stories-i-read-to-calm

[stories-i-read-to-calm]

Name: Kal

Occupation: Chimerical Being & Full-Time Activist

Location: Rizal, Philippines

5:12 AM

Kal wakes up in a hammock strung between two acacia trees behind a peasant cooperative in San Mateo. The early mist clings to their skin like the residue of forgotten dreams. Someone dreamt a feast during the night—a bowl of sinigang with extra gabi and a mango float for dessert—and Kal woke up nourished, belly warm.

They swing down, stretch, and wince slightly. A high schooler walked past yesterday doing finger guns at the sky. Still sore.

7:00 AM

In Antipolo, Kal blends in with the local activist group: teachers, students, farmers, and workers all gathered in a cramped room plastered with banners and flyers.

There’s talk of illegal land conversion again in Rodriguez. Another eviction notice slipped under the doors of a fisherfolk community in Taytay. Kal, half-listening, imagines a cup of coffee—and it appears in their hands, piping hot. No one questions it. They've long since learned not to ask.

They volunteer to take the community education materials up to the uplands. The ones where the real monsters wear land titles and speak in developer jargon.

11:38 AM

Kal climbs with the farmers, hauling sacks of rice and printed zines on agrarian reform. Kids follow them, giggling.

“Kuya Kal! You’re see-through when you squint!”

“Only sometimes,” Kal says, grinning.

A kid points a stick. “Bang! Bang! You’re dead!”

Kal crumples dramatically.

“Oh no! I’ve been defeated by revolutionary youth!”

The adults laugh, but Kal rubs their ribs. That did sting a bit.

1:00 PM

They eat beside the terraced fields—real rice, real tuyo. Someone dreamed of adobo, and Kal eats that too. A few dream-fruits appear, odd hybrids. One tastes like banana but crunches like singkamas. Kal shares it without explaining.

Then a farmer hands them a notebook.

“You said we should write down our histories. I started.”

Kal reads the shaky handwriting.

It’s better than any epic.

They tuck it gently into their satchel, right next to an imaginary dagger someone dreamt for them last week. They use it mostly to cut dream-papaya now.

4:45 PM

At the foothills, a barangay captain shows up with a couple of barangay tanods and an out-of-place man in business-casual. Kal’s skin prickles.

“Unauthorized gatherings,” says the man. “Distributing anti-government propaganda.”

Kal steps forward.

“In a legal sense,” Kal says carefully, “I don’t exist.”

This buys enough time for the real organizers to shuffle the elders away and hide the materials. Kal bears the brunt of the confrontation—literally. The tanod pretends to cuff them. Which means Kal actually gets bound by imaginary plastic ties.

They’ll have bruises later. Conceptual, but real enough.

9:00 PM

Back in Antipolo, Kal returns the borrowed face to the artist who dreamed it up for them.

“You keeping safe?” the artist asks, handing over a new sketch.

It’s a face with sharper cheekbones, a nose that speaks of mountains.

Kal nods. “They’re starting to write their own stories now.”

The artist smiles.

“That’s how the impossible becomes inevitable.”

Kal walks home on tired legs, through a city that forgets it’s sacred. Lights buzz. Jeepneys roar. A kid on the street corner makes laser noises and Kal ducks instinctively.

11:47 PM

Kal lies down under the stars. No hammock tonight—just a rooftop with a protest banner drying nearby. They drift off, thinking of the typhoon season, of mass mobilizations, of the coming State of the Nation Address.

Someone dreams of kalamay and safe houses and a world where land belongs to those who till it.

Kal smiles, belly full.

And sleeps.

...

In Rizal, imagination is rebellion.

And Kal? Kal is the soft boundary where dream meets struggle. Where even the unreal fights to make something real.

You're a 'chimerical being,' meaning imagined objects can interact with you physically. Pros: You can eat imaginary food and get the full benefits of eating real food. Cons: finger guns hurt like hell, and anyone can put you in an invisible box easily. And children… don't get me started.

[stories-i-read-to-calm]

When It arrived, the sky split open like wet paper and wept stars. The oceans folded inward. Clocks forgot how to tick. Languages bled into each other until everyone simultaneously spoke fluent Latin and migraine.

It was glorious. It was abominable.

It was Th’zygrll’khn—Terror Beyond Thought, Devourer of Minds, Herald of the Thirty-Seven Angled Screams.

It came to break us. To unravel mortal psyches with the mere shape of Its being, the way a melody can shatter glass or how a single forbidden word can burn down a soul.

It hovered over a city, pulsing with colors unnamed by nature, chanting in geometries. It revealed glimpses of the true universe—chaotic, seething, infinite.

And humanity… just kinda blinked.

One guy took a blurry video and said, “lol what the hell is that,” before uploading it with a vaporwave remix.

A teenager live-tweeted the descent. “Some sky spaghetti monster just called me ‘insufficiently liminal’ and now my teeth are itchy?? anyone else??”

Someone else made fan art. Cute fan art.

A middle-aged woman simply sipped her coffee and said, “Well. There are a lot of things I don’t understand. Could be quantum.”

Th’zygrll’khn writhed in consternation. It grew larger. More unknowable. It whispered entire extinct dialects backwards. It made time flicker in bursts and dreams leak into waking thought.

People just called it “weird weather” and went back to work.

It manifested a mouth that spoke pure madness into a parking lot.

Someone filmed it for TikTok and added text:

"When the intrusive thoughts win 😭💅"

For the first time in ten thousand eons, the horror felt something unfamiliar.

Doubt.

Had it… lost its touch? Were mortals now too overstimulated, too used to not knowing things, too ironic to be shattered by cosmic revelation?

Was incomprehensibility… cringe?

It sulked back to the void, leaving behind only a faint smell of ozone, a few mild cults, and a really successful EDM remix of its entrance scream.

And humanity?

Humanity just added it to the list of things that were probably AI-generated and went on with their day.

An eldritch horror beyond comprehension arrives in the mortal realm to drive humans insane with its incomprehensibility. It's rather annoyed to find that most humans aren't being driven insane by its incomprehensibility due to most of them accepting there are things they don't understand.

[stories-i-read-to-calm]

Anyone else just… secretly wish they’d get roped into a classic Freaky Friday body swap?

Not for the hijinks. Not for the laughs.

But for the deep, harrowing validation.

Like. Just once.

Let some bright-eyed normie wake up in your meat suit, stretch your back (ha! joke’s on them—it doesn’t), try to walk three steps with your sensory settings on fire, and then just collapse.

Let them stare into your mirror and say, “Oh Jesus fuck, how do you live like this?”

Let them open your phone and feel the panic spike at five unread texts. Let them sit in your usual chair and wonder why their brain sounds like a swarm of bees fighting over a knife.

Let them try to make it through a single day of your inner monologue, of the static, the ache, the gnawing wrongness, and come out the other side just a little more haunted.

And then—then—you get your body back. And they just look at you like you’re some kind of war hero.

No pity. No advice. Just awe. Respect. Maybe a little fear.

“Dude,” they whisper, voice trembling. “You were right. You are built different. Built like an anxiety golem held together with caffeine and shame.”

And you just nod, sip your lukewarm tea, and say,

“Yeah. I know.”