Paige woke up at 11pm. Just a second before, her alarm clock had roused obnoxiously from its silence – neon red numericals Vegas-bright in her room. As usual when she woke, she thought excitedly about her babies. Even though she had never given birth, they were still her babies. On the weekly rota there was…
The following stories come from the diary of the late Michael Tre Dirstrong. The police found this on his person at the scene of his suicide, and dismissed the stories as a result of his “insanity”. You be the judge. February 17th, 2011 I had to move to this house. It was scaring me too…
Andrew Sullivan was a wealthy man with his wife and his son before he made his billions from founding internet companies. His companies survived the crash that took out his inexperienced competitors and thrived in the vacuum they created. Time passed and Andrew and his family were happy. His son was growing up into a…
Anna Hamilton didn’t see herself as a suspicious person but when someone’s been following her for quite awhile she gets a queasy feeling in her stomach. Guaranteed she was out late but she was strong and from taking the new karate classes she knew she couldn’t (and wouldn’t) be defeated. Anna picked up the pace,…
Ever since I was small I’ve had a fascination with old things, buildings specifically. Something about things that rot and decay is beautiful to me, I don’t really know why. As a kid I’d get into all the dark, dusty spaces I could. The attic, the crawl space in our roof; I’d hide under my…
Suzie had lost her trademark smirk. A frail pink mouth quivered in its place. Her green eyes sparkled in the firelight, the naive naughtiness now absent. She was holding back the rest of her story, almost as if she wasn’t sure if it was fiction anymore. Our touching knees parted. Karl accidently knocked over a…
{BEGIN TRANSCRIPTION. DATE: NOVEMBER 21. 11:11:11s} [ SPEAKER COUGHS. AVERTS EYES; NERVOUS.] Um, okay so—damn it! How do I start this—well, okay. Let me say this first, I’m not crazy. I am not paranoid. I do not have a hyperactive imagination. No, I did not watch several hours of horror movies and no, I was…
Freddy Krueger only stalks the victims that fear him, right? He plays with their dreams and gets into the deepest and darkest parts of their subconscious minds, right? That kind of stuff only happens in movies, right? Wrong. Even talking about what happened last month makes me feel nauseous and uneasy. It was no movie….
I try to not think of it. But it haunts me. We’ve all heard stories about this place, about all those who go are never the same. There a few words in school about it, mainly of how much of a terrible place it is. I’ve heard of one story where a girl went in…
Imagine this. A city, built into a monolithic cavern, in an almost endless desert. A bright, beautiful city, alive with markets, streets, lights, and people. Imagine, a modern day Rome, a Rome built in the Earth. This city, the inhabitants called “Cairn,” referring to the stone that the city was made of. Now, imagine this…
The thing about nightmares is that when you wake up, it’s supposed to be over. You’re supposed to wake up screaming for mommy, turn the lights on, and see your familiar pooh bear in the corner, next to the toppled over Thomas the Tank Engine and Barbie’s Dream House. The thing about dreaming you’re abandoned,…
Two years after his passing, my husband’s grave still remained adorned with jewelry and flowers. Sasaki Tomonaga’s final resting place had become so decorated, one may believe him to be a noble instead of a lowly gokenin. He will always and forever be remembered for protecting our village from utter destruction. Alas, the legacy of…
“It’s not too bad, is it, sweetie?” Humbly dressed and brown haired, Wilbert Snow smiled at his daughter, and Mary gently smiled back from the living room. Mary’s father, Wilbert, was searching for a home set on a few acres of land that he could potentially build a vegetable garden on, and after a tedious…
There is something wrong with me. I cannot hide it anymore. I fear my family suspects that something is not quite right with me. They reach out to me, but I pull away. If they came too close, they would know I am different and I am dirty. Once, only my mother’s voice mattered. It…
I’ve often thought it likely, though have no way to really prove, that in every sizable town in America there is at least one area that feels a bit strange somehow. Maybe it’s a single building that was witness to a grisly murder or maybe it’s a slum full of forgotten people with forgotten dreams….
I was playing with a couple of my friends, walking down the empty streets of small town Bennettsville, South Carolina, when I noticed something out of place in a small alley way beside the town café. I paused, “Hey, is that a computer?” I asked, pretty much talking to myself but earning curious glances from…
In the heart of Washington, there’s a house that used to be owned by a family of five. Nobody really knows what happened to them. Their neighbors at the time say that there were no signs of weirdness or fear in the family. The common testimony is that one day there was nothing wrong. The…
Westley was rich. Not in the manor in which he was stuck up or thought he was better than everyone else, but in the manner where the only friends he could find were those who really only cared for his money and not him. That being said, life was rather difficult for him. He was…
It is just another day for anyone but me. Cars zip past on the highway just beyond my house. The sun is shining down and birds are singing the day’s glory just beyond my windowsill. I can see the leaves of an oak tree swaying in the wind outside. The entrancing deep green has my…
She had scolded me once again, told me that we had gone on this trip as an escape from the monotony of life in the city and bond as a couple, as if I already hadn’t known that. Expressing her feelings about how I’d become more “Distant” and “A husk of how I used to…
I can tell, how you’re staring there at this screen, finding some enjoyment. You need anything, just anything to keep you awake and entertained. It’s late, you’re dead tired, but you want to use up every moment. I know how it is. This happens to me, too. Are the sounds on your computer too loud?…
It was an atrocious act, but it worked. And just like everything else in this world, there was a consequence. This act worked, but not in the way that they wanted it to. They did not take any physical forms. They could talk, but would not be heard. They could touch, but could not be…
In the early eighties, around the time the internet was being developed, the military funded a massive experiment to see if similar technology could be used to design an artificial neural network. This was intended to be the foundation for a functioning AI. Predictably, the project went nowhere. Try as they might, the programmers and…
It has been exactly a year now since the incident happened… The day that my younger brother, John was killed. I have tried and tried to forget about what happened but it is still burned in my mind. So I know this is rather a cliché but I am recording this and putting it online…