Aster made it another three blocks before the city sank its claws in again.

  Rounding the next corner, the air hit him before the scenery did—thick, metallic, trembling with a low hum that wasn’t coming from the idling engines. Traffic had stalled as far as Aster could see, caught in a chokehold of steel and glass, tires grinding against tarmac, horns flaring intermittently.

  But the traffic wasn’t what had caused Aster to stare slack-jawed in awe. What held his attention was the space above it: an angry red cloud of mist hanging over the snaking cars.

  Metallic, sweet, and biting, like copper pennies dissolved in hot oil. The air around him shimmered with heat and psychic energy; he could almost taste the frustration, bitter and acrid on his tongue.

  Fantastic. The weather’s doing mood swings now.

  Golden-black hornets the size of terriers darted in and out of the mist. Their wings cut through the stagnant air with a low hum, sharp enough that Aster felt it as a vibration at the base of his skull. They didn’t seem to be feeding on the mist; no, it seemed as if they were conducting with it. Every dart, every shift of their glossy, segmented bodies, corresponded to the twitch of a driver’s fingers, the flush of heat across a forehead, the tightening of knuckles on steering wheels.

  The mist seemed to draw a strange glowing bug the size of an orange, shaped inexplicably like a lantern. Tiny, almost imperceptible, translucent wings glowed faintly yellow in the diffused light of the intersection. They buzzed through the traffic, arcing along the spirals of coppery mist like minnows in a stream. Each one skimmed the air, picking at the rage as though it were a delicacy, tiny electric zings trailing across their fragile, almost diaphanous bodies.

  The hornets snapped them up mid-flight, one after another, jaws closing with a wet, absurdly human-like click. The tiniest vibrations of misaligned wings, the slight falter in the mist’s coil, registered in his chest like hammer strikes. Aster couldn’t look away. Each driver’s minor tantrum—slamming the steering wheel, muttering obscenities, jabbing at the hornets’ invisible provocations—spun a thread of rage into the invisible web overhead. Every thread fed the flies; every fly fed the hornets.

  Aster couldn’t help but see the link between the anger and the mist. Were the mists emotions? He thought back to the bus: envy, anxiety, attention—the leech had used smugness as a catalyst to force out mists of joy from others.

  The rage was under the surface, primal and roiling, and the hornet’s sting had drawn it out like water from a sponge, forcing it to manifest in visible, thick, psychedelic red mist.

  Every sting pulled more anger into the mist, and every plume drew more flies closer, like feeding animals to the scent of fresh blood. He blinked, nausea rolling through his stomach. The hornets were predators. The flies were their livestock, herded by stingers that coaxed rage for them to be drawn to. And all of it—this ridiculous, grotesque, hyper-organized chaos—depended on the mundane frustrations of humans too small, too blind, to notice that their minor anger had been turned into a resource.

  He wondered how long the city had been feeding on itself like this, how many invisible systems quietly monetized human emotions while everyone argued about parking spaces. He shivered, thankful for the golden field still clinging to him, protecting him just enough to observe without being sucked into it. His throat tightened. He wanted to vomit or maybe applaud, but his body refused both.

  Instead, he just stood there, jaw slack, chest tight, watching the ballet of rage and predation unfold with horrific, exquisite precision.

  “If I’m hallucinating this, I’m either a genius or I desperately need a refund from my subconscious.”

  His laughter caught in his throat, half-choked. The sharp unease in his chest flared again, the hook dragging hard enough to make him gasp. Something beyond the hornets had noticed him. The same vast attention that had brushed him on the bus now leaned on the hook with the weight of inevitability. Like gravity, but meaner. Something was getting closer. And it wasn’t interested in the hornets.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “Right,” he muttered. “Time to go before this bad trip decides to show me the emotional cost of factory farming by adding me to the bottom rung of a metaphysical food pyramid.”

  He started walking—fast, steady—pretending urgency was composure. The hum of wings followed for a few seconds, then faded. Each block felt heavier, the air thicker, as though the city itself had become aware of him. He continued trying to make as much distance as he could to the house, ignoring the building sense of unease.

  He made it another block before slowing involuntarily, passing an ATM next to a small lunch shop. His eyes caught on a man hunched over the keypad, as if it might spontaneously cough up cash if pressed with enough desperation. Fingers rattled; the man scrolled through menus with a tension so taut it made Aster’s teeth ache. Behind him, four people lingered in line, feet tapping, fists clenching, muffled curses and sighs vibrating through the air.

  Small tendrils of mist in brown-reds and rusty oranges curled off each person like smoke from a dying fire. The man at the front froze on a prompt, hesitation stretching into panic. When the person behind him, with thick, sticky orange frustration bleeding from a psyche that’d had enough, shouted, “Get the fuck on with it,” the man in front seemed to crack, releasing a surge of deep purple mist blooming around him like an octopus trying to escape an attack—sharp, acidic, thick with the taste of mortification.

  The ATM shivered. No—it spasmed. Its surface started to roil. Something alive, hidden beneath metal and plastic, strained against the surface. Then, in a single convulsive surge, dozens of slender, electric, metallic-finned eels erupted from the machine, twisting and writhing as if folded inside it, now bursting into the violet bloom of shame mist like predators smelling blood in water.

  Their bodies arced sparks that sizzled in the heavy air. The purple mist throbbed with their quivering frenzy, waves making Aster’s stomach pitch. Sparks flickered across the eels’ slick skin as they darted in and out of the cloud, appearing and vanishing like corrupted frames in a broken video.

  He watched in morbid horror as the eels fed on the man’s mist, tugging at each twitch of guilt, each stutter of inadequacy, drawing it into themselves with electric impatience. It was shame; he didn’t even need to touch it to know. It wasn’t subtle—every spark, every flash of metallic sheen broadcast the man’s shame, feeding these eels that would become food for something bigger downstream.

  Aster stepped back instinctively, chest tight, watching the dance of predator and psychic residue. He couldn’t place the rules, couldn’t rationalize it—but the function was obvious. Everything somehow thrived off the ambient bleed of people’s thoughts and emotions.

  Aster couldn’t stop staring. It was obscene and merciful at once—every emotion in the city recycled, nothing wasted. An economy of despair.

  He turned away, throat tight. Maybe this was always here, he thought. Maybe everyone was just trained not to see it.

  He pulled his jacket tighter, more out of superstition than warmth, and kept walking. The hook in his chest yanked again, harder this time, insistent.

  He made another four blocks—just about six left—passing a homeless man, hunched, kneeling with his forehead pressed to the wet fur of a small, shivering dog.

  Aster couldn’t help but do a double take as he noticed the man entwined with a small, many-limbed creature, poking out from the tightly wrapped blanket he was using for warmth. Its tentacles curled and uncurling from the blanket’s shadow as it siphoned mist from the man, so blue and melancholy that Aster knew it contained enough sorrow to make his life look like a success story.

  Each writhing limb seemed delicate as it caressed the man’s field, stroking sympathetically at him, almost consoling—but its intent was merciless. The mist bled from the homeless man in an endless bloom, drawn noisily into the darkness from which the tentacles reached. What couldn’t be taken dissipated into the surrounding mist, absorbed into the plants, feeding roots and vines in a creeping network of psychic nutrient exchange.