#madness

In my hometown, Park City, Utah, things are usually pretty quiet and easygoing due to it being the so called, “Number 1 Ski Town” on Earth by about 15 different ski magazines. Not much happens other than the Sundance Film Festival and ski season. I am telling you this to give you some background and to let you realize that nothing paranormal or odd ever happens here or to any of it’s people.

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…

I grew up in an area where the properties are so large and the families are so wealthy, that they build mansions and walls inclosing themselves in their own private paradises - never interacting with their neighbors unless by some strange coincidence. I was home-schooled until the age of 7, which is where this story ends.

Sarah rolled over, glancing at the digital clock resting on her nightstand. She groaned when she saw the green numbers read 2:59 am. As she started to roll over again, a flash of lightning lit up her room and she froze. Her eyes darted to her bedroom window where she thought she had seen a dark figure climbing in, until another flash of lightning proves there’s nothing there. Sarah sighed and rolled over, mumbling to herself. She closed her eyes, drifting back into peaceful slumber.

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…

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…

I have never been a good flyer. Anxiety mixed with a fear of heights makes airplanes my personal hell. Currently, I find myself in the terminal solely for my mother. She was diagnosed with cancer recently and is rapidly deteriorating. My mom is the only person in my immediate family I truly care about, as I have no siblings and my father passed away years ago. Flying is the only option to reach her before she passes. With each passing minute, my anxiety intensifies. The plane has been delayed…

I've never been a very sociable kid. To be completely honest, I've never really seen the point of it. People talk about the same things over and over again. Meaningless things. The weather. The weekend. Work. School. As I've gotten into my late teens, I've grown to loathe it. Whenever I hear the kids in my classes or in the halls talking about the same old crap and giggling my blood boils. People avoid me mostly, which can be expected. A few of the more brutish kids pick on me, but I just…

A dream of pale, flesh colored thread. I blinked back the darkness encompassing my vision, revealing again the dusty room we had been biding our time in. I must've fallen asleep, and the Sun was now dead, the window revealing night blanketed over the countryside. The moonlight casted shadows of corpses of forests and dead verdure, the sheets of snow reflecting the light with a strange sheen.

I've lost control in every sense of the word. The steering wheel is slipping loosely through my crimson splattered hands and the cry of a father’s daughter screaming in agony echoes in my conscious. The knife on the passenger seat is sliding back and forth across the leather like a euphoric heretic mid ritual as the grim world outside is reflecting onto its scarlet tainted surface. The rain is growing greater and greater and my car’s wheels barely maintain their connection onto the road as I…

New York City, 1980: Giuseppe Russo sat in his small city apartment. It felt no larger than a jail cell, but had just about everything he ever dreamt of. His bed sat in a window nook on the right wall across from the entrance. Two bookshelves sat on both ends of his bed.

From the moment I closed my eyes to the accident I had gotten myself into, I knew that it would never be the same ever again. Never would I have guessed though, that I would survive pretty much unharmed. Well... that's still a bit of an understatement. My arms and legs work the way they're supposed to. But my mind... not so much anymore. I've started to see things. The world and the people have changed since the moment I woke up. It's almost as if I've entered another world entirely.

James Locke had always been a quiet man, the sort whose presence barely registered in a crowded room, and he had grown used to it. There was a strange comfort in being unnoticed, in blending into the gray pattern of city life without anyone truly looking at him.

It’s Christmas time, and my mom wanted to start a new tradition. Of course she had to make it “Elf on a Shelf”. I wasn’t too enthusiastic about the idea, but she knew that I wouldn’t go for just a hidden elf. So my mom made it a murdering elf. Why the fuck not, right? It’s already creepy enough looking already. But that’s not it. She put post-it notes on the elf and they were clues to find the “victims” of the elf. She knew I was horrible at finding things, so this was for her amusement. I was…

I work the night shift at a local mom-and-pop convenience store at the front of my neighborhood. We sell snacks, drinks, milk, bread, all the normal stuff that people need but aren’t willing to make a traditional run to the grocery store for. There was talk about adding a gas pump out front, but it hasn’t happened yet.

The sound of the gentle tapping of the rain on my window awakens me. Just by glancing over at the window I can see the dark autumn sky even though it must still be around noon. Slowly I get up from the couch, I must have dozed off for a minute or so. I walk over to my kitchen to see if there is anything to eat. Opening all the cabinets and finally the freezer, I discover that I'm all out of food. Damn, I forgot, it's grocery day today... and I still have to go out with this shitty weather.

Summer in Colorado Springs was exceptionally hot that year. Jim, Jack, and their younger sisters, Judy and Jill, were spending their time carelessly, playing in the front yard. One day, their parents went out shopping, leaving the siblings with strict orders not to wander off and to watch the house. As the shopping took longer than expected, the boys grew restless and decided to go for a short walk in the woods. Their sisters followed them.

For the tenth time that day, Lucy's phone rang. She knew that, because she had been counting. And for the tenth time that day, Lucy ignored the shrill sounds of the phone. She didn't much care for it, it was if anything annoying and too persistent for her taste. What she had learned, was that persistence got you killed. Much like curiosity. And she would be giving into both those things if she were foolish enough to answer the phone.

I have a teacher at school that teaches a variety of subjects and he is generally well liked, the only strange thing about him is that he doesn't call any student by their real names but by their future potential from his opinion. He comes in class and starts doing the register. "Potential murderer" teacher shouts out and Callum raises his hand as he knows it's him because the teacher always calls him by that name.

Hello, my name is Alice. This is my story. No no, Not the cliche story of falling down a rabbit hole into a mysterious unknown land with a Red Queen who cuts off heads and a man in a ridiculous hat who has tea parties. No this isn't like that.