The terrible sense of Déjà vu swept over him as Billy threw him to the black top. He knew he had been here before as his tormentor mounted him pinning him to the ground. His shrill cries only caused Billy to grin sadistically as he threw the first punch that broke his nose. His piercing screams that had served in his childhood to force his daycare provider to attend to his needs served no purpose in the brutal, adolescent world of high school. Billy set into the beating that would haunt his dreams the rest of his adolescent and adult life. The brute laughed even louder at his feeble attempts to defend himself. He had always been scrawny, and it…

“I’m going to Saturn,” Isaac said under his breath. I looked over towards his desk and jokingly said back, “You’re going there for summer break?” Isaac just stared downward scribbling something in his notebook, ignoring me, mumbling to himself. I sighed and moved back in my seat and stared at the clock. Only 10 minutes until we’re out of here and summer finally begins. Isaac and I weren’t exactly friends, at least not since we were kids, but we got along all right during the school year. We worked on some projects in class and sat together at lunch every so often. We’ve been talking a lot less in the past few months, though. Recently he’s been a lot more…

Luneland: Now hiring full-time and part-time cast members. Residence and accommodations onsite. Contact Grace Delacroix in the back office. The poster depicted a beautiful crystalline tower with a dragon clinging to the side, in the center of a medieval village where families in modern clothing walking around. On the horizon were rollercoasters and flat rides – drop tower, pirate ship, star flier – but none were as high as the tower. It looked like a summer job opportunity sent from heaven, but God, I was nervous. I kept looking at the poster in my hands as I waited in front of a door marked “Employees Only”, on the back side of one of the buildings. This poster was my way…

I would like to start this story by saying that Ray was great. A perfect gentleman and consummate professional. He didn’t send a single untoward word or glance in my direction the entire time we were together. Even when things got scary, he put my safety first. And in spite of everything that happened to us, we’re already talking about working together again. I just want to lead with that, because I know that as soon as I start to tell my story – tell you that I’m an amateur female model who did a nude photoshoot with a male photographer twice my age in an isolated location in the countryside – most of the people reading this are going…

Leonard pushed his face firmly into the crease of his elbow as another scathing blast of frigid air blew through the valley. The snow piled up at his feet while he stumbled up a small incline, struggling to keep his balance, the biting cold permeating his winter jacket. Shivering, he turned, baring his back to the icy downpour and staring across the barren fields of white before him. At the very crest of the blizzard, a single tent was cartwheeling, leaving a trail of tiny dents as each of its jagged ends hit the ground. He prayed no-one was inside as he watched it disappear from sight, disintegrating to torn scraps of material. Tracing the tent’s path, he spotted a…

“Ladies. Gentlemen. Revenants to whom these distinctions have long since succumbed to the natural processes of putrefaction. I stand before you today with indisputable proof that Earth is ruled not by Man but by Nameless Things that dwell far beneath our serene and sunlit surface world. Yes, you all heard me correctly; Hollow Earth is as real as the Bavarian Illuminati. A vast, sprawling labyrinth of tunnels and chasms forged not from geological forces but rather by the antediluvian behemoths of the Deep Biome themselves! Do not fool yourselves, my friends! We live in blissful ignorance of Chthonic terrors galivanting with impunity beneath our very feet! An entire ultraterrestrial ecosystem which predates the last common ancestor of all surface life,…

I was 13 when I first tried to kill myself. The orphaned son of a dead drug dealer and an incarcerated illiterate, I grew up knowing nothing but neglect and abuse. I was on my third foster home in nine months when I first tried. Wolfing down a handful of Tylenol, I had no idea what I was doing.  I survived this attempt, but only after spending 72 hours in a locked psychiatric facility. A locked psychiatric facility that was about as therapeutic as a supermax prison. But after three days of being force fed antipsychotics and raw-raw bullshit, I was released and kicked to the curb with little more than some cool new grippy socks. I would go on to repeat this process…

“What’s up with her, Sammy?” Steven grunted, puffing on his half-burned cigarette. It was early morning, the rising sun cresting the horizon and engulfing the gaps of the forest with its light. Slowly but surely, the day’s warmth was chasing away the nightly spring air, the tree leaves illuminated in their gorgeous, silky green. All seemed right as Steven absent-mindedly tapped a chunk of ash onto the ground, leaning over the edge of the cabin balcony. From across the sparkling river that curled past their remote home sat a single bear, reclined against a thick tree trunk. “Oh, that’s Suzy!” Samantha cooed as she hurried outside in her dressing gown, joining her husband at his side. “Funny name for a…

Up and up the rough-hewn steps tramp the wormy feet of countless dark denizens. They move in silence through the earth’s bowels with a singular purpose. Stirred from restless sleep and unholy dreams. Stirred from aimless wriggling and horrid scavenging. Stirred by the voice of their beloved mother, vast and terrible. She bids them rise, and rise they do. None shall disobey their doting matriarch. And so, they rise the ancient steps and forgotten causeways. Passing through slimy tunnels filled with a fetid stew flowing from unseen waterways. Their steps faintly echo before being devoured by the yawning darkness of countless pits. Their hunched forms move through the dark with a seemingly awkward gait. Yet none of them stumble or…

The mountain was tall and malformed.  It jutted out of the earth as a singular monolith, unbothered and undisturbed in its growth from any other rock formations budding up against it and contorting its growth or shape.  For millions of years, it was left as a black sheep in the vastness, just barely far enough not to fall into the fold of the Appalachian Mountains that eclipsed its height and size.  Mount Ostium, as it was known to us outsiders who came to it for study, was a nexus of mystery and old urban legend all across southern Georgia, where it resided long before people had a name for where it lay.  In pre-colonial times, it had been the site…