Thalassosis
By
Nathan Poole Shannon
When the sea came, it came quickly. It started in India, just the simplest thing that everyone said would be contained. That had been a lie. Or a miscalculation. The sea spread quickly, globally.
When the shelters had been built a hundred years ago, they were roundly ridiculed. The sky is falling, news stories read, with a laugh from the smirking anchors on the screen. Then the sky fell. A plastics recycling facility had an unexpected discharge of static electricity, a huge blue fireball that expanded outward in a glowing shockwave. The discharge activated the atoms in the plastic and it began to literally shake itself to molecules.
Henrik paused at one of the circular doors in Shelter Delta Kilo 7. He held out his badge, the one that gave him unfettered military clearance throughout the hangar-like shelter built into the side of the mountain. The light on the panel flashed lime green and the door scissored open. Henrik stepped through. I can feel it, he thought. It’s in my head.
The vibration spread. All of the plastics in the Indian facility began to dissolve. It looked like the stacks of recyclable items turned into granulated sugar, sliding apart, pooling on the ground. A maintenance crew was sent in to work on it, to try and get the dissolution under control. The crew of five were all dead within minutes, their lungs lined with microscopic beads of dissolved plastic.
Henrik waved slightly at a passing couple in the hallway of Delta Kilo 7. The Pattersons, who had a son of about twelve who volunteered with one of the committees Henrik chaired. He barely recognized them, thinking only of his mission. Keep moving. Keep going. They passed on their way in the general direction of the dining hall- an optimistic euphemism for a long room full of tables, an enormous underground Quonset hut with a kitchen. He kept walking.
Microplastics! The news screamed. An ocean of microplastics!
It had been over two centuries since microplastics had been discovered leaching into the ground, water and air. Governments turned their eyes away. They were found in breast milk and blood streams. We can live with it, corporations and politicians agreed. Time went by and the veins of iron in the mines began to dry up and the useable forests disappeared. Plastic remained readily available and went from one of the primary materials used globally to virtually the only one.
Then there was the bomb. The first wartime nuclear detonation in over a century killed thirty million people in Chongquing. Retaliatory strikes were prepared but never launched as virtually every nation on Earth came together in the immediate aftermath. Mercifully, the war ended there and a new World Government was formed, and one of the earliest measures undertaken was the construction of thousands of underground shelters. When the plastic began to dissolve after the static discharge in Hyderabad, these shelters, long unused, were activated.
Henrik paused at another door. This one did not have a badge reader but a handprint scanner. He tugged the sleeve of his fatigues up. He inserted his hand- come on, come on- and in a moment another green light shone, admitting him through yet another scissor door. He continued on.
The shelters filled up quickly as the dissolving plastic spread. Panic gripped the world and the news portrayed it as the apocalypse. People hid rather than try and find the shelter for their area, hiding in basements, at the tops of buildings, trying to get above the onrushing sea of plastic. Nothing withstood the onslaught.
The shelters were designed to hold ten thousand people but many took in well over that number. The militaries stationed at each shelter, ostensibly to maintain order, were totally overwhelmed, and many of the shelters were so overstuffed with humanity that they couldn’t close their doors before the plastic arrived. The ones that did manage to close in time were secure as no plastics were used in their construction. They dated back to before the loss of raw metal and wood and were the stronger for it.
Everything- everything- made with plastics was lost. Entire buildings were made of it and they fell apart like a sandcastle at high tide. Plastic components of vehicles dissolved in a matter of seconds, with aircraft plunging out of the skies and cars suddenly losing integrity and leaving the roads. People’s clothing melted off and plastics used in things like pacemakers and artificial heart valves and hips all gave out. Even people unaffected by this were smothered in the rushing tides of microplastics. The smallest particulates, only nanometers across, were small enough to enter a person through their pores.
The shelter doors stayed open as long as possible but it was only rarely enough. Even the smallest amounts of the dust that poured like water was enough to disrupt everything around, so the doors needed to be sealed before the plastics came. Satellites- unaffected in orbit- monitored the progression of the sloshing sea as it spread, sending information about when to close the doors and how many more people there were.
Delta Kilo 7 was overrun by a last minute surge of humanity. Giant waves, tsunamis of plastics, followed the crowd. It spread faster than they could run and sucked everyone in its path up into the wave itself. The door was closing as the wave spread out of the city that had once been in sight, and the military opened fire on the fleeing citizens to allow the door to close and seal. The estimate of casualties just from the path of this particular wave was in the high hundreds of thousands dead.
