“Computer, wake up.” The green static flickered on the face of the monitor. The computer system of the ship never completely shuts down, but is occasionally requested to sleep during long periods of inactivity. Red lights flared on and off as the backup generators designated all...
I’ve had this problem for as long as I can remember. In preschool, I remember being confused when they told us there were seven days in a week, because I could only ever count six. I’ve never told anyone this, not even my wife, so I’ve...
I thought I saw my future self as a time traveler. Less than a week ago, I was on my way to school when I locked eyes with a very peculiar person. She looked almost exactly like me. Her brown hair, the exact same length...
I think I’ve lost my goddamn mind. Everything was fine until I walked out of work this afternoon. Dan, my cube-mate, and I were walking out of the building talking about our plans for the weekend. We had been pulling overtime, one of our clients...
It'd been four days since Julius McKlinsky had left his house. Maybe longer. Had it been a week already? He couldn't tell. Not anymore. The same four walls seemed to close in on him every passing day, yet whoever - or whatever - was out there...
“THEY'RE NOT COMING, THEY'RE ALREADY HERE.” That’s all the email said. No subject, no name, and the email account was clearly a junk or throwaway account linked to AOL mail. At first, I laughed at the ridiculously serious message, not paying it much thought. I used...
Vanna-Isabella Osborne was only two years old when the tests began. Every day, she'd be awoken at dawn by her crazed parents, before being stripped bare and strapped onto a cool metal table. No matter how much she screamed and cried, it wouldn't stop her...
Everything that people think they know about the Mandela effect is incorrect. The phenomenon has been occurring for years, only most dismissed it as a fluke. In the most severe cases those experiencing the effect were diagnosed as having some sort of mental illness, and...
Mr. Hansen’s body was interred in a stately mausoleum of his own design years ago, and yet he still works for us. I’m forced to interview with the remains of the sad dotard almost daily. The world honors Hansen for his invention of countless beloved...
The story I am about to tell you is rather confidential. Amongst the Mire, we are known as Regiment 9. Throughout Regiment 9, we are known as the ‘BlackGuards’, But in the small circle of men and women who actually make up the organization, we...
In the heart of a second-growth piney-woods jungle of southern Alabama, a region sparsely settled by backwoods blacks and Cajuns—that queer, half-wild people descended from Acadian exiles of the middle eighteenth century—stands a strange, enormous ruin....
I'm lying in bed next to someone who I'll call my wife, but tomorrow, I know there will be someone different waking up next to me. My current wife will be dead by tomorrow afternoon and I will end the evening dying in a fiery...
Griffin and I were both 25. We hadn’t seen each other since college but kept in close contact. I was working at a cybersecurity firm, and I really wasn’t sure what he had been doing. He always told me he was “just working on something.” I...
I like to go urban spelunking, "ruin diving" my friends call it. We find a place out in the middle of the nowhere that people have forgotten and we break in to see what treasures they might have left behind. On one of our trips...
They gave me a million bucks to keep my trap shut, and I did, for fifteen years. But last night I was making the rounds, and I saw the professor again. I had a heart attack three years back, and I tell you, when I saw...
A few days ago I got a text message from an unknown number reading “I got your proof.” I stared at the words for a bit, thinking it was a wrong number. Then I remembered the last time I’d spoken to Jeremy. Jeremy, my younger cousin,...
Roger glanced around the desert once more. Nothing but the cloudless sky and the sand scattering in the wind, with a few cacti dotted around the landscape. With nothing else to do, he checked his magazine, already knowing how many bullets he had. Full. Adjusting...
“Dad, you said you’d play catch with me!” I yelled as my father walked past me to his office, where he spent most of his days when he wasn’t at work. “I’m sorry, bud, I’ve gotta get these documents done for tomorrow’s big meeting. We’ll do...
This is only happening because of what we did. I regret it, but not because of the consequences. I regret it because I could have been good; I should have been kind. I think we deserve this. Think of it like Carrie — you remember that movie?...
I stared at the odd hole that had appeared in my arm overnight. It was located on the inside of my forearm just before the bend of my elbow. I’m positive it wasn’t there when I went to bed last night. How can I be...
Interstellar Colony Collective Government File Colony Failure Assessment Report Document 647 Report Date: 30th of May, 2374, 02:47 ET Reported by: CFA Basic Data Collector Salma Chakroun Information Status: CLASSIFIED - SUPERIOR OFFICERS ONLY Report: I have been active duty for 4 years and have completed 23 failure assessment missions, and...
It was supposed to be such an uneventful day, but overhead the clouds churned and plotted. Rebecca Madison saw and heard the roaring of the wind against her car, but she didn’t care. It was warm inside, so what did the fierce cold outside have to...
As the last of the crisp brown Autumn leaves fell to the worn pavement, the young man let out a sigh. So much had happened in the time since he left in the spring of 2001. His home, his workshop, even his favorite stores and...
Everything, all of this chaos and madness, all began with the Black Fog. It was just an ordinary day when the news reported a strange phenomenon, a wispy black cloud of fog, steadily making its way toward the west coast of the country from over the...