The rain had barely relented. Jon looked out the sixth story window again, away from his TV flickering a save screen. Between the raindrops streaking the window, Jon could still see the guy that lived in front of his apartment building. The man’s name was Ted, and he seemed like
I was sitting in an AA meeting when I found the tooth in my pocket. This was two and a half weeks ago. I always hit the Saturday night meeting in the city – it’s fifteen minutes from the apartment I share with my girlfriend, but mostly I like the
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It was cold. Cold and dark. That’s all I could feel when I stared into the black abyss, that made up its eyes. There was a tingling sensation in my feet, that slowly rose up in my body like panic trapped inside of me. I felt changed. I don’t know
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Mark is not my real name. I’m changing the names for others’ privacy too. I’ll tell you why I can’t sleep. You’ll find this a bit strange but I swear it’s all true. I’m friends with a guy, call him Bill, I worked with at the Crab House back in
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Some people call me a hero. I can’t disagree with them, because it’s actually kind of true. Believe it or not, I’ve saved a drowning man, pulled a girl from a burning building, and I even saved a dog from being swept away by a nasty flood. My friends thought
The spring flu had been going around the school like usual, but some people were sicker than normal. They didn’t just have fever and headache – their faces were blotchy, their eyes bulged, and they all wheezed like they’d just run up ten flights of stairs without stopping. Cara McCormack
I love numbers, even numbers to be exact. I like that there are 48 stairs leading up to my cell. I like that I get precisely four hours of leisure time every day, no more, no less. I like that my wake up time, my breakfast time, my lunchtime, and
My brother has always had a dream of being a great filmmaker. For as long as I can remember it’s been his obsession. He got a video camera for his eighth birthday and would literally film everything with it, even the most mundane things. He would have us do ‘interviews’
Perpetual darkness lingered at the top of the world. Thick ice, frigid air, and snow covered the lifeless mountainscape. However, the endless night did not go unchallenged. A single source of light illuminated the sky and drove back the darkness. Nestled between two snow-covered mountain, a little cottage sat with
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“Man, that shift sucks!” I hear it all the time. I can understand why people say it; I used to think the same thing. I still do some days. I’m one of the lucky people that go to work while everybody else is sleeping soundly in their nice warm bed.
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The night of Christmas Eve 2008 is a blur, depending on how much medication I am given that day. I can avoid the nurses for a couple of hours, but not too long. I suppose you’ve heard about me in the papers or on your favorite serial killer show. No,
Ever since grade three, my friends and I could make Derek Zimmer believe anything. Anything. From Pop-Rocks and Coke will make your stomach explode; to earwigs actually burrow in your ears (and one’s on your shoulder right now!); to the typical urban legend of the babysitter and the killer upstairs
Jake Thomasson pulled the sleeve of his sweatshirt down, covering his hand, and wiped away the condensation from the window. It was the third time he had done this in the past ten minutes, but he didn’t want to miss seeing if any cars drove by outside. He was sitting
I sigh, stretch, and push myself away from my laptop. I let the chair spin for before lazily dragging my foot to stop it. I had been working on a new story. One about Christmas, and the horrors it includes. It was pretty cheesy, and all the ideas felt recycled.
He was cold. Bitterly so. It was not the unforgiving December wind creating lazy vortexes in the freshly falling snow; rather, it was the numbness that consumed both body and soul in one fatal, unseen breeze. It also did not escape him that his surroundings seemingly felt the same: bleak
Well you really screwed up this time, didn’t you? You found a gnarly deal on a beautiful home that almost seemed too good to be true, and you jumped at it. And now that you’re all moved in, you’ve started to notice some anomalies. You know the type: the spooky-dooky
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The alarm was horribly loud in his left ear, a persistent high pitched beep forcing him from his dreamless, alcohol-soaked slumber into a hangover-heavy wakefulness. Jim groaned, rolling away from the insistent machine and negligently silencing it with a lucky swipe of his arm. His head felt thick and fuzzy,
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Growing up, or at least since the mid-two thousands, my house always had an Elf on the Shelf during the Christmas season. If you don’t know, Elves on the Shelf are these little elf dolls that are supposed to be scouts for Santa Claus. I named mine Humble. I think
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I don’t do ‘cold readings’ anymore. I don’t tell fortunes. I don’t read tea leaves. And I do not do contact ‘the other side’. Look, don’t judge me alright? It was an easy gig. I mean, the first time I did it, it was a joke. I did it just
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It was the Christmas season. It had just gotten dark, as I was finally able to leave the office that night after working overtime. The streets were damp from the heavy rain; it had been an unusually warm winter. I stopped downtown for some Christmas shopping for the kids, just
Living in lower Alabama, we rarely receive snow. I spent most of my life wishing for a white Christmas, a white Christmas that never came. I have only seen snow twice in my thirty-three years here. I always wanted to share that with my two boys. I just knew that
In the dark of the night, little children often feel as if they see demons in their closet, and as if someone is watching them. The inky blackness of the night changes their familiar bedrooms once the watchful sun sets below the horizon. For most children, a blanket over the
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One contrary wheel wobbled erratically as Thomas Moon pushed against the weighted shopping cart. He looked down at the mountain of Christmas presents and imagined his poor wallet gasping for air and fainting in a huff. He smiled as his wife, Christine, waddled up to the cart carrying what seemed
No matter what you see in the coming months, regardless of how convincing it might seem; Know that I didn’t want to die. I’m going to take all possible steps to prevent my predetermined demise, but if I don’t make it, I need at least someone to know what really
My Old Home Videos Showed Me a Life I Never Lived Read More »
