Introduction
You live in a world where the line between mundane reality and cosmic horror remains dangerously thin. Unseen entities watch you from alternate dimensions, and ordinary moments can suddenly descend into grotesque supernatural violence. You might find yourself trapped in bizarre paranormal loops without knowing whom to trust or how to survive.
David Wong explores this nightmare through the chaotic misadventures of two lazy dropouts thrust into an apocalyptic conflict. A bizarre recreational substance known as soy sauce opens human perception to terrifying extradimensional realities, unleashing parasitic entities that threaten total annihilation.
The book details how ordinary slackers confront cosmic horrors using improvised tactics and dark humor. You will discover the mechanics of extradimensional invasion, temporal anomalies, and the terrifying reach of ancient entities.
- What is the true origin of the soy sauce drug?
- How do parasites replace human beings?
- Can everyday slackers defeat a cosmic superentity?
1. The Supernatural Substance
A mysterious drug called soy sauce grants heightened perception and alternate reality access while unleashing lethal parasitic entities.
A philosophical riddle about replacing parts of an object questions whether an item remains the same after all its original components are swapped out. The prologue introduces a riddle involving an ax used to behead a zombie-like man. After the handle breaks, it is replaced; later, the head breaks and is replaced. The reanimated victim claims it is the exact same ax that originally killed him.
A man uses an ax to decapitate a twitchy attacker, breaks the handle, replaces it, later breaks the blade in a kitchen fight against a slug-like monster, replaces the blade, and is confronted by the reanimated victim who recognizes the weapon.
Effects of the Sauce
Ingesting a mysterious substance causes severe physical and cognitive side effects that grant David abnormal sensory perception and involuntary data downloads. When David is on the sauce, he experiences violent tremors, light-headedness, and involuntary cognitive overloads where his mind is flooded with massive amounts of data about human populations and the precise history of ordinary objects he touches.
While sitting in a restaurant, David involuntarily counts 5,829 grains of rice on a waitress's plate and instantly knows the manufacturing details and history of a fork. The numbers stack up quickly: there are 103 billion humans born since the appearance of the species, and six hours have passed since his last dose.
The mysterious drug known as soy sauce acts as an otherworldly gateway, causing terrifying hallucinations, temporal displacement, and encounters with entities. John took the substance from a man calling himself Robert Marley after it was tested on him, leading to severe memory distortions, looping phone calls across time, and the sensation of being hunted by an unnatural entity.
John called David repeatedly from his apartment while experiencing warped time, claiming he was getting calls from the future and seeing an indescribable creature. He spent five sleepless and foodless days on vodka and chemicals, surrounded by approximately twenty empty beer bottles on John's floor, and made about twenty calls to David.
Exposure to the mysterious black substance drastically heightens human senses and allows for intense hyper-awareness of surroundings. When the black voodoo oil makes blood contact with Dave, it causes a jittery energy rush from the chest out, making colors overly saturated and sharpening hearing and vision to a high-definition level. Dave spots a tear in a moth's wing on the wall and hears a man talking on a cell phone from the outside sidewalk.
Destruction of the Residue
The residue of the drug inside a disposable diabetic syringe exhibits aggressive, organic-like movement when exposed to heat. David finds a syringe with black, motor-oil-like residue in John's jacket, which later pinches him and reveals spine-like growths before being destroyed with a lighter.
David extracts the syringe from his pocket after it pinches his thigh, burns the squirming black blob with John's lighter until it forms a hard crust, and washes it down the drain. You can neutralize this organic threat by following exact containment actions:
- Break off the needle in the trash
- Hold a butane flame to the squirming blob until it curls up
- Wash the resulting hard black crust down the drain with five minutes of running water
2. Temporal and Spatial Anomalies
Exposure to otherworldly forces shatters normal time perception and opens hidden passages to dangerous dimensions.
Ingesting the drug causes severe temporal dislocation, resulting in phone calls originating from different timelines and overlapping moments in time. John's perception of time shatters, allowing him to leave voice messages or make phone calls from the future while sitting right next to David in the present.
David receives a phone call from John while John is sitting right beside him without a phone near his head, reenacting a conversation about Las Vegas that had not happened. You can receive calls from John spanning a predicted eight or nine years. David ignored three phone call rings before answering.
