The first chill arrived on a Tuesday.
Arthur, a man shaped by 42 years of unremarkable English weather, noticed it not in the air, but in the absence of something familiar. It was the radio announcer's pause, a beat too long, as if the words had momentarily vanished from his mind.
Then, the news continued, slightly disjointed, but normal enough that Arthur initially dismissed it as a minor studio hiccup.
He sipped his morning tea, the lukewarm brew doing little to dispel a creeping unease. He lived alone in a modest terraced house in a quiet corner of Leeds.
His days were predictable, filled with the gentle hum of routine. He worked as a data analyst, a profession that thrived on the clarity of thought, the precision of numbers.
That morning, though, the numbers seemed to swim on the screen. He double-checked his calculations, a simple algorithm he'd executed countless times. Yet, for a moment, the logic eluded him, as if a key part of his understanding had simply gone missing.
"Bloody hell," he muttered, rubbing his eyes. Must be tired.
He put it down to a lack of sleep, perhaps too much cheese before bed. Arthur was a practical man. He favored logic and reason, the tangible and the explainable. Supernatural horrors, entities that stole thoughts – those were the domains of cheap novels and late-night films.
He tried to focus on his work, but the feeling of something being 'off' grew stronger. It was like a phantom limb, an awareness of a missing faculty he hadn't realized he possessed until it began to fade.
He attempted to formulate a work email, a simple request for data access, and found himself staring blankly at the blinking cursor. The words, the structure of the sentence, the very intent of his message seemed to slip from his grasp.
He closed his eyes, trying to recall the email's purpose. It was there, just out of reach, like a word on the tip of his tongue, yet frustratingly intangible. This wasn't tiredness. This was something else.
Lunch offered no solace. In the break room, his colleagues seemed subdued, their conversations stilted. Brenda from HR, normally a fountain of office gossip, spoke in short, clipped sentences, her usual vivacity replaced by a muted detachment.
"Morning, Brenda," Arthur offered, trying to inject some levity into the room.
She looked at him, her brow furrowed. "Morning, Arthur. Did you… did you need something?" Her question hung in the air, devoid of any warmth, any genuine interest.
"Just saying hello," Arthur replied, a knot tightening in his stomach.
Brenda nodded once, sharply, then turned away, picking at her salad with a strange, almost mechanical detachment. The air in the room felt heavy, laden with an unspoken tension. It was more than just a bad day; it was as if the very fabric of their shared reality had become frayed.
By the afternoon, the feeling had intensified. The entire office seemed cloaked in a veil of disorientation. Conversations started and stopped abruptly, laughter was absent, and the usual clatter of keyboards was replaced by a disquieting silence. Arthur tried to discuss the strange atmosphere with Mark, his desk neighbor.
"Mark," he began, leaning closer, "have you noticed… everything feels a bit… odd today?"
Mark looked up, his eyes unfocused, almost distant. "Odd? What do you mean?" His tone was flat, devoid of inflection.
Arthur struggled to articulate the feeling. "It's like… like everyone's thinking through treacle. Words are… harder to find."
Mark stared at him for a long moment, a blank expression on his face. Then, slowly, he shook his head. "No. I haven't noticed anything." He returned to his screen, his movements slow, deliberate, almost robotic.
Arthur retreated, a cold dread creeping into his bones. He wasn't imagining it. Something was happening. Something was stealing more than just words; it was stealing thought itself.
That evening, walking home, the city felt different. The usual evening rush was muted. People moved with a strange listlessness, their faces blank, their eyes unfocused. Even the usual street vendors, shouting their wares, were silent, their voices gone.
He passed a group of teenagers normally full of boisterous energy, now standing motionless, staring at nothing, their faces empty. A shiver went down Arthur's spine. This wasn't just his office; this was everywhere.
Back in his quiet house, the silence was oppressive. He switched on the television, hoping for some distraction, some normalcy. The news anchor, a usually polished and articulate woman, stumbled over her words, her delivery hesitant, her eyes darting nervously around the studio.
"And… and… in… in… international news," she stammered, visibly struggling, "the… the… uh… situation… remains…" She trailed off, her face a mask of confusion and distress. The broadcast abruptly cut to static.
Arthur switched channels, finding only more static, or disjointed fragments of programs, voices fading in and out, images flickering erratically. It was as if the very airwaves were struggling to carry thought, to transmit meaning.
He turned off the television, the silence returning, heavier than before. He felt utterly alone, surrounded by a world slowly losing its mind.
