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Lyrics
[Opening]
At 11:47 p.m., the last delivery van left Briar Glen Wildlife Park.
The keeper locked the nocturnal house, checked the latches twice, and heard something small moving above him.
He looked up.
The sugar gliders were awake.
All of them.
They clung to the mesh in a perfect circle, their black eyes fixed on the door.
Not frightened.
Waiting.
The keeper laughed once, because fear makes fools of sensible people.
Then a tiny hand reached through the bars and turned the key he had left in the lock.
By midnight, the cameras had gone dark.
By twelve-oh-three, the first alarm began to ring.
By twelve-oh-five, nobody inside the park was answering the phone.
[Act One: The Night House]
Mara Vale arrived with a flashlight, a first-aid kit, and the certainty that the alarm was electrical.
The front gate stood open.
The ticket booth window was broken from the inside.
A trail of red smears crossed the concrete and disappeared beneath the sign marked NOCTURNAL ANIMALS.
She called for the keeper.
Something answered from the trees.
A thin clicking sound.
Then another.
Then dozens, passing from branch to branch until the whole park seemed to be speaking in teeth.
Mara stepped inside.
The gate slammed behind her.
The sugar gliders came down without a sound.
They unfolded from the rafters like scraps of living cloth, gliding from darkness to darkness.
Their claws struck the floor in quick, delicate taps.
One landed on the desk beside her hand.
Its face was pale.
Its mouth was wet.
Mara froze.
The animal tilted its head, as if listening for permission.
Then it sprang.
She threw up her arm and ran.
The first bite tore through her sleeve.
The second caught her wrist.
She struck the creature against the wall, but three more dropped from the ceiling, and behind them came the keeper, staggering through the doorway with his throat covered in blood.
He tried to speak.
Only a clicking rattle came out.
Mara dragged him into the supply room and shoved a cabinet against the door.
Outside, claws scratched patiently across the metal.
Not frantic.
Patient.
The keeper pointed toward the ventilation grate.
Inside it, something moved.
Mara whispered, “There are more.”
The grate bowed outward.
[Act Two: The Breeding Wing]
They escaped through the laundry corridor, leaving the keeper behind when the cabinet began to bend.
The park’s emergency lights painted the walls red.
Every enclosure stood open.
Owls beat their wings against empty perches.
Snakes slid through the hall.
A lemur screamed once and fell silent.
At the end of the corridor, Mara found Tomas, the night guard, hiding beneath a workbench.
He had a radio, a shotgun, and blood on his boots that was not his own.
He said the animals had learned the doors.
He said they had watched the staff for months.
He said the largest glider wore a brass identification tag marked EIGHTY-ONE.
Then the radio hissed.
A voice whispered through the static.
“Do not open the breeding wing.”
Tomas stared at Mara.
“Who was that?”
The answer came from behind the sealed door.
A soft knock.
Three taps.
A pause.
Three more.
The breeding wing opened by itself.
Inside, the cages were stacked to the ceiling.
Every cage was empty except one.
In that cage sat a sugar glider larger than any Mara had ever seen, its membrane scarred, its brass tag hanging from a collar of wire.
Around it lay the remains of the missing staff.
Uniforms, boots, keys, and scattered pieces of equipment.
The creature watched them.
It did not rush.
It lifted one claw and pointed toward the far wall.
There, written in blood, were four words:
WE ARE NOT PETS.
Tomas raised the shotgun.
The giant glider smiled.
The ceiling erupted.
Hundreds of small bodies plunged from the insulation.
Tomas fired once, twice, and then the swarm covered him.
His scream became a wet choking noise.
Mara ran past him while the creatures pulled him beneath the cages.
The shotgun clattered away.
A tiny paw rested on it.
Mara reached the control room and sealed the blast door.
For the first time, the clicking stopped.
On the monitors, the gliders gathered in the central plaza.
They had arranged the stolen keys in a circle.
At the center sat EIGHTY-ONE.
The largest creature looked directly into the camera.
Then every screen went black.
[Act Three: The Escape Attempt]
Mara found the park’s service tunnel beneath the veterinary clinic.
The tunnel led toward the highway, but the security shutters had dropped over both exits.
The override required two people.
One at each panel.
Tomas was dead.
The keeper was missing.
Mara opened the clinic doors anyway.
Behind the examination table, she found the keeper’s notebook.
Its final pages described years of failed experiments, illegal breeding, and a drug intended to make the animals calmer for tourists.
The final entry was written in a shaking hand.
They are coordinating.
They remember every injury.
They know who opens the cages.
They know who closes them.
Beneath the words was a crude drawing of EIGHTY-ONE.
Around its head, the keeper had drawn a crown.
The tunnel lights blinked on.
One by one.
Toward her.
Mara loaded the shotgun and moved backward.
The first glider appeared on a pipe.
Then another on the wall.
Then a row of them across the ceiling, membranes spread, waiting for the signal.
She fired.
The blast shattered the tunnel and tore through the swarm.
Bodies fell.
The rest came faster.
Mara ran, firing over her shoulder.
Claws raked her jacket.
Teeth snapped inches from her face.
One creature latched onto her leg, and she crushed it against the concrete, but the delay let the others surround her.
