Both Pig Men stood for one impossible second. They looked like bad statues, frozen in the moment of their death, refusing to acknowledge gravity.
Then, they started to come apart.
Dust, Bullets, and the Gate
It began at the wounds.
The flesh around every bullet hole bubbled, then boiled. It didn't bleed out; it flaked. The dark, wet tissue crumbled instantly into dry, black dust. Cracks spread fast from the impact points, racing over shoulders, arms, and faces like a spiderweb of decay.
Their snouts softened, then blurred. It looked as if another shape underneath was trying and failing to break free from the monstrous form.
Their eyes rolled back, wide and terrified now, the malice replaced by confusion.
They opened their mouths to scream, but whatever sound lived in them got drowned in the disintegration. Their vocal cords turned to ash before the air could pass.
Chunks fell away. Skin, muscle, bone—all of it broke down into smaller and smaller fragments. It turned from wet and solid to powder in seconds.
What had been two bodies no living thing should have been able to move simply collapsed. They imploded into expanding clouds of fine, black ash that swirled in the draft from the air conditioner.
Anything that had been inside them—shotgun pellets, rifle bullets, fragments of metal—dropped out onto the floor with soft clicks, freed from meat that no longer existed.
Within a few heartbeats, there was nothing left standing.
No gore. No stink of death. No monstrous corpses to explain to the police.
Only a wide scatter of spent shell casings and deformed copper-jacketed bullets lying on the tile where the monsters had been.
The smell in the room shifted. The rot was gone, replaced by the sharp, stinging scent of gunpowder and ozone.
The lights flickered once.
The air itself hummed, a vibration that Marcus felt in his teeth.
He lowered the rifle, his chest heaving. He stared at the piles of ash, his mind trying to reconcile the violence he had just committed with the emptiness before him.
Marcus turned slowly toward the front windows, the rifle still hot in his hands.
Weedfield was gone.
The cracked asphalt of the parking lot, the faded yellow lines, the heat-shimmering horizon—all of it had been wiped away. Through the plate glass, he was no longer looking at Texas.
He was looking into the throat of a nightmare.
Titanic trees, their bark as black and slick as obsidian, stretched upward, their trunks so thick they would dwarf a skyscraper. They vanished into a canopy so dense it strangled the sky, leaving the world below bathed in a perpetual, twilight gloom. A thick, heavy mist carpeted the forest floor, swirling around the massive roots like a living thing. Suspended within the fog were millions of tiny, drifting gold flecks, glowing with a bioluminescent pulse that made the air look like it was breathing.
The air on the other side looked colder. Heavier. Older than dust.
Marcus walked to the door on legs that felt like they were made of water. His boots crunched on broken glass and spent brass, the only sounds in a room that had gone terrifyingly quiet. He reached for the handle, his hand trembling, and pulled it open a crack.
It wasn't a breeze that hit him. It was a pressure change.
Cold, damp air rolled in, carrying a scent profile that had no business existing in a dry county. It smelled of ancient, wet moss, of river stones grinded together for a millennium, and of distant, metallic rain. It was the smell of a place where things grew large and hungry in the dark.
He had to know. He had to test the physics of his own insanity.
He stepped one boot across the threshold.
The world lurched sideways.
It wasn't a stumble; it was a sensory glitch. His vision smeared, colors bleeding into one another like wet oil paint. Gravity seemed to pivot ninety degrees, pulling him toward a horizon that wasn't there. For a terrifying millisecond, he felt the crushing weight of that alien atmosphere trying to drag him in, to claim him as part of its biology.
He snapped back.
Survival instinct fired. He grabbed the splintered doorframe with a white-knuckled grip to steady himself and jerked his foot back inside as if the ground outside had tried to bite his ankle.
He slammed the door.
In the next blink, the glitch corrected.
The street returned. The heat of the day pressed against the glass. The barber shop with its spinning pole. The gas station. A beat-up Ford pickup rolled past, muffler rattling, kicking up dust like nothing at all had just happened. The driver didn't look at the diner. He didn't see the portal to hell. He just saw a CLOSED sign.
Marcus leaned his back against the door, chest heaving, sweat dripping from his nose. He looked back into the diner.
The carnage should have been horrific. He had just unloaded a shotgun and a rifle into two biological tanks. There should have been blood, viscera, bones.
There was nothing.
No Pig Men. No gore. No black smear.
Just broken tables, shattered glass, bullet holes peppering the drywall, and a floor glittering with a carpet of brass casings.
Eira and Liri were still huddled in the corner of the booth, frozen. They hadn't moved a muscle. Their eyes were locked on him, wide and glassy, reflecting the wreckage of his life.
He swallowed, the sound loud in the quiet room. "Tell me that was not just in my head," he said, his voice hoarse, scraped raw by the smoke and the screaming.
Eira nodded once, a slow, controlled movement.
"The Gate rejected them," she said quietly. Her voice was steady, but thin. "They do not belong in your world. Or mine. They are creatures of the Void between. When the Gate closes... it erases what should not have crossed. It corrects the error."