Our own creation has turned on us, came a voice over the radio as the dissolving plastics spread. Plastics! We have been scolded to fear the wrong things! Our own invention, of convenience and greed, will be our undoing! Great walls of the stuff crash down upon our cities, killing us by the millions… reports coming in describe unknown, untold horrors! Doom! We are doomed! The voice was not heard again, destroyed by the new sea.
The final shelters were closed August 16, 2231. There were estimates sent between the shelters that there were nine million people saved. Nine million out of a planetary population of over twelve billion at that time.
Henrik turned into another hallway, empty of others. It was near dinner time and most of the residents of Delta Kilo 7 were in the dining hall or on their way. The flat white walls gleamed dully as he passed, the sounds of his leather-soled boots clapping with an echo. He opened a door and faced a ladder; he climbed.
In the days after the shelters were closed and sealed, computers and monitoring equipment ran round the clock, watching what remained of the outside world. A program estimated that, if the sea of microplastics were level, the entire surface of the Earth would be buried under sixty feet of the stuff. One shelter outside of Sao Paulo measured they were a mile below the new surface, and others reported their observation decks had a view of what was outside. Videos were distributed to the other shelters, the residents gathered and the video shown.
People were aghast. Most had no real idea of what was happening, so they sat, mostly silent, watching in horror. Whispers ran through the groups. What do we do? How do we fix this? Will we ever get out?
No answers came from any authority. The scientists who were able to make it to the shelters were all in agreement that there would be no escape. Even once the plastics settled, there was simply too much. Any plastics that came in touch with the mass, the new sea, simply dissolved into particulates. There was talk of developing fans to blow the plastics away or some sort of vacuum dropped down from the space stations, but no workable plan was developed.
One of the scientists who had been consulted heavily for some sort of plan lived in Oscar Whiskey 23. He had immediately stepped down from any advisory role. I can no longer be trusted, he said. I have been watching the tides outside. It is hypnotic and I believe that I have lost my ability to rationalize or to act altruistically. I apologize. He read this prepared statement on a meeting with the scientific brass of over a hundred shelters, and then turned off his camera. The meeting continued on. The scientist left his desk and went to one of the emergency exits of the shelter. Using his all-access pass, he opened the exit and the plastics poured in.
The screens of the other scientists from Oscar Whiskey 23 briefly broadcast screaming and the horror of the rushing sea of plastics, and fell silent. They could not be contacted again. The shelter was destroyed along with the ten thousand people inside.
Days later, a single box on the communication screen came up. The face of the head scientist from Lima Yankee 103. We call it thalassosis, he said. It’s related to thalassophobia, a fear of the ocean… this is similar but is a kind of hypnosis. Sailors would report this from time to time. The undulation of the waves, the always shifting new surface, creates a type of hypnosis, a compulsion. Our research is obviously very limited but we managed to stop one of our residents from repeating the tragedy of Oscar Whiskey 23.
Thalassosis. The word ran through the shelters like wildfire. It drove residents mad; the man captured by Lima Yankee 103 was able to confess what drove him to try and get out of the shelter. He could hear it, he said, it was talking to him. The sea of plastics. Calling to him. The scientists who examined him found that he was in a full state of nervous collapse, barely functioning. They wrote the event off as a suicide attempt and hospitalized the man.
As this news spread, other shelters replied that they had the same experiences. It’s shifting, it’s moving, it’s calling to me, the others said. Also written off. The residents were heavily sedated to prevent an additional attempt.
It was like the Oscar Whiskey tragedy, someone pointed out. The successful suicide.
Henrik reached the top of the ladder and stepped out into yet another hallway. He was in the top level of the shelter and could hear the rumbling of the plastics overhead, sliding back and forth in their endless tidal movement, calling to him. He couldn’t describe what he heard but he knew it was impossible to ignore.
Shelters began to board over their windows to prevent people seeing the sea and falling victim to thalassosis. The view varied depending on the plastics and would change from day to day in most shelters. Where the windows- heavily double-paned and set deeply into iron frames- were buried, it looked like a fog outside. Just a grey mass, shapeless, churning, folding. Guards were posted to make sure no one spent too long at the windows, and security checked regularly that the coverings, once installed, stayed up.