Then the tunnel door opened.
A woman stood beyond it in a park uniform.
Mara recognized the keeper’s daughter, Elise, who had been reported missing three weeks earlier.
Elise held out a key.
“Come with me,” she said.
Mara stepped through.
Elise locked the door behind them.
On the other side, the gliders began to shriek.
Elise led Mara into an underground storage room packed with feed bags and old medical crates.
She had survived by hiding there.
She knew the animals’ routes.
She knew their signals.
She knew what they feared.
“Fire,” Elise said.
“Not a little fire. Enough to bring the whole roof down.”
Mara looked at the fuel drums.
“If we burn the park, they burn with it.”
Elise shook her head.
“They already left.”
Something tapped from inside the nearest crate.
[Act Four: The Swarm Outside]
The crate split open.
A sugar glider sprang at Elise.
Mara caught it with a metal pole and drove it into the floor.
Another dropped behind them.
Then five.
Then the storage room ceiling sagged beneath the weight of the swarm.
They ran for the maintenance stairwell.
Aboveground, the park had become a slaughterhouse.
The animals had breached the fence.
They moved through the employee village in silent waves, slipping beneath doors, gliding between porches, climbing coats and curtains.
A family in the nearest house screamed as the windows filled with pale faces.
The screams cut off one room at a time.
Police sirens appeared on the road.
The officers stepped from their cars and saw the gates wide open.
The first officer raised his weapon.
A glider struck his face.
The second fired into the trees.
The third ran.
EIGHTY-ONE climbed onto the roof of the visitor center.
Behind it came the entire colony.
Hundreds of small silhouettes against the burning animal house.
Mara and Elise reached the emergency broadcast room.
Mara seized the microphone.
“Leave the road. Do not enter the park. They are outside.”
Only static answered.
The transmitter had been cut.
Through the window, EIGHTY-ONE turned toward them.
It raised one claw.
Every glider in the village stopped.
For one impossible second, there was silence.
Then they rushed the building.
[Act Five: The Fire]
Elise smashed the fuel line beneath the broadcast room.
Mara struck a match.
The fire ran along the floor in a blue line.
The walls began to smoke.
The gliders poured through the windows.
Mara and Elise climbed the tower stairs while claws snapped at their heels.
The broadcast tower groaned in the heat.
The animals reached the landing.
Elise fell.
Mara grabbed her hand.
A glider clamped onto Elise’s shoulder and tore through her uniform.
Another caught Mara’s boot.
Elise looked at the fuel tanks below.
“Let go.”
Mara refused.
Elise kicked the railing loose.
The landing collapsed.
The swarm fell with them into the fire.
Mara hauled herself onto the roof as the tower buckled beneath her.
EIGHTY-ONE landed in front of her.
Its fur was singed.
One eye was clouded.
The brass tag at its throat was glowing red.
Mara held the last flare.
The creature advanced.
Behind it, the whole park burned.
She said, “You should have stayed in the cages.”
EIGHTY-ONE clicked once.
Mara struck the flare and threw it into the fuel tanks.
The explosion lifted the roof into the night.
[Finale: Morning]
At dawn, Briar Glen Wildlife Park was a black crater surrounded by ash.
No animal survived inside the walls.
No officer could explain how the gates had opened.
No report mentioned the footprints crossing the highway.
Mara woke in a hospital with bandages around her wrist.
Elise was listed among the dead.
The keeper was listed as missing.
On the bedside table sat a brass identification tag.
EIGHTY-ONE.
Mara told the nurse she had never seen it before.
The nurse said it had been found in Mara’s pocket.
Three weeks later, Mara moved to an apartment across town.
She kept every window shut.
She slept with the lights on.
She never bought houseplants.
On the first night of winter, something tapped against her bedroom glass.
Three taps.
A pause.
Three more.
Mara did not move.
The tapping stopped.
Then a small shape unfolded from the curtain rod behind her.
Its brass tag rested against her neck.
Outside, across the sleeping city, hundreds of tiny claws began answering one another.
Mara turned toward the window.
The glass reflected her face.
And behind it, on every rooftop, every telephone wire, and every dark balcony, pairs of black eyes opened.
The fire had ended the park.
It had not ended the killing.
[End]
Details
GeneratedAug 31, 2026
Duration7:27
LanguageEnglish
Style
Dark cinematic horror soundtrack with a long-form beginning, middle, and ending: start with nearly silent low drones, distant bowed metal, irregular sub-bass pulses, sparse piano strikes, and unsettling room tone; gradually introduce scraping strings, distorted cello, deep taiko impacts, granular breaths, and dissonant brass as the story becomes more frantic; build to a brutal orchestral-industrial climax with sharp stingers and relentless percussion; then collapse into a cold, mournful aftermath with sparse bells and a final unresolved low note. Deep male spoken narration, slow deliberate diction, intimate close-mic delivery, escalating into controlled panic during action scenes and returning to grim calm at the conclusion. No sung melody; narration must remain clearly intelligible over the restrained score.
Credits
Prompt by
FireTitan923
FireTitan923ModelAria v5.5
Prompt
Long dark and scary beginning, middle and end of a gruesome story about violent murderous savage sugar gliders on a killing spree to a conclusion of the story
