I had been unemployed for months when I saw the job offer for a “planner” with no experience required. When I called, they told me to come down that night. The office was in the middle of two crumbling apartment complexes with gang graffiti all over the walls and ripped open bags of trash strewn across the alleys. Other than a few homeless people and hooded figures standing on the corner, the entire area looked deserted.

I entered the cracked stucco building and followed the signs for “Avenzi Planning.” On the second floor I knocked on the door. It opened up with a loud squeal.

On every wall stood posters for old horror and sci-fi movies, from Alien to Halloween to Predator, Phantasm and Hellraiser. A couple dull incandescent bulbs barely illuminated the room. A large desk with an ancient woman behind it took up the majority of the room. She motioned at the seat across from her and I sat.

“Mr. Bellingham? Jason Bellingham?” she asked me in a soft tone. I nodded. “I am Dorothea Lamb. This will be a quick session. You will be paid per task. First, we need you to fill out some surveys.” I nodded genially at this and she gave me a clipboard filled with papers, directing me back out into the lobby to fill it out. I was expecting the generic “Name, Number, Address” type forms, and that was how it started out. But it quickly became weird.

“Do you believe in God?” one question asked. A checklist ran next to it, “Yes” or “No.” “Do you think Hell is real? Would you ever commit suicide? Do you think demons can possess your soul? Do you wish you were never born?” I stared blankly at the sheet for a minute, wondering if there were candid cameras filming me as part of some joke.

I filled it out honestly and returned the sheet to the woman. She scanned it briefly, then put it in the top drawer of her desk, pulling a key from her pocket and locking the drawer behind it.

“You’re hired,” she said, smiling widely at me. Her beady brown eyes studied me over her huge Cheshire cat grin. “Can you start training immediately?” I nodded, feeling a small tight pit of anxiety in my stomach as her smile never faltered. Her eyes looked like tiny black holes in the overly bright fluorescent lighting of the room. Something felt wrong, but I really needed the money. I hadn’t had a job in months and my savings account was already overdrafted. If I didn’t pay my rent by the end of next week, the landlord said she would begin eviction proceedings immediately.

“Absolutely,” I said, offering her a wan smile. She smacked her meaty hands down on the desk, making me jump.

“Great!” she said, still showing far too many teeth in her disconcerting grin. “Follow me to the training center.” She got up quickly, moving much faster than an obese woman like her would appear to be able, and motioned for me to come.

I followed her down a hallway from her office, the carpet feeling wet and squelchy beneath my sneakers. The fluorescent lights flickered in overly bright strobes, making me feel nauseated and disoriented. Mrs. Lamb seemed totally unaffected by any of it. She walked with a grace unusual for someone who looked like she broke the 300-pound mark.

She turned suddenly, opening a random door on the right that looked just like the endless lines of doors on both sides of the hall. It had no marking or number on it to differentiate it, but when she opened it, I saw it lead into a garage. Men and women in identical uniforms stood in lines next to vans labeled “Celestial Pathway”. They all had on pure white pants and button-down shirts for the men, or skirts and blouses for the women. Not a single spot or stain marred the cloth on any of them. They all stared at me like mannequins, with identical blank smiling expressions on all of their faces. Goosebumps popped out all over my skin and a thin sheen of sweat began to gather on my forehead as my gut told me to get the hell out of there.

But I really needed the money, so I ignored it and continued forward.

From the corner of the room, a man stepped forward in an extremely expensive black suit from Dolce & Gabbana. It was professionally tailored and had a silky sheen that glimmered under the bright lights overhead. His pale gray eyes stared at me, as cold as iron, his white hair perfectly coiffed, his skin smooth and totally free of wrinkles despite his advanced age. He handed me a business card. I looked down at its embossed words, frowning.

Karavar Avenzi- Businessman, Entrepreneur, Enlightened Being. Below that, it had his phone number, fax number and email address.

“Um, hi there,” I said awkwardly, holding out my hand. “My name is Jason Bellingham.” He shook it, his hand radiating warmth, his grip feeling like steel as he crushed my hand under his.

“Karavar Avenzi,” he said simply, giving my hand a single pump before releasing it. “You can call me Karavar, however. I am the owner and operator of this building, as well as many other businesses in the area. Most importantly, however, I operate a spiritual group here, one we call the Celestial Pathway.” He motioned at the vans for emphasis, showing off the professionally-wrapped massive letters that covered all sides of the vehicles.

“First of all,” he said, pulling a clipboard from out of nowhere and handing it over to me, “we just need to finish the formalities. This here is your NDA, which states you will never speak of what you see while working here to anyone. And this is your employment contract- $27 an hour to start, and potentially more later if everything works out for the best.” My mouth dropped at this. Most of the temp and non-degree jobs around here paid anywhere from $13 to $20 an hour. $27 an hour was a life-changing amount for me right now. All the red flags I had noticed in this place were brushed away by my mind as a flood of hope took over.

