#psychological

I was in the schoolyard when, suddenly, my friend Christopher Satin or as i call him, Chris, told me: "Damian, I have something to tell you. I’ve known you since we were little, so I wanted you to be the first person I told." Chris was always one for jokes; his personality matched his appearance—a skinny, 5'7 guy with curly, shoulder-length blonde hair. Seeing him look so serious worried me; he’s usually terrible at acting serious, so I had a feeling he was probably not faking it.

The widow, Laura, walked into the garden. Cracked Stone walls surrounded her, their green vines slithering toward bushes plump with blood-red berries. At the center of the garden stood a rectangular stone basin shaped like an angel. It knelt before the pool as if to deliver water from its mouth. Yet what flowed was bleak black water, filled with sticks and the smal bodies of dying insects. When she was younger, she remembered tossing coins and watching them sink into the water's darkness.…

For three days after I found the rabbit, nothing else had happened. That frightened me more than the noises had. The woods had gone quiet. Not truly quiet. The birds still called in the mornings. Cicadas screamed from the trees in the afternoon. At night, the frogs took over the creek. But the other sounds stopped. No howls. Not footsteps beneath my window. No knocking against the walls. Nothing watched from the pasture either. Nothing moved in the tree line.

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.

I was seventeen years old when my father took us out of Boston. I loved the idea! Or at least I thought I would. For many years afterward, whenever someone asked where the trouble began, I told them it began in those mountains. That wasn’t true… It began long before we saw them.

I usually don’t write my experiences down in journals like this. Typically, I’d prefer to just keep my unsavory memories in my head to let them rot away over time, which makes the pain easier to cope with. However, with everything that has happened to me recently, I’d feel guilty if I just let all those traumatic experiences simply be forgotten about, especially since they involve friends and people so dear to me… So, I shall tell the story of that godforsaken Airbnb and how it led me down a…

The release wing door buzzed before it opened. There was no ceremony to it. No applause. No relief. Just a metal door that opened and closed without emotion. Daniel Danvers stood beside his car in the visitor lot, cigarette balanced between his fingers, smoke unraveling into the cloudy afternoon sky. The gravel shifted under his shoes when he adjusted his stance. He checked his phone again. No new messages from Alexander.

Mr. Pike arrived shortly after noon. I knew it was him before father said anything. There was something about the way the man approached the house that made him uneasy. Most visitors, as in would imagine, would look towards the farmhouse first. Not Pike. He looked straight to the woods. He came up the road in a dark green truck that coughed smoke behind it and rattled like loose bones. The truck stopped near the barn, but Pike didn’t immediately get out of the truck.

Her head felt hazy. Something was wrong—she could feel it, the way you feel a storm before it breaks. Something bad was coming. She tried to open her eyes. Her body felt heavy, weighted down, as if invisible hands were pressing her into the floor. And somewhere close, someone was crying. Her eyelids fluttered open. A girl was lying on top of her, weeping into her chest. Panic surged through Jasmine—she shoved the girl away before her mind could catch up with her body.

The first warning sign came about eighteen months in. I remember it precisely because I had been sweating my ass off—hunched over a server tower in the equipment room, staring at temperature readouts that were climbing way too fast. The fan wall was choking itself to death on all the dust bunnies that accumulated on its intake. I couldn’t afford to take a server offline, since it communicated with all the others. Which meant I was doing it live—on my hands and knees, myself.

Mr. Zimmer didn’t want his last Halloween to end like this, alone in a dark cold room, an invalid while children and parents alike roamed the streets outside asking for candy and dressed in costumes. He remembered when he was young and fit, and when he hadn’t shattered his spine by falling off a roof setting up spooky decorations. At his old age, and with what little money his family possessed, it was easier for everyone to toss him into a nursing home. Easier for everyone except Mr. Zimmer…

After they came to our door, my sibling stopped being a “problem.” That’s what my parents wanted, at least. But all I can remember is them being a normal kid. Yeah, they caused trouble sometimes–but they were young. That’s it. That’s all it was. Nothing that wouldn’t have passed on its own. And that’s exactly what those two people promised when they showed up. They didn’t look strange at first. Just calm. Polite. Like they’d done this a hundred times before. Five minutes, they said.

Perhaps it's just my world, but it might also be yours. Everyone here wears a mask. A real mask, maybe the one given from the beginning or one changed or even stolen. Our masks decide everything for us: our emotions, jobs, school, friends, relationships, chances in life and even crimes. Our whole identity really. Without our masks, we can't live since there isn't really anything underneath it. We all get our first mask just after birth after all.

There was this tiny indie horror movie that basically nobody had seen. I don't even remember how we found it. Maybe TikTok, or maybe someone on Reddit recommended it. It had one of those titles that sounded way cooler after you finished watching it than before, and it looked like it had a budget of maybe twenty dollars. Somehow it still worked. It wasn't really scary in the traditional sense. There weren't any monsters or cheap jump scares. It was just... unsettling.

I've been such a coward. Never before have I stooped this low. Never before have I done something like this out of fear. Yes, it's all because of a fear that can thoroughly be explained and the reason is an understandable one. But somehow the feeling I got from doing it hasn't left me. It's like it's slowly rubbing my back, poisoning my skin. It has burned itself deep into my soul and the chills I got from that day still haven't disappeared in the slightest. I dislike this feeling.

The first time my neighbor asked if I was new here I said yes. The second time I told her she'd already asked. This started in the parking area of an old apartment building. It was evening and my cousin and I were sitting there talking about random things. The building was old. The paint was faded. The balconies looked worn out and there were cracks in some of the walls. Nothing looked scary. It just felt strange. And it was very quiet.

Plot: It is the year 1929. Stanley Fontaine, an American writer of mystical horror novels, is forced to leave his city after losing his inspiration. After many years, he decides to travel to Louisiana on the Eastern Express, where the staff is of the highest calibre and nothing seems to foreshadow any misfortune. Yet soon he begins to realise that what we see is not always reality, and that most people have grown accustomed to living in sweet flattery. This very carriage conceals a multitude of…

​THERE EXIST such places where every fragment, every corner is pierced by pain, suffering, darkness, and oppression. It is so dense and stifling there that in some places it makes you want to vomit. The mind is drilled through as if by an auger, and every second of drilling feels like an eternity. It is as if someone has sat on a chair full of spikes in a dark, merciless torture chamber full of cruelty, blood, and pain. Time is not measured here because time does not exist here at all.…

DATE OF INCIDENT: 2306-04-29 REPORTING OFFICER: Captain L. Voss, Service No. 4071, District 9 LOCATION: BLACKGULL-9A-0102-THALASSA INCIDENT TYPE: ANOMALOUS EVENT INCIDENT SEVERITY: CRITICAL

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.