#madness

It was a cold, rainy day in December. There was less than a week until we got out of school for winter break. Usually my teachers don't give us work before a break, but my bastard of a History teacher decided he'd assign us a 2000-word report due the day before we got out. I knew I wasn't going to be there then; I was going up to the mountains in North Carolina to spend Christmas and New Years' in Lenoir with some old friends I hadn't seen since I moved.

I wake up because I really have to pee. Sliding out of my bed, I sneak past my roommate and into the bathroom. I'm really glad I woke up to pee. I always do, but not being able to wake up from deep sleep to pee is a symptom of frontal lobe abnormality, a symptom of maladaptive social behavior: antisocial. It's funny how so many people use that word incorrectly; the words they mean to use are ‘social anxiety’ when they say antisocial, because antisocial is the psychiatric and correct term for…

I would have never known had I not seen it with my own eyes. The dream catcher. Not the things we hang in our windows, those awful summer camp crafts projects made of sticks and ropes and feathers and such. No. The dream catcher whom nobody has dared to see, imagine or come to understand. To call it a person would be an insult to all things real. Then again it is as real as the people it claims. More so the children…

My first memory would be that of my boy hood in the summer of 1995. When I was only 12 years old my mother, my brother, and I had recently moved in to a new home apartment. Which, now that I think about it, looked more like one of those haunted houses you see in old horror movies. However, this story is not of that genre, my friend. So do not delude yourself into thinking that it will, as it is not. My mother worked a full time job at a local college and my brother and me would usually be…

Have you ever heard of Elf on the Shelf? It was a children’s book released in 2005 that follows an elf who reports to Santa on who’s been naughty or nice. Later on they made it into t.v. movie and now it’s a really popular game with kids around Christmas time. I’ll never forget that elf. The one that terrorized me only a few weeks ago. I consider it a miracle I’m still here today to tell you about it.

The farm was left to him after his mother passed away five years ago. He was still in Afghanistan however, so he was unable to make it to the funeral. When he returned back home a year after his mother’s death, there was nobody to meet him at the airport; but Derby Matthews didn’t mind. He never did. Retired now, with fifteen years of military service as a field surgeon under his belt, Derby tucked himself away on the large, lonely farm for what he assumed would be the rest of his life.

I remember I would wake up screaming and nearly drown myself in cold sweat. I'd try to turn on a light or get a drink of water, but I couldn't even move. It was only a matter of seconds until my eyes would turn into old sepia camera filters, and "they" would appear. You probably wonder what I mean when I say that. I mean, the figures that defined my childhood, and have stood the test of time. They appeared by my door like always, leaning slowly, stabbing me with those blank, obscured eyes. My…

I need to find Sabrina. Something bad has happened in this house that was once a home. This was no place for a child, especially for one that calls me Daddy. Within the darkness she lies. Where? I do not know, but I will find her. God help me, I will find her.

BOOM! Kaitlyn bolted up in bed in a cold sweat. She nearly fell out in a panic, and then managed to right herself. After catching her breath, she managed to calm down and glanced at the clock. 12:30 AM. Fucking great. She knew that she always took at least an hour and a half to get to sleep, and she had to be to work at 4:30.

Mandy watched the girl on the television run. She was about thirty minutes into Halloween and honestly she was unimpressed. Was this really what she was staying up past her bedtime for? Was this really worth the risk of her mother finding out that she was not in fact really asleep, preparing for the next day in which she would go to school and learn just like the good children?

"Have you heard about the Fowl Faced Killer? Apparently, there's been a string of serial killings all over the country that link back to a guy that wears a leather bird mask. The murders all occur within the last three months. According to investigators, the majority of the victims are chosen at random, the others were witnesses to his crimes.

One month ago, on a rain-slicked street My mother and I got a bite to eat But on the way back, I slipped and fell And I suppose the car coming didn’t see me well Because the next thing I knew, as I lifted my head I was staring at the sheets of a hospital bed! I could not move my legs, nor my right arm My left was okay (it escaped from harm) My mother came in, with a frown, and then Said “honey, I’m afraid you’ll never walk again.” A feeling came over me, not sadness or hate

In 2005 when I graduated high school, I did so without much concern for what kind of person I was upon leaving, or how that person might affect my future. In fact, I don't think anyone I was in a social circle with did that much thinking. My parents made the mistake of giving me $200 in graduation money that was added to another $150 from various proud relatives. I could have donated a portion of it or put it in a savings account. But I didn't. I got crocked with some of my other delinquent…

Found the shit on my porch one night… Fucking ding-dong ditch or whatever. A little baggie with two blue capsules. And a stupid note with two words… “Do try” I figured it was some shitty prank from my “experimental” friends from down the street. We’ve tried nearly every reasonable drug there is, trying to get the most psychadelic trips, maintain the best highs..

When Felix Agnus put up the life-sized shrouded bronze statue of a grieving angel, seated on a pedestal, in the Agnus family plot in the Druid Ridge Cemetery, he had no idea what he had started. The statue was a rather eerie figure by day, frozen in a moment of grief and terrible pain. At night, the figure was almost unbelievably creepy; the shroud over its head obscuring the face until you were up close to it. There was a living air about the grieving angel, as if its arms could really reach…

The darkness. It's all there is. This deep, endless black that would make a moonless night seem blindingly bright. Never would I have imagined that such a darkness as this could exist. But it does, and now it's all I know. I stopped searching for the light a long time ago. It's kind of funny. . . Because I actually thought I knew darkness before. I was wrong. The pain.

When I was a small child, I was terrified of the dark. I still am, but back when I was around six years old I couldn’t go a full night without crying out for one of my parents to search beneath my bed or in my closet for whatever monster I thought was waiting to eat me. Even with a night light, I would still see dark shapes moving around the corners of the room, or strange faces looking in on me from my bedroom window. My parents would do their best to console me, telling me that it was just a…

10:00 A.M. (Tuesday Morning)

English professors have told me that born-writers can sit by a computer and make up a story in an hour, without even having to think. Their stories flow like water from their finger tips. I am most definitely not a born-writer. People like me, people without born artistic talent– we need pain to create. We need horrible tragedies to write our stories. This is how we profit. We take our mothers’ deaths and make the widest selling and most beloved children’s books of all time. We need…

"'Tis midnight, let us hit this," He said, after procuring the previously mentioned drugs. Wielding the ever-convenient Ziplock bag, he started to make his way into the room, abruptly falling down without the slightest grace as his already-altered motor skills abandoned his legs. He hit the floor rather loudly.