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The Day I Rise From The Dead Episode 1: Cursed From Birth The sun always shined a little brighter on Alestia.

Note: This is my own take on the "Clown Statue" urban legend A girl was babysitting two children in Florida while their parents went out on a date. That evening, the mother drove her to the house and dropped her off at the front door. The children's mother came to let her in. "Hi! You must be the babysitter. Come on in." "Hello. Yes, that's me." The father walked over and smiled. "Thanks again for doing this. We won't be gone too long." "No problem." The mother pointed toward the stairs.

Once, I visited the strangest restaurant. But it was not a normal restaurant, and I am not normal anymore either, since that fateful encounter with a cook called Alice. It was back during my college days when a friend from high school introduced me to the place. My friend, let's call him Sam, noticed me when I was shopping, browsing the aisle in search of new shoes to replace the pair that broke. At first I didn't recognize him because he looked so different. Sam was a lot thinner than he was…

As a single dad, the quiet moments after tucking my six-year-old daughter, Jessie, into bed are usually my only chance to catch my breath. But last Tuesday, that quiet was shattered by a plastic, mechanical giggle echoing from the hallway. I found Jessie sitting cross-legged on the living room rug, bathed in the pale glow of the television. In her lap sat a doll I had never seen before in my life.

I'm awoken by a bright golden light. Carefully I open my eyes, the bright light hurting them in the process. So I rub them for the pain to go away. In order to protect my sight further, I sit up, creating shadow. It takes a moment for my eyes to finally adjust to and at last I'm finally able to see my surroundings, something by which I'm taken by surprise. There's water above me... I'm sitting on what seems like the sand at the bottom of the sea.

THERE EXIST such places where every fragment, every corner is pierced by pain, suffering, darkness, and oppression. It is so dense and stifling there that in some places it makes you want to vomit. The mind is drilled through as if by an auger, and every second of drilling feels like an eternity. It is as if someone has sat on a chair full of spikes in a dark, merciless torture chamber full of cruelty, blood, and pain. Time is not measured here because time does not exist here at all.…

*Originally published in the Flash Phantoms June 2026 issue

My story started the same as so many others. The loss of a job, the breakdown of a five-year relationship, and the urgent need to find a new place to live, lest I end up sleeping in my car.

I guess you could call me an old codger – the kind who’s spent his entire life living in the same small village on the west coast of Ireland. Call me the parochial type – wedded to the land, having spent my working life as a small hold farmer before enjoying my retirement amongst old friends and family. These days I prop up the bar at McCafferty’s pub, sipping pints of Guiness whilst telling tales of years past.

Every person has their own fears. Spiders, reptiles, darkness, or even death. But have you ever heard that people are afraid of silence itself? Yes, you could say that silence is peace, a state of stillness. But sometimes, something can happen in silence that no spider or monster can compare to. Today I’m going to tell you why something can happen in silence that I’ll remember for the rest of my life — and I’m afraid to recall what I saw. My name is Tom, I’m 20 years old, and I’m a single…

Annabella was a Witch, She lived in a house made of sticks. Through the woods, and over a stream Where very few people are ever seen. ~ In the village, she loved a man. Jeremiah, as he stands. But no matter how hard Annabella tried... She could never catch Jeremiah's eye. ~ In her House of Sticks, she cried. Feeling her heart slowly die. But soon a vile plan was born, To get Jeremiah, this, Annabella had sworn. ~ For the toxin of love: an ingredient was needed.

Pentimento I spent two years working on a single sentence.

The first warning sign came about eighteen months in. I remember it precisely because I had been sweating my ass off—hunched over a server tower in the equipment room, staring at temperature readouts that were climbing way too fast. The fan wall was choking itself to death on all the dust bunnies that accumulated on its intake. I couldn’t afford to take a server offline, since it communicated with all the others. Which meant I was doing it live—on my hands and knees, myself.

Everyone in town loves Burger Sams. Everyday they would arrive, packing the order counter, tripping over each other to get their chance to just lick the burger grease. The dining area was always a chaos of noisy chewing and smacking lips. Sometimes they would have to close the drive thru to stop the line from blocking the road. Everyone in town loves Burger Sams. Except Jen. Because she worked there.

In 1996, a boutique robotics company quietly manufactured a line of luxury, life-sized animatronics. They were marketed exclusively to wealthy families as elite, high-tech playmates for children. But the line was canceled almost immediately. Rumors spread about a prototype that came off the assembly line completely wrong—warped, oversized, and deeply unsettling. My little sister, Rose, found her in a salvage yard behind one of the abandoned corporate warehouses.

You remember Freddy Fazbear's? You know, that popular pizzeria in the '80s with the toy animatronics? Everyone else remembers the birthday parties—the greasy pizza, the arcade carpet sticky with soda, the plastic tokens, and that unbearable, synthesized marching-band tune that played from the stage on an endless loop. They remember the balloons and the paper hats. I remember the silence.

Jeanette moved closer to the glass, and besides a bony hand, she also saw the terrifying face of an old woman with a scarred face and 4 eyeballs. Jeanette was completely paralyzed, not knowing what to do. "Who are you and what do you want from me?" "You are the one who summoned me along with your friends during the evening séance, remember that, Darling?" "Siltani, come here" — and so I came, from the Land of the Whispering Bones and Shadows, here I am, and from now on I will give you no…

It’s 3:00 AM. The house is quiet. My room is pitch black save for the blue light of my monitor, and my reflection is starting to look like a stranger. I’d heard about Megan Is Missing. Heard it was controversial, banned in some places, a found-footage nightmare that leaves you terrified to blink. Naturally, I had to see it. A torrent file, a quick download, and there it was: a murky, grainy file on my desktop, waiting.

Father did not sleep that night. Neither did I. After the fourth call faded into the mountains, he checked every door and window in the house twice. Then he pulled a chair beside the front door, laid the shotgun across his knees and remained there until morning. Nobody talked much. Mother took Thomas into their room. Evelyn stayed downstairs. She sat wrapped in a blanket near the stove, occasionally looking toward the windows whenever the house creaked.

Mr. Pike arrived shortly after noon. I knew it was him before father said anything. There was something about the way the man approached the house that made him uneasy. Most visitors, as in would imagine, would look towards the farmhouse first. Not Pike. He looked straight to the woods. He came up the road in a dark green truck that coughed smoke behind it and rattled like loose bones. The truck stopped near the barn, but Pike didn’t immediately get out of the truck.