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It was the morning after I had said my vows in the shield hall of the Twilight Gate when I first doubted my decision to join the Asundrian Order. A strange notion, I know. Who ever heard of a doubting Sentinel? After all, there are only two types of people in Asunder: the honorable few with unwavering dedication to the cause, and those who gambled away the prerogative to question their choices; no in-between. In truth, there are probably far more stories like mine - bland, told a thousand times…

Tom was used to being the center of attention. He was always making a joke, always chugging some beer, always playing a round of flip cup or beer pong. He prided himself on being the life of a party. He was the first to arrive and the last to leave, often overstaying his welcome as the party dwindled to no one but the tired hosts. He didn’t notice, or maybe he didn’t care. He just didn’t want to go home.

“I think we should get a fifth cat,” my wife, Mabel, told me. I looked at her, amused, as we are both cat people. We have four cats: Taco, a tortoiseshell-colored cat; Ginger, a brown cat; Gadget, a black Bombay cat; and Pingu, a black-and-white-colored kitten.

The night was calm. It rained in the afternoon, so the plants and soil were wet, the glow of the moonlight made the leaves flicker as the soft breeze started blowing, the remainder of the storm. I was standing in the middle of our kitchen. The heat of whatever Mama was cooking on the stove gave me the warmth I needed. I spent most of the day in the rain soaking wet looking for one of Mama’s new born goats. Our goat gave birth to two kids three days ago much to the delight of Mama. A fully grown…

I have to remind myself. I don’t want to forget. I can’t forget again. For a while now I don’t even remember my own name from time to time, and I forget who my mom was. And my brother. I have to write down everything that happened before I go back there. Back to The Chimes. My name is Sam. My older brother was named Marcus.

“Skreeeeeee!” My brakes squealed as they slid along the slick road. The rain had turned the roads into a slip n’ slide from hell. My high beams illuminated the bridge’s wall and before I even realized what had happened, my car crashed through and over the guardrail.

It started when I was six years old. I was in school, it was the middle of a reading lesson, and I needed to pee, badly. At that age, actually, a fair few kids still wet themselves, and I always got paranoid about embarrassing myself in public like that. I stuck my hand up and told Mrs. Zebby that I needed to use the bathroom. After the usual speech about how I “should have gone at break”, she gave me the key to the Disabled-Access toilet (as it was the closest one to my classroom).

Silences are louder than the music on the radio.... Quiet, is the noise of white and light... The silences can be loud too, when the quiet gets noisy, and your mind starts to hurt.... When your mind starts to see danger wherever you go... Anxiety, dressed up in the hidden depths of your mind.... And it will never let you go... Depression, forms of smiles, and 'I'm Fine'.... Where your mind is your worst enemy, that another person can't hurt you with words...

"Flabbergasted. F - L - A - B - B - E - R - G -A - S - T - E - D. Flabbergasted." Sweat rolled down Natalie's forehead as she watched the three judges chatter amongst themselves. Her heart was beating so vibrantly, she felt like wheezing. Each aching moment was like a nail being gradually driven between her fingernails. After what felt like an eternity of suspended animation, the female judge tilted her glasses on the bridge of her nose and nodded. "Good job, Ms. Flowers."

I knew Susie since she was about three years old.

“Well, that was ominous!” I said putting the can back on the shelf. “Totally! Maybe we are haunted!” Rudy said jokingly. “That would be kind of awesome!” I jokingly said back. Oh, how right we were, and we did not even know it yet. So, we finally called it a night and went to sleep. The next morning, I got up like usual and hopped into the shower. The water pressure in this house was nice and the water got hot, and it always left fresh fog on the mirrors. I turned off the water and stepped out…

It was a nice summer day, my 5-year-old son James was playing outside in the backyard of our suburban home. James has always been a quiet boy, he plays by himself mostly, he never had many friends, but he has always had a wild imagination. I was in the kitchen feeding our dog Fido, when I heard what sounded like James talking to someone in the backyard. I’m not sure who it was he could be talking to, could he have finally made a friend? Being a single mom it’s hard for me to always keep an eye…

“What’s got you in such a sour mood, Brandon? It’s payday!” my veteran colleague Vinson asked as the rusty freight elevator noisily rattled its way up towards the penthouse suite.

To start off, the name’s Jay, and honestly, I never really wanted to tell this story. For years, I buried it deep, locked it away like a nightmare too awful to face. But now as I sit down and write this, I realize I owe it to the children who didn’t survive and to ones like me who still carry the scars. Looking back, I wish I had just relied on E3 and other events or just never went to anything Nintendo-themed at all.

(This is the typed version of a handwritten transcript that I was given access to. The transcript itself is from a voice recording, but I have no idea where that is, or how the person who wrote the transcript obtained it. Due to the sloppiness of the handwriting and some water marks, some of the words are indecipherable, or maybe they were unintelligible from the recording. I cannot go into detail as to how I came across this transcript.)

I never saw the faces of the men who kidnapped me. I'd been too busy working when the gang of them burst through the front door. Like smoke from an explosion, the kidnappers spread through the entire building. They demanded victims and turned our world upside down searching for them. They didn't speak outside of grunted demands and language so blue that if you could see the words spilling from their mouths, it'd be a dam breaking.

To be honest, I've never thought about murder and death. I'm used to just pushing through thoughts like that, you know? Especially for a 27 year old scientist. Don't get me wrong, I've seen my share of coffins and corpses here in Vail, Colorado. But that was before the freak accident with the Tesla coils killed me, and I was a, shall we say, guinea pig of new weaponry for the US government. I'm kinda glad I'm not as human anymore. They're are so petty. They kill for money, ego, materialistic…

The audience laughed as the young man in the top hat smiled. The trick he had just completed had apparently been more than enough to please the crowd. As the man slowly walked away from the almost blindly bright spotlight, he kept his face focused on the crowd, continuing to smile.

The terrible sense of Déjà vu swept over him as Billy threw him to the black top. He knew he had been here before as his tormentor mounted him pinning him to the ground. His shrill cries only caused Billy to grin sadistically as he threw the first punch that broke his nose. His piercing screams that had served in his childhood to force his daycare provider to attend to his needs served no purpose in the brutal, adolescent world of high school. Billy set into the beating that would haunt his…

Moving at the end of my high school career is not what I imagined. My mother and father insisted that we move a few towns a way. Far enough to escape poor memories, yet close enough to the ones we wanted to keep. The town we reside in now has a decent enough track record, and the crime rate seems to be pretty low. My father has become so quiet now, so sallow. I swear, my mother's complexion will never come back.