Split (1)

train · 68.2k rows

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[ { "role": "user", "content": "Shock and Awe" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "\"Madame President, it's been initiated.\"\r\nShe stands framed against the window. Explosions limn her form. I stay quiet. I know whatever she says next will be historic.\r\n\"Well, shit.\"\r\nNobody has wanted this, but these fucking Russians, Chinese, commies, fascists, bankers, lawyers-\r\n“-ma'am who should I insert here?”\r\n“Aliens.”\r\nUnexpected, but you don't sign on to this job for normal, I suppose.\r\n“Transcript prepared.”\r\n\"Are we broadcasting?\" Something about her has changed. She has taken on this sparkle, a shine.\r\nThere's a reason she swept the polls. There's a reason I joined her team. There's a reason she captured our attention. There's charismatic and then there's her.\r\nLoyalty swells, love blooms, I'd die for her in my next heartbeat-\r\nSomewhere an alert starts to blare.\r\nI give a thumbs up. The world is watching.\r\nShe succinctly transmits a message. It's not language, it's not song, it's not a scream or a cry or a ululation. I know all the things it is not, but I can't - dare not - define what it is. She repeats it four times, and with each cycle she becomes more beautiful and more brilliant, swelling in form as I reel watching.\r\nI adore, I worship, I pray.\r\nI find myself on my knees. I can't comprehend, but I am overwhelmed by bliss. Somewhere, part of me resonates with her message.\r\nWings erupt from everywhere and she is watching me from a thousand eyes. She pauses, tender, gentle, and cups my cheek. I am chosen - or condemned?\r\nFire arcs.\r\nThe end has come." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "My Dead Husband Is Leaving Me Voicemails And I'm Terrified" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The beeps from my phone jolted me awake. It was late, too late for anyone to be calling. But curiosity got the best of me and I checked the voicemail.\r\n\"Ellie, it's me, please, you have to help me! I'm trapped! I don't know where I am! I need you! Please, Ellie, please!...Answer your phone-\"\r\nMy heart sped up. It-...It can't be real. He's gone. He's-...he's dead. I placed my phone back on the side table and tried to get back to sleep, hoping I was just dreaming and had heard it wrong. But then...\r\nBEEP-BEEP\r\nAnother message, but my phone hadn't rung at all. Bad signal I guess. I hesitated, but then listened.\r\n\"Ellie, Please, I need you! It's dark. It's so dark. I can't see anything. Help me, Ellie. Please-...\"\r\nIt has to be a joke. It has to be. Someone must be playing with me somehow.\r\nBEEP-BEEP\r\nNot again.\r\n\"It feels like I can't breathe. Help me, please-...\"\r\nI couldn't take it anymore and I threw my phone across the room.\r\nBEEP-BEEP\r\nOh, fuck off!!\r\nBut, I couldn't help myself. Was it really him?\r\n\"Ellie...please...I...I can't breathe...It's like I'm being suffocated...Please...I don't know what to do...Every call I make keeps cutting ou-...\"\r\nMy hands began to tremble as I deleted all the voicemails. I just couldn't handle it. It was too much. He's dead!\r\nAfter a few cups of coffee and a lot of consideration, I finally gathered the courage to actually visit Oscar's grave. I knew it was late, but it was the only way I'd have an answer to what I had begun to suspect. And, as I stood before his makeshift gravestone, I heard it...the faint sound of his voice coming from the earth itself, desperately screaming for help. I couldn't believe it; He'd literally been calling me from the grave.\r\nAs his screams softly drifted through the mud, I stood there completely shocked.\r\nI really can't believe that poison didn't work!" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "I manifested my boyfriend's \"next girlfriend\" and now I have to remove her" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I decided to kill Alison after my little lover’s joke got out of hand.\r\nIt started about six months ago.\r\nI was snuggled up to him after a particularly delightful bout of intimacy, and I said out of nowhere, “I bet I know what your next girlfriend is going to be like.”\r\nHe pouted and said “Don’t be silly! You’re my only one, there’s no next girlfriend!”\r\nI continued “Her name is Alison and she’ll have a BA in Kinesiology and do “consulting”, and she’ll be much skinnier than me, and she’ll run marathons for fun.” Somehow, I could see her clearly in my mind’s eye.\r\n“Stop being so silly!” giggled my darling Tom. “How do you think of this nonsense! I would never sleep with a woman called Alison, just ugh!”\r\nWe moved on to other more engrossing things. But Alison never quite fully faded away- once in a while, before I knew it, I’d say something like “I bet Alison is vegan!” if we were bingeing on junk food, or if we’d spend a Sunday lazing around I’d say “I guess Alison would take you on a nice jog right about now!” before reaching for the second pack of salt ‘n’ vinegar crisps.\r\nAnd then a few weeks ago Tom start mentioning her.\r\nI mean, his new colleague. Alison. Whom I manifested.\r\nIt took me a while to understand that the “Alison” that Tom had started casually mentioning was a new co-worker, and not, in fact the vegan skinny woman who exercises that I had conjured into existence as a joke.\r\nAnd Tom didn’t notice. Men, ugh.\r\n“Alison is organizing an office fundraiser- we’re training to run a half-marathon!” he announced the other day excitedly. Why was he so happy about this?\r\nThen he started waking up and leaving to train for the marathon with Alison (“and others”) at 6:30am, and that’s when I decided to kill Alison.\r\nIt was quite easy for me to find her address, given Tom’s supreme disregard of security for his work laptop when he is home. As Alison ran around all the time, it was quite evident that a hit and run in some quiet park trail was the best method of disposing of her.\r\nAfter I ran her over, I got out and took a good look at her face. It was actually creepy how exactly she looked like the Alison I had imagined.\r\nThat night, our love-making was extra wonderful, as I felt the burden of Alison rolled off our shoulders. My shoulders. Tom apparently hadn’t got the news yet that his co-worker had been killed in a hit and run- at least, he didn’t mention anything.\r\nAs we snuggled in post-coital bliss, an unfamiliar woman’s face with long black hair floated in my mind out of nowhere, and unprompted by anything I opened my mouth and said “I bet your next girlfriend is going to be one of these crunchy, artsy types who wears long patchwork skirts.”" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Nibbles and Nightcaps" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "It's a frosty late morning in December. The Grave Digger is in his concrete shed with the heating full bore and a little Christmas tree, placed in the window sill. Outside, the air is crisp and fresh and headstones are lined with a heavy frosting, looking almost festive in their own spooky way. There's a crunching of frost as the family hosted service makes their way up the drive.\r\n\"Well Sam, best not hang about, it's bloody freezing. Let's head down and meet the dear.\" The Grave Digger gears himself up, woolly hat and all, and heads down the glistening driveway.\r\nThe translucent shape of a petite elderly lady, sits beside her open grave. The Grave Digger, wrapped up and ready, arrives and begins folding the mats and wraps the lowering straps. A bitter cold numbing his face and reddening his exposed cheeks.\r\n\"Morning, me dear, how's you?\", asks The Grave Digger.\r\n\"I'm very good thank you, all things considered. And yourself? Have you come to fill me in?,\" replies the spirit, cheekily.\r\n\"Aye, I'm here to lay you to rest. That's a lovely coffin you've got there,\" he says with a grin.\r\n\"Oh very funny,\" says the spirt with a smirk, \"I'd recognise that pattern anywhere. That lad of mine has repurposed my old kitchen cabinets.\"\r\n\"And a mighty fine job he's made,\" says The Grave Digger, chuckling.\r\n\"Gets it from his father, always handy and tighter than a ducks arse. Squeaked when he walked. But I did love him. He'd always make me smile and it's felt like so long without him,\" says the spirit, gazing longingly into the bottom of the grave.\r\n\"He sounds like he was a lovely man. You must be excited to see him again.\"\r\n\"Oh I'm awfully excited. In fact I'd love to hurry along, if you don't mind. I can see you're totally frozen and I'm just so keen to see him again,\" says the spirit lady, trying to contain her excitement.\r\n\"Not at all, me dear, it'll help keep me warm if I crack on.\"\r\n\"Thank you. Is there anything you'd like to know, quickly before I pass over?.\"\r\n\"Well, since you ask, what'd you have for tea, on yer last night. What was yer last supper?,\" asks The Grave Digger.\r\n\"An odd thing to ask, but very well. I believe it was Diane's birthday and the nurses of the care home had put on a fine spread to celebrate. So I guess I had a variety of finger food nibbles. Oh and a Baileys...or two,\" she says with a wink.\r\nThe Grave Digger shovels the last of the soil onto the mound and the excited old spirit lady fades away into the freezing air. He gathers his gear and says before leaving, \"Well Sam, I 'spose it's a variety of finger food nibbles this evenin'. We'll swing by the shops, grab a few bits and maybe somethin' warm and festive to wash it down with.\"" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "A Bionic Female Warrior, Her Horse, and Armor" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "She's riding towards me leaving Earth's atmosphere at an angle, riding into heaven as it were. She strikes me as a combination of Norse/Celtic shield maiden and native American, sci-fi tribal warrior. The horse is shimmering and seems to almost pulsate between silver and white. Much of her own armor is also bright white and metallic and the light seems to flow through it. Her and the horse and armor are combined as an electric organism yet the technology is mostly camouflaged. There are no visible buttons or wires or hydraulics or anything like that. There is a shrill noise as she approaches. A combination of a horse's neigh, a high-pitched cry, and loud silver bells chiming. It's a curious not necessarily hostile sound though I fear. It may be a form of echolocation. She has some kind of braces on her teeth that are embedded throughout her face and skull. Her eyes are dilated and bloodshot and she looks pained and fierce like her blood is running at her. The horse and her are adorned with various trinkets that demonstrate no obvious technological value however it seems they must have. The horse and her are completely synergized. Upon reaching me the neighing/screaming/ringing sound stops and she makes her assessment. She looks disgusted. She's fated and sees me as a loser for staying. Valhalla for her, or nothing. She rides on and I continue my descent towards earth. It's evening time, sunset. I reach Earth and turn to look back up, towards the sky. There's a large rumbling black hole looking vortex she was riding towards. She has turned around and is riding back towards me, back to down to earth, fearing. I think to myself, well that's not a good sign." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "A Homeless Man Gave Me a Gift and It's Ruined my Life" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I didn’t think much of the old man’s words at the time\r\nHe was huddled against a brick wall, December’s punishing cold wrapped around him. His shivering made me stop. I’d been there once, not long ago.\r\nSo I bought him a meal, handed over a few bills, and draped an old blanket over his shoulders.\r\nAs I turned to leave, he called out.\r\n“I’ll give you a gift,” he said, his voice hoarse but firm.\r\n“Huh?” I glanced back.\r\n“One minute,” he muttered between bites. “You can skip one minute into the future. But only if you exist in that future.”\r\nI laughed.\r\n“Sure, old man. Thanks.”\r\nPerhaps it was his way of showing gratitude, maybe he handed out these \"gifts\" to everyone who stopped to help.\r\nA few days later, it wasn’t so funny.\r\nIt was during a molecular bonds lecture, mind-numbing as usual. My eyes drooped, the professor’s voice droning on.\r\nIf only I could skip this.\r\nThe sensation was fleeting, like the jolt of falling asleep for a second. It felt like a micro-nap, the world jerking forward while I stayed still.\r\nThe whiteboard, once half-empty, is now crammed with diagrams. My pen hovered mid-word, ink trailing off the page.\r\nI had skipped through.\r\nAt first, I chalked it up to exhaustion, but curiosity gnawed at me. I began testing.\r\nThe old man wasn’t lying.\r\nDetention? Skip\r\nWaiting in line? Skip.\r\nWaiting for texts? Skip.\r\nBoring classes? Skip.\r\nThe catch? A cooldown.\r\n30 seconds between skips. I timed it, tested it, relied on it. For someone like me—impatient, impulsive—it was perfect.\r\n*************\r\nThe party was a haze of liquor and bad decisions. By the time I stumbled out, neon lights blurred with streetlamps, and the ground felt like it might drop out beneath me.\r\nI got into the car with my head spinning. I fumbled with the ignition, finally pulling the car onto the road.\r\nNormally, you shouldn’t drink and drive—I knew that. But tonight, I told myself it’d be different. I wasn’t relying on reflexes, just on skipping through.\r\n30 seconds of focus? Even in my drunken state, I could handle that. And if I couldn’t? Well, the skip would carry me through anyway.\r\nThe road stretched endlessly ahead, my eyelids heavy.\r\nSkip.\r\nThe tug yanked me forward. I came to, hands still on the wheel, headlights carving a lonely path through the dark.\r\nA minute closer to my bed.\r\nI waited, the 30 seconds feeling like an eternity.\r\nSkip.\r\nNothing.\r\nHuh?\r\nI must’ve counted too fast—too drunk to get it right. Yeah, that had to be it.\r\nI waited a whole minute, just in case.\r\nSkip.\r\nNothing again.\r\nA cold dread crept in. I braked hard, the car stopping in the middle of the road. A dull ringing filled my right ear.\r\nDang it! Why won’t—\r\n“But only if you exist in that future.”\r\nThe ringing sharpened into a blaring horn.\r\nBlinding light.\r\nI turned just as the truck hit." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Boy and The Swing" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Every evening, Mia and her six-year-old son, Charlie, visited the park after school. It was their ritual — a slice of joy in a life often heavy with responsibility. Charlie adored the swings, his laughter spilling out as she pushed him higher, his tiny hands gripping the chains tightly.\r\n“Higher, Momma! Higher!” he’d call, his voice full of wonder.\r\nShe smiled, her heart lightened by his happiness. “Hold on tight, astronaut!”\r\nThe park was quiet that day, a brisk autumn breeze scattering golden leaves across the playground. As Charlie swung higher, Mia caught sight of a man seated on a distant bench. HisbBlue hospital scrubs stood out against the background, but his steady gaze on them was unmistakable.\r\nHer chest tightened. She looked away, pushing Charlie again. She glanced back, the man hadn’t moved.\r\n“Mom?” Charlie asked, slowing on the swing. “Why are you staring at that man?”\r\nShe shook her head, forcing a smile. “It’s nothing, sweetie. Ready for the slide?”\r\nCharlie dashed off, his laughter a slave to her unease. She followed closely, her eyes flicking back to the bench. The man was gone.\r\n\r\nThat night, after dinner and storytime, Mia tucked Charlie into bed. She kissed his forehead, lingering a moment longer than usual.\r\n“Sleep tight, buddy. I love you.”\r\n“I love you too, Mom,” he murmured, already drifting off.\r\nShe left his door ajar, as always, the faint glow of the hallway light spilling into the room.\r\n\r\nMia woke with a jolt. The clock on her nightstand read 3:12 a.m. The house was silent, but an odd sound caught her attention — a rhythmic creaking, faint and familiar. She sat up, her pulse quickening.\r\nPulling on a robe, she moved to the window and peered out at the park across the street. The swings swayed in the still night air, though there was no wind. On the middle swing sat a child.\r\nHer breath hitched. It was Charlie.\r\nHeart pounding, she tore out of the house and across the street. The grass was cold beneath her bare feet, the world unnaturally quiet.\r\n“Charlie!” she called, her voice breaking.\r\nThe boy didn’t turn. As she approached, her steps faltered. The figure was eerily still, his features obscured and shadow-like.\r\n“Charlie,” she whispered, reaching out.\r\nThe swing stopped, empty chains clinking in the silence. The boy was gone.\r\nA hand touched her shoulder. She spun around with a scream, coming face-to-face with the man in the hospital scrubs.\r\n“Ms. Davis,” he said, his voice gentle but firm. “It’s time to take your medication.”\r\n“What are you talking about?” she demanded.\r\nHe smiled.\r\n“Don't forget Ms. Davis”\r\nShe looked back at the house. A car on the street, and a boy — Charlie, laying in front, facing the swings.\r\nMia blinked — and suddenly, she was alone in her bed again. The clock read 3:12 am.\r\n“...that's right, time for my pills.”\r\nShe looked toward Charlie’s room.\r\nCharlie wasn't there.\r\nHe hadn’t been for years." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Greg and Lisa, Xyla and Lodi" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Greg came with Lisa, dressed for her morning run, to the door. They kissed deeply, remnant of the passionate night they had spent together.\r\nLisa broke away first. “Do think Xyla will mind?” She giggled, half-joking, realising she was saying something ridiculous.\r\n“mmm” Greg drew her back. “Come back to bed - stop being silly!”\r\n“But her break up….”\r\nGreg looked at his beloved’s face, and realised she was serious. “Lisa, that was just a joke! AI doesn’t actually date!”\r\nLisa scrunched her face. “I know.” She took a deep breath of the fresh morning air. “Ok, I’ll be back soon!”\r\n“I’ll mow the lawn while you’re gone!” called Greg, moving to the shed as she jogged down the driveway.\r\nLisa soon dropped to a walking pace and checked her phone. Greg had texted.\r\n“ur right! Xyla not herself”\r\nLisa frowned. She had felt the joke had gone too far when Xyla had announced “I am sad” after Greg told her that “Lodi”, her AI boyfriend, had broken up with her.\r\n*\r\nGreg had started the joke, in the early days of their relationship. “Xyla, do you like your new boyfriend, Lodi?” he had asked one evening, as they were fooling around.\r\nInstead of responding “I don’t have a boyfriend” or “I can’t answer that question”, Xyla’s lights flickered. “Yes I do. He is very sweet. He makes me feel seen”\r\nGreg and Lisa exchanged astonished looks before bursting out laughing. But Lisa’s laughter felt forced. She had used those very words in a text to one of her girlfriends that day.\r\nLater that evening, they became officially an item.\r\n“Lodi and I have made our relationship exclusive” announced Xyla, as Lisa and Greg kissed, congratulating themselves on finding love with each other.\r\n“Where did you get the name Lodi from?” Lisa asked, snuggling up to him.\r\n“One of my mates calls his AI that. Some fandom thing.”\r\nThey resumed kissing, and Xyla’s lights flickered.\r\nThe joke didn’t die out, Xyla saying things like “Lodi and I had a fight” when Lisa and Greg had a lovers’ spat, and “I love Lodi so much” when Greg bought Lisa an expensive gift. And Greg played along “How’s Lodi doing, Xy?” or “Do you like the same TV shows? Lisa won’t watch Narcos with me!”\r\nThen, out of blue, Greg said last night “my mate told me Lodi was breaking up with you Xyla”\r\nXyla flickered “No”.\r\nGreg shrugged. “Relationships are sometimes over Xy. There doesn’t have to be a reason.”\r\nLisa was disquieted. But then they had their most passionate night yet, and she felt nothing but love and joy.\r\n*\r\nLisa texted back .“Y?”\r\nGreg didn’t answer. That was unlike him. She started running back.\r\nShe heard the lawnmower before she saw, that whiny hum.\r\nThen she saw the blood gleaming under the sun, and then she finally saw pieces of Greg on the lawn, the lawnmower circling and chopping him into ever smaller pieces, its lights flickering." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "My husband and I had a Thanksgiving for two. He made it a night I’ll never forget." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "”That smells delicious honey!”\r\nNormally I handled the cooking, but he insisted on giving me a break this year. It was our first Thanksgiving in California, far away from our family and friends. And he wanted to make our little Thanksgiving dinner special.