“Thank you so much,” I said quickly, excited, feeling my heart fluttering in my chest. “You have no idea how much this job means to me.” Karavar smiled politely at me, waiting for me to finish. Then he produced a blindfold from the inner pocket of his jacket.

“Put this on,” he said bluntly. “We must go to the worksite now- or at least, you must go to the worksite. I have important things to attend to first.” I held the blindfold in my right hand, like a dead fish limply strewn over my fingers.

“Put it on,” he repeated insistently, his voice turning cold. I did as he commanded, a rising trepidation battling the need for money in my mind. A strong hand tightened around my arm, and I felt the stinging pain of a needle going into my neck. Then I lost consciousness.

I woke up an indeterminate time later, feeling pine needles and twigs underneath my fingers, the smell of evergreens giving a pungent aroma to the air. Mixed in with that sweet pine smell was an undertone of rotting meat, urine and liquified shit. I sat up quickly, thinking that I was blind for a moment before remember the blindfold and ripping it off. What I saw in front of me horrified me.

A few hundred feet away across a grassy field, a pile of nude bodies was stacked in a pyramid, legs and arms hanging out like loose stitches in an unfinished needlework project. The white-clad members of the organization stood next to a couple of the Celestial Pathway vans on the dirt road between me and the pile of corpses. The largest member stepped forward, and I recognized her instantly as Dorothea Lamb.

“Good evening, Mr. Bellingham,” she said sweetly, her beady eyes narrowing as she gazed down at me. “I’m glad to see you returned to the land of the living. The time of your training has come.” The rest of the organization members, which I was now beginning to suspect were actually cult members, stared at me silently, slight identical grins marring their otherwise expressionless faces. A black man with a shaved head stepped stepped forward from the cult members, motioning for me to follow him as he turned and began walking towards the pile of corpses.

Having no other choice, my eyes downcast as I walked past the expressionless faces, I followed him. Next to the rotting bodies, I saw two things that sent a sense of shock through me: an industrial-sized woodchipper and a black hole in the ground, about five feet across and perfectly level with the grass and dirt around it. As we walked closer, though, I realized that the hole was not a hole in the traditional sense. It shimmered and sent up sparks of iridescent light. The surface of it resembled an oil stain, the blackness mixing with the dying light of the day to form rainbows that shifted and morphed into one another. Behind that blackness, I saw what looked like humanoid shapes swimming and dancing, but as I tried to focus on them, my head began to pound and they seemed to disappear or swim away.

“I don’t recommend you stare too deeply into that portal,” the black man said with a growl. “Sometimes it can hypnotize people, and those it hypnotizes have been known to jump in from time to time. We never see them again.” Tearing my gaze away, I looked up at him.

“What’s your name, friend?” I asked, trying to be as nice as possible, hoping I would still get out of here alive.

“You call me K,” he said, extending his hand. “In our religion, the monks and nuns give up our names. Only the workers like Mrs. Lamb or the leaders like Karavar Avenzi keep theirs.” I shook his hand as he talked, making eye contact. He didn’t smile. His shaved head reflected the light of the sunset as the sun began to disappear behind the trees. “Now listen up, because I am only going to say this once. Your job is to dispose of the traitors-” he pointed to the pile of bodies behind us, “-and to feed the Asuras.” With this, he pointed to the shimmering black hole. “The Asuras don’t like full bodies, so we provide them with assistance.” He pointed to the woodchipper. “Any questions?” I had many, many questions, but I wasn’t going to say that.

“What are the Asuras?” I asked. I thought he would slap me, but instead he simply stared daggers at me before responding.

“They are from the stars,” he said. “They came down from Heaven and they will return to it, bringing us with them. But until that time comes, we need to feed them and keep the organization pure. The Celestial Pathway is literally that- the Pathway to the stars, the way to Heaven for all of us, you included, if you choose to accept what is given. Now get to work.”

I hate to admit it, but I did get to work. K turned on the woodchipper with a roar, and I grabbed the first body and dragged it over. He didn’t want to touch it or help me in anyway; I had the feeling none of the cult members liked to touch the bodies, which is very likely why they hired me in the first place. The body was still fresh, the blue eyes staring blankly up at me, as if asking “Why?” Grunting, I pushed the feet up into the conveyor belt of the woodchipper, then grabbed the shoulders and lifted it. The belt did the rest of the work, carrying the body into the interior machinery. With a wet crushing sound, the body began to disassemble. Pieces of bone and flesh began to roar out into the black shimmering hole. I heard a harmonic song of joy from the hole as the slurry disappeared into it, and the opening seemed to expand outwards as the beings inside fed on the human meat. K indicated for me to continue, so I did.

