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They Need Help

Shawn took one last drag of his cigarette. He didn’t smoke regularly, but this occasion nearly called for one. It had been years since his last job interview, and it was all he could do to stop his hands from shaking. He looked at the cigarette and remembered the time

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Biting At My Heels

I enjoy running quite a bit. It might come off as a bit odd to say, but it really is important to me. I found my love for it back in high school, when I ended up drifting aimlessly onto the cross country track teams. Joining was less of an

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Yellow Ledbetter

The land beyond the bridge had been in my family for generations, forty-four acres of farmland.  My father was as rooted to it as the oak tree in our front yard. Although he was sympathetic to my plight, he was certainly not going to move just because his daughter’s college

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There’s a Giant Person in the Sky

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 was being more needy than

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The Lake

Cryptozoology has always been a minor interest of mine. I say minor because it was something I’d only enjoyed casually: a few internet articles here and there, scrolling through a couple of pages on a Tumblr blog dedicated to it, maybe watching one of those Bigfoot documentaries. You know, that

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Why I Hate Scarecrows

I hate scarecrows. I have ever since I was little. I found something about the dolls stuffed with straw unsettling. I remember my parents tried to help me get over this fear by telling me things like, “They’re not scary, they only want to be friends” or some other lame

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The Whistlers: Bill’s Account

I’ve got calluses on my hands from burying my brother. If we’re rescued today, I’ll have to explain that to someone. Some search-and-rescue trooper, some forest ranger, will hold my palm to the light of a chopper window and want to know how I managed to rub the heel of my hand raw. I practice, sometimes. I practice what I’ll say to people when we get back home. Dr. Harmon, the department head, will need to know how I got Geoff and Lillian killed doing what was supposed to be straightforward field research. They were both his students, hand-picked for great things, led astray by the man who wrote his dissertation on the Russian Yeti, who taught a cryptozoology class disguised as a folklore survey. I got bumped off the tenure track for that. Harmon talked over me in meetings. Like I wasn’t there.

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The Whistlers: Ruth’s Account

The man on the trail is dead and will need to be moved. It is a more difficult task than I would have guessed, and nearly impossible for a 5’ 4” woman with no help and no gurney. I tried to drag him toward camp right after I found him this morning, but only succeeded in pivoting him and twisting his legs around each other horribly. Bodies look so wrong once they stop feeling pain. I never thought I would have so much experience with death, but I haven’t cried over the loss of someone since the lighthouse. This man shit his pants before he died, and moving him made the smell worse. It will bring the animals in. Still no sign of Ira or Bill.

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Why I’ll Never Work Security At Disney World Again

I work in security at Disney World, the happiest place on Earth. Typically, I wouldn’t say where I work as obviously there are some pretty strict rules about things employees can put online, but I just don’t think I can tell this properly without that context. And, honestly, I think

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Something Happened During a Hostage Negotiation I Can’t Explain

The west side bank has three exits, thirty windows and nineteen air vents. And when I arrived at the scene, there were thirteen people being held captive by a man with a vendetta. “How bad are things?” I asked the officer in charge. So far no one had been hurt.

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A Story From the BlackGuard

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 call ourselves ‘the exterminators’. Led by the infamous Commander, Cyrus Fiendel, we were essentially tasked with getting rid of all the pests that Emperor Dravis didn’t want to deal with.

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The Blue Meteor

It was a clear night in a small community near San Francisco, California when a mysterious blue light was seen by several residents as it fell from the sky. The next morning, a none-too-bright man in his early twenties went to check out the field where the strange blue object

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