Hellsborough Exposed

Cryptobites are the garbage trucks of Hellsborough, and I mean that literally: massive, slow, near-unkillable Mentiloth larvae that stopped being larvae and now crawl the dark net inside and out, cleaning up stripped minds and the psychic detritus of a city running on things it shouldn't. If one fixes its attention on you it is because something you have been through left a residue it finds interesting, and the correct response is to reconsider your life choices and start moving. They cannot manage stairs, mind; a good staircase has saved at least three documented lives.

People ask why a grown folklorist wastes his life on old wives' tales, and my answer is that a tale is just an ancient meme: it mutates as it passes between tribes and ages and eras and takes on a life of its own. No story survives the retelling unless it still means something to whoever hears it, which is why I keep chasing the genesis of the daft ones. Half my STEM-brained friends call that pointless and then, in the same breath, confess their faith in a supreme being, and I never can get them to see that their God might be the oldest meme of the lot.