There were brightly painted, eye catching notices posted throughout all the shelters not to look outside for too long. Every apartment had a notice on their door. There were meetings to discuss thalassosis and the very real threat it posed.
A panicked message came in from Alpha Echo 2. We’re having a revolt, said the wide-eyed military official. Thalassosis, he screamed. There are some fifty men trying to get to the doors, there’s a standoff! A clatter of gunfire trembled in the background and the face on camera whipped around to see. They’re trying to smash the windows! The feed cut off. An hour later a different face appeared on the screen from Alpha Echo 2, a young, crew-cut soldier with a fine spray of blood on his cheek. We’ve put down the insurrection, he said flatly on the screen, emotionless. The background was noisy and hectic. More updates to follow, crew-cut promised.
I’m coming, Henrik thought. The sounds of the plastics, the voice of the sea, called to him and he answered. I’m coming.
Alpha Echo 2 reappeared on the screen the next day. We’re having a court martial trial, someone said. The leader of the insurrection is a corporal in our military. We will broadcast the trial today at sixteen hundred hours.
Henrik, walking steadily through the top-level hallway, listened to the sounds. He flicked an unseeing salute at another passing uniformed soldier.
The leader of the Alpha Echo 2 insurrection sat, strapped in a plastic chair before a tribunal of four heavily medaled officers, his corporal’s stripes torn off his sleeves. He had strangely vacant eyes and his head swayed lightly from side to side. It calls to me, is all he said in his defense. You would bring death down on all of us? One of the officers asks. If you open those doors or smash that window, the shelter is lost. We would all be dead in a matter of moments. His vacant eyes and blank expression were his only reply.
Henrik turned into an access hallway. He knew there was a vent room beyond. His all access pass let him through, and he entered the room. The sounds of the shifting plastics were much louder by the vent.
Have you reached a verdict? The presiding officer in Alpha Echo 2 asked. Guilty, the officers all said, one by one. The gavel fell on the presiding officer’s podium and the leader of the insurrection continued to stare vacantly, unconcerned. Sergeant At Arms, the presiding officer summoned, and another soldier stepped forward. You may carry out the sentence.
Henrik went to the vent, his hands feeling along the edge of the cover. It was steel, like all the bones of the shelter, and unforgiving. Cold to the touch. He could feel the press of the sea through the skin of the shelter. He had been to this room before, it was where he first heard the call. He had resisted but now he did not.
The Sergeant At Arms pulled his sidearm from its holster as he stepped towards the leader of the insurrection, still seated in the plastic chair. Across the other shelters, horrified faces looked on, watching their screens.
Henrik pulled out his pistol and pointed it at the corner of the sheet of steel that was the only thing keeping the sea at bay. He closed one eye to get better aim.
The Sergeant At Arms pulled his trigger. In a fine spray of blood, a red wound opened on the forehead of the insurrectionist. His head snapped back and whipped forward, blood pulsing out of the new wound. The tension in his body slackened immediately and he shuddered.
Henrik fired and the bullet hit exactly where he wanted it to. Bluish sparks flew. Henrik opened his other eye and looked at his shot. There was the tiniest hiss of outside air coming through.
In Alpha Echo 2, the Sergeant At Arms stepped forward to the slumped body of the deceased. From near point blank range, he raised his sidearm again and fired a second shot into the crown of the insurrectionist’s head.
Henrik closed his eye again and re-focused. He pulled the trigger a second time, the report harsh in his ears. He looked at his shot, and could feel the cold wind of the outside blowing. The hiss was louder now, and he could see a rushing torrent of the plastics pouring in through the hole he’d made.
The sentence has been carried out, said the presiding officer at the court martial in Alpha Echo 2. He banged his gavel to pronounce the trial closed.
Thank God, Henrik thought to himself as the plastics surged into the vent room of Delta Kilo 7. Thank God. The sea washed and rolled over him and he let himself be taken. The tension in his hand loosened and his sidearm dropped to the floor, lost in the onrushing new sea.
Nathan Poole Shannon is an emerging writer of the strange and macabre. Creepy and weird stories, whether they be modern or historically set, are his specialty. From crawling shadows to cryptic specters, he is only beginning to share with the world. He lives in Ottawa, Canada, with his spouse and a small menagerie of pets who are decidedly not creepy- but from time to time, inspire something that is.
