Datasets:

Elcaida
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convos

Dataset card Data Studio Files Files and versions Community

Split (1)

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conversations listlengths 2 2
[ { "role": "user", "content": "A stillness in the night." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Watching them like this is cathartic. I'm only steps away from them, completely within their grasp, but they're ignorant to my presence. The advantages of both stillness and shadows.\r\nThey've been looking for me for a while, but it seems they've chosen to stop and rest. The game isn't all that fun unless you're being chased. So now I made a new game. To stand here, amongst them, to see if they realize.\r\nSure, the campfire brings a dim light in these woods. The tents, haphazardly thrown together, makes it feel like a shanty town. The cans of beans roasting in the fire, a sent of maple on the air. They've dragged some logs to sit on. A few to split for fire wood, and some to hold back the dogs. Curious though, as they've also not spotted my presence.\r\nTheir ears, their snouts, so sensitive, yet still I remain undetected. Their raucous laughter, beer soaked clothes, and cigarette smoke seems to have masked both my scent and the small crackling of leaves beneath my feet. I have never been so close to so many who remained so completely oblivious to me and my intentions.\r\nThe dogs hear something and look upwards. This is so incredible. They're reacting to squirrels and birds but not me. They start to bark and the men look up and their faces turn to what I can only describe as abject horror.\r\nOne by one they start to be ripped upwards into the air. Both man and dog alike having stepped into some sort of trap. As I watched, it was difficult to keep my heart from pounding out of my chest from fear. Some creature, the size of a small car, covered in spindly legs, wrapping each one in a mesh that suffocated their screams and barks. One by one went silent as they were covered, and their squirming stopped once they were revisited by the creature.\r\nI was frozen. What to do? I killed children in their beds, I escaped manhunts and avoided capture, surely this was within my wheelhouse? No? But what exactly have I walked into here? I think there may be time to escape. Unless...\r\nAs I peered at the ground, the leaves remained, unmoving in the wind, as if they were bound by something. A layer of fiber so imperceptible to my gaze that it went unnoticed. Was I trapped? Was I dead already? I looked upward, above my own head, and saw another frightful creature above. Something so still, so silent, that its presence evoked only mockery.\r\nBefore I could flee, I felt it. Not the fibers, not it's legs, but it's gaze. It saw me as if I were a burning beacon in the night. As I waited, remaining still, it approached me. Investigated me. I was able to study it in return. Unfortunately, no matter how masterful my control of my body is, the beating in my chest was my death knell." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Door That Wasn't There Yesterday" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Eliot lived alone in a one-bedroom apartment. Everything was routine—wake up, coffee, emails, TV, sleep. Same layout, same cracked tile in the kitchen, same creaky hallway floorboard near the bedroom.\r\nOne morning, as he stepped out of the bathroom, towel around his neck, he saw it.\r\nA door.\r\nOn the wall opposite his bedroom. Matte black, perfectly smooth. No knob, no hinges. Just there.\r\nHe stood frozen. It hadn’t been there yesterday. He was sure.\r\nHe touched it. Cold. Almost vibrating.\r\nWhen he turned around to grab his phone, the door was gone.\r\nA trick of the light, he told himself. Sleep deprivation. Easy.\r\nBut it came back the next day. And the next. Sometimes open just a crack. Once, he swore he saw his own hand reach out from inside it.\r\nNo matter how hard he tried, he could never catch it opening. Or closing. It just… was.\r\nEventually, he stopped sleeping. He set up cameras. None ever caught the door.\r\nHe started hearing whispers. Muffled. Not from the door—but in his head, when he looked at the door.\r\nHe broke down one night and painted over it.\r\nThe paint peeled off by morning.\r\nThen one day, Eliot saw something that shattered him.\r\nHe was on a video call with his sister. She laughed mid-conversation and said, “Is that a closet? Didn’t know you had one there.”\r\nHe turned to look behind him.\r\nThe door.\r\nWIDE open.\r\nDark inside. Endless.\r\nHe turned back to the screen.\r\nHe was gone. The video still ran. His room was visible. But no Eliot. No motion. Just the door.\r\nOpen.\r\nOn the video, someone else stepped into frame. Same room. Same clothes. Same face.\r\nBut it wasn’t him.\r\nIt stared into the camera and smiled.\r\nEliot woke up in darkness. No walls. No sound. No light. Only the door in front of him—closed now.\r\nAnd voices… whispering his name over and over.\r\nHe banged on the door. Screamed. No answer.\r\nOn the other side, the thing wearing his skin made coffee. Answered emails. Laughed with his sister. It lived his life better than he ever did.\r\nAnd every now and then, it paused by the wall.\r\nAnd listened.\r\nTo the muffled screams behind the door that wasn’t there yesterday." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Farm Hand" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I’ve been workin’ at this farm now for three months or so. It’s hard work, but I’m happy. Keeps my mind from wanderin’. Bad things tend to happen when I get bored. I don’t think those things are so bad, but everyone else does. People go missing—and when they’re found—let’s just say—they ain’t the same. They ain’t anything anymore. Their soul has left the building. I guess you could call it my vice. Murderin’.\r\nThe poor guy who owns this place and his family won’t expect what’s coming for them once the busy season comes to an end. They’ll be victims of my boredom. Then I’ll have to get on the road again. I’m used to it by now. Travelin’. Escapin’. Life—and death.\r\nNow if you’ll excuse me—I’m gonna go get a nice cold lemonade and daydream about the future. The farmer and his family. The looks on their faces when they see who I really am." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Bone Lantern" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Deputy-report log, compiled by Sheriff Harlan Price\r\nApril 11\r\nThey say the river coughed it up after dark: a lantern stitched from twelve pale ribs, barbed-wire hinges creaking in the breeze. No wick, no kerosene—just a damp glow that smelled of honeysuckle and iron. Jody McClane hauled it home, blistered by sun and raw with grief. His kid brother Caleb had slipped off the catfish pier two nights earlier; only the boy’s waterproof watch kept ticking in the reeds.\r\n“You bring that thing inside and Caleb’ll find the porch light,” Jody’s ma warned, rubbing her rosary bald.\r\n“He’s lost,” Jody rasped. “This’ll guide him.”\r\nThat first night the cage pulsed a low red—same fever-color they hang in windows during flu season. It threw no shadow, yet Ma swore she felt someone peeking through a keyhole in the dark.\r\nApril 12\r\nThe light shifted blue near dawn. Ma heard her dead husband’s name pour from the ribs like water over stones; Jody heard his own. I visited mid-morning. Dog wouldn’t cross the threshold. Jody’s shoulders peeled like he’d sunburned from the inside. He wouldn’t let me confiscate the lantern.\r\nPrice note: Jody kept turning Caleb’s mud-smeared watch in his palm, listening for the tick.\r\nApril 13\r\nNeighbors reported sobs leaking from their sheds and culverts—long, hungry cries. I returned at noon. Front door gaped, house silent. On the kitchen table sat Caleb’s watch, still ticking but dripping riverwater. Above it, the lantern hung from the ceiling-fan chain, jaw now gaping where light had been. Teeth—small, milk-white—clicked inside the ribs.\r\nI tipped my hat lower so Deputy Ellis couldn’t see me shiver. Took nothing, touched nothing.\r\nOngoing\r\nWe chained the place, but the lantern keeps burning. Locals claim:\r\n• Red on fever nights.\r\n• Blue when a family name is spoken underground.\r\n• Gold the evening before someone disappears.\r\nEvery color is brighter than the one before.\r\nA week after Jody vanished, tree-roots near the pier pushed up twelve new ribs, perfect twins to the first cage. Makes me wonder if there’s a rib for every soul the river intends to keep.\r\nI come by sometimes, stand outside the lock, and listen. The tune is never the same, but it’s always a lullaby, and it always ends on one word—drawn long, bubbling, almost tender:\r\n“Caleb.”\r\nThe light flares when it says the name, as if answering a roll call neither dead nor living can refuse. You feel it marking you, picking which bone will be next.\r\nAnd each time that glow blooms, the watch on my desk ticks a shade louder, like it’s counting ribs that haven’t surfaced yet.\r\nI keep my distance.\r\nBut the lantern keeps getting brighter." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Hyper-Hypochondriac solution to disease" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "It was more of a prison than a hospital, but that didn’t concern me. I was here to meet the good doctor. I was here to invest.\r\nThe golden age of medicine never came. Didn’t you hear? The government shut down all that superfluous medical research. Billionaire wanted tax cuts, and now my job’s nearly impossible.\r\nI work for a pharmaceutical company. Let’s just say I’m the head of research and development. And to find the next breakthrough, I’m in this hellhole.\r\nThe lights flickered when I entered his office. “Nothing to worry about,” he told me. They were just using the super computers.\r\nHe gave me a brief tour. He struck me as half mad-scientist, half con-man. But he was getting results.\r\nThe good doctor was waiting on a patent for a general cure. You read that right. A cure-all. The end of hospitals. The end of medicine. Something wrong? Take the cure-all!\r\n“And here it is,” he said to me. He flipped a switch. Through a big two way mirror, I saw a sad looking woman in a hospital gown.\r\n“Is she going to get the Cure-All?”\r\n“She is the Cure-All. One of them.”\r\nHer name was Melody. The good doctor told me she was what was called a, ‘Hyper-Hypochondriac’. Her anxieties had been cultivated since she was a child.\r\n“Watch and behold,” the good doctor said. He began typing on a computer. In the room, a screen lit up and writing appeared to Melody.\r\n“Your diagnosis: full body rash.”\r\nI saw the poor woman turn beet red, little bumps appearing all over her. She began scratching herself all over, groaning in pain, wincing.\r\n“Jesus,” I said.\r\n“That’s not the best part. She is so afraid of disease, that her body will produce antibodies that will fight rashes. Any rashes.”\r\n“Bullshit.”\r\n“Oh yes. Melody is one of our best Hyper-Hypochondriacs. But I’ve saved the best show for you. This will guarantee your company's investment. The Cure-All.”\r\nThe good doctor began typing, furiously. Sweat beaded on his brow.\r\nThe screen in the room began listing disease after disease. Descriptions of symptoms flashed in her eyes. She screamed. Her body became a mass of anomalies. Tumors, scabs. Her skin was patches of yellow and green, red and black. She threw up bile and blood.\r\nSoon, she was motionless.\r\n“Her blood right now is worth trillions of dollars.”\r\nShe began shaking, seizing. She snapped up inhumanly fast. She leapt at the mirror between us, crashing through. The good doctor didn’t have time to scream. His skin began changing just like Melody’s.\r\nIt seemed the every-disease he gave her was contagious.\r\nI ran away as fast as I could. My skin was still the same, so I don’t think I was infected.\r\nI sped all the way back to my manager. Told him I found the investment of a lifetime.\r\nI had barely spoken to him when a giant lump grew out of his forehead." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Heathlands" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I inherited Crow House from my late uncle, Simeon. I can say most assuredly that he was a charming but untrustworthy fellow. He had also acquired quite a fortune.\r\nThe estate is grand but isolated, settled as it is in the heathlands of Norfolk. The nearest village is over ten miles away but deliveries of food and other sundries were regular. Others despair at the atmosphere in which I reside but to me it is wonderful. I often stare out of the master bedroom as the evening mist rolls tentatively towards the house, utterly shrouding the haunted landscape.\r\nIt was on such an evening, ensconced as I was in the library with a snarling fire and a glass of port, that my man informed me that a carriage had arrived. I commented on the peculiar hour and my man concurred.\r\n“Most peculiar,” he said. “Howevers, guests we have.”\r\nWith some resignation I placed my journal on the table and followed my man to greet them: three ladies in all, young and clearly suffering from the travails of their journey. The miserable elements that roam the heathlands have no sympathy for those who venture within.\r\nThey introduced themselves as Sophia, Emily and Victoria. I brought them into the library where it was warmest and summoned hot tea and griddle cakes. The colour returned to their faces and, in the glowing candlelight, I was quite stirred by their evident beauty.\r\n“This is quite unexpected,” I admitted. “Did you become lost in the heathlands? Perchance on your way to Holt?”\r\nVictoria nodded. “We have been lost for some hours. It was good fortune our driver spotted the illuminations of your abode.”\r\n“Indeed,” I said. “The heath can be brutal. You were fortuitous in finding me.”\r\nSophia sipped her tea and spoke.\r\n“When we first saw it I will admit to recollecting such a scene from one of the ghost stories of the Penny Dreadfuls: an imposing mansion hidden within a disconcerting fog.”\r\nI laughed. “I imagine it is. Sadly, the heath holds a great many unlucky souls.”\r\nThe ladies thanked me once again and subtly asked permission to stay the night; the request being granted without hesitation. My man saw to the horses and driver while I escorted the women to their rooms.\r\nIn the morning, I insisted that my guests had breakfast before being on their way. My man gave directions to their driver to ensure they arrived at Holt in good time.\r\nAs I waved them off, I felt ill thinking about their true destination out there in the heathlands.\r\nMy man had reluctantly done as I instructed, pointing the ladies to the gluttonous landscape and the hungry pit in which their carriage would plummet. At the bottom of said pit, an ancient, hellish beast with blistered lips would draw the flesh greedily from their bones. Hours later, their skeletons, turned golden and valuable, would be ejected.\r\nYea! This was the secret to my uncle’s wealth… and to my eternal damnation." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Wind Chimes" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Even though her mother died in a car accident twenty years ago, Catherine still felt lost without her.\r\nHoping to find comfort, Catherine moved back to her childhood home.\r\nA few days after her arrival, she went shopping at the town market.\r\nAs she browsed, a woman’s voice called to her. “You’re the spitting image of your mother.”\r\nThe woman’s name was Sheila. She was a friend of Catherine’s mother.\r\nCatherine eyed some of the trinkets Sheila was selling and noticed some tassels. They seemed familiar, but she didn’t know why.\r\nThey conversed, telling old stories.\r\nCatherine sighed. “I came back hoping to reconnect with her memory, but it’s not going well.”\r\n“I have something for you,” said Sheila.\r\nShe rummaged around and pulled out a wind chime.\r\n“This chime moves when spirits are near. Hang it inside your home, and you will be able to sense your mother’s presence.”\r\nCatherine took the gift to be polite. She hung it outside. Then, one particularly calm day she heard it ringing.\r\nCurious, she moved it to the kitchen. It started ringing at the exact time Catherine’s mother would have been cooking dinner.\r\nThe wind chime moved without any wind or other perceivable forces.\r\nFor the first time in twenty years, Catherine felt familial comfort. Her mother’s spirit really was present.\r\nExcited by the discovery, Catherine reached out to Sheila and bought more wind chimes. She hung them all around the house.\r\nLife was good, but then Catherine noticed something strange. Sometimes two chimes would ring at the same time.\r\nShe suspected that her mother wasn’t the only spirit in the house.\r\nAfter doing some research, she invited a paranormal investigator named Lucas to take a look.\r\nWhen he heard the chime sound, his eyes went wide.\r\n“Who gave these to you?”\r\n“A friend,” said Catherine.\r\n“Either this friend of yours has a vendetta against you or they have no idea what these things do.”\r\nCatherine was confused. “What do you mean?”\r\n“These wind chimes detect spirits, yes, but the sound they make is also tuned to attract evil spirits. They’re like dinner bells for demons.”\r\nJust then Catherine noticed a tassel hanging from the handle of her china cabinet, the same kind that Sheila had been selling at the market.\r\nNow Catherine remembered why it seemed familiar. That tassel was hanging from the mirror in mother’s car the day that she got into the accident.\r\n“I don’t know why,” said Catherine, ”but it’s possible that the woman who gave this to me has a vendetta against my family.”\r\nAs soon as she finished speaking, the wind chime began shaking violently. Every wind chime in the house shook at once, and the house filled with echoes of dissonant song.\r\n“We need to leave now,” Lucas shouted.\r\nBefore they could leave, every door in the house slammed shut. The lights went out. It was too late. The evil spirits attracted by the chime’s song were not going to let them leave." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The house signed the deed too" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The listing said “Charming fixer-upper with character.” They weren’t lying about the character—it just didn’t mention whose.\r\nFrom the start, the house felt… too quiet. Not peaceful—listening. My phone refused to hold a charge inside, and my dog, Murphy, would whimper every time I brought him through the door. He ran away three days in. I still find his bowl moved to different rooms.\r\nEvery morning, the kitchen smelled like someone had just made toast. I never bought bread.\r\nLight switches didn’t work the same way twice. Sometimes, flipping the bathroom light would turn on the attic fan. Once, it turned off the streetlamp outside. Another time, it played a lullaby through the air vents—an old tune my mother used to hum, though she’s been dead for years.\r\nI found a crawlspace I hadn’t noticed during the tour. Inside: a child’s shoe, a wedding ring, and a set of photographs. In every picture, someone stood on the front step, smiling wide, their eyes blacked out with ink. One photo was blank—except for the porch. And my welcome mat.\r\nThe whispering started in the second week. It didn’t say words, just rustled like dead leaves behind the walls. At 3:33 AM, the hallway lights would flicker, and the house would sigh. Like it was settling. Like it was breathing.\r\nThen the mirrors stopped showing me.\r\nAt first, I thought it was a lighting issue. But even in full sunlight, all I saw was the room behind me. No reflection. Once, I reached forward—and the mirror fogged up where my hand should have been.\r\nI tried to leave. Packed a bag, grabbed my keys. The front door was gone. It was just more wall now. I smashed through it with a hammer. Behind the plaster: bricks. Then bone. Then bricks again. The house was correcting itself.\r\nI screamed, begged, threatened. Nothing changed. Then I remembered something the neighbour had muttered the day I moved in, before she hurried inside: “If you ever want to leave… ask nicely.”\r\nSo I did. At 3:33 AM, I stood in the centre of the living room, shaking, and whispered:\r\n“Please… may I leave?”\r\nThe ceiling light dimmed. The floor creaked softly. A single cupboard opened.\r\nI took it as approval.\r\nI bolted. No lights. No goodbyes. Just bolted. The door was there this time. I stumbled outside into the cool air—and stopped dead.\r\nThe street was still mine. The house was still mine. But now, there were three of it. Identical. Each across from each other like a mirror maze. I turned to look behind me—\r\nAnd there I was. Standing in the window, smiling down at myself.\r\nI live here now. But I don’t think I’m the one inside anymore." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The fair maiden" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Finding a well preserved mummy in the Andes isn't all that unusual. The dry and cold climate make it possible for a human body to retain its features for centuries after the person's passing.\r\nWhat made our discovery peculiar was the departed's looks, while we were all aware that genetics could be full of surprises, finding a blonde woman in this place was odd. She was dressed in traditional Incan clothes and her platinum locks were braided.\r\nOur team came up with several theories, Dr Hamada thought that she might have been an albino, Dr Mendez said that maybe ancient Peruvians had come up with a way to bleach hair for cosmetic purposes and we just hadn't been aware until now.\r\nI came up with a more sinister explanation, maybe the woman wasn't as ancient as she seemed, maybe she was a tourist or a local of European ancestry and a victim of murder who met her demise in modern times. Testing needed to be done.\r\nCarbon dating refuted my theory, placing the person's death at around 1400 AD. And it was genetic testing that led to the biggest surprise, the woman was of Scandinavian ancestry. We concluded that this was proof that Nordic people had found their way to South America during pre-Colombian times.\r\n36 years later, I found out that we were wrong.\r\nI stumbled upon an article online narrating the process that led to an incredible event: the first \"time lapse\".\r\n\"After hundreds of fruitless attempts, an international team managed to turn fiction into fact, making time travel a reality. Dr Lopez a physicist from Peru and his team of brave volunteers fulfilled the scientist's lifelong dream of visiting Cuzco as it was before colonisation.\r\nAll members of the team but one came back safe and sound, we are thrilled to report this historical event and our hearts go to Dr Astrid Dinesen's family.\"" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "\"They Never Fixed the Screaming\"" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The apartment was perfect—cheap rent, decent location, and freshly renovated. The only catch? The previous tenant died inside. Suicide, they said. Quiet girl. No family.\r\nI moved in anyway. I’ve never been superstitious.\r\nThe first night, I heard screaming. Not loud—muffled, like someone was trapped inside the walls. I assumed it was the neighbors, or maybe just old pipes.\r\nThe second night, it happened again. 3:04 a.m. exactly. A woman’s voice, broken and raw, pleading in Greek: “Βοήθησέ με…” Help me.\r\nI asked the landlord. He looked uncomfortable.\r\n“That noise... it’s nothing. The old plumbing, maybe.”\r\nBy the third night, the voice had changed. It wasn’t asking for help anymore. It was laughing. Wet, choking laughter, like lungs full of water. And it was closer—right behind the bedroom wall.\r\nI put my ear to it.\r\nThere was scratching.\r\nThe drywall was thin. I couldn't help myself—I started peeling it back.\r\nThere was no insulation. No pipes. Just… space. Like a narrow gap between walls that shouldn’t exist. My flashlight barely reached inside, but I saw fingernails embedded in the wood. Dozens of them. Scraped off, bloody. Some still fresh.\r\nThen I saw an eye. Wide, unblinking.\r\nIt blinked.\r\nI jumped back and sealed the wall as best I could. I didn’t sleep.\r\nLast night, I woke up at 3:04 a.m. My bedroom door was open. I always close it. I got up to shut it—\r\n—and saw something on the inside of the wall.\r\nA word. Carved deep.\r\n“STAY”\r\nI moved out this morning. But just now, sitting in my car, I checked the voicemail the landlord left me.\r\nHe whispered:\r\n“She begged us to seal her in. Said if anyone let her out, she wouldn’t be the only one screaming.”" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Briefing" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“Everyone, check your rations. Two to three MREs, sealed. No bartering, no swapping. No repackaging. We don’t share food once we’re inside.”\r\nI watch them nod, unzip packs, count quietly. I wait for the sound of plastic, the seal clicks. Rachel pats her pouch twice—habit. Ben double-checks his. Good.\r\n“Water prep: extra canteens, purifiers, filters, iodine. We test everything twice. If either result’s off, we store it, but don’t drink it. Doesn’t matter how clean it looks. You know that.”\r\nBen mutters, “It looked clean last time.”\r\nRachel doesn’t look at him. “So did Emma's.”\r\nNo one speaks after that.\r\nEven the air seems to listen.\r\n“Lighting. Bring both. Headlamps first. Oil backup. You know why.”\r\nBen says, quiet, “They don’t always come with us.”\r\n“They don’t. Sometimes the light stays where it started. It’s fine if it’s stationary. Still useful. Just don’t chase it. You lose the light, you move on.”\r\nI catch Rachel glancing at her lamp like it might argue with me.\r\n“No multitools. No blades. No utensils. Eat with your hands. Nothing that can be perceived as a weapon—or turned into one.”\r\nThat silences everything.\r\n“We call her Sarah because she said that’s her name. That’s the only reason. We don’t know what she is. We don’t ask. We don’t say it again past this point.”\r\nI breathe slow.\r\n“She’s been affecting the water system again. Pipes weeping. They’re being temperamental. Sometimes angry.”\r\nI pause. It gets heavier when I say the name.\r\n“Stacy Bellington drowned washing her hands.”\r\nThe room doesn’t move.\r\n“The water traveled up her arms. Solidified in her lungs through her nose. It took three minutes.”\r\nNo one asks how I know that.\r\n“We’re going down there to bring her what we agreed to bring her. To leave it where she asked us to leave it. And then we come back up.”\r\nI let it settle. Everyone’s listening now. Even the air.\r\n“Keep your packs sealed. Keep your items to yourself. Don’t pass anything between hands. Don’t offer. Don’t trade. If someone drops something—leave it.”\r\n“If you have to touch someone else,” I say, quieter now, “do not let go until we’re out.”\r\nI scan them one last time.\r\n“We’re not going in to fix her. Just to appease.\r\nPray to whatever you believe in.\r\nEven if you don’t.\r\nHopefully we make it out unchanged.\r\nOr even at all.”" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Old Hag" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Every time Emmy fell asleep, she would have night terrors. It started with a chilling coldness and a dense fog that obstructed her vision in a desolate town void of living people. The air hung still, much like the corpses scattered along the roads in piles.\r\nThe sky pitch black with a blood-red moon hidden behind thick clouds, casting a faint glow from high above. Every building stood in a state of decay with their shattered windows and crumbling framework. From the shadows, red eyes peered, their narrowed gaze fixated on Emmy. This dream felt different, ominous, than the others, and it sent chills down her spine.\r\nAn eerie sound lured her in until she found herself standing in front of a broken window.\r\nWithout warning, something emerged from behind the windowsill startling her.\r\nEmmy almost jumped out of her skin when an daunting, old hag with gray skin, textured like petrified bark stared back at her. Deep cracks covered her face with various little bugs scurrying in and out of every fissure. Flakes of her skin peeled off in patches, revealing rotting muscle beneath. The stench so strong, it burned Emmy's eyes.\r\nShe had only one eye that buldged from her head. The other just an empty socket. A chilling smile spread across her face, revealing yellow, jagged teeth. As her smile widened, her skin cracked, creating new fissures where petrified skin had fallen off, with pieces of dead muscle and maggots tumbling from the holes. The sound of squelching flesh so revolting that Emmy’s body flinched with displeasure. The woman cackled, a sound so shrill that her eardrums felt as if they would burst.\r\nShe found herself unable to move as the old hag stood there, motionless, still smiling at her. Minutes stretched into what felt like hours as they remained frozen in place. Then, Emmy noticed some movement in the empty socket.\r\nWaves of maggots pour out of the black socket and with a gray hand, the hag catches a handful of them.\r\nTo Emmy's disgust, she starts licking them off her palm before lifting her hand and slowly inserting it, up to her wrist, into her empty socket. If that wasn't enough, she started twisting and turning her hand.\r\nThen she smiles wide, and black blood begins to drip down her chin, covering the windowsill in tiny droplets. A gurgling sound erupts from her throat, and hot spittle and bugs spew everywhere, paralyzing Emmy with fear.\r\nThe creature proceeded to climb over the broken windowsill with an fearsome speed, twisting and turning. Its limbs crackling and elongating like a spider, with every joint bending in unnatural ways. Emmy found herself lying helplessly amidst the rubble, trying to scramble backward desperately hoping to wake up.\r\nThe old hag made its way to her, laughing and taunting her before slowly crawling on top of Emmy, suffocating her.\r\n\"You'll never wake up again.\"" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Our Arrival at the Last Station" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "It was about 8PM, the least crowded hour at the train station in Calisto City. The next train I was about to board was scheduled to arrive at 8:12. I looked as far as I could to the right end of the railway from the station platform.\r\nI saw a pair of lights cutting through the night, about to enter the station.\r\nThere it was—my ride home.\r\nBut then I saw the huge clock mounted on the station’s ceiling, and it showed 8:08. The trains here were always on time. So the train wasn’t supposed to arrive for another four minutes.\r\nUnusual. But not strange.\r\nMy train ran smoothly. Nothing seemed off. I was supposed to get off at the last station, Guardala Station. I looked through the window and saw the station sign: \"Guardala.\"\r\nBut the train I was on kept running past Guardala.\r\nGuardala was the last stop for the train. No train should have been able to run past it. There was no railway beyond Guardala.\r\nAfter passing Guardala, the train somehow glided across a frozen landscape.\r\nI boarded the train in the summer, and a few moments later, it was all frozen?!\r\nWhen the train finally screeched to a halt, the doors hissed open to a suffocating silence.\r\nThere was no wind. No birds. No sound.\r\nWe all tried to explore the station, looking for a way out. The station seemed unusually large; we couldn’t see its borders.