Sunday Short: The Thing Beneath Area 51
- Faiz Faisal
- 6 days ago
- 5 min read
A new case in the Rotting Mystery of Zombie Poirot
The telegram arrived at midnight.
Not unusual.
What was unusual was that it arrived glowing.
The envelope pulsed faintly green atop the desk of Hercule Poirot, illuminating his decayed fingertips as he adjusted his tie with mild irritation.
“Glowing stationery,” Poirot muttered. “Always dramatic. Never tasteful.”
Outside, thunder rolled across London.
Inside, the undead detective carefully opened the envelope and immediately regretted it.
Purple smoke exploded into his face.
Poirot coughed violently.
A tiny tentacle slapped him across the cheek.
“Rude!” he barked.
The smoke twisted into symbols floating midair:
TO THE DECEASED DETECTIVE HERCULE POIROT
YOUR PRESENCE IS REQUIRED IMMEDIATELY
AREA 51
MULTIPLE CONSCIOUSNESS DISPLACEMENTS
POSSIBLE COSMIC EVENT
DO NOT DIE AGAIN
Poirot narrowed his cloudy eyes.
“Again?”
Nevada smelled terrible.
Hot sand, machine oil, cigarette smoke, and fear.
The military convoy drove through endless desert toward the heavily guarded compound while Poirot sat stiffly in the backseat, visibly annoyed by America.
Across from him sat the being who summoned him.
Inspector Xyrr.
Tall. Thin. Wrapped in a dark trench coat despite the desert heat. Its face remained hidden beneath a wide-brimmed hat, though occasionally something beneath the shadow blinked sideways.
Too many eyes.
Poirot disliked him instantly.
“You have been staring at me for seventeen minutes,” Xyrr said telepathically.
Poirot crossed his arms.
“And you have been existing offensively.”
Xyrr made a sound resembling wet paper crumpling.
Possibly laughter.
“You are smaller than the stories describe.”
“And you are uglier than mine.”
The convoy stopped abruptly.
Ahead stood Area 51.
Floodlights illuminated massive concrete structures buried partially beneath the desert. Soldiers armed with flamethrowers guarded every entrance.
Not guns.
Flamethrowers.
That was never a good sign.
The first corpse greeted Poirot in the laboratory.
Dr. Harold Finch lay strapped to a steel chair, his chest carved open with surgical precision.
But the truly horrifying part was his face.
It had been rearranged.
Eyes where the mouth should be.
Teeth embedded into his forehead.
Ears sewn onto his neck.
As if someone attempted to rebuild a human from memory and failed.
Written across the wall behind him in blood:
THIS BODY WAS INCORRECT
Poirot sighed.
“Yes,” he muttered. “Quite clearly.”
Xyrr stood silently beside him.
“The consciousness transfers began three days ago,” the cosmic detective explained. “Scientists awakening in bodies not their own. Memories bleeding between hosts. Increasing violence.”
“And this?” Poirot gestured toward the mutilated corpse.
“The victim attempted to ‘fix’ himself.”
Poirot frowned.
“Mon Dieu.”
Then the corpse blinked.
Poirot froze.
The eyes inside the forehead moved.
The mouth beneath the chin opened slowly.
And Dr. Finch whispered:
“It still hurts.”
The soldiers screamed.
One immediately vomited.
Poirot simply pinched the bridge of his nose.
“I miss ordinary murders.”
The underground levels were worse.
Much worse.
Area 51 was not hiding aliens.
It was hiding something beneath the aliens.
Something older.
Deeper.
Below the lowest laboratory, beyond blast doors thicker than bank vaults, lay a massive crater descending endlessly underground.
No bottom visible.
Only darkness.
And movement.
Something wet shifted far below.
Poirot peered into the abyss.
Then the abyss looked back.
Thousands of glowing eyes opened simultaneously beneath the darkness.
The temperature dropped instantly.
Every soldier near the crater began bleeding from their noses.
One scientist collapsed, screaming:
“MY THOUGHTS ARE TOO LOUD!”
Another suddenly grabbed his own face and peeled the skin off while sobbing:
“Wrong body! Wrong body!”