By
Nathan Poole Shannon
When the sea came, it came quickly. It started in India, just the simplest thing that everyone said would be contained. That had been a lie. Or a miscalculation. The sea spread quickly, globally.
When the shelters had been built a hundred years ago, they were roundly ridiculed. The sky is falling, news stories read, with a laugh from the smirking anchors on the screen. Then the sky fell. A plastics recycling facility had an unexpected discharge of static electricity, a huge blue fireball that expanded outward in a glowing shockwave. The discharge activated the atoms in the plastic and it began to literally shake itself to molecules.
Henrik paused at one of the circular doors in Shelter Delta Kilo 7. He held out his badge, the one that gave him unfettered military clearance throughout the hangar-like shelter built into the side of the mountain. The light on the panel flashed lime green and the door scissored open. Henrik stepped through. I can feel it, he thought. It’s in my head.
The vibration spread. All of the plastics in the Indian facility began to dissolve. It looked like the stacks of recyclable items turned into granulated sugar, sliding apart, pooling on the ground. A maintenance crew was sent in to work on it, to try and get the dissolution under control. The crew of five were all dead within minutes, their lungs lined with microscopic beads of dissolved plastic.
Henrik waved slightly at a passing couple in the hallway of Delta Kilo 7. The Pattersons, who had a son of about twelve who volunteered with one of the committees Henrik chaired. He barely recognized them, thinking only of his mission. Keep moving. Keep going. They passed on their way in the general direction of the dining hall- an optimistic euphemism for a long room full of tables, an enormous underground Quonset hut with a kitchen. He kept walking.
Microplastics! The news screamed. An ocean of microplastics!
It had been over two centuries since microplastics had been discovered leaching into the ground, water and air. Governments turned their eyes away. They were found in breast milk and blood streams. We can live with it, corporations and politicians agreed. Time went by and the veins of iron in the mines began to dry up and the useable forests disappeared. Plastic remained readily available and went from one of the primary materials used globally to virtually the only one.
Then there was the bomb. The first wartime nuclear detonation in over a century killed thirty million people in Chongquing. Retaliatory strikes were prepared but never launched as virtually every nation on Earth came together in the immediate aftermath. Mercifully, the war ended there and a new World Government was formed, and one of the earliest measures undertaken was the construction of thousands of underground shelters. When the plastic began to dissolve after the static discharge in Hyderabad, these shelters, long unused, were activated.
Henrik paused at another door. This one did not have a badge reader but a handprint scanner. He tugged the sleeve of his fatigues up. He inserted his hand- come on, come on- and in a moment another green light shone, admitting him through yet another scissor door. He continued on.
The shelters filled up quickly as the dissolving plastic spread. Panic gripped the world and the news portrayed it as the apocalypse. People hid rather than try and find the shelter for their area, hiding in basements, at the tops of buildings, trying to get above the onrushing sea of plastic. Nothing withstood the onslaught.
The shelters were designed to hold ten thousand people but many took in well over that number. The militaries stationed at each shelter, ostensibly to maintain order, were totally overwhelmed, and many of the shelters were so overstuffed with humanity that they couldn’t close their doors before the plastic arrived. The ones that did manage to close in time were secure as no plastics were used in their construction. They dated back to before the loss of raw metal and wood and were the stronger for it.
Everything- everything- made with plastics was lost. Entire buildings were made of it and they fell apart like a sandcastle at high tide. Plastic components of vehicles dissolved in a matter of seconds, with aircraft plunging out of the skies and cars suddenly losing integrity and leaving the roads. People’s clothing melted off and plastics used in things like pacemakers and artificial heart valves and hips all gave out. Even people unaffected by this were smothered in the rushing tides of microplastics. The smallest particulates, only nanometers across, were small enough to enter a person through their pores.
The shelter doors stayed open as long as possible but it was only rarely enough. Even the smallest amounts of the dust that poured like water was enough to disrupt everything around, so the doors needed to be sealed before the plastics came. Satellites- unaffected in orbit- monitored the progression of the sloshing sea as it spread, sending information about when to close the doors and how many more people there were.
Delta Kilo 7 was overrun by a last minute surge of humanity. Giant waves, tsunamis of plastics, followed the crowd. It spread faster than they could run and sucked everyone in its path up into the wave itself. The door was closing as the wave spread out of the city that had once been in sight, and the military opened fire on the fleeing citizens to allow the door to close and seal. The estimate of casualties just from the path of this particular wave was in the high hundreds of thousands dead.
