“Where are my smoking glasses?” Elizabeth frowned at her father’s request, not having made it one step out of the stuffy, dust-layered hole that was their living room. This was her third attempt at leaving, and once more had the confused man called out for her in that all-too familiar way, voice heavy with contempt. It was the same loveless cadence she recognised from the 40-odd years they had lived in the house together, though the energy behind it was now weak and smouldering, like a fire in need of stoking. She took a moment to consider the question. First the blanket, then the ashtray, now this. It was true that her father had been a rather excessive smoker in…

I was elbow deep in a four-tab Acid trip when the Molly kicked in. Like a lightning strike straight to the Amygdala, it jolted my brain into vibrant overdrive. What had initially been little more than some crunchy vibes and cool visuals all of a sudden transformed into one of the craziest trips of my entire life. A trip that I was no way ready for. Now I am by no means a noob when it comes to hallucinogens. I have been tripping on anything and everything since I was in secondary school: mushrooms, Ketamine, DXM, DMT, LSD, PCP, THC, you name it. Hell, this wasn’t even my first time Candy Flipping. But it was the most Acid I had ever done in one sitting and some…

“I’m going blind,” I told my wife when we moved to our new gothic-style home in Griswold on a breezy day in early April. It was a wedding gift from my estranged father —a beautiful two-story structure with pointed arches, board-and-batten siding, large stained-glass windows, and a steep-pitched roof that gave the illusion of a medieval tower. Before my gradual onset of blindness, Samantha and I loved looking at homes from this era. Now, our beautiful new home was a blur, another milestone I couldn’t see. “I feel dizzy.” “You have contacts, silly,” Samantha said, lifting a small box from our SUV. “Of course you’re blind. You’d better sit down.  Hey…are you okay?” “You’re right. I need to sit down.”…

They were outcasts once, in the old days; The Silent Kings. That’s what all the old-timers heard from their old-timers, anyway. They were Sin Eaters. Mute Sin Eaters.  Mute from trauma, according to most. The three of them were brothers, orphaned together when they accidentally set their mother on fire. The legends don’t record the details of exactly how that went down, but the boys were so traumatized not just from witnessing their mother’s fiery demise, but also being the cause of it, that they never spoke again. No one spoke to them, either. They were pariahs after that. Accident or not, being responsible for the death of your own mother, especially in such a ghastly manner, will make people…

Chapter 6: Face of the Forgotten   He pressed forward with his claymore resting on his shoulder, leaving bloody footprints behind him. His feet regrew the muscles and skin with every step he took further into the labyrinth. Requiem walked through the labyrinth that took the shape of a dungeon. Every room he passed was vacant as he progressed through the torchless hallway that seemed to have no end.   He spent days walking through the hall into an eternal darkness that all stayed the same. The scent of grass filled his nostrils making Requiem stop in his tracks. He peered into one of the rooms next to him to see nothing, but empty stone coffins. Requiem then looked back in the…

I’m sure you all have heard the tales about the trucker who was driving late at night and stopped to pick up a woman on the side of the road and the woman turns out to be a ghost. Right? Well, I’ve got a story for you that trumps that one. I was driving my rig one night. I had a load I picked up in Texas and was bound for California. It was about 12:30 a.m. and I was a little tired, but I had to keep it going, at least to get to the next truck stop. I was rolling along I-10, passing through New Mexico. Now I don’t know what you know about New Mexico but there…

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. “Which room would you like to visit today?” the hateable robot spoke, emerging from the ceiling. It was a black, spidery thing with a low-hanging body, capable of turning in any direction at will. With a short buzz, it flashed a kaleidoscope of Colour from its circular screen, brilliant blues mixing with vibrant greens and yellows. On and off they blinked, back and…

I – Summer On Vai I should have chosen speechlore, I thought as another gust of wind whipped snow under my hood. Folklore would have been an excellent choice as well. Perhaps mathematics, or meteorology. Only a few months ago, I had been more than content with my specialization. After several weeks in the frozen monotony of the Asundrian wilderness, however, even the history of Hishan arts struck me as far more appealing. My research intersected with a variety of disciplines, and Iluma Aator – the Serpentine Academy’s oldest and most prestigious house of learning – was renowned for its wealth of mentors in every field a scholar could ever want. I therefore found myself confronted with an almost impossible…

My stomach rumbled as we approached the edge of the woods. It was nearly midday, but I hadn’t eaten in hours. Supply troubles and nerves had left me with little food and next to no appetite. A combination that was less than ideal heading into my first taste of combat.   Pa always told me war was nothing like the heroic tales I read about when I was young. He had fought in the Battle of Bad Axe back in ’32 and said that he had lost a piece of himself somewhere in those Wisconsin woods. A piece of himself that he knew he would never get back. But despite his many warnings I enlisted in the army anyways. Being the…

As I wandered through the park once more, walking towards the circus, I could feel a sense of dread boiling from within me, it felt as if a thousand eyes were watching me, staring into the back of my soul as I wandered towards what felt like certain doom, the feeling of fear and despair only growing as I saw the big top tent in the distance, and saw the abandoned trailers that seemed to surround me from all sides, with crates and hay bales stacked against them. I could feel myself shaking as I moved forwards, moving closer to the tent. but then I stopped. Looking closely, lying on top of one of the crates, was a rusted, old…