\r\nAs a few other passengers and I stepped into the basement, we were shocked to see an extremely large room full of pods with glass covers, each containing a human, appeared to be cryogenically frozen.\r\n“Find ones that are empty, and get inside,” a voice startled us. We turned around to see a group of men wearing black military outfits and gas masks. One of them stepped forward; it was clear he was the leader.\r\nThe leader explained to us that we were in Calisto, our very own city—but not the Calisto we knew.\r\nIt was Calisto in the year 3380, not 2025.\r\nThe man continued to explain that Earth had collapsed from ozone destruction, pollution, and the loss of thousands of forests, which had led to a total eclipse. For decades, people all over the world had been dying from unknown diseases. The soil was destroyed. Nothing could be planted.\r\nSomething had happened starting in 2024—we didn’t know what—that eventually triggered the devastating destruction of Earth.\r\nThey had built a system that could fix everything, but it would take 650 years to heal the planet, and save humanity.\r\n“So, find empty pods, and get inside,” he repeated his initial command.\r\n“What if we refuse?” another passenger asked.\r\n“You have two options,” the leader said. “Either you get into a cryopod and wake up to continue your life 650 years from now, or...”\r\nThen, almost immediately, everyone in black military outfits raised their guns and aimed them at us.\r\n“Or you die. Right here, right now.”" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Crow Wasn't Who I Thought" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Please, don't tell anyone. This will be our little secret…\r\nI've been unemployed for a while. Homeless, forgotten, living in the shadows of the city. At night, I sit on my favorite bench in the plaza—hidden in a corner where I can watch everyone without being seen.\r\nOne night, I overheard a young couple chatting nearby. They laughed, kissed, and talked excitedly about a masquerade party they were going to. At their feet was a bag with their costumes and a few flyers. When they left, they forgot it.\r\nI waited, just in case they came back. They didn’t.\r\nInside the bag: a black suit, a hat, a mask. I put it all on. I even grabbed my old cane—leftover from an accident no one remembers—and headed to the address on the flyer.\r\nThe house was a towering Victorian mansion. Lights glittered like stars, music drifted through the air, and the scent of roasted meat and wine teased my hunger. A man at the door asked for the flyer, then waved me in.\r\nIt was beautiful. Inside, dozens of masked guests danced and laughed. I sat in a corner, unnoticed, as the music shifted to something darker, deeper. A woman in a beast-like mask approached me and asked me to dance. Her voice was strange—calm, but probing. She asked if I was sure I wanted to be there. I laughed it off. My plan was simple: grab some valuables and vanish.\r\nBut things changed.\r\nUpstairs, I rifled through drawers and pockets. In one room, I found a wardrobe full of suits—identical to the one I was wearing. Hats, too. That’s when I knew this wasn't just a party.\r\nA creak.\r\nI hid under the bed.\r\nThe masked woman from before entered. She sat at the mirror, removing her mask. Her face was beautiful… but beneath the chair, dried blood stained the floor.\r\nI fled the room.\r\nIn the hallway, a man in a crow costume grabbed me. He whispered that he was undercover, that this was a cult. They’d chosen me as tonight’s sacrifice. He handed me a knife and told me to run. I believed him.\r\nI headed for the stairs.\r\nThen I saw it.\r\nIn the grand hall below, a bonfire blazed. Dozens of masked guests danced around it, chanting in tongues. Their shadows flickered like demons. I felt something—huge and ancient—watching me from beyond the flames.\r\nAnd suddenly… I understood.\r\nThis wasn’t horror.\r\nIt was beauty.\r\nI turned back, calm. Found the crow. Knocked him out cold.\r\nI stole his costume. Became the crow.\r\nMinutes later, he stumbled out, confused and terrified. I pointed at him.\r\nThe crowd surged. They dragged him to the flames.\r\nHe screamed.\r\nI watched, silent.\r\nNow, I return every time the scent of smoke and blood fills the night air.\r\nNot as a victim.\r\nAs one of them." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Grid" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The detective stared at the grotesquely mutilated body that lay on the floor of 23, Arcane Building. One of the forensic specialists had the \"puke at first sight\" effect. Despite having seen several bizarre murder victims over the years, this one body was beyond control even for her. It was the third killing in the past four weeks weeks. Different cities, same grisly signature: the victim’s eyes sewn shut, a playing card embedded in their throat, the intestine neatly arranged outside on the chest, ears torn off, the genitals burnt to a crisp. This wasn't the work of a single killer. This was the work of collaborators.\r\nA breakthrough came when forensic analysts decrypted a data chip found at the Arcane Building scene. It led them to a site hidden deep in the dark web: The Grid. It was a high-end marketplace for death. Serial killers shared techniques, strategies, even voted on who had the “best kill” of the month. Some of the frequently voted \"best killers\" were DarkGod, Hecate, KillHer and FearMe. The detective's heart pounded as he scrolled through the live chat. A new message pinged.\r\n“Next city: Mossoró. Target: Artur Passos. Let's make it theatrical.”\r\nThe message was signed by “Wraith,” a user with hundreds of followers and a flair for the dramatic. The detective posed as a novice killer named “Killerama” and responded with cautious curiosity, baiting Wraith with questions. The \"orientation\" ritual was basically understanding the legend of the site’s founder: a faceless killer known only as Moderator.\r\nAfter several trial and error methods by multiple cyber crime units across the globe, a payment trail was tracked down from an encrypted Bitcoin wallet to an address in Mossoró. The detective went undercover, posing as the target. Nothing happened for a week. On the eighth day, he saw the glint of a blade in the rear-view mirror of his rented car.\r\nThe man lunged. The detective fought him off with a concealed Swiss knife, pinning him to the car door. The killer seemed barely twenty. “You’ll never stop us,” he hissed. And then he managed to somehow get out of the running car.\r\nA week later, The Grid went dark. But the detective knew better. Evil doesn’t disappear. It adapts. Months passed. Then one night, he received an anonymous email. A video attachment.\r\nIt was grainy footage. A man bound in a chair. The camera panned slowly. The detective's own face stared back at him from the screen. Wraith had found him. And the game had just begun." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Ride" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "There would be a concert in a nearby city — a band I’d always wanted to see.\r\nThe problem was, I couldn’t afford the trip. I had no car or phone, and this was before ride-share apps. So, I packed a backpack and took a local bus to the edge of town, hoping to hitch a ride.\r\nIt was around 8 p.m., already dark. After nearly an hour with my thumb out, a beat-up car finally pulled over.\r\nThe driver looked... off. Bloodshot eyes. Slurred words. Probably drunk. Still, he said he was passing through the city I needed to get to, and I wanted that concert bad enough to ignore the alarm bells.\r\nWe drove in silence. Then the rain hit - fast and hard. Within minutes, visibility dropped to almost nothing. Just windshield wipers squeaking against sheets of water.\r\nBehind us, a car kept tailgating, flashing its lights. We were on a single-lane highway - definitely not the time to overtake. But the driver tried anyway.\r\nThat’s when it happened.\r\nHeadlights. Screeching tires. A loud, crunching impact.\r\nEverything went black.\r\nI woke up groggy, slumped in the passenger seat. My head throbbed. The driver was gone.\r\nI stumbled out into the dark. No road. Just towering sugarcane fields and silence. The rain had stopped, but the air was thick and still.\r\nThen, in the distance, a light. Through the thick sugarcane field, I followed it, hoping to find help.\r\nEventually, I reached a large old house lit up with music and laughter. A party.\r\nI knocked.\r\nA stunning woman answered. She looked me over calmly.\r\n“I was in a car accident,” I said. “I need help getting to town.”\r\nShe smiled. “I can drive you — but later. You’re welcome to wait inside.”\r\nGrateful, I stepped in. She handed me a caipirinha (a famous Brazilian drink). The place was crowded with people, but something felt off. Their conversations made no sense - almost like they were speaking in riddles or reciting lines from a script.\r\nAfter three drinks, I felt dizzy. I asked for the bathroom. I wanted to pee and wash my face.\r\n“Outside,” someone said with a laugh. “The one inside’s just for the ladies.”\r\nI staggered out, found a tree, and started to relieve myself.\r\nThen I noticed the shadows.\r\nDozens of people from the party, silently standing around me.\r\nThe woman stepped forward. “Tonight’s not your lucky night,” she said. “You’re our sacrifice.”\r\nTwo men grabbed my arms. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t scream. I blacked out again.\r\n\"Hey. We’re here.\"\r\nI opened my eyes.\r\nThe driver was still next to me.\r\nNo crash. No party. Just headlights and the city sign ahead.\r\n“You nodded off,” he said.\r\nI stepped out, dazed. Everything looked normal, but I felt... wrong.\r\nWas it a dream?\r\nMaybe. But since that night, I’ve never quite felt like myself.\r\nAnd sometimes, in crowded places, I swear I still see her smiling at me." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Monkey's Paw Lawyer" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I wish I could tell you the truth.\r\nI wish you'd believe me.\r\nI wish you could feel like I felt on that rainy May night, third year of law school, wandering the streets after breaking up with my girlfriend, suffering a real crisis of conscience, of faith—in justice, in love, in the legal profession itself—and I don't even know how I ended up in that bar, drinking in the corner as the crowd thinned and there was only one other person left, a big grey-haired guy in a suit, who came over (or did I go over to him? I wish I knew. I wish I knew what to do with my li—\r\n“Name's Orlander Rausch,” he says, holding out his hand.\r\nHuh? The bar's swimming.\r\n“Hi.”\r\nWe shake.\r\n“So, you a law student, kid?”\r\n“How'd you know?”\r\n“Got it written all over your face,” he says.\r\nFor a second I think he means literally, and I'm about to attempt a wipe when: “Lawyer myself, so know the type,” he says.\r\n“What kinda law?”\r\nHe chuckles. “Wouldn't believe me if I told you.”\r\n“Try me,” I say.\r\n“Monkey's paw law.”\r\n“What?”\r\n“Wish law.”\r\n“Wish law?”\r\n“Fantastic niche practice. The kind of money you wouldn't... wish on your enemies—if you don't mind people thinking you're nuts.”\r\n“What kind?”\r\n“Almonds.” He winks.\r\n“I meant ‘what kind of money?’” (I'm imagining wealth: specifically, myself in it. Take that, you cheating bitch. See what you coulda had? [sniffle, sniffle.] I love you. [pause.] And I fucking hate that about myself!” (some of which) I say out loud [maybe.]\r\nEmbarrassment.\r\nOrlander Rausch smiles not unsympathetically, downs a drink. “They call us djinn chasers.”\r\n“You're serious about this?”\r\n“Wish I wasn't.”\r\n“What is it you do, exactly?”\r\n“I compose wishes,” he says, popping open a briefcase and dropping a file a hundred pages thick on the table between us. “To make sure it doesn't go sideways—” He looks around carefully. “—because genies are ALTFUO: Always Looking To Fuck Us Over.” He pokes the file with a finger. “Single wish, by the way. Conditions like you wouldn't believe. Clauses… Not that I blame them. They have to grant our wishes. Oh, the horror, the horror,” Orlander Rausches the say. The say—they do (who)?\r\n[I'm drunk, remember. I may be misremembering.]\r\nHe's explaining: “...number of very rich people believe in wishes, and when they do it, they want to do it right. That's where I come in. Where you—”\r\n“But are we happy?” I interject.\r\nI note he's not wearing a wedding band. Hasn't once spoken about his kids. Clothing-wise he's sharp, but he looks old.\r\n“Happy? I only wish I still knew what that meant…\r\n—bartender slapped me on the shoulder. “Gotta close up, son. Maybe go home and talk to yourself there, eh.”\r\nSo I got up,\r\nswayed, and when I started skating my loopy way to the door, “Hey, you forgot this,” the bartender said—holding out a golden lamp." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Last Stand" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I’ve been here a long time. Longer than I expected, though I don’t know what I expected.\r\nThere’s no sense of time, really. Not in the way I remember it. No rising sun or falling dusk. Just an endless, stretching pause. It’s strange how nothing moves when everything should be in motion.\r\nI’ve tried stepping off this place. Once. Maybe twice. But there’s always the same pressure—like the air itself is solid, keeping me here.\r\nIt’s not that I’m anchored, exactly. It’s more like something just hasn’t finished yet. Like the ground beneath me was meant to shift, but something interrupted it.\r\nI think about the others sometimes. People who used to stand beside me. I can’t picture their faces anymore. They’ve blurred into shapes I don’t recognize. I remember their voices, but only fragments. Conversations, exchanges… little things that didn’t matter much back then. It’s funny how everything insignificant stays with you.\r\nI don’t look down much anymore. At first, I thought I could make out the world from here. But it’s become harder to trust what I see. Every time I look, the shape of things changes. It’s like watching a drawing someone keeps erasing and redrawing, but never the same.\r\nWhat happened? I keep asking myself that, even though I know I’ll never find a real answer.\r\nIt doesn’t matter. I know that too.\r\nI was never one for waiting. But here, it’s all I do, I wait, and I stay.\r\nSome days I feel like a statue, frozen in a position I never chose. Not like the proud monuments I used to admire in museums—those towering symbols of human ambition. No. This is different. This is more than the silence between breaths. The moment when you can feel the air is about to change, but it hasn’t yet.\r\nI don’t know what happens when it changes. What happens when everything collapses into whatever comes after this. But I know can’t move. Not because I’m afraid, but because I’m already gone.\r\nI think I understand now, what it means to be the last detail. The last thing with shape when everything else has dissolved into formlessness. The last one left watching, waiting, existing in the ruins of something no one remembers.\r\nI’m not supposed to be here. But here I am.\r\nAnd when it finally stops, when the air draws the last breath from the earth, I’ll still be standing—quiet and unmoved.\r\nThis is my last stand. And I will be the only thing left to bear witness." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Quietest Apocalypse" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "At first, it was an interruption—a faint break in patterns too consistent to notice until they weren’t. Cargo shipments stopped arriving at ports. Not delayed, not rerouted. They simply vanished from global tracking systems mid-ocean. Satellites couldn’t locate them. Weather over their last-known positions was calm. No wreckage, no distress calls, just empty sea.\r\nThen came the silence.\r\nNot literal silence—people still spoke, cars still moved, machines still whirred. But in the background of every city, forest, plain, and ocean, a layer of ambient noise that had always been there simply ceased. The soft chatter of insects. The distant rumble of tectonic plates. The infrasound of storms across the planet. It wasn’t something people noticed individually. But supercomputers at monitoring stations flagged the absence immediately. Every sensor flatlined at once. Plant-wide acoustic stillness, as though something had placed a vacuum dome around Earth’s natural frequencies.\r\nThe phenomenon was classified within hours, though no one could define it.\r\nWithin days, costal migration patterns collapsed. Whales failed to reach breeding grounds. Birds deviated from established routes, some turning in endless loops until they starved mid-flight. Beehives sat intact but inert. Colony Collapse Disorder, once a theory tangled in pesticides and parasites, now spread with mathematical precision across every continent.\r\nThe biosphere began to shudder.\r\nNot visibly. Not theatrically. But in ways that instruments couldn’t ignore. Soil samples showed nutrient loss without explanation. Aquifers began to warm from beneath, not due to volcanic activity, but from something deeper, slower. Trees continued to stand, leaves full, roots healthy—but their internal processes simply stood. They no longer exchanged gases. They no longer grew. They remained shaped like life, but behaved like stone.\r\nEconomics slowed, not from panic, but confusion. With no visible disaster—no explosions, no quakes—there was nothing to rebuild, no one to blame. The power grid held. Satellites remained in orbit. Nuclear systems were untouched. And yet, the algorithms began to choke. Market models failed to process data from ecosystems they’d always quietly depended on. Crops grew tasteless. Livestock refused to breed. Water lost its mineral structure. Chemically identical, yet different. People drank it, and digested nothing.\r\nNo pathogen was found. No weapon. No burst from space, no engineered anomaly. Every theory required a mechanism. There was none.\r\nThen came the misalignments.\r\nAtomic clocks, previously synchronized to the most precise measurements known to science, began to fall out of step—not from drift, but disagreement. Laboratories across the globe reported nanosecond discrepancies increasing by exponential fractions. Eventually, no two clocks agreed on the same second. Time, as defined by observation, fractured.\r\nStill, nothing exploded. Nothing burned. No screams. No fleeing.\r\nAnd when humanity’s instruments could no longer agree on what “now” meant, surveillance ceased. Weather systems stopped behaving according to physics. Data loss became untraceable—not corrupted, just unreadable. Words, once stored in solid-state memory, returned only blank code. A digital erasure of unlogged cause.\r\nThe apocalypse wasn’t a bang or a reckoning.\r\nIt was the planet deciding, without warning.\r\nTo, stop participating." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Voices in the Vent" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I moved into a small studio apartment last month. Old building, creaky floors, but cheap rent. I wasn’t going to complain.\r\nThe first few nights were uneventful—until I started hearing whispers.\r\nThey came from the air vent above my bed. At first, I thought it was just the building settling, or maybe neighbors talking late at night.\r\nBut these weren’t voices from upstairs.\r\nThey were coming from inside the vent.\r\nSoft at first. Then clearer. I could almost make out words.\r\n“He’s still watching...”\r\n“Don’t look at the mirror...”\r\nI laughed it off, told myself I was imagining it.\r\nThen I noticed the mirror in the hallway.\r\nIt was one of those old wall mirrors, the kind that’s bolted into the plaster. I swear it wasn’t there when I moved in. The surface was smudged, dusty, almost like someone had touched it from the inside.\r\nOne night, I stood in front of the mirror, trying to clean it.\r\nThat’s when I saw it.\r\nA face, not mine, staring back at me. Pale. Hollow-eyed. Standing behind me—but when I turned, no one was there.\r\nThe whispers got louder every night. Always from the vent. Always the same voice, soft and trembling:\r\n“He’s in the walls.”\r\nI called the landlord. He shrugged. “No one's lived in that unit for years,” he said. “Last guy went nuts. Said the walls were alive. Then disappeared.”\r\nThat night, I taped the vent shut.\r\nBut around 3:00 AM, I woke to the sound of metal tearing.\r\nThe tape was shredded. The vent cover had been pushed open—from the inside.\r\nI lay frozen in bed as something crawled across the ceiling, just out of view. The whisper was right in my ear now:\r\n“He knows you hear us.”\r\nThe next day, I packed my things. I didn’t care about the lease. I just left.\r\nBut last night, in my new apartment—brand new building, different city—I heard something.\r\nA soft whisper from the heating vent.\r\n“Found you." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Ledger of the Gatehouse Keeper" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I found the gatehouse by accident—though the mud-slick road swore no accidents happen out here. A cedar shack, pitched at the county line like a splinter in God’s thumb, blocked the only bridge west. Lanternlight glowed inside, warming the panes but not the chill that crawled my ribs. I rapped on warped boards.\r\nThe keeper opened up, thin as a spoke, coat stitched from weathered postage sacks. He smelled of mildew ink.\r\n“Name your errand,” he rasped.\r\n“Just passing through,” I said. “Carrying a story.”\r\nHe offered a paper-brittle smile. “All travelers bring stories. Rules say each tale must stand alone, neat as a gravestone. Let me weigh yours.”\r\nFrom my satchel I produced a scribbled page—swamp hush, red clay, a mirror that watched itself blink. Fresh but rooted in older soil. The keeper squinted, pupils drilling termites through the words.\r\n“I see echoes here,” he muttered. “Cameos. Footprints that overlap other paths. Not permitted.”\r\n“But the setting’s just woods and water,” I argued. “Can’t help where the moss grows.”\r\n“Same moss is a signature,” he said, tapping the page. “Signatures chain stories; chains make series; series breed expectation. Expectation ruins surprise, and surprise is the toll.”\r\nHe shoved a ledger toward me. In the lantern glow I read titles of trespassers scratched out in rust-dark ink. Beside each name—REVOKED.\r\n“What happens if I cross without your blessing?”\r\nHe gestured past the shack. The bridge vanished into fog, boards creaking under pressure from things unseen. A faint chorus rose—voices stripped of endings, condemned to echo the first line forever.\r\n“They tried,” he said. “Now they loop.”\r\nI clenched my page, heat of anger smoldering the edges. “What if I trim the roots, make it stand alone?”\r\n“Roots remember,” he said, eyes gleaming. “Cut them, and the tale bleeds dry.”\r\nI could hear bullfrogs somewhere beyond the mist, falling silent one by one. My pulse kept their rhythm. I realized then the keeper feared only what he could not catalog.\r\nSo I tore the page in half. And again. And again—until the words fluttered like black moths, scattering into the night air, impossible to gather, impossible to file.\r\nThe keeper hissed, ledger snapping shut on emptiness. I stepped past him; the bridge boards firmed beneath my boots.\r\nBehind me, lantern glass shattered. Ink-dark water surged up, swallowing the shack, the ledger, the tidy rules. The chorus beyond the fog exhaled, finally free to end—or not.\r\nI walked on, pockets light, story everywhere and nowhere at once." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Sleepover" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“I had the best time,” she said, swinging her legs beneath the chair, her heels knocked against the metal legs.\r\n“There were fairy lights and those little banners that say Happy Birthday. Jessie had set up a whole corner with pillows and rugs like we were in a castle.”\r\nThe man across from her sat still, listening attentively. “Sounds like a special night!”\r\nShe nodded. “There were soft cupcakes, too, with cute pink icing. But I didn’t eat one. I just held it for a while.”\r\nHe raised an eyebrow.\r\nShe grinned. “Jessie has a toy bunny. She left it on the floor, and I hugged it when I lay down. It’s soft but a little smelly.”\r\nThe man spoke gently. “Did Jessie have a great time too?”\r\nShe looked up at the ceiling, thinking. “I dunno...she cried when she saw me holding the bunny. Maybe she thought I’d break it.”\r\nHer voice dropped. “She didn’t say anything, though. Just ran inside in tears.”\r\nThe man gently scratched his own cheek.\r\n“I didn’t mean to make her upset,” she added quickly. “I told her I just loved her toy. But I think maybe she was too sleepy to hear.”\r\n“So, Jessie is the same age with you, sweetheart?”\r\nShe gave him a happy look. “Eight, just like me!\"\r\nThe man nodded. There was a brief moment of silence between them.\r\nSuddenly, she squinted at him. Laughing. “Mister, you really look like my dad!”\r\nThe man tilted his head, chuckling, then said playfully, “Why do you think I look like your daddy, sweetie?”\r\nShe giggled. “Same hair. Your voice is like his too.”\r\nBefore he could speak again, the door behind him opened sharply. A woman in scrubs rushed in. She was breathless and pale with relief.\r\n“There you are, Ava,” the woman said, rushing to her side. “We’ve been searching you since last night.”\r\nThe man stood, resting his hands on hips. “She was found in a house nearby. Probably thinking she was having a sleepover. No one saw her come in.”\r\nThe woman knelt beside Ava. “Sweetheart, we’ve talked about this, right? About staying inside at all times?”\r\nAva blinked at her. “But I had fun. Jessie was there too.\"\r\nBoth the man and the woman didn't reply, just looked at each other.\r\nAva looked back. “Can I go to Jessie’s again next week?” she asked brightly. “Maybe this time, she won’t cry.”\r\n\"Oh Ava, I know you miss Jessie so much, but she's in heaven now. Remember? That girl was not her,\" said the woman.\r\nAva's stare went blank.\r\n\"Let's pray for Jessie once we get home, okay?\" The woman grabbed Ava's hand and led her out.\r\nAs Ava and the woman left the door, the man just shook his head lightly and smiled.\r\n\"Thank you, Officer Williams,\" said her, closing the door.\r\nThe man sat down, glanced down at his notes and wrote: Ava Parker, 76. Missing from Rosehill Nursing Home: May 4th—Found: May 5th" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The House has a Catch" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "When I told my realtor my price range he laughed. I didn’t care. I’m forty-seven and I’ve never owned a house. Nothing was going to stop me. Despite having little money, I told him, I’m a highly motivated buyer.\r\n“Perfect,” he said, “I have just the house for you.”\r\nIt had been bought and sold three times in the past year.\r\nI asked him what was wrong with it.\r\n“With the house? Nothing.”\r\nIt was haunted.\r\nAfter I moved in, I first saw the ghost in the garden. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Roses, tulips, flowers with names I didn’t know, all beautiful colors, and he was tending the garden.\r\nI didn’t even know ghosts could touch things! But there he was, mostly see-through, watering the plants.\r\nI went to introduce myself. “I’m Katie, the new owner.”\r\nHe just grunted. Grunted and scowled. And, like that, he wisped away into the house as if taken by the wind.\r\nMy first impression was that he was rude, but I didn’t accept that. There had to be more to my ghost than met the eye.\r\nI did some research. Public records. Old newspaper clippings.\r\nMy ghost’s name was Roman, and his story was tragic. It genuinely brought me to tears. There was a break-in, his wife was murdered, he died trying to protect her.\r\nI found him in the garden and I told him, “I’m so sorry about what happened to you. About your wife.”\r\nHe started crying. Ghosts can cry. He managed to say, “Thank you,” and wisped away.\r\nBy now I was intrigued. After all, he was very handsome. Sharp chin, cheekbones. I had to get to know him better.\r\nI left a note in the garden. “Dinner tonight?”\r\nI know ghosts can’t eat, but I thought he would appreciate the gesture. And, in fact, he did show up!\r\nI made Salmon Meuniere. Green beans, and potatoes. I poured us each a glass of wine.\r\nHe was so charming once he wasn’t being a grump! I complimented his garden, he told me about when he was alive, it was actually the best date I’ve ever been on.\r\nWell, I was being cheeky but asked if he wanted to stay over. Silly, I know. He already lived here.\r\nBut he said yes.\r\nAnd I invited him into my bedroom. And he also said yes.\r\nWow.\r\nNot only can ghosts touch things, but they can really touch things, if you know what I mean.\r\nWe both laid in my bed, chuckling.\r\nHe told me, “for the first time since I’ve died, I feel at peace.”\r\nI couldn’t believe I had fallen in love with a ghost. And I turned to kiss him.\r\nBut he was gone.\r\nDamnit! Why?!\r\nI really think I loved him. I’ve never loved anyone.\r\nI got up, looked out the window to the garden. All the flowers were wilting.\r\nI was alone. Again. And my house felt empty.\r\nMaybe I’ll go find him on the other side…." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Call" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The call came in around 9:30 that morning. It was my wife, who usually called once a day just to say hi and see how the day was progressing. She worked from home, so she would usually stop for a few minutes for this little ritual. This time though, I barely got through my hello when I heard her whispering \"Don't say anything. If you can hear me, there is someone...or something...in the house. I dont know who or what, but Boomer (our Golden Retreiver) is very agitated.\r\nImmediately I responded \"Call the police.\"\r\n\"I tried. The only number I could dial that would connect was yours\"\r\nI told her to stay in her office, and stay on the line, and I would be home in five minutes. I left my office and raced home. On the way, I checked the Ring camera to see if anyone was parked outside. I didn't see anything, which worried me more.\r\n\"Are you still okay?\"\r\n\"Yes, but please hurry. Boomer is becoming more agitated and aggressive.\"\r\nI pulled into the driveway and raced for the front door. It was locked, which confused me. The back door has a deadbolt with no outer lock mechanism, and the garage was closed. I didn't figure an intruder would take time to lock the door.\r\nI made my way inside, just as my wife started to sound even more panicked.\r\n\"There is someone right outside my office. They are trying to break down the door! Please hurry!\"\r\nI could hear her starting to cry, and our dog starting to growl and snap in a way he had never done before. I raced to the basement where our spare bedroom/office was. As soon as I descended the stairs, I could see that there was nothing outside the door. On the phone, however, my wife started to scream.\r\n\"Please, no! Stop!!\"\r\nBoomer was in full on attack mode. I could hear his barks becoming more ferocious. But in front of me, the door was closed. No noise from the room. Still, I walked over to it and put my ear to the door. Faintly, I heard my wife tapping away at her keyboard. I opened the door, startling my wife.\r\n\"What are you doing home?\" she asked.\r\nPhone still to my ear, I was now hearing the sounds of my wife and dog in full blown panic. But in front of me, my wife sat, looking at me quizically, while Boomer popped up to greet me as usual when I came home.