#creatures

By the end of the spring semester of our senior year, the state of mind for me and my friends could be described simply as “burned out”. The semester was hard on all of us, and we desperately needed a reset for our brains. I’ve never been one to make plans and this time around was no different. I knew that if I waited long enough, Steven or Josh would make plans for us. “You guys are going to love this idea!” Steven said with way too much enthusiasm as he walked into our dorm.

By the end of our first week, father had stopped talking about Boston. That was how I knew he was happy. Every morning he woke before sunrise, dressed without lighting a lamp, and went outside with an axe over one shoulder. By breakfast, he had already split enough wood to last us for several days. He repaired the barn roof. He cleared the weeds from the garden for mother. He even found an old plow beneath a pile of rotten boards and spent the better part of two days repairing it.

Father did not sleep that night. Neither did I. After the fourth call faded into the mountains, he checked every door and window in the house twice. Then he pulled a chair beside the front door, laid the shotgun across his knees and remained there until morning. Nobody talked much. Mother took Thomas into their room. Evelyn stayed downstairs. She sat wrapped in a blanket near the stove, occasionally looking toward the windows whenever the house creaked.

I guess I’m not really sure what to write down. These past few weeks feel…It’s just hard to put to words what’s going on. I can hear sirens in the distance. Not much time left now. The police’ll be here shortly. Only one more thing left to do, but first I want to leave some kind of a record. Some testament to what happened so when they look back on this insanity, maybe somebody will know I wasn’t crazy. At least, not completely. I’ll write down the facts as they happened, try and give you a…

“Welcome to Riverwood.” The administrator exclaimed, shaking the hand of the new night nurse. Riverwood was the town’s only nursing home. It had been built as a hospital back in the early days of Millville. It was a grand three story building, built in an “L” shape. At the far west end of the building was a bell tower. It no longer sounded, the bell having been removed several years ago. It was on a slight hill overlooking the north end of town and was surrounded by trees so thick that it was…

By WedgeOverPotato

The attic floorboards are thin, but the silence is thinner. I’ve been up here for three hours. The vibrating stopped, which is worse. Now, the only sound is a rhythmic thump-drag, thump-drag coming from the hallway directly below the attic hatch.

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.

On May 4th 1989, in my town of Cumbernauld, Scotland. A 6-year old boy by the name of Connor Docherty was reported missing by his mother Joan, she reported that her son was particularly tearful one morning and seemed to be inconsolable. She attributed it to the random emotional tantrums and outbursts of a six year old, dismissing any seriousness of it. However it’s estimated that sometime that night, he vanished from his home without a trace. Detectives swooned in to try and find DNA samples…

I remember being in my young teenage years and I was always dreaming about becoming batman. Me and my two friends were avid comic book readers and we loved superheroes, it didn't matter if it was from DC comics or marvel. My friend Harold wanted to be Xavier and martin wanted to be Spiderman. We all use to dress up and pretend that we were the superheroes and I also remember at that age, we actually believed that the three of us would actually become superheroes.

My eyes shoot open as the tapping echoes throughout the room, scanning every inch of my dark bedroom for something that should not be there. Shit. No. No, no. Not now. Every shadow, every dark corner stands out in my mind as my imagination screams horrifying possibilities what could be lurking in the blackness. My entire body tenses. Closing my eyes, I try to force myself to calm down. Just ignore it, I internally whisper to myself. Just ignore it and it will go away.

My parents live up North, and so every Christmas my drive to their house is defined by a lot of grey, brown and white, as well as bitter cold. Never liked the cold. I spent the first 18 years of my life in it, so I think I definitely have an educated opinion on it.

I never thought much about puppets. They were relics of another time, something my grandparents might have found amusing before the age of screens. I'd seen them in dusty attics and antique shops, their faces painted in stiff, eternal grins. They were lifeless, inert things that didn't deserve a second thought. But that was before it came to town.

I can’t remember the exact age it started, I can only remember that it was summertime. I can remember that it was summertime because my family had just returned from the beach. So, I guess I can’t remember the exact age it started, but I can tell you exactly what started it.

It was a brilliant club to be part of and we were a bunch of 60+ year olds enjoying ourselves, we have our own club or space in a library and the times are from 8-10 Sunday to Tuesday. Mind you, there are only ten of us in this club, but we are a brilliant lot and 5 of the members are retired. It is more of a club for the old and the retired, who have worked all of their lives and we do creative things, from reading scripts, novels to even put on a little show as we have our own stage. We also…

August 13th, 1921 Prof. Herbert Clayton Children's Ward St. Mary's Childrens Hospital Fife, Scotland Dear Professor, My trusted friend and mentor, I write to you in the hope that you may advise me on a matter of urgency concerning a patient of mine. Edward is a boy of just nine years who arrived with his mother six days ago with a disposition so positive that we did not at first admit him. This did not last long.

I live in the middle of nowhere, far away from the rest of my friends. I have to wake up very early in the morning to catch my bus and I usually eat my breakfast as it’s bringing me to school. I don’t have any brothers or sisters; There’s just me, the Ziggy the cat, and my Dad. And then there’s Martha, the chronically pissed-off woman who insists that I call her my Mother. But lately I don’t feel so inclined to do so. She’s hardly ever around because it seems like she works every day of the…

I woke up. Sheets were stained with sweat, breath was no longer bated, and unconscious solace began to surcease. Depression kills. Not in a directly physical way, not in a way perceivable by anyone except the sufferer. It made me feel psychotic. It went past the brain tissue, into the atoms of their molecules. I always imagined the electrons painstakingly orbiting a chunk of ice. There was never light in my imagination.

I wake up feeling a small pain on my upper back. It’s tiny, but noticeable. I know what to expect now. It’s going to be yet another small scratch that seemingly came out of nowhere. My logical mind tells me that it was only me scratching my back while asleep, or my skin just being too sensitive for the sheets and getting cut. I believe my mind, but I still have an eerie feeling about these small scratches. I get up, hobbling over to my bathroom door, sliding it open, hopping up on the counter,…

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.