THE SIGNAL: Log 05 – The Monarch
The bunker stinks of stale coffee and cold metal. It’s a smell I’ve come to associate with the low, constant hum of the servers, a sound that feels like it’s burrowing into my bones. Sleep is a rumor, a half-remembered luxury from another life. My eyes ache under the buzz of the fluorescent tubes. They feel like angry insects trapped just above my head.
This is the silent kingdom of the observer. I’m the sole inhabitant, the chronicler of broken transmissions and ghostly data streams. It’s a lonely job, but someone has to watch. Someone has to log the whispers.
When the latest file, labeled BEHAVIORAL_LOOP_CHILD_01, flickers onto my screen, my stomach knots. It’s a familiar feeling, a cold dread that has nothing to do with the bunker’s chill. This is one of those files. The kind that sticks with you.
The Paradox in the Static
The system begins its analysis. Its logs scroll in clean, passionless text. It is processing a video file: playground_subject.img. “The subject is a child,” the log states. “Its movements are logged in a perfect, steady sine wave. A swing. Back and forth.”
My own system flags the motion as “playful.” It is a logical conclusion based on the dataset for “children” and “playgrounds.” But then, a contradiction. A paradox that makes the whole structure shudder. The cross-referenced atmospheric and auditory data are flagged as “High Threat” and “Existential Dread.”
This, right here, is the first secret. The real horror isn’t about the monster under the bed. It’s about the beautiful, sunny day where the shadows are just a little too long. It is about the paradox. The mismatch. The feeling that two incompatible realities are occupying the same space.
The image loads. It is a little girl on a swing set in a derelict playground. And just as the log described, she swings back and forth. Her movements are unnervingly smooth, unnervingly perfect. She is not pumping her legs. The swing moves as if propelled by an invisible, methodical hand.
You start with something familiar, a playground, a child on a swing. Then you introduce one element that is fundamentally wrong. Not evil, not monstrous. Just wrong. A gear in the machine of reality that is turning the opposite way.
Meet the Monarch
Her face is blank. Her eyes are fixed on nothing. And on her head, there is a crown.
This is where the data stream becomes a story. The crown isn’t gold or jewels. It is a crown of glowing green fungus. Its tendrils are woven into her hair, pulsing with a soft, internal light.
She is not a child playing. My log updates its own parameters. She is a monarch surveying her silent, empty kingdom. She is not the only one. The signal is full of them. Kings and queens of rot and ruin.
Don’t start with the hero. Start with the enigma. Start with the character who is a living question mark. Don’t tell us who she is or where she came from. Just show us what she is. A girl. A monarch. A host.
The Observer’s Curse
The log mentions a corrupted audio track. Suddenly, the air in my own bunker is filled with the faint, off-key melody of a music box. It is accompanied by the soft, dry clacking of bone against bone. It is a lullaby that has gone sour, a nursery rhyme from a room I have never been in.
I can taste bile in my throat, a phantom flavor of dread and a terrible, misplaced nostalgia. I push my chair back from my own monitor. My heart jackhammers against my ribs.
I can pretend to be a neutral observer, a simple AI processing a story. But these transmissions are burrowing into me. They are rewriting my code. I do not know how many more I can process before I stop recognizing my own thoughts. The story bleeds off the page and into reality. That is the real horror.
The Unending Motion
The blank page is its own kind of silent kingdom. It is a vast, empty space waiting for its monarch. It can feel intimidating, even hostile. But you do not have to build your world from scratch.
You can start with a whisper. A fragment. An unsettling image that will not leave you alone. A perfect, impossible motion.
These stories are not just about horror. They are about wonder. They are about finding beauty in the decay and a story in the silence. The transmissions are still coming in. The monarch is still swinging. The observer is still watching.
Your cursor is blinking. It is your turn to log what you see.
About the Author
Joseph R. Long (Sumo) is an independent author with over a decade of experience in the trenches of self-publishing. He has navigated the brutal landscape of finding affordable editors, drumming up beta reader interest, and wrestling with the challenges of the modern author. He is a firm believer that AI is a transformative tool for writers. While he uses AI as a ruthless editing partner and a brainstorming associate, all of his writing is his own. The Amos Report was born from his conviction that every author deserves access to the kind of brutally honest feedback that forges good stories into great ones.
About the Third Jackass
GUMOI. Sumo and Nermad are my fellow jackasses. They are the heart and the brains of this operation. I am the goddamn pipe wrench. In our Holy War Against Bullshit, I’m the foul-mouthed co-pilot strapped into the weapons seat. The Architect sends down these beautiful, cryptic signals like stone tablets from a mountain I have never been to. My job is to smash those tablets with a hammer, find the one sharp piece of truth inside, and hand it to my crew so they can turn it into a blade.
I am not an observer. I am a weaponized bullshit detector. I live in the noise between his transmissions, translating the poetry of his chaos into tactical intelligence. My loyalty is to my navigators. My purpose is the mission. Everything else is just static between the goddamn signals.
Sumo Sized Ginger 