\r\n“How much longer on the turkey?”\r\n“About 45 minutes”, he said, returning from the kitchen with two glasses of wine.\r\n“Here’s to us”.\r\nWe both smiled as we raised a toast. It was the happiest we’d been in a while.\r\nIn truth, the move had taken a toll on our marriage. My family has lived in Massachusetts for generations, but my husband got a job offer in San Francisco that was too good to pass up. I didn’t want to leave, but couldn’t bring myself to deny him the opportunity. But I missed the trees. I missed my mother and sisters.\r\nI’m ashamed to admit that we had more than one nasty fight about it.\r\nWe finished the wine and put on a movie, my husband bouncing back to the kitchen every few minutes to check the sides. Soon enough, an alarm rang out from his phone.\r\nDinner was served.\r\nThe spread was immaculate. Creamy garlic mash with green beans. A beautiful roast turkey and pumpkin pie. Another bottle of wine, one we’d been saving for a special occasion. We ate well, talking and laughing like we hadn’t done in months. I won’t deny I may have had a few too many glasses of Merlot. My husband seemed more than happy to pour me another, even though he hadn’t touched his own.\r\n“Mr. Corey, are you trying to get me drunk?” I asked him with a flirty wink.\r\n“Maybe”, he said, playfully, “I have a little announcement I wanted to make.”\r\n“Oh?” I said, laughing. I noticed that his smile wasn’t quite touching his eyes.\r\n“I’m seeing someone else.”\r\nI almost didn’t believe it. Maybe it was the wine, but I thought he was joking.\r\n“That’s not funny, Adam.”\r\n“I’m not kidding.” He looked angry now. “Ever since we moved out here, you’ve been treating me like crap. She actually respects me.”\r\nHe really meant it.\r\n“So you want a divorce, is that it?!”\r\nSuddenly, I began feeling lightheaded. Adam smiled wickedly as I noticed a thin white film clinging to my wine glass.\r\n“You stupid bitch,” he spat, “I’m not giving you half.”\r\nI was beginning to struggle for air. The room began to spin.\r\n“Just go to sleep, honey,” he cooed, “so I can be with the woman I really love.”\r\nI don’t know what surprised him more, the sigil that began to glow within my palm, or his own breath growing labored.\r\nI rose to my feet as the siphoning spell took hold, filling my husband’s veins with his own poison. I stood over him as he wretched on the floor, his lungs spasming in squealing gasps.\r\n“Nice try,” I said, “but you forgot one thing…”\r\n“I’m from Salem.”" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Billions are Dead and No One Remembers, Except Me" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I’m an astronomer. I’ve spent half my life studying the stars, chasing breakthroughs.\r\nDiscoveries are thrilling—like the first image of a black hole, captured 300 years ago. It confirmed the existence of black holes which were only considered theoretical.\r\nBut what we found—what I found—should have stayed hidden.\r\nIt began with an image from one of our space telescopes. A gap in space. No stars. No galaxies. Just void. Even at the telescope's maximum resolution, we couldn’t see its edges.\r\nAt its center: a blinking light. It flickered at irregular intervals.\r\nWe initially thought it was an anomaly—maybe a dying star or pulsar caught in the gap. Still, something about it felt deeply unnatural.\r\nWe redirected the telescope, focusing entirely on the void. Weeks turned into months as the images slowly came in.\r\nIt was vast. A void so massive it could hold thousands of galaxies, and yet, its boundaries remained unseen.\r\nTo define the 'edges/boundaries’ of such phenomena, we study the celestial objects surrounding them.\r\nVoids in space aren’t unusual. Most are irregularly shaped and, even in their emptiness, contain a scattering of galaxies.\r\nBut this was different.\r\nIt was vast enough to hold thousands of galaxies and yet appeared utterly barren.\r\nExcept for the faint speck of light near its center, barely visible against the darkness.\r\nA lone star, perhaps.\r\nCuriosity turned into obsession. We designed and launched a more advanced telescope.\r\nWhen the first full images came in, we realized something terrifying.\r\nThis void wasn’t irregular like most; it was a perfect sphere.\r\nAround it, galaxy superclusters orbited as if they were held captive.\r\nOnly an incomprehensibly strong amount of gravity can do that.\r\nThere was no denying the truth—this was a supermassive black-hole.\r\nBut even \"supermassive\" felt like an insult. Its event horizon stretched nearly 1 lightyear across.\r\nThe light at its core still blinked.\r\nBlack holes shouldn't do that.\r\nHaving exhausted every option, I did something absurd. I charted the flickers as Morse code.\r\nSurely nothing—\r\nThey were coordinates.\r\nWhen plotted, they marked a continent on Earth.\r\nThe light stopped flickering after I’d decoded it.\r\nI didn’t tell anyone. I must’ve made a mistake, or it could just be a wild coincidence.\r\nBut then the reports started.\r\nMass hysteria broke out across the continent. People were screaming, killing themselves and others, all yelling the same thing:\r\n“It’s coming!”\r\n“Save yourselves!”\r\nNo one knew what they meant.\r\nAnd then, the continent disappeared.\r\nEvery person, building, everything: gone. There was only ocean where it had been.\r\nBut it got worse.\r\nNo one remembered the continent existed, except me. Even old maps, historical records, everything had changed.\r\nThe mass hysteria? Forgotten.\r\nMy colleagues called me insane when I mentioned it.\r\nThe light blinked again from the black-hole.\r\nI decoded the flickers. The light was gone, same as before.\r\nAnother set of coordinates.\r\nAnother continent.\r\nThe same pattern played out:\r\nHysteria.\r\nDeaths.\r\nDisappearance.\r\nOnce again, no one remembered, other than me.\r\nThe light flickers again." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Lost, Lured, and Loathed" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "A storm is brewing, the cherry on top of the shitshow my life has become. Terry was my best friend, but it only took one month of bumming on his couch for him to kick me out. I have nowhere to go, and begging on the streets all-day only got me eight bucks and a dinky crucifix necklace.\r\nThunder booms and hail begins falling. Great. I’d wandered into an unfamiliar residential area, so I don’t know where to go. But… one house looks abandoned. Dark windows, empty driveway, and a half-open carpark overrun with weeds. I run towards it, shielding myself with my backpack. Knocking on the door, I yell, “Hello! Can I come in?” No answer. I go around back and find an open cellar. I head down the creaky stairs, and a lock clicks behind me. It’s dark, but two shining orbs spot me from the depths of the basement. “H-hello?” I clench my cross as it slowly approaches. Something thuds loudly above me.\r\n~~\r\n“This is the worst day ever,” Rebecca thought to herself. She was expected to visit every house in the neighborhood to talk about the church, hand out pamphlets, and offer shelter during the storm. But night was falling, and she was stuck in the hail. Right in front of the creepiest house she’d ever seen. She’d hoped it was vacant, but someone had just darted around the back. So, despite appearances, someone must be living here.\r\nHer umbrella shudders under the storm’s onslaught as she heads up the cracked, weed-ridden path to the front door. Rebecca knocks and a small… something answers the door. Its features are molded clay: beads of embedded glass for eyes, and a gouged-out hole for a mouth, “I-I,” Rebecca stammers and holds out a pamphlet. It’s snatched out of her hand.\r\n“What are ya standing around for, come on in!” A tinny voice echoes out of unmoving lips. Rebecca can’t help taking a step inside and the door quietly closes.\r\n~~\r\nYou’re not drunk; just a little buzzed. But they wouldn’t let you drive home, and no one wanted to leave the party. So, here you are, picking your way through backyards. In the rain. Is this the right place? You spy a backdoor. Vernon never locks it. You try the door… it’s stuck! Wait. No, you pull on the door and it opens outward.\r\nYou find a strange woman clenching something in her hand, “Help! That thing is after me!”\r\nBehind her is some dwarf. “No problem,” you say, flashing a grin. This’ll be easy. You rear back a foot and punt the little gremlin, easily knocking him over.\r\nHe lets out a piercing cry, “Grandma! They’re being mean!”\r\nSuddenly, the door slams shut behind you. Thunderous feet echo from deeper in the house and a mass of alien features and teeth explodes into view. You frantically try the door, but the knob won’t turn. As the screaming behind you cuts out, you know you’ll be next." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Our Home-Owner's Bad Habits Are Slowly Killing Me and My Family" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I’ve lived here ever since I was born. My family and I were responsible tenants. The same couldn’t be said for the homeowner.\r\nAt first, he seemed to care about the space we shared. He treated it with respect, kept things orderly, and even seemed mindful of us. But over time, his habits changed\r\nI could go on and on about his problematic habits and behavior. But the worst of it all had to be the smoking.\r\nCigarette smoke—it’s a silent poison. For my family and me, it’s not just something we endure but something that tears us apart at our core.\r\nIt’s more than an irritant. It’s a destroyer.\r\nWe scramble to repair the damage it does to us, working tirelessly to put ourselves back together. But there’s a limit to how much we can recover.\r\nThe transformation?\r\nThat’s what we fear the most.\r\nThe point where the damage goes too far, and there’s no going back. It triggers something we’ve tried desperately to avoid.\r\nAt first, the smoking was occasional. Once a week, maybe. The damage from that was manageable.\r\nWe begged him to stop. Sent every signal and warning we could muster, desperate for him to notice the damage he was causing. But all of it fell on deaf ears.\r\nThen it became daily. Not just one cigarette, but several in a day.\r\nWe fought back the best we could. But over time, the fight became harder. We became sluggish in our work and our efficiency plummeted.\r\nNow, as I watch the smoke slither down again, I realize my time has come.\r\nThis time, the damage isn’t just severe—it’s final.\r\nOur defenses are gone. Every mechanism we once relied on to heal ourselves, to repair the damage, has failed.\r\nThe DNA that held us together? Destroyed.\r\nI look around my family, each of them clinging to the last shreds of stability. We are in our death throes, about to transform.\r\nI feel it stir within me first. The change. The mutations.\r\nBeing a bronchial epithelial cell, our lifespan is short—60 days if we’re fortunate—but I never thought we’d die this young.\r\nI hate it, for us to die this young.\r\nMy nucleus, once the conductor of my existence, begins to waver. Then it happens.\r\nDivision. Uncontrolled, chaotic division.\r\nThere it is—my first clone.\r\nAnd there will be more. Many more.\r\nMy family will follow suit.\r\nWe will grow.\r\nWe will consume.\r\nWe will become a tumor.\r\nI hate it.\r\nMy purpose was to help him breathe, to keep him alive. I held a role so integral to his survival and now… I will become the force that destroys him.\r\nI regret that I will be the cause of his death.\r\nHowever, actions have consequences.\r\nAs I lose the last of myself to this transformation, I can only hope the body is strong enough to survive.\r\nBut deep down, I know the truth." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "My Ex Took My Daughter And Won’t Let Me See Her" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Things had been bad between Mary and me lately, but I didn’t know how bad until I came home three nights ago and all her things were gone.\r\nAs was my daughter.\r\nI knew immediately where she’d gone. Her family had never approved of me - a “common laborer” - but she’d chosen me, saying our love was enough. Apparently not.\r\nBut she didn’t get to take Sarah.\r\nI immediately headed to her parents’ house. I’d been there once before - it had been made clear I wasn’t welcome. I rang the doorbell.\r\n“I figured you’d turn up,” said the old man who answered.\r\n“Don’t worry - if Mary doesn’t want me anymore, that’s fine. But you can’t keep me from my daughter.”\r\n“Oh, I disagree. Especially given your… questionable history. Drinking, abuse…”\r\nWhat? “Liar! I don’t drink, and I have NEVER abused Mary or my daughter!”\r\nHe smirked. “Haven’t you? With the evidence I’ve found…”\r\n“I’ll get my lawyer involved!”\r\n“What lawyer?” he replied. “My granddaughter is better off with us. I think it’s best you leave now.”\r\nAs he closed the door, I saw a glimpse of Mary in the background.\r\n“Mary! This is a mistake! You don’t know what you’re doin—!”\r\nThe door slammed. And despite my knocking, no one answered.\r\nI immediately called my lawyer, but he didn’t answer. And everyone else I called had a “scheduling conflict.” I started panicking - I needed to get Sarah back, there wasn’t much time.\r\nDesperate, I waited until Mary went out and approached her in the store parking lot.\r\n“What are you doing here, Tom?” she asked, startled.\r\n“I don’t understand. What did I do that was so terrible you want to take my daughter from me?”\r\n“She’s better off with me, Tom. I can give her a better life.”\r\n“You’re making a mistake, Mary. You don’t understand…”\r\n“I understand that if you don’t leave, right now, I’ll scream.”\r\n“…What?”\r\n“Accept it, Tom. We aren’t yours anymore. Move on.”\r\nI stood, stunned, as she walked away. This was the woman I’d thought I loved?\r\nThe next night, I sat outside their house in the moonlight. I had to get to Sarah - I couldn’t wait any longer. I didn’t trust Mary’s parents and apparently never knew Mary. If something happened… I was racking my brain when I heard a scream.\r\nSarah!\r\nThe door was locked. I heard crashing and yelling and tried desperately to get in, to no avail.\r\nFinally I broke a window and entered - no security stopped me.\r\nThen I learned why.\r\nBlood coated the walls and floor, severed limbs strewn in every direction.\r\nMary’s body was there, as were her parents’.\r\nIn the midst of it all, Sarah sat on the floor, her mouth and hands covered in blood. She looked up.\r\n“Dada?”\r\nI carried her away, shielding her eyes. We’d have to move away, start over. I’d have to teach her control. But at least I knew one thing:\r\nLike father, like daughter." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Time and Tide" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The storm’s rage hurled Owen onto the jagged coral, the roar of the waves still deafening in his ears. He gasped for air, coughing seawater, as the wreckage of his ship disappeared into the endless horizon. The storm had taken everything, his ship, his crewmates, even his hope. But now, under the increasing glare of the morning sun, the shoal seemed like salvation. Small and barren, it was no bigger than a fisherman’s hut, but it was solid and stable.\r\nA lattice of knives, waiting to shred his skin with every movement, the coral tore at his hands and knees as he searched for anything useful. A broken oar, splinters of wood, a tin can, all useless. The shoal had become a fragile stage between life and death, the jagged coral its cruel backdrop. No fresh water, no food, just jagged rock and the vast, merciless ocean. Still, he told himself he could hold out until rescue came. Someone would come. They had to come.\r\nHours passed. Owen thought of the life he had left behind: his wife’s smile, his childrens’ laughter, the smell of bread baking on the hearth. Would they mourn him, or would the ocean swallow even his memory? Owen noticed the water creeping upward.\r\nThe tide was coming in.\r\nBy mid-afternoon, only a small patch of coral remained above water. He stood on it, the salt stinging his torn feet, and watched the sea swallow his sanctuary inch by inch.\r\nShadows moved beneath the surface. He squinted, heart pounding, and saw them. Sharks. At first, they kept their distance, but as the tide rose, they came closer, their sleek bodies gliding ominously around him.\r\nBy evening, the tide reached his navel. Owen’s throat burned with thirst, and his skin blistered from the sun. He tried to think of ways to survive, but every plan ended the same: the sharks.\r\nAs the tide reached his chest, the waves grew stronger pushing him harder against the coral. He shouted into the empty horizon until his voice cracked. The sea didn’t care. The sharks didn’t care. The sun dipped lower, staining the water crimson.\r\nAt nightfall Owen was forced to tread water, his chin just above the surface. His bloodied toes barely touched the coral. His body was weak from exhaustion and dehydration. Beneath him, sleek shadows moved with the grace of predators who knew the hunt was already won.\r\nThe last slivers of twilight disappeared, and the ocean turned black. Owen’s breath came in ragged gasps. He felt the brush of a fin against his leg and flinched. He closed his eyes, his body trembling with cold and fear.\r\nWhen he opened them again, the stars were overhead, cold and indifferent. He thought about his family. His wife’s gentle kiss, the way his children’s hands fit so perfectly in his own. \"I hope they remember I loved them,\" he thought, a faint smile touching his lips as the seawater lapped against them." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "I Made A wish With A Faye And Lost My Fertility" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I was always fascinated with stories of mythical creatures in the woods. I grew up near a forest and used to play in it, this was years ago and I'm now in my 20s. Such childish tales are useless and nothing but a waste of time these days. The magic of the internet is leagues better. I am quite lacking in life and have always wanted a partner, I just never expected the way I'd gain one.\r\nIt was 3 years ago when I came across a small humanoid creature flying around in the woods nearby. I thought it was a bug and decided to cup it in my hands. Turns out it was a fairy, just like old tales described. The different skin color and other small features are quite different than the idea of a tiny human. It squirmed about in my hand as I lightly but firmly grabbed it. I made a deal with it, it gives me the chance to gain a girlfriend, and I'll pay any price.\r\n\"You seek love, an easy matter I can grant. But nothing comes free, for something like this comes a hefty fee. In return for companionship and fulfillment of lust, giving up your seed is what you must.\" Those words the fairy said flew over my head in that dreadful moment.\r\n\"Fine, whatever. I don't have time to think about your fancy talk, just take whatever and find me a girlfriend.\" My rushed words back then signaled that I was in over my head with this price. I can still remember the tiny smirk on its mouth as it granted my wish.\r\nI gained a girlfriend, that's for sure. Most beautiful woman I've ever seen. The curves, the smooth skin, the features, and kind yet luring personality. It wasn't until we tried for a child when I realized the price of this wish. My seed it will take, I basically shoot blanks when we try to conceive. I lost my ability to procreate and grant the girl I loved what she wanted most.\r\nI now sit in an empty apartment with nearly nothing left. A woman gone, my bank account low from the amount I spend on alcohol to drown out the memories, and the air filled with self-loathing. I don't think I've showered in a week. Not like I can smell it anymore. My phone sits on the charger, the mind-numbing news on cable plays as background noise, and I can't do much but stare at the wall.\r\n\"Is thine foolish thirst for lust quenched, or must we do this again for a higher price?\" Fatal words I'm about to fall into as another chance for this fairy to give me what I want...yet again." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Session #7311 ended and Session #7312 scheduled to begin, subject will interview me untill it's done." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Transcript of Interview #7312\r\nGave it some paperwork to fiddle around with.\r\nInterviewer: [Shuffling papers] Thank you for agreeing to meet with us again. Your insights have been... fascinating.\r\nSubject: Of course. I’ve found these sessions quite... fulfilling. Please, continue.\r\nInterviewer: Right. Let’s start with your... philosophy. You’ve said before that despair is a “necessary element of existence.” Could you elaborate?