Our own creation has turned on us, came a voice over the radio as the dissolving plastics spread. Plastics! We have been scolded to fear the wrong things! Our own invention, of convenience and greed, will be our undoing! Great walls of the stuff crash down upon our cities, killing us by the millions… reports coming in describe unknown, untold horrors! Doom! We are doomed! The voice was not heard again, destroyed by the new sea.
The final shelters were closed August 16, 2231. There were estimates sent between the shelters that there were nine million people saved. Nine million out of a planetary population of over twelve billion at that time.
Henrik turned into another hallway, empty of others. It was near dinner time and most of the residents of Delta Kilo 7 were in the dining hall or on their way. The flat white walls gleamed dully as he passed, the sounds of his leather-soled boots clapping with an echo. He opened a door and faced a ladder; he climbed.
In the days after the shelters were closed and sealed, computers and monitoring equipment ran round the clock, watching what remained of the outside world. A program estimated that, if the sea of microplastics were level, the entire surface of the Earth would be buried under sixty feet of the stuff. One shelter outside of Sao Paulo measured they were a mile below the new surface, and others reported their observation decks had a view of what was outside. Videos were distributed to the other shelters, the residents gathered and the video shown.
People were aghast. Most had no real idea of what was happening, so they sat, mostly silent, watching in horror. Whispers ran through the groups. What do we do? How do we fix this? Will we ever get out?
No answers came from any authority. The scientists who were able to make it to the shelters were all in agreement that there would be no escape. Even once the plastics settled, there was simply too much. Any plastics that came in touch with the mass, the new sea, simply dissolved into particulates. There was talk of developing fans to blow the plastics away or some sort of vacuum dropped down from the space stations, but no workable plan was developed.
One of the scientists who had been consulted heavily for some sort of plan lived in Oscar Whiskey 23. He had immediately stepped down from any advisory role. I can no longer be trusted, he said. I have been watching the tides outside. It is hypnotic and I believe that I have lost my ability to rationalize or to act altruistically. I apologize. He read this prepared statement on a meeting with the scientific brass of over a hundred shelters, and then turned off his camera. The meeting continued on. The scientist left his desk and went to one of the emergency exits of the shelter. Using his all-access pass, he opened the exit and the plastics poured in.
The screens of the other scientists from Oscar Whiskey 23 briefly broadcast screaming and the horror of the rushing sea of plastics, and fell silent. They could not be contacted again. The shelter was destroyed along with the ten thousand people inside.
Days later, a single box on the communication screen came up. The face of the head scientist from Lima Yankee 103. We call it thalassosis, he said. It’s related to thalassophobia, a fear of the ocean… this is similar but is a kind of hypnosis. Sailors would report this from time to time. The undulation of the waves, the always shifting new surface, creates a type of hypnosis, a compulsion. Our research is obviously very limited but we managed to stop one of our residents from repeating the tragedy of Oscar Whiskey 23.
Thalassosis. The word ran through the shelters like wildfire. It drove residents mad; the man captured by Lima Yankee 103 was able to confess what drove him to try and get out of the shelter. He could hear it, he said, it was talking to him. The sea of plastics. Calling to him. The scientists who examined him found that he was in a full state of nervous collapse, barely functioning. They wrote the event off as a suicide attempt and hospitalized the man.
As this news spread, other shelters replied that they had the same experiences. It’s shifting, it’s moving, it’s calling to me, the others said. Also written off. The residents were heavily sedated to prevent an additional attempt.
It was like the Oscar Whiskey tragedy, someone pointed out. The successful suicide.
Henrik reached the top of the ladder and stepped out into yet another hallway. He was in the top level of the shelter and could hear the rumbling of the plastics overhead, sliding back and forth in their endless tidal movement, calling to him. He couldn’t describe what he heard but he knew it was impossible to ignore.
Shelters began to board over their windows to prevent people seeing the sea and falling victim to thalassosis. The view varied depending on the plastics and would change from day to day in most shelters. Where the windows- heavily double-paned and set deeply into iron frames- were buried, it looked like a fog outside. Just a grey mass, shapeless, churning, folding. Guards were posted to make sure no one spent too long at the windows, and security checked regularly that the coverings, once installed, stayed up.