Some of the bodies were in worse shape than the first, the skin sloughing off in my hands, the bloated flesh releasing rancid-smelling gases that made me gag and cough. There were men and women of all races and ages, and even a few children. Under the baleful gaze of K, with all the other cult members ready to come at a moment’s notice, I knew I had no choice but to continue my task until it was completed. I only hoped they would let me go home.

Once I got to my seventh body, things started to go wrong. I picked up the fresh-looking body of a young Asian woman, but her eyes flew open. She was covered in blood and gore, but apparently not dead. Her breath began to come in heaving gasps as she looked straight at me, whispering, “Please, help me.” Instinctively, I dropped her like I had accidentally picked up a poisonous snake. I almost started to scream, but at that moment K roughly pushed past me, pulling a syringe from his pocket and shoving it into her neck. Then he indicated that I should continue.

“I can’t continue!” I wailed plaintively. “She’s still alive! What if other ones are still alive too?”

“They are dead to us, so therefore they are dead to the world. We are the path of life. We are the Celestial Path. Now move these bodies made of meat, you maggot.” My head downcast, I did as he said. Grabbing her by the ankles, I began to pull the naked body towards the woodchipper. I didn’t notice any breathing anymore from the woman, and I hoped for her sake she was dead. Out of pity, though, I put her into the conveyor belt headfirst, wondering if any of the others were actually alive when I put the bodies in. I shuddered at the very thought, my stomach turning in quick nauseous flips.

But I knew that if I refused, they would kill me. I could see it in the eyes of K and all the other cult members. Actually, speaking of the other cult members, what were they all doing here, I wondered to myself. Sneaking a peak in that direction, the dying light of the day illuminated a horrifying scene.

They were gathered in a circle around a shimmering black being thirty feet tall. Its skin sent off rainbows, as if made of oil spots on the pavement, and it had no features, no eyes, no mouth, no hair, nothing besides the human shape of a black behemoth. I saw the cult members praying on their knees to it, and as they murmured, the being seemed to grow and solidify. The air around it cracked with electricity, throwing off sparks of light in all directions. The longer I stared at it, the more I felt hypnotized, until K came from behind me and smacked me in the back of the head.

“Don’t stare at the Asuras!” he said to me. “You think you are worthy to even look upon it? You aren’t worthy to lick the dirt from its feet.” I nodded silently, then went back to work, dragging more bodies to the woodchipper. The hole continued to grow, until I wondered if it would suck in the woodchipper itself eventually. The circumference of it was only a few feet away by this point, and the hole had grown to over thirty feet across. Looking down into it, I saw the oily black beings beneath the surface were writhing and dancing at an amazingly fast speed, almost too fast for my eye to see anything more than a constant blur.

K came up beside me, looking down into the hole for a second. I pretended to walk back to the pile of bodies, but I kept a close eye on him. He continued to stare down, hypnotized, and I knew this might be my only chance to lose him and escape.

I got a running start from ten feet behind him, trying to sprint as quietly as I could. Despite this, he heard my footsteps and began to turn as I plowed into him at full speed. The half-turn ended up being to my advantage, as his legs tangled as he went flying into the black opening.

His mouth opened in a silent scream as hundreds of black arms, all covered in that oily sheen of rainbows and colors, flew up and grabbed him. Pulling him in different directions, his body tore into pieces, then sunk beneath the surface.

I took the chance and began to run towards the forest, away from the cult members praying to the black god behind me. As I passed the pile of corpses, I saw some of them stirring, trying to fight their way out from the tangle of arms and legs, rising up from the rotting bodies that surrounded them.

Once I was in the woods, I just ran randomly, changing directions multiple times. I was caught in pricker bushes and my skin torn, but due to the adrenaline, I barely felt it. Eventually I heard the roaring of traffic and followed it to a highway, where I flagged down a car who called the police.

I told them the entire sordid tale, and they gave me the benefit of the doubt, even allowing me to show them to the original building where I had interviewed. But now it was abandoned, all the posters and desks gone, all the vans missing from the garage. Not a person was in sight.

They said they’d follow up with me if they found anything, but that was weeks ago and I never heard anything back from them. But I did hear from my old friend- Karavar Avenzi, Businessman, Entrepreneur, Enlightened Being. At least, he sent me a piece of mail.

It was a check for the hours I had worked. True to his word, he had paid me $27 an hour for the entire time I had disposed of those bodies for them, even including payment for the time taken to interview and travel to the site. And yes, I did deposit the check.

After all, I really needed the money.