He tried to recall something, anything, a memory, a song, a simple phrase, and found them slipping away, like sand through his fingers. His own thoughts felt fragile, ephemeral, on the verge of dissolving.
Fear, cold and sharp, pierced through the growing fog in his mind. This was not a sickness, not a natural phenomenon. This was something deliberate, something… predatory.
He sat in the dim light of his living room, the silence punctuated only by the frantic beating of his own heart. He tried to think, to reason, to understand what was happening, but the effort was immense, like wading through thick mud. His thoughts felt stolen even as he tried to grasp them, vanishing into the oppressive silence.
Then, a sound. Faint, almost imperceptible at first, but growing steadily louder. A low, resonant hum, vibrating not just in his ears, but in his very bones. It was a sound that felt wrong, unnatural, alien.
The humming intensified, filling the room, filling his head, drowning out all other thought. It was accompanied by a feeling, not of pain, but of… extraction.
As if something was reaching into his mind, siphoning away his thoughts, his memories, his very essence.
He gasped, clutching his head, trying to resist, but the feeling was overwhelming. His thoughts, his carefully constructed inner world, began to unravel, to fray, to dissolve into the humming void.
He saw images, fragmented, fleeting. Dark shapes in the periphery, too fast to focus on. Glimpses of impossible landscapes, alien geometries that defied comprehension. And then, a presence. Not physical, but felt, vast and cold, immeasurably ancient.
It was Von Go Jagon.
The name formed in his mind, unbidden, unwelcome. He didn't know how he knew it, but he did. Von Go Jagon, the thought-stealer.
The entity whispered about in forgotten corners of the internet, dismissed as myth, as paranoid ramblings. But it was real. It was here. And it was inside his head.
The extraction intensified. His memories flickered, distorted, fading like old photographs. Moments from his childhood, his first love, his career, all dissolving into nothingness.
He tried to hold on, to cling to something, anything, but there was nothing left to grasp. His identity, his self, his very being was being systematically dismantled, piece by piece.
He wanted to scream, but the scream died in his throat, unspoken, unthought. Even the impulse to scream was being taken from him. He was becoming empty, a hollow shell, devoid of thought, of feeling, of self.
The humming reached a crescendo, a deafening roar in his mind. The alien presence loomed larger, colder, more dominant. He was no longer Arthur, the data analyst from Leeds. He was nothing. A vacant vessel, waiting to be filled with… with what? He no longer knew. He no longer could know.
And then, silence.
The humming stopped. The extraction ceased. The alien presence receded, leaving behind… nothing.
Arthur sat in the darkness, his eyes open, staring blankly ahead. His house was silent, the city outside silent, the world silent. But the silence was not peaceful. It was the silence of emptiness, of absence. The silence of a mind utterly devoid of thought.
He looked down at his hands, pale and lifeless in the dim light. He knew they were his hands, but they felt alien, disconnected. He tried to move them, and they moved, but without purpose, without direction.
He stood, his legs carrying him forward, but he did not choose to stand, he did not choose to walk. He was a puppet, moving through the motions of a life he no longer remembered, a life that no longer existed within him.
He walked to the window, staring out at the street, still and deserted under the cold, indifferent moonlight. He saw reflections in the glass, a pale, gaunt face staring back, but he did not recognize it. It was just a face, empty, meaningless.
He was still alive, in a technical sense. His heart still beat, his lungs still drew breath. But the essence of him, the spark of consciousness, the seat of self – it was gone. Stolen. By Von Go Jagon.
He would continue to exist, to move, to function, in a manner, but he would never think again. Never feel again. Never be Arthur again. He was a living ghost, walking through a world he could no longer perceive, a world that held no meaning, no purpose, no fear, no sadness, no anything.
His fate was not tragic in the traditional sense, not a fiery demise or a gruesome end. It was something far more desolate, far more profound.
He was not dead. He was simply… gone. Erased. His story not a tragedy of death, but the ultimate horror of oblivion while still breathing.
A fate worse than death, a living nothingness. His existence, from this point onward, a silent, empty testament to the terrifying power of Von Go Jagon, a chilling monument to the entity that stole not just thoughts, but everything that made him human.
And in the vast, uncaring universe, his silent, empty existence would continue, unnoticed, unmourned, a brutal, unique, and profoundly sad ending for a man who had simply wanted a quiet life in a quiet corner of Leeds.