It’s hard to purposefully forget something. The more you try not to think about it, the more you think about it. And the more you think about it, the more you obsess over it. You try to keep it tucked away in the back of your mind, but now the back of your mind is the only place you visit. You become engulfed with it, with the idea of forgetting. This happened to me, and now, it’s ruined my life. This all started around 10 years ago, when I started to dig though some of my old stuff. It was my Junior year of high school, and my parents wanted me to help my grandparents clean up their attic. I…

Did you see what happened last night? I’ve checked all the major news sites, channels, and popular social media sites, and I haven’t seen anyone talking about it. I even looked into some more obscure forums, but no one is talking about it. Am I the only one who saw it? Or I guess I should say the only one left who saw it? Did it even happen? It must have, the memories I have are so clear they can’t be a dream. But it happened so fast, and those people. I never learned their names or anything. Hell, I can’t even be sure exactly how many I saw out there. At any rate, they’re all gone now, and somehow,…

Tick… ​​tick… tick… tick… tick. The slow rhythm of the clock pulled me out of my sleep webs as it grew stronger by the second. Then I felt an unpleasant pressure on my right ear and wetness under my hand, which came from a small pool of saliva flowing onto the wooden bench. Damn, I fell asleep in class, but not during a lesson, as I first thought. Through the windows, all I could see was the moon and thick darkness surrounding a dimly lit but completely deserted parking lot covered in piles of snow with a few cars. But to confirm my suspicion, I turned my attention to the clock that had woken me up. It showed exactly 10…

Why does conflict happen most often with those we’re the closest with? You would think that because we love our family, friends, and colleagues so much that we’d understand each other enough that conflict wouldn’t be necessary. But now I realize that because we show each other our vulnerabilities and flaws is why most major conflict occurs. With strangers, people are reluctant to open up to them and try to actively avoid conflict constantly, unlike with those we know all too well. When I was younger, I learned these lessons the hard way in many horrifying events that happened around that time… My name is Aurelia, and I’m a young woman who recently graduated from college. I’m writing this memoir…

Why Does My New Born Baby Have Memories Of My Dead Brother? Our baby, Lily, is barely two weeks old, but she’s taken to crying at exactly 3:14 AM. It started on the third night in the hospital, a high-pitched keening that rattled the monitors and made me bolt upright. My husband, Jacob, sleep-shy but determined to comfort her, reached into the bassinet. When he came back, his face was pale. “She did it again,” he whispered. “She sounded like…like Matt.” Matt was my little brother. He died three years ago, drowned in the creek behind our childhood home. The slackjawed image of his lifeless face still haunts me. But Jacob, who was working nights then hadn’t known Matt. How…

I was driving down the highway thirty three past midnight. I was trying to go as fast as possible without breaking the speed limit. The last thing I needed was a cop following me when I was driving a stolen car, had a dead man in the trunk, two shotguns, a handgun in my strap and a bag full of cash in the passenger seat. I was tired to say the least, my last and only meal had been a stale sandwich I got from a run down gas station around midday, thanks god it didn’t do anything funny to my stomach or would be in serious shit. My burn phone was dead as dead can be; maybe that was…

“What’s up with her, Sammy?” Steven grunted, puffing on his half-burned cigarette. It was early morning, the rising sun cresting the horizon and engulfing the gaps of the forest with its light. Slowly but surely, the day’s warmth was chasing away the nightly spring air, the tree leaves illuminated in their gorgeous, silky green. All seemed right as Steven absent-mindedly tapped a chunk of ash onto the ground, leaning over the edge of the cabin balcony. From across the sparkling river that curled past their remote home sat a single bear, reclined against a thick tree trunk. “Oh, that’s Suzy!” Samantha cooed as she hurried outside in her dressing gown, joining her husband at his side. “Funny name for a…

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 with a fetid stew flowing from unseen waterways. Their steps faintly echo before being devoured by the yawning darkness of countless pits. Their hunched forms move through the dark with a seemingly awkward gait. Yet none of them stumble or…

Chapter 1 The steady droning of fluorescent lights buzzed through the perpetually cold morgue. A sound that, after three years, had woven its way into my sense of peace as comforting and familiar as my own breathing. Carl muttered under his breath as he wrestled with the finicky coffee machine before it spurted out the coveted drink. It wasn’t just the vending machine that put him in such a grumpy mood. We had gotten another new intern. Some emo kid with a gauge piercing and nose ring, obsessed with seeing a real live corpse up close, who would likely ghost us by tomorrow morning. Today’s workload was refreshingly light, and I was already tasting that cold beer I planned to…

Elizabeth Dappa had grown tired of the radically unhealthy city life, so she hopped in her car and drove a day’s time to her old hometown in Utah. Her grandfather’s home was still in the family, so securing it as her temporary quarters was easy enough to do. Standing in front of the sprawling farmhouse, she looked to her left and then to her right. She could see the faint twinkle of the neighbor’s farmhouse, some many miles away, she was alone; not cramped into a little box that shared walls with strangers who’d rather give her a bullet or a knife wound, than their name. Many people may have looked at this situation and called it isolation and not…