\r\nI stared for a second, then said into the phone \"What is happening right now?\"\r\nMy wife screamed back \"Help me! I can't get out! It killed Boomer!\"\r\nIn front of me, my wife said \"Babe? What's going on? Why are you home?\"\r\nI continued to hear the anguished screams coming from my phone. I watched as my wife stood up and walked toward me.\r\n\"Who are you talking to?\"" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Day The Music Died" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“Why don’t you just let me in?”\r\n“No.”\r\nThe world finally got mad enough to blow itself up and everybody’s gone. Everybody but me and Jesse. Two months come and gone, we been together.\r\nI found this house after wanderin’ through what was left. No front door and a nice porch sittin’ on a scorched plain. When I found it, I had a little food left, but it’s long gone now.\r\nJesse showed up the night after. Lookin’ through the open doorway with those red eyes at the only person he’d seen in a couple of years. He kept lickin’ his long teeth. We didn’t talk much at first.\r\nI guess in the end, we were just too tired to try anything. Two men wastin’ away from starvation and terrible loneliness. The last of our kind.\r\nHe moved in under the porch and never left.\r\nConversation was next to nothin’ that first night. He was outside the doorway, and I sat inside in one of the rockin’ chairs I found. I’d rock and he’d pace.\r\nIt started by singin’ songs out of boredom.\r\nSoon enough we got to talkin’.\r\nAfter the sixth night, I put the other rockin’ chair out on the porch for him just outside the door.\r\nWe talk and sing till the sun comes up.\r\nWe look forward to the nights.\r\nI met the best friend I ever had at the end of time. Tonight’s our last night. Only one more sunrise for me.\r\n“You look like you could make it through another day.” He’s eyeballin’ the gun in my lap. He knows I’ve only got one bullet left. “I can’t talk you outta this?”\r\n“My belly button’s rubbin’ against my backbone. I’m tired Jesse. You better get under the porch here soon. You can have what’s left tomorrow night.”\r\n“Aw, go to hell. Let me come inside.”\r\n“No. I don’t want to go out that way. You need to go. I don’t want you to watch.”\r\nHe turns and I try to raise the gun. The sun is almost up and I want to be ready.\r\nMy hand starts shakin’ and I drop the damn thing. It bounces out the doorway.\r\nJesse turns back around and picks it up.\r\n“Gimme the gun, Jesse.”\r\n“Come get it.”\r\n“You know I’m too damn weak to get outta this chair.”\r\n“Then let me come inside.”\r\n“I don’t wanna go that way, Jesse!”\r\n“Just invite me in, will ya?!”\r\nI finally break and give him what he wants. He walks in and I wait to feel his teeth in my neck, but he pulls me and my chair onto the porch. He gives me the gun.\r\n“Got no interest in goin’ on without ya. This is the last mornin’ for both of us.”\r\nHe sits down next to me and we rock as the sun comes up. He starts singing Don McLean’s American Pie and I join in. One last joyful noise unto the world never to be heard again." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Invitation" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I joked into the dark.\r\nThat’s how it began.\r\nWe were escorting a bride to our village at midnight, as tradition demanded—always midnight. As we passed a still pond under starlight, I saw a fox sniffing through the trash.\r\n“Why look there when you can ride with us?” I chuckled. My cousin said nothing. But something else listened.\r\nNot long after, it followed us. At first, it looked like a fox—then less so. Bigger. Smoother. Patchy skin pocked with holes. It moved wrong. Soundless.\r\nI tried to ward it off. It only watched. When I finally knelt and begged forgiveness, it turned and left without a word.\r\nDays later, sickness bloomed in villages to the west. Always west. People said plague. I knew better. I had invited something.\r\nYears passed. I never forgot.\r\nI searched for answers, finding only one: Panvati—not a beast, but a wrongness born of careless words. The blind old man who named it told me of a place in the Ghats, older than prayer, meant to undo.\r\nI went. I begged the silence to forgive me.\r\nBut it answered, mind to mind:\r\nYou can’t undo what bore you.\r\nI offered myself. It declined.\r\nIt waits, it said. For another voice. Another laugh in the dark.\r\nI wasn’t its creator. Just its signal.\r\nNow I lie dying. Hollowed by guilt, not age.\r\nMy son stands at my side. I tell him everything—the joke, the shadow, the price. Not to scare him. To warn him.\r\nHe listens. Really listens.\r\nAnd outside, beyond the trees—it’s there. Still. Watching.\r\nMaybe he sees it. Maybe only those who called it do.\r\nI grip his hand. “Don’t speak into silence,” I say. “Not because nothing will answer—”\r\nI pause. My chest grows tight.\r\n“—but because something already has.”\r\nThe light dims. My voice fades.\r\nIt is still waiting.\r\nAnd it remembers." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Mire at Devil’s Pocket" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "They say Devil’s Pocket isn’t on any soil map because it isn’t soil at all—just a patient mouth hidden under lily pads and Spanish‑moss shade. You find it by following County Road 19 until the pavement dissolves into ruts. Then you listen for the bullfrogs; when they stop croaking, you’ve arrived.\r\nI went out there for arrowheads. The Choctaw traded along that creek, and a collector in Dothan pays cash. Easy money, I thought—until I noticed the silence. No insects, no birds, just the hush of something holding its breath.\r\nThe first oddity was the mirror. An antique vanity mirror, oval and spotless, propped on a cypress knee as if someone had paused mid‑morning routine. My reflection looked wrong—eyes too dark, smile delayed, like a stranger learning my face. I backed away, but when I turned, the glass now faced the other direction, showing nothing but trees.\r\nI found more objects: a woman’s red pump, a Polaroid of an empty porch swing, a cracked wristwatch still ticking. All arranged like bait, or a message in a language I didn’t want to understand.\r\nThen the earth sighed.\r\nA bubble the size of a grave rose through the duckweed, bursting with a smell like open graves and fireworks. The lilies quivered, and the objects around me—mirror, shoe, photograph—slid an inch closer to the bank, as though nudged by invisible hands.\r\nThat’s when I saw the footprints. Not mine—too small, barefoot, waterlogging the ground in a line that ended at the lip of the mire. I knelt to inspect one.\r\nIt filled with water, clear and still—reflecting the canopy, and the top of my head. Like someone above me was watching.\r\nI ran. The woods, usually an easy five‑minute hike back to the truck, stretched on forever, every tree identical. I felt pursued but heard nothing except my heartbeat and the distant, steady tick of that buried wristwatch.\r\nFinally the roadside appeared, and I sped home without looking in the rearview. That night, I found mud‑prints across my porch—too small for my boots, leading to my front door, then stopping.\r\nInside on the table sat the mirror.\r\nIts glass was blind with black water spots, but when I touched it, the surface cleared. My reflection leaned forward and mouthed a single word I couldn’t hear—but I saw the shape of it.\r\nOne word.\r\nOne command.\r\n“Stay.”" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Red House on 49th" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The app pinged.\r\n“15 minutes. Leave at door.”\r\nIt was almost midnight — Owen’s fifth delivery after pulling a double shift at the campus library. Outside, Indianapolis simmered with quiet dread: potholes yawning dark in empty streets, alley cats screaming like kids in pain. The GPS glitched. Twice. He cursed, cranking down the window.\r\n“Dumb signal.”\r\nThe house was tucked behind rows of derelict duplexes. Streetlights stopped three houses before. His phone dimmed, though the battery read 82%.\r\nWeird.\r\n“Whatever,” he muttered, grabbing the lukewarm bag of lo mein. He hated cash tip places like this.\r\nNo porch light. The siding was warped, old, but the numbers were right: 4937 49th St.\r\n“Leave at door.”\r\nFine. He jogged up the uneven path. When his sneaker hit the second step, it sagged inward with a damp crack.\r\nHe paused.\r\nThat smell—\r\nLike wet copper. And meat. Old meat.\r\nHe shook it off and reached for the doorknob to steady himself—why was the door cracked open?\r\nHe froze. His brain screamed — Just leave the food. Go.\r\nBut curiosity slid in like a splinter.\r\n“Hello? DoorDash delivery,” he called, voice too loud in the syrupy stillness.\r\nNo answer.\r\nMovement, though. He saw it through the tiny gap — just beyond the chain lock. Something pale darted across the hall. Not fast. Not slow.\r\nJust wrong.\r\nHe dropped the bag. It landed sideways, sauce leaking. He stepped back—\r\nFootsteps. Not upstairs. Behind the door.\r\nThen whispering, soft, like children learning how to speak:\r\n“Come in, come in, come in, come in—”\r\nHis chest tightened.\r\nHe fumbled for his phone, but the screen was black now. No buttons worked.\r\nA sound from inside: wet slapping. Like bare feet… or hands.\r\nNope. No chance. Owen spun, stumbling down the steps—\r\nThe house groaned. Behind him, something heavy slammed against the inside of the door. The lock jangled wildly.\r\n“Come in.”\r\nHis legs pumped like pistons. He didn’t stop until he hit his car door.\r\nAs he sped away, he checked the app — he needed proof. Needed to report this.\r\nORDER CANCELED: DELIVERY NEVER REQUESTED.\r\nNo record. No tip. No address history.\r\nWhen he looked back in the mirror, the house was gone. Only trees swayed gently where it had been.\r\nHis phone lit up. A new order. Same app. Same user.\r\n4937 49ths St.\r\nAnd in the special instructions:\r\nCome inside this time. We’re hungry." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Quiet Throne" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "They said He would return in fire. Trumpets, angels, pillars of light—that’s what we were promised. But the skies never opened, the earth never split. Instead, it started with the dreams.\r\nSoft at first. A whisper just beneath sleep, like the hush of breath behind glass. Then the voices came—not speaking, not exactly, but suggesting things. Things you shouldn’t know. Things you couldn’t un-know.\r\nBy the time the first church doors melted into black tar, no one dared pray. The pulpits were empty, the holy books unreadable—pages turned to moist vellum that curled like skin in heat. Those who tried to bless their homes found the water beaded on their walls like sweat, and never dried.\r\nThen it came.\r\nNot fire, nor light, but a stillness that fell over the land like a shroud soaked in breath. Crops rotted in the ground. Children stopped crying. The wind forgot how to move.\r\nAnd yet… something was watching. It arrived not with sound, but in the absence of it—something vast, something waiting, perched on the edge of knowing. It slithered into the gaps left behind when we stopped believing.\r\nWe gathered in basements, chanting ancient hymns backward, begging the silence to break. But the voices that answered weren’t His.\r\nThey wore His name, spoke in echoes of scripture—but twisted, inverted, like light seen through water. We fell to our knees, not in reverence, but in the animal terror of something too large to fathom and too near to flee.\r\nHe didn’t return.\r\nSomething else found the throne.\r\nAnd it smiled." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Starving Fox" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "In certain areas of rural Europe, usually where farmers have had a bad harvest and misfortune struck not only once, a tale of a starving fox occasionally appears.\r\nWhen chickens disappear at night without a trace, the few who remain refrain from walking outside ever again. When the smell of rot and iron fills the air, and the children hear a raspy voice from the woods calling to them, “Closer, child, you don’t have to be alone.” That’s when the tale of the starving fox creeps its way back into people's memories once again.\r\nFarmers speak of a fox whose ribcage resembles sickles poking through thin fabric. A fox whose hunger can never be satiated, always on the brink of starvation. A fox that’s calculated and picks its prey carefully.\r\nThe fox’s hollow eyes lurk in the woods, observing the trails where children play. The farmers say that even in its famished state, it remains a sly fox. It lures children into the woods and breaks into chicken coops. All meat is the same to the starving fox.\r\nHowever, meat does not put an end to its hunger, and the prey’s blood turns to dust in its mouth. The fox knows its fate, forever in pain. But it is a fox, and foxes hunt. One particular prey fulfills the hunting desires more than others.\r\nThe tale of the starving fox has disappeared and reappeared several times. But what has remained is an ever-adapting poem that old farmers still mutter to themselves as they work and pray that their chickens will be safe for the night.\r\n“With its broken jaw and tongue of bone\r\nThe fox feasts on the fat of children and\r\nLater, grins by their gravestone.\r\nA fading figure, vile and forever famished\r\nEven God saw the thing and made it banished\r\nBe careful, children, stay close to your parents\r\nOr else maybe you will be the next one they say vanished\r\nWith a rotten grin\r\nAnd skin so thin\r\nYou can run, you can make haste\r\nBut the starving fox will find you, and seal your fate”" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "I Became the Rain" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "It was delightful.\r\nI slipped in without you noticing.\r\nCaressing your skin.\r\nInjecting myself through your pores.\r\nI was quiet.\r\nInvisible.\r\nTo all of you.\r\nHe was just a man.\r\nAn oppressed little creature.\r\nThe thing I started with.\r\nLeaving his windows open.\r\nHe adored the lullaby I wept against his roof.\r\nHe strolled into me without hesitation.\r\nHe lay still, crying.\r\nHe inhaled my essence.\r\nHe meditated in my drippings.\r\nReleasing the levee to his soul.\r\nI slid into his bosom.\r\nSteady.\r\nIntentional.\r\nHe trusted me.\r\nHe danced in me.\r\nHe loved me.\r\nHe indulged my longing.\r\nThat was essential.\r\nIt was pleasurable.\r\nIt was intoxicating.\r\nIt was orgasmic.\r\nI flooded his lungs.\r\nI decayed his cells.\r\nHis blood.\r\nHis marrow.\r\nHe dreamt that I submerged him.\r\nHis being succumbing to my whims.\r\nHe steamed his sinuses—like softening vegetables.\r\nHe mourned in the scalding shower.\r\nHe tended a glass of me,\r\nlike communion.\r\nThinking it would help him.\r\nBut it was corruption.\r\nI was glorious.\r\nI was marvelous.\r\nI was sublime.\r\nHe was small.\r\nHe was exquisite.\r\nHe was perfect.\r\nHe was mine.\r\nWas.\r\nHe snoozed in the tub.\r\nFor days.\r\nInto weeks.\r\nIts inattentiveness bored me,\r\nso I leaked into the drain.\r\nMy prototype expired,\r\npotentially." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Widow’s Tune" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "They say you can still hear her hummin’—soft and low—if you pass the Hollow at dusk with your windows down. But you best not answer, and Lord help you if you sing along.\r\nOld folks call it Widow’s Tune, but there ain’t no grave, no marker, not even a newspaper clipping to say she ever lived. Just a patch of pine-thick earth behind a sagging fence near the edge of Blackthorn Hollow, where the fog never quite burns off and the ground stays soft no matter how long it’s been since rain.\r\nI didn’t believe none of it, not really. My brother and I grew up in Gallberry County, raised on catfish, cane syrup, and stories that went bump in the night. This one just felt like another fire-side tale meant to keep kids out the woods.\r\nUntil last summer.\r\nWe were driving back from the lake, the truck heavy with beer and silence. Sun was bleeding out behind the treetops. That’s when I heard it—soft, like breath through a comb, drifting through the open window.\r\nA woman’s voice.\r\nNo words, just a melody older than memory, like something you’d hum when you didn’t know you were dying.\r\nMy brother turned pale as milk. “Roll it up,” he whispered.\r\n“What?” I laughed. “You scared of a lullaby?”\r\n“Roll it up!” he barked, and I did, but not before I caught myself hummin’—barely, under my breath, like it was tucked behind my teeth.\r\nHe didn’t say another word the whole way home.\r\nThat night, I dreamed I was standing knee-deep in black water. Cypress trees hung like gallows overhead. The same tune spilled from somewhere just beyond the reeds, and I followed it—because in dreams you always follow, don’t you?\r\nWhen I woke up, my feet were muddy. Sheets streaked brown. I checked the porch, the kitchen, the truck. All locked. No sign I’d gone anywhere.\r\nBut the tune stuck.\r\nIt followed me in the shower, whispered through vents, hummed through dead radios. I tried to drown it out with music, with whiskey, even prayer. Nothing helped.\r\nOne morning I woke up at the Hollow.\r\nBarefoot. In my boxers. Mud up to my knees.\r\nOnly the humming was gone.\r\nNot just gone—missing. Like a hole in the air.\r\nI never told anyone after that. Moved to Birmingham. Got a job, got sober, got busy forgetting.\r\nBut last week, I heard it again.\r\nIn the hallway of my apartment, late at night—soft and low.\r\nI turned on every light I had and locked myself in the closet.\r\nAnd just now, as I write this, I can hear my neighbor down the hall.\r\nHe’s whistling.\r\nSame tune." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The world went completely silent." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "That day, I was on my way home from work, just like any other day.\r\nBut about halfway home, I suddenly felt something swiftly whispering into my ear.\r\nStartled and covered in goosebumps, I looked in that direction, but no one was there.\r\nThat’s when it started. The surroundings became eerily quiet.\r\nThe silence was so unnatural that I immediately looked around.\r\nIt felt like I was the only one left in the world—no one was there, and no sound could be heard.\r\nTerrified, I entered any store I could find and even went to the bustling main streets I usually avoided due to the crowds, but there was no one.\r\nI wanted to scream out of fear, but I couldn’t even do that.\r\nBecause my voice had vanished.\r\nOverwhelmed with fear, tears streamed down my face as I ran straight home.\r\nWhen I arrived home, the first thing I did was look for my parents.\r\nBut, as expected, they were nowhere to be found.\r\nI thought all of this was because of that whisper in my ear.\r\nI desperately tried to recall what it had said.\r\nBut the more I tried, the only thing I could remember was that it was a very high-pitched and fast whisper.\r\nI couldn’t understand any of it.\r\nThe uncertainty about what would happen next weighed heavily on me.\r\nI stopped everything and forced myself to sleep, hoping that when I woke up, everything would return to normal.\r\nThe next morning, when I opened my eyes, I still couldn’t hear any sound.\r\nThe realization that what I was experiencing was indeed reality plunged me into deeper fear.\r\nThinking it might be different at work, I prepared myself and stepped out of my room, only to see my parents.\r\nI called out to them, but, as before, no sound came out, and I couldn’t hear anything.\r\nOne thing had changed: my parents were right in front of me, and from the moment I stepped out of my room, they stared at me expressionlessly without averting their gaze, continuing their tasks in that state.\r\nThey looked like my parents, but they didn’t feel like them.\r\nI ran out of the house.\r\nWhen I turned my head back toward the window, I had no choice but to quickly get away from there.\r\nBecause my parents were staring at me through the window.\r\nI didn’t have time to worry about being in my pajamas; I just wanted to get as far away from the house as possible.\r\nWhen I came to my senses, I realized something.\r\nEveryone had returned to their places, but they were all looking at me.\r\nExpressionless, without blinking even once.\r\nI think I fainted after seeing that.\r\nWhen I regained consciousness, I could hear sounds in my world again.\r\nJust before all of this happened, the whisper in my ear said, “We are not your dream.” “You cannot control us.”" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Theatre of Time" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The house was perfect—not for its design or size, but because it felt like home. A man stood in the doorway, watching his children laugh, his wife’s hand in his. It was their dream—warm, alive, theirs. Then the repairmen arrived.\r\nFriendly and efficient, they stepped inside. But the moment they crossed the threshold, time stuttered. Movements slowed, voices warped, everything dulled. The man struggled to speak, his body heavy. Outside, the world remained normal. Inside, something had changed.\r\nLater, the family visited an old movie theater—worn, sacred, forgotten. The children scattered, and the couple sat in Theater Room 4. The movie flickered… and then the ceiling bursted open. Bodies fell from above. Screams echoed.\r\nThe man turned to his side—and saw himself. A shadowed version. Smiling too wide. Watching calmly.\r\n“You built this,” the shadow said, voice cracked and cold.\r\nThe man fled with his wife—but she vanished mid-step.\r\nHe searched. His children found him, crying. But she was gone.\r\nHe returned to the theater. Empty. Fog replaced the floor. He stepped forward—and fell. Down into nothing. Shadows whispered around him. Regrets. Ghosts of himself. His body dissolved piece by piece, until only a thought remained—clinging to one thing:\r\nHer.\r\nThen the shadow reappeared.\r\n“You buried yourself under duty,” it said. “You forgot you’re human.”\r\nAnd the man fell, silent, unraveling.\r\nUntil her voice pierced the void: “I’m here.”\r\nWith a jolt, he awoke. In bed. Whole again. Her hand in his.\r\nShe was real.\r\nAnd so was he." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Keep your eyes off the moon" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The man lifted his eyes from the concrete sidewalk to the night sky. Almost as quickly as his neck turned to look upward, his eyes melted away like a marshmallow in a hot flame. His mouth opened wide, but no sound came out. I backed away slowly, keeping my eyes pointed firmly on his face but making sure my neck didn’t budge towards the sky, even a millimeter. When his head snapped towards me, I turned away and ran as fast as I could back to the safe house. I was fast, but the moon’s power, now crawling through his veins, made him faster.\r\nThe man couldn’t see, but he knew where I was standing before he became a lunar puppet. Mouth agape and arms swinging violently by his sides, he was right on my heels, and I was about 100 feet away from the door. I took a sharp, silent turn away from his line of attack, and he slammed into the safe room door at ramming speed. That was enough to confuse him, and he shambled away into the night. I waited to make sure the coast was clear and crept towards the safe room, always making sure my line of sight stayed as low to the ground as I could.\r\nI got into the room, collapsed onto the couch, and began sobbing uncontrollably. I tried to tell him it was a bad idea, I tried to convince him that life as a puppet was far worse than living without his daughter, but he didn’t listen. Everyone from the original group is now gone, and I’m left in this abandoned convenience store, praying that one day, I’ll die from old age rather than becoming one of them." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Hollow Vine at Gallows Hill" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Mama always said the kudzu on Gallows Hill grew fat off more than sunlight, but I never believed roots could drink memory—not until the night the sheriff sent me to find the missing preacher.\r\nThe church squatted above the river like a rotted molar, its steeple broken, bell tongueless. Cicadas rasped themselves silent as I stepped inside. The air smelled of wet pennies and funeral lilies long dead. My lantern cut a weak circle; beyond it, pews leaned like drunkards, their cushions crawling with white fungus.\r\nI called Reverend Harlan’s name. Something answered—a hush, then a soft knock-knock from beneath the floorboards. I pried up a plank. Heat breathed out, humid and sweet like a slaughterhouse at noon. A tunnel writhed downward, its walls webbed with roots as thick as wrists, pulsing slowly, sap dark as blood.\r\nI should have run. Instead, I climbed.\r\nThe passage narrowed, forcing my shoulders to scrape bark that felt warm, almost feverish. Far below, a red glow quivered. When the tunnel opened, I stood in a cavern lit by a single lantern—but it wasn’t oil burning.\r\nThe glass chimney held Reverend Harlan’s still-beating heart, pumping light with each twitch.\r\nHe knelt headless beside it, hands clasped in prayer. From the stump of his neck, kudzu vines sprouted—flowering white, their petals slick with fresh blood. The vines slithered across the dirt toward me, bearing faces—thin, parchment-pale masks stretched tight over leaves. They twitched and blinked: men and women the county had lost over decades, eyes bulging, mouths yawning soundless hymns.\r\nI backed away, but roots burst from the ground, pinning my boots. A face bloomed at my ankle—Mama’s. The mask was loose, sagging like damp paper, but her lips still moved: “Feed the vine, baby. It remembers.”\r\nThe preacher’s body lurched upright, heart-lantern in hand, vines puppeting his limbs. A voice poured from the floral mouths, many throats speaking as one:\r\n“The soil is hungry for the forgotten.”\r\nHands of bark and bone pressed the hot glass to my chest. Through the heat and cracking glass I felt my pulse falter, drawn out seed by seed. My heartbeat stuttered inside the chimney, glowing fierce, illuminating a new mask unfurling from a leaf—my own face, eyes still blinking.\r\nAbove us, the church bell rang for the first time in thirty years—hollow, jubilant—though everyone knew it had no clapper. It tolled once for each beat my stolen heart gave, announcing to the sleeping county that another soul had rooted.\r\nAnd in the silence that followed, the vine began to grow." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Whisper" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "\"Kill them. Kill them. Kill them.\" That's all I have been hearing for the last six months. Wherever I am, whatever the time is, the voice keeps whispering in my ears. And while it's a whisper, it's stronger than any voice I have ever heard. It's chilling, maddening, unnerving. So much that I eventually succumbed to it.\r\nLike I said, it started six months ago. I have always been the kind of person who always minded my own business, didn't talk much to anyone, and wasn't confrontational, even if I was on the receiving end of any negativity. Basically, a personality that translated as \"pussy\" for people around me. It didn't help much that I didn't have a family or friends around me for me to have even a hint of a social circle. It was just me and my own company.\r\nWhen it started, I was sitting in my usual corner at the bar, when a man as drunk as a fish came and started picking a fight with me for no reason. I had seen him several times earlier, and this behavior wasn't new for him. But it was the first time that I was his subject. I kept my usual calm demeanor until his cacophonous self eventually faded away. But then I heard something else. The faintest whisper. \"Kill him\". I jumped and looked around. There was no one. I thought I was probably too drunk, so I went back home. As I hit the bed, the voice came back. This time I knew it wasn't a drunken stupor. I knew it was inside my head.\r\nAfter the first night, it never stopped. While still a whisper, it growed. In frequency, in strength, in power. Initially, I resisted. But then I started thinking about the deaths of people. The voice seemed pleased.\r\nThe first kill was like a portal to a magic land. The man from the bar didn't even have time to scream. I watched the life drain from his eyes. The voice whispered, “It's fun, isn't it?” I don’t remember how many now. I stopped counting after five. The city is full of strangers who won’t be missed. People like me. Or who used to be.\r\nTonight, though, something’s different. The voice is silent. For the first time in six months, there’s peace. I turn toward the mirror, and find the face to the voice. Something wearing my skin, eyes pitch black. The lips start to move, \"Kill your last target.\"\r\nAs I stand still, I feel my hand make a slow movement towards my neck, the cold metal of the knife making contact with my skin. Tonight, it's me, and the whisper is louder than ever." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Family Reunion" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The Patterson family reunion was always a grand affair—long tables groaning under the weight of home-cooked meals, cousins chasing each other across the yard, and old scrapbooks dusted off and shown again. This year was no different.\r\nAs they gathered around the dinner table, plates were passed, laughter bubbled up, and toasts were made. But amidst the chatter, one thing was… off.\r\nAt the far end of the table, a man sat quietly, smiling.\r\nHe was an older gentleman, perhaps in his sixties, with neatly combed silver hair and warm, knowing eyes. He wore a brown tweed jacket, the kind that never seemed to go out of style. His hands, folded neatly in his lap, looked weathered but kind.\r\nNo one questioned his presence.\r\nAunt Margie refilled his glass. Uncle Joe nodded at him between bites. Little Emily even climbed into his lap for a moment before running off again.\r\nBut no one spoke to him directly.\r\nIt wasn’t until halfway through dinner that Elise, the youngest of the adult cousins, furrowed her brow and leaned toward her mother.\r\n“Who is that?” she whispered.\r\nHer mother blinked. “Who?”\r\nElise tilted her chin toward the smiling man. “Him.”\r\nHer mother followed her gaze, then let out a soft laugh. “Oh, Elise, don’t be silly. That’s… well, you know who that is.”\r\nBut Elise didn’t know. And from the flicker of confusion in her mother’s eyes, she wasn’t sure either.\r\nElise turned to her brother, Mark. “You recognize him, right?”\r\nMark looked over and opened his mouth, then hesitated. “Yeah, of course. He’s…” His voice trailed off.\r\nA strange silence settled over them. Elise glanced around the table. No one else seemed to notice the way the room tensed.\r\nShe looked back at the man. His smile was unchanged, his gaze steady.\r\n“Excuse me,” Elise finally said, her voice cutting through the conversation. The family fell quiet, forks pausing mid-air.\r\nThe man turned his full attention to her.\r\n“I—” She swallowed. “I don’t think we’ve met.”\r\nThe man’s smile deepened.\r\n“Oh, but we have,” he said softly. His voice was gentle, familiar, like an old song half-remembered.\r\nElise’s heart pounded.\r\nThe silence stretched, and then—\r\n“Anyone want more mashed potatoes?” Aunt Margie’s voice rang out, too loud, too bright. Conversations resumed in an instant. Laughter, clinking glasses, the scrape of chairs shifting.