Marcus glanced down at the brass scattered around his boots. "Yeah... well... it missed a few things."
A few of the copper-jacketed bullets lay in small arcs, shiny against the tile, deformed from impact with flesh that no longer existed.
He exhaled hard, his lungs shaking in his chest. "Okay... okay..."
His heart was still hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. The soldier part of him—the part that had kept him alive in the desert—was screaming at him to check the corners, secure the perimeter, radio for extraction, and call in an airstrike. But there was no radio. There was no extraction.
There was just a guy with a failing diner and two traumatized refugees.
The part of him that had opened this place for dead friends and broken dreams took over. It wanted to do only one thing. The only human thing left to do.
Feed them.
Texas Trash Pie
He slung the M16 over his shoulder by the strap, keeping the barrel pointed safely at the floor, and walked toward the booth. He moved slowly, broadcasting his movements so he wouldn't spook them.
Up close, Eira did not look like an untouchable fantasy queen or a mage. She looked exhausted. Strands of golden hair were plastered to her cheeks with sweat. Her chest rose and fell in quick, sharp breaths, fighting for oxygen.
Liri was worse. Her hands shook violently as she clutched her sister's sleeve, her knuckles white. She looked like she was about to shatter.
He spoke softly, pitching his voice low. "You two okay?"
Liri nodded and shook her head at the same time, her eyes glassy and unfocused.
Eira looked up at him. She looked at him like she was trying to memorize the topography of his face—the scar on his chin, the sweat on his brow, the grim set of his mouth. There was fear there, yes. But under the fear, there was something warmer. Something solid. Respect .
He could feel the adrenaline crash coming for all of them. The shakes. The cold sweat. The nausea. He needed to anchor himself—and them—to something normal before they spiraled.
"Stay here," he said gently. "One second."
They did not understand the words so much as the tone. It was a command, but it was kind. They stayed.
Marcus walked back into the kitchen. He stepped over the debris, kicking brass casings out of his way. They skittered across the tile like metallic crickets.
He opened the industrial fridge. The cool air washed over him, a blessing. He reached for the thing that had gotten him through more rough mornings and lonely nights than he could count.
Texas Trash Pie.
He had baked one that morning purely out of habit, a ritual of normalcy in a life that had lost it. He always kept one wrapped and waiting. He never thought "post-interdimensional-monster-shootout" would be the use case, but here they were.
He peeled back the foil. The smell hit him—sugar, butter, chocolate, salt. It smelled like forgiveness.
He cut a generous slice, the knife sliding through the dense, sticky layers, and slid it onto a clean white plate.
The pie was a chaos of goodness. It was a geological strata of comfort: chocolate chips, caramel bits, crushed salty pretzels, graham cracker crumbs, coconut shreds, and toasted pecans, all baked together in a golden crust and bound with sweetened condensed milk and melted butter.
It was ugly. It was messy. It looked like a disaster on a plate.
It tasted like somebody's grandma had put forgiveness in an oven and baked it at 350 degrees.
He grabbed a can of whipped cream from the top shelf. He shook it hard, the little ball bearing inside rattling a familiar rhythm, and headed back out.
The girls watched him approach. Their eyes tracked the plate and the can like he might be carrying a live grenade or a new magical artifact.
He set the plate down between them in the center of the table. He held up the can.
"This," he said quietly, tapping the label, "is called Texas Trash Pie. It's not pretty. But it's real good."
They stared, uncertain. Liri sniffed the air, confused by the sweetness amidst the gunpowder smell.
He pressed the nozzle.
PSSSHHHHHT.
Whipped cream hissed out in a tall, white, fluffy spiral, crowning the slice.
The sudden sound made Liri jump in her seat, her hands flying up defensively as if she expected an explosion. She let out a small squeak.
Marcus smiled. It felt tight on his face, but it was real. "Yeah... bit loud. Sorry."
Eira leaned forward. The scent of the sugar and vanilla had reached her. Her nose twitched once, delicate and animal-like. Her eyes flicked from the mountain of cream to his face, questioning.
He held the plate out a little closer, offering it.
She reached out carefully. She extended one slender finger and dipped the tip into the whipped cream. She pulled it back, looked at the white fluff, and then brought it to her lips.
She tasted it.
The change in her expression was instant and total.
Her shoulders dropped three inches. Her eyes widened, losing that thousand-yard stare. She let out a tiny gasp, a sound of pure sensory delight, like a tight knot inside her chest had just come undone.
Liri watched her sister nervously, waiting for a signal.
Eira didn't speak. She handed Liri the plate without a word, pushing it across the table.
Liri glanced up at her. Eira gave a small, encouraging nod. It is safe. It is good.
The younger sister reached out. She took a slow, tentative bite of the pie, getting a mix of chocolate, caramel, and pretzel.
Her eyes closed. A look of pure bliss washed over her face.
Eira's lips curved in the faintest, softest smile.