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Within the dark penetralia of the human soul, where fear of the unknown festers and finds its deepest dwelling, there stood a town named Desdemon. Hidden among towering pines, shrouded in perpetual mist, its days were sunless, its nights without dawn. The air was frigid and damp, steeped with whispered tales of cosmic dread, as though even the churning fog carried secrets too terrible for the tongue.

I never really did want to go to that Christmas party, but I have to say it turned out all right in the end. The Christmas party was to be held on the great stage at the Opera House downtown, and it was open to all employees of the law firm Goble & Mundorff and their immediate families.  That last part was a problem for my brother Henry and me, because our mom was a paralegal at G&M, and she’d made it clear that she expected us to put in an appearance.

Let me guess, you clicked on this story because of the title? Yeah, you did! Well, hopefully this love story, and yes this is a love story, will catch your attention long enough for you to finish it. For starters, I am Mathew Connors, and I graduated from Texas Tech a few years ago. I met my beautiful wife, Angela, in college. We have 2 amazing kids, Jonah, and Abigail, they are 10 and 8. They say that when you find the one you are destined to be, it’s like “Love at first sight”, well in our…

“I was fourteen at the time. I and my friend Leo Carper went to the Grizzly Rocks,” the storyteller hesitated as he stumbled on a thought, then continued: “I should have put it a different way, so I correct the error. Leo should have come first: of the two of us, he was the major figure, as it were. Daredevil is about him. Ringleader and photographer par excellence,” the storyteller paused and could not go on for a few minutes as he rode out his overwhelming feelings. “I thought back to his…

I woke up under the shade of a tree. I was tired and had a headache, and I didn't understand what was happening. There were police cars in front of me, and a large crowd of people were gathered around, but I still couldn't grasp what was going on. I walked a little way and saw my friend's car. I tried to grab the door handle, but I couldn't. I tried several times, and at first, I thought the car was locked, but then suddenly, I reached through the door.

The sidewalk had a way of holding onto things, not objects or anything a person could reach down and pick up, but something far heavier and far more stubborn, something that clung beneath the surface of cracked concrete and refused to fade no matter how much time tried to grind it away, and it stretched through that forgotten part of the city like a scar that had never healed, uneven and silent and wrong in a way that people could feel without ever understanding, which was why most avoided it…

The rain carried on as mercilessly as it had the past two weeks which miraculously happened to be just the time when I moved into this dumpster of a town. Me, the 13 year old, Finn Junior Hollis. Watercliff, Bakersfield. Things that shouldn’t be associated at all, right here to shove in the universes face after all. Or rather, this was the universe shoving it into my face as if this is its idea of some cruel joke. First of all, not only was I damned to live in an uneventful place like…

“Hey Zsolt, you wanna hit?” Claud said. “Hit?” “Yeah, a hit of Red Sunshine?” he asked. “Red Shoeshine?” “No, ya’ dummy, Red Sunshine.”

“Peter, can you even see anything up there?” Harry, the oldest yet least mature forest Ranger, said over the two-way. High on my perch in Tower 3, I had a full three hundred sixty degree view of A_____ National Forest that stretched out to the horizon. This was a dumb joke he liked to ask every time I drew the short straw for this position. “Yes, vision is clear. No smoke. No fires. No adverse weather conditions.”

Unfortunately, my brother is a bit of a loner. He likes to be alone most of the time and loves playing video games. He doesn't have many friends because he's not very social. I don't remember much about him, and his memories are almost forgotten, but there's one thing that my family and I all remember: Nan 102. I don't know how to explain it. It might sound silly and illogical, but, my brother, all I remember from that night and that incident is that he was playing a video game. He was playing…

There was a time before history. Before words. Before sanity.

I needed the job. Without a bachelor's degree, my previous nursing work hadn't paid much, certainly not enough for me and my four-year-old son Julian to get by. So yeah, life as a single Black mother wasn't easy. Especially considering I was only twenty-three.

My cousin told me it happened in a very small village in Mexico, the one our grandfather grew up in. Late one night, a young man was leaving a friend's home. Despite the late hour, he insisted that he could walk home. After all, his own abode was only a mile away. Stepping out into the quiet streets, he started his journey. Breathing in the humid summer air, listening to the buzz of the street lamps mixed with the crickets and his own footsteps on the gravel ground.

I actually liked Albany. Sure, the town was far from Georgia’s finest. Far from having any recognizable achievements other than rampant poverty and an exaggerated crime rate. But hey, it beat Bainbridge. At least, there was shit to do here, you know. And Alicia and I were never bored.

I saw them. My family’s cows, floating up into the pale white light. I was looking out my window at the time, it was night and I was the only one awake. Father had claimed he had locked the barn, but again more of the poor creatures where taken. They had been going missing, one by one, for a while now. My family had installed camera’s, but nothing was ever caught, just another cow disappearing into thin air every night.

“Can you sign for this?” the impatient UPS driver said after handing me a small box. “I’m not expecting anything. Who’s it from?” They shrugged. “I just deliver ‘em, man. Maybe somebody out there wanted to surprise you with a gift.” I signed, and they headed to their next stop. I looked down at the box in my hands. There wasn’t a return address. Despite its size, the package was heavy.

We all have a story about how we ended up where we are. The details change. They soften, blur, rearrange themselves like furniture in a room you haven’t visited in years. The more times we remember them, the less we do. Parts get polished smooth. Others wear thin. Still… the core of it usually survives. At least that’s what I’ve gathered from the people I now call my neighbors. I’m hardly the right man to tell their stories. I probably will anyway,

Hi. My name is Rick Leave. If you are reading this, you are alive, or at least foolish enough to seek danger where it waits. That is appropriate. Curiosity can be fatal in my world. People called me insane, a threat, someone who should be locked away and discarded. They were right—only in that they never understood. They never understood the way my mind observes patterns, how life moves like clockwork when seen through careful eyes, and how fear can be orchestrated, anticipated, controlled.

“And of course, my wonderful and wunderbar blast furnaces are the heart of my Foundry’s operations,” Raubritter boasted proudly as he led the young and aloof Petra down across the factory floor towards the upstairs offices.

Editor's note: The following pages were found on the laptop of Elena K., a doctoral student at the Art History Institute in Zurich, who has been missing since March 14th. Her advisor passed the file on to us with the request to publish it — maybe someone recognizes something, maybe someone comes forward. We have changed nothing in the text. The image related to her notes is shown above. Please look at it while you read, for better understanding. Aside from this file, only one other thing was…