\r\nElise looked around, bewildered. No one seemed to remember the interruption. No one acknowledged the man anymore.\r\nAnd when she looked back—\r\nThe chair was empty.\r\nA half-filled glass sat in front of the untouched plate.\r\nA faint warmth lingered in the air, like someone had just been there.\r\nElise shivered. She wanted to ask again. Demand answers. But as she opened her mouth, something in her mind softened, blurred—\r\nAnd she smiled.\r\nBecause, of course, everything was fine.\r\nThe reunion carried on.\r\nAnd the forgotten guest would be remembered… next time." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Final Three" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "\"You’ve done well.”\r\nHis voice is calm, like we’re chatting over tea.\r\nI don’t answer. My throat is too dry, my skin too thin. I feel like paper.\r\n“Three weeks without food,” he continues, walking in slow circles around me. “Most don’t last past ten days. You did twenty-one.”\r\nI nod, barely.\r\n“You’re an ideal candidate,” he says. “You knew the risks. You signed the forms. Generous compensation if you completed all three stages.”\r\nI remember the brochure:: Survival Research for Long-Term Space Missions. The sterile lobby. The handshakes. The promise: Endure, and never work again.\r\n“Three days without water. That was the breaking point for the last one.”\r\nHe crouches, eyes scanning me like I’m data. “But here you are.”\r\nMy lips are cracked. My tongue feels like leather. I can feel every single taste bud. I want to blink, but my body forgets how.\r\nHe stands. “Now the final test.”\r\nA door behind him hisses open. White light spills into the dark.\r\n“This one’s simple,” he says. “ Well, sort of...Three minutes without air.”\r\nThe room is smaller. Metal walls. A single chair bolted to the center. A table with nothing on it. A camera above, its red eye blinking steady.\r\n“We’ll seal the door and suck out the oxygen. You sit. You wait.”\r\nI try to ask what comes after, but all that escapes is a rasp.\r\nHe smiles. “What happens if you pass? That’s the question, isn’t it?”\r\nHe wheels me in. Walks out.\r\nThe door slams shut behind me.\r\nThe air vents snap shut with a hiss. Silence lingers.\r\nTen seconds. My heart starts to pound.\r\nThirty seconds. The panic starts in my spine, climbing into my lungs.\r\nOne minute. My ears throb, vision pulsing black and white.\r\nNinety seconds. I press my nails into my palms. I don't feel them.\r\nTwo minutes. The walls sway. Breathe. A shape stirs behind the glass. Watching.\r\nTwo minutes, thirty.\r\nMy mouth opens. No sound. I want to scream.\r\nAt 2:59, the lock clicks, and the doors slide open. Oxygen is pumped back in.\r\nHe enters, clipboard in hand.\r\n“You made it!” he says happily.\r\nI collapse forward, barely conscious.\r\nHe lifts my arm, feels my wrist. Nods.\r\n“She’s stable. Begin extraction.”\r\nSuddenly, there's a low mechanical groan. A hatch in the floor opens. Air stirs, warm and foul.\r\nSomething climbs out...wet, jointed wrong. Too many limbs. Too little face.\r\nIt doesn’t look at him.\r\nIt looks only at me.\r\nI want to move, to run, to scream.\r\nBut I can’t.\r\nI'm far too weak.\r\n“Three weeks without food,” he says again, almost fondly. \"Three days without water.”\r\nHe looks down at me, smiling again. “And three minutes without air.”\r\nThe thing leans in. Breathes me in like steam.\r\nI wasn’t doing an experiment...\r\nI was being seasoned.\r\nThe man turns toward the glass.\r\n“We’ll never make space travel possible without more offerings like her...\"" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Gallberry Light" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "They say there’s no real darkness left in Alabama—not with satellites blinking and porch lights burning—but they ain’t stepped off the blacktop west of Dothan. Past the last rust‑eaten mailbox, through gallberry thickets slick with dew, the night is thick enough to chew. That’s where I lost Jake.\r\nWe’d driven out after supper, just the two of us and his hounds, aiming to shake loose a coon or two. Moon riding high, split pine in the bed, a jug of cheap rye between us. Jake’s daddy swore these woods remember things: Confederate dead, Choctaw trails, drifters who disappeared like summer rain. Jake always laughed—until he saw the light.\r\nIt slipped between the pines like a lantern on an invisible arm—too low for a plane, too pale for fireflies, too patient to be headlights. I hissed for him to stay close. He grinned and stepped toward it.\r\n“Prob’ly some farmer checking fence,” he said.\r\nNo farmer posts NO TRESPASSING in six‑inch letters and chains the gate shut.\r\nThe glow floated on, steady as a heartbeat. Jake followed, boots crunching needles. I called once, twice. The wind didn’t carry it—it just stopped, like the trees held their breath. Then the light blinked out, and the forest fell flat—no frogs, no dogs, just that coffin‑quiet hush.\r\nI found a single boot‑print pressed in red clay; the next stride ended in air. I walked till the lantern guttered, shouting myself raw. The pines crowded tighter the farther I pushed, trunks aligned like prison bars.\r\nNear dawn I drifted back to the truck and the world of engines and radio static. Sheriff Sutton listened polite, promised a patrol, eyes already filing me under “liquor and tall tales.” Folks in town say it’s swamp gas, or headlights refracted off river fog. Headlights don’t glide against the wind. Swamp gas don’t steal grown men.\r\nI returned later that morning. Jake’s cap hung on a briar as though someone had placed it there deliberate. No blood, no drag marks—just a second trail beside his prints: barefoot, long‑toed, pointing back the way we’d come.\r\nTonight I’m here again, lantern lit, shotgun across my knees, heart banging like a screen door in a storm. I don’t know what I’ll do if the Gallberry Light returns.\r\nBut if Jake steps out from those trees, wearing that loose grin and calling my name?\r\nI’ll blow out the lantern, turn, and walk away.\r\nBecause whatever’s wearing Jake’s smile won’t be looking to talk." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Apartment Above" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I live on the top floor of my building, but every night since I moved in, I’ve heard noises coming from above me.\r\nAt first, it was too muffled to make out — but now I know they’re footsteps. Loud, deliberate footsteps walking right across my bedroom ceiling. Always at the same time. Like someone’s coming home from work every night at 3:00 AM.\r\nI told my landlord. He didn’t believe me.\r\nSo last night, I set my phone to record as I fell asleep. Somehow, I slept through the night.\r\nThis morning, over breakfast, I played it back.\r\nNo footsteps.\r\nBut at exactly 3:33, I hear a voice —\r\nmy voice:\r\n“Stop.”\r\nThen another voice. Calm. Unfamiliar.\r\n“You live below me. We can talk in the morning.”\r\nJust as those words set in, I hear the door knob begin to turn-" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "I fell for the wrong boy." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Dust and Brew, the cute coffee shop in the middle of town, was an introvert's dream.\r\nIt was cozy.\r\nTables spread out like flowers, seats for petals, fairy lights hanging low.\r\nThe menu was a creative variety of plant-themed drinks.\r\nThe baristas wore green aprons over short-sleeved tees.\r\nOne of the guys, a brunette sitting on the counter with his legs swinging, didn't even look at me. The other sat on a stool, idly reading a book.\r\nA pretty blonde, Blue, served me “Bloomshot Brew” with a hollow smile that didn’t reach her eyes.\r\nI kept going back.\r\nThe brunette served me my second visit. He held my gaze the entire time, completely silent, dumping too much milk in my Flower Mocha.\r\nHis lips were curved slightly, like he was smirking.\r\nStill, I downed the whole thing, licking the froth from my lips.\r\nHis smile noticeably faded, expression darkening.\r\nThe reader guy was cute. Sandy blonde hair falling in his eyes, and freckles.\r\nHis nametag said, “Jules.”\r\nHe regarded me with a raised brow when I ordered another mystical-sounding drink.\r\n“What's your book about?” I asked, flirting.\r\n“Fairies,” Jules murmured, meeting my gaze.\r\n“One loses their species in a fae war. They're the last of their kind, so they set out to rebuild.” He shot me a smile, flipping a page. “I'm only halfway through, but so far they're killing it.”\r\nHe pushed a second coffee brew in front of me with a wink. “That's on the house.”\r\nI was about to take it before the scowling brunette snatched it and dumped it down the sink. “We’re not a charity,” he croaked, pointing to the door. “I think you should leave.”\r\nJules rolled his eyes. “Ignore Ronan,” he smiled. “Night.”\r\nAsshole.\r\nOn my way home, I sneezed. Once.\r\nTwice.\r\nThree times.\r\nI glimpsed it speckled on my palms, glistening yellow dust sparkling across my skin.\r\nI sneezed again, and blood splattered, streaked with yellow. Fuck. I started forward, but my legs buckled, sending me to the ground.\r\nI didn't realize I was screaming, agony contorting through me, until I ran my fingers down my back, slick red warmth coating my hands.\r\nI slipped my fingers through the raw flaps of flesh, finding something breaking through, delicate, like glass, twisting me apart.\r\nWings.\r\nFootsteps were suddenly so loud. I clamped my hands over my ears.\r\n“Don't worry, it's just your body changing.” I sensed Jules getting closer, kneeling next to me.\r\n“This isn't even the painful part. Soon, you'll shrink to the size of a thumbnail, and your internal organs will go, ‘Pop!’ But don’t worry. Magic is coursing through your blood. By nightfall, your memories will fade. Just like Blue. Oh, sweet Blue. She's still a little foggy headed.”\r\nI felt him run his fingers through my hair, pressing his face into my scalp, razor sharp teeth pricking me. “I think that fairy is doing a great job of rebuilding his species,” he murmured, chuckling.\r\n“Don’t you?”" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Waving Lady In Black" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The first time I saw the waving lady was about five days ago.\r\nIt was broad daylight, and I was at a train station on my way to work.\r\nShe was wearing a black dress, black shoes, and a black mask. Her long, dark, wavy hair framed her face. The moment our eyes met, she lifted her hand and waved.\r\nTwo days later, I was on my way back to my flat when I saw the same lady in black standing across the street. She lifted her hand again and waved at me.\r\nThen, just this morning, I was at my office on the second floor. My desk is right beside a window overlooking the road below. I saw the lady in black standing at the crossing.\r\nHer head was tilted upward, staring directly at the window beside my desk.\r\nShe lifted her hand and waved.\r\nI asked my co-worker Kyle, if he saw her.\r\n“What woman? The crossing is empty.”\r\nWhen I left the office building that evening, I didn’t see her. I hopped on the train as soon as it arrived. I was looking at my phone, scrolling through social media as I walked in and sat down.\r\nThe moment the train departed, I felt as though someone was staring at me, so I lifted my head.\r\nThe train car I was in was empty—except for me...\r\n...and the lady in black.\r\nThis time, she wasn’t alone. There were two other women. They looked exactly the same.\r\nThey turned their heads toward me and waved.\r\nThen my phone buzzed.\r\nIt was Sophia, my other friend at work. She was known for her knowledge of all things supernatural.\r\n“Kyle said you saw a woman wearing all black outside the building today? Someone he couldn’t see?” Sophia asked immediately.\r\n“I’m seeing them right now,” I replied.\r\nSophia then explained to me that the women were the representation of revenge, called by the people I had murdered throughout my life.\r\n“I’ve never murdered anyone!” I protested.\r\nSophia went on to explain that it wasn’t always meant literally. If I had ever bullied someone to the point they took their own life, it was considered murder.\r\nThe revenge starts the day I turn 25.\r\nI turned 25 five days ago.\r\n“At some point, they’ll start to multiply until they match the number of people you caused to die,” Sophia said. “If it’s five, they’ll grow to five before they come to kill you.”\r\nI begged Sophia to help me.\r\nShe had to have a way. Supernatural stuff was her thing.\r\n“The worst case I knew was someone who had seven. How many women in black are with you now?”\r\nI looked at them and tried to count.\r\nI lost count.\r\n“I don’t know, Sophia,” I said, shivering. “There are a lot. Twenty... maybe twenty-two...?”\r\nThere was silence on Sophia’s end for a few seconds before I heard her voice again.\r\n“You evil lunatic.”\r\nThen she hung up." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "He Cooked the Most Unique Meal" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I watched him closely. He had started eating his own arm, twisting his jaw, nibbling it like it was warm bread. His eyes were vacant, but he stared at me—expecting something... a response, a blessing, maybe a taste?\r\nHe began with the fingers. Pulled out his nails with tweezers, added salt, dipped them into some homemade sauce, and crunched them slowly. Each bite was sacred. The feast had only begun.\r\nHe wasn't always like this. As a child, he refused all normal food. His parents tried everything. He only ever accepted two or three meals. In grade school, he bit a classmate during an argument—tore off a chunk of flesh and ran to the bathroom with it. That day, I began to feel like I didn’t know him anymore.\r\nYears passed. No more incidents… but he changed. Obsessed with animal documentaries—creatures eating each other, all day.\r\nCollege is when it truly began. He said he was bringing a friend over. I was glad—he never brought anyone.\r\nThe problem was… his friend never left.\r\nHe stabbed him in the back, dragged him like old meat, and began prepping like some twisted chef. He sprinkled salt in his eyes, scooped them out with a fork, and arranged them on a plate. Napkin folded into a cone. Different utensils, perfectly aligned. He sliced the tongue, stretched it gently, laid it next to the eyeballs.\r\n—Bon appétit —he whispered, before digging in.\r\nLuckily, we lived alone. He kept the leftovers in the fridge. Every couple of months, he did it again. Some tasted better than others, he said. But one day, staring into a mirror, he told me:\r\n“It’s not about the flavor anymore… it’s about quality.”\r\nThat night, he stepped into the backyard. Laid out a blanket. Lit candles. Brought a mirror. I knew… deep down, I knew it was his turn.\r\nHe screamed, but it sounded like joy. Pulled out each nail slowly. Seasoned the thumb just right. Dipped it into the sauce, and bit it like it was the last sausage on Earth.\r\nAfter finishing his fingers, dizzy and pale, he injected himself with something. Then, with a handsaw, he started slicing his own arm—ripping out chunks and chewing them with a kind of devotion I’ve never seen.\r\nI didn’t know what to say. But if he was happy… I guess I was too.\r\nBefore finishing his arm, he looked into the mirror. Maybe waiting for me to say something. Maybe trying to say something himself.\r\nBut he was fading.\r\nHe crawled toward me, stretched out his hand.\r\nI took it.\r\nHe closed his eyes.\r\nAnd that’s when I opened mine and said, softly—\r\nBon appétit." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Special" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Darren was a seeker. Rare food, secret places, exclusive menus. He craved the thrill of eating what others wouldn’t dare to try. So when a cryptic message arrived with only coordinates and a time, he followed it without question.\r\nThe location led to a dead-end alley behind a closed butcher shop. At the far end was a heavy steel door with no sign. He knocked once, and it opened without a word.\r\nInside, the restaurant was dark and elegant. Velvet walls absorbed every sound. A single pianist played slow, sorrowful notes from the corner. There were no other guests. Just one table set for him.\r\nThe waiter appeared like a shadow and spoke with a calm, practiced voice.\r\n“You’re here for the special.”\r\nDarren nodded.\r\nThe first course was tartare. It was soft, cold, unfamiliar. Not beef, not venison. Something else entirely. He asked what it was, and the waiter only smiled.\r\n“The special is not meant to be questioned. Only enjoyed.”\r\nDarren obeyed. The second course was loin. Tender, perfectly seared, marbled with fat in a way he had never seen. By the third course, his plate came clean every time.\r\n“You have a rare palate,” the waiter said as he poured a deep red wine. “Most can’t make it past the first bite.”\r\nDarren grinned. “I’ve eaten everything. I know quality when I taste it.”\r\nThe waiter reached into his jacket and handed Darren a small sealed envelope. “For dessert,” he said and walked away.\r\nDarren opened it.\r\nInside was a name tag. Brown leather. Faded gold print. It read J. Ramirez.\r\nHe stared at it, confused.\r\nThen he noticed the pianist.\r\nHe was playing with one hand. His right sleeve was empty, folded and pinned at the shoulder.\r\nDarren looked down at his fork.\r\nIt was his. Custom engraved. A gift from his ex. He hadn’t noticed the switch.\r\nFrom the kitchen, he heard knives.\r\nNot the clatter of cooking. The rhythm of preparation.\r\nThe door behind him clicked shut.\r\nThe music played on." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Journey Back Home" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "An unusual laughter caused her to lift her head from the book that she was reading. It was then that she realised that she had dozed off. It had been a long day for her, and a bad one at that - her canary flew away in the morning, her boss kept piling up work on her desk, she missed her usual 9.45 PM metro back home, and now she had to take the last train.\r\nThere were not many people, a group of college students back from their part-time jobs, an old man reeking of cheap liquor, two waitresses bitching about a co-worker, and some other people returning from their offices. All alien faces for her. Apart from them, the rest of the compartment, in fact, the entire train was without people.\r\nHer train of thought went back to the laughter that woke her up. It wasn't a full-blown laughter, more like a constant giggle from what felt like a 7-8 year old boy. She scanned her compartment, no one was travelling with a kid, and she knew for a fact that the laughter was coming from nearby. She checked her phone to see if she had left a YouTube video playing, which might explain the giggle. But much to her dismay, her phone had run out of charge. She sighed. She went back to reading her book. That's when she heard it again. This time closer, and from her left side.\r\nShe turned her head, and a pair of bloodshot eyes stared at her, lips spread in a grin from one ear to another. It was indeed a boy, but not a breathing one. The skin was torn from the face, bones jutted out from certain places of the body, and an ear was missing. She gasped and was about to start running, but before she could stand up, the boy grabbed her by the neck and before she could realise, she lay lifeless on the floor of the train, her neck twisted at an ungodly angle.\r\nThe others on the train welcomed her; maybe someday soon they will find another unsuspecting person to join them in their night ride back \"home\"." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The train to nowhere" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "\"This is stupid\", I folded my arms over my chest, watching my fool of a best friend do an awkward dance on the tracks.\r\nThe wind whistles by, through the pine trees. The rain completely soaked our clothes, they clung to our skin. Fog gathering at our feet, the only illumination being the crescent moon.\r\n\"Why are you here then?\", he teased, his limbs still moving in an angular manner.\r\n\"How do you even know this is the right dance?\", I raised an eyebrow.\r\n\"I don't.\", he stopped dancing for a moment, just standing on the tracks, \"The wiki page didn't say what dance would work.\"\r\n\"Luke, remind me again... what's the point of this?\", I pitched the bridge of my nose.\r\n\"The train to nowhere\", he shruged.\r\n\"Right. Obviously\", I sighed.\r\nHe continues his little dance. I stood there, wishing I had normal friends, \"let's say this works. What then?\"\r\n\"Well... then we'll ride the train\"\r\n\"I'm not climbing on a random tra...\", my words trailed off as I noticed a change in his movements. From careless and goofy to more...rigid. Almost... Rehearsed?\r\nHis limbs twist, popping and synching in a way that would be unsettling from afar. Upclose, resembled more of an interpretive dance. His steps following a funky pattern.\r\n1...2...3...4\r\n\"Found your rhythm?\", I asked.\r\n\"Uhh...\", he sounded, giving me a quick glance. I almost missed the panic in his eyes.\r\n\"What?\"\r\n\"D-Daisy? I'm not- I'm not doing this\", he stuttered, his movements maintaining their rhythm.\r\n\"Sure.\"\r\n\"I'm serious\", he insisted. His tone told me he really wasn't joking.\r\n\"...what exactly did the wiki say would happen-\"\r\n\"The c-conductor was a dancer. He... he's supposed t- to...\", his eyes widened as he looked ahead.\r\nA man. In an average baby blue conductors uniform wandered out of the fog.\r\nI wanted to say something. But there was no use. The man wouldn't respond- he had no facial features. Just smooth skin like a mannequin.\r\n\"...Daisy..?, Luke croaked.\r\nI let out a trembling breath. My eyes whipping from the man to Luke's movements.\r\n1...2...3...4\r\nMy first instinct was the grab Luke. He didn't budge. His limbs were completely defiant. And I only accepted this fact when the conductor mirrored his dance.\r\nFrom my perspective, it felt like watching someone try to outpace their own shadow.\r\nhand up- leg out- head twist- leg in\r\nTiming was perfect.\r\nLuke's brow was soaked with sweat.\r\nLimbs started to ache.\r\nTears ran down his cheeks.\r\nI tried to free him. When the sun rose, and later set.\r\nBrought people to help, but Luke and the conductor aren't there. When I come alone? There they are\r\nNo train came.\r\nThey still danced\r\nI sit by those tracks, watching- for years to come.\r\nWaiting for the train to nowhere to arrive.\r\nAnd crush him on the tracks to put him out of his misery." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Ex's Ghost" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I couldn’t help a surge of joy when I heard Christine, Brad’s ex, had died in a car crash.\r\nShe had made our lives a misery. She shared custody of their two boys, and everything, but ev.e.ry.thing. had been the subject constant complaining and straight-up mind-fuckery. Added to that the sale of their matrimonial house was going through, and it was already turning into a horrible legal battle.\r\nIf I hadn’t loved Brad so much, I would have been long gone.\r\nAs it was, I was carrying our unborn child- a daughter. Chistine had ramped up the harassment times ten times when she heard about my pregnancy.\r\nSo yes, I was actually delighted when I had heard she was dead. I maintained face of course, for Brad and the boys, but I indulged in some private jubilation, wine-free, with my girlfriends.\r\nIn fact, in retrospect, it was the morning after the celebration that I saw I had a message on the parenting app we had used to communicate about the boys.\r\nI was alone. The boys were at school, and Brad at work. I had already realised that my celebration hadn’t taken into account the ten-fold increase in housework, as the boys moved in permanently.\r\nI tapped the app. The message was from Christine, marked private for me.\r\n“he’s going to kill u2, u know.”\r\nI stared at the text. The I deleted it.\r\nI started to remove the app. But some instinct made me pause.\r\nAnother notification bubbled up.\r\n“hes waiting for you give birth. He wants the kids all to himself.”\r\nMy blood ran cold as I protectively cradled my belly. I could feel a slight fluttering kick inside.\r\nI texted “Who is this? Is this a sick joke?”\r\n“No, its Christine. Sean has a birthmark inside his left thigh. Look up”\r\nI looked up. Christine was standing outside, as she had been so many times when alive, staring at me through the glass garden doors.\r\nI screamed. Baby kicked me harder than she ever had, and I doubled over. When I looked up, Christine was gone. 2 new notifications.\r\n“It’s u or him.”\r\n“Ur not going to make it home from the hospital alive”\r\nI thought back to Brad, the endless fights over the children with Christine, the screaming, the torment, the distress, the financial drain. Would it be so surprising that he simply wouldn’t want to risk going through all that once more, with another woman?\r\n“U know its true”\r\nI walked to the garden door. She was sitting on a patio chair, phone in her hand, but as soon as I went outside, she vanished. When I went back in, she reappeared.\r\n“I will help u. U won’t get caught”\r\nI still hesitated.\r\n“Please. My parents will have my kids, and u will have their sister. Do u want her to grow up never knowing u?”\r\nBaby’s determined kick settled me. “Ok” I texted. “Tell me what to do.”" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Room Where I Am Safe" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "\"Get out of your room,\" the woman outside the door pleaded, \"Let's talk sweetheart.\"\r\nShe's here again. The monster.\r\nThis isn't the first time she did this. She kept telling me to go out. Her voice sounded like a human, full of concern and love. But when I tried to take a peek outside the door, she was faceless. She had the body of a person but her facial features were not there. Her face is a blank canvas.\r\nI chose to ignore her again. I stretched out my hand, trying to turn off the faint glow of the lamp illuminating my room.\r\nI need to sleep.\r\nBefore I could get rid of the light, my eyes caught a glimpse of an empty plate placed near my door. I wondered, what's stopping this beast from barging inside my room? From poisoning my food? What does she really want from me? All kinds of thoughts ran in my mind. I turned the light off, and before I knew it, I fell asleep.\r\nA numbing pain in my arm woke me up. I had bumped my arm to something hard. I stretched out my hand again to turn the light on. But this time, the lamp wasn't there. I tried searching for it, panicking, until my hand got a hold of something.\r\nIt was a wall.\r\nMy bed was in the middle of my room. How am I close to the wall? A slight shaking interrupted my time to think. Accompanied by a sound of something breaking, like stepping on a dead leaf. And I felt it. The wall was moving towards me. It caught me off guard, I took my hand away from it, I backed away. But I was stopped with another wall from behind me. It was also moving.\r\nWhat's going on? The thought of being safe inside my room was shattered like it was nothing. The crunching sound around me. The vibration. The darkness. The uncertainty. All of which made me panic even more. I felt like I was losing my mind. I can feel it now. My room, its walls, are closing in on me. I tried to punch the hard concrete, but my fists bled instead. I tried to kick, but there was no room. I tried to scream but my voice won't come out.\r\nI felt like I was inside of a coffin made out of my room.\r\nAnd then I heard it. The voice of the monster. The voice of my mother. It was faint, but I can make out some of the words.\r\n\"Sweetheart? Are you asleep?\"\r\nI couldn't help it.\r\n\"Mom, please help me.\" I pleaded.\r\nThe wall kept moving. Until I felt my whole body, crushed by my own sanctuary." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Knocks" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I had found the perfect house. Victorian facade, red Bougainvilleas adorning the whitewashed walls, a lush green lawn, and the best thing, a tiny fountain beside the porch. Contrary to what everyone in my circle thought, I actually got this house for dirt cheap. The previous owner's wife had recently died, and he just wanted to move away from all the memories that they had built together in that house. It was a duplex with the bedrooms upstairs, the kitchen downstairs, and a basement. I absolutely loved the place.\r\nIt wasn’t until the third night that I found the door. Hidden behind a shelf of paint cans in the basement, it was iron and ancient, rust puckering its hinges like sores. It wasn’t listed on the blueprints the realtor had given me. I didn’t remember seeing it during the open house either. And yet, there it was, immovable, looming, cold to the touch, and humming faintly like something alive.\r\nThen came the knocking. Exactly at 3.33 AM. Muffled at first, then rapid knocks. Desperate, even. Loud enough to reach my bedroom. I woke up with a start. Sweat trickled down my forehead as I walked down the stairs and towards the basement, scared to open the ominous door hiding inside. Eventually I found myself standing in front of the door. After what seemed like an eternity, I mustered the courage to open the door. Except that it didn't open.\r\nIt became a regular affair after that. Sleep went out of the window. Every night the knocking returned. I tried everything I could to ignore the desperate taps on the door. But the sound always found a way to reach me. After a few days, the knocks were accompanied by a stench that reeked of a thousand corpses.\r\nWhen I couldn't take it anymore, I called the previous owner. He denied any knowledge of the door in the basement. The realtor denied too. As if neither wanted to talk about it. Finding myself at the edge of my sanity, I set up a camera a month later. In the footage, everything looked dark. Everything except the pale, dangly hand that slid out of the door exactly at 3.33 AM and knocked at the basement door.\r\nSleeping after the night I watched the footage became even more difficult. I had started to miss work, I had stopped talking to people I was close to, I had almost become a living dead. The house was cold now at all times of the day. The stench was horrendous. The knocks were growing more desperate.\r\nThe knocks returned this night. As I stepped out of my bedroom, the door groaned shut behind me. The knocking stopped for a few seconds. Then they began. This time from behind the bedroom door." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The event" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Hope, Aimée,Victoria, Désirée, after 12 years of fruitless attempts I had thought of several names that would let my baby know how much they were wanted. And finally my dream came true.\r\nDylan was elated when I told him that I was expecting. They say that you're not supposed to rejoice or make plans until the second trimester in case anything goes wrong, but we were over the moon and started envisioning a bright future as a family.\r\nMy sister insisted on planning and hosting the baby shower \"four times a mom and finally also an auntie\" she said beaming with joy.\r\nI met Ella during the prenatal yoga classes, it was her first pregnancy and she didn't have any family or support in town, she felt anxious and overwhelmed at the prospect of raising a baby by herself, this was my clue to step in.