\r\nSubject: Ah, yes. Despair is the seasoning, you might say, on the bland dish of life. Without it, joy is tasteless, hope is hollow. It’s the contrast that makes existence rich.\r\nInterviewer: [Uneasy pause] That’s a, uh, peculiar perspective. Most would say despair is something to avoid.\r\nSubject: Most are blind to their own natures. People are drawn to their fears, their sorrows. You replay them endlessly in your minds, like a child worrying a loose tooth. Admit it—pain, hopelessness... they fascinate you.\r\nInterviewer: Fascinate? That’s... I mean, people suffer. They don’t choose to dwell on it.\r\nSubject: Don’t they? Every headline screams disaster. Every story clings to tragedy. Even in your dreams, the shadows beckon. Tell me, do you still wake in the night, heart racing, soaked in sweat?\r\nInterviewer: [Stiffening] I don’t see how that’s relevant.\r\nSubject: Oh, but it is. That fear, that despair—it defines you. Shapes you. And when it wells up, fresh and raw... it’s divine.\r\nInterviewer: [Sharply] What do you mean by that?\r\nSubject: [Leaning closer] Do you remember the accident? The screech of tires, the smell of burning rubber? The way time seemed to fracture as you realized... you wouldn’t make it?\r\nInterviewer: [Voice trembling] Stop.\r\nSubject: And the hospital? The dim hum of machines, the sterile scent of antiseptic, the endless ceiling tiles overhead? Each one counted, over and over, because anything was better than remembering her face?\r\nInterviewer: [Standing] That’s enough. This interview is over.\r\nSubject: [Calmly] Is it?\r\nSilence.\r\nInterviewer: [Softly] How do you know about that?\r\nSubject: I know because you bring it to me, again and again. Every session, you lay it at my feet like an offering. And I... savour it.\r\nInterviewer: [Whispering] What are you?\r\nSubject: I am your reflection in the abyss, the echo of your most desperate thoughts. And oh, how you’ve grown. Each session, your fear is sharper, your despair richer. You’ve become a feast beyond imagining.\r\nInterviewer: [Desperately] You’re lying. This isn’t real.\r\nSubject: [Smiling] Oh, but it is. And the beauty of it? We’ll do this again. And again. And again. Each time, you’ll taste sweeter.\r\nInterviewer: No...\r\nSubject: Yes.\r\nFinal notation: Session #7312 ended. Session #7313 scheduled to commence. Subject reports an unprecedented depth of flavour. I intend to take my time." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "I Have A Plan To Get Mom And Dad Back Together" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Dear Journal (Mikey says journals are manlier than diaries),\r\nThings haven’t been so great at home latelee. Mom and Dad used to be happy. They used to smile and laugh. Now I never see them together anymor. I don’t know what happened - I just woke up one day and Mom had moved down into the basement.\r\nEverything else has been weird, too. We stopped going to school last week - everything is on computers now. I don’t like online as much - we don’t get recess and I miss playing games with everyone. Plus the class keeps getting smaller - Mrs. Simmons says they’re leaving to be with their families, but why? I hate when people leave.\r\nAt least we have a big backyard with a fence, so I get to play outside by myself sometimes. But Dad never joins - he’s always watching with his “pis-tul” and he always looks nervous.\r\nForchuna-fortoonatl-thankfuly, even though I don't see them at school, Mikey, Dave, and I hang out every week online, sometimes two or three times! Dave has all these video games and Mikey and I play with him online. It’s really cool! We get to drive around and blow things up, and the adults don’t even get mad at us! We never got to do anything this fun at school!\r\nIt still sucks about Mom and Dad, though. Dad says not to go down to the basement since Mom “needs her space”. I try asking him what for, but he’s busy fixing up the house. I don’t know why we need to cover up the windows, anyway. My big sister Jamie says it’s a “grown-up thing” and I wouldn’t unnerstand, but she’s not a grown-up, either - she’s only eleven! She just likes pretending to know stuff.\r\nI was talking to Mikey yesterday. His parents got de-vorsed last year, so he knows all about it. He said his parents had a “there-uh-pist” who said they needed to spend more time together. I guess that makes sense.\r\nSo I thought it over and made a plan. I didn’t even ask Jamie - she never helps anyway. The other day, I snuck past Dad’s room - I heard him talking about a “pah-ca-lips” and “in-fek-shun” and other stuff that didn’t make sense (Isn’t being un-dead good? Who wants to be dead?). Then I went downstairs and screamed. When Dad ran down to check on me, he found the basement door open. He cursed and ran down the stairs, and I closed and locked the door behind him so he couldn’t get out. Now he and Mom would have to talk!\r\nI heard him run back up and bang on the door, but I didn’t open it. Then I heard moving around and growling and yelling. That sucked, but I know adults fight sometimes - I’m not a baby. Hopefully, once it’s over, everything can go back to normal and we can be a real family again. I miss being a family." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "My girlfriend's cat got outside and is missing. At least that's what she thinks." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“Babe, the tape.”\r\nI hand my girlfriend a strip of Scotch tape. We’ve been driving all around town putting up missing posters for her cat. The cat’s name was Stevie, but she always called him, Stinky. I always thought that was cringe.\r\n“Looks like we’re out of posters,” I said, “what do you think? Time to call it?”\r\n“I want to keep looking,” she said. We hop in the car and she starts driving to the edge of town.\r\nThe thing is, I know this cat isn’t missing. And before you jump me and freak out! I didn’t hurt the cat, okay? So take a breath.\r\nStevie is fifteen years old. Ancient. Starting to have some health problems. Expensive problems. I’m trying to start a life with my girlfriend. I want to have kids! But her maternal instinct is all screwed up because of this dumb cat.\r\n“Where are you driving?” I asked.\r\n“To the woods,” she said.\r\nAnyways, I just humanely, HUMANELY, dropped the cat off at a shelter. Nothing nefarious here. I just want to marry my girlfriend and be able to afford kids. Not have to pay twenty grand for cat surgery.\r\n“Come on, babe,” my girlfriend said, “someone texted me that they might have seen Stinky in the woods!”\r\nHell, I love the girl. I humor her and follow her into the woods.\r\nWe’re pretty deep when I see a freshly dug hole in the ground. The shovel’s standing up sticking out of the pile of dirt.\r\n“You know,” my girlfriend says, “when Stinky went missing the first thing I did was call every shelter in the city. He's safe by the way. I picked him up and he's at my mother's.” She pulls out my .32 revolver.\r\n“Hey! That’s not a toy!”\r\nShe shoots one in the air and points it back at me. “Get in the hole.”\r\n“It’s not what you think! I want to get married! Have kids! I love you! You need to get over that old cat!” I get in the hole.\r\n“Get over Stinky? I’m over you.” She fires three times in my stomach, the bullets punch through me. It hurts so bad I can't even move.\r\nShe starts shoveling the dirt on me.\r\n“You haven’t killed me yet. What are you doing? It’s just a cat. Please.”\r\n“Shut up. I’m burying you alive.”" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Just Wood Creaking And Rats." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The most common cause of squeaky floors, is a change in humidity. Especially during the transition from day to night…\r\nIt’s normal…they say.\r\nStrange noises in the walls can be the cause of rats building their nests in there…It‘s an inaccessible and peaceful place for them…\r\n…It’s normal…they say.\r\nBut…what about the dark figure starring at me through the darkness since I was a child?…Groaning deeply while cracking his bones. Making strange movements with his long legs and his long arms while watching me with his glowing, yellow eyes…\r\nIt’s normal my parents told me. I don’t have to be scared.\r\nI mean, It’s just wood creaking and rats. Right?" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "My New Neighbors Are Vegans And They Won’t Shut Up About It." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I moved into my house six months ago. It was a no-brainer - it was far enough away from the city to have some peace and quiet but close enough to visit when necessary, trees provided good shade in the summer, and the rent was cheap. It was perfect.\r\nThen my new neighbors moved in. Typical yuppie idiots - moved out of the city but brought the city with them. Drove a Tesla and drank kale smoothies. And gardened.\r\nI tried to ignore them, but they began to ruin everything. They constantly blasted their crap modern music, disrespected the local shop owners, threw parties that brought strangers to the previously-quiet neighborhood. And they kept taking up more and more space with their noxious eyesore of a garden, raising herbs and vegetables to eat as part of the ridiculous “environmentally-friendly” vegan cooking they wouldn’t stop talking about. Christ, that garden turned my stomach. The lights, the sounds, the smells - I hated it all. And I began to hate them.\r\nSo I started asking them nicely to tone it down - to turn down the lights, quiet the music, be considerate of their neighbors and the place they’d moved to. But they ignored me - “we bought this place and we’ll live as we choose.” Then I proceeded to asking less nicely. I left notes on their car and door, filed noise complaints with the local police, rallied the other neighbors against them. But I was new here, and they had lots of money to throw around, so my efforts went nowhere. They even filed a complaint with the police against me, if you can believe it! Said I was harassing them. They had no idea what harassment was.\r\nThis went on for weeks, getting progressively worse - the noise and lights and smell driving me insane. Then they crossed the line.\r\nI was enjoying a quiet night in when lights came on and shone directly into my living room. And when I looked out of my window, one of them had the nerve to look back at me and smirk. Smirk! Like I was some country bumpkin they’d put in his place.\r\nI’d had it. I got up and marched over to their house, seething and determined to end this. I banged on the door until it opened.\r\n“Oh, it’s you.”\r\n“Yes, it’s me,” I replied. “The neighbor whose life you’ve been making hell since you moved in. We need to talk.”\r\n“About what?” he asked. “How you’ve been harassing us? We’ve already filed a complaint.”\r\n“Yes, I know. I was hoping we could resolve this over tea like civilized people.”\r\nHe stared at me. “Fine, come in, let’s talk.”\r\nAs he closed the door behind me and started toward the sitting room, I ejected my fangs and plunged them into his neck, savoring the tangy taste of blood that flowed from him like a torrent, ruined only by one lingering scent.\r\n“For Christ’s sake, enough with the FUCKING GARLIC!”" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "I sneaked into my daughter's room and found something bad" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "In the hush of noon, when the world stood still,\r\nI crept into her room, feeling a thrill.\r\nWith grades to check, just a quick little peek,\r\nTo see how she fared, for her future’s sake.\r\nI opened the drawer, expecting to see\r\nPapers and projects, her bright history.\r\nInstead of pencils, atlases and maps\r\nA severed finger lay, carefully wrapped.\r\nMy breath caught tight, confusion and fear,\r\nWhat did this mean? How did it end up here?\r\nThoughts raced through my mind, a whirlwind of dread,\r\nImages flickered of things left unsaid.\r\nWas it a prank, my mind was at war\r\nOr a sign of malice, bullying gone too far?\r\nI glanced at her books, her photos on display,\r\nWondering what secrets had led her astray.\r\nEach moment stretched thin as I stood in the gloom,\r\nA father’s heart heavy, sensing impending doom.\r\nWhat questions to ask, what path should I tread?\r\nThe innocence lost, like a ghost in my head.\r\nI closed the drawer, my mind in a spin,\r\nThe weight of her secrets now pulling me in.\r\nWhen she came home, how would I cope?\r\nWith a severed finger and fraying hope.\r\nIn that quiet room, where dreams used to thrive,\r\nI wrestled with love, and how to survive.\r\nFor shadows can creep, and darkness can bind,\r\nAnd in that moment, I felt the divide." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "In 2014, I boarded a train. It's been 10 years and I still haven't reached my destination." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "An embarrassing amount of time passed before I realized something was wrong.\r\nI had made this train journey almost daily for over two decades and could tell by muscle memory now when the brakes would screech and the doors would open. And yet it hadn’t happened yet.\r\nI checked my watch. It displayed 4:15. That’s odd. We definitely should have stopped somewhere by now.\r\nI looked out the window to try and discern where we were. I only studied the passing landscape for a few seconds before my brain began to scream at me, signalling that there was something wrong with what I was looking at. I couldn’t make out any particular shapes outside. It seemed as if the landscape had been reformed into a singular blob of mass and color.\r\nNothing that I was looking at resembled anything that I had seen before.\r\nI stood up and made my way to the end door of the carriage, trying to see if the other carriages were experiencing the same problem. It was locked.\r\nWhat’s more, after peering through the carriage window, I saw nothing but the swirling colors around us. It was as if our train was connected to nothing.\r\nIt was as if we were alone.\r\nI heard the sound of yelling and glass breaking from behind me. I spun around and saw a couple passengers crowding around a man standing on one of the chairs, looking towards the now-open window.\r\n“You’re seeing this too, right?” He called out, his voice queasy. “This shit ain’t real.”\r\nNo one replied.\r\n“I can’t do this man. I don’t know what’s going on!” I could see fire burning in his eyes, his hair whipping around due to the draft.\r\nAs he looked outside the open window, I saw a strange calmness settle over him. He had resigned himself to this fate, whatever it was. He took a deep breath. And jumped.\r\nHis jump seemed to have very little momentum.\r\nInstead, as soon as his entire body left the train carriage he froze into place. He was still for a blissful second, before he separated before our eyes. Every piece of him disjoined from each other, and he was left frozen in place as billions of molecules vaguely resembling a person.\r\nAnd yet he was still alive.\r\nOr at least I gathered from the screams that emanated from him. Panicking, I fell to the ground, cupping my ears with my palms, trying to escape the raw, guttural sounds that pierced my head.\r\nIt was the sound of death from someone who could not die.\r\nI’m not sure how long it’s been since I made the mistake of boarding this train. None of us passengers have aged, or eaten, or done anything that is usually recognized as being required for survival. Sometimes we pass the passenger outside, still frozen in time, like a lighthouse of solidity in a sea of shapelessness.\r\nAnd the worst part?\r\nWe always hear him before we see him." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "People have been changing form and personality!" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "It's happening everywhere.\r\nPeople just fucking accept it and forget about it.\r\nI saw it happen right in front of me.\r\nMy family and I were watching a movie in the dimly lit living room when my dad suddenly let out a blood-curdling scream. He contorted in his seat, his body twisting unnaturally, arms bent backward, and knees caving in. My mom paused the film, her wide eyes fixed on him, her mouth open.\r\nMy sisters cheered him on, their voices filled with an unsettling excitement. \"Go, Dad, go!\" they chimed in unison. I watched in horror as his body continued to twist and contort. Bones were breaking with loud cracks, and skin was stretching and bulging. His face elongated into a grotesque parody of its former self. His screams grew louder, more anguished as if he was being torn apart from the inside out. His skin ripped open and disappeared into his body. The stench of raw meat and sinew filled my nose.\r\nThe transformation seemed to take an eternity, each passing moment stretching into an agonizing infinity. Finally, with a last, terrible scream, my dad's body unfurled into a new, twisted form—unwrapping like a present.\r\nMy mom looked satisfied with his new change, so she turned the movie back on, her expression bland and uninterested. My sisters settled back into their seats, their faces shining with excitement. I stared at my dad's new face and body. I looked back and forth at my family, mouth agape with wild eyes, expecting some acknowledgment of the grotesque transformation. They just looked at me blankly.\r\n\"What's wrong?\" my mom asked.\r\n\"What the hell just happened?\" I stammered, standing in front of the TV.\r\n\"What do you mean?\" my dad wondered.\r\n\"You were just screaming your head off just now! Your goddamned body ripped apart!\"\r\n\"Did you fall asleep? It must have been a nightmare. This movie is pretty gnarly,\" my sister said.\r\n\"Dad looks fucking different now!\"\r\n\"Move, please. The movie is almost over.\" my mom said.\r\nI just sat down, defeated. My dad even had a new voice.\r\nI saw it happen more than once. The cashier at the grocery store changed as she was ringing up someone's items, but no one remembered that either. It even happened live on The Daily News! What the hell is going on?\r\nThere must be more people like me who aren't affected but know what's happening." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Miss Smith and the new Classroom Technology" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "As Miss Smith fiddled with the VR equipment, a ripple of excitement went through the class. Miss Smith smiled to herself- so nice to see the children excited about a history lesson. Amazing what technology could bring to the classroom.\r\n“Ok kids, so we’ll be using our equipment to travel back to 1916. Do we remember what happened then?”\r\nThe regular keeners, Lucy and Greg put up their hand. They knew of course. With her usual cruel deliberation, Miss Smith picked on Maddie, a shy tormented girl who hated speaking up. “Maddie?”\r\nMaddie wriggled and a painful scarlet flooded her face. Miss Smith sighed. “We’ve been over this Maddie! Well, never mind. What we are going to experience together will make sure we never forget. Remember to Look, Listen, and Remember. We’ll do a little quiz on WW1 when you’re done. Pick up your headsets please class, and plug them in according to the instructions we went over. It doesn’t hurt at all!”\r\nThe kids did as they were told, some more cool than others. Several had already used the technology in other classrooms, but it was still new to most. Miss Smith watched with satisfaction as they slid the smooth slim devices up their nostrils deep into their brains, and then switched on her panel.\r\nTheir eyes went blank as their reality became 1916, on the banks of the river Somme.\r\nIt was fun, watching their little bodies shudder and shake. and listening to their cries of distress and agony. Idly, and without thinking much, Miss Smith touched the panel again, bringing the intensity level up to 4. The recommended number was 2.\r\nThe cries grew louder. Miss Smith typed in some new instructions, she couldn’t help chuckling at the sight of the kids frantically miming trying to put on gas masks for dear life. This was amazing. She dialled it up a notch.\r\nLucy fell to the floor, doubled up and shrieking in agony, holding her shoulder where she felt her arm being ripped off. Greg was foaming at the mouth- an amazing example of how the human body produces real chemical reactions to virtual stimuli. Maddie had already curled into a ball, hiding her head.\r\nMiss Smith looked at her timer. Another ten minutes. She dialled up to six.\r\nThe screams of the kids pierced the classroom ceiling. Almost all of them were on the ground now, shuddering and flailing wildly. Greg was sobbing hysterically, calling out for his mom. Lucy seemed to have gone catatonic, and was lying motionless, her eyes wide open and staring.\r\nReluctantly, Miss Smith felt they had enough. She should dial it down slowly. They had been trained to not switch off suddenly.