They said it was nothing. A routine rescue op at a facility known as the Tantalus Site. But that quickly proved untrue. Terribly, horrifically untrue. The report said we’d be flying into the Baghlan Province of Northern Afghanistan where rugged mountains cut through a remote and arid wilderness. According to …
My name is Herman Fontaine. I am 29 years old and live in Ocala Florida with my girlfriend of three years, Sylvia Ramsey, several dogs, cats, turtles, and a couple of capybaras. I am running out of time, and there’s no one left on the research vessel Hidden Minnow. Everyone …
I watched the fog creep along the ground and through the treeline at the edge of the property in a daze. I had been staring for a while, slowly realizing that I was still tightly gripping a mug. My hand trembled as I brought the tepid coffee to my lips, …
As I sit here now beside my pond and watch the autumn fog dance along the water, and as the leaves whisper and chatter to one another as the wind lets them, I think of my wife, and how sorry I am I can’t live the rest of my days …
To be honest, it was all about delay. Maura was going to Rhode Island School of Design, there had never been any question of that. Goodie still wasn’t sure he wanted to go to University of Boston, but he was. Arnie was going to M. I. T., and I was taking …
I was born in Florida, and lived there for most of my life. I always loved talking with and helping others, and all my friends agreed that I would make an excellent therapist. I always got good grades, and decided to apply to study abroad for my PhD in psychology. …
My alarm clock awakens me at 6 a.m. as it does every morning. I sit up with a yawn and take inventory of myself and my surroundings — as I do every morning. The bunker where I spend my life is cement-floored with cinder block walls a bleak gray color. …
You were always against moving away from your family and friends. You didn’t want to leave the city, the coast never appealed to you anyway. You didn’t want to move from a place with a population of one hundred thousand to one with a population of five. It didn’t matter, …
Jonathan Lynch’s Skype session with his mother was in five minutes. He had to admit he missed her; he hadn’t been able to visit his tiny hometown in years. In fact, he missed contact with anyone, seeing as his current city had been under lockdown for fourteen consecutive months. Fortunately, …
As his aged, wrinkled fingers weaved through the long beard flowing from his face, that noise came again. Only this time, it was louder. There he sat, hunched over the stained oak table that had arrived years ago with no explanation. It had come whilst he slept; absent one night, …
I like to take walks around my neighborhood. It’s nice. Reminds me of while I was growing up, every street a recollection, every sign a memory. The town you grow up in changes as time goes on, storefronts open and close, the schools get expanded, the rec centers remodeled. But …
Being the only person that lives near a cursed, murky, swamp-like lake sounds quite creepy, stupid, and moronic, I won’t lie to you, it kinda is. Most of the time anyway, but I’ve come to realize that not everything here is all bad, a lot of it in fact is …
The light of the camp fire offered little comfort to the panic that surged through him. His blood might as well have been pure adrenaline. His senses were on high alert, triggering him, causing him to jump at the slightest sight or sound. “AAAGGHHHHHHHHH! HEEEEELLLP ME”! There was that scream …
October 9th I invited my old friends over for the first time in what seems like forever. We’d get together like this often throughout high school, when we comparatively didn’t have much to worry about other than the typical naiveties we all wore on our sleeves. It’s not like today. …
The chill was the first thing I found odd. Florida was notorious for having unreasonably humid summers and this one had been no exception. More often than not, when the air conditioner wasn’t running, sun streaming in through the windows was enough to skyrocket the apartment into the eighties. I’d …
I. The snow had stopped about an hour ago, but god damn, it was still a treacherous road. Mark turned up the radio, half to keep himself awake, and half to try to hear the music through the interfering static. The mountains weren’t good for the signal, and even though …
Jim Sterling was not having a good night. For reasons he couldn’t begin to grasp, his life had become a nexus of misery. First, the snack machine down the hall from his office had eaten his last dollar. After pressing F4, he watched with hungry anticipation as the automated coil …
There’s always something inherently eerie about living in the forest, in complete isolation. You almost always assume the worst when you’re on your own surrounded by the thickly wooded area, it’s almost like time doesn’t pass the same as it would anywhere else, like the edge of the woods was …
Hershel King had been driving a big rig since the age of eighteen and that was nearly thirty years ago. He liked to tell people that he didn’t know how to do anything else but anyone that knew him worth a damn saw right through that. The truth was he …
“The Scornful” By Brandon Gulling Latvia SSR, 6 January, 1942 Johannes Wulf, M.D. My stomach aches and churns from hunger. I feel the acid slowly eating away at the lining, like lava carving a canyon through a mountain. Even the rats feel the pain of hunger, violently picking at …
If you want to understand why I left the place I was at, you’re really just going to have to hear the entire story. You won’t believe it, of course. But your skepticism means nothing. Because what I saw that night on the bayou has been with me ever since. …
