how if this being did not like getting wet, this would be the best possible trap. Rain levels here were some of the lowest in the state, and humidity was almost nonexistent. Dry ground. Dry air. A perfect feeding ground for something that lived on heat and metal. As I was turning over reasons why this creature would love our little town, I saw a hole form not more than fifteen feet away from me.

It did not tear open. It appeared—metal going soft and parting like wax near a flame.

I pulled the cover off the container and walked toward it, heart hammering, pouring the highly salted liquid into the hole. I expected steam. I expected violence. I expected the sound of something dying.

What I got instead was rage.

The advice from the crypto department worked, just not the way I expected. What I would call it now is getting pissed off. The invisible nature of the being was not flesh at all—it was a suit of some kind, a field or shell, and the liquid did not short it out. It peeled it away.

The thing came up out of the hole fully this time. A very large green slimy figure, wrong in every proportion, not human in any way. Its surface rippled like overheated plastic, and when it moved, it made a sound like metal screaming underwater. I ran.

It was fast. Faster than it should have been, faster than something that large had any right to be, and I could feel it gaining on me as I bolted for the hanging truck. I slid under it and dove into the cubby with the emergency release lever I had found earlier, pressing myself flat, barely breathing.

I waited.

Footsteps came closer, heavy and wet, the platform above me shifting as weight pressed down. I found a small piece of scrap and tossed it across my side of the hanging truck, letting it clatter loudly and wrong. I waited again until I felt the weight settle fully onto the platform.

Then I pulled the lever.

The truck dropped.

The sound was beyond loud—it was final. Metal collapsed. Something screamed underneath it, not like an animal, not like a machine. I ran for the controls and started the compactor the way I had learned online, heart slamming as the machine roared to life. It began its task, crushing the truck and the beast together, steel folding in on itself like paper.

Knowing it was on auto-compact mode, I moved as close as I could to my opening in the fence. Behind me, I heard an inhuman scream as the unit compacted whatever that beast was, yellow blood spraying and pooling into the machine alongside the remains of an old Mack truck frame.

I thought it was over.

I was wrong.

What I did not know—what I know now—is that there were two of these beasts.

After the first one was dead, I heard movement again. Faster. Closer. And now I find myself being chased by the second, forced behind this dumpster as I put these words down, the ground trembling with every step it takes toward me. My only hope is that it does not find me, and maybe just maybe if it does not, it might stop the search when sunlight hits this area in just one hour. Can I last here? I won't if I stop talking. That is for sure.

CHAPTER 3
Future Rule set

After I made it out and finally got home, I was still sick—physically sick—from what I had done. Not tired, not shaken, but nauseous in a way that sat deep and would not move. It felt like my body was rejecting the night before my mind had fully caught up to it.

I knew then that if I was going to keep doing this—if I was going to keep documenting, investigating, recording—then I could not wait. I could not soften it later or let time sand the edges off what I felt. I had to write it down immediately, while it was still raw, while my hands still felt wrong and my chest still hurt.

So I sat down and started writing right then, without delay, because anything less would have been another lie.

As I was sitting there waiting for a possible escape through the fence, away from the nightmare creature, a feeling hit me that I did not expect at all. It came low and slow, like something rotting loose inside my chest, and my stomach turned hard enough that I thought I might be sick right there behind the dumpster.

Because I am not a hit man. I am not a thug.
I am not a soldier.

I am a normal guy who wanted to help and do the news.

So I forced myself to think about it that way.

Who did I help? Anyone?

No. Not even myself.

I cannot write about what I did on someone else’s property. I cannot explain it. I cannot justify it. I killed one of them—from what, a pair? A couple? And that question landed hard. Did I kill a mother? A husband? Were there others waiting somewhere that depended on it? Just because they did not look like us did not mean they were angry or cruel or even dangerous to us.

Then I thought back to my first visit.

The stick hit something. Whatever it was did not hurt me. It did not even try to catch me—not really. It felt almost like a game of get-away, clumsy and curious, not violent. And what did I do in return?

I crushed it.

I put it through something unimaginably painful and final because it did not fit inside my box of right and wrong. Because it scared me. Because it was unfamiliar. For all I know, they could have been travelers. Something passing through, scavenging enough to survive before moving on.

And I decided to make them disposable.

That realization hit harder than anything else tonight.

So I am making this promise now—out loud, to all of this, and mostly to myself: I will no longer kill or damage any entity or being that does not try to kill me or others first. That rule is now written. It is the first rule in my own book of do’s and don’ts, and it will not be bent.

I will not become someone who hurts others just because their existence feels wrong to me.

That is no different than school kids beating a girl in the lunchroom because she is alone or wears glasses. It is the same cruelty, just dressed up with fear and excuses. And right now I feel sick because I think I acted like them tonight.

That makes me no better than people who kill just because they can.

I am leaving this file exactly as it is—not because I am proud of it, but because it has to exist as a record. A reminder. A warning. I do not believe anyone in this city even cares that I did any of this. Not the police. Not the city. Not even Mary, if I had to guess.

But I care.

And that has to be enough, because right now it is all I have.

And my first record or file is now closed and will be added to my empty box.

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