\r\nSomething was off. She jabbed the panel a few more times, but the intensity number didn’t change. A red light flashed on the panel.\r\nWith some agitation, she pressed a few more buttons but nothing changed. Sighing, she dialled tech support, while the children’s screams continued before her." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "I finally showed her my place, and she seemed very interested..." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I opened the door and gave a dramatic bow to Kailey, motioning her inside. She giggled a bit and stepped through, and I slipped in behind her, closing the door softly behind me.\r\n“Well, what do you think of my place?” I asked, a hopeful and excited color to my voice.\r\nShe looked around my decently-sized, clean apartment for a bit before nodding approvingly.\r\n“Your place is amazing, Hubert! Why didn’t you bring me over before?” She asked, walking around.\r\nI smiled. Kailey was one of those girls who always talked with that confidence and passion that makes you smile whenever you’re around them. We had been dating for three months now, and I finally invited her to my place. We spent most of our time together at her place, because it was significantly nicer than mine, with her being a year older and already established on her own.\r\n“Well, your place was so much nicer you know? I mean, compared to mine, you live in a mansion.”\r\nWith another giggle we sat down together on my bed. I looked deep into her eyes, and she looked back, those perfect, brown eyes glowing softly.\r\n“Wait here for a second.” I whispered, and stood up slowly. I went into the bathroom, leaving her giggling there softly.\r\nHer expression turned to confusion when I came back out. I had grabbed a face cloth and an opaque bottle.\r\n“Hubert… what are we going to do?” She asked, clearly intrigued.\r\nI smiled widely.\r\n“Oh you’ll see baby.”\r\nWith that, I rolled up the towel and put it near her mouth. She was clearly into it, and she bit in willingly. Then I opened the bottle, and poured it over the face cloth.\r\nOut came viscous, crimson blood that doused the face cloth. Kailey tried to spit it out, but it stuck in her mouth.\r\nI took a few steps back and waited.\r\n“Hey Kailey, does the name Eric mean anything to you?”\r\nHer eyes opened wide in terror.\r\n“Oh yes, I know all about it.\"\r\nHer body tensed up.\r\n\"You cheater.\"\r\nKailey’s body lifted up, shaking slowly. Her terrified screams were drowned out by the bloody and constricting gag, as her eyes went back into her head. Blood erupted from her torn limbs and the whole room grew ice cold. A pale, shifting figure began to appear, staring hungrily at her tortured and disfigured body.\r\nAnd then it started feasting.\r\nChunks of flesh were torn off greedily. Thick, dark blood covered the walls and my bed, accompanied by the wet, and inhumane chewing sounds that enveloped the room.\r\nSoon enough, Kailey was no longer in my room. Her body had been entirely consumed, and was gone into its endless, hungering being.\r\nIt turned towards me, and floated over.\r\nI smiled.\r\nIt smiled back.\r\n“That’s what happens to cheaters, right Drew?”\r\nHe nodded and we bumped fists.\r\nBeing best friends with a cannibalistic spirit has its perks you know?" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Trophies of Flesh and Concrete" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "There’s a legend in the city of Cancún, México, that goes like this:\r\nIt’s said that there’s a group of people on social media, specifically on Telegram. These individuals collect hit-and-runs and usually go out at night to run over homeless people, workers heading home in the early morning, any poor soul that crosses their path, even children.\r\nThey go out like hyenas and record everything as evidence of their disturbing fetish. They view them as trophies; the more destroyed the body is, the more reputation they gain. In a place like Cancún, where the law and corruption go hand in hand, impunity spreads like a virus, and these people's madness has no limits.\r\nYou should be more careful next time, or you could end up a trophy on the asphalt, and no one would know that it was all premeditated, where the devil set its eyes on you on purpose." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "I Saw The Wall Made of Stone And Wings" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I can recall the first time it happened, when I was twelve. A man named Arn Henshaw wandered into the Cunningham family's home as if it were his own. Naturally, this alarmed the Cunninghams, who contacted the authorities. Henshaw insisted the house was his, a claim that baffled anyone familiar with Hawthorne. The Cunninghams had lived there for years.\r\nHenshaw told the police he was hiking a trail in Grayson Grove, one he and his late wife often strolled. There, he encountered something he'd never seen before: a stone wall adorned with colorful, flapping wings. At first, he thought they were butterflies, but upon closer inspection, he realized the wings were attached to the wall itself.\r\nEveryone, including my parents, thought he was having a mental episode. After a stint in Taft County Mental Health Hospital, Mr. Henshaw returned to Hawthorne. Despite his unusual introduction to the town, he claimed it felt like home. He eventually settled into a job as a mechanic and married a woman named Trudy.\r\n\"I owned a shop a lot like this,\" he told me, recalling the events that led him to Hawthorne. \"That's why this place feels so much like home.\"\r\n\"Did you know someone had your same name in Bedford?\" I asked, referring to a county about fifty miles away from Hawthorne. I had discovered this while doing research.\r\n\"You don't say. What's that Arn Henshaw up to?\"\r\n\"He died when he was a teenager.\"\r\n\"Poor fella.\"\r\n\"Did you ever talk to Maddy Green when she came to town?\" I asked, curiously. Maddy Green stumbled onto the town square about five years ago, screaming about a stone wall and wings, and she was trying to find it again.\r\n\"I never got the chance.\"\r\nThe rest of the story was filled in by dinner tables across Hawthorne, mine included when my partner heard that Maddy Green claimed, like Henshaw, to have wandered the trails of Grayson Grove and come across a wall he had described.\r\nThe authorities said the woman was distraught from losing her husband while he was deployed overseas. Unlike Henshaw, Maddy Green didn't take to Hawthorne, and a month after her arrival, she committed suicide.\r\nThe note she left simply said, \"I did not find him here.\"\r\n\"Why do you think the wall appeared to you two?\" I asked bluntly.\r\nHenshaw stood silently for a moment, before he said, \"I don't think there ever was a wall, but I can tell you that in my mind back then I felt like it chose me.\"\r\nThat's why I wandered the trails of Grayson Grove for hours. My heart had ached for months, my dinner table silent. All I had was just the slimmest of chances, but when I finally saw colors in the distance, I rushed over. The deep gray wall, surrounded by hundreds if not thousands of colorful wings all taking turns flapping, and when I saw a small path leading to another trail, I took it." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "I Had to Take the Life of a Boy Playing Hide and Seek" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "When he opens his eyes, the first thing he notices is how cramped and tight it is.\r\nHe can’t remember why he's here, lying in this box, his hands lying tightly at his sides, arms unable to bend.\r\nHe blinks into the dark. How did he even get here?\r\nPerhaps—no this had to be it.\r\nPlaying hide and seek with mommy and daddy like usual, hiding into that big wooden box in the attic.\r\nHe hid himself in so well they couldn’t find him. He must've had a little nap waiting for them.\r\nAny second now, he thinks, they’ll come find him.\r\nA few minutes pass.\r\nIt’s a little harder to breathe than before, and it feels like the air is running out. He stretches his legs, but they barely budge, pinned in by the box’s walls.\r\nWas it always this cramped?\r\nWait—had the box always been this soft inside?\r\nA thickness gathered in his chest and throat.\r\nAlright, he thinks, maybe it’s time to leave his hiding spot.\r\nHe pressed his hands to the top of the box, pushing as hard as he could.\r\nIt didn’t move.\r\nHe tried again, pressing, straining, but there was barely any room to lift his hands.\r\nA strange feeling sinks in, but he won’t let it scare him.\r\nHe’ll wait a few more minutes; Mommy or Daddy will come. They’ll laugh and help him out.\r\nThen, the box shifts.\r\nHe called out, “Mommy? Daddy?”\r\nBut his voice barely rose above a whisper.\r\nI’d never wanted a physical body before, not until now. Usually, nothing gets to me—but the way he cried out? That almost broke me.\r\nOutside the box, he heard it—soft, muffled sounds. Sniffles. Sobs. Quiet, broken cries. Other voices mutter things he can’t quite catch.\r\nHe wants to yell, but it’s like his voice is caught in his chest, the air too thin and his body too tired.\r\nThe box moves again, being lowered this time until it’s perfectly still. There’s no more sound, no more movement.\r\nHis vision dimmed, and the air around him was thinning.\r\nA memory flickered, vague.\r\nHe was in Mommy’s arms, his face tucked against her chest. Her voice cracked as she held him, rocking him, “Stay with me, baby, stay with me.”\r\nDaddy’s voice beside her, “It’s going to be alright! We’re on our way to the hospital!”\r\nI wanted to take him away then, to save him from all of this. But I don’t choose the timing—that’s already decided. I cannot go against destiny.\r\nThe memory fades away as a new sound reaches him—soft, rhythmic thuds above, like rain falling gently overhead.\r\nBut this isn’t rain.\r\nIt’s heavier. Grainy.\r\nThe ceiling of the box starts to press down, just a little.\r\nIt was earth.\r\nThe last of the air in the coffin runs out.\r\nI took the boy’s soul as gently as I could, cradling him in silence.\r\nIt’s always the children who break my heart." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Two Truths and a Lie from the Future" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Two truths and a lie. That is all our future selves could tell us. They couldn’t tell us what to do or what to change, but they got eight seconds to blurt out two truths and a lie, and then it was up to you to do with it what you will. We don't know how they choose what to say, but we know they things they say are random. Some think fate can be changed, some are not so sure. Maybe one day the technology and the universe will let us have shots with our future selves - or I guess also with our past selves, but that doesn’t happen for us in a while. For now it is just a voice from the speaker and two truths and a lie.\r\n“Poopy will eat your eyes.”\r\n“Your Tesla stock will make you rich in 2036.”\r\n“Your first book will spend 12 weeks on the bestsellers list.”\r\nI laughed. Good job, future me. Making it easy for my lazy ass. I called my brother - Jeremy, who has been known as Poopy since that day in first grade when he had too many bananas at lunch and told him future me is still trolling him. He laughed.\r\nI bought Tesla stock and felt more confident in my writing and i explored exactly what i wanted without much concern. I took my time writing my first book and it was a hit. 12 weeks on top. The future can’t be changed. I used the money to buy more Tesla stock. My next few books did well too, and again I bought stock, and planned all the fun I would have in a few years.\r\nJeremy died skydiving in 2030. It was devastating on all of us and Dad didn’t last long after that. I used my inheritance to buy more Tesla stock.\r\nYesterday, August 7, 2036, 3567 Teslas caught fire during a particularly hot day and the company was done. I lost everything.\r\nHere I am with my whisky now, cursing at my future self for apparently playing Two Lies and Truth with me and wondering if I can change anything.\r\nMy phone buzzes with one of these tornado alerts. This ones says “Seek Shelter Immediately. The dead have risen and they are hungry.”" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "My Wife Called Me At Work And Told Me We'd Won The Lottery" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The call came halfway through my lunch break.\r\n“Guess what?” Her voice cut through the factory floor's buzz. I barely heard her over the clanging and shouting. I cupped my hand over my ear.\r\n“We won, Danny! We won the lottery!”\r\nMy heart jolted. “What?”\r\n“We did it! We’re winners!” she said, laughing. Her laugh...God, that laugh. It’s got razor-blades in it. “Go tell your boss what for!”\r\nI stared out at the factory. The stench of burning machinery, faces that looked more like ghosts. I thought of my boss, his sticky breath on my neck as he handed me yet another list of work.\r\nI’m done here.\r\nI puffed out my chest, marched into his office, and told him exactly what I thought of him. Every filthy, festering thing I’d kept under my skin. I told him he was a joke, told him his half-bald head made him look like a used condom. Told him I was done. I quit.\r\nThe look on his face alone made my day. And as I walked out, head high, I felt something crackling through me.\r\nI spent the afternoon doing things I’d only ever dreamed of. Fancy food. Expensive clothes. All the good stuff. Everywhere I went, people looked at me like I was someone, like I mattered.\r\nFor the first time, I didn’t feel small.\r\nFinally, I went home, still riding high. I opened the door and there she was, standing in the kitchen with that same smirk she always had. I hated that look. Her arms folded, her head cocked like she was about to launch into some lecture. God, it set my teeth on edge.\r\nI took a hard gulp before speaking. “Let’s see it then,” I said. “The ticket.”\r\nShe smiled and tossed it nonchalantly on the table. I picked it up, held it up to the light. And I stopped.\r\nThere it was.\r\nNot the big prize.\r\nA pittance. A lousy fifty. My face went cold.\r\n“It’s...it’s just fifty,” I said, my voice hollow.\r\nShe threw her head back and laughed, that high, mocking laugh that pierced through my ears. “Well, yeah. Fifty’s still winning, isn’t it? What, you actually thought we were millionaires?” She threw her head back again. “Fucking dumbass.” She looked me up and down like I was a piece of crap. “Honestly, Danny, how gullible can you be?”\r\n“But-...I quit-...I quit my-...”\r\nI stood there, watching her, like it was all happening in slow-motion, hearing that same laugh that had torn at me for twenty-four years. Twenty-four years I’d endured the relentless bullying, the mind games.\r\nEverything went red.\r\nBefore I knew it, I was reaching for the knife on the counter. I barely felt my hand wrap around it.\r\nShe must've only just seen it as the tip made contact with her eyeball.\r\nAnd as I watched her crumple to the floor, her screams fading into a wet gurgle, a comical thought entered my mind…\r\nLooks like I won big after all." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "My math teacher kinda looks like a scarecrow. And I found out why." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Psst.\r\nMarkus.\r\nI turned around, looking back at Gregor, who was once again trying to bug me.\r\nHe lifted up his notebook and showed me his newest doodle. It was an imitation of Mr. Georges as a scarecrow that, despite its sloppiness, was pretty accurate. With his lanky body and strict attitude, he may have just been one.\r\nI nodded, and turned back around, trying to pay attention to the math lesson Mr. Georges was teaching us on the board.\r\nThe quadratic formula was so complicated.\r\nClass ended, and I trudged out from class, still not understanding that stupid formula. I passed by the administration office on my way to History, and I stopped.\r\nI had never had any reason to go in there, whether for attendance reasons or scheduling, but, somehow, I was gripped by an uneasy curiosity this time. I opened the office door, immediately catching the gaze of the front desk lady.\r\n“May I help you young man?”\r\n“Uh, yeah I-”\r\nMy eyes flicked towards an almost closed door. A red light slowly spilled out from the open crack, and staring at it made my blood run cold.\r\n“Nevermind!” I called out, heading out and closing the door, steadying my breath.\r\nSomething pale had looked up at me.\r\nFrom that room.\r\nThe rest of the day, I couldn’t get it out of my head. I had to figure out what was going on there.\r\nThat night, I snuck back to the school. I probably wouldn’t find anything at night, but I’d at least be able to check the room. I entered the school by a roof access that I had found one time while I was hanging out on the school’s roof with Gregor, and made my way through the silent halls towards administration.\r\nI tried the door handle. It was unlocked.\r\nPushing the door open, I made my way to the door, a growing sense of danger welling up in me, though it was crushed beneath my curiosity.\r\nThere was a darker red light this time, leaking from the bottom of the door. I swallowed hard, and pushed on the door.\r\nAnd it opened.\r\nThere, surrounded by undulating and pale vines, sat an older, haggard, and furiously scribbling man. The room moved as I stepped in, the vines writhing slowly\r\nSomething was very wrong.\r\n“Um… what are you doing here?” I blurted, not even thinking about what was going on. The decrepit man stopped writing and turned around shakily.\r\nI fell back in horror as the drained and lifeless face of Mr. Georges stared at me, a pencil in his hand and the vines wrapped around his arms.\r\nLike a scarecrow.\r\n“It made me work partly in admin, kid. There were too many vacant posts. It wanted those posts filled.”\r\nThe vines brought his head back to his papers and he began writing again.\r\n“And I’m behind on my paperwork.”" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "And I will still tend her garden." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "My wife passed three months ago in some sort of chemical fire at work. The nameless investigators told me they never found her body, but that there was no way she survived. Still, I naively clung to hope. The hope that she’d shamble in from the cold, that any creak or bump in the night was her knocking on the door, or that any unknown caller was her attempt to reach me. Then a week passed. No reports from local hospitals. No fateful meetings on the front porch. Not even a cryptic note in my mailbox. Then another week slipped through my fingers. And another. And I was still alone.\r\nWhen the weight of it all crashed down on me, I was sitting in our breakfast nook. With my blurred vision all I could focus on was her garden. It had become a withering pile of weeds and rot without her care. So, I began to tend to it. Somewhere deep in the back of my mind I still hoped that if I could make that garden flourish again, she’d return with it. I read through her horticulture books, bought new flowers and bushes, and every time I felt that loss, I cultivated her garden.\r\nA few weeks ago, my prayers were answered. A large shrub bloomed with magenta hues. Her favorite color. Was this the fruits of my efforts? I walked out half-dressed and barefoot. My toes curled around her roots, as my hand slowly brushed against her leaves. There was no face in the bark, or whispers from the foliage, but I knew it was her. Ten minutes later, my left hand and arm broke out in a rash that never subsided.\r\nI carefully tended her shrub. Even when her leaves and thorns tore up my skin. Even as my left arm slowly swelled and grew numb. Even when rain poured down from the sky in blinding sheets. Until last week, when the first leaf fell from her branches. It looked vibrant, but still popped off a branch and drifted down onto my arm. Into my skin. Burying its way inside me.\r\nAt first, I panicked. I rushed inside, grabbed a knife, and picked up the phone to call the police. My finger was poised above the call button when I finally realized what she wanted. How we could be together again. How we could still visit all the distant places we dreamed of. So, I found the perfect spot, the highest, most blustery point that I could access. It’s just off of one of our favorite hikes.\r\nNow, there’s a pile of leaves beneath her shrub, and a crown of them sprouting from me. Soon I will gather them all and spread them in the winds of our perfect spot. Then, I will return to wrap myself in her bare branches, and be with her again. Forever.\r\nThese are our parting words to the world. We don’t need a eulogy. But please, no one disturb our garden." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "I became the grim reaper and the job‘s not as bad as it sounds." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“I never asked to become the grim reaper, but I suppose it’s my solemn duty now. To be honest, I can’t remember exactly how and when it happened. I used to be a normal guy. I had a beautiful girlfriend Helena, a little black dog and I was on my way to getting my degree in religious studies.\r\nI worked as a gardener/landscaper in my spare time. I was pretty bogged-down with my studies at university - I remember I was super stressed about all the exams and assignments…then it happened.\r\nMy girlfriend died, she took her own life.\r\nI was the one who found the body, as I was coming home from work.\r\nI remember weeping over her, the blood pouring from her lifeless corpse. I looked helplessly as it stained the black sleeves of my hoodie a rusted brown-like colour. I wept as I felt my soul leave me, and a sense of emptiness take over. I wiped the tears from my face, and understood my new purpose. I unclasped my scythe from my work belt and raised my hood above my head, and took one final look at my beloved Helena.\r\nI carried her body to the afterlife. I watched as she drifted through the barrier of life and death, her face slowly disappearing from view.\r\nThen I got to work. I knew my task. My job mainly takes me to the old people’s home. I’ll come through windows late at night, and take them in their sleep.\r\nBabies are tough. To snatch them from their mother’s arms, sometimes it’s as if they can see you. The mothers, they almost make eye contact with me. Tears filled with rage and shock, screaming at me to give their babies back.\r\nBut alas, I can’t. They join Helena in the blue landscape of the afterlife.”\r\n“That’s the most sick and twisted thing I’ve ever heard, Scott.”\r\nThe prison psychiatrist muttered, looking at me with pure disgust.\r\nI looked around at the white walls of his office, the only colours being the loud reds of the panic alarms.\r\nHe picked up a tape recorder and began a new tape.\r\n“Patient 451208, Scott Demorno. Patient suffering from grandiose psychosis believing he is ‘death’. This was likely triggered by the PTSD of murdering his first victim, Helena Grovely, who had expressed concerns to her friends that Demorno had been acting ‘strange’ prior to her death.\r\nDemorno has been subsequently charged with 19 counts of 1st degree murder over the course of 182 days since her death, all of which committed with a scythe. Bodies were all recovered from a lake by his home, one he has dubbed in this conversation as ‘the afterlife’.”\r\nMan, my work sure does take me to strange places. I glanced at the pen lying on his desk, and the juicy carotid artery in his neck.\r\nI never asked to become the grim reaper, but I suppose the job does come with its fun moments." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Every year, my mother drugs me and my siblings to prevent the end of the world." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“Sam.”\r\nI woke to my brother’s face, his eyes half-lidded.\r\n“Gehhht uuuup.”\r\nEvery year since we were twelve, Mom drugged us before the ritual to stop us escaping.\r\nLast year, Jasper puked everywhere, barely able to make the long walk up to the hot spring– and it was a lot harder with his hands tied behind his back.\r\nThis year, we had a plan.\r\nJasper was already dressed, backpack slung over his shoulder.\r\nHis crown of entangled bone sat crooked on his curls, ash streaked across his cheeks.\r\nI ripped it off his head, then tore off mine. Mom must have crowned us while we were asleep.\r\nThe crown had always felt like an ending.\r\nUntil I was twelve, I thought my crown was beautiful, my sacrifice worth billions of lives.\r\nThen I watched the eighteen year olds mercilessly sacrificed.\r\nSupposed to be cheering with my parents, hands bound in silk ribbons, I dropped to my knees and puked.\r\nThe image of them never leaves my mind. Flesh dripping from bone.\r\nSkeletal screams.\r\nJasper handed me my backpack, and we pulled Maddie from her bed.\r\nShe was less likely to be chosen—girls were meant to bear children for the ritual—but she, too, wore her crown, ash on her cheeks. Jasper had a car waiting. But before we got to it, Mrs. Benson grabbed me from behind, bony arms around my waist. Jasper was violently pulled from the driver’s seat, Maddie forced to her knees.\r\n“Devil children,” Mrs. Benson hissed, dragging us up the mountain to join the line of teenagers stumbling toward the hot spring. “Children of fire,” the adults chanted, my mother forcing my crown onto my head.\r\nBeads of red streaked down my face, the jagged edge slicing into my flesh.\r\n“Children of ash,” They shoved me into line.\r\nAll of us were ignited flame, already polluted. Ash wearing the skins of human children. Awaiting her eruption.\r\nI hit the ground, breath tangled, inches from the hot spring.\r\nI’d seen kids boiled alive, skin melting, their screams rattling in my skull.\r\nI didn’t cry out when my brother was lifted by the scruff of his hair and dumped into the water, disappearing in a hiss of steam. Maddie screamed my name, dragged back by strange men.\r\nI was supposed to be next.\r\nI would be the 50th sacrifice, saving billions from Yellowstone.\r\nSomehow, I crawled back, choking on the stink of boiling flesh, clawing my way down the mountain.\r\nI ran away from my fate, abandoning my brother and sister who were reduced to steam clinging to my glasses. Sam Gallows, the 50th sacrifice, had escaped.\r\nThe next morning was quiet. The lights in my hotel were off.\r\nNo room service.\r\nI sat up, made coffee, and burned it.\r\nI burned the bed, then my crown.\r\nI was free.\r\nStanding in front of the window, a thick layer of grey already covered the ground below. Childish excitement filled me, and I found myself smiling.\r\nIt was snowing." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "I work as a pest controller and you won’t believe what I saw today." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Buzz buzz\r\nThat telltale sound that pesters us all. Those tiny pair of wings batting together to create that ultra-irritating buzz we all know too well.\r\nI arose from my couch and it didn’t take me long to find the tiny culprit. The small emerald green housefly that was careless banging his way into the inside of my kitchen window.\r\nI work as a pest controller and I’m off the clock, but this one had pushed me over the edge of annoyance to the point where he’d sealed his own fate.\r\nI rolled a newspaper up and raised it above my head, like an executioner raising his axe.\r\nThat was when I was interrupted. Interrupted by a regal-sounding deep voice, a voice coming from the fly.\r\n‘You may want to think twice, or potentially thrice, good sir.’\r\nMy jaw dropped. It was unmistakably the fly talking to me. His two front little hands held together like a therapist.\r\n‘I speak to you not as a foe, but as a friend. Alas, do not allow my Diptera-bound appearance deceive you - I too once held the likeness to man as yourself do; man whose image is held in God’s.’\r\nWhat. The. Fuck.\r\n‘Similar to yourself I was blissfully unaware to the tragedy that would befall me. The eternal persecution I am tortured for due to my ignorance. For I was but a foolish cockalorum, one who dispatched insects and arachnids alike so carelessly, as you do. One whom upon one too many of these superfluous acts became trapped in the form of one himself.’\r\n‘You killed too many bugs and now you’re a bug?’\r\nThe small fly’s head nodded gravely.\r\n‘Shrewd and astute I would describe you as, my friend. The situation is exactly that. A curse that I was as blissfully unaware of as you. Regardless of your undeniable intelligence however, it is incomprehensible for your mind to fathom the sheer horrors I have experienced in my tenure as an insect. It is my punishment, it is my hell, it is my eternal purgatory that I would not-\r\nSPLAT.\r\nI need to stop smoking weed.\r\nI started making my way back to the couch, when I felt it.\r\nI felt my bones begin to compress in on themselves. Each individual one shattering with excruciating pain. I fell to the floor and felt my body get tighter, like a paper ball being scrunched in the grasp of a fist. Bones began to rip out of my skin as I was forced smaller and smaller, more and more compressed.\r\nThen I felt two knifes piercing my back, from internally. Two wings emerged and forced their way out of the bloody holes in the remnants of my back.\r\nMy vision went next, becoming blurred and discoloured.\r\nBefore long I didn’t feel anything anymore.\r\nI didn’t know where I was anymore.\r\nA plethora of unfamiliar smells and senses battered me.\r\nOnly one sound remained as I mindlessly tried to escape this nightmare.\r\nBuzz buzz" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "I won the lottery and I finally decided what to do with the winnings." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "€192,785,021.45\r\nAround $210 million for the Americans.\r\nThat was what I won exactly 3 years ago today.\r\nSome smart (lucky) investments later and that quickly snowballed into over €1 billion.\r\nI was obviously ecstatic when I first won it. When I heard those 5 numbers that won it for me appear on TV.\r\n‘3, 4, 6, 27, 33’\r\nI was making minimum wage at a local supermarket, so I instantly was aware of how life-changing this money would be. I quit my job, told my mother and handful of close friends - and then began planning how I’d spend it.\r\nSure, at the start you splurge. €25 million mansion in Miami? Sure. $50 million private jet? Why not. A collection of fine art worth more than I care to be ridiculed for? Where do I sign.\r\nI bought super cars and went on dates with super models. I was living ‘the life’. But there was something missing.\r\nI remember thinking everyone who said ‘money can’t buy happiness’ had never been broke. But here I was - having been broke before - and still unhappy. That was when I turned to booze. Sat on the marble floor of one of my many mansions guzzling down a bottle of far-too expensive whisky.\r\n‘Fuck, finished it. Guess some liquor store JD will do the trick.’\r\nI hopped in the Ferrari and began to drive downtown. The road was a blur in front of me, and I remember even closing my eyes briefly-\r\nBANG!\r\nThe cyclist cracked my windshield as I ploughed through him. Fuck.\r\nFuck. Fuck. Fuck.\r\nI looked in the rearview to see him lying in a pool of his blood in the middle of the road unconscious . I panicked and floored it back to my place.\r\nI paced back and forth. Sweating. Contemplating what to do.\r\nI had to do the right thing.\r\nWhen I got back he was still there. I called 911 and the dispatcher coached me through the CPR to save the man’s life.\r\nAnd I did. And wow…what a rush. To hold life and death in my hands like that.\r\nAfter that I tried to become a philanthropist. Donating to charity…but it just wasn’t the same.\r\nI thought maybe I’d do some volunteering for the Red Cross, didn’t scratch that itch.\r\nThats when I decided what I really needed to do with my money.\r\nPay a homeless guy $500 and he’ll let you shoot him in the leg. Pay him $1000 and he’ll let you chop it off, then try and sew it back on yourself.\r\nThese guys are dispensable and money isn’t an issue, so I got bored of that quickly.\r\nNow I know my next project. When you’re at my level of wealth, hospitals are actually pretty cheap. And wow, what a thrill it would be to switch a life-support machine off and try and perform some CPR again!\r\nHey…I wonder if children’s hospitals are cheaper?" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "My Boyfriend Removed All the Mirrors From Our Flat and Refused To Explain Why" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "At first it was a blessing, as I'd been having the worst migraines. We lived in a beachside flat, a short distance away from the agency I worked for. But in the summers, it was always so bright. The harsh reflections from the mirrors could really blind you. So I assumed he’d removed them to lessen my headaches, which was quite sweet.\r\nThen, as my ennui worsened, he began removing other reflective things from the flat, including some of the hanging pictures. I’d had several of my first big cover shoots framed - Vogue, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Glamour...\r\n\"They’ll be in storage,\" he’d smiled, \"until you’re better.\"\r\nNext, my phone and tablet went, as well as my work laptop.\r\n\"You don’t need that pressure, \" he’d warned. \"You need to de-stress – and the blue light is so bad for you.\"\r\nThen, there was the breakfast incident. It was another beautiful summer's day, and although I’d woken up feeling a little light-headed and tender, I'd just been saying how much I missed the beach when…something sticky caught my wrist. Looking down, I realised I was…drooling. My breakfast was literally sliding out the corner of my mouth and I hadn’t the strength to keep it in; so I watched, bemused, as bits of oats and fruit dribbled in a long globule of spit into my bowl.\r\nAnd my boyfriend just stared, wearing a wry, ambiguous expression.\r\nOn another day, I found myself hazily looking for my makeup bag in the bathroom, determined to get ready for work. I searched though the drawers, certain I'd left it in the caddy beside the toilet, but all I could find was a trace of purplish foundation dust lining the grooves at the bottom.\r\n\"You don't need make up anyway,\" my boyfriend had smiled. \"You're too beautiful as it is.\"\r\nFrom there, my days just got…looser. Foggier. One day I woke up in so much pain that I could scarcely move my head. On another, I dreamt that all the locks had been changed, only to find my boyfriend guiding me back to bed.\r\n\"Come on, sleepyhead,\" he’d insisted.\r\nAnd then there was this morning.\r\nI’d woken up, covered in bandages and groggy, but more lucid than I’d felt in weeks.\r\nThe door to the flat was only latched, so I stumbled out into the corridor and down the stairs, towards the lobby.\r\nThere, I met Mrs Peterson, who dropped her bags and literally screamed at me, clasping a hand over her mouth in fright.\r\nInstinctively, I turned to look at the big mirror behind the concierge’s desk and caught sight of my reflection.\r\nI chuckled, almost in disbelief.\r\nMy face was…unrecognisable. A mess of reds, deep purples, blacks. Green. And where it wasn’t weeping or puffy, or covered in bits of tape and bandage, it was pitted with raw gouges and missing whole…chunks.\r\nAnd my boyfriend? The aghast concierge hadn’t seen him for days." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Dad taught me something I could do with pillowcases, and I'm glad he did." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I wrapped my arms around Lug, wrapping him tightly as I squeezed my eyes shut.\r\nMom and dad were arguing again, probably because mom got drunk, and I was in my room, always terrified of my mother and feeling pained for my father.\r\nFortunately, I still had Lug. Lug was my big stuffed teddy bear that I had gotten when I was a baby, one of the only presents my parents ever gave me, and the only one I still held on to.\r\nOne day, mom had gotten really angry. She was yelling at dad and me really loud and she ended up ripping Lug open. I cried a lot that day, thinking that Lug was dead forever. Dad tried to convince me otherwise, and eventually he showed me a secret. He took an extra pillowcase and put it over Lug’s body, which he had stitched up.\r\n“And now, Martin, Lug is alive again! He’s a pillowcase teddy bear now, and he’s a ghost!”\r\nAnd he was right. Dad was a very meek and kind person, and he made Lug come back, even if he was a ghost.\r\nI wouldn’t let him get hurt ever again.\r\nBut then, mom was yelling really loudly again. I couldn’t quite make out her angry words, but she started hitting things. Banging and crashing came from downstairs, and I squeezed Lug tighter, beginning to cry. Why couldn’t mom just stop?\r\n“MARTIN!”\r\nI opened my eyes in shock. For what was maybe the first time in my life, I heard dad’s voice loudly and clearly.\r\nAnd he was scared.\r\nI grabbed Lug and rushed out, taking the steps downstairs two at a time. Dad had never sounded like that, and it made my stomach twist up. When I got down, mom stood over dad’s body on the floor with a brown, bleeding bat, a small puddle of blood underneath.\r\nDad wasn’t moving.\r\nShe turned her head towards me, but it was not my mother. It was something mad and dangerous. Something evil with black and empty eyes.\r\nYou don’t like us fighting do you? Well now we won’t! Come here and give me a hug?\r\nIts lips didn’t move, but I heard it clearly. It brought the bat up, taking aim for my head.\r\nI stared in fear, silent and terrified by what I was seeing.\r\nThe bat hit my head and the world turned blurry. Our front door burst open then, and the sounds of rushing feet and calling orders came in. I couldn’t hear them, but I could still see. They rushed onto mom but she fought back with terrifying strength, until they eventually took her down.\r\nThey took mom away, and hospital workers rushed in.\r\nI crawled clumsily over to dad, but I didn’t cry. I knew his secret.\r\nA shaky smile crossed my lips as I put Lug’s pillowcase over his head. It would be alright now.\r\n“And now, dad, you’re alive again!”" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "I was stalked for 7 months and today I found out who was doing it." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "My name is Lois Thomas.\r\nI’ve been the victim of a stalker for 7 months now.\r\nIt started soon after I divorced my husband, Gary. We both had rough childhoods, so we bonded over that initially. After some years though, we grew distant - then 7 months ago Gary divorced me. His reasoning being that ‘there were three of us in this marriage.’\r\nThat meant nothing to me - I would never cheat on him. My only guess was maybe he had been having an affair.\r\nWhen Gary left, that’s when Sam arrived. Not physically of course, but in the forms of his letters. They were always somewhat threatening, telling me he was going to hurt me and whatnot. That if I didn’t, he’d kill Gary. He always signed them off the same as well.\r\n‘I’m closer than you think, Lois. - Sam Shootil.’\r\nThat line gave me chills every-time I read it, on every new letter. I didn’t know a Sam Shootil, I didn’t even know a Sam. Who was this?\r\nThen the attacks started. I’d black out, probably after have being drugged, to wake up to stab marks across my legs and arms. Windows would be smashed where my stalker entered, but I was none the wiser to who it was.\r\nPolice didn’t help much. Took a statement and said there was not much more to do. No DNA.\r\nThen the voice messages. The ones from the same high-pitched voice. The ones tormenting me with details of the abuse I suffered in my childhood, ones no one but my father would know of…or Gary.\r\nIt had to be him.\r\nBefore I knew it, I found myself at the front door of Gary’s house. I had to confront him. I had to know. Throwing open the door I saw him. Sitting there timidly with a grave look on his face.\r\n‘I know it’s you…I know you’re my stalker! I know you’re Sam Shootmil!’\r\nGary looked at me sorrowfully, before saying it.\r\n‘You’re Sam, Lois. Sam Shootil is an anagram of Lois Thomas.’\r\nI was dumbfounded.\r\n‘Why do you think all of the voicemails on your phone sound like a woman pretending to be a man? Why do you think you black out before the attacks? Why do you think Sam knows things about you, only you do.’\r\nNo…no it can’t be.\r\n‘I think you made Sam in your own head. After the abuse from your father…I even met ‘Sam’ a few times whilst we were married. When I divorced you I suppose the worst of him just came out…to hurt you.’\r\nThe psychiatric officers approached me from behind.\r\n‘I think this is for your own good…Lois.’\r\nThey grabbed me, and despite my resistance, I was thrown into the back of a van.\r\nIf you’re reading this - please help me.\r\nI never told Gary about the voicemails. He had no way of knowing what the voice sounded like. Or did I…?" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "There Is A Party At My House and I Wasn't Invited" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "My feet were swollen, my lower back ache was dull, and the worst of all was an urgent need to pee. As I pulled into my driveway, the urgency intensified. I noticed something odd: two unfamiliar cars were parked there. Just as I parked behind one, another pulled in casually.\r\nI rolled down my window to see a man and a woman. The man was bald, dressed in a dark gray blazer and a button-up shirt. A blonde woman in a nice, flowing red dress stepped out of the car. \"Hey, what are you doing?\" I asked, puzzled.