#madness

Very seldom does it happen that a young person enters a nursing home. Mostly we assume that nursing homes are for the elderly. Those who are too fragile or infirm to be without twenty-four hour care, those with a broken hip that won’t heal or with too many illnesses to count. A few who will recover and the rest left here as a last resort. But occasionally a child inhabits a room at a nursing home. Here is the tale of one such child, and the impression she left behind.

I know why you’re here. You’re here because you have some understanding of the things that go bump in the night and send waves of terror down your spine. You want to hear about the things that haunt the edges of your vision. You want to be scared. But why am I here?

[Author's note: The historical context of the time period has been altered than what actually happened in history due to the nature of the story being derived from another one of my projects.] August 19th, 1915 Corp. D.H. Griffin, 3rd Infantry Battalion, US Army

Moving to a new place was a big thing for me. 3 hours away from home, 3 hours away from the town I loved, the house I grew up in and the ex boyfriend who had been the thing to drive me away. In a way I was looking to escape. New start, new life, new me, that was what I decided when I moved away.

One of my best qualities, I believe, is my intelligence. I don’t mean to come across as rude, but the fact is, I am beyond the brain capacity of any other person my age. At the age of eight, my IQ was measured to be 136, which was just shy of genius level. I loved to learn, too. I wanted to know everything.

I used to go diving a lot. Not so much anymore, but a couple years ago I was really into it, had my license and everything. It’s really beautiful down there: the pale patterned sand, the water washing away the distance like a blue mist, and flashes of the brightest colors you’ve ever seen as some fish darts into view. I’ve done my share of exploring wrecks and grottoes, but my favorite thing to do is hover right where the shelf plunges into the deep. You get the greatest dynamics there as…

It started about a year and a half ago. I was on the internet reading about Libya, Gaddafi and the Arab Spring when I felt a sensation on the back of the neck. At first it was just a slight itch but it progressively became more and more intense. It felt as if a little itty bitty ant was crawling up and down the back of my neck. The only way to stop it was to slap the back of my neck. Sometimes it felt like it was burrowing into my skin. Once it burrowed in, I had to itch it away or else it…

4:38:03 PM He placed the cold steel barrel to his temple, feeling it press against bone. The scarred right wrist was steady, the shoulder relaxed, as he’d been trained. Standing in front of the mirror, his dry brown eyes burned with concentration. The muscles of his right hand contracted. The trigger began to move. His cracked lips curled to one side. The same sly, crooked half smile so many girls and women found appealing.

The Journal of Harry Rellic The following; a series of the most recent excerpts from a private journal of ‘Harry Rellic’, a 22 year old found dead in his apartment this evening. Apparent death by overdose on cyanide. … I wake up at ten in the morning to my phone ringing. I pick up, expecting Hannah to be on the other end, but instead I hear her sister, Mary. She is in hysterics. I ask her what the problem is, trying to calm her down; she tells me Hannah is dead.

Nobody who ever met Ludovic Caesar could honestly say that he didn’t strike them as a reasonable and polite young man. He was strangely intelligent for his twenty three years, and there was something about the way he spoke that drew people to him. He pondered his choice of words carefully before speaking them, and when he did, they were beautiful and fluid, like poetry. Ludovic Caesar was a man who mostly declined the company of other beings, a man who was more content with his work then with…

The bell on the door chimed softly as Joe entered the small flower shop. Sandra was pissed at him for working late again; she'd made that much clear when he'd rolled in past ten last night. Who is she, Joe? Who is who? The woman you're screwing. What are you talking about, Sandy? You know I have the Brinkman proposal to finish by next week. It's requiring more time and effort than Bob anticipated when he signed us up for the damn thing.

A few weeks, my wife and I took a vacation to Florida. We decided to drive, due to the price of airplane tickets around holiday season. On our way south, we passed through Tennessee as well as a large portion of Georgia. Unfortunately, there was a large accident that occurred on the turnpike, so we decided to take a short detour and then get back onto the turnpike after we passed all the traffic.

“Pretty Penny: The American Slit-Mouth Woman” Ohio can be a frightening place, with scary legends jumping out from around nearly every dark rural corner. Some though remain extremely obscure, and deserve perhaps a second look. In a true case of east meets west I give you Pretty Penny, America’s own Slit Mouth Woman.

It would seem that all cities, even small towns, have their own ghost stories and urban legends. Living in Devine, Texas for 5 years, I always heard about the Salt and Pepper lady of the Devine Projects. Friends would speak of their experiences with this very strange and disturbing specter. If you grew up in the Devine Projects, your parents wouldn't allow you to be outside whatsoever after dark, which was less due to the gangs and drug problem and more out of fear of the Salt and Pepper lady.

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.

My name is Harold Granderson, and I've been the director of the Cleveland Opera for 39 years. I'm sure that doesn't sound like much, what with the picture of Cleveland as a post-industrial wasteland deprived of fine culture, but I can assure you we don't harbor talentless hacks. I make sure of that. Admittedly, it's difficult to attract equally discerning ears. We live in the shadow of the Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame, where the off-key caterwauling of drunken pseudo-poets is worshiped. Even the…

-“Hey, Vince, are you there?”- she asked. -“I’m so excited about the mission, Vince! Wait until I tell my friends that my husband is in a scientific mission on outer space!”-she said -“Hahahaha, you’re such a sweetie, Vince! ”-she laughed -“Does Earth look beautiful from space, Vince?”-she smiled -“It is more than beautiful”- I murmured, while I observed the aurora borealis. -ooooo-

They are going to kill you. You just know they are. You sit here, in the back area of the white van. It's devoid of anything, except the chair you sit in, and a white, metal floor with a screwdriver laying lazily near the wall. A fluorescent bulb hangs on the ceiling nearby, casting an erie white glow around the place. There are no windows, and everything not illuminated by the bulb is pitch black. You can't move anything.

A Lucid Dream is when the dreamer knows that he or she is dreaming at the moment. This powerful knowledge can make the dream seem more fun, with the dreamer being able to control everything. Meanwhile, an Out of Body Experience is when the dreamer is not dreaming, but they sometimes believe that they are currently in a dream. However, what happens when a dreamer believes that he is in a dream but realizes that he cannot control it? That my friends is called a Lucid Mystery. Story

Chad’s stomach growled. He knew the only way he could satisfy this new hunger was with nachos, as he had done so many times in the past. Each nacho was a piece of the hunger puzzle in his stomach, and the pieces always lined up perfectly.