The terrible sense of Déjà vu swept over him as Billy threw him to the black top. He knew he had been here before as his tormentor mounted him pinning him to the ground. His shrill cries only caused Billy to grin sadistically as he threw the first punch that broke his nose. His piercing screams that had served in his childhood to force his daycare provider to attend to his needs served no purpose in the brutal, adolescent world of high school. Billy set into the beating that would haunt his dreams the rest of his adolescent and adult life. The brute laughed even louder at his feeble attempts to defend himself. He had always been scrawny, and it…

I laid in bed last night unable to sleep. I tossed and turned, for hours, trying to focus on falling asleep. My eyes closed and breathing slowly and deeply; Still, sleep never came. As I laid there, wrestling with the wake demon, searching endlessly for the sandman, I was frustrated with my inability to pass into the dreamland. After four long hours, I sat up in my bed, thinking about my son; Sad for what I had done, for what I had to do; for all that had happened. It was all just a blur now but still, it resonated sharply enough to have an effect on me. The memories were still fresh enough to haunt me. It was 1976,…

I don’t want to tell this story, I don’t want to tell it because I know no matter how much I warn people, somebody is bound to try it. I’m telling this story as a cautionary tale, if anyone ever finds instructions on how to play “The Subway Game” pretend you never saw it. I can’t state this enough. It all started on a summer afternoon. I was over at my friend’s house, we’ll call him Tim. This was around the early 2010s and me and Tim were browsing random forums, it was summer and we were both 15 at the time. We had just come home from the pool so we were cooling off in Tim’s room. Anyway, after…

“I’m going to Saturn,” Isaac said under his breath. I looked over towards his desk and jokingly said back, “You’re going there for summer break?” Isaac just stared downward scribbling something in his notebook, ignoring me, mumbling to himself. I sighed and moved back in my seat and stared at the clock. Only 10 minutes until we’re out of here and summer finally begins. Isaac and I weren’t exactly friends, at least not since we were kids, but we got along all right during the school year. We worked on some projects in class and sat together at lunch every so often. We’ve been talking a lot less in the past few months, though. Recently he’s been a lot more…

No word, uttered or inscribed, can claim that all they tell is true to the letter; in every slip and stutter of the human voice, every unspoken detail in fine print, a lie takes root and defiles the same soil that nourishes it, until it burgeons into a carnivorous parasite. Last summer, Rosenthal Manor snatched me away from my life with a bouquet of hopes and walled me into her cold, high corridors, where every step that falls on the marble floor, every voice whispered in its chambers, does so in the name of rules that no soul dared disobey for centuries. It all began a couple of months after I graduated from university, when I woke up to a…

“I consider it useless and tedious to represent what exists, because nothing that exists satisfies me. Nature is ugly, and I prefer the monsters of my fancy to what is positively trivial.” -Charles Bauldelaire I turned in horror at the tent as I watched The Rot transform, I could see something rising from the tent, pulling it apart as it emerged, like a butterfly from a chrysalis. I froze in place as it moved, every feature, every detail, the massive beast was so impossible, so broken, that all my body was screaming to do was run. The Rot had become a large, bulky creature, with a look of pure malice and hatred in its eyes as it looked towards me.…

Here they come, around the corner, sliding into the driveway in their family sedan. They’re back from the market, the father’s pockets no doubt lined with fresh 50s. The tires roll easily along the gravel, and I pray that lying somewhere in that collection of pebbles and stones is a glass shard, or a rock sharp enough to pierce the tires. My hopes are dashed as the car slows to a stop, the engine fading to silence. The youngest one, the boy, gets out and hurries to the front door. “No need to rush,” the father proclaims as he strolls outwards in a warm winter coat, his fingers escaping the clamp of the slammed car door behind him. Out comes…

Luneland: Now hiring full-time and part-time cast members. Residence and accommodations onsite. Contact Grace Delacroix in the back office. The poster depicted a beautiful crystalline tower with a dragon clinging to the side, in the center of a medieval village where families in modern clothing walking around. On the horizon were rollercoasters and flat rides – drop tower, pirate ship, star flier – but none were as high as the tower. It looked like a summer job opportunity sent from heaven, but God, I was nervous. I kept looking at the poster in my hands as I waited in front of a door marked “Employees Only”, on the back side of one of the buildings. This poster was my way…

A gray SUV stopped by a white house in the countryside. The garden was a bit overgrown; the grass and trees were starting to claim more land than they had been permitted. Five people came down from the car and looked around. ‘This place looks nice.’ Said a tall blond girl with green eyes while taking a deep breath. ‘Yeah, it’s a nice place. Grandpa loved this: fresh air, the forest extends for ten kilometers, and there is a river down the hill; we used to bathe there as kids. A dark and tall man in his thirties said as he looked towards the forest with a nostalgic face and a little smile. ‘Sorry to ruin the moment, Kendric, but…

I would like to start this story by saying that Ray was great. A perfect gentleman and consummate professional. He didn’t send a single untoward word or glance in my direction the entire time we were together. Even when things got scary, he put my safety first. And in spite of everything that happened to us, we’re already talking about working together again. I just want to lead with that, because I know that as soon as I start to tell my story – tell you that I’m an amateur female model who did a nude photoshoot with a male photographer twice my age in an isolated location in the countryside – most of the people reading this are going…