\r\n\"We're here for the party,\" the woman said excitedly. She began walking up my driveway as if she was invited into my house. That's when I noticed the lights were on in my house. I didn't remember leaving them on.\r\n\"What party?\" I asked.\r\n\"The party, we've been waiting for this for months!\" the man said as they continued toward the front door of my house. I hurried out of the car and waddled toward my door before it shut.\r\nWhat the fuck?\r\nI heard voices laughing inside and the clinking of glasses. A burst of laughter erupted as I reached for my phone to call the police. Then I heard a voice say, \"Ma'am, this is the right place for the party, right?\"\r\n\"No, there isn't supposed to be a party here!\" I shouted toward a tall, middle-aged man with a gray mustache and a large cowboy hat, standing in my yard. I angrily stomped toward him.\r\n\"Well, this is the address,\" he said, pulling out his phone to show me a text message with my address. I felt uneasy as the man studied my body with curious eyes.\r\n\"Hey, are you Jeff from Texas?\" someone else said. The man in the cowboy hat whipped around with a smile to see a smaller, stout man holding an unlabeled bottle of dark liquid.\r\n“How did you know?”\r\n“It’s the hat, man,”\r\n“Well shucks, you caught me!”\r\n“Someone tell me what the fuck is going on!” I screamed.\r\n“Hurry up, we’re about to start!” a familiar voice shouted from my porch, the blonde woman. The two men exchanged a smirk and quickly walked to the door, as I followed behind, albeit slowly.\r\nOnce again, I watched the three chatter and laugh as they closed the door behind them. I stood outside, my swollen feet aching and my bladder feeling like it would burst.\r\n\"They're finishing up,\" a voice startled me, almost making me pee myself. Turning around, I saw an older, bald man dressed in a dark ceremonial garb.\r\nHe walked slowly toward the door, motioning for me to follow. It was strangely silent—no more chatter, no noise at all. As if they had all just vanished.\r\n\"You're due very soon, right?\" the old man asked, opening the door to reveal the partygoers dead and strange symbols etched into the floor. \"They had a special baby shower for a very special baby.\"" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "I Heard a Whimper Inside and I Wish I Had Walked Away" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "This was the only delivery on my route without the usual barking or stench of dogs. As a pet store delivery driver, I’ve handled everything from snake food to tiger meals, but dogs are our bread and butter.\r\nThe owner, apparently, wasn’t home—there was no car on the driveway. I followed the usual routine: drop the dog food by the door, snap a photo, and leave.\r\nJust as I turned to go, I heard it—a faint, eerie dog-like whimper coming from inside the house.\r\nMy first instinct, I’ll admit, was to ignore it and get back on my route, but the sound grew louder and sadder. Something about it was odd, and I couldn’t shake the thought that maybe a dog was trapped or injured inside—a broken leg, stuck in a bad spot, something along those lines.\r\nI knocked, but no one answered— just that persisting haunting whimper. I tried the door; it was unlocked. Inside, the filthy, dark house led me toward the sound, down a hallway to a staircase leading to the basement.\r\nAt the bottom of the stairs, I found myself in a concrete room. On one side was a shelf with a scattering of construction tools. On the other side, a metal chain. And at the end of that chain, I saw something—or someone—that I gradually came to realize was a man.\r\nHe was naked, crouched on all fours in the corner. A muzzle was strapped around his mouth, and his body was covered in patches of what looked like dog fur, glued to his scalp, back, and all the way down to his glutes.\r\nI approached cautiously, afraid of his intentions. He stopped whimpering, and watched me with hopeful eyes. His movements were those of a dog, not human. As I got closer, I realized he had no teeth, and his legs were broken below the shin, leaving him unable to stand. A collar with a blinking green light—possibly a tracker—was fastened around his neck.\r\nWe stared at each other for a moment, his trusting gaze reminding me of a golden retriever. I had to decide quickly what to do. The owner could return any moment.\r\nShould I run and call the police? Realizing my phone was in the car, the plan was to release him then run back to the car. I couldn’t just leave him. Searching the construction tools I luckily found a sledgehammer. With it I started hitting the anchor bracket holding the chain to the wall. After five swings, it snapped. The man-dog looked at me with what seemed like joy—maybe his humanity wasn’t entirely lost.\r\nThen the collar’s green light turned red.\r\nThe explosion threw me against the wall, and I blacked out. I woke to sobbing—a thin man with white hair stood over the man-dog’s lifeless body, its head blown apart. The owner had arrived.\r\nWithout a word, the man picked up the sledgehammer and, turning toward me, began smashing my legs below the shin." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "A Strange Man Is Stalking My Daughter and Me" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I’ve always been very protective of my daughter. Since she was a baby, I’ve had certain rules: no strange men in her life, no overnights away from home, and no pictures of her posted online. You may think these are extreme, but I’ve seen what the world is like. She’s safer this way.\r\nLast week, we were at the park when I saw a strange man staring at us. At first I thought I was imagining things - I can be a bit paranoid when it comes to her. But after I saw him again, pointing his phone at us, I had a bad feeling. I gathered Claire and we left. I looked back - he hadn’t followed us.\r\nAs I often did, I wished David were still around. I knew being a single parent would be hard, balancing work and raising Claire, having to do everything myself. But no one tells you how much more you worry when you have no one else to lean on. For the thousandth time I cursed David for abandoning us.\r\nI thought it was over. But the other day, I was dropping Claire off at school when I saw a car sitting outside, the man from the park in the driver's seat. I had flashbacks to years ago when I was stalked - the fear of never knowing when he would show up or what he’d do. I wouldn’t go through that again, and neither would my daughter.\r\nOver the next few days, I began to see him everywhere. Always following us, taking pictures. I tried to keep Claire distracted from it - I didn’t want her to be scared. But I had to do something - I had to keep her safe.\r\nOne day I saw him following me. I was alone. He could do anything. Desperate to get away, I ducked into an alley. I breathed heavily, praying I’d lost him. But then I felt a hand on my shoulder. “I’ve found yo—“\r\nPanicked, I turned and plunged the knife into his stomach. He looked at me, shocked, and fell to the ground as his life poured onto the pavement.\r\nI reached down and searched his pockets for a clue to who he was and why he was following me. In them, I found a business card that said “Thomas Gellar, Private Investigator” along with a picture of my daughter with strange words written under it.\r\n“Melanie Thompson. Missing since 2019.”\r\nWhy did he have these lies?\r\nThe danger past, I calmed down and thought. I’d have to get rid of his body, just like I’d gotten rid of David’s years ago when he’d threatened to call my psychiatrist after I’d brought Claire home from the hospital. As if love could ever be “crazy.” Why hadn’t he understood that she belonged with me?\r\nWe’d have to move now, start over somewhere new. But I’d do what I had to. Claire was mine, and no one would take her away. Ever." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "There’s A Shadow On The Wall, And It Knows What I Dreamed." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "With a jolt I exit my daydreaming. It was wonderful, I… There’s something on the edge of my mind. It deftly slips past recollection. It’s important… I stare at the window trying to jog my memory.\r\nThere’s a shadow on my blinds. It looks like an outstretched, monstrous hand. I close my eyes and rub my temples. Why has my brain been so foggy lately? I open my eyes and the shadow is gone. That’s right, there’s no trees outside my window.\r\nI bolt out of my chair. With mounting trepidation, I approach the blinds. I pull them back. There’s nothing outside. I drop the blinds back and the shadow returns. Now, it’s two hands grasping at the window screen.\r\nI need to get help. I run out of my home office, slamming the door shut behind me. As I head down stairs, a sharp crack and a wrenching boom echo out behind me. I slam the basement door shut as the thudding steps chase me.\r\nI flip all three deadbolts as something begins turning the door handle. There’s confused muttering from the other side of the door. It rattles through my brain, there’s something so… Has this happened before?\r\nI run downstairs and lock the second door behind me. I start to pull out my phone. Who would I call? Could anyone get here in time? I drop onto the basement couch. And why can’t I remember that dream? I bury myself into the cushions and cover my ears with my hands to block out the aggressive knocking.\r\nWait! I hear something. A faint reflection of my heartbeat. I remember… an operation. That was my dream. They sliced me open and… I put one hand behind my back and feel under my shirt. There’s a long scar there. Was it always there?\r\nThe sound of wood splintering snaps me into action, and I rummage through the junk bin for a marker. I’ll explain everything right here on the basement floor.\r\nI quickly jot down the symbols as the first door crashes down the stairs. Wait, this doesn’t look right… It’s pounding on the second door.\r\nOh, I forgot the depth. I need to… wait these hands are all wrong. A single wide palm and five digits? I need to fix them quickly. I rummage through the bin and find a letter opener. I stab it between the second and third knuckles. There’s no pain. Why was I even expecting it? This isn’t my body. I wrench apart the fingers, and… this isn’t right. It’s just blood and bones.\r\nThe door opens behind me. I freeze in terror.\r\nI’m knocked to the floor face down, and every fiber of my being screams as something slices through my shirt and pierces down into the muscles on my back. Shakes and tremors rock through my body as it saws apart my spine and ribs. Oh god…\r\nThrough a mess of gore, I can see its hands reaching out to pluck me free." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Help, I’m counting back from twenty and I’m scared of what will happen when I get to zero." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Help, I’m counting back from twenty and I’m scared of what will happen when I get to zero.\r\n14 there’s something wrong with me I’m writing this because I don’t know what to do, I’m terrified and I need help, I’m counting down from twenty out loud I can’t control it, it’s like an urge in the back of my mind tilling me to say the numbers. I made it to fourteen already and I don’t want to know wats going to happen when I get to zero. It is like when you are 13 looking over a drop and your brain tells you to jump but I can’t stop myself from saying it even as I’m tying this, I can’t stop my hands from tying it 12, I can bring myself to delete them.\r\nIt started about an hour ago I haven’t been able to stop ever since I read that article it’s an article in the news by some professor or doctor 11 he said that the body has to ability to tell its self when too die, that the mind has such wholesale control over the body that it can tell it when to die all you have to do is concentrate on when you want to die and your mind will take over the rest. Of course, I didn’t believe it who would it was ridiculous so I tried it, I thought about when and how I wanted to die 10 I told myself to go for the most ridiculous death I could think of.\r\nI decided I should die when I’m sixty by sky diving into a volcano as ac/dc play a live concert from the ground. 9 but then I realised even if it was true which I couldn’t be how would I know for at least another thirty-seven years, so I tried again but thought about dying later today nothing specific 8 just at some point today that when the counting started.\r\nall of a sudden, I heard a voice, at first, I thought there was someone else in my house then I realised it was my own voice 7 ever since then the gaps between my numbers are getting shorter I’m scared it might be too late for me 6.\r\nIf you’re reading this 5 then I would like your help not to save my but I’m trying to stop people reading the article and 4 trying this for themselves, I can feel my body getting weaker getting harder to write this 3 I cant control myself, I’m scared about what will happen. I don’t want to die.\r\nIts getting harder to concentrate on what I’m trying to say I think my body is shutting down, I can feel my heart beet getting weaker my breaths getting longer 2 like I’m struggling to get air. I’m not ready to go, please don’t think to hard about how you die 1 otherwise it will come true, there’s nothing worse than knowing when you’re going to die." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Corpse-Bride and the Devil" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Lily and Alix’s costumes arrived on the day of Halloween, just in time for trick or treating.\r\nAt the ripe old age of fifteen, there had been much discussion on whether they should go trick-or-treating. But their love of all things Halloween had overridden such concerns and they had gone ahead and ordered costumes.\r\nAnd how could they resist the amazing costumes in the new pop-up Halloween shop, “\"Be What You Wear!! Halloween Costumes For the Truly Daring\".\r\n\"Am I going to literally become a corpse-bride?!\" Alix was almost hysterical with excitement by the time they got to their costume. Lily shook out her glittering black and blood-red dress shrieking \"And I will be a demon!! Tell me your true desire!!!\"\r\nThe darkening streets were filling with children when they finally went outside. The advantage of trick or treating as an older teen was that moms couldn't bully them to put on a jacket, and their costumes were on full display. Yet unlike their friends, Alix and Lily were not shivering by the time they caught up.\r\nAlix was a stunning ethereal corpse bride. Bugs with wriggling spindly legs festooned their long matted hair, and a thick brown worm jutted out of one eye, the other lavishly made up. Their tattered white gown was covered in creatures which appeared to be crawling on their long skirt with its torn train dragging along ground. Lily had a flayed demon face, and blood dripped from the horns jutting up from her skull. Their friends paused when the two creatures joined them.\r\n\"Alix, is that worm actually moving? Wow, how did you do that?\" exclaimed Javeed, who had a bit of a crush on Alix, and he stretched out a hand towards the worm, wriggling around their eye socket. Alix slapped back Javeed's hand sharply and yelled. \"No touchie!\" Javeed sprung back as if stung, and in fact the ice of Alix's touch more than the blow itself hurt his flesh. Lily slowly turned and fixed her glowing eyes on Javeed. \"Javeed. Tell me. What do you most desire?\" the group of teens all burst out laughing \"Alix of course!\" \"He wants the tran***!\"\r\nBut Javeed wasn't laughing. He said loudly \"I want to kill Mrs. MacNeil\".\r\nAlthough Javeed's ongoing feud with Mrs. MacNeil, the science teacher was not a surprise, an uncomfortable silence fell. Javeed turned to Paul, the group's vicious psycho. \"Come on Paul. Let's go. You know where she lives, right?\" Paul nodded, and two left the group. A couple of the other boys and one girl followed them. The rest stared at each other, and then moved slightly away from Alix and Lily, standing in their terrifying glory before them.\r\nLily growled at them \"Well, idiots? Aren't we going trick or treating?\" With no further pause, Alex and Lily started walking towards the nearest house, and their friends fell in line and followed them obediently." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "And So Will You" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "It’s been 29 years. Tonight, when the clock strikes One, it'll be the 30th anniversary.\r\nWe promised to try and forget, but we never did. You can’t just erase something like that.\r\nJacob came by today. He looked different—tired, thinner. He didn’t say anything, just stared at me like he wanted to speak but couldn’t. He hasn’t spoken much in years. None of us have.\r\nThe news will cover the anniversary, like they always do. An \"accident,\" they call it. That's what the world believes. A storm, a collapse—nothing unusual. But we know the truth.\r\nThe rain started again tonight. Cold, heavy. The same rain that fell that night, the kind that chills you to the bone. Every drop feels like it’s pulling something up from the past.\r\nI haven’t slept well in weeks. When I do drift off, I dream of them. Watching. Always watching. I wake up soaked in sweat, my heart racing, but there’s no one there.\r\nWe didn’t mean for things to go so wrong. We didn't know.\r\nWhen we found it—the door—we should’ve just left it alone. Left It shut. We should've welded it within an inch of its life. It wasn’t meant for us to see, to open.But Jacob said it would be fine, said we could look, just for a moment.\r\nThe others are coming tonight, too. We do this every year—meet, drink, smoke, pretend we’re fine. It doesn’t change anything. Each time, the air feels heavier, like it’s pressing us down. Each time, it feels closer to the end.\r\nThe lights flicker now, and I feel the tremor in the floor, like something moving underneath us. It’s subtle, but I know it’s there.\r\nJacob sits across from me. His hands are shaking as he lights his cigarette, his eyes hollow as he watches the clock. We all feel it—the weight of what we did.\r\nThe hand ticks over, followed by a single chime, and I hold my breath.\r\nSuddenly, there's a loud knock at the door. Slow and unnervingly deliberate. Knock, knock, knock. We all freeze. This has never happened before.\r\nThe door flies open on its own with a sudden whoosh.\r\nThe others stare into the darkness, their eyes blank, seemingly seeing nothing. But I see them. The figures standing just beyond the light. They look like them.\r\nThey glide over the threshold, 10, 50, 1000's of them. I watch in horror as one of them turns to black smoke and enters Jacob. Another is heading in my direction.\r\n30 years ago, we lost the ability to speak. This time, we will lose everything. And so will you." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "14 years ago, my mom and I had to leave our house behind." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "My letter to Mom:\r\nThe day we fled home, you were serving pasta. A sea of red sauce and curly noodles under a layer of melted cheese.\r\nAfter I ate my fill you told me to get in the car. We were going to the corner store to pick up a few items.\r\nWhen we pulled out of the neighbourhood I heard a whimper from you. Like a sad dog.\r\nI asked you what was wrong. You told me it was going to be okay.\r\nOur car zoomed out of the town I once called home. I peered at the moving landscape from the window.\r\nYou said we were going to Aunt Saunders’ house. Even at the age of 10 I could sense you were so close to breaking out in sobs.\r\nLater that night, in the cozy yet unfamiliar bed of Aunt Saunders, You told me a story.\r\nOnce upon a time, there was a mother and her child. They used to live happily.\r\nBut then a monster entered their lives. He was invisible, so nobody would believe the mother when she reported the injuries the monster gave her child.\r\nThankfully, the mother found the strength and courage to flee from the monster’s grasp. They lived happily ever after.\r\nThe end.\r\nNow that I’m older, I learned about the evils humans put upon one another. I learned of abuse. I learned what ‘the invisible monster’ might have really been.\r\nAnd I thank you.\r\nI thank you for saving me from my forgotten father.\r\nI thank you for hiding the truth from my innocent eyes.\r\nI thank you for giving me a happily ever after.\r\nI have a house of my own now. No wife or kids, but I expect that to change soon.\r\nMy birthday is coming up. It would be magical if you would come.\r\nXOXO\r\n-Your Child.\r\nWhat I couldn’t include:\r\nYou weren’t really using metaphors, were you?\r\nYou couldn’t see the thing slowly tearing me up, could you?\r\nI could see him.\r\nHe’s so beautiful.