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If I could travel back in time, I would have changed a lot of things. Would you? I wouldn't just do better at everything or undo certain mistakes, I would probably become your friend. Do you remember, when we were little, that we actually lived quite close to each other? Y'know when you're born here you just don't seem willing to leave. All the locals have this problem. Well anyway, your house was just a couple of streets away from mine.

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…

“Time is a flat circle.” — Friedrich Nietzsche — - I hadn’t laughed like that in a long time. The van rattled as we bounced down the narrow gravel road, overgrown branches tapping the sides. Lexi was already filming everything with her phone, narrating in a mock-documentary voice: “Five survivors return to the place where all went wrong.” Jared howled in response, always being the loud one, and Elise shook her head, grinning, the wind tangling her curls.

The game was almost over, but things didn't get easier. I knew that the Rot wouldn’t let me win this. I had to plan ahead. I could tell that judging from the last 2, the final candles would both be in one of the main areas of the park: the circus, and the rides in the center of the grounds.

I hope this message finds you well. I want to apologize for all the stress I’ve caused these past few months, and the least I can do is explain why I had to leave so abruptly. I do understand if this is a huge red flag to you seeing we’ve only been dating for eight months now. Here goes nothing.

Having just finished my Master’s in Classical archaeology, I decided to celebrate by trekking my way through Italy. I spent about a week in Rome seeing the usual sites and eventually I made my way south down to Sorrento.  But backpacking through Italy wasn’t just for leisure, it was actual fieldwork — well, sort of.

I think Captain Gold is worried that I'm losing it. Sometimes I think I might be. I haven’t seen Marty for days. He was supposed to meet me at the Larrabee last night, but never showed. I’m starting to get very concerned. Casey is gone. I think I lost her a long time ago, but now she’s gone for good. It occurs to me that I’m jumping ahead of myself. I need to stop and recollect my thoughts. There’s a lot I don’t remember, and even more that I do, but it might not be true.

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.” — Matthew 7:13

For most people, the art of programming is to fill desires left unaccomplished in reality. For some, it is to pay their bills in an effort to have a home. And for others, it may not be so heart-warming and wholesome most of the time. It may be to sacrifice. To reawaken. To find. 1995, Lubbock, Texas -

11:30 am. Dreary. Heartburn. Brain ache. Tired eyes giving way to a dull throbbing, but never drifting closed. We sat in silence around our monitors and typed, when suddenly, the office room silence was pierced by Lola’s break alarm. It blared its flat, electronic tone on repeat a few times until she stood up from her chair.

After discovering the lost episode of Gilligan’s Island, I started thinking about finding an episode of another favorite show of mine, The Three Stooges. According to a source I found, the episode was called Ghost Encounters. It was supposed to be shown in movie theaters and on television (as episodes were being aired on TV as well and released on DVD, of course). This episode was cut for being disturbing, but before you roll your eyes and think I’m going to talk about characters dying in…

Behind the unsteady glow of a flickering candle, Gideon, a man of pallid skin and restless eyes, sat slumped in his painting chamber. He would spend his days withering away here as he grappled with the monstrous quiet of an unraveling mind. He was known to be a brilliant portraitist, capturing the essence of his subjects with confident, precise strokes. In his hands, even the smallest nuance became a revelation, bringing to light the hidden beauties within every visage.

Three years ago, a serial killer terrified my small hometown. He was referred to as the Chase Pond slasher. He was called that because he murdered four people near a pond with that name. Three bodies were found in the forest, and the other was in the pond itself. The terror lasted for six months until he was finally caught.

I recovered from a coma I had a while back; I can’t recall the date, but I was driving back from a convenience store for groceries, and one of the overhead cables blew out and hit my vehicle, and then I woke up; it was somewhere like my own home but not really.

I am a single mother of three boys who was recently divorced. James, my eldest son, is twelve years old and has just begun secondary school. He is very smart; loves science and wishes to work as a biologist after he graduates from varsity. Without a doubt, I see him pursuing a career in that area. George, my 10-year-old second oldest son, is a creative little prodigy who enjoys painting and modeling clay sculptures. Lastly, Kevin, my 4-year-old son. Kevin is such a sweetheart! Even though he…

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.

A few years ago, a random virus that appeared overnight wiped out 3/4th of the population. The world went into ruin for a bit, until society came together after dying down to about 3 million people. They then made so many things that they could only dream of making when the population was at its max. Soon, most of society moved to a high tech city so originally named “The Big City”, It reminded people a lot of a Cyberpunk society. People did still live outside of The Big City, doing important…

It would have been so much easier just to keep telling myself the worst parts of my past were all in my head, and assure myself it wasn’t healthy for me to think too much about it.

This is a story of a boy I met when I was still young. His name was James Elkin, and he lived in the house two doors down from me. We weren’t friends, but I did greet him a few times when I saw him. He always looked small for a nine-year-old and had long, uneven hair.

Sarah gambled.  She played video poker and the ponies at the track.  She knew the odds of blackjack if she split a pair of face cards.  She’d played the office football pool--until she was fired for taking one too many three-hour lunches at the casino.  She gambled when she had money and, on credit, when she was broke--before she’d maxed out her credit cards and the debt collectors started dogging her steps.  She gambled when she was happy and she gambled when she was miserable--which was…