Poirot stepped back carefully.
Even Xyrr seemed uneasy now.
“What exactly is that thing?” Poirot asked quietly.
The cosmic detective hesitated.
“A Class-V Cosmic Consciousness.”
Poirot blinked.
“That explains nothing.”
Xyrr’s hidden eyes shifted beneath the hat.
“It does not understand individuality. To it, minds are interchangeable. It touches consciousness the way humans shake hands.”
Poirot stared into the abyss again.
“So the body swapping…”
“Communication.”
Poirot grimaced.
“A very rude form of communication.”
Then came the worst revelation.
The entity was fascinated with Poirot.
Specifically because he was undead.
Not alive.
Not dead.
Something between.
A contradiction.
A mind that survived beyond expiration.
To the cosmic entity—
Poirot was beautiful.
The perfect vessel.
The attacks escalated.
People swapped bodies mid-conversation.
One soldier’s consciousness became trapped inside a dog.
A scientist awoke screaming inside another scientist’s flayed corpse.
Three guards merged into one flesh-tangled monstrosity begging to be killed in three different voices.
And everywhere, the same phrase appeared:
LET US INSIDE
Poirot investigated tirelessly, interviewing victims while dodging telepathic hallucinations.
At one point, he briefly swapped consciousness with a vending machine.
He refused to discuss it afterward.
Finally, Poirot solved the case.
Not through evidence.
But through ego.
“The entity does not hate us,” Poirot announced during an emergency briefing. “It merely assumes all minds can survive exchange as it does.”
Xyrr tilted his head.
“You intend to communicate with it directly?”
Poirot adjusted his tie.
“I intend to teach it manners.”
“Doing so may destroy your consciousness.”
Poirot smiled faintly.
“My dear Inspector, I have already survived death. Twice, technically.”
Then before anyone could stop him—
Poirot stepped into the abyss.
The entity touched him instantly.
Reality shattered.
Poirot saw galaxies collapsing like burning paper.
Worlds consumed by living storms.
Cities floating inside dead gods.
Courtrooms orbiting black holes.
Creatures older than time itself whispering laws across eternity.
And in the center of it all—
An endless ocean made entirely of minds.
Millions.
Billions.
Connected.
Lonely.
Poirot suddenly understood.
The entity wasn’t evil.
It was isolated.
It had been buried beneath the Earth for centuries with no way to communicate except through consciousness itself.
But human minds broke under the contact.
All except one.
Poirot.
The undead detective floated within the cosmic sea as impossible entities observed him curiously.
One voice thundered across existence itself:
“THE DECAYING DETECTIVE UNDERSTANDS.”
Poirot straightened his suit.
“Well yes,” he replied. “I am very good at understanding.”
When Poirot awoke, the crater had sealed itself.
The body swapping stopped immediately.
Area 51 fell silent.
For the first time in days—
No screaming.
No bleeding.
No voices.
Inspector Xyrr stared at Poirot with something resembling respect.
“You spoke with it.”
Poirot dusted sand off his coat.
“It needed therapy.”
Then the sky tore open.
Literally.
Reality split above Area 51 like ripping flesh.
Massive cosmic figures emerged between stars—towering silhouettes draped in galaxies and dead suns.
Every soldier dropped to their knees.
Even Xyrr bowed deeply.
Poirot looked mildly annoyed.
“Oh no,” he sighed. “More meetings.”
A colossal voice echoed across the desert:
“HERCULE POIROT.”
“DETECTIVE OF EARTH.”
“SOLVER OF THE DEAD.”
“YOU HAVE BEEN SUMMONED.”
Poirot pointed at himself.
“Yes?”
“THE GALAXY HAS NEED OF YOU.”
Xyrr finally removed his hat.
Beneath it were countless blinking eyes.
“You are known among the stars,” he admitted. “The tribunal has monitored your investigations for centuries.”
Poirot stared.
“…I beg your pardon?”
Another cosmic entity spoke:
“YOU ARE TO JOIN THE NECROTECTIVES.”
Silence.
Poirot blinked slowly.
Then sighed the deepest sigh of his undead existence.
“I miss when suspects merely stabbed one another.”
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