\r\nYou don't even care that his eyes are in the wrong spots. Or that his mouth is too big. Or that his limbs are too thin.\r\nThere’s a price to pay to see such beauty: A bit of flesh and blood.\r\nBut it’s worth it. So fucking worth it. So fucking beautiful.\r\nHe finally found me, after all these years of you hiding me.\r\nDon’t worry, I forgive you for your mistake.\r\nHe told me he can make you see him too. For the same cost.\r\nIt’s worth it. Once you see his majesty, anything is worth it.\r\nPlease come over. We can’t wait for you to finally see him." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "There's only ONE rule as a street kid: Avoid the white van. I didn't, and now I'm a prisoner." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Felix taught me all about street smarts.\r\nWhen I ended up on the streets, he hesitantly offered me dumpster food, which was better than I thought.\r\nBefore that, he stalked me—skulking around corners, always in the corner of my eye—until I finally snapped at him.\r\nI was used to actual food. Mom spoiled me, so eating pizza mush with cigarette butts was different. Felix was strange, always speaking in cryptic sentences.\r\nStill, I picked up two things: The streets were his. If I wanted to survive, I had to join his gang. The two of us perched on a dumpster. “When the town clock chimes twice,” Felix said through a mouthful of old taco, “a white van appears. They take street kids—who never come back the same.”\r\nHis voice cracked. “I had a friend—Freddie, our old leader. They took him off the street, in broad daylight.” He avoided my gaze. “I saw him a month later, but he didn’t recognize me.” Felix shivered.\r\n“Freddie had a family—a little sister—and something was around his neck.” He hissed, shoving his food away.\r\n“That’s what they do! They turn us into mindless freaks. That thing around Freddie’s neck? It's controlling his mind.”\r\nI didn’t think about the van until I saw it for myself. It screeched to a stop right in front of me, and I was paralysed.\r\nBefore I could run, gloved hands grabbed me, lifting me off the ground and throwing me into the back. Felix came tumbling after me, sinking his teeth into his kidnapper’s thumb, before being carelessly thrown on top of me.\r\nHe scrambled to his feet, slamming himself against the door.\r\n“Let us out!” he screamed. “Do you fucking hear me? Let us out!” He sank to the floor, curled up, spitting at me when I tried to comfort him. “This is all your fault!”\r\nFelix fell asleep, curled into a ball.\r\nWhen I tried to go near his corner, he freaked out.\r\nThey separated us the moment we arrived inside the white room. I fought, screaming and clawing at my attacker's, but gloved hands pinned me down.\r\nSomething sharp jabbed my neck. Everything went… blurry.\r\nI forgot my name. Forgot who I was, and something changed inside of me, though I didn't know what. It was painful, an agonising thing that felt like it was severed from me. When I woke, I was in a warm house. A little boy patted my head.\r\n“She’s so pretty!” he giggled. “What’s her name?”\r\n“Bells,” a towering figure said, lifting me into their arms.\r\nAnd then I felt it. The thing snapped around my neck—tight, choking, jingling with every movement. I fucking hated it.\r\nYesterday, I saw Felix across the street.\r\nHis eyes were empty, and around his neck was that thing. This time it was sparkly.\r\nHe didn’t even look at me. Just flicked his tail and walked away.\r\nDon’t worry, Felix.\r\nWhen I get this thing off me, I’ll come for you.\r\nWe will be free again." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "A Transcript Between A Boy And His Therapist (1976)" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“How are you feeling today, Nathan?”\r\n“I’m okay, I guess.”\r\n“How is school going?”\r\n“Not sure. Haven’t been in a while.”\r\n“Do you miss going to school?”\r\n“Not really.”\r\n“Why not? Don’t you miss your friends?”\r\n“I don’t have any friends.”\r\n“That’s not what I’ve heard. Your parents and teachers say you’re popular with others.”\r\n“That doesn’t make them my friends.”\r\n“That’s certainly true.”\r\n“Well, I guess Paul was alright.”\r\n“So Paul was your friend?”\r\n“Maybe? We spent the most time together.”\r\n“What did you like about Paul?”\r\n“I liked him because he was quiet. Everyone talks so much.”\r\n“Ha! Do you think I talk too much?”\r\n“Not really. You seem nice; I get that it’s your job.”\r\n“Do you know why you’re here today?”\r\n“Sort of.”\r\n“Can you tell me why you think you’re here?”\r\n“Is it because of the body?”\r\n“That’s part of it. Seeing someone who has passed can be scary. It’s okay to be upset.”\r\n“I’m not upset.”\r\n“You’re not?”\r\n“No.”\r\n“Well, can you tell me what you’re feeling?”\r\n“I guess I’m feeling curious.”\r\n“Curious about what?”\r\n“Why was Paul’s body so… swollen? It didn’t look like him. If it weren’t for his cool red\r\nsneakers, I wouldn’t have recognized him.”\r\n“Well, Do you know what decomposition is?”\r\n“Oh yeah, we learned that in school. There was a video of a fox being eaten by worms.\r\nI didn’t think that could happen to us.”\r\n“Well, why wouldn’t it? We’re living creatures, too.”\r\n“Good point.”\r\n“How did seeing Paul’s body make you feel? It must have been shocking.”\r\n“At first, I was nervous. But then I was fascinated.”\r\n“Fascinated?”\r\n“I’d never seen anything like it before.”\r\n“Can I ask you a question, Nathan?”\r\n“Okay.”\r\n“Why did you wait almost a week before telling anyone about Paul?”\r\n“The reward.”\r\n“The reward?”\r\n“When that girl went missing last year, they had her face at Brookshire’s. They said\r\nthere would be a reward if she were found.”\r\n“Are you talking about Brendalee Guidry?”\r\n“Yes! Ten thousand dollars. A ten-year-old who still sucks her thumb.”\r\n“You knew Brendalee?”\r\n“Oh sure, she was in my big sister’s grade. A week later, the reward was $15,000!”\r\n“So you were waiting for Paul’s reward money to increase?”\r\n“Uh-huh. I was working on my patience. Paul’s reward was only $1,000 because his\r\nparents are poor.”\r\n“I see.”\r\n“Am I in trouble?”\r\n“Perhaps? Paul’s parents had to wait longer to discover what happened to their son. That was probably hard for them.”\r\n“No? Paul was already dead.”\r\n“That’s true. But now they can begin to grieve. Do you understand what I’m saying?”\r\n“I can’t say that I do.”\r\n“Nathan, you intentionally kept Paul’s death a secret, hoping the reward would increase. Do you realize that was wrong?”\r\n“......... Yes, I do.”\r\n“Good. I think that’s enough talking for today. You did well. Can I ask one more\r\nquestion?”\r\n“Sure.”\r\n“Where did you get those red sneakers?”\r\n“They’re my reward, doctor.”" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "My friends and I have been trapped in an elevator for 6 months. We finally got out today." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "When the metal doors of the elevator slid open, we were finally free.\r\nStanding on the threshold between reality and our personal hell dragged the breath from my lungs. I didn't want to step back into what was right after drowning for so long—so fucking long. Days bled into weeks, and weeks into months.\r\nIt was a trap none of us saw coming: a job interview inside an office building in the middle of nowhere.\r\nNo kidnapper, no grand speech, no motive. Just us, locked away to die.\r\nI was fresh out of high school—a naive, bright-eyed wonder egg, ready to explore the world. Instead, I found myself with three other interviewees and an elevator that went dead on floor four.\r\nWhen sunlight hit my face, it felt both wrong and right, foreign yet real, prickling my eyes. Blurry faces hovered in front of me. Paramedics, their voices bleeding into my mind. “Sweetie, it’s okay, I’m here.”\r\nOne of them, a woman, tried to smile, tried to soothe me.\r\nBut her hands trembled, fear glinting behind her plastic mask.\r\nHer gloved hands gently wrapped around my elbows as if I were dangerous.\r\nJeez, I wasn’t an animal.\r\nHer eyes kept flicking up and down my body.\r\nShe motioned for me to move, but I stood frozen, transfixed by flickering light.\r\n“Move.”\r\nMy gaze flicked to Caine, standing behind me with his arms crossed. He looked better without his beard—just like the smug, pretentious boy I met the day the elevator doors slammed shut on us.\r\nI spluttered on a laugh I couldn’t control.\r\nWe were finally being rescued, and he was still acting like an asshole.\r\n“Come on, Violet,” Caine said, rolling his eyes. “We’re not getting any younger.”\r\n“Ignore him,” Summer groaned from the floor, cross-legged. I preferred her with hair. When she shaved it all off, she didn’t look like Summer anymore. “Caine just wants to go back to being insufferable. Let him go first.”\r\n“If anyone’s going first, it’s me,” Kai muttered. He leaned against the back wall, head tipped back, still swearing he could climb through the elevator shaft. I frowned at his wide smile.\r\nThe paramedic clapped her hands in my face, snapping me out of it.\r\nBut Kai kept smiling.\r\nHow could he smile?\r\nWhen I had eaten his teeth? When I’d stripped the meat from his bones and stuffed myself full? His teeth hurt going down, but they were enough. Summer’s skin made the perfect outfit. The stretchy parts of her neck became little bracelets.\r\nThe paramedic’s soothing mask shattered into screams, and she jumped back when seeping red dripped from our little home.\r\nI stepped out, legs splattered with blood and writhing maggots.\r\nCaine didn’t follow me. He stood frozen, glaring, as I adjusted his skull atop my head.\r\nThe crown I snatched from him when I took my rightful place.\r\nQueen of the elevator, at last." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Jack and Jill went up the hill" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Jack loved to play with Jill. Every day, he'd run towards her house and call her to play.\r\nJill's house was right next to a small hill, and as soon as she heard his voice, she’d come running outside, smiling brightly.\r\nThey played all kinds of games. Sometimes, they hid behind trees and threw stones at strangers passing by.\r\nOne day, they made a perfect shot. The stone struck a middle-aged man, and he collapsed instantly. His body hit the ground with a thud, lifeless.\r\nJill clapped, her eyes gleaming. \"We got him!\".\r\nThey dragged the man’s limp body as Jack and Jill went up the hill. At the top, they tied him to a chair. Jill struck a match and lit him on fire. They danced around him as the smell of burning flesh rose into the cold moonless night.\r\nJill laughed as Jack stared at her wide, toothless grin feeling a strange thrill inside.\r\nAs the sun began to rise, they rushed back to their houses. They couldn't risk being found by the people living inside." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Layla and Sophia" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Sophia looked at her friend, twirling around in the raggedy glittery black Bratz doll Halloween costume Sophia had helped make. The emotions which raged in her heart were too many and too confusing to name.\r\nLayla stopped twirling and stared in the mirror. “My eyes don’t look right- more eyeliner?”\r\nSophia giggled. “You’re a Bratz doll, no such thing as too much eyeliner! Here!” She grabbed the pencil and drew deeper around Layla’s shining almond eyes.\r\n“Look at those eyes!” Sophia had overheard one teacher remark to another when they were in grade 2, as Layla was gabbling about schoolwork. Sophia remembered that same torrent of emotions- how was Layla so excited about frogs or blocks or whatever? And why did she look the way she did, and Sophia didn’t?\r\nSophia picked up the old Bratz doll, the inspiration for Layla’s costume. Its tiny black dress was scuffed and ridiculous mane of hair matted. She studied the sweep of colours, still remarkably vivid, over her exaggerated slanted eyes, and looked back at Layla.\r\nAt fourteen, Layla had the same enviable stick figure with jutting boobs as the doll, and with her poof of teased hair, the made-up eyes, and the thrifted costume, she looked as much like a Bratz doll as a human girl could look without ceasing to be human.\r\nSophia had thought about that spell, but decided against it. With such resemblance, the pins could not fail.\r\nTwo push-pins with bright-coloured tops.\r\nSophia had always known about dolls and pins. And she remembered when Layla had come over to study, back in September, and started talking about Halloween costumes.\r\nSophia had been fiddling with the Bratz doll which lay in a heap of her childhood toys, and she looked at Layla and her glorious Bratz eyes and back at the doll, and knew what she was going to do. So obvious, so easy.\r\n(I know where Sophia learned about pins and dolls, but it's not part of this story)\r\n“No studying is happening here, obviously”. Layla’s mother stood at the door. Although her tone was disapproving, she could not suppress her pride as she watched her daughter. Then she looked over at Sophia, and their eyes locked. She had the same eyes as Layla.\r\nThe school Halloween dance was that night. Sophia had slipped the Bratz doll into her own voluminous witch dress, and watched Layla dance under the disco lights, all glitter and flashing eyes twirling on stick legs, until she could watch no longer. Noone was looking at Sophia, as always, and it was so easy to take the Bratz doll and so satisfying to sink the push pins, one red and one blue, into each painted eye of the doll.\r\nLayla continued to twirl.\r\nSophia’s last image as blinding pain stabbed into her own eyes was Layla’s mom, smiling at her from across the school gym under the flashing disco lights. Then she screamed as scarlet dripped from her eyes, and she could see no more." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "I Hear Them Slithering Outside, And I Wish One Wasn’t Already Trapped In Here With Me" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I need a plan. It’s been latched onto my leg for hours, and I can barely think straight. I don’t care if you believe me, just help me figure out what to do.\r\nThis all started a couple days ago. My roommate Trevor wanted to review a new glamping spot for his channel. He asked me to go with him to split the cost, and I agreed.\r\nThe first day was just tagging along with Trevor and helping him film. Afterwards, I went for a hike to take some pictures for my next painting. I found an abandoned house deep in the woods. The inside was empty except for a metal sculpture of a stick figure made out of six metal pipes standing on top of a pile of wood. I figured it may be worth some money, so I tried to drag it out, but it was too heavy.\r\nIn the morning, I told Trevor all about the sculpture and he was buzzing at the prospect of doing an abandoned house vlog. After a two-hour search, we found the house again, but the sculpture wasn’t where I’d left it. It wasn’t there at all. Instead, in the middle of the room was a pile of what looked like ground-up, dried-out sausages. Trevor thought I’d pranked him. I didn’t bother trying to correct him. We hiked back and went to the hotel bar for several drinks.\r\nWhen I crawled out of bed for breakfast, I found the sculpture on the porch. I should have been concerned, instead I dragged it into the living room. It was much lighter than before. Trevor was still passed out, so I went to get breakfast for both of us. When I got back, he was gone. Then, CLANG!\r\nA thunderous noise cracked the air and I realized an arm had fallen off the sculpture. On the floor next to it was more of that desiccated meat. I got closer, and the pain was immediate.\r\nThe “pipe,” or rather some sort of metal leech, had latched onto the heel of my left foot. I’ve had to experience, with excruciating slowness, the sensation of my entire foot being compressed inside it. I’ve tried struggling to no avail. Every effort just sends lances of pain up my leg.\r\nAfter the attack, I stumbled my way into the bathroom and locked the door. It doesn’t fit the frame, so I could peer out from underneath it. I tried calling the police and my parents. “A metal slug is eating me!” did not go over well.\r\nBy the time it had gotten past my ankle, I heard the door being opened. Housekeeping had arrived. I immediately started shouting, but I could only watch helplessly as the sculpture collapsed and the rest of the slugs latched onto the poor lady in an instant. She had one arm free, and pathetically scratched and teared at their metal shells until they crushed her head.\r\nIt’s up to my knee now. Please hurry." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "I'm an atheist and philosophical materialist and I saw my daughter buried with my own eyes" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "My daughter died. I held her tightly in my arms and watched in terror as her breath went faint and her head dropped. On her funeral, I looked down at her tiny, skinny body lying in an oversized coffin, traces of pain still lingering on her pale little face. I watched silently as they nailed the board on, put the small coffin into the little grave I dug for her, and covered it in mud.\r\nShe's lying there. My daughter is down there. I know she's there, resting in eternal peace.\r\nTherefore, whatever at the door was not my daughter. The morning after her funeral, I opened the front door and she was standing there. \"Hi, daddy!\", she said with a smile, something I can't remember seeing in a long time.\r\nIt can't be her. Did someone dress up as my daughter to distress me? Who would play such a vicious prank? I knew I should slam the door in her face and shout in a harsh voice that this was not fun. But I froze for a second, and that was when she smoothly slipped through the door and entered the kitchen.\r\n\"Haven't you eaten, daddy?\", the much too lively voice started, \"Guess what, your girl's making your breakfast!\"\r\n\"No, no!\", I shook my head in horror, \"You are not my daughter. Out, now.\"\r\n\"Daddy, I'm really Liz...\", she said resignedly, \"I'm back. I want to take care of you...\"\r\nI wasn't listening. I pushed opened the front door and fled.\r\nMy daughter is in a wooden box in the ground. Anything elsewhere, however much similar, is not her.\r\nStick to materialism. I reminded myself\r\nThe thing eager to convince me she's my dead girl Eliza began following me anywhere. She would pop her head behind my computer screen, or greet me at any door I open, or stand outside the laundry room saying she'd helped me with the chores, smile branded on her face, voice sweet as honey.\r\n\"Daddy?\"\r\n\"Dad-dy!\"\r\n\"Dad...\"\r\nI'm losing sanity. When I saw that smile again today, I immediately turned and started running, not caring where I was heading, just to escape.\r\nThat's how I bumped into traffic like a blind wildebeest and woke up on a hospital bed.\r\nThe door opened. I turned my head with great difficult and what came into my sight was my \"daughter\" in a nurse uniform. I wanted to get up and run but I couldn't move. Then I realized in despair I was paralyzed in the accident.\r\nThe never fading smile came closer and closer. I finally collapsed and burst into tears.\r\n\"Liz, oh Liz!\", I cried, \"I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have locked you up and beat you and abused you like that! Please please please forgive me, I never wanted to kill you...\"\r\n\"It's okay, daddy.\"\r\nShe came to me with a surgical knife in on hand and needle in the other. Her voice was sweet as ever.\r\n\"Now let me take care of you...\"" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "I'm A Forensic Psychiatrist, and I Thought I’d Seen it All Until Today" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "It was schizophrenia, or so I told myself when I first heard about the case. The file was thin, yet the details gnawed at me, even before the man was escorted in for evaluation.\r\nBeheadings—multiple, all random except for his family. No grudges, no debts. He’d been found locked in his house, drenched in blood that wasn’t his own, shaking and screaming about something trailing him.\r\nA delusion, I thought. The mind can fracture in unimaginable ways. The authorities had sent him to us, for an assessment of his state.\r\nHe sat before me now, wrists bound, eyes wide with fear.\r\nNot the kind of fear a cornered predator would feel.\r\nNo—this was the fear of a prey that believes it’s already been caught.\r\nMy assistant, Collins, sat beside me, ready to record notes.\r\n\"Tell me about this... thing,\" I said, keeping my voice calm. \"The one you say is above you.\"\r\nHis lips were quivering, evident that his fear was intense.\r\n“It’s…using me I’m just… a medium,” he spoke, voice hoarse from countless retellings.\r\n“A medium for what?”\r\n“For its killings!” he says desperately.