The substance known as soy sauce can be ingested in capsule form to grant temporal perception shifts, though it causes intense physical agony during the bonding process. The substance functions as a living parasite that attacks the host, burrows into the face, and alters neurological processing so that the user experiences time dilation and witnesses past events across different timelines.
David swallows two black, Tic Tac-like capsules found in Robert's stash, resulting in a painful facial drill by the parasites and subsequent involuntary visions of past moments in the trailer. Under the influence of the sauce, the brain perceives a brief window of 1.78 seconds before a confrontation as an extended duration. You can follow these steps to ingest the capsules:
- Locate the metal vial containing the capsules
- Twist the top half off to release the two black pebbles
- Ingest the capsules to allow the substance to enter the body
Hidden Underground Spaces
Secret subterranean chambers hidden beneath ordinary structures can house bizarre organic machinery and supernatural entities. Beneath a shifted toilet in the trailer, Robert dug a round dirt chamber containing biological machinery, including a modified television broadcasting live feeds from another time or dimension, severed digits, and a massive fat caterpillar-like creature.
David crawls down a ladder into a round, dirt-walled chamber under the trailer where he finds a television wired into a dead fish and a slug-like organism. The leathery caterpillar-like creature found in the underground chamber measures five feet long.
Abandoned commercial properties in the town contain elusive architectural anomalies and optical illusions resembling secret doors. John follows fresh tire tracks to the abandoned Undisclosed Shopping Centre and discovers a maintenance room leading to a blank wall that shifts into an ornate arched doorway only when viewed out of the corner of the eye.
John picks the lock of a maintenance room in the dead mall, finds a blank wall that flickers into a grand doorway when he looks away, but returns to a solid surface when he faces it directly. David and Amy are sitting in the parked Bronco managing the heater at 5:18 A.M.
Dimensional portals and ghost doors allow travelers to slip between alternate versions of reality where history has diverged drastically. David and John frequently encounter unstable dimensional rifts that lead to ruined, dystopian worlds populated by hostile creatures and oppressed remnants of humanity.
David and John step through a floating black sphere into a post-apocalyptic version of their world overrun by flying baboons and monitored by robotic probes. John holds a 548-point lead in basketball in the alternate universe.
The abducted group endures a prolonged journey across state lines inside a dark cargo space while subjected to extreme confinement and psychological dread. The hostages are trapped in the cargo area of a truck fueled by warm beer and minimal water, enduring nearly thirty hours of transit toward a destination in the desert.
John, Big Jim, Jennifer Lopez, Fred Chu, and Dave are locked inside a beer truck for over a day while being transported across the country. The total time spent inside the beer truck is twenty-eight hours and nineteen minutes over a distance of 1,669 miles.
3. Invasion and Replacement Strategies
Extradimensional parasites use human hosts as living Trojan horses and replace individuals with exact duplicates.
Dave deduces that the drug intake allows foreign entities to pass through into human hosts. These infected individuals then act as transport vehicles to open the gates for their companions.
Dave explains the mechanism to the group, comparing the infected individuals to the ancient Trojan horse used to smuggle enemy soldiers inside camp walls.
The Trojan Horse Mechanism
Mysterious operatives can deploy parasitic, blood-drinking creatures that attach themselves to a victim's body and inflict intense physical pain. Robert North confronts David in his truck, utilizing a long, slug-like parasite equipped with needle-sharp teeth and an appendage that feeds on blood. This creature causes debilitating pain when commanded.
Robert North attacks David in his vehicle by deploying a long, twitching slug creature that slides under David's shirt, pierces his chest, and causes excruciating pain until David burns it off with a cigarette lighter.
An expansive underground facility operates in industrial darkness, producing biological duplicates, altered animals, and faceless worker mannequins. The factory-like space houses barrels of crimson fluid, massive glass tanks with floating humanoid and animal shapes, and a cage mechanism that transforms humans into pigs.
John and David watch a young boy in twenty feet away in a wire cage scream as a red-to-green electronic device liquefies his body and transforms him into a pink pig in five seconds. A clean-suited man points a multi-barreled rifle from thirty feet away.