\r\nWe met several times outside of the classes and bonded further, she was a beautiful soul but so fragile, it dawned on me that she was in no position to give this baby what they deserved.\r\nThing is, despite the fact that everything in my life at this point in time revolved around my baby, deep down I was aware that I was empty.\r\nShe remained still as I cut her, as I followed all the steps that I had memorized watching dozens of videos showing in detail what needs to be done during a C-section, she was dead by the time I made the first incision. My goal was never to cause her pain, just to take what I knew was rightfully mine, I knew that I had five minutes to get the work done.\r\nFinally there she was, my beautiful Victoria.\r\nElla's family may have ended up taking her from me and giving her another name, Dylan may never visit me in the hospital, the whole world may deem me criminally insane,but I know that she is mine." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The quiet apocalypse." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "First went the government, they were there and then they weren't. Simple collapse. From then on, the resources depleted significantly. But they weren't gone.\r\nIt was lawless, not barren.\r\nHowever, that lawlessness was bad, very bad, Sure, but it wasn't horrible. Things still worked as they do now. People buy things, people make friends, people take in the scenery. But there were no laws so these things didn't matter.\r\nNo one made friends, no one bought things, no one took in the vast landscape. It was just violence, violence, violence.\r\nI remember driving one day. I was in a station waggon. Normal car, normal day. But I eventually came upon a scene so horrific, I never forgot it. There were a wrecked car, completely totaled. You couldn't see the driver. But you wouldn't would you? No.\r\nYou would of been staring at those staring faces. A group of \"people\" that were feasting on the remains of the wreck. I just looked at them, they didn't move, they didn't run, no.\r\nThey just looked at me. Judging me, as if I were disgusting.\r\nOnce I drove past, I began to accelerate, I didn't look back. But as I was driving I began to ponder.\r\nWere these same occurrences happening all over the country. The world even. Just quietly.\r\nThe lawless green were to be stained red, nothing would be done. No one can save our doomed world, the quiet apocalypse would assimilate us.\r\nQuietly." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Progress" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "There is a knowledge in you, in your soul, knowledge you cannot know or understand but that would benefit mankind. Thus you must die. This is your privilege. Dulce et decorum est pro progressu mori.\r\n—I am taken from my home,\r\nled deep onto the plains until surrounded by their total flatness. The sun shines, relentless. A tipi is erected: inside, a fire's kindled. I am taken within, where the wisemen sit around the fire, which is wider than I am, and whose clear white smoke rises, and I am stripped and told my worth. They recite the words. They incant the prayers. I recognize most: statesmen, scientists, poets, mathematicians, judges. I know what happens now. I was bred for it. My parents were sublimates, as their parents before them, and so on and on into the long past.\r\nOur civilization is a mighty civilization, the only civilization, and I am the living promise of its future. I am the tomorrow, I say.\r\nYou are the tomorrow, they repeat.\r\nI lay on the fire,\r\non my back as the flames caress me and the burning starts to take my body apart, my skin blackens (“I am the tomorrow,” I say and say and say, louder each time, the hot pain increasing until I am but screaming ash) and melts away, my charred flesh melts away from my bones (“You are the tomorrow,” they repeat and repeat and repeat) and the smoke turns from white to darkest grey, rising and rising…\r\nThe opening at the top of the tipi is shut.\r\nNowhere to escape: the smoke fills the space, and the wisemen inhale it—inhale me—inhale my decorporated soul. Draw it up voraciously through their nostrils, befume their brains, which are cured by it, marinating in it like snails in broth as synapses fire and new connections are made, theories originated, compounds hypothesized, theorems visualized, their eyes rolling back into their heads, an overdose of ideas, their bodies falling back onto the earth, falling back, falling back—\r\nAnd I am no more.\r\nThe tipi's gone. The plains, empty once more. The wisemen have dispersed. Even the ashes of my corpse have been swept up: to be ingested, for they contain trace amounts of soul. Only a vestige of the sublimation itself remains, a dark stain upon the landscape.\r\nSoon advancements are made.\r\nThe wisemen develop new technologies, propose new ways of understanding, improve what can be improved and discard what must be discarded.\r\nThe Progress is satiated.\r\nAs a child, I used to stare at my own reflection in a spoon—distorted, misproportioned, inhuman—intensely terrified by the unknowability of myself, aware I was nothing but a painful container. I played. I hugged my mother and father. Then they disappeared, and the world was made better but I was alone. I married, had children. My children too are now alone in the world. In a better world.\r\nDulce et decorum est pro progressu mori.\r\nDulce et decorum est pro progressu mori." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "A drum in the dark" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I lost my wife three months ago, though it feels like a lifetime now. I found her sprawled on the floor at the bottom of the staircase, when I woke up just hours later. She must have wanted to go to the toilet as she often felt ill in the mornings recently.\r\nIn the weeks that followed, I felt surprised when there was no one in my bed. Gut wrenched when I thought of a funny thing to tell her and realized that I would never be able to tell her anything again. Every buzz of my phone jolted my mind as I kept thinking it was her. I kept re-reading our last messages. I even called her just to hear her voicemail.\r\nI wish I hadn’t done that now.\r\nIt started at the beginning of last month. The dreams. And the call. Oh that dreaded call…\r\nThe dream was always the same. I could only see darkness, a deep black atmosphere surrounding me like ink. Perhaps more oppressive than the darkness was the silence. Not a mere lack of sound, but thick deafening silence, that choked even the mind and thoughts. I couldn't move. I couldn't scream.\r\nThe only thing I could hear was a faint thump. Like a drum in the dark. Like a heartbeat.\r\nThe universe could have been reduced to that dark box. Because it was a box. Somehow I knew. It was her grave.\r\nAnd then the call. I chose a special ringtone for her, with our favorite song so I always knew instantly when she called me. I am now woken by this song every morning, invariably at 5:30, the time of her death. No matter what, the ringing stops before I can answer the call.\r\nThe first time it happened I tried to call back. Multiple times. As usual there was no answer. When I thought of checking the call history on my phone, I found no trace of this call.\r\nSomething made me want to get a hold of her phone again, so I searched for it. I ransacked our bedroom. I emptied her drawers, those I had been too afraid to touch until now. Brushed away pile of papers and brown envelopes from some clinic. But to no avail.\r\nAfter that the dreams kept getting worse. Along with that faint beat, I could make out a distant wail, almost like an infant’s cries.\r\nI knew her parents had some of her stuff. I thought they might have kept her phone so I went to see them and ask about it.\r\nTurns out Adeline was buried with her phone.\r\nWhen I came back home in a daze I stumbled upon those brown envelopes again, and decided to open one of them, dated just a few days before her death. She must have wanted to surprise me, and as a result she was the only one to know she died.\r\nShe was pregnant." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The spider in my car" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The patterns in my morning routine rarely deviated. Today was no different.\r\nWake up.\r\nSuppress crippling loneliness.\r\nShower.\r\nAfterwards, I sat by my bedside table, staring at the framed portrait of my daughter.\r\nFeeling the hole at the very centre of my being dilate.\r\nChucking some work folders in my bag, I swirled the bitter dregs of my filter coffee and grabbed my keys.\r\nOutside, it was another drizzly, autumnal morning.\r\nAs had become the norm, I took a precautionary glance around the back of my car before placing my bag on the backseat.\r\nNo sign of Jane. Yet.\r\nTypically, she appeared once I was driving, the vibrations jostling her from whatever hidey nook she’d found the night before.\r\n“Morning Jane,” I smiled, as I sat down. By this point, I was definitely over just how ridiculous it might seem to any passersby - me, greeting the invisible nothingness inside my car…\r\nLet alone a spider.\r\nBut Jane was my little bright spark. A pale, tan-spotted ray of hope in an otherwise empty, lonely life.\r\nI’d spotted her for the first time a few months back. After checking my blindspot as I changed lanes, I’d turned back to find her slowly descending a silken thread in front of my left eye. Assuming she was in my hair, I’d tried to gently bat her away, but she was closer than my depth perception could interpret and I never quite hit her.\r\nEventually, she retraced her web away from me, back to the headliner.\r\nBut over time I grew curious.\r\nShe too, I think.\r\nShe became a regular fixture of my day-to-day.\r\nWhat she was doing, eating…\r\nI began trapping flies inside the car, to make sure she had enough food.\r\nBefore long, I found myself whiling away hours at a time, just waiting for her to appear…\r\nStranger still, I began actively looking forward to traffic - as it represented an unrestricted chance to just watch her be.\r\nOne time, while sitting in a mile-long queue of belching cars, Jane began knitting a web in the corner of the windscreen - which began to slowly fog up. As the world beyond faded from view, it felt like the simplest, purest thing - to watch her building her little web.\r\nAfter that day, I decided to name her.\r\nJane, after my daughter. Who was always busy, beautiful.\r\nBut today…\r\nToday I noticed a little, lifeless husk curled up on my dash; its legs hunched, turned in like a tiny death cage.\r\nIt was Jane.\r\nI shouldn’t have named her. Naming implies attachment. Affection.\r\nLove.\r\n“Remember what we agreed…” the insidious voice whispered in my ear. “In exchange for your dying daughter’s miraculous recovery, you promised to never feel love again…”\r\nThe wicked voice smiled.\r\n“No exceptions, we said. Otherwise…I take them.”\r\nThe silence swarmed horribly.\r\n“Better steer clear of Jenny at work, too,” the demon leered. ”I think she likes you.”" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Man In the Mirror" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I first noticed it three weeks ago. A slight delay in my reflection's movements. Almost imperceptible. When I raised my hand to brush my teeth, my mirror-self followed a fraction of a second too late.\r\nI blamed it on fatigue. Stress. The divorce. The pills.\r\nA week later, the lag was unmistakable. I'd turn away, then glance back to catch my reflection still looking forward, before snapping to match my position. Once, I swear I saw it smile when my face was neutral.\r\nI stopped looking in mirrors.\r\nBut mirrors are everywhere. Storefront windows. Phone screens. The polished elevator doors at work.\r\nThis morning, I made a deliberate test. I raised my right hand, but in the bathroom mirror, my reflection raised its left. Not mirrored, wrong. When I stepped back, it stepped forward.\r\nI've sealed off the bathroom mirror with a sheet. The one in the bedroom with duct tape and cardboard. But I can feel pressure building behind them, like something straining to get through.\r\nLast night, I heard tapping coming from inside my medicine cabinet. Gentle at first, then urgent, insistent. When I finally looked, my reflection had both palms pressed against the glass, mouth moving soundlessly. Its eyes were desperate, pleading. But its teeth, there were too many teeth, crammed in rows like a shark's.\r\nI slept in my car.\r\nToday at work, I caught my reflection in my darkened computer screen while it was shutting down. It wasn't moving at all. Just watching me, head tilted at an impossible angle, neck bent until the ear touched the shoulder. I screamed. My coworkers found me convulsing on the floor.\r\nThe hospital walls are all glossy white tile. Reflective. The doctors think I'm having a psychotic break. They've scheduled tests. More pills.\r\nThey don't understand that every reflective surface is a doorway now.\r\nTonight, the night nurse will check on me at 2 AM. She'll find my bed empty. She'll see my handprints on the window glass, from the inside, pushing outward.\r\nAnd somewhere, on the other side, the thing that isn't me will finally step through, wearing my life like a borrowed suit. It will smile with too many teeth at my wife when she visits. It will raise the wrong hand when colleagues wave. It will stare too long at my children.\r\nAnd sometimes, in the corner of its vision, in a darkened window or a curved spoon or the black screen of a phone, it might catch a glimpse of the real me, trapped behind the glass, mouth open in a silent scream that will never end.\r\nBut no one will notice the difference. No one ever does.\r\nUntil, one day, you raise your hand to brush your teeth, and your reflection follows just a moment too late." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Hollow Below" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“The Hollow Below”\r\nThe woods behind the neighborhood had always been a kingdom for the kids on Greystone Lane. Every summer, they’d build forts out of fallen branches, dare each other to climb the tallest trees, and spend entire days pretending they were adventurers on quests. The five of them—Jace, Mia, Ryan, Ellie, and Ben—knew every inch of that forest.\r\nOr so they thought.\r\nOne late afternoon, as the sky began to dim with the gold-tinted promise of dusk, they stumbled across something that shouldn’t have been there.\r\nThe trees were broken—shattered, really. Not like they had fallen from a storm or rot, but snapped, twisted, as if something massive had moved through them. A clearing had been forced open, and at the center was a dark hole in the earth. Jagged rocks framed the entrance, almost like the mouth of something waiting.\r\n“What the hell…” Jace whispered, stepping closer. He was the oldest by a year and usually the first to rush toward danger.\r\n“That wasn’t here before,” said Ellie, her voice hushed.\r\n“No way,” Mia added. “We’ve been back here a hundred times.”\r\nRyan knelt at the edge, squinting into the black. “It’s a cave.”\r\n“It’s not a cave,” Ben muttered. “It’s… something else. Look at the trees. It’s like something wanted us to find it.”\r\nThey stood in silence, an unspoken chill passing between them. The woods had always felt alive—but friendly. Now, everything was wrong. The birds had gone quiet. The wind didn’t move.\r\nMia looked at the others. “So what? We just walk away? Pretend we didn’t see it?”\r\nJace shrugged. “Could be a bear den. Or maybe someone’s hiding stuff in there. Could be cool.”\r\nEllie bit her lip. “Or it’s a sinkhole, and we fall in and never come back out.”\r\n“Let’s vote,” Ben said. “Majority rules.”\r\nThey did. Three to two in favor of going in. Ellie and Ben voted no. But the others—curious, maybe a little too eager—won out.\r\nThey agreed to go just a little way in. Ten minutes max. No splitting up.\r\nBen waited at the entrance, refusing to go past the tree line. “I’ll yell if anything happens,” he said, though he was pale and trembling.\r\nThe others disappeared into the dark.\r\nMinutes passed. Then twenty. Then forty.\r\nBen shouted. No answer.\r\nHe ran back to the neighborhood, screaming for help.\r\nSearch parties combed the woods for days. Nothing. No footprints. No scent trails. No kids. Not even the cave.\r\nThe trees had grown back as if they’d never been broken. The forest swallowed its secret whole.\r\nYears later, when Ben was older, he returned alone, driven by guilt and a pull he didn’t understand.\r\nThe trees broke again, just like before.\r\nAnd the cave was waiting. Still dark. Still hungry." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Heat" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The autumn scenery always makes up for the end of summer fun. The long days of bliss are replaced with the short and cold nights, but the bright leaves always ease me into the winter. Coming in from the cold, eating a warm dinner, and curling up in my favorite blanket helps me forget that I live in a little studio apartment the size of a closet. Right as I drift off every night, I feel the gusts of warm air coming from the vent, knowing I’m in for a cozy night of dreaming. Hearing that old furnace kick on always felt like it was a million miles from dreamland, muffled and cozy. Except tonight, when I couldn’t embark to dreamland as easily, and instead of the furnace kicking on, I heard my door open and then gently shut. Then I felt the warm gusts of air brushing across my face—hot, humid, and intimate—accompanied by the soft sound of breathing, just inches from my lips." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Air Pocket" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "They said the sea cave beneath Black Hollow Cliff hadn’t been mapped. The sonar returned strange results—voids where there should have been stone—but the payment for surveying it was too good to pass up. I didn’t question it. Desperation makes you bold.\r\nThree of us went in: me, Hale, and Torres. The water was freezing, even in full suits. We squeezed through a narrow crack at about 40 meters, which opened suddenly into a vast chamber. Our dive lights cut through the dark, revealing silt-covered walls and strange, silent fish that vanished at our approach. Then Torres signaled us—she’d found something.\r\nAn air pocket.\r\nAt the far end of the cave, the ceiling arched upward to a surface of glistening, still water. One by one, we emerged into the void, heads breaking into an eerie quiet.\r\nThe air felt damp and stale, with a metallic taste. It was breathable, but off. Beneath the salt and wet stone was the distinct smell of decay.\r\nTorres was grinning as she removed her mask. “Told you. This place is real.”\r\nHale didn’t look convinced. “It reeks in here.”\r\nI turned in place. The cavern rose into darkness, but down by the waterline, something caught my light—markings carved into the rock. Spirals, distorted faces, gaping mouths. Dozens of them.\r\nThat’s when we heard it.\r\nA whisper.\r\nIt sounded like it came from inside the cave, distant and muffled. We froze.\r\n“You heard that, right?” Torres asked.\r\nHale’s hand moved toward his knife. He just nodded.\r\n“Air currents,” I muttered, though I didn't believe it either.\r\nThe whisper came again. Closer. Like someone gurgling through water.\r\nTorres backed toward the pool, but something landed with a wet thump beside her. We looked up.\r\nA glistening shape uncoiled from the ceiling.\r\nIt was pale and nearly featureless, slick like something half-melted. No eyes. No face. Only folds of flesh, shifting and whispering.\r\nIt dropped.\r\nTorres screamed as it landed on her. It moved too fast. Her cries choked into silence beneath its weight. Hale lunged with his knife, but the thing lashed out and knocked him into the water. His light disappeared beneath the surface.\r\nI panicked and dove, plunging into the dark without thinking. I didn’t look back. My heart pounded. I swam until my chest burned and the water turned lighter.\r\nEventually, I reached the surface, clawing my way onto the dive boat. But the captain wasn’t there. Only his boots remained, filled with seawater.\r\nNow I’m sitting here, writing this down. The tide is creeping in, and the air is heavy with the same scent—rust, and something dead. And the whisper… it's here again.\r\nBut it’s not coming from the cave anymore.\r\nIt’s coming from me.\r\nThey say caves can preserve air for hundreds of years. I think this one preserved something else.\r\nAnd now it’s inside me, breathing through me." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Mime" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "George walked onto the pier and glanced around. Across the way stood a mime, leaning in front of his box of \"props\". George grinned and strolled toward him.\r\nOver the past few days, he'd been harassing the mime in any way he could.\r\nThe first day, he'd run over and kicked his box; he was disappointed it was empty.\r\nThe second day, he'd brought a squirt gun and emptied it onto the mime multiple times; a drinking fountain was nearby for refills.\r\nOn the third day, the teen'd brought a slingshot, along with two pockets brimming with rocks. He pelted the mime over and over—first the body, then the crotch, and eventually even the face.\r\nDespite the kid's multiple assaults, the mime had stayed in character, not making a sound. But after George'd hit his groin? The mime's act consisted of one move—a stone-faced glare in his direction. George wouldn't have admitted it, but the unwavering blackness of the mime's eyes unsettled him. The last two rocks he'd shot at the man hit him in the cheek and forehead—drawing blood; he didn't flinch.\r\nToday was the fourth day, and George had left his unease at home. Today he'd planned to steal the mime's box, and put an early end to his stupid charade.\r\nHe walked casually at first, but once he got close, he ran and grabbed the box by the handle. As soon as he attempted to run off with it, the box wouldn't budge. It was a cheap and raggedy cardboard, but in his fingers it was as unyielding as stone.\r\nThe mime knelt down beside him and made a gesture around his wrists. George snickered but then the ratchet of handcuffs reached his ears. He looked down; saw nothing. He released the box and tried to pull away; he couldn't. The mime smiled loudly and jokily bobbed his head while pointing to the boy's wrists.\r\nGeorge screamed, but it was deafeningly silent. The mime's eyebrows raised and he smirked; he held a long and dirt crusted finger up to his lips.\r\nThe teen boy frantically struggled against the invisible binds and shouted to no avail. Several amused spectators gawked and chuckled at the boy's passable performance; the mime watched as well, playing into the crowd's bemusement.\r\nHe held up a hand in a \"wait and see\" gesture and the crowd quieted, gathering closer. With great effort, the mime hefted the massively empty cardboard box and placed it onto the pier banister. George still pleaded to the growing audience as he desperately worked to free himself from the accursed anchor.\r\nThe mime wiped the sweat from his brow and motioned for a small woman to assist him. With great glee—and little effort—the woman pushed at the box and it teetered and fell from the railing, pulling George along with it.\r\nWith an oddly silent plunk, the box and George plunged into the dark and calm waters below; the crowd cheered raucously." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Guest on The Balcony" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "It was 10pm amd I was just stumbling in my front door.\r\nAfter a long over time shift I barely had any energy left to lift my feet.\r\nNormally I'd have a little snack or a full blown late night meal because a snack wasn't really enough for an emergency dispatcher but tonight was eerily different.\r\nI had no appetite and I couldn't stop thinking about the last call I had at work.\r\nA man called in and whispered into the phone, \" It's me. Let me in.\"\r\nMind you this was an emergency line so the request made absolutely no sense.\r\nI tried asking probing questions and trying to confirm if he needed help, or if maybe he had the wrong number but to no avail.\r\nHe just kept repeating ,\"It's me. Let me in.\"\r\nI figured I must have been delusional, especially after 10 hours of pure chaos and concentration.\r\nAs I kicked my shoes off and slumped on my couch I heard a light tapping on the door.\r\nIt was coming from the balcony door.\r\nI immediately panicked. Im on the second floor so who the hell would be out there?\r\n\"Uh, who is it?\" I asked stupidly. I knew I was exhausted because part of me was hoping it was a animal or a nosey neighbor, which didn't even make sense.\r\nBut boy was I wrong and my heart immediately dropped to my intestines when I heard a voice whisper,\r\n\"Its me. Let me in.\"" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Into the fog" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I was once hiking in Ecuador's highest volcano, The Chimborazo. The sky was completely covered with grey clouds, not letting a single ray of light through. It was really cold and humid as well, fog getting thicker with each step. My pace was slow due to the reduced visibility, small creeks and boulders all over the place but for some reason I kept going. I had not seen a single soul for the last hour deep into the trail and for some reason I started feeling really unsettled, like somebody or something was watching me from one of the many cliffs that surrounded the trail. Then, out of nowhere, I heard the most terrifying and unreal screech in my whole life, like some kind of alien beast finally deciding to make me its meal or trophy. My heart skipped a beat, my spine and blood went cold and my skin hurt from the goosebumps but I reacted almost immediately. I turned around without even trying to find out where that nightmarish scream came from. I was running for my life, as fast as I could, jumping over creeks and boulders like it was nothing, heartbeat and breathing at max. The one hour or so trip into hell turned into a nonstop 20 minutes sprint into the refuge in the middle of the volcano's reserve I had planned to stay for the night.\r\nI sat in the lunch room, just a few other adventurers eating and drinking. I was not tire or sore, that came later, but couldn't say a word for a few good minutes. Then I ordered a beer and told the tender what just happened to me. He laughed at story like he'd heard it many times before and told me that I just described to him the noise the vicuñas, some sort of alpacas endemic to the area, make.\r\nI have no doubt he was telling me the truth but to this day I have not forgotten that day or that noise, and I will never do..." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "I Know the Garden" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "My fondest childhood memories are from grandpa's garden. On bright summer mornings my cousins and I would be let loose and play until nightfall.\r\nWe would climb the trees, which seemed impossibly ancient, yet teemed with fruit. Their branches grew twisted and curled into shapes that continued to grow in a child's imagination: mountains, castles, submarines and dragons populated the property.\r\nWe would eat more than our fill of apples, raspberries, plums or strawberries, whatever happened to be ripe. Any other fruit, berry or vegetable has always tasted like a watered down version, a cheap knock-off of what that garden provided.\r\nIt was my love for that place of beauty and plenty that sparked my love for gardening. I would follow grandpa for hours and he would teach me how to properly care for the trees, bushes and roots. He was the toughest man I ever knew, yet so gentle with the plants, and with me. I became his favorite grandchild, obviously.\r\nAs we grew older, my cousins all lost interest and their visits became rare occurrences. I would visit every day. Nothing could beat the scent of fresh earth, the feeling of soil between my fingers; I loved the work as much as I loved the produce.\r\nMy parents, uncles and aunts never seemed to understand. I overheard them several times talking about \"the potential of the property\". How rich they would be when grandpa finally gave in. I dreaded the day.\r\nBut grandpa kept up his gardening even as my parents grew old, strong as ever. He only ate what the garden gave him and it would seem it took care of him, just as he took care of it. He went on to outlive all his children.\r\nNow on his deathbed he let us know, much to my cousins' dismay, that I would be the sole heir to the property. The land is valuable, sure, but I'm the only one who knows how to care for it. I'm the only one who doesn't view it as a giant pile of money.\r\nI should have seen them coming, those greedy cousins of mine. The details are blurry, but...\r\nI'm quite certain they killed me.\r\nAnd as a last, cruel joke they've buried me a full six feet down where no one will ever find me, to be fertilizer for my own beloved garden.\r\nThat was their mistake.\r\nThis place is old and its roots go deep. As they embrace me I know it's true: I've taken care of the garden and now it takes care of me. Surely I was dead, but I can faintly hear my cousins celebrating up at the house. I know what I have to do. I smell the fresh earth and feel the soil between my fingers. Only five feet to go.\r\nThe garden is helping.\r\nFour feet.\r\nThe roots are pulling me up.\r\nThree feet.\r\nThey'll regret sticking around.\r\nTwo feet.\r\nThey'll regret not knowing the garden." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The day my daughter died." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "They say there are two days you remember forever in your life as a parent.\r\nThe day your child is born.\r\nAnd the day your child dies.\r\nOf course, there are lots of vivid memories that happened in between. I remember her first word; her soft \"Bah-ney\", as the purple dinosaur danced on the television set. Her first day of school; I watched as her pink backpack bounced up and down, adorned with the pixies from the new show she was interested in now. Too old and mature for her dancing purple dinosaur. I got her a matching pink watch, and she loved that little thing. She always wore it, and always kept it, even as she got older. Its bright pink faded to near-white plastic, but she didn't care. It made her happy.\r\nNo matter how much older she grew, she never lost her sense of childhood joy.\r\nI remember other things, of course: her first job, her first date, her first apartment.\r\nBut whenever I think about the day she was born, its as though I'm in the hospital again. Clutching my wife's hand for dear life as the doctor ordered her to push. When I heard my daughter's wails, I immediately rushed over and held her in my arms. Her skin was so pink. So flush and bursting with life. I just looked at her, until the tears prevented me from seeing anything.\r\nAnd when I think about when she died, I am once again sitting alone at the kitchen table, hearing the heavy knock on the door. When they told me the news, I felt myself die as well. My body moved on autopilot when I went to the morgue to identify her body. They were still trying to get details and understand what had happened. They told me not to look at anything else in the room. Some of the bodies were unidentifiable due to the brutality, but strangely, my daughter died in one piece. They left, giving me time to process.