“Sorry, new kid, but you’re last in today so you’re our candidate this year!” The kid in front of our classroom door relaying this to me looked a mixture of pity and relief, his nose taped over and a black eye, an immediate standout feature....
Our story begins, as so many do, with the approach of an oncoming storm. In the port city of Trondheim, Norway, a city regarded as the nation’s capital of knowledge, a young married couple are sitting in their living room, watching television. Their love and...
Grandpa Cobalt hated letting things go. Whether it was the wobbly chair he kept in his study or his favorite warped record he fed to the gramophone—looping the same groove over and over. He was a tall man with a frosty thin hairline and a nose capable...
I think most people are surprised when they learn one of my hobbies is taxidermy. I know what you probably expect when you hear that – some shady-looking Ed Gein kind of guy. I’m going to clear this up off the bat. Not everyone that practices...
A few seconds. I looked down for just a few seconds, and I ended up being treated to an experience that has permanently warped my sense of reality. I was driving home after work. I’d had to stay late to help clean up, and the sun...
“My wife is such a bitch.” Right on schedule, Shane started complaining about his wife while drinking beer number four. Whether it has anything to do with the amount of alcohol in his system or whether he thought enough time had passed so he could start...
Found this journal in an old storage locker I had taken possession of. It’s dated in the summer of 1985, and the pages are curled, smelling faintly of popcorn. As for the contents…well, go ahead and start reading. June 1 Infiltrating Funtasia’s Dreamscape Circus was easier than...
How does it feel? It asks this as it cuts deep into the inner thigh, flesh and fat zippering apart, its tongue probing into the fresh wound. How are you doing? The thing wouldn't want an answer even if there was one. It only wants screams. This is going...
Pirarucu. The Brazilian name for “the red fish,” known among scientific circles as the arapaima. If you’ve never heard of “the red fish” before now, then prepare yourself, because you won’t be forgetting it anytime soon. Imagine a living torpedo, pushing ten feet and five hundred pounds...
Katie Watson gazed around at the vast, opulent room. For the first time in her professional career, she felt small and vulnerable. The world had changed in the last several years, but the building they were in had remained unaltered since its construction over a...
Ford Street Bridge - Minneapolis, Minnesota Wednesday, September 10, 2021 - 11:55 p.m. EST Willis, hurry your ass up! Can’t you hear all those popping off like Fourth of July fireworks, and the sky’s a funky-ass green. Ronny told us all to leave over two hours...
Chapter 1 Tommy ruled. He was the commanding pilot you could count on when the shit went down. And believe me, it was always going down lately. We’d had more skirmishes in the last week and suffered more losses than I can remember. The weekends seem...
Chapter 1: Clyde and Rachel “Clyde, won’t you please come to bed with me—it’s late, honey.” My eyes ached from the strain of staring into the screen for hour after hour. The screen though—is my vehicle. My vehicle to the world I’d been creating and now wished...
They were never even supposed to be here. Forty-seven kilometers past the Arctic Circle, the lone helicopter neared its target. According to the classified reports she’d been graciously given, the facility wasn’t even supposed to exist. Even from this angle, it wasn’t much of a surprise to see...
The downtown library was always a comfort to me as a young schoolboy. Often getting picked on by bullies, I would hide away in the recesses of the stories I found there, imagining a lifetime of adventures I could never have. Perhaps my favorite collection of works...
I never met Charlie Bowman. Not that I expected to, in a company the size of this one; the chances of ever rubbing shoulders with the CEO are probably astronomical. Still, he was the one who always signed my checks every payday, so when the news...
The following personal ad was discovered among a myriad of others on a dark web forum. It was connected to a local string of murders by the Rochester Coast Police Department. It is being made public at the request of the Chief of Police. Any...
You probably think you’ve heard every scary “we went on vacation to a cabin” story ever told, but I promise you, you’ve never heard anything like what happened to my wife and me. There were no ghosts, no demons, no madmen stalking us through the...
I never met my mom. Not…really, anyway. She didn’t abandon us; she didn’t die giving birth, I wasn’t put up for adoption, nothing like that. We lived in the same house for 12 years. Our paths just never crossed, which, I guess, is because she didn’t really have...
I can feel it coming, slowly but surely. With everything going on, all the stay-at-home orders, I decided to go to the place in which I find the most peace. High in the mountains of my home state, I have a cabin that was left to...