Human Replacements
Interdimensional invaders infiltrate human society by manufacturing exact physical and mental replicas of people to act as controlled meat puppets. The entities use technological chambers to alter human bodies and neural connections, replacing original individuals with copies branded with a pi-symbol tattoo on their foot.
Amy Sullivan is replaced by an infected copy designed to hatch parasites after suffering for twenty years before her tragic death. North is revealed to be a jellyfish-like creature inhabiting a human suit before melting into a pool of goo.
The ultimate horror of interdimensional infiltration is discovering that one's own body has already been duplicated and replaced by an alien entity.
Upon returning to their own world, the protagonists find a frozen corpse of David in the toolshed. They discover the identical pi-symbol brand on David's own foot, proving he is a replacement copy.
David checks his own foot after finding his dead frozen body in the toolshed and laughs upon discovering the pi symbol brand on his toe.
4. Improvised Survival Tactics
Fighting supernatural entities requires ruthless preparation, unconventional weapons, and strict self-defense protocols.
Residue of the drug inside a disposable diabetic syringe exhibits aggressive, organic-like movement when exposed to heat. You must neutralize such biohazards immediately before they expand or infect the environment.
- Break off the needle in the trash.
- Hold a butane flame to the squirming blob until it curls up.
- Wash the resulting hard black crust down the drain with five minutes of running water.
David finds a syringe with black, motor-oil-like residue in John's jacket, which later pinches him and reveals spine-like growths before being destroyed with a lighter. He extracts the syringe from his pocket after it pinches his thigh, burns the squirming black blob with John's lighter until it forms a hard crust, and washes it down the drain.
Unseen supernatural entities can be perceived out of the corner of the eye by replicating the psychological mindset of looking into darkness. Arnie looks at an empty portable dog carrier in the back of Dave's truck out of the corner of his eye, sees a terrifying entity, and falls backward in shock.
Improvised Weapons
When normal technology fails, you must rely on unconventional communication mediums and improvised hardware. Dave buys a bratwurst and bun for $3.15 from the hot dog cart near the park and places it against his ear to continue hearing John's voice after his cell phone circuit board is exposed.
- Buy a bratwurst from the hot dog cart near the park.
- Place the bratwurst up to your head to receive psychic voice transmissions.
Certain dormant parasitic organisms can be reanimated and rapidly grown from a shriveled state through exposure to human urine. Fred Chu urinates on a dried worm sliver on the floor, causing it to rapidly grow into a seven-legged, multi-eyed creature wearing a blond wig, taking about a minute to expand across the two inches separating its unconnected body sections.
- Place the dried sliver on the floor.
- Piss on it.
- Wait for the organism to expand and develop its biological structures.
Faced with unknown otherworldly threats, you must improvise weapons using everyday household items and scavenged materials. David uses a BIG GUSHER squirt gun with a two-gallon tank on a belt hook, duct tape, and a grill lighter to create a functional flamethrower that sprays a quarter-inch-wide stream of water fifty feet. He also mixes Jell-O, the innards of two smoke detectors, shredded playing cards, truck air conditioner refrigerant, and nine other ingredients to fashion sticky explosive clay called a bone bomb.
- Gather a large modern squirt gun, a roll of duct tape, an extended disposable grill lighter, and a mix of flammable chemicals to form fuel for an improvised flamethrower.
- Mix a packet of Jell-O, innards of two smoke detectors, shredded playing cards, truck air conditioner refrigerant, and nine other ingredients to fashion sticky explosive clay.
Survival Protocols
Carrying a firearm or maintaining a mobile kit ensures you can react instantly to sudden supernatural assaults.
David gives Amy his Smith & Wesson pistol and tells her to aim for his chest and squeeze the trigger if he begins acting under the control of the entities.
- Keep the gun pointed at the center of the body.
- Jam the barrel into the ribs if necessary.
- Squeeze the trigger as hard and fast as possible without hesitating.
David also maintains a red-and-white flip-top cooler emergency kit in his Bronco. It holds two hundred dollars in cash, a roll of duct tape, spare pants, dried fruit, beef jerky, water bottles, mechanic shop towels, a metal skull-cracking pipe, and a fake beard.
- Pack duct tape, spare pants, and two hundred dollars in cash.
- Include dried fruit, beef jerky, and multiple bottles of water.
