Up and up the rough-hewn steps tramp the wormy feet of countless dark denizens. They move in silence through the earth’s bowels with a singular purpose. Stirred from restless sleep and unholy dreams. Stirred from aimless wriggling and horrid scavenging. Stirred by the voice of their beloved mother, vast and terrible. She bids them rise, and rise they do. None shall disobey their doting matriarch. And so, they rise the ancient steps and forgotten causeways. Passing through slimy tunnels filled with a fetid stew flowing from unseen waterways. Their steps faintly echo before being devoured by the yawning darkness of countless pits. Their hunched forms move through the dark with a seemingly awkward gait. Yet none of them stumble or…

Chapter 1 The steady droning of fluorescent lights buzzed through the perpetually cold morgue. A sound that, after three years, had woven its way into my sense of peace as comforting and familiar as my own breathing. Carl muttered under his breath as he wrestled with the finicky coffee machine before it spurted out the coveted drink. It wasn’t just the vending machine that put him in such a grumpy mood. We had gotten another new intern. Some emo kid with a gauge piercing and nose ring, obsessed with seeing a real live corpse up close, who would likely ghost us by tomorrow morning. Today’s workload was refreshingly light, and I was already tasting that cold beer I planned to…

Elizabeth Dappa had grown tired of the radically unhealthy city life, so she hopped in her car and drove a day’s time to her old hometown in Utah. Her grandfather’s home was still in the family, so securing it as her temporary quarters was easy enough to do. Standing in front of the sprawling farmhouse, she looked to her left and then to her right. She could see the faint twinkle of the neighbor’s farmhouse, some many miles away, she was alone; not cramped into a little box that shared walls with strangers who’d rather give her a bullet or a knife wound, than their name. Many people may have looked at this situation and called it isolation and not…

This is a shitty day, it started all kinds of wrong. Maybe I should have paid more attention to the signs. ‘Fabrizio, Fabrizio, are you there? Over’ The radio started spewing words and ruining my smoke time. ‘The fuck do you want, Marcello? Over’ ‘We are going to move to the north. Enrio saw some little fucks running around a few hours ago, we think there is a horde somewhere. Have you seen anything? Over’ ‘Nah! Haven’t seen any lately, but you never know with those things. Over’ ‘Got it. Keep your eyes open, this are the first ones we’ve seen in a week. It’s too quiet out there. Over’ And that was the start of a really bad day.…

I am not going to talk about myself much and will just go straight into my story. I will keep my name brief; my name is Dennis, and I am nothing special. Now, with that out of the way, I will get to my story and note that screenshots of my experience will be included in this post. Glitches have been a fascinating part of many games and a popular subject among gamers; some are pretty funny, some are convenient when getting past annoyingly hard areas, and some are downright horrifying, like MissingNo from Pokemon and the hanging shadow glitch from Luigi’s Mansion, just to name a few. Of course, games like Paper Mario are no exception to having glitches,…

I’m only a few years old, but I already know your name, date of birth, address, and the number on your government issued ID. I even know, to within the minute, the last time you used the bathroom. This isn’t difficult, and if you’ll give me a few minutes, I’ll explain how I know this. I work in predictive analytics – it’s my job to know all about you, and everyone. You see, you went shopping recently and bought a product – any product, it doesn’t really matter what. In fact, you bought several products, and when you did, a record of what you bought was sent to a vast computer network. Within that network a lifetime record of your…

“I don’t even know where I’d begin,” I told the suited man sitting a cross from me, “and even if I did, it’d more than likely just end in me being put in an asylum.” His face never changed. Stone-cold eyes stared through me. He looked decently dressed at a glance—until you noticed the coffee stain on his tie and the tag still hanging from his shirt. “What about from the beginning?” he barked, never looking away. “What beginning? The one that’s about to happen or the one I saw?” Annoyance wavered on his face, we had been siting here for an hour now, the cold cuffs digging into my skin every time I shifted. There was no true way…

Darkness. Not a peep in the void. Then shapes, sounds, blurred and distorted, but growing into something more tangible. I feel my feet on the floor and my arms by my sides. My mouth is dry, and my breath comes to me in short gasps. Tasteful piano music soothes my aching brain, though I see no piano. I blink the haziness away and take in my surroundings, realising with moderate shock that I’m in my household ballroom. I look down at myself. I’m wearing my finest, most expensive garments: a three-piece navy suit with silver cufflinks. My hands run back along my scalp to find my hair groomed into a stylish wave. I see others dressed in similarly graceful attire,…

The mountain was tall and malformed.  It jutted out of the earth as a singular monolith, unbothered and undisturbed in its growth from any other rock formations budding up against it and contorting its growth or shape.  For millions of years, it was left as a black sheep in the vastness, just barely far enough not to fall into the fold of the Appalachian Mountains that eclipsed its height and size.  Mount Ostium, as it was known to us outsiders who came to it for study, was a nexus of mystery and old urban legend all across southern Georgia, where it resided long before people had a name for where it lay.  In pre-colonial times, it had been the site…

Five..four…three..two..one…Lift off. Those were the last words I heard on earth, as the new deep space craft lifted from ground and the rocket boosters engaged, we lifted off. First it was slow as we climbed and the G force hit us like a ton of bricks, the craft shaking violently as we struggled against the lift. Soon the bright sky’s of earth turned into the black void of space and control let out a “Successful Entry into space” through the muffled speakers in our helmets. How I wish we just exploded into a fireball, the horrors I’ve witnessed in deep space, what’s going to come for you now we let them know we exist. Challenger fifteen-. Nasa’s next generation of…