#psychological

It was Halloween in the year 2015. I remember waking up at 7AM, feeling stoked for Halloween and watching Charlie Brown. I saw people from outside my neighborhood decorating at the last minute because a lot of people like slacking on Halloween.

The Bainbridge Ghost Tours used to be a tradition in my hometown around Halloween. It was always cheap and heavy on the schlock. Hammy tour guides, cheesy music, cheap decorations. Picture ‘Monster Mash’ as a two-hour ghost tour and you get the idea. But given the town's limited history and questionable urban legends, I couldn't really blame Mr. and Mrs. Wesley for going all out with their prized attraction.

Xavier Truman drove with one hand resting loosely on the steering wheel, the other drumming against the door in rhythm with the radio. Late afternoon sunlight filtered through the windshield, bathing the quiet neighborhood in a warm, nostalgic haze. The radio crackled softly.

“HELP!” I yell, at least I believe I’m yelling, the feeling of my skin bubbling, is it bubbling… I don’t know. I can feel it, but I don’t know if it is what I think it is. I am or at least what I believe I am… I don’t know. It’s cold wait what does cold feel like again sigh I think I sighed. My body grows old and decayed, my flesh turning a colour I cannot perceive, my hair falling out of my grotesque scalp or what’s left of it. He… no, IT did this. My senses have been stripped away from me, I…

The Doorman

"What are you gazing at...? What's there outside the window...?" "Outside the window...? Nothing." "Nothing? Looking at nothing?" "It's her... my... my ghostly girl." Beloved women... They, like a sudden downpour, come, turn you into themselves, and vanish… leaving you… leaving you alone with your own shadow called sorrow.

Tap, tap, tap… Tap, tap. Silence... tap.

Most people have never heard someone die. The moaning. The crying. The pleading. The last tortured breath before they go quiet. Most people will never hear those things. I do. Daily. No, I’m not a serial killer on a hellbent mission to cleanse the Earth. I’m a 911 operator. When I took the job ten years ago, I assumed I’d more or less be like an air traffic controller, but for emergency response teams. For a large portion of my job, that’s true. That’s the easy part. Death is harder.

The trip was fun. From what we could remember at least. Olivia and I had made the weekend trip down to St. Augustine, Florida with her younger brother John. The four hour drive from Albany, Georgia to one of America’s oldest cities was long and boring. The four-lane highways we traveled along were barren and isolated, surrounded by nothing but miles of impenetrable forest save for the occasional shithole rest stop.

I never saw the faces of the men who kidnapped me. I'd been too busy working when the gang of them burst through the front door. Like smoke from an explosion, the kidnappers spread through the entire building. They demanded victims and turned our world upside down searching for them. They didn't speak outside of grunted demands and language so blue that if you could see the words spilling from their mouths, it'd be a dam breaking.

Why Does My New Born Baby Have Memories Of My Dead Brother? Our baby, Lily, is barely two weeks old, but she's taken to crying at exactly 3:14 AM. It started on the third night in the hospital, a high-pitched keening that rattled the monitors and made me bolt upright. My husband, Jacob, sleep-shy but determined to comfort her, reached into the bassinet. When he came back, his face was pale. "She did it again," he whispered. "She sounded like…like Matt."

Think about this for a second, when you delete a file, a video, an image, literally anything on the internet, where does it go? Is it technically still out there? Is it in the hands of someone else? Well, I sure as hell found out.

This Is How You Teach a Child to Die Slowly. "I exist in two places: here, and where you left me." — Margaret At wood. • There it goes again. It starts with a frightening silence. Then… slam! "Jesus!" my mother screams, like she's just realized how close she is to actually meeting Him. We run again. My brothers dive under the bed. My sister clings to my mom, as though she's thinking "maybe this time, she'd actually go, and I can go with her."

Year 157, Near the end of the fall season. I'm not sure what day it is. I am a regular guy who lives in the peaceful village of "Unut." And today, I am helping the village elder by chopping some logs for him. "But he's not going to pay me shit." I said as I swung my axe. I'm only helping him because he's like a father to me. I was a little child when my family abandoned me. Yet he took me in and raised me to this age. "And I am going to do his chores for the rest of his lifetime."

The ball streaked towards little Jimmy Hanson, covering the distance uncomfortably fast. The scrawny boy two sizes too small with the aviator glasses, cringed out of the way. It landed directly where he had been standing, and like that the game ended. “Damnit Jimmy, you're supposed to catch the ball not hide from it!” a fat kid with a glove on one hand cried.

The past is not dead. It is not even past." — William Faulkner • I don't remember who called me about the funeral. I assume it was Aunt Lillian's neighbor, or maybe someone from the church, but the truth is, I picked up the phone, I heard my name, and everything after that is a smear of static and vowels. Now I'm standing on the porch of my great-aunt's house, our family's house surrounded by pines, decay, and a smell I can't name but instinctively hate. The front door is already open.

By WedgeOverPotato

It took me longer than it should have to realize one simple truth: humanity has a blind spot, and hiding in it are living nightmares.

Tap. Tap. Tap. My footsteps echo through the dark hallway. I swallow hard as I get close enough to the door. Damnit... Does it really have to be done? I can feel my arms tremble. Just before coming here I dressed warmer, but the cold is still entering my body. "Come on, come on." I whisper trying to get some motivation into my body. One minute. Two minutes. "Fuck..." I press the doorknob down and look down the stairs. I have no choice but to go down. Step. Step.

I put on my running shoes with springs, designed to cushion the impact on the ground. It was my nightly ritual, something I did every single day without fail: running to the neighboring town, keeping my body busy and my mind free of thoughts. It was almost five o’clock, and the sun still stubbornly lingered in the sky, painting everything with a pale golden light.