I have been a hunter since a very young age. A wanderer of the silent woods, a stalker of the croaking marshes, a drifter of the sighing deserts. My father was a hunter as was his father. I would say it runs in our blood, but I think it runs …
They walked the path because they had always walked the path. This year there were nine children, swallowed in coats of gray, slogging through drifts of soft, powdered snow as the bald trees stood sentinel. They had come a long way, almost halfway up the mountain, yet still the path …
Here we are again. The cold wooden floor is my seat of choice. My lower back and knees start to ache only about thirty minutes in. The cold sweat keeps making my feet slide away from me on the slick floor and I keep jerking them back to my body. …
Today you, tomorrow me.—————————– “Stop!”.Tyler barked from across the room. The uncharacteristically aggressive tone of his voice causing all three of usto turn around and face him. Mark and Jess exchanged cautious glances, hesitantly lowering the rolled up magazine which Mark intended to use tosmash an admittedly large but obviously …
The business card left in my mailbox was unassuming. A simple white font affixed to a black background. But its claim was bold: There is now an in-dream hotline you can call to escape nightmares! Simply find a red rotary phone in your dreamscape, dislocate it from the receiver, and …
It had been wracking my brain for months. What exactly did he keep in there? Why was he being so secretive? Even when I was younger, my father was more than happy to share his work with me at the dinner table. I listened intently, fascinated by the projects his …
Summer for me and my friend, Jake, usually only meant one thing: Endless hiking trips in the mountainous terrain around our city. While traveling far away was a luxury we couldn’t afford, we’d frequently spent the weekend camping out. There were plenty of new places to discover in our vicinity; …
I use the term retired in this context very loosely. I was never paid for my work and there was no pension to speak of. Cryptozoology has always been a passion of mine; one that, in my old age, I no longer have the energy to pursue. But I didn’t …
My friends and I used to wander into the dark woods at night, wielding little more than our flashlights and overactive imaginations. It was the surge of adrenaline we needed, gained from harmless, nonexistent horror. Lucky for us, there was a forest bordering our neighborhood. It was full of ancient …
I’d only been gone for about fifteen minutes, sneaking in a coffee break in the early morning hours. By the time I returned, panic had spread through the office like wildfire. “James, what’s going on?” I asked, more confused than worried. He didn’t have to answer. Instead, he just pointed …
I had nightmares about the place for weeks. Every time, it was exactly the same. I stood before a large oak tree, alone, in a vast field of dead grass. Roots from the tree wove in and out of the dirt, far from their source, twisting in unnatural ways. Its …
I awoke lying face down in cool, black sand. The air smelled strongly of ocean, yet when I sat up and wiped the dirt from my face, there was no shoreline in sight. Instead, what I saw was an endless horizon of black desert. Every direction was the same; a …
The last survivors gathered at the town center, all of us desperate for our daily ration. Dark skies loomed above, obscured by bizarre clouds, hiding us from daylight. Ironically, our town had once been nick-named the “Sunshine City,” a faint memory of better times. On that particular day, it had …