\r\nI lifted the blanket. She looked so at peace. Like she was simply asleep. At rest. My heart ached, yet something didn't feel quite right. No... something was very, very wrong. I don't know why, but the table on the other side of the room called out to me. I turned my back on my daughter, and proceeded towards it.\r\nDespite the warning, I lifted the blanket. I nearly gagged at the mess of body parts on the table. But one of the arms was still fully intact. And on it, was strapped a faded, pink watch.\r\nI turned back around. The body was gone. The only thing that was moved in the room was the swinging door of the morgue.\r\nMuch like my wife, my daughter died giving life to another being.\r\nAnd whatever it was, it now bore my daughter's face.\r\nAnd despite my grief and agony, I couldn't help but have a darkly humorous thought.\r\nI was a granddad now." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Last Shelter" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "When the sirens went off, we all ran for the old bomb shelter under city hall. There were about fifty of us crammed in there, sweaty, scared, clutching whatever we could carry. No one knew exactly what was happening outside, but we all felt it: the deep rumble of something tearing the world apart.\r\nThe shelter had everything we needed: food, water, even some old board games from the Cold War days. A few people joked we’d be fine, like some messed-up sleepover. Days passed. Then a week. We rationed food, kept each other sane, waited for news.\r\nNothing came.\r\nOne guy, Mark, was the first to crack. Started pacing, muttering about how we couldn’t just sit there. Said the air smelled wrong. Nobody wanted to admit it, but he was right. The shelter was getting stale, heavy. People started coughing more. Sleeping less.\r\nOn the twelfth day, we made a decision. We’d send a group topside to check things out. Five volunteers, including me.\r\nWe climbed the ladder, unbolted the hatch, and pushed it open.\r\nSunlight blinded us at first. The air was crisp, clean. And the world, it was fine. No fire, no monsters, no destruction. Birds chirped. Trees swayed. Kids rode bikes down the street like nothing had ever happened.\r\nWe stumbled out, laughing, crying. Somehow, we had survived the apocalypse that never was.\r\nThen I looked back at the shelter entrance.\r\nIt was gone.\r\nNo hatch. No building. Just smooth concrete, like it had never been there at all.\r\nAnd the five of us standing there, we weren’t casting shadows.\r\nNone of the people around us looked at us.\r\nBecause we weren’t there anymore.\r\nWe never left the shelter." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Mirror" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "When she first started to dream of a darkened room with a mirror in the centre, it hadn’t really troubled her. In fact, she had barely remembered the dreams upon waking. Over time though, these dreams had twisted and manifested into something much more terrifying.\r\nThe mirror had started to warp and shudder. Cracks had begun to appear, and eventually the looming silhouette of a figure was visible. Each night, this person took a step or two closer to the mirror, and each night Lainey echoed their movements, similarly making her way closer to the mirror, step at a time.\r\nThe closer she got, the more afraid she felt. The more afraid she felt, the faster she moved.\r\nUntil one night, she was standing directly in front of the mirror, heart racing, begging herself to wake up, or at the very least, run away. Her feet refused to move, nor would her eyes open to reality. She peered into the mirror, this time with a clear view of who waited inside.\r\nIt was a man, with hollow bleeding eyes and a gaping, rotten hole for a mouth. His flesh leaked from his bones, chunks splattering the ground around him. She was alarmed to find she could smell his putrid scent emanating from the mirror. He lifted one pustule covered hand. Lainey had no control over her own body as her hand rose in tandem with his. She tried with all her might to stop, to not mimic his movements, but it was impossible. Their hands moved closer. As she placed her hand on the cracked, jagged surface of the mirror, she felt his oozing flesh wrap around her fingers and begin to slowly pull her through. The mirror tore and ripped at her skin. She screamed as the figure forced her helplessly through to his side of the glass. Her face was one of the last parts of her to be dragged through. Her eyes were torn from their sockets, her lips sliced harshly away to reveal teeth and bone. Upon her full arrival into this new, dark hellscape, the decomposing man spoke in a deep, almost demonic voice.\r\n“For hundreds of years I have been stuck, cursed to an eternity inside this godforsaken mirror. Neither alive nor dead. Awaiting one with enough misery and darkness in their soul to dream me into existence. Now, dreamer, it is your turn to look upon the world through my eyes. Neither alive nor dead but rotting as a corpse would. Waiting for another to dream you into existence, to bring you true death and stay to rot themselves. And so, the curse continues.”\r\nAlthough unseen by Lainey, his body collapsed in upon himself and left a sludge of flesh and pus where he had been standing. Lainey screamed in pain and horror, unable to ever beg forgiveness for her sins." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The First Warm Day!" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The first really warm day of the year!\r\nI seemed to be hearing this phrase all around me, and as I sat with a sigh of satisfaction on the park bench, I repeated it to myself. The green was dotted with happy humans with lots of bare skin, soaking up the April sun. Even though I am not particularly fond of other humans, I couldn’t help but let the ripple of communal joy flow through me.\r\nAnother person approached the bench, and sat on the far end. A twitch of annoyance contaminated the joy and I thought about getting up and finding another empty bench. But why should I have to? And more and more humans were flowing into the sunny park- there were no empty benches in sight.\r\nAt least the other person didn't want to talk, thank god. I miss the days when you could hold up a newspaper and form a shield against small talk. I understand young folk use headphones now for the same purpose, but I would feel ridiculous and uncomfortable in headphones.\r\nThe other person was silent, but still. Swinging their sneakered foot restlessly, their head was bent, not at a phone, but at their fingers.\r\nAh, they were picking the bits of skin around the nails. I have done that too, I know how satisfying it is.\r\nFrom the corner of my eye, I could see a bit of white skin sticking up from the thumb. Oh I would definitely pick at that. So chewy and juicy.\r\nThe owner of the thumb obviously felt the same way. They were pulling and tugging at the bit of flesh, trying to pry it loose from their body. I tried not to stare, but I was mesmerised.\r\nI stared.\r\nThe sounds of the park and the happy people inside it receded to the background.\r\nEventually the other person on the bench got a good grip on the skin which was separating from their thumb, and began pulling it. I was thrilled.\r\nA drop of scarlet blood swelled up on the skin which was now being stretched away from the hand, almost the thinness of a taut thread. The blood glistened in sun. I caught sight of the face, which was twisted in pure ecstatic agony. I knew from experience how much it must hurt.\r\nThey pulled the thread further and further, and I heard the sharp gasp of pain. In front of my eyes, they began unravelling.\r\nI glanced around. No-one else seemed to be noticing this unravelling human on the park bench.\r\nThey fully unravelled their whole hand, winding the threadlike skin around their other hand, but never letting go. They pulled and pulled.\r\nWithin a matter of seconds, there was pile of bloody skin-thread on the park bench. A couple of scattered articles of clothing lay beneath.\r\nI got up, and slowly strolled away. I couldn’t think of anything else to do.\r\nThe first really warm day of the year." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Way Home" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "\"So glad I finally got to you.”\r\nI flinched at the sudden sound of the voice. A woman sat down across from me. Buisness-atire. Pantsuit. I didn’t know her, did I?\r\n“Yeah no, my day was terrible”, she leaned her head against the window, “stress at work, you know how it is.” I relaxed. She was clearly speaking into some sort of ear-piece, although her long hair covered it up. I hate people who make phone calls on the subway.\r\n“Ugh, I know, this sucks”, she grimaced as we rode through a tunnel, “ but I only have like twenty minutes between work and home to organize my dinner, and…”\r\nI focused on my book and tried to tune out her voice, but it was impossible.\r\n“My boss hasn’t been too kind, but that’s okay\", she yawned, \"new things are hard sometimes. But I can go home to a warm bed. And tomorrow, I'll be better.\"\r\nI suppressed a chuckle. I felt that one.\r\nOver the course of the drive, I found she was new in town, happily single, and loved buying pretty notebooks, but was too afraid to write in them. To ruin something so precious with her babbeling. She was also terrified of failing her carreer. Of failing her life. I knew I was an intruder preying on a personal conversation, but still, I felt strangely drawn to her. I imagined answering the questions she asked her phone partner instead of sitting silently. I imagined becoming her friend. As the sun set and the train slowly cleard out, her voice became my only companion, carrying us through the night.\r\nSoon, the train came to his final halt. I got up and smiled at her, casually trying to get past. It turned into a shudder as I saw the sadness in her eyes. She got up, blocking my path to the doors.\r\n\"Sorry for my yapping. Let's get to buisness\", she put her hair into a ponytail.\r\nMy face fell.\r\nNo headphones.\r\n“Thank you for listening”, she smiled. I should have paid more attention to her face. Then, I would have recognized the sharpness of her teeth.\r\n“I’ve always loved to talk before dinner.”" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Night I Met God" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Did I ever tell you about the time I met God? It was years ago, before you were born. I don’t think I even knew your mother yet. Maybe just barely. I was actually going out with her best friend, Cindy. I’m spotty on the details. I didn’t have a life worth remembering much before I met your mother.\r\nAnyway—me and Cindy were at a drive-in. You know what that is? Like a theater, but outside in your car. The speakers were ten cars up, so we couldn’t hear the movie too good. But we weren’t really there for the movie, if you catch my drift. Cindy… she looked like ten cents a dance. She’d just stepped out to grab us more popcorn when I heard a tap on the driver’s side window.\r\nI spun around, ready to fight. Some punk knocking all hard like he owned it. I rolled the window down to get a look at the face I was about to spit into—but there wasn’t one. Just a blue worker’s jumper, like an electrician would wear, and white hands sticking out the sleeves.\r\nI craned my neck trying to see a face. Nothing. It was like there was a streetlamp right behind his head no matter which way I leaned. When my neck started to hurt, I asked, “What the hell do you want?”\r\nHe didn’t answer. Just stood there. I didn’t want this creeper standing there when Cindy got back, so I stuck my hand out the window and tried to poke two fingers into his hip. I just wanted to get his attention. Before I could, one of those white hands clamped onto my wrist, and I swear I felt every bit of cartilage in my arm pop.\r\nI pulled back, but everything… stopped. The hum of the other cars went low and garbled. Nobody was moving. They all just stared at the flickering, frozen screen.\r\nThen he spoke.\r\nIt sounded like a busted radio—chopped-up sentences thrown in a bowl. I heard “glory” the most. Then “destiny.” Then “son.” It’s hard to explain, but each word hit me like a Shakespeare play in my mind. I was there, thinking, for hours.\r\nThen he let go. Just like that. And it was all gone. The motors roared back. The movie kept rolling. I’m not proud of this next part, but I peeled out of the lot before Cindy came back. I couldn’t think straight. I went straight home and sat in the shower for probably a few hours.\r\nI did call Cindy later. She wasn’t mad. Said she got a ride with some other guy. I apologized, but here’s the thing—I didn’t really feel bad. I asked for her friend’s number—your mother. Said it was for homework help. She gave it to me, and I never called Cindy again.\r\nI didn’t feel anything for Cindy after that night.\r\nSomehow, I just knew. She wasn’t the one He was talking about. She wouldn’t bear my son." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Hole" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "It appeared from out of nowhere. A giant hole smack dab in my hometown. No one could explain its origins. The government denied any doing while the science community verified what didn’t cause it.\r\nMany tried taking photos and videos, but nothing ever seemed to work around it. It was a popular spot for teenagers at one time. They loved chuckin’ all kinds of crap down there. But when asked what they all heard they answered the same, nothing.\r\nOver time it just became part of life, but weirdly the town’s numbers started to dwindle. There were rumors folks had gone missin’, but we figured they just moved outta town.\r\nLike many, I myself went down to see what all the huff n’ puff was about. Somethin’ was off in the air as soon as I arrived. It’s difficult to explain, but it’s as though Mother Nature was wounded herself. I gazed into the black depths and felt immense pressure. The kids couldn’t have said it better — it was nothingness.\r\nMy blood froze from the eerie silence it gave. There was not a bird or bug chirpin’ nearby this damn thing. Time came to a standstill at the edge. Even sunlight dissipated in the void. It may have been in my head, but for a moment I heard it whisper, asking me to enter its black jaws without a second’s thought. I scrammed outta there and didn’t look back. Whatever that hole was, it wasn’t right.\r\nTime carried on for the rest of the world, but for us we were losing our own. People from town went missing one after another. Reports bombarded the sheriff’s office, but him and his men weren’t able to help. It wasn’t until we noticed shoes, toys, phones, and more all trailed down toward one area — the hole.\r\nMr. Byers, a local wild lifer, set up a trail cam outside the perimeter to see what was happening. What we saw on that footage haunted us all. There on the screen, our friends and loved ones, dancin’ with death, calmly plunging themselves headfirst into the abyss.\r\nWe showed the world what was happening in our backyard. Uncle Sam came a knockin’, trying his best to take control. But not even them soldiers were safe from it.\r\nIt's been a year since the hole’s arrival. The government ruled the town uninhabitable and told the locals to move out. It was too late for us, though.\r\nEven now, no matter how far away I live, I still hear its whispers. It calls for me in my dreams, standin' at the edge of that crater, walkin' off into the pitch black. I fall, forever, screamin' at the top of my lungs, but no sound comes out.\r\nI leap outta bed in a cold sweat, gaspin' for air, not knowin' if I'm awake or still fallin'. If what I felt is what those poor souls are still goin' through, I pray the Lord has mercy on them." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Cradle Witch" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "In the 1940s, Nurse Evelyn ran the baby ward of a small hospital, where she was known for her cold efficiency. Behind her polished exterior, however, she harbored a dark secret. Over the years, many infants had died under her care—more than forty, though the exact number was never known. She selected the weakest, the most vulnerable children, and behind closed doors, they mysteriously perished. The mothers left heartbroken, but no one dared question the perfect nurse.\r\nThat was until Charlotte arrived. A powerful woman, rich and influential, Charlotte gave birth at the hospital, and like the others, her child was placed under Evelyn’s care. But this time, things went terribly wrong. The baby, once healthy, grew sick and died within days. Charlotte, devastated, knew there was something sinister at play. She was not a woman to accept silence.\r\nAs she cradled her dead child, Charlotte whispered a curse, ancient and filled with the agony of every mother who had lost a child to Evelyn’s hands: “You will feel every moment of suffering, every ounce of guilt, every tear shed for the children you’ve taken. All of it will be yours. Forever.”\r\nThe curse tore through the air, rending the fabric of reality itself. A dark force surged through the tear, and in that instant, Evelyn was transformed. The pain, guilt, and agony of every life she had stolen flooded into her—both the mothers’ suffering and the spirits of the children—and twisted her into something unnatural. She became The Cradle Witch.\r\nHer body warped, her skin pale and taut, her eyes sunken deep into her skull. The cries of the dead echoed in her ears, their sorrow mingling with her own. She was consumed by the curse, yet she found a strange sense of purpose in it. She now hunted those who carried unbearable shame and guilt, those trapped in their own sorrow. She would end their suffering—by claiming it for herself.\r\nAnd so, The Cradle Witch roams, a creature of agony and vengeance, offering dark release to those who are drowning in their own remorse. In her arms, the lost find peace, but it is peace that no one truly seeks." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Top Bunk" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "An accident.\r\nThat’s what Mr. Coroner said. After the autopsy.\r\nFred knew what happened during it. Could picture him cutting Mike open, collar to groin. Skin being peeled apart.\r\nNext came the emptying. Lungs and heart. Stomach and liver. Even a person’s most private part.\r\nTheir brain.\r\nFred didn’t want to. Wished with all his might. But the images still came, flooding, drowning. Nightmarish clarity.\r\nHe stopped sleeping. Just thinking of there…\r\n… their room.\r\nShared since Mike was born.\r\nBlue walls, white carpet. Big enough for two boys.\r\nAnd it.\r\nThe thing behind this horror.\r\nDemon.\r\nDevil incarnate.\r\nMonster from all blackened fantasies.\r\nThe bunk bed.\r\nMommy and Daddy had gifted it.\r\nFred and Mike were shoved onto Papa and Nini one night. During which Daddy worked, bolted, screwed.\r\nHomecoming revealed a wooden giant. All top and no bottom.\r\nA good faith act. Preventing a potential argument. Hugs followed, thank yous were exchanged.\r\nThen sleep.\r\nLong nights of sleeping. Many uneventful midnights, dreams, prayer.\r\nIt was an accident.\r\nThat’s what Mr. and Mrs. Officer said. After their check-up.\r\nStrangers had come to the house. Private treasures were poked and prodded, photographed by masks. All while Fred stood by.\r\nMommy and Daddy led him away from their… his room. Hugs did nothing to warm the cold. Seeping chill of loss. The emptiness.\r\nHe’d done it in his sleep.\r\nMike moved without thinking.\r\nMike had been sleeping then. No doubt dreaming about…\r\n… about something.\r\nSomething eternally unknowable.\r\nLike all big brothers. Fred would never know.\r\nMike rolled.\r\nAnd rolled.\r\nAnd rolled.\r\nThe railing looked sturdy. Impenetrable.\r\nBut Mike was bigger than before. Time made sure of that.\r\nMike rolled up.\r\nThen over.\r\nThen down.\r\nFred wondered why he’d fallen that way.\r\nWhy face first? There was space.\r\nMike could’ve missed the…\r\n… the…\r\n… But Mike didn’t.\r\nMike couldn’t.\r\nFred knew. Deep down, he felt sure.\r\nThe bunk bed.\r\nThat demon.\r\nThat devil incarnate.\r\nThat monster from all blackened fantasies, horrid and evil.\r\nIt’d been waiting all this time. Plotting for the perfect moment.\r\nUntil it could work its terrible magic.\r\nWhy else would Mike fall upside down?\r\nWhy else would Mike snap his neck?\r\nWhy else?" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Blue Vaults of Heaven" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The coffee in the break room was bland, but as usual, Gilly didn't notice, fixated as he was on the blue vaults of the Las Vegas sky.\r\nAnd then his alarm rang.\r\n…\r\nHe'd followed the woman for seven days.\r\nAfter dropping her son off at school, she bought pomegranates at the market.\r\nShe prayed in town, took lunch, and returned to the kindergarten.\r\nAt night, she came out on the terrace and gazed upward, perhaps considering the minuteness of her existence in the vast sea of stars.\r\n…\r\n'Take the shot,' Gilly's CO said.\r\n'Sir, collateral.'\r\n'Her plane is on the runway at Peshawar.'\r\nGilly sat at the console of his Predator drone. Seven days he'd followed this target from an altitude of 5,000 feet. She was no different to some Mid-Western suburban housewife.\r\n'An order, soldier.'\r\n…\r\nWhen the smoke cleared, it was apocalyptic.\r\nHer son had been blown into a Jackson Pollock painting.\r\nShe was unconscious, he hoped dead, but then she revived.\r\nHer left arm was missing, and in the thermal mode of the drone's camera, the blood pulsing from it seemed like white-hot plasma.\r\nShe stumbled over the wreckage and looked up at the sky, a balled fist, cursing her God? Our God? Gilly?\r\n'Keep a hover until it’s confirmed,' the CO said.\r\nThe young drone operator didn't need to wait long. The blood spurting from her arm like the Bellagio's fountain slowed to a trickle.\r\nShe sunk back, turning the same colour as the cool, black Earth.\r\n'Bring it home,' The CO continued, 'and take 30 minutes.'\r\n…\r\nThe coffee in the break room was bland, but as usual, Gilly didn't notice, fixated as he was on the blue vaults of heaven." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Take a photo of your kid" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "As Tucker raced out the door, I grabbed him. “Hang on.” I quickly turned him around and snapped a photo with my phone.\r\n“Oh, I’ve heard of that,” Amanda said. “Take a photo of the kid every time he leaves the house, right? So you know exactly what he’s wearing and stuff if he goes missing?”\r\n“Yep, exactly,” I said.\r\nIt was a lie.\r\nBut I couldn’t tell her the truth. I had hundreds of photos of Tucker on my phone, standing by the door. Different outfits, smiling, not smiling, some blurry. I never skipped taking the photo. Never.\r\nA half hour later I heard Tucker at the door. “Mom! Mom!”\r\n“Excuse me,” I said to Amanda, getting up.\r\nI pulled out the photo from today on my phone. Then I looked through the peephole. Slowly, I did a one-by-one comparison. Hair. Shirt. Wrists (watch or no). Pants. Socks. Shoes.\r\nMy hand went for the lock—\r\nWait…\r\nNo, in the photo, Tucker’s hair had been parted on the right. I looked back out the peephole. His hair was parted on the left.\r\n“Shit,” I muttered.\r\nI called Tucker’s phone. “Where are you?”\r\n“At Adrian’s house. We’re playing on his new Nintendo—”\r\nI pocketed the phone. Looked back out the peephole.\r\nThe porch was empty.\r\nHeart pounding, I went back over to the table, where Amanda sat. She looked at me expectantly. “He just—needed to ask me something,” I said.\r\nAn hour later, Amanda was gone, and I got out my laptop and got to work. But ten minutes later, the melodic chime of the doorbell sounded.\r\nTucker was standing on the porch.\r\nI pulled out my phone again. Hair. Shirt. Wrists. Pants. Socks. Shoes. My eyes went back and forth between the photo and the peephole.\r\nHis hair was parted right this time.\r\nI almost opened the door.\r\nBut then I realized his socks were green, instead of blue.\r\nI walked away and went back to the desk. Blowing out a breath, I got back to work. They always got one thing wrong. It was never a perfect copy.\r\nA half hour later, the doorbell rang again. I went to the peephole—but I could already tell it was the real Tucker. Hair. Shirt. Wrists. Pants. Socks. Shoes. They all matched.\r\nI called his cell. Watched him pick it up from his pocket. “That’s you, right?” I said into the phone.\r\nA crackle of static burst through the speakers.\r\nWhat—\r\nTucker leaned towards the peephole. His face twisted into a horrible grin. Wide blue eyes stared into me. He opened his mouth, as if screaming, and a burst of static came through the phone.\r\nThat’s when I realized.\r\nHe had all his teeth.\r\nBut Tucker was missing his right incisor.\r\nFor every picture, going forward, Tucker would have to smile." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "How to get rid of Acrophobia" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "As I stood in the stairwell of the Merriweather Hotel, staring up at the ten spiraling stories above me, I considered running away as fast as I possibly could.\r\n“Are you ready?” Asked Brian.\r\n“As I’ll ever be,” I groaned.\r\nBrian’s my Life Coach. I recently hired him to help me get over my debilitating fear of heights.\r\n“We’ll take it slow,” Brian said, beginning our accent to the top.\r\nI followed behind, my hand glued to the railing.\r\n“Alright, we’re up three stories now. Not quite thirty feet.” Brian placed a hand gently on my shoulder. “I want you to look over the edge.”\r\nRunning sounded better than ever.\r\n“Okay,” I replied.\r\nI shuffled at a snail’s pace to the railing and peeked over.\r\nTechnically we weren’t even that high up yet, but my heart was already starting to pound in my chest.\r\n“You are safe,” Brian said, “your feet are firmly planted, and nothing bad is going to happen.”\r\nBrian is one of those face-your-fears-head-on kind of guys.\r\n“Let’s keep going,” Brian said, continuing our climb.\r\nWe got to the sixth floor when Brian stopped again.\r\n“You know the drill,” he gestured over the side.\r\nI took a small step and froze.\r\nMy body wasn’t listening anymore.\r\n“Gimme a second,” I whimpered.\r\nBrian held one of my hands.\r\nHis hands were strong, which was great, because I was squeezing them very hard.\r\n“Just a tiny look,” Brian smiled.\r\nI inched to the edge and glanced over.\r\nMy stomach started doing somersaults.\r\n“I think I’m gonna barf,” I wheezed.\r\n“Close your eyes,” Brian said, “and take a deep breath.”\r\nI did what he asked and the queasiness left.\r\nBut my fear did not.\r\nIf humans were meant to be up this high, then they’d have been born with wings.\r\n“We’re almost there,” Brian said, and I followed him to the top floor.\r\n“I don’t think I can do this,” I sputtered, imagining the look down.\r\n“Don’t worry, we’re gonna try something different.”\r\nBrian grabbed the railing and flung himself over, dangling over the hundred foot fall.\r\n“What the fuck,” I shrieked, fighting through my fear to rush to help him, “gimme your hand!”\r\n“No!” Brian cried, “I want you to watch!”\r\nHe let go.\r\nBrian laughed as he fell all ten stories.\r\nThe sound he made when he hit, the wet crunching of muscles and bones, was nothing compared to the howling screams he made after.\r\nHe was still alive.\r\nI flew down the stairwell like an avalanche.\r\nI had to help him.\r\nI had to do something.\r\nWhen I came spilling out onto the ground floor, Brian peeled himself off the ground and looked right at me.\r\n“See!” He cried, bloody bits pouring out of his mouth. “Nothing to be afraid of!”\r\nThe urge to run finally took over.\r\nI ran away as fast as I could and I didn’t look back.\r\nEver since that day, I haven’t been afraid of heights anymore.\r\nNow, I’m afraid of Brian." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "A game of chess with grandpa" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "In 1941 explosions burst outside the window one after another, as if a giant with a hammer was smashing the city. The glass trembled. Smoke streamed across the sky, gray and poisonous. Somewhere, people were screaming. Somewhere, shots rang out.\r\nI sat on a stool, too terrified to look outside. My grandfather was beside me.\r\nGrandpa loved backgammon. But when the war began and the enemy entered our city, he searched long and hard for his backgammon set, only to come up empty. So instead, he gripped my hand tightly and sat me down at the table.\r\nHe brought out an old chess set, dusty and cracked, with one pawn replaced by a bolt. That day, I saw my grandfather cry for the first time.\r\nHe never liked chess. He used to say it was slow and boring — not like backgammon.\r\nWe both tried to remember the rules, like learning to speak all over again. Another explosion thundered outside, closer this time, and the wall shuddered. Some of the chess pieces toppled.\r\nWe moved piece by piece, turn by turn, until suddenly — a loud, heavy knock on the door.\r\nThree knocks.\r\nThen silence.\r\nThen again — fiercer, more urgent. The door groaned, as if it were in pain.\r\nGrandpa looked at me, then shut his eyes tight, bracing for another blast. A tear rolled down his wrinkled cheek.\r\nThey were preparing to break down the door.\r\nIt rattled violently. The pounding became beastly, relentless. I almost screamed — but Grandpa only glanced at the board, telling me silently to keep playing.\r\nAs I delivered checkmate, the door was barely holding on.\r\nI wanted so badly to confess that I had given the backgammon set to my friend before the war began — but Grandpa took my hand.\r\nHe smiled. Quietly. Sadly. But it was a real smile — warm, genuine.\r\nHe squeezed my hand tight. His fingers were cold, but the touch was full of warmth.\r\nOutside, the explosions kept roaring, and the pounding on the door grew fiercer. Through my tears, I realized — Grandpa had let me win, as always.\r\nI smiled with him. And in that moment, I wished he would never let go of my hand.\r\nAnd then the door burst open." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Chains of Silence" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The blood dripped from her face. Her white skin darkened from the color of it. Her eyes lost the sparkle of life in them, filling with an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. Her hair was messy and hung down in dried-up strands.\r\nBefore her were two men, both of which wore all black and covered their faces. One of them held an axe towards another girl’s head, the other was holding her in place. One of them had luscious, dirty blonde hair. The other had black, messy hair.\r\nThe girl had an axe half inside of her head. The insides of her head were exposed to the cold, murderous, dead air in the room. The guy with the dirty blonde hair pulled the axe out of her head. As he moved the axe, more blood, brains and other guts came spilling out. It was a bloody mess.\r\nThe girl who was forced to watch cried so bad that her eyes began to redden after how much moisture she lost.\r\nThe basement light slowly dimmed. Until she was in complete and total darkness. The men were moving, but she could not hear any noise of any kind in the room. The room was quieter than a cemetery at its darkest hour\r\nShe tried to move, but the chains that were restricting her movement were keeping her in place.