The Stench of Death
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I sliced the arms and legs. I sew together each vein. Delicate patterns of lace, and the soft blush of first love. My palms are stained red. The needle slipped in, swiftly as the sleek body of a fish. Sans hésitation A gentle gush of warmth, Flowing freely from each cut. Catching in the cracks of the pavement And between my lovers lips These are only the amateur first strokes Of my watercolour painting. Next are the fingernails. which have endured the brunt for many years,
Orson had a mind like no other. He could be shown a craft once, just once, then repeat it with a precision that startled his mentors. The carpenter on Ellis Street had only to demonstrate the carving of a dovetail, and Orson’s hands would shape that exact cut as though he’d been doing it his whole life. The carpenter peered over his shoulder, frowning. “That’s some fluke,” he muttered. “Took me months to cut like that.”
Amid the seemingly infinite expanse of the night-shrouded ocean, a solitary fishing boat ventured forth, its journey towards Bunker Island guided by the lone, silvery light of the moon. As the vessel gently rocked on the ebb and flow of the dark waters, its name, the 'Elizabeth Dane,' barely clung to the peeling paint at the stern, a testament to the countless expeditions it had weathered.
On a scale of one to ten, what's the surest you've ever been at any one moment that something absolutely sinister was looking straight at you? I'd rate my experience earlier tonight at about an eight.
I was walking down an abandoned, dirt road in the middle of a small town that I did not recognise. I was alone; literally, there was no one in sight. I looked at the house I was walking by, the only house on the street. It was old and the dark grey paint was faded into more of an off white colour. The windows were covered in dust and chipped at the edges, behind them were some ripped, faded yellow curtains hanging. Only one of the windows was missing a curtain, the top left window to be exact.…
Okay.. So, before I begin, I just want to say that this story is true. What I’m about to tell you, really happened to me and I’m not just saying so. This happened when I was a kid. We lived in a smaller house back then and I shared a room with my elder sister. We had a bunk bed and I slept in the bottom bunk. Or, I tried to. For no good reason I was afraid to sleep there.
Our journey began at the end of everything. The world had ended, but ours had just begun. We had lived our lives in solitude, confined for as long as we could remember, but that was about to change. “Hello? Can anyone hear me?” I asked seemingly no one. After a while, a voice I’d never heard rang out. “Hello! Yes, I can hear you. Who am I speaking with?” The British voice crackled out, and a wave of excitement overcame me.
You know it was weird. Things like this always are actually. So when people die, they leave wills, and distribute their material things amongst others. Sometimes, strangers do it too, and you're left with a confused feeling. Everyone has that friend or something, and you promise each other your things when you die. Or it's your roommate's stuff that they left behind when they have no family. Stuff like that.
Growing up, my parents told me never to go into the basement. It is kind of interesting now that I think back on it. I was an obedient kid and never did anything that my parents told me not to, but I also never once questioned, until very recently, why I wasn't allowed to go down those stairs. Our house was huge. My dad worked in finance, but grew up a country boy before college so, as soon as we had the chance, we moved us out into isolation, even though this made his commute over an hour into…
"Nine-one-one. What's your emergency?" "Someone's in my house." A woman, maybe fifty, steady. "In the hallway. I can hear him breathing." I ask for the address and she gives it, slow and clear, and I type it into the field, and the field does something it has never once done: it stops me. The cursor goes red before I finish. A note unfolds under the line, the way the system writes when it's telling you something is over. PREMISES LOST. FIRE. 2019. NO SURVIVORS.
I’ve been selling junk on eBay for years—mid-century lamps, Beanie Babies, even a taxidermy squirrel once. My weekends are spent prowling garage sales, looking for overlooked treasures. So when I saw the squat, ancient jar sitting in a patch of weeds at the back of a neighbor’s sale, I figured it might be worth, at the very least, a hundred bucks to some archaeology-obsessed collector. Honestly, it didn’t look like much at first. About as tall as my knee, thick clay, faded patterns spiraling…
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.
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.
L-3 About 10 miles off the shores of Galveston, Texas, lies Grandiosia Isle: 300,000 acres of swamp, mountain, jungle, and thick pine forest. It has endured a lot—a blizzard during the early 1200s, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and in 1875 a forest fire scorched the entire island, rendering it uninhabitable for some time. As a result, the island was nearly devoid of forest life, except for creatures capable of flight, until 1994 when deer and such were reintroduced onto the island.
The widow, Laura, walked into the garden. Cracked Stone walls surrounded her, their green vines slithering toward bushes plump with blood-red berries. At the center of the garden stood a rectangular stone basin shaped like an angel. It knelt before the pool as if to deliver water from its mouth. Yet what flowed was bleak black water, filled with sticks and the smal bodies of dying insects. When she was younger, she remembered tossing coins and watching them sink into the water's darkness.…
You wake up in a cramped, windowless room, and see blood on the walls. As you walk a little, you trip over something and look underneath… It's a small child's skull. Looking closer, you notice his clothes. You wake up from this terrifying dream… But you realize you're still stuck in the same place, and that it wasn't a dream. Blood is everywhere, and you've been sleeping next to your little brother's skull for about three weeks. You keep forgetting why you're there, how it all happened…
I put on my running shoes with springs, designed to cushion the impact on the ground. It was my nightly ritual, something I did every single day without fail: running to the neighboring town, keeping my body busy and my mind free of thoughts. It was almost five o’clock, and the sun still stubbornly lingered in the sky, painting everything with a pale golden light.
I can't stand when someone is walking behind me or simply that feeling of being watched or followed. It’s not pleasant at all, and personally for me, it’s unbearable. Let me begin by saying that the reason I practically hate it is due to the fact that's how I felt that during most of my childhood. All of the events that I will tell you actually happened so you probably will understand that for protection purposes (yourself, my family and mine) I will avoid providing any names or locations.…
It all began when our grandfather died.
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