Killing wasn’t all that bad when you learned what was really going on. Death was a rule of the world. Everyone knew that. It was how systems renewed themselves. It was beautiful, in a way. These other things, though — these other things didn’t die on their own. Something in reality had slipped a spoke and they ran on and on. It was up to the group to punch their ticket. It was up to him. He had done many such things for the group since 1943. Since any semblance of normal life had ended.

No one knew what the things were, really. He had heard some in the group go on and on about Elder Ones and cycles and elliptical orbits of dead stars that ruined the world every 900 million years. He’d seen reports on time gates and ray guns and things that, if they slipped past the net the group had raised, could destabilize the whole world.

Once, he saw something huge and gelatinous and covered in a thousand eyes crawl up from a hand-carved pit in Peru, struggle over the ledge, and consume a tied-up goat with the avidity of a spider feeding on a fly.

That was okay. There were worse things, really.

—“Punching,” by Dennis Detwiller, © 2011


Delta Green: Tales from Failed Anatomies is a collection of stories by award-winning author and game designer Dennis Detwiller.

These tales span the life of Delta Green, the desperate organization that Detwiller helped create: a group of men and women who have seen the awful truths of reality and struggle to keep those realities at bay as long as they can.