Horror
Lost In a Dream
++-+---ello? Can you hear me? Are you listening? This story is not about me. It isn’t about you. It just keeps going. Unfolding with no end in sight. Broken in places. You see many of us just keep unraveling as life goes on with no idea where things will end up. Seeking purpose in whatever place we find comfort in, for a moment, maybe even a lifetime?
By Spencer Lane3 years ago in Fiction
Balancing Catherine
1. The storm is growing near. We feel the inert and stagnant air grow more and more silent. She complains about the temperature in the room so we go outside, but it is just as hot. We hear nothing except for the coquis and the occasional burst of shooting stars. She always spots them up above, pointing vividly to the skies. I always miss the phenomenon. I always miss the ghosts that Catherine sees at night in our new house. I don't believe in ghosts, much less in her, but the more adamant she becomes, the more I start to believe her. But I will only reach out my skepticism as far as her pretty, quixotic mouth would lead. The storm has started. She wants to go back inside because the winds are beginning to howl. I tell her not to be afraid. She thinks I'm talking about her ghosts. Under the approaching deluge, she simply says that nothing will ever be the same. I never believe in what she says.
By Justin Fong Cruz3 years ago in Fiction
Gobby Blank
The deer blind was like a cocoon. Gobby's limbs ached with stiffness, but she wasn’t ready to leave just yet. One more would come by soon, she knew it. They were far too predictable. She reached for the biscuit in her pocket only to realize she’d crushed it somehow, and now she had a pocket full of crumbs. She tried balling the crumbs together in her fist to no avail. The next thing she knew, she was eating the crumbs from her hand like a rat. It made her think of her mother, who didn’t have teeth. She couldn’t have rat-mouthed these biscuit crumbs.
By CAROLE S TURNER3 years ago in Fiction
The Left Behinds
June 26th, Year Unknown. Country Unknown. Place Unknown. ‘I don’t know how long I have been walking for, nor do I know why I travelled in this direction. All that I have with me is my worn down backpack, a dodgy memory and a rusty heart shaped locket that I have carried with me for as long as I can remember. What I do know, is that I need to take shelter, hunker down, so that they can’t chase me. Who is they? I hear you ask. I couldn’t tell you. All I know is they have been relentlessly chasing me for three nights now and I need some sleep.
By Joey Shabadoo3 years ago in Fiction
A Forager's Peril
Her legs burned as she raced through the trees, lungs gasping for breath, every muscle in her body begging her to stop. But to stop was to die so she pushed forward. Nothing like danger nipping at your heels to get in a good workout. Not that she’d recommend this regime to anyone.
By Emma Brown3 years ago in Fiction
The End
1 year Post Diary, It’s been a year…365 days of complete chaos filled with sleepless nights and hungry days. People have come and gone but we always end up alone. Just you, me, and mom’s locket. Gods, how have I kept that locket safe all this time? Such a simple piece- just a golden heart no bigger than my fingernail but in times like this could be the cause of my own death.
By Nicole Smith3 years ago in Fiction
foothills
He’d been in the mountains for two years. His territory was somewhere in the foothills of the Pyrenees and he moved his camp a few miles once or twice a month. When he first arrived he had intended to keep moving south west into Spain but avoiding the coasts meant he’d kept inland and higher in the mountains, even when the winters were harshest. The cold never bothered him in the same way as the heat and the dry.
By Laurie Barraclough3 years ago in Fiction
The Asylum
During the month of June in 2020, five employees of an environmental consulting company arrived in [REDACTED] to complete a series of bat surveys on a property with numerous condemned buildings. Bat surveys are conducted 30 minutes prior to sunset and one hour after for a total survey time of 90 minutes. According to the protocols for species at risk bats by the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry, suitable weather means low wind, no precipitation, and temperatures above 10 degrees Celsius. In 1876 the site was called the [REDACTED] Asylum for Idiots. The following logs a series of unusual phenomena that each employee experienced and later recounted to their fellow coworkers.
By Kelsey Reich3 years ago in Fiction
The Bird
“I saw a bird today.” Her voice emerges from the cocoon of yellow foam and matted blankets on the other side of the platform. Shapes of the scrapyard cast shadows that slice my sister’s face into strips, and her one eye falls perfectly in a stripe of orange glow from the burn barrel in the pit.
By Tippy Ki Yay3 years ago in Fiction
BREEDER
My name is Will. Naming me was the last thing my mother did before she died. Sometimes I tell myself a story for comfort. In this story, my mother wanted to give me a name that was a secret message, the only one she would get through to me. I imagine that my mother looked back over her short and crappy life and thought about all the hell that lay ahead for me, and the message she wanted to pass on was Have strength, be resilient. Will. I give you Will. Sometimes I even imagine that she wanted to say something more—I’m happy you were born, Will. I love you and want you to survive. But I don’t think she actually loved me, and I know she wasn’t happy that I was born. She killed herself a couple of hours after I came into this world. I don’t blame her—she was only thirteen years old.
By Honni van Rijswijk3 years ago in Fiction