The tents appeared in the middle of the night, without preamble. There was some heated discussion at city hall, because not even the mayor knew they were coming. They must’ve worked out something, though, because the gypsy circus stayed. Our town wasn’t big enough to support even a fair, so
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When I saw the car for sale on Craigslist, I was shocked. Not only was it a good price, decent shape, and reliable brand – but it was custom built for someone who didn’t have legs! Both of my legs had to be amputated due to a childhood illness. Obviously,
When I was in college, I developed a bad habit. No, not alcohol or drugs, something far tamer than those. I developed a habit of sleeping in class. You see, it seemed as though every class I had fell right after a meal: breakfast, then comp sci, lunch, then general
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I grew up in a pretty crummy town – Nowheresville; a real one-horse piece of crap with a small municipal park that housed a vintage carousel since time immemorial. The same elderly guy sat in his little booth in the center, no matter the weather. I would sometimes watch whilst
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5:58 AM “There is an unexpected turn in the weather this morning, say our local meteorologists. Instead of seeing a warm day, we are getting a snowstorm that sources are saying could turn into the storm of the century.” Dad turned off the radio, grumpy as hell this early in
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“Do you ever have thoughts about hurting yourself?” “No.” “Have you ever thought about harming anyone else?” “Never.” Doctor Osbourne leaned back in his green leather chair. His slacks slid up and revealed long dress socks with red and blue squares in a checkered pattern. They were pulled all the
There was a time when I was younger that I didn’t let the people around me know that I smoked cigarettes or was a regular fan of vaping. My best friends and I would acquire some packs from older friends, and sneak off into the woods just behind the corner
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I have a friend, Tomas, who works as a freelance artist creating booths and installations for event shows. He’s quite talented at designing interactive presentations for companies to showcase their products. The last time we got together, he told me that he had signed on to be part of “something
At no point during the night was she more than a half-mile from the police station, but the park was thinly lit, and the road snaked through forest in both directions. I took a personal interest in her story after I learned about how badly her body had been mutilated.
Too many sages and soothsayers to reference, those thoughtful idiots, have lambasted the youth with the wizardry of profundity. They had answers to the esoteric. Of Life. Of Death. Of the end. Who are they? What do they really know of the darkness? What do they fancy as truth or
I lost my laptop for a few days, and after a thorough search of my apartment, I retraced my steps to an internet café called Trista’s that I occasionally visit. I could have sworn I remembered having it after leaving Trista’s, and I knew it was a long shot, but I
The sun shone dimly through gray skies, barely illuminating a vague dirt road upon which a young teen walked. The young man was tired, fighting off fatigue as he forced one foot in front of the other, desperate to find an inn. His perseverance was soon rewarded by the sight
Where the Nightmares Go Read More »
It’s that time of the year again. I know how I’m going to be spending Halloween. Same way I have for the past two years, slowly nursing a beer in the bar. Watching the glass sweat on that smooth wooden counter, staring at it till it goes warm in my
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Slow is the smolder of fire igniting in flesh. The skin cracks and dries and powders to ash, incinerating extremities long before flame penetrates to vital systems. The eyes will boil from the skull and cartilage will melt and run like wax. The insulated brain will be protected all the
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The message has been smuggled via a plaintext file saved to a MicroSD that I pray survives its trip to the surface. If the journalist or civilian receiving this can read this message, I am posting covertly from a deep marine lab that officially does not exist. Its codename, as
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The new epidemic is already beyond its patient zero. Whether or not I am infected, I am confident that Mr. Bridestar will soon have me murdered. He will do this in order to keep the disease’s name unknown. I won’t let him win, though. At least not completely. Although this
My foot tapped eagerly on the floor of the internet cafe. I looked at the unattended laptop, then back to the counter. The laptop been sitting there, unlocked, for over 10 minutes— it would be an easy sell, and I had bills to pay. As soon as the barista opened
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I’d never been inside of one before. An awkward, out-of-place-feeling little room nuzzled between a failing Irish pub and an antiques shop, I’d honestly forgotten these things existed in the vast metro area of my city. Until I needed one. College essay, see, and I hadn’t even begun it – just my luck for my laptop to obnoxiously die the weekend before the paper was due. I tried to borrow a friend’s computer, but no dice; as for plan B, my school’s library was out of rentable laptops. To the local, seedy internet café I went then, where I had always been told the poverty-stricken perverts surfed for porn and the seemingly parent-less children crowded around online games.
They Like To Play Games Read More »
The storm made the city street a blur to Tim Avery as he walked rapidly down the sidewalk. Rain fell just heavily enough to make people run to their cars or take shelter in the shadows of store awnings. To Tim, however, walking through the rain seemed right. It felt like it might
As an investigative analyst for the FBI, I spent years combing through the depths of the digital colossus known as the “Dark Web.” It’s mind-numbing work, filtering through thousands of illicit sites offering services ranging from outrageously fake to bone chillingly real. My name is Clara Sanders. I’m 35-years-old, unmarried,
My friend recently bought a foreclosed home, and while helping him clean it out of the previous owner’s leftover belongings, I came across a box of journals in the attic. What I learned in the early entries was that the man who lived there, Allan, was agoraphobic. For those unfamiliar
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It was my fifth day in Gloaming, Nevada – an unincorporated township skirted on all sides by scorched barrenness. I had never been this far west before, and so the craggy, acacia-dotted desert was dazzling to my senses. I remember wishing that I could extend my stay, but also knew
You wake up to a text one morning. It is 7:03—you blink, sleepily. It’s from your best friend, Tom. The message reads, hey! do you wanna hang out some time today?? i’m free whenever You blink at your phone and then send him a response. yeah, I can be there
The man walked quickly to his destination, boots crunching on the old snow. It was covered in dirt and dog piss. No one had bothered to shovel for a few days so the heaps of ice and snow were getting hard to handle. But he walked confidently, slamming his feet