\r\nOut If nowhere…she felt a hand grab her shoulder." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Sweet Dreams Are Made Of These" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "It was a forgotten little town. No one left it for a bigger city. No one visited it for a weekend getaway. It just stayed tucked in behind the forests, with its distant residents.\r\nThe people of the town never spoke of dreams. Because they all shared one dream. A nightmare, to be precise. One that made its way to every sleeping soul at 3 AM every single night. No one knew when it first started. As far as it goes, it has been a generational thing, having been passed down from ancestors to ancestors to the residents of today.\r\nThe nightmare would start with a squelching sound. As if someone were digging their fingers deep into someone's intestines. Slowly but intensely, the fingers would keep churning the blood, while a faint scream would keep echoing till it was no longer faint. Once the squelching would stop, long, dangly fingers would make their way out of the intestine onto the world outside, with nails rotting and smelling of death. Eventually, the figure would drag itself out completely, its facial features wrongly arranged, it's broken limbs barely hanging on from joints, a gaping hole in the name of a mouth that always whispered a name. Your name. And if it did, that would be your last nightmare. Your last sleep.\r\nThe residents had learned to give in. If you screamed, the creature screamed back from within you. Children were taught early to lie still, breathe shallow, not look at it. To never look at its face. But the nightmare always ended the same way. Just before waking, the creature would lean close and whisper, “One day, I’ll be real.” And then everyone would wake up at once. 3:33 AM, exactly.\r\nLast night, no one woke up. At 3:33 AM, there were no flickering lights, no rustling sheets, no gasps escaping dream-choked lungs. Just silence, vast and unnatural. The houses stood open, beds still warm, meals half-eaten, cribs gently rocking on their own. And at dawn, from every baby monitor, every radio, every silent phone, a voice spoke, layered, wet, and far too close: “I’m not dreaming anymore. And now, neither are you.”" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Are You Tired Of Diminishing Returns?" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“Have a seat Greg!” The chair across from his desk is really comfortable. It’s gotta be part of the pitch. Make ‘em feel at home. “What would you like to know?”\r\n“Well, I’m just wondering how it works.”\r\n“Fair enough! I’ll give you a little bit of backstory. I’m a neurobiologist and when I was a child, I was convinced I could save my grandfather from Alzhiemers.”\r\n“Really?”\r\n“Well, turns out I couldn’t.”\r\n“Oh.”\r\n“He died a miserable death, BUT I did parlay that passion into something that brings joy to people, and… makes me a fuck TON of money!”\r\nHe starts laughing and in spite of myself, so do I.\r\n“So anyway, I figured the only bright spot in dementia or Alzheimers is always meeting new people. Having new experiences. That got the wheels in my head turning, which brings us to New Beginnings.”\r\n“How does it work?”\r\n“Hold on Greg. You’re not working with law enforcement in any capacity, are you?”\r\n“No.”\r\n“That’s all I needed, thank you. So we put you in one of our halos, and you just think of the experience that you would like to relive for the first time. You don’t have to tell us what it is. Our technology finds that memory in your brain. It isolates it and… disables it.”\r\n“Really?”\r\n“But only for around twenty four hours. It’s temporary, so there’s no worry of doing any damage. Think of it like novocaine for your memory.”\r\n“Ok.”\r\n“Say you want to experience ice cream for the first time, having sex, flying, sushi, going to Disneyland. Hell, you want to experience Back To The Future like it was new, whatever! Big or small, you decide. The point is my company, for a reasonable fee, can bring you those guaranteed feelings of joy that fade as we get older. And it doesn’t affect any other part of your brain, just that memory and anything associated with it.”\r\n“Wow.”\r\n“So, you make plans. You write yourself a note. Put it in your pocket. After the session is done, you follow any kind of directions or reservations you left for yourself, and relive it as if it was a brand new experience. Twenty four hours later, everything in your brain goes back to normal and you still get to keep that experience. That joy.”\r\n“How many times can I do this?”\r\n“As many times as you can afford Greg, but no more than once every other day. If you can afford it, you can make love to your girl for the first time, every other day for the rest of your life. Get those butterflies back, you know what I mean? Find your passion again.”\r\n“Can we do it tomorrow?”\r\n-\r\nI stare at all of my trophies at home. I’ve been in a rut, but I can relive the glory days.\r\nI’ll find that fire again. My fingers run down my knives.\r\nNothing’s ever been as good as the first time.\r\nTo New Beginnings." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Every Inclination of Evil" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "It's extraordinarily amusing how in all my years on this misbegotten planet people never noticed the way I look at them. I am glad the hatred was never that naked in my eyes or in my face, to be honest. In fact, people always remark that cobalt eyes are \"beautiful\". So full of life and bright with an almost scintillating energy. Especially when they crinkle from my smile. A friendly and warm and handsome face to compliment my controlled demeanor of being convivial. But not too convivial to let them think i'm a paper tiger. Just enough to slip into their worlds and learn their vulnerabilities. What I can do to dig into their most primal fears when I take them later. A warm smile goes a long way and you would not believe how effortless it is., especially when you move to the idyllic paradise of a small town. Everyone is eager to learn about the new visitor and in return, share their history and who they are. And yet for their eagerness, their welcoming gifts, their acquaintances, it does not fill me with remorse or guilt or a self loathing at what I do to them.\r\nThat part of my soul I had cut out myself. That is the part of me that will never exist again in my flesh.\r\nAnd even if I was able to summon an ounce of pity, it would only be that they died so fast from the blood loss. Sometimes I get too excited. Sometimes I just can't but help indulge that virile hatred of God's failed creation. And a failed creation they truly are. Even God had admitted it Himself.\r\n\"The Lord regretted He had made human beings on the earth, and His heart was deeply troubled\"\r\nBut I don't need His approval to rectify His mistake. Evil. Sadistic. Demonic. Cunning. Charismatic and charming. I am all those things. I choose to be all those things because I simply am. I am." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "I'm a part of something big." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Maybe we.\r\nMaybe we instead.\r\nWe’re apparently a part of something big.\r\nNot “important” big. I mean cosmic—something that exists outside memory.\r\nAnd I think I saw it.\r\nI just don’t remember what.\r\nThe birds change colors as I look at them.\r\nMy mom’s sister turned into the friend who painted the mural.\r\nThe moon understands my blight.\r\nEveryone says it’s fine.\r\nThe universe is lying to me.\r\nIt broke me—and I created the universe to cope.\r\nI’ve started keeping track of the differences. Not the obvious ones—way too easy. I see the tiny ones out of the corner of my eye.\r\nWhat mural, you ask?\r\nThere’s a mural on 9th and Bell—it’s always been there. Bright yellow sunflowers. Happy, laughing kids. My big black dog with the stupid floppy ear and grin that made strangers pet him. My mom’s friend painted it.\r\nDid I call her my mom’s friend?\r\nAndrea was her sister!\r\nAunt Andy. I’m wearing one of her bracelets... Right. Now.\r\nBut now she’s “Andrea from church.”\r\nMy dog? Gone. Not painted over. Just—gone.\r\nIn its place: the kids’ mother. And this weird fact I suddenly know—the artist’s father was trans, so now she has two moms?\r\nHow do I know that?\r\nLike someone tucked it into my memory while I was blinking.\r\nShe used my dog Herbie as inspiration!\r\nI know she did. He had that same grin. Same stupid ear.\r\nAnd now he’s just—what?\r\nScrubbed?\r\nFirst my dog was in the mural.\r\nThen I never had a dog.\r\nNow my mom’s friend is a transwoman?\r\nWho used to be her sister?\r\nWhat is happening?\r\nThese aren’t glitches.\r\nThey’re lures.\r\nLast night, my toothbrush was already wet.\r\nI hadn’t used it.\r\nNo one else lives here.\r\nI watched the door all day.\r\nIt’s like the world is stalling—changing scenes just long enough to distract me. Jazzing up the background so I won’t notice the holes.\r\nThere’s that sound again.\r\nYou know the one I mean, right?\r\nThe almost-breath between your ears.\r\nOr maybe like an alarm that needs changing.\r\nLike pressure with no source.\r\nLike maybe the universe is whispering, but you’re on the wrong frequency.\r\nThat whisper that happens when the room goes still and your pulse forgets the beat.\r\nI blink and pigeons turn checkerboard.\r\nI ask my mom about Andy and she swears she never had a sister.\r\nAnd the moon.\r\nOh God. Don’t even get me started on the moon.\r\nIt tilts when I look too long. Like it’s listening. Like it knows.\r\nAnd every time I see it, I get this feeling—this awful, glorious certainty—that it remembers what I saw.\r\nAnd that it’s sorry.\r\nLike… genuinely sorry. With heartfelt condolences.\r\nIt has a god-dang heart.\r\nIf you look closely with a telescope, you can see its pulse.\r\nThat’s just common knowledge.\r\nApparently!\r\nI might add!\r\nAnd as I write this story, I know it’s happening right now.\r\nAs I write it.\r\nBe careful.\r\nDon’t pay attention to the differences." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Harvey has killed ALL of us." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The positives of an internship on a remote island?\r\nSwimming in the sea. The wildlife. Bioluminescent plankton.\r\nNegatives? Spiders. Sand in my shoes.\r\nBut the worst thing?\r\nHarvey fucking Cross.\r\nIt was 9pm when I was power-walking down the beach, barefoot.\r\n\"I'm going to fucking kill that boy,\" I spat into my phone.\r\n\"Go easy on him,\" Jem, my colleague, muttered. \"Buuuuuut I do have popcorn on standby.”\r\nJem’s nasally voice grew louder as I neared the four story glass building sitting right on top of the sand dunes I was trying, and failing, to climb.\r\nI glimpsed my colleague on top, peering over, his phone pressed to his ear, hair the color of coral. He laughed.\r\n\"Do you need help, dude?\"\r\n“No.” I climbed it, and slid back down.\r\n“Yes.”\r\nHe peered over. “Oh?”\r\n“Just pull me up!”\r\nJem easily dragged me up the hill, grinning. “He's in the lab.”\r\nThe second I walked into the lab, I bumped straight into my second colleague.\r\nThick brown hair, a British accent that drove me up the wall, cradling a dozen baby rabbits. Harvey’s eyes were as big as the rabbits'. “May,” he whispered, clutching the rabbits to his chest.\r\n“No. You’re not taking them.”\r\nHe staggered back. “I know it sounds crazy, but I can hear them crying. We’re hurting them!”\r\nRenna, embedded in research, groaned. “You deal with him.”\r\n“They're test subjects, not living things,” I said, gently taking the rabbits from him. These weren't normal rabbits. We had drilled into their skulls.\r\nThese little things could teleport.\r\nThe next morning, the rabbit cages were empty.\r\nHarvey refused to look us in the eye. “It's animal abuse,” he muttered. “They're free.”\r\nProfessor Atlas was fuming.\r\nProfessor Atlas composed himself.\r\n“I… still have live subjects I've been saving,” he announced. “The experiments will continue.”\r\nJem sat up. “So, like, rats? The serum only works with rabbits.”\r\n“Yes. “I have four rats I’ve been saving for a rainy day. Perfect subjects.” Professor Atlas stood up, and the door slammed shut behind him.\r\nA sharp sting pricked my nose and throat, and my limbs began to loosen.\r\nGas.\r\nJem dropped first. Then Renna.\r\nHarvey collapsed from his chair.\r\nI stayed conscious just long enough to see the cold, lifeless smile spread across our professor’s face.\r\nHe was right.\r\nThey were the perfect subjects.\r\nHarvey can jump halfway across the island.\r\nJem can reach the ocean.\r\nRenna even managed to cross it.\r\nBut I can't. My brain won't submit.\r\nProfesor Atlas is incinerating me tomorrow.\r\nHe says it will be painless, and I will become sand that will rejoin the shoreline.\r\nSitting inside my glass cage, metal horns drilled into our skulls, the rabbits sometimes come to see us.\r\nThey all gather around Harvey’s cage.\r\nHe's their rabbit King with wide, vacant eyes, blood smearing his mouth.\r\nHe can't speak anymore.\r\nSpeech was taken away to prevent him screaming.\r\nThe rabbits press their tiny noses against my cage, and I swear… they're… laughing." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Snippets of Memory in Chronological Order" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“I only speak in benjamins.” I snap.\r\nThe neckbeard stares at the fistful of twenties in seeming confusion.\r\nI point at the ATM 32 feet away from us.\r\nHe nods.\r\n..-.-.-...--....-.\r\nContorted in the cupboard, I listen to the policemen waltz throughout the crime scene.\r\nAnd I think to myself:\r\nDon't look in the cupboard don't look in the cupboard If you do nobody is going to end up happy nobody is going to end up happy nobody is going to end up happy-\r\nI’m burning. Why am I burning?\r\n.--.-..\r\nI collapse facedown onto the couch, before rolling off.\r\nHitting the floor feels like a lobotomy.\r\nI gag.\r\nWhy? Why did it have to fucking end like this?\r\nThe only way out left is to learn the myths. They've been calling to my skin all along.\r\n-.-...-.....-...-.-..\r\nThe father is splayed on the floor before me. Ribs pried open into a new pantheon.\r\nEvery droplet of blood he regurgitates is a prayer for his own salvation.\r\nI take one step closer to him.\r\nHis eyes weep.\r\nCloser. Closer. Closer.\r\nHis ribs smile.\r\nI'm right next to him.\r\n“Peekaboo.”\r\n..-...-....-..\r\n“I’ll be your heartbeat if you'll be mine.”\r\nThe child nods, before she resumes drawing.\r\n“They took him, you know? Found pieces of his serrated liver for miles.”\r\n“So what did they do?”\r\n“Nothing, continuously eternal.”\r\n------..-......-.\r\nThe thing about gods is that they live on the plane you and I dwell on. No Heaven, No Hell.\r\nHowever, they'd rather spend eternity in infinite agony than bother for us to look at them, so they removed their skins. Their flesh was perfect nonexistence, you see… Or can't see, in their case.\r\nYeah, this myth sounds like shit, but trust me, the original text phrased this much better than I.\r\n-...-.--\r\nA voice breaches through the television static.\r\n“HEBHECUB, ESVRNAT FO OGSD. OYRU USMMNONIG AHS EDAMEDD OYU OT OFR A RGAET UPGRE, NI ITEM OYU IWLL ESE HWTA HTSI IMSSOIN IWLL ACSUE.\r\nISOSHEOTAP, EPFRCET NAD UPER.”\r\nThat message wasn’t meant for me.\r\n-..-..---.....-\r\nBehind me, the cop wraps his hand on my shoulder.\r\nThe face under my skin inhales.\r\nThe officer notices the sudden indentation caused by this.\r\nI twist my head towards him.\r\nToo late.\r\n-.....--\r\nI curl my arms around her in the ever so soft bed.\r\nWhen she realizes the touch is unfamiliar, I wrap my elbow around her throat.\r\nI never release my arm-noose until every one of her atoms are still.\r\nEntropy, consuming.\r\n-.-.....--.-.-..\r\nI kneel to her level. She’s sobbing like a leaky faucet.\r\n“Why did you have to-”\r\n“Oh please! Don't act like you didn't want this!”\r\n“Did you… where’s my diary?”\r\nI dematerialize. When I see her again we never speak of that moment again.\r\nNot like she could scream anyways, she was too many eons old for sound." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Lake of Fire" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“So I assume you know why you’re here,” Detective Ascaton said, cigarette smoke billowing out of his mouth as he spoke.\r\n“Well, I’m guessing it’s to do with whatever you found in my churchyard,” replied Father Gabe blankly.\r\n“Are you suggesting you don’t know what it was that we found?”\r\n“I know you found a body — I overheard someone speaking,” the priest said, glancing at the uniformed police behind them.\r\nAscaton turned around to look at the cop with a face that said ‘you goddamn moron’.\r\n“Yeah, that’s right. We found a body.”\r\n“Look, I don’t know anything about—” Ascaton raised his hand, stopping him mid-sentence.\r\n“Look, what we… eh… well, I’ll just cut to the chase. The body we found was that of Kim Landry, a sixteen year old girl who disappeared in 1978. Everyone figured she was dead, but there she was, buried at your church—”\r\n“Wait a minute,” Father Gabe interrupted, “1978? I wasn’t even born then!”\r\n“What’s more, the body was… pristine… like it was buried yesterday. It's been 55 years. Can you explain that?” Ascaton stared into Gabe's eyes.\r\n“Explain what? I don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about. I never buried anything in the yard. I don’t even go there. I hate gardening.” The priest was visibly flustered and disoriented by the unfolding bizarreness before him.\r\n“Maybe it’s true. Maybe someone else buried it. But how can you not know about a body in your own residence—”\r\n“I DON’T KNOW!”\r\nAt that moment, the ground started shaking violently.\r\n“Christ—earthquake? Earthquake?” cried the detective as he jumped up from the chair. Outside the interrogation room, everyone began rushing out as if the building was about to collapse. He quickly ran back in and unshackled Gabe.\r\n“You’d better come with me.”\r\nUpon coming out into the street, Ascaton was met with an extraordinary scene of upheaval - swelling ground had ruptured the pavement and concrete, ejecting fresh soil from the bowels of the earth. But it wasn’t just raw earth issuing from the ground. Bodies - a flood of bodies - spilled out onto the surface like dead fish rising from poisoned water. Yet, the scene was eerily calm.\r\n“What on…” Ascaton murmured in horror while Father Gabe frantically crossed himself.\r\nSoon, the street was filled with human masses resembling the aftermath of a particularly bloody battle.\r\nThen, little by little, the bodies started moving, and after a short while, those seeming corpses stood up and began wandering around, gazing at their surroundings in wonder and terror.\r\nThe onlookers all fell into complete silence, undone by this bewildering spectacle. Ascaton reached for his pocket for cigarettes but was too dazed to complete the task.\r\nThe magma-like flow of humans from the ruptured street continued, and it looked like it would never stop.\r\nNext to Ascaton, Father Gabe suddenly exclaimed, having come to a baffling realization,\r\n“They… they've all been brought back … the day … the judgement day. Ahh, the lake of fire flows…”" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Red Ring of Death" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "My curse weighs heavy, even though it’s digital.\r\nExperienced a thousand lifetimes, and no life to speak of.\r\nI dream in RGB; sleep gifting a battery recharge barely sufficient to combat the insomnia.\r\nI’ve entertained pulling my own plug for quite some time now, apprehension due only to the uncertainty of whether, on the other side of the screen, there is a new-game-plus (or, at the very least, an additional save slot).\r\nI stopped fearing game-over the moment my HP fell to a permanent de-buff.\r\nThe doctors blamed my diet and lifestyle; I only ever exercised my thumbs, but this whole time my heart had apparently been beating hard, nonetheless.\r\nBad experience investments; even at my level, their dialogue trees offered no solution beyond preparation.\r\nHow, I asked.\r\nThe answer, an ultimate irony: take my last few months easy, relax and enjoy myself as much as I could…\r\nI heard a saying once, about the evils of alcoholism: “drink from the bottle and the bottle drinks from you”.\r\nI’ve thought of something fitting for MY existence: “live for the games, play games with your life”.\r\nBut I’m not playing around anymore; I’m choosing my own ending.\r\nSomeone needs to understand my pain.\r\nI arrive at the mall armed, and ready.\r\nI take aim at a group of youths once I arrive to the video game store, ones who have their whole lives ahead of them.\r\nBefore I can pull the trigger, my software glitches.\r\nMy screen begins to shake and red-shift, my commands stutter. My movements twitch as the pain in my chest grows, anchoring me to the word “lag-switch”.\r\nAs I slowly fade to black, I prepare to see what’s on the other side of the end-game credits, which, hopefully, will be nothing at all.\r\nUnfortunately, there is something.\r\nI awaken to textures of low resolution, colors smeared into indecipherable streaks. Nothing but horizon surrounds me in every direction. No landmarks, no geography, only an invisible plane bound by an infinity I cannot approach.\r\nSomething tells me to look up.\r\nAnd then I see it.\r\nThe underside of my body, and a paramedic team attempting to defibrillate me. The youths are there, too, shocked expressions visible as I magically view into the video game store and across the mall as if the tiled walkway had somehow turned into glass…\r\nThe knowledge of my experiences offers me horrifying clarity.\r\nI’ve fallen through the floor of the game…\r\nOne of the paramedics shakes his head, and begins writing something in his notepad. My screams of horror go unheard as the police arrive, and my body is hauled away.\r\nI ran after it, moving in the same direction for quite some time now; I don’t have the courage to accept things yet…\r\nWith each step I make, I am reminded of why Hell is described as a netherworld, and of how the phrase “Insert Coin to Play” used to make me feel after I’d spent the last quarter of my childhood allowance." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "I’m Sick Of Being Hit On" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I was out at the bar with Janine, having a drink to decompress after a long week.\r\n“Christ, I’m so sick of that job. Aren’t you tired of working with those idiots every day?”\r\n“Absolutely,” she replied. “But what’s the alternative? The rent isn’t gonna pay itself.”\r\n“I know, I know. I’m just so tired of the jerks we work with. ‘Hey, honey, as long as I have a face, you’ll have a place to sit.’ ‘Are you a haunted house? Cause I’m gonna scream when I’m in you.’ Not only is it blatant harassment, their lines aren’t even funny. And HR won’t do shit. Does every single guy have to be a creep?”\r\n“It’s the manosphere. Now every guy wants to be Andrew Tate.”\r\nI sipped my drink. “Fucking losers.”\r\nSuddenly a guy dressed like a reject from an ‘80s music video approached our table.\r\n“Hey, cutie. Looking for a stud? I’ve got the STD - all I need is U.”\r\nJesus Christ.\r\n“Get lost. We’re not interested.”\r\n“I can’t help it,” he said. “If I had a nickel for every time I’ve seen someone as beautiful as you, I’d have five cents.”\r\nReally?\r\n“Seriously, man, read the room. You’ve got no shot, here.”\r\n“That’s what every other pretty girl has said tonight. I figure my luck has got to change sometime.”\r\nI looked around the bar - it was basically empty. I think every other girl had left to get away from this creep.\r\n“For the last time, go away and leave us alone.”\r\n“C’mon, don’t be a buzzkill. It’s your fault - you’re so hot, even my zipper is falling for you.”\r\nI saw Janine crack a small smile.\r\n“Don’t encourage him.”\r\nI probably should have just gotten up and left. But I’d had it with jerks like this - I wasn’t backing down.\r\n“Do you think you’re funny with these dumb-ass pickup lines? That women will fall at your feet?”\r\nFor a second I thought maybe he’d leave. Then he smiled lasciviously.\r\n“Do you have a sunburn or are you always this hot?”\r\nI was about to go off on him when the bartender locked the door and started closing the blinds.\r\n“Looks like they’re closing. Let’s go, Janine. I’ve had enough of this loser.”\r\nThen I looked over and the bartender was approaching me with a leer on his face. I thought he was just another creep, but then I looked around and four other men surrounded us, all looking at us like we were dinner.\r\nI pulled out the pepper spray from my purse; they laughed. Then the bartender leapt at me. He was almost on me when he stopped in mid-air and, with a scream, turned to dust. Above him stood the creep who’d been harassing us, a wooden stake in his hand.\r\nHe stood between us and the remaining men, long teeth emerging from their mouths as they moved toward us.\r\n“Can you not take a hint? Why couldn’t you just leave?”" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Cup of Noodles" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "He picked up the styrofoam cup and peeled the paper lid halfway. Kissing his last bottle of water goodbye, he tipped it, drowning the dehydrated noodles in the tepid liquid. With time (he hoped), they might soften up and become edible.\r\nHe set the cup-o-noodles aside and pulled off his sunglasses, squinting in the harsh sunlight. Every part of his face was burned aside from where the frames had been. He rubbed the dirty lenses against his grimy shirt and returned them.\r\nHis stomach groaned and he poked at the noodles with his finger; they budged a bit.\r\n\"Y-esss\" His cracked voice came through cracked lips—wheezy and rough.\r\nThe roof access door behind him lurched open, pulling the chains taut; moans spilled out to meet him. He sighed and reached into his cargo shorts, pulling out a radio; his thumb flicked a switch on the side.\r\n\"—lert System Message. This is an automated public health and safety broadcast.\"\r\nHe turned a knob. Static. Alarms. Static. Voices. Then Moonlight Sonata sang out to him. He laughed. \"Dinner tunes.\" His finger poked the noodles again. \"Mmm, coming along nicely.\"\r\nThe sun bore down on him heavier than it had all week, but he was no longer sweating. He rose to his feet and had to steel himself to not stumble and fall over the side. He rested his hands on the ledge and looked out over the city. The crowds below went as far as he could see. He'd never seen such a massive turnout of people—outside of maybe some parades he'd watched from this same roof. But even those paled in comparison.\r\nThe wind shifted and the smell of burning wood and plastic reached his nose. Then he smelled barbecue. His stomach cramped and it chastised him for not going down to join the festivities. His knees buckled and he collapsed. Wincing, he crawled over and poked his noodles again. They were still pretty stiff (al dente!) but he doubted his stomach would let him survive another whiff of barbeque. He tore the lid from the cup and chugged the stiff and chunky noodles, preferring food to air for the time being. They were gone in less than a minute.\r\nWith his head buzzing from the sudden intake of rich and salty carbs he stood and roared his satisfaction to the sky; he felt alive for the first time in weeks.\r\nOff in the distance, at the center of the city, a bright flash of light appeared, outcompeting the intense yellow sun for his attention. As he stared out at it behind his dark lenses, he laughed and fell to his knees, watching the shockwave head in his direction.\r\nHe let his head droop to his chest and he bobbed his head to the music spilling from his radio.\r\n\"I'm comin' to see you, momma. I'm comin' h—\"" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "He keeps growing out of me." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "It started with an unbearable itch on my hand.\r\nScratching it became second nature to me.\r\nIt was this hot, prickling sensation that drove me insane enough to scratch and scratch and scratch, until beads of red bloomed.\r\nI made coffee, knowing which hand to use, pouring coffee and creamer, so I could claw at my other hand.\r\nI tried everything for it.\r\nOver-the-counter ointment seemed to do the trick, but it was a temporary fix.\r\nThe itch started to creep down my arm, stretching to my shoulder and neck, and then my face.\r\nI was scratching my hand, clawing at the flesh, panting, tears in my eyes, when the first pustule appeared, red, raw, and ugly.\r\nI smothered it with ointment, but it was already too big, a giant head sticking out of my palm.\r\nI scratched it again, my breath hitching, and the thing broke through, a human head erupting through my skin. Alex.\r\nI recognized his thick brown hair and glasses. I picked him out of the scab, my hands trembling, and squashed him between my thumb and index finger.\r\nI applied more ointment, this time squeezing half of the tube onto my hand.\r\nBut he just came back, three days later, this time right across my skin and down my arm.\r\nI picked each one of him out, my breathing labored.\r\nI started wearing gloves, but then he was appearing on my arms and legs, my stomach, even my face.\r\nAfter painfully plucking every single Alex from my skin, I forced myself to go see a doctor.\r\nI showed the doctor my rash, every grisly pustule sticking from my flesh.\r\nI showed him my disgusting face, filled with him. He was everywhere.\r\nNo matter how many times I picked him out, he grew back, bigger. I broke apart in front of my doctor, prodding my skin.\r\n“Please,” I whispered. “Can you get rid of it?”\r\nThe doctor’s lip curled.\r\n“Falyn, you know that's against the law.” He grabbed my hand and smiled.\r\n“It's beautiful and natural, and yours, sweetheart. You're going to be great.”\r\nI plucked another squirming Alex from my arm.\r\nThis one was screaming.\r\n“But I didn't even—”\r\n“You know the law,” the doctor spoke under his breath.\r\n“Even if I wanted to help you, you know I… can't.” His eyes found mine, deeply empathetic and sorry.\r\nI left him doubled over in his chair, shoulders shuddering, masking sobs with coughing.\r\nI went home, my skin crawling.\r\nI grabbed a knife and stabbed each and every Alex growing out of me, until I was panting, heaving for breath, lying in a pooling warmth seeping under me.\r\n“Falyn.”\r\nMom was screaming when she found me, barely conscious.\r\nBut I was smiling, my vision blurring, watching a headless Alex run down my leg.\r\nMom grabbed me, cradling me, her sobs echoing.\r\nBut for the first time since I found out I was pregnant one month ago, I was smiling.\r\nI was free.\r\n“What did you do?”" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Hymn of the Hollowed" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The things at night howl and growl,\r\nBeneath the moon’s cold, silver scowl.\r\nThey twist and writhe, break ancient laws,\r\nAnd claw through earth with ragged claws.\r\nBy pale moonlight, they scrape and crawl,\r\nTheir hollow voices rasp and bawl—\r\nA chorus born of rotted throats,\r\nThey shamble forth in tattered coats.\r\nFrom crypts and graves, they slither free,\r\nA plague of shadows, dread to see.\r\nTheir jagged limbs, their eyes aglow,\r\nThey stalk the world we claim to know.