“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
Can You Hear That? Read More »
The asphalt road leading through Duskwood, Virginia always seemed to swallow the headlights of Owen’s battered old sedan, but tonight, on Halloween, the shadows felt especially heavy. A thick, oppressive fog rolled off the Blue Ridge Mountains, settling into the valleys and wrapping around the trunks of bare oaks like
The Ledger of Howard Nestor Read More »
Hello everyone. I came here to write this because I genuinely don’t know who else I can tell. My name is David. I’m a man in my mid-thirties who’s recently divorced. Well, I guess not recently, it’s been nine months. I was married to Lauren for five years. The divorce
I sighed and entered my key into the slot of my apartment doorknob. The grooves and divots slid into place and clicked. As I turned the lock, something caught my eye. A manila envelope. Wedged halfway underneath my door, strings bound tightly around the metal clasps. It made it rather
Forty-Eights Hours To Remember Read More »
A sea of infinite darkness. This is my view as I sit outside on my small balcony and gaze up into the night sky. I had not done this in a while. But tonight I watched for hours as the sky shifted from its joyous sea of blue to the
I knew I was going to hate it the moment I walked through that door. The cramped entrance hall was already thick with the musty smell of old carpet. I kicked off my boots and stepped into the living room-bedroom hybrid, taking in the depression that seemed to emanate from
The rain hit my bedroom window like a handful of gravel, throwing distorted shadows across the walls. It was just past midnight. The four of us—Caitlyn, Jade, Serena, and I—were huddled together in a fortress of blankets and pillows on my floor. My parents were away for the weekend, leaving
The Prom Queen’s Legacy Read More »
The first tooth arrived in the heart of a pear. Years later, whenever Adeline tried to explain everything that had happened, she always found herself returning to that afternoon, though she knew the true beginning might have been much earlier. Perhaps it began in the graveyard behind her grandmother’s house,
The Girl Who Kept Finding Teeth Read More »
The highway above groaned with morning traffic, and Greg woke to it the way most people wake to an alarm, grudgingly and with his whole body fighting the process. His tent was a single-person backpacking model with a broken zipper, held shut with a braid of zip ties he’d threaded
A Needle In The Vein Read More »
Peri had been doodling to pass the time, it took hours for the elevator to descend into the facility. A bat, some circles, some lines, numbers, squiggles. She made “rollercoasters”, as she called them, which looked like loop de loops and random lines every which way. A single straight line
The camera didn’t look like something that should still work. Didn’t feel right from the start. When my sister handed me that box on my birthday, I could tell it’d be a pile of garbage. She’d always been a cheapskate, the woman can’t walk past a yard sale without stopping.
Followers of the Flaming Hand Read More »
Zoe had not left her apartment in almost four months. The last time had been a Thursday, a trip to her primary physician to check up on a worrying rash that was developing on her calf. Her father had given her a ride. She had to stare at the patterns
A Frog In The Terrarium Read More »
Be it curiosity, a sense of amusement, or something much darker, the man found himself walking toward the dilapidated structure that peeked through the trees at him. His feet swept through the grass as he approached the treeline. The sun was shining and the bright rays warmed his skin. He
Something in the Void Read More »
My father committed suicide when I was six years old. When you’re that young, you don’t really understand much beyond the fact that Daddy is never coming back home. And that mommy will never be the same again. She was always a drinker, but when Dad died, it increased tenfold.
The House I Squatted In Never Existed Read More »
I was awoken in the middle of the night by the sound of my phone going off. It wasn’t that of a phone call or a text, or even an alarm, rather, it was the familiar chime of the notification that I would get when my front doors’ doorbell camera
They come in the snow. Always in the snow. Always when the snow is deep and the woods are quiet. So very quiet. At first, it was just one or two who came. Silently moving up the pasture toward the house. They didn’t come too close back then. I thought
“The moving truck is gonna be here in 20 minutes!” I heard my fiancé, Roger, shout from downstairs. “Okay, almost done!” I shouted back. I had been up in the attic packing boxes with the last of our stuff for the last couple of hours, in preparation for our big
Who is Melissa Harbenton? Read More »
Henry glanced over at the empty side of the double bed. Patting it with his hand brought the faint aroma of lemon detergent out of the fibres and into the air, it wasn’t strong enough to mask the underlying musk of animal in the sheets and duvet. Lately Henry never
A degree in wildlife management. It sounds so exciting, and the $70,000 piece of paper has certainly ensnared many bright, nature-loving youths with the allure of grand vistas and endless adventures, and I am one who heard the sirens call. From a young age, I knew people weren’t for me.
The Thing behind me wants me to turn around Read More »
We moved into the flat above the butcher’s two months ago. It was a step down from our old place; John lost his good job and we had to make adjustments. The place wasn’t exactly the Ritz, but it functioned. The wallpaper popped and flaked when you scraped a nail
The Floor is Sticky Read More »
I was born on a small cabbage farm just outside of Racine, Wisconsin on April 14, 1900. The lone son of two God-fearing German immigrants, I was raised on hard work, religious reverence, and teetotalism.My parents first moved to the United States in August of 1898 with the hopes of
Johnathan woke up in a daze to find himself all alone. The alone part was normal. The alone part wasn’t strange. What was strange was that he woke up in a graveyard. “What the fuck…” Johnathan pushed himself, sitting upwards, onto the wet earth beneath him. As he leaned back
It was the sound of sobs, soft…muffled, miserable and tinged with a sort of echoing hollowness, that woke me. It was furitive, almost guilty misery..but with the strange quality of the sound, and the location, suggested it was coming from my shower. I growned, trying to roll over in bed..not
My Wife is the Only One who can See Something is wrong Read More »
It was October 1st of 1967, and the campus of Montauk University sat quiet and still in the new morning hours. The sky was dark, street lamps bright, and all students living on campus were asleep. Except, of course, for two figures who sauntered down the sidewalk towards the campus
