St. Bruvia was always a hungry town. It was an old place, older than most of its residents, with crooked wooden houses leaning toward one another beneath heavy snow and onion-domed churches whose ringing carried across the river. Whenever a family moved into a new house, they left something beneath
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Read Part One here “WHAT IS THE OATH of the Grave?” “Death’s first usher, the Dragon, first pledged it,” Great-Grandmother says. “Many did so in the past, but they’re few and far between these days. Most have forsaken it and sworn allegiance to the Exarch and his Law instead. The
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“Can you hear that?” The voice was muffled. The music blaring from my headphones drowned out everything around me. If he didn’t tap my shoulder, I wouldn’t have even noticed he was there. Sitting beside me on the bus, was a middle aged man in a hoodie and jeans. There
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“Is it true we know more about the surface of the moon than our own oceans?” “No. People love saying that, but we know far more about our oceans than we do the moon.” The interview process had begun, and Doctor Stefan Krause found himself amused by the wobbling of
If you are reading this, there is a very likely chance I am either dead or at the very least in a hospitalized state. It’s currently 12:43 PM as I am writing this, and every minute I spend writing is another step closer to certain death. I have no way
The door creaked open on its own, barely affixed to its own hinges. The dead, drooped eyes of one Nicolas Sullivan stared off into the distance, mindlessly fixated on the wall in front of him. If he were actually paying any attention, maybe he’d care about the festering mess on
Every device in my house woke me up at 5:38 A.M. I woke up before the alarm went off. That was the first wrong thing. In eleven years of marriage I had never once beaten the sound of my phone, but at 5:38 that morning—the fourteenth of November, a Saturday,
I grew up in a quaint town. The kind where everyone knows everything about one another, truly hellacious. As a child, I was reclusive, so you can imagine I hated it whenever anyone butted into my business. I would just shyly walk away until I found a quiet spot to
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Imagine receiving an image from someone online, opening it, and realizing that you have just become part of a curse. That’s exactly what internet users experienced back when the image of the famous Smile Dog first appeared on the internet. If you’re familiar with those times, long before AI and
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My favorite fact to use in Two Truths, One Lie is that I saw a ghost when I was seven. It all started one morning when I was hunched over a new toy I’d just gotten. It was a bright red, blue, and yellow plastic toy with PERFECTION printed along
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Entry One Entry Two It’s been a solid month since my unsettling trip to Tartarus. I still haven’t heard anything about the woman I picked up. I suppose that finding herself will likely take some time. Yeah, I’ve been thinking about her a lot–her, as well as myself, or who
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The living nightmare began as it always did – a tried and tested routine of bloodshed. This was all part of a cruel and inhuman system which had been in place for as long as anybody could remember. The methods had become more refined over the years, and the slaughter
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I CAN’T MOVE. I can’t speak. I can’t breathe. The only thing keeping me alive right now, despite the stake in my chest, is the black substance running through my veins. I look like an unnaturally pale young lady, but don’t be fooled. My great-grandfather was a vampire. He wed
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When my brother killed himself, I decided I needed to move out for college. I’m not sure how long he struggled for. I honestly don’t like to think about it. All I know is one night he went into the bathroom and never came out. By the time our dad
Growing up, my family used to joke that I slept so deeply even a brutal murder couldn’t wake me up. I now know that’s not true. Screams echoed through my apartment from the unit below mine, five tortured voices piercing through the floor at such a volume I could only
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My favorite place to be was my mother’s arms. She caressed my little head, braided my little curls, kissed my little forehead good morning, and sang me goodnight with a voice that reminded me of the hot autumn nights we got in Mobile. Her dark eyes comforted me; like two
Mother, Guide My Fate Read More »
My Nonna Elana was an incredible woman. She was not the type to sit in her chair knitting. She was a lively and adventurous woman. Even in her late 60’s and early 70’s she was climbing mountains and even spelunking. She was extremely kind hearted especially to us grandkids. She
In December of 2015, Marceline Nightingale was declared missing. The lack of evidence, like many other older cases in this town, entices me. Maybe if this one could be solved so could the other ones. Today I was doing research in Laria town library with my friend Sasha. We both
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It has been precisely 42 days since I have seen another human being. I just woke up one day, and since I live alone, I didn’t notice immediately. It’s funny that scientists say that people need other people to stay alive and sane, but I have never felt that way.
On the 23rd of September 2025, I died. It was sudden and painful, but brief. For some reason my just heart gave out. It ticked away for years without issue, just for the gears to break when it decided my time was up. Dying young is often seen as unfair,
We Share Intestines Read More »
It must be said from the start that Turin or Torino, as it is also called, is a strict city, elegant even for Italian cities, with strict rules regarding architecture, arrangement, street lines and geometry. And anything that deviates has only two options: it is glorified or marginalized. Palazzo Trucchi
I wake up on my couch, the television stuck on “Are you still watching?” Rolling over, I glance at the coffee table. “Where’s my phone?” I sit up, scouring back and forth, unable to find the device that keeps track of my life and keeps me on track in life.
If you grew up anywhere near eastern Ohio, you know every small town has its monster. In Blackwood Creek, ours were the Hollow Men. When we were kids in the late 2000s, the story was standard campfire stuff. They were tall, impossibly thin figures made of dry corn husks and
I was born on June 10th, 1992. At least, that’s what my birth certificate says. It’s not as if I remember. In fact, I don’t have a single memory of my life before I was ten years old. My first memory is a vivid one. Just a young boy calling
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