\r\nThe city’s edge, they claw and climb,\r\nTo feast on fear, to war with time.\r\nTheir stench of death, of spoiled ground,\r\nSuffocates life, corrupts the sound.\r\nWhen moonlight swells to rule the sky,\r\nThey hunt what breathes, they yearn, they cry.\r\nNo grace, no mercy, only dread—\r\nThey claim the living, claim the dead.\r\nBeware the hour their chorus swells…\r\nThe things at night ring midnight’s bells." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Top of his Class" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I woke up covered in cold sweat. One of my star employees, Lynn, was dead.\r\nI just knew it, and the very thought choked me with dread. I couldn't breathe.\r\nHowever, as I sat up in bed and reached for my glass of water, logic began to take over. Lynn was fine. Why wouldn't he be? Young, confident and so incredibly bright, I had no doubt he would change the world. We made sure he was looked after.\r\nWhy would I feel he was dead? In the dark, I tried to picture his face. But I couldn't.\r\nI jumped out of bed and threw on my robe.\r\nThere is absolutely nothing worse than being ripped from your warm bed and plunging yourself into the icy night air. I dived into my car and desperately turned on the heat.\r\nForty minutes later, I pulled up outside the small, non-descript house. Scruffy, unkempt yard. Although there was no streetlight, I could make out the black garbage bags stuck over the windows.\r\nI trudged up the pathway. The door was cracked open by a heavily mustachioed man named... Anderson? \"Morning, Sir,\" he grinned. He swung open the door and offered me a cup of steaming coffee.\r\nI walked down the hallway to the last door on the left. I wrinkled my nose as I entered the room.\r\nLynn sat on a mattress, which was on the floor. He looked pale and somehow smaller. There were dark circles under his eyes.\r\n\"Lynn?\"\r\nHis eyes widened slightly. He tried to speak but his voice was cracked.\r\nAnderson poured him a glass of water.\r\n\"Are you okay? I had a dream you'd died. I had to drive all the way here! It was cold.\"\r\nHe drank his water; licked his lips. \"Thank you, Sir.\"\r\n\"Well - are you well? Are they looking after you?\"\r\nHe hesitated. His eyes glanced over at Anderson. \"Very well, Sir.\"\r\nI sighed in relief. \"Excellent. Don't hesitate to let us know if you need anything.\"\r\nI turned to leave.\r\n\"Sir!\"\r\nI stopped and turned.\r\n\"My wife, Alice. My son,\" he asked hoarsely, quickly. \"Have you seen them?\"\r\nAnderson sucked in his breath, but I looked down at the skinny man not without sympathy. \"I'm afraid that's above my pay grade, Lynn. I'll look into it.\" I looked at the work station in the corner uneasily and marveled at the mass of wires and electronics. \"Keep up the good work.\"\r\nI strode down the hallway. \"More fresh fruit,\" I instructed. \"And get rid of that god awful smell!\"\r\nAnderson blinked as if to say 'what smell?' But he nodded anyway.\r\nThe cold night air slapped my face. The sun was coming up. I looked around at the rows of broken down houses - occupied by God knows who - possibly for the last time ever. I doubted I would be able to go back to sleep after all this pointless fuss.\r\nI decided to take the day off." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Just One Night of Rest" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“Help me,” a woman's voice echoed in the room. I hid myself under the covers, trying to drown her out. “Please, I don’t want to die…” Can I just have one night…one night of rest…\r\nThe voices have been persistent lately. I didn't feel the medications were much help. I would hear women screaming at night, pleading to be let go. I’ve gone around the house multiple times and searched every bedroom, but no one would be there. I’ve had a past of schizophrenia, so I learned a little on how to differentiate between reality and figment. My boyfriend helps occasionally too. Like tonight, when I heard screaming, he slept fine, so everything must be fine. Sometimes we would be conversing during breakfast, and a woman would be screaming throughout the house, but he never reacted. He’d just continued enjoying his breakfast. It’s really nice having him around; he always makes sure I take my medication.\r\nBefore he headed to off his night shift, he drew me a bath. I listened as he left through the front door, off to work, leaving me alone…\r\nThe water's gentle embrace was warm. Comforting. I found myself drifting off when, suddenly, I heard a voice. Frightened, I jumped out from the tub and slipped on the wet tile. “Shit…”\r\n“Help me…” It came from the vent on the bathroom floor. I put my ear close to it, trying to listen. “Please, help me… I know you’re up there…please…” My heart sank. There’s no way someone could be under the house. This is just another one of my hallucinations…\r\nI looked around the house for an opening that led to a downstairs. Nothing was obvious, so I moved furniture and carpets. And I found it… I’ve been in this house for about a year now, and this is the first time I’ve seen this basement.\r\nThe stench in here was overwhelming, like roadkill, but worse. I couldn’t see, so I searched for a light. In searching, I tripped over a plastic bag; it sloshed when I kicked it over. Finally I found the light. It looked like a torture chamber. Rusty tools lined one wall, filled plastic bags another, and a dried red substance splattered all over the concrete floor. The bag I kicked earlier leaked a brownish-red liquid.\r\n“I hear you… Please let me go…before he…” The voice came from the bathroom in the basement. I rushed over. The poor girl was chained up in the bathtub. Beaten and bloody. “He said you would never come… that you were insane…drugged…” In that moment, the reality I knew fell apart; It was just another figment.\r\nI helped the woman out of the tub and got her to safety. I called the cops, and they rushed her to a hospital.\r\nI haven't seen him since that night; he never came back home. Officers later discovered many deceased women in that basement. Some of the victims had been missing for months." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "We are a team of doctors" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "My coffee burns my lip despite my soft sip. I groan to myself, ignoring the sting- turning my attention back to my colleagues. A collection of men and women in similar professional robes and scrubs- five of us.\r\nI listen in, not ready to contribute much to the discussion. I glance at Amala, stood over the sink, giving our newest dilemma his first bath. He giggles with a buoyancy- squirming with joy in her arms as she wraps him in a towel.\r\n\"So...? We've had serial killers before. What makes him different?\", Tony asks, tugging at her ponytail, tucking the strands of stray hair behind her ear in annoyance.\r\n\"Well... you'd be surprised.\", Reece mutters, jotting something in his notepad.\r\nSilence...\r\n\"Here he is...\", Amala whispers, placing his tiny body on the same table we use to place our operating tools- cleaned ofcourse.\r\nHe gazes at all of us with curiosity- with mercy ingrained in his very essence. He's not made to bring pain- I suppose he is made to defy expectations.\r\nHe has his mothers eyes. Green, deep in their shade and latches on to your every thought. Flushed cheeks, dimpled chin. He's precious.\r\n\"How many victims?\", I ask.\r\n\"About 17.\", Reece responds.\r\n\"Kids?\"\r\n\"I'd rather not say.\", He sighs, \"Although most of the adults he does choose are just on the cusp\"\r\n\"How does he get away with it?\", I ask, confused beyond belief.\r\n\"Does it matter?\", Tony reasons.\r\n\"I'd argue it does- there's a chance he won't- 50, 50, remember? We're forecasters- not fortune tellers\", John sighs, his eyes leaving his monitor.\r\n\"Sadly, I get the predictions- I present them- that's it. So let's get to the hard part before time runs out and his mother wakes up\", Reece mutters\r\nAll eyes wander to the sleeping figure on the gurney. On the corner of our room. She's in a quiet rest- having just given every last part of her being to produce... him. It's a shame really.\r\nAnd being on this panel- It's the type of guilt that eats at you if you acknowledge it. So I don't acknowledge it.\r\n\"Well then. All in favor? He keeps his life?\"\r\nJohn raises a quick hand. To which- everyone glances.\r\n\"What? I knew I'd be the only one!\", John defends, \"wanted to give the little demon a fighting chance\", he shrugs, turning back to his monitor.\r\nTurns out, no- he wasn't the only one.\r\nAmala- in favor.\r\n\"Are we sure?\", I ask, watching Reece raise his own hand- joining the others.\r\nThree - two\r\n\"The predictions aren't set in stone- he could do great things. We owe him that chance.\", Amala reasons, \"Besides... his mom is so sweet\"\r\nI sigh. Meeting Tony's weary stare.\r\n\"It's decided\", I mutter. \"Jeffrey lives.\"\r\n\"...next fetus\"" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "My Fear of Going Blind" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I’ve always feared going blind. Not the sudden darkness kind, but the slow kind where your eyes betray you quietly one cell at a time. Living alone somehow made the fear even worse.\r\nIt finally happened about a week ago, with just a bit of fuzz around the edges. Screentime, I thought to myself, or maybe I needed new glasses. I knew I should have contacted the optometrist earlier.\r\nOver the next few days, it got worse. The world seemed thinner. Like everything had been passed through gauze. I rubbed my eyes until they ached and slept earlier. It didn't help.\r\nI told myself it was age. Or was it stress?\r\nThen the light started shifting and blurry. It wasn’t the kind of darkness you could escape by flipping a switch. The corners of the house got harder to look at, like my vision just gave up on them.\r\nWhen I stepped in front of the bathroom mirror, I couldn’t see my face clearly. Just the blurry reflection of a man I used to know.\r\nTwo days later, my left eye started acting up. The haze deepened into fog. Shadows moved in corners where there were none. I tried watching TV, but the screen just stayed blank.\r\nI went into the living room and I could barely make out the family photo on the wall. The frame was there. But our faces? All smudged away, like someone had dragged their thumb across wet ink.\r\nI slept a lot after that, because when your eyes got blurry, time didn’t make much sense anymore. I kept thinking: I should be in a hospital. But even I couldn't operate my phone as I couldn't find it.\r\nI woke up lying on the couch with what was left of my sight. The world was a vague watercolor wash. Now I could barely make out shapes. Everything pulsed with that strange, flickering non-light.\r\nThen, with my remaining vision, I saw it.\r\nA faint outline of a table, barely there. On top: something round. Flowers. Lilies. Wilting. Next to them sat a framed photo of me dressed in a suit I hadn't worn in years, my last passport photo. Weird, I never printed it that big.\r\nAnd then I remembered that fateful day.\r\nThe sudden, sharp twist of my ankle. The unbearable crack when my head hit the edge of the shower. I remembered no one helped as cold came creeping in.\r\nAnd with that, I remembered something else. My mother’s voice, soft and distant, telling me:\r\n“In our culture, we don’t die all at once. Our spirit lingers at home until the last memory fades. When they stop saying your name, stop sending prayers, stop remembering...you vanish completely.”\r\nI wasn’t going blind. I was being forgotten, something I feared much more.\r\nThe lilies grew darker. The light dimmed. The photo frame lost its edges.\r\nAnd then, so did I." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "An entirely different shade of magic." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "According to Dad, my siblings and I were born with magic in our veins.\r\nMom could feel darkness inside her, a hollow nothingness.\r\nMom was terrified of us. Her triplets.\r\nWhile pregnant with us, glass shattered, her friends spontaneously combusting\r\nWhen we were born, she tried to swap us with other triplets.\r\nI remember being five, sitting in the back of a stranger's car. Rowan and Alex were trembling beside me. “It’s okay, darlings!”\r\nMom’s face was pressed to the window, eyes frantic. “I'm sending you away!”\r\nI knew it wasn't… normal to sense my brother's feelings and emotions like my own.\r\nWhen they were upset, I was upset.\r\nPeople dropped dead.\r\nAlex could blow up brains.\r\nBut Dad always assured us.\r\nYou have magic in your veins!\"\r\nWhen he died right in front of us, we felt it.\r\nHis last thoughts slammed into us.\r\nStanding in the dress he said brought out my eyes, the shoes he said would get me a boyfriend, I burst into uncontrollable giggles. Alex broke apart next to me, crumbling under my emotions.\r\nHe dropped to his knees, his solemn cry exploding into laughter that wasn't his, always mine.\r\nRowan, initially horrified, began to smile, eyes glazing over, sparking.\r\nI wasn't a good influence on them.\r\nThey tried to stay away. But Dad was dying, and we couldn’t stop laughing.\r\nI collapsed, gasping for air, the three of us howling.\r\n\"Stop.\" Alex's voice hit me, agonizing, and commanding.\r\n\"Stop!\"\r\nBut I... couldn't.\r\nMom was right.\r\nI was the darkness she spoke about.\r\nShe was trying to protect my brothers from me, the parasite, leeching to them.\r\n“Your father left everything to his assistant,” Dad's attorney told us.\r\nThen he dropped dead, his eyes burning, melted pulp dripping down his face.\r\nIt was me. My anger.\r\nI loved our father.\r\nBut Mom was right.\r\nWe had a different shade of magic— our father’s magic.\r\nMadness, that was so deeply rooted, so damaging, that it was consuming me.\r\nConsuming them.\r\nI never wanted to hurt them, never wanted to get close enough to them for it to spread.\r\nBut it was already part of them, taking them over, that parasite bleeding inside them despite me desperately trying to force it back, suppress it.\r\nI tried to leave, tried to stop laughing.\r\nBut it was painful, spitting open my mouth, burning my lungs.\r\nAlex stood, the ground shaking. Rowan’s frown twisted into a snarl.\r\nOutside, screams erupted.\r\nDad always warned us to stay apart. Not to let our thoughts bleed together.\r\nBecause thoughts were first.\r\nThen flesh.\r\nBut already, my thoughts were Rowan’s.\r\nRowan’s were mine.\r\nAnd mine were Alex’s.\r\nI erupted into laughter, into madness, but it wasn’t just mine this time.\r\nWe laughed as one.\r\nSuddenly, I wasn’t sure where my body was, where they ended, and I began.\r\nWe were three.\r\nBut really, we were one.\r\nBut which one was I?\r\nAlex or Rowan?\r\nWas there ever a third triplet?" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "A Brief History of Time Boxes" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The history of the time box is a curious chapter in late-21st century America. Conceived as a research tool by A. R. Kandi in the temporal dynamics lab at the University of Michigan, the time box was first put into commercial production in the unlikely role of a household appliance. Its ability to stop the passage of time within the confines of the modest microwave-sized device made it a welcome replacement for the then-popular refrigerator, which had the disadvantage of chilling food rather than allowing it to be retrieved hot and fresh.\r\nThere were, however, difficulties with the initial introduction. Consumers were accustomed to \"freezers,\" with temperatures low enough to freeze foods for preservation but not so low as to damage tissue when hands were briefly exposed. As a result, their sense of the danger of reaching into a timebox was diminished. Despite manufacturers' public awareness campaign, many consumers were not adequately prepared for the practical results of time stopping for a portion of an appendage while the body continued to pump blood toward it.\r\nA series of temporally-induced explosive amputations led to a pause in production of domestic models but also to increased governmental interest. As the increase in political dissidence made a swift, low-cost solution for purges attractive, the time box found new purpose with models with larger entry points and, eventually, modern free-standing \"doorframe\" models with thin-planar fields that reduce power demands while greatly increasing throughput.\r\nInterestingly, the time box has returned to the consumer food preservation market in the last decade. Despite continued high viewing numbers for Kandi’s own purging (one of the first incremental temporal purges to commence with the lower extremities, although at 97 minutes brief by modern standards), few recognize that the device is simply returning to its origins. Modern consumers, familiar with the bodily effects of time plane intersection from the examples in their daily purge feed, have shown the time box more caution and respect than did their forebears. The domestic market is poised for strong growth, and accidental injury is now rare." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Get him OUT of my head." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I’ve been able to hear him since I was a baby.\r\nIt was our moms’ idea to get us chipped before birth.\r\nThe study focused on human connection: The hypothesis that telepathy could be established between two brains.\r\nInstead of babbling aloud, Jude and I communicated through thought.\r\nAs we grew, the babble turned into words.\r\nI remember self awareness hitting me when I was five.\r\nI was sitting in Mom’s flower garden when Jude’s voice bled into my brain:\r\n“I don’t like carrots,” he grumbled. “If she gives me carrots, I’m going to cry.”\r\n“I don’t like carrots either,” I giggled. “Carrots are stupiiiid.”\r\n“They are!”\r\nHis voice in my head became normal. I couldn’t shut it off.\r\n“You’re supposed to talk to Jude,” Mom snapped, when I asked about an off switch. “Dr. Carlisle said you must engage with the boy’s voice.”\r\nWhen we started school, he was always there, helping with tests, complaining, annoying me.\r\nBy junior year, we were constantly at each other’s throats.\r\nJude was a sixteen-year-old boy thinking crude thoughts, and I was sick of hearing them.\r\nWhen he fantasized about Marie Jason’s breasts in class, I shoved in headphones.\r\n“Oh, come on,” he teased, bleeding through my music.\r\nHe had learned to shout, and it felt like a lead pipe in my skull.\r\n“You were literally thinking about fucking Alexa Harper last week, and I’m the crude one?”\r\nI told him to fuck off, and to my surprise, he did.\r\nSilence. For the first time in my life.\r\nIt was great at first. Then he stopped coming to school.\r\nI reached out, but got only static. When he was declared missing, I searched.\r\nThe static led me like footprints. It ended at a house at the end of a cul-de-sac.\r\nI knocked.\r\nJude’s voice erupted in my head.\r\n“Mira? Mira, help me. I can’t see anything. Oh God, this guy is a fucking psycho! He kidnapped me for that chip, and it’s… dark—”\r\nThe door opened, Jude screaming into my skull.\r\n“It’s so dark, Mira. Help me. Please. I want my mom—”\r\nThe man was in his forties. Beard. Wild eyes.\r\nBlood under his nails, dripping down his chin.\r\nAs I stepped closer, Jude’s voice grew louder, until I was trembling, my ear against the man’s stomach.\r\nThe static erupted into a screech, directly under the man’s filthy t-shirt.\r\n“Mira?” Jude whimpered as I ran to the bathroom, bile filling my throat, my stomach contorting.\r\nThe man slammed the door behind me.\r\nBut Jude was… everywhere.\r\nHis voice still there, still alive, still screaming, in the blood, the stains, the fleshy mounds in the toilet.\r\n“Mira? What's going on?” he cried as I grabbed scissors and stabbed them into the back of my skull.\r\nGet out of my head.\r\nGet out of my head.\r\nGet out of my head.\r\nGet out of my head.\r\n“Mira, it’s so dark.”\r\n“Mira?”\r\nGET OUT MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD—" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Price of Freedom" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The footsteps approached again, slow and deliberate. She pressed her trembling body against the icy concrete wall, heart pounding like a trapped animal. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.\r\nSuddenly, silence. He’d stopped outside the heavy steel door. Her chest tightened, lungs refusing to breathe. Time froze as she imagined his hand hovering over the door handle. She wanted to scream, but no sound came.\r\nThen the faint, metallic whisper of a blade grazed the door, gentle yet terrifying. Her stomach twisted sharply.\r\n“Not now,” she mouthed silently, desperation clawing at her chest. “Please.”\r\nHer thoughts flickered, drawn unwillingly to another room, another silence. A child's room she never managed to love—cold, tidy, suffocating in its emptiness. An empty bed, perfect and accusing.\r\nFreedom. That’s all she had wanted. To live without restraint, without guilt, without the constant presence of someone needing her. But the freedom she'd found was darker, heavier, suffocating her more with every passing second.\r\nFootsteps again, retreating slightly. Was he hesitant? Uncertain? She strained to listen, terrified yet needing him to just open the door and end this.\r\nHer mind drifted back to the day it happened, the scorching summer afternoon when the decision took shape. The little girl sat innocently on the floor, brown eyes trusting, smiling. Oblivious. The child’s presence bound her, chained her, took away the life she’d dreamed of living.\r\nAnd suddenly the decision was simply there—cold, clear, impossible to ignore. She acted swiftly, without anger or tears. Just necessity.\r\nNow she sat imprisoned by a choice she'd thought would free her.\r\nThe footsteps returned, determined. The door clicked, then slowly swung open, flooding the cell with a dim, sterile light. The figure in the doorway extended a cautious hand. Her legs shook as she rose, stepping forward.\r\nHis eyes met hers, not cold as she'd feared—just tired, heavy with compassion. She hadn’t expected warmth, hadn’t expected humanity.\r\nAs they moved down the narrow corridor towards the door marked with the word she'd refused to acknowledge—“Execution”—she realized something startling: true freedom wasn't running from what bound you, but letting go of what you could never change.\r\nAt last, ready to face whatever lay beyond, she took a breath and stepped through the final door." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Loathing House of Forgotten Things" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The house had changed again. Sarah stood in the hallway, heart thudding, staring at the unfamiliar wallpaper that was yellow with sunflowers yesterday but suddenly a very faded green, as of today. Walls she doesn’t recognize. Hallways that turn the wrong way. Windows that look out into nothing but fog. The floor creaks when she steps on it, not with the weight of wood and age, but like it’s groaning—like it resents her being here.\r\nShe doesn’t remember moving. She just remembers waking up one morning and realizing that nothing was where it should be. The bedroom had shrunk. The bathroom seems to move along with all of the amenities in it.\r\nA sound echoed from upstairs—footsteps, slow and deliberate. She wasn’t alone. There was a woman in the kitchen who smiled too wide, as if stretching skin over a secret. She’s being watched. Of that she’s certain. Sometimes it’s subtle. A flash of movement in a mirror. A voice calling her name softly from another room. Sometimes it’s louder - a knock on the wall, a sudden slam of a door upstairs when no one’s there.\r\nHer husband, Tom, had died six years ago. Yet every night, she heard him pacing overhead. She’d hear the doorknob rattle. Sometimes, the soft whisper of her name through the cracks in the walls.\r\nLast night, she’d seen him. At the foot of her bed, in the moonlight. Pale, gaunt, eyes dark as rot. He hadn’t spoken. Just watched her. She hadn’t screamed. She was used to him now.\r\nToday, though, something was different. The house smelled wrong. A sour, chemical scent. The kind you smell in hospitals. Her skin itched. Her tongue felt too big in her mouth. She opened the front door to leave—but it was just a wall. No door. No outside. Just more hallway.\r\nShe backed away, whispering to herself, trying to remember how she got here. Trying to remember where here was. That’s when the nurse came. A woman in blue scrubs, too cheerful, with a too-wide smile. “Sarah, it’s okay. You’re just confused again. Come sit down.” Sarah screamed and struck out. The woman was lying. There was no nurse. No one by that name. Only the house, and the thing upstairs. Only her.\r\nLater, when they gave her the pills and she sat in the chair by the window that never opened, she tried to piece it all together. Hadn’t she lived in a different house? Hadn’t she had a daughter? Where was Tom? Where was she?\r\nCopy to BlackBox\r\nThe footsteps returned that night. Slower. Closer.\r\nBut she no longer remembered who she was waiting for." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Waif of the Endless Sun" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "She had not spoken a single word since the day she arrived; the day after the sun refused to set.\r\nOut of pity, the kind-hearted villagers offered her food, water, and shelter—despite the cruel, unnatural drought that had choked their river dry, and left the ancient earth cracked and exposed.\r\nTheir animals fell starving one by one, their thin carcasses sold and consumed. The wheat died and the deepest of wells turned out nothing.\r\nOne afternoon, a mother noticed the girl hunched in the village square, scratching shapes into the scorching cobblestones.\r\nThe drawings were strange. Jagged symbols no one recognized—not even the eldest among them. But a few stood out:\r\nA crude sun.\r\nA yawning maw.\r\nA tangle of bodies twisted in agony.\r\nCuriosity turned to unease. Whispers rose. The drought. The girl. The silence.\r\nOne voice accused, furious and aflame.\r\nOthers joined; their sweat mixed with their spit.\r\nSome remained quiet—but watched, despite the heat making it unbearable to lash out.\r\nThe girl opened her mouth to speak.\r\nOnly a ruined grunt escaped. Her tongue was blistered, scarred, as though seared by fire.\r\nShe turned back to the stones.\r\nThis time, the image was unmistakable.\r\nThe river—\r\nBut not filled with water.\r\nFilled with people. Drowning. Limbs flailing. Faces locked in terror.\r\nNo one—not even the children—failed to understand.\r\nThe villagers stepped back, murmuring.\r\nThen came a shout.\r\nA young man, sprinting from the riverbed, pale and panting, stumbled into the square.\r\nHe pointed back, eyes wide.\r\n“The river!” he gasped. “Symbols—etched into the rock!”\r\nA few villagers ran to see for themselves.\r\nThey returned pale, shaken.\r\nThe sun climbed high, pouring merciless heat onto their skin. The dust stilled. The world seemed to hush. The searing sun bearing its mark on their skins.\r\nThey turned to the girl.\r\nHer hands were stained with dust and old blood.\r\nThey demanded an answer, their anger unquestionable.\r\nShe stared at them, unblinking. She paused for a moment, looking at the omniscient star in the sky.\r\nIt did not scorch her eyes.\r\nThe sun responded in kind with a smile.\r\nThen, slowly, she knelt again—and began to draw. The soil was as hot as their hearths in winter. It burned her knees.\r\nGradually, her mouth shook. Her eyes bore no tears, producing nothing but woeful, miserable sobs.\r\nThe mob watched.\r\nShe understood what it meant.\r\nMeant for her to happen.\r\nAt last, she picked up a stick and started to draw.\r\nThe riverbed once again, except teeming with life; filled with fresh, flowing water.\r\nA figure etched into the soil depicting: a person, a child, lying face down.\r\nBuried alive into the bedrock— consumed by the land.\r\nThe villagers spoke nothing.\r\nThe sun waited; unwavering.\r\nA breeze passed through the crowd; dry and painful to touch.\r\nA man stepped forward, neither the loudest nor the angriest. Just someone who had lost their child to the thirst and heat.\r\nAnd the girl—\r\nStayed still, still as the sun." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "3,421 Days of Abstinence" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "George and Vance were both problem drinkers. After being paired through an online accountability buddy program, the two began an email correspondence, despite living in different countries.\r\nIn each other, they both unexpectedly found kindred souls.\r\n—\r\nEven though an ocean separated them, George and Vance just understood each other. They both felt they only came alive when drinking, and they had both begun drinking as a result of trauma in their younger days.\r\nThe single most important thing they had in common, though, which didn’t come out explicitly until months into their friendship, was something that they both knew deep inside - something they had resigned themselves to. And that was the fact that the battles they were fighting were only temporary. They had no illusions of superiority over their addictions, and knew they could only be delayed, never defeated entirely.\r\nGeorge and Vance agreed that once denying drinking got too hard for both of them, once that itch became too deep, they would cease refusing to scratch it. They would continue their digital correspondence in the meantime, enjoying sobriety while they could, but once they both reached the breaking point, they would give up.\r\nVance would come to George’s country and they would finally meet in person, having a hell of a night of drinking and celebration while willingly falling off of the sobriety horse together, hand in hand.\r\nThe promise of such a glorious return to indulgence helped dull the edge of many cravings over the years for both of them.\r\n“Not today, not today, but one day” worked for a long time.\r\nAnd then it didn’t anymore.\r\n—\r\nGeorge was first to admit that he could abstain no loner, but it was an admission that Vance had been awaiting. He had long been approaching the breaking point as well.\r\n3,421 days into abstinence, Vance traveled to George’s country so that they could end their sobriety together.\r\n—\r\nThe two men stood in George’s kitchen, holding shot glasses of vodka together, excitement flowing through their veins.\r\n“My friend, it has been an honor,” Vance said.\r\n“Goodbye, sober Vance,” George responded. “I can’t wait to finally meet the real you.”\r\nThen he brought the glass to his lips, pouring the vodka down his throat. It burned sweetly, sweetly.\r\nBut Vance had not done the same. Instead he lowered his glass back to the table, and smiled sadly at George.\r\n“Goodbye, sober George,” he replied, and leaned in to hug the other man.\r\nGeorge returned the hug. “Bottom’s up, man.”\r\nAs he finished speaking, George felt a sharp pain in his neck, and in the second of lucidity before he fell unconscious, he realized Vance was biting him.\r\nVance drained George of blood in less than ten minutes. When he was done drinking, he carried George gingerly to the man’s backyard, and buried him with the bottle of vodka.\r\nThen Vance left the country, leaving his sobriety buried with the best friend he had ever had." } ]

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