There were brightly painted, eye catching notices posted throughout all the shelters not to look outside for too long. Every apartment had a notice on their door. There were meetings to discuss thalassosis and the very real threat it posed.
A panicked message came in from Alpha Echo 2. We’re having a revolt, said the wide-eyed military official. Thalassosis, he screamed. There are some fifty men trying to get to the doors, there’s a standoff! A clatter of gunfire trembled in the background and the face on camera whipped around to see. They’re trying to smash the windows! The feed cut off. An hour later a different face appeared on the screen from Alpha Echo 2, a young, crew-cut soldier with a fine spray of blood on his cheek. We’ve put down the insurrection, he said flatly on the screen, emotionless. The background was noisy and hectic. More updates to follow, crew-cut promised.
I’m coming, Henrik thought. The sounds of the plastics, the voice of the sea, called to him and he answered. I’m coming.
Alpha Echo 2 reappeared on the screen the next day. We’re having a court martial trial, someone said. The leader of the insurrection is a corporal in our military. We will broadcast the trial today at sixteen hundred hours.
Henrik, walking steadily through the top-level hallway, listened to the sounds. He flicked an unseeing salute at another passing uniformed soldier.
The leader of the Alpha Echo 2 insurrection sat, strapped in a plastic chair before a tribunal of four heavily medaled officers, his corporal’s stripes torn off his sleeves. He had strangely vacant eyes and his head swayed lightly from side to side. It calls to me, is all he said in his defense. You would bring death down on all of us? One of the officers asks. If you open those doors or smash that window, the shelter is lost. We would all be dead in a matter of moments. His vacant eyes and blank expression were his only reply.
Henrik turned into an access hallway. He knew there was a vent room beyond. His all access pass let him through, and he entered the room. The sounds of the shifting plastics were much louder by the vent.
Have you reached a verdict? The presiding officer in Alpha Echo 2 asked. Guilty, the officers all said, one by one. The gavel fell on the presiding officer’s podium and the leader of the insurrection continued to stare vacantly, unconcerned. Sergeant At Arms, the presiding officer summoned, and another soldier stepped forward. You may carry out the sentence.
Henrik went to the vent, his hands feeling along the edge of the cover. It was steel, like all the bones of the shelter, and unforgiving. Cold to the touch. He could feel the press of the sea through the skin of the shelter. He had been to this room before, it was where he first heard the call. He had resisted but now he did not.
The Sergeant At Arms pulled his sidearm from its holster as he stepped towards the leader of the insurrection, still seated in the plastic chair. Across the other shelters, horrified faces looked on, watching their screens.
Henrik pulled out his pistol and pointed it at the corner of the sheet of steel that was the only thing keeping the sea at bay. He closed one eye to get better aim.
The Sergeant At Arms pulled his trigger. In a fine spray of blood, a red wound opened on the forehead of the insurrectionist. His head snapped back and whipped forward, blood pulsing out of the new wound. The tension in his body slackened immediately and he shuddered.
Henrik fired and the bullet hit exactly where he wanted it to. Bluish sparks flew. Henrik opened his other eye and looked at his shot. There was the tiniest hiss of outside air coming through.
In Alpha Echo 2, the Sergeant At Arms stepped forward to the slumped body of the deceased. From near point blank range, he raised his sidearm again and fired a second shot into the crown of the insurrectionist’s head.
Henrik closed his eye again and re-focused. He pulled the trigger a second time, the report harsh in his ears. He looked at his shot, and could feel the cold wind of the outside blowing. The hiss was louder now, and he could see a rushing torrent of the plastics pouring in through the hole he’d made.
The sentence has been carried out, said the presiding officer at the court martial in Alpha Echo 2. He banged his gavel to pronounce the trial closed.
Thank God, Henrik thought to himself as the plastics surged into the vent room of Delta Kilo 7. Thank God. The sea washed and rolled over him and he let himself be taken. The tension in his hand loosened and his sidearm dropped to the floor, lost in the onrushing new sea.
Nathan Poole Shannon is an emerging writer of the strange and macabre. Creepy and weird stories, whether they be modern or historically set, are his specialty. From crawling shadows to cryptic specters, he is only beginning to share with the world. He lives in Ottawa, Canada, with his spouse and a small menagerie of pets who are decidedly not creepy- but from time to time, inspire something that is.