- Keep mechanic shop towels, a metal pipe for defense, and a disguise like a fake beard handy.
Molly the dog ingested unstable ultra-high explosive dog biscuits provided by General Valdez. John and David use a tiny shard of this explosive dog biscuit mixed with canine feces and ignited by a Zippo lighter to blast a hole through a thick glass barrier and escape captivity.
5. The Cosmic Entity Korrok
An ancient, chaotic superentity named Korrok seeks to conquer infinite realities through a vast neural web and dimensional portals.
Dr. Marconi hosts a mentalist and spiritual contact show inside the Luxor Las Vegas Hotel. He uses a large ice sculpture and audience concentration to open a spiritual window that malevolent entities exploit to break into the physical world. A fifteen-foot-high giant ice angel sculpture stands in the center of the Egyptian Ballroom during this fateful event.
At the Luxor Las Vegas Hotel, Dr. Marconi's audience tries to contact deceased individuals. Instead, a grotesque entity named Shitload arrives and unleashes thousands of parasitic wig monsters. Five survivors pile into a stolen SUV to escape the carnage.
Extradimensional parasites originate from a reality of black noise and are vulnerable to melody and loud rock music. Harmonious sounds, loud music, and spoken spiritual words act like physical blades to their ears. This acoustic assault disorients the monsters and forces them to retreat.
David, John, and Jennifer plug in musical instruments on stage at the Luxor and perform the song "Camel Holocaust" to repel the swarm of wig monsters. It takes fifteen minutes to flag down a car after the wrecked SUV incident.
The Battle at the Luxor
Sports caster Danny Wexler is possessed by a shadow entity after touching Molly, leading him to broadcast racist and erratic diatribes on live television. This possession transforms him into a cockroach entity.
Danny Wexler appears on Channel 5 sports carved from solid shadow and broadcasts a bizarre rant praising Korrok. The final score of the football game mentioned in Wexler's corrupted broadcast is 41 to 17. The distance between Dr. Haleine's Egyptian dig and another site where the same symbol was found measures 7,500 miles.
The Supreme Entity
When surrounded by absolute blackness, a thin line of electric blue expands across the windshield to reveal an enormous eye that inspects David and Amy before blinking and vanishing.
While parked near an unlit doughnut shop, David and Amy look through the windshield and see the giant blue eye of Korrok observing them.
Korrok is the ultimate organic supercomputer and manifestation of a sprawling neural network that rules over half of all infinite realities. The entity is a colossal, drain-slime-like mass of exposed organs and fibers. It processes the collected wisdom of every genius born into its world, utilizing living energy as the core engine of reality.
The entity communicates telepathically with David, taunting him and bragging about ruling seven billion marked men across an infinity of alternate realities. A twenty-foot-tall golden statue represents the heroes and Korrok's flame in this bizarre dimension.
10 Key Ideas
- Ingesting a mysterious recreational substance known as soy sauce opens human perception to terrifying extradimensional realities, unleashing parasitic entities and causing severe physical and cognitive side effects.
- Exposure to otherworldly forces shatters normal time perception, resulting in phone calls originating from different timelines and overlapping moments in time.
- Secret subterranean chambers hidden beneath ordinary structures can house bizarre organic machinery, severed digits, and massive slug-like organisms.
- Extradimensional parasites use human hosts as living Trojan horses to pass through and open gates for their companions.
- Interdimensional invaders infiltrate human society by manufacturing exact physical and mental replicas of people to act as controlled meat puppets branded with a pi-symbol tattoo on their foot.
- Unseen supernatural entities can be perceived out of the corner of the eye by replicating the psychological mindset of looking into darkness.
- Faced with unknown otherworldly threats, you must improvise weapons like a flamethrower or sticky explosive clay using everyday household items and scavenged materials.
- Maintaining an emergency kit with cash, tools, and a disguise ensures you can react instantly to sudden supernatural assaults.
- Harmonious sounds, loud music, and spoken spiritual words act like physical blades to the ears of extradimensional parasites, forcing the monsters to retreat.
- The ancient, chaotic superentity Korrok rules over half of all infinite realities as a colossal, drain-slime-like mass of exposed organs and fibers that processes the collected wisdom of every genius born into its world.