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It'd been about a month since the fire, the cause of which is still unknown. I don't like to think about it, not because we narrowly escaped with our lives, but because our two dogs didn’t. Since then we’d relocated to an apartment in the city while our house got fixed up. Things hadn't been the same since then. Our home atmosphere, which had usually been warm and lively, had since shifted to a more depressing one that nobody wanted to be around.

I wake up to the sound of sizzling oil and the smell of eggs. I bring my hands up to my face and I am met with caked blood on my wrists. It is not surprising anymore. I hear tiny feet pad down the hallway and my brother opens my door. "Ada, breakfast is ready," Timothy says. I chuckle. He still has not managed to get his lisp under control.

It was two days until Christmas, just one more day until Christmas Eve. I was at Walmart with my older sister Alyssa, trying to find a present for our father. "Eric, how much money did you say you had?" she questioned, rummaging through her purse. "Five dollars and seventy-eight cents," I answered proudly. "Eric," she began, reaching for the top shelf, "if we want to get Dad this Guinness set, we'll need five more dollars."

Timothy had always loved Christmas. It was his favorite time of year. He loved the lights, the music, the presents, the movies, the laughter… he loved it all.

The phone rang abruptly. He paused to look at the screen of his battered cell phone. "No Caller ID." He doesn't usually answer these calls, but after what just happened he thought it could be something important. He slid his thumb slowly across the bottom of the screen to answer, and even slower again, he raised the phone to his ear. "H-Hello?" he said hesitantly.

I had just graduated high school and was planning to head off to college that fall. I had done well enough in high school that I had a couple of different college scholarships at my disposal. However, not every school that I looked at was willing to give me a full ride. After much thought and delegation I decided to attend the University of Wyoming. Why would I apply to such a college you may ask? Well for one thing, the college is in the middle of nowhere! Literally, when you drive there, all…

I grew up in an area where the properties are so large and the families are so wealthy, that they build mansions and walls inclosing themselves in their own private paradises - never interacting with their neighbors unless by some strange coincidence. I was home-schooled until the age of 7, which is where this story ends.

Long black hair draped down in twisted, wet tendrils, her head cocked to one side as the TV blared in front of her. "HEY!" I shouted again, trying to project my voice over the noise, "HELLO?!" Her head didn't move, not so much as an inch, just stayed utterly stagnant, facing away from me, her body sitting upright on my couch. "HELLO!?" I again cried, slowly setting down my keys in the entryway, yet keeping my shoes on as I began creeping forwards hesitantly. "WHO ARE YOU?!"

The Ilchester Tunnel is located near the historic town of Ellicott City, Maryland. This old B&O Railroad tunnel also has a little known urban legend attached to it: The Legend of The Blink Man.

My father's family home was just a little under two hours away by car from where we lived, a small village surrounded by farmland. I often stayed with my grandparents during my summer vacation and winter breaks from school, and they were always happy to play with me... but the last time I visited them was over ten years ago now, when I was still in my third year of high school. It was my Spring break and I had been invited to visit; and since the weather was good, I rode my bike out to their…

It was annoying at first. The occasional creaking of the house, power shortages, no heating, things you would expect to find in a small town up in Scotland. Since I had lived here for a good four years I had gotten used to those events occurring. Gradually it got worse. The power would stay out for hours, sometimes even days. The cold winds would shake the old house, I stopped bothering to light candles when the lights died. The currents of air would just seep through the cracks around the…

I awoke to the sound of dripping water, it was coming from somewhere in the kitchen, the open door just a few feet away. The smell hit me, just as pungent as it was when I went to sleep. My eyes started to water at the pure concentration of the odor, and the nausea set in. How long had it been since I arrived here? A week? A month? It sure felt like forever, but time was useless for me, since I knew however long it had been wouldn’t affect how long it would be until I could leave.

May 17th of 2011 was my finals week. I was quietly working on a study guide in the Earth Sciences department. Being surrounded by the fossils somehow made me feel less stressed about finals. Many of them were simply beautiful, with their natural curves set in stone. All of them, from ammonite shells to mammoth teeth, were arranged in a chronological fashion, from oldest to the youngest.

When you hear of crime writers, you think of people like Michael Connelly, or Rick Castle. Those guys are schmucks compared to me. The same plotlines rehashed over and over and repackaged into new covers with slightly more entertaining titles each time. You see, with me, everything I put in the pages of my books are legitimate. Now, I don’t just look up old crimes on the Internet and try to make them more appealing to the modern reader. No, that’s too simple. I make the crimes.

"I just needed to sleep; it wasn't personal," he murmured, focusing intently on his fidgeting hands to avoid my gaze. "During the war, to desensitize us, our superiors played the harrowing screams of dying men over the speakers in our barracks. Initially, it was deeply unsettling, but over time, I couldn't sleep without it." He yawned, revealing the dark circles under his eyes. "I see," I responded, sitting across the table from the soldier. "And this justifies your actions?"

Throughout my time observing the everyday activities of humans, I've noticed several quirks about them. Many of these can be used to my advantage. One such quirk is that people seldom look up. Whether sitting alone in a dark room, running panicked through a forest, or dining in a crowded restaurant, they rarely glance skyward. I'm uncertain of the reason for this lack of upward glances, but it works in my favor.

Larson woke up startled in the middle of the night. He clutched his chest with his tiny hand trying to dull the sharp pain in his heart. As he gasped for air, he desperately tried to remember what his nightmare had been about. He looked over at his alarm clock and discover it was 4:58 AM. He began sobbing and thought about calling out for his mom to come calm him down, but he couldn’t bring himself to make a sound. That’s when he realized that he was not the source of the sniffling and heavy…

James Nichols was a detective in mid-New Jersey. He lived with his wife and two kids, and was a happy man, aside from his insomnia and occasional sleepwalking. Just part of the job, he guessed. He had heard stories things like PTSD from certain cases, generally the more traumatic ones, obviously. With all these tales of people that had had their psyches ruined for life, he was thankful and guessed he got off easy. One night as he was going to sleep, he went and took the new prescription sleep…

When I was fourteen years old I received my first cell phone. It was one of the earlier models of phone, small, basic and a burner. When I was in high school the all the cell phones were only able make or receive calls and texts. There weren't cameras or apps or even call I.D. built into the phones. All of the older technology now seems so simple and innocent in comparison to today's models.

Jennie and I were an item for a little less than two months. I knew that we probably wouldn't last. I mean, come on, she was Jennie Matthews, who every guy wanted and every girl wanted to be. The new girl but already the queen of the school, with her looks and her uncanny way of knowing everyone's secrets before they knew them themselves. And I was Nathaniel Twining, straight-A student, nearly fifteen and the guy that everybody wanted to partner in classes just because I got the grades.