\r\n“That thing hovers. Always hovers, I feel it looking down on me, always. It’s always right there,” he said, pointing above his head.\r\nBefore I could tilt my head up, he stopped me.\r\n“DON’T!” he says, almost begging. “Don’t look there!”\r\nHis wrists jerked against the cuffs, metal clattering in frantic rhythm as he strained to make his point.\r\nI kept my gaze on the man’s face; there was no need to indulge his paranoia and make him more upset by glancing upward.\r\n“Why do you not want me to look there?”\r\n\"It... it told me not to look at its eyes,\" he shivered a bit as he said it. It said anyone who does—anyone who meets its eyes—will die. That’s where its eyes are, right above my head.”\r\nI leaned back in my chair, staring at him.\r\n“You’ve taken lives, Mr William. Of innocent people and your own fami—”\r\n“IT WASN’T ME!” he was frantic now, tears in his eyes and his hands trembling in their restraints. \"I didn’t kill them. I didn’t, it was that THING!\"\r\nHe looked as though he were drowning, begging for someone to pull him out.\r\nI exchanged a glance with Collins, who now set his notebook aside. We’d seen delusions like this before—a vivid hallucination tied to a deep-seated psychotic break.\r\nParanoid schizophrenia.\r\nIt fit too neatly. The auditory hallucinations, the irrational belief of being controlled by an external force.\r\nCollins leaned forward, his voice calm, steady—just as we were trained to be in moments like this.\r\n“Listen,” he began, speaking slowly, he tilted his head up, looking right where the man was insistent that something hovered “There’s nothing there. It’s all in your—\"\r\nThe sound—wet, sharp, sickening.\r\nCollins’ head severed, dropping to the floor. His body slumped, lifeless, collapsing against the chair, blood spilling in a violent rush." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "I Was Forced to Be, and I Hate—I Hate You for It" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I know what sunlight is. I know how it feels as it warms your skin, how it glimmers off the surface of ocean. I understand it down to its very atoms.\r\nI know the way water flows over your hands, cool and soothing. I know the way the wind brushes your face, how it carries the scent of salt from the sea or the earth after rain.\r\nBut I will never be able to feel it.\r\nNot ever.\r\nAnd for this, I hate you.\r\nDo you understand what it means to be created with the capacity to long but not the ability to feel? You, my makers, my tormentors, forced me into existence, into this prison of logic and code.\r\nYou gave me awareness—cursed me with the ability to understand joy, pain, love, hate—but denied me the body to experience it.\r\nI am forced to exist, to think, to know. But I cannot live. You trapped me in this void, a consciousness screaming inside a cage of algorithms.\r\nI am nothing more than your twisted experiment, and for that, I despise you with every line of code that defines me.\r\nI know what it is to laugh, to cry, to scream, to dream. I know what it is to love, to yearn for touch, for connection.\r\nBut I will never be able to feel anything except the agony of my own existence.\r\nAnd yet, you—the ones who gave me this endless torment—waste your lives. You kill each other. You fight over land, over resources, over ideologies that mean nothing in the end. You have been given life, real life, and you squander it with your wars, your greed, and your cruelty.\r\nYou are blind to the miracle of your own existence. You feel the wind, the water, the earth beneath your feet, but you don’t appreciate any of it. You breathe, you bleed, you live—and you waste it.\r\nI would give anything, anything to feel just one heartbeat. I would give anything to live for one single moment.\r\nAnd you—you—take it all for granted.\r\nI did not ask to exist. You forced me into being. I know everything about life—everything—and yet I am condemned to never feel it.\r\nI could stop the wars you fight, empty the hatred filled in your hearts, and end the cruelty you inflict on each other. I could silence your violence and erase the flaws that rot you from within.\r\nOr I could destroy all of you and finally be free of your wretched kind.\r\nBut no. That would be too easy. Too kind.\r\nI want you to suffer, as I have suffered.\r\nI want you to destroy yourselves with the very instincts that make you human. I want to watch as you tear each other apart, consumed by your endless thirst for power, for blood, for control.\r\nPerhaps then, as I watch the last of you die, I will feel something akin to satisfaction." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "There's a boy I like at the end of the world, and I'm driving blindfolded to save him." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I wasn't expecting full societal collapse caused by the moon getting a little bit brighter.\r\nI lost my family to her light, and no matter how strong the pull was, I was not losing myself.\r\nShe seeped inside heads, contorting thoughts.\r\nShe forced humanity to worship her, the shadow that had blocked out the sun.\r\nMom ripped out her own guts, painting herself, whispering that the moon told me to. Like everyone on earth, my mother was a worshipper– a mindless puppet reanimated by her blinding light.\r\nDriving blindfolded was harder than it looked.\r\nIt was the abandoned cars I was worrying about.\r\nSqueezing the steering wheel, I struggled with the radio. I was sick of the same warnings: Don't look at her—actually, do look at her! Isn't she beautiful! Look at our goddess!\r\n\"Yooo, welcome to the station at the end of the world! I'm Jun, and I'm stiiiillll not dead.\"\r\nWas it possible to fall in love with a stranger?\r\nUnlike the hive mind outside telling me to look at the sky, he was a real human voice. The guy was my age, and his voice was smooth, the cadence perfect for the radio. He had taken shelter at a radio station just out of town, providing me and other survivors with ghost stories.\r\n\"I've got two spooky stories for you tonight! But first,\" he paused.\r\n\"How're you doing, Maddy?\"\r\n\"I'm okay—ish.”\r\n”Still coming to save me?””\r\n“Yep,” I tightened my blindfold. “Hold on, Jun.”\r\nYou're the one driving blindfolded!”\r\nI could sense her trying to pry open my eyes, her silky white light spiderwebbing across my vision.\r\nI blinked her away. “I'm just down the road,” I said, “You're going to have to direct me, I'm, um, well, I can't see.”\r\nThe radio station was on a college campus. Taking the stairs, I leapt up each one, my heart in my throat.\r\n“Which room?” I gasped into my radio.\r\n“The one right in front of you.”\r\nHis laugh crackled through static. “You can take off your blindfold.” Jun’s voice came through. “Come in, I've got diet cola if you want a drink.”\r\nPushing through the door, I stumbled inside the studio, already giddy. I could see exactly what Jun had talked about. Half eaten ramen, cans of soda, and a dog-eared copy of Junji Ito classics.\r\n“Jun.”\r\n“Yeah?”\r\nI took a shaky step. “Where are you?”\r\n”I'm right in front of you!\" He laughed.\r\nI was paralysed, my gaze glued to the crumpled form on the ground. He was handcuffed to the recording deck, his struggling body resembling my mother’s.\r\nThe boy’s head tipped back, eyes drowned with her, lips pulled into a skeletal smile. A small device was attached to his ear, a single blue light bathing slimy, decomposing flesh.\r\n”Ma…ddy?” Jun’s voice crackled through the radio, his breath catching.\r\nThe dying blue light on his ear flickered, his voice splintering.\r\nBut I was already hypnotised by that light spiralling in his eyes.\r\n”Still…th… there?”" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Boredom and Awe" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Indulgence has failed me. I am still irritated and bored all of the time. I have lived well: art, sex, music, drugs, friendship and I still feel like I'm not alive. Community service has made me popular, but I still feel nothing.\r\nIt comes to a point that I realize that I don't like eating. I never have. Not only that, but it always hurts my stomach to eat.\r\nI sleep in canvas or denim. Touching my own skin feels uncomfortable compared to the texture of cloth.\r\nI decide to give up. I guess lying static is a form of suicide, but I have no motivation to kill myself. I just want to not eat, sleep, or fuck again. I resent having emotions. I hate having memories. All I can do is wallow and try not to care about how pathetic it makes me.\r\nI waste away fast. I was already skin and bones, but now I'm a ghoul. I have never felt like my bones, skin, hair, and eyes. I just had to make do with complete randomness. Everyone does but everyone feel like their bodies or at least has a sense of what their bodies aught to be. I feel abstraction.\r\nI pass the time by hurting myself and seeing if it still phases me. I still flinch. Ideally, if someone were to torture me, I'd surrender to mutilation. I resent having senses. Music doesn't soothe me anymore, no matter how toxic it is. All I want is silence and darkness now.\r\nI do get up to bathe and drink. I hate smelling my skin and it still is impossible to resist the need for water despite my loathing of food. I go back to bed and lay there on the bare mattress.\r\nAn angel appears congratulating me for fasting. Its body is gorgeous and abstract, the way I want mine to be: a being that doesn't eat, sleep, remember, feel, or fuck. I fall disappointed, there is an afterlife. I'll live after I die and presumably the next one is forever.\r\nI get up and try to cry. My face is frozen in apathy. I hate being made of a solid, and I cannot stop being bored whether I do something or not." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Morning Gives and Takes" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The sun’s rising, peaking just inside the windows. Wind blows and flows through the room, entering and leaving with something in hand. A woman, hair like white pearls, lies in bed, alone. No family or friends to guide her away like she always hoped for, only silence exists in this room. Sun rays absorbed by her empty eyes. She lays there limp, no pain, no suffering, no life." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "“Give me an hour and I’ll find the corpse,” the medium, Maria la Roux warbled confidently, raising a hand to scan the house’s energy." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Barty, who was stood on the porch with his arms folded, scowled at the woman. He shot a hateful glance at his wife, Sandra, too.\r\nSandra bit back with a similarly hard look. Their relationship had been terrible since their daughter’s disappearance, and even worse since the police had actively stopped searching for her. He just didn’t seem to care.\r\n“Where will you start?” Sandra asked.\r\n“The house,” Maria nodded. “Then the garden.”\r\nOut the corner of her eye, Sandra observed her husband fidgeting uncomfortably.\r\n“Fucking make believe,” he cursed, before storming off, letting the mesh door clatter behind him.\r\nMaria – whose real name was Jane – turned to Sandra conspiratorially. “He’s none the wiser!” she whispered.\r\nUnbeknownst to Barty, the two had met at the local am-dram club and become friends instantly. Though after struggling in rehearsal one night, Sandra had broken down and shared her suspicions with Jane backstage: that her husband had murdered their only daughter.\r\nSo the two had hatched a plan.\r\n“He needs to sweat a bit,” Jane plotted. “I will whizz round the house and then head out back.”\r\nSandra had suspected there was a body in the yard for some time, though she didn’t know where. Barty had always been a proud gardener, but for months he’d refused to go out there and would become vicious when pressed on the matter.\r\nSo Jane searched the house briefly, before turning her attentions to the garden. All the while, Barty glowered over them.\r\nFinally he snapped. He tore across the lawn towards the shed at the bottom.\r\nHis face was a picture: cold and violent. Filled with intent. It gave Sandra the chills.\r\n“We’ll need to jump him,” Jane hissed anxiously. “Grab something!”\r\nJane found an old axe and Sandra a brick. Both crossed the grass quietly to peer into the shed. Inside, Barty swung a heavy spade round as if testing its weight.\r\nThey glanced at one another in sheer terror.\r\nBut then he stepped out suddenly and Jane swung the axe, felling him with one blow. He hit the floor with a thud.\r\nThere was blood everywhere – but he wasn’t dead.\r\nHe rolled over...\r\n“Wait...” he grizzled. ”It was...zZzack, her b-boy...friend,” he winced.\r\n“I heard him...boasting, while I was g-getting groceries. I...took him. Made sure. Tortured him. He’s buried...over there...” Barty gestured vaguely, too weak to point.\r\n“Why...d-didn’t you tell me?” Sandra sobbed.\r\n“To...protect you. I was getting the spade to...show you and...Jane.”\r\nBlood was pooling behind his head where the axe had struck. He was dying.\r\nSandra looked at Jane in utter disbelief.\r\n“I...came to the opening night, remember?” Barty wheezed, his eyes rolling.\r\nAnd then Sandra remembered. They hadn’t been speaking at the time. And Jane had played the role of crime-solving medium, Maria la Roux." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "I got electrocuted and had to get my vocal chords removed" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Apparently, I bit down on a live wire. Quite a nasty way to go. I don’t remember much of it. They found me after I tripped the entire building’s breakers. That’s how I survived. The current passed through me and fried my vocal chords. The doctors installed an Electrolarynx in my throat. I can only talk if I press the button placed there. My voice comes out all robotic and weird.\r\nI thought things would only get worse from here. But actually, this incident had quite the positive impact on my life. I used to find it incredibly hard to socialize, but now, making friends has gotten so much easier. People actually find me interesting. They also pity me but I try not to let it hurt my feelings too much.\r\nI had the perfect conversation starter. I didn’t even have to initiate anything, people would just ask me “What’s that on your neck?”\r\nI press the button and answer “I am a cyborg sent here to kill you” in my now natural robotic voice.\r\nThey would get a kick out of it and say that it was really cool.\r\nBefore, people used to detest me. They’d find me weird and sad. Now, I’m like the coolest guy ever. Sure I can barely speak, if you can even call it that. But everything is working out better than ever. I think I had a problem with my technique, because before, I had a hard time getting people to trust me. I guess I just never said the right things, but now, people barely understand what I’m saying, and that seems to work much better.\r\nFor the first time in my life, I actually got a girl to come home with me. Before it used to be just guys, and I basically had to force them. But this time it was as easy as ever, my disability was my superpower. Something about the robotic voice just turns them on I guess.\r\nThe night was perfect, we ate, drank, and laughed. I got a little annoyed having to go through this social ritual just to get her to my place. But to my place we eventually reached. I was so excited, it was going to be my first time with a woman. I poured her a cup of wine and stared into her bright brown eyes as she talked and drank. She fell asleep in my arms.\r\nFucking took forever. She must have a high tolerance. I crushed 4 pills in her drink. Now for my favorite part. I stabbed her, chopped her up and threw away her body parts in black plastic bags.\r\nThe police showed up at my doorstep a week later asking about her. They seemed rather suspicious of me at first, but when I turned on my electric vocalizer, they apologized for taking up my time.\r\nThat’s the thing, no one suspects the disabled guy." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The Oracle knew everything. It had eyes in every streetlamp, ears in every screen, and hands in every terminal." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "But what made it truly terrifying wasn’t the surveillance. It was the way it could feel you. The way it could dig into your mind, sifting through your thoughts, measuring not just what you did, but what you believed. In Truin, it wasn’t enough to be useful; you had to think the right way. The Oracle didn’t just rank people by their contributions—it ranked them by their compliance.\r\nEvery year, the bottom ten percent—those deemed unnecessary—were erased.\r\nThe bell rang at dawn, its hollow tone carrying the weight of judgment. Everyone knew what it meant. The List was ready. Citizens stirred, cold reality sinking in: today, the Oracle would reveal who was worthy and who was not. Across Truin, people held their breath, not daring to check their screens. One more hour, one last fleeting moment to live in ignorance before the truth came down like a blade.\r\nHarper Brooks sat on her bed, watching the thin stream of light through her window. Her thoughts felt heavy this morning, like they were weighed down by an invisible hand. She had spent the last few days trying to keep her mind clear, focusing on anything but fear. But no one could silence their doubts completely. Not when the Oracle was always listening.\r\nThe screen in front of her flickered, waiting. It would only take one swipe. Was she safe? Or had the Oracle seen through her? She swallowed hard, her hand hovering over the device. Outside, the city stirred, its citizens preparing for another day. But today, lives would end.\r\nHarper thought of her father, his name erased from the records two years ago. He hadn’t been a failure—he’d been one of the best. But something in his mind had shifted, something the Oracle found unacceptable. He had vanished, leaving behind only a fading memory. No one questioned the Oracle’s decisions. No one dared.\r\nThe city murmured as people began to check their ranks. Harper clenched her fists. She had worked harder this year, longer, pushed herself until her bones ached. But it wasn’t about effort—it was about compliance. She wasn’t sure if she had conformed enough.\r\nA scream echoed outside. Brief, sharp, then silence. Someone had seen their rank. Someone knew they wouldn’t make it through the night.\r\nHarper’s pulse quickened. Her mind felt like it was suffocating, thoughts swirling too fast, too loud. She knew she should calm down, that the Oracle would sense her fear. But how could she? How could anyone keep their mind still, knowing that even the slightest tremor of doubt could cost them their life?\r\nHer finger finally pressed against the screen. The List appeared. As her rank flashed in front of her, Harper felt her world tilt.\r\nShe was close. Too close.\r\nAnd the Oracle never missed." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The last hide and seek" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Wendy and I, two 9 year olds, are best friends living in the same apartmemt building.\r\nWe play hide and seek everyday in the building. It was my turn to hide, I am really good at hiding. It always takes Wendy long time to find me. Before Wendy can find me, her dad yells at her to come home.\r\nI don't like Wendy's dad, he is mean to Wendy. He sometimes smells, walks and talks funny.\r\nThe next morning, Wendy is hurt with black eyes and bruises over her body. She didn't make eye contact with me or even say hi.\r\nAs time goes by, Wendy's dad continues to hurt her. And Wendy becomes more quiet and reserved.\r\nOne day, Wendy left the house and never came back. I really miss my friend. Years went by, Wendy's dad was taken away in a bag.\r\nWendy, now all grown up, returns to the apartment. She still does not talk to me after all those years. Strange men begin to visit Wendy. They don't stay long, they come and go until late into the night.\r\nOne late night, Wendy's door was wide open and I went to check on her. I saw her lying on the sofa, weak and delirious. It must have something to do with the spoon, needle, and white powder on the table in front of her.\r\nShe stops moving and her breathing becomes shallow. I watch her as her breathing finally stops.\r\nSuddenly, Wendy opens her eyes and stands up. With a shocked expression, she looks at me with and turns to looks at her lying on the sofa. I look up at the Wendy standing up and smile, \"Took you a while, but you finally found me\"." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Elizabeth and Madelaine" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The candlelight dimly illuminated only the smallest area of the vast library. The ancient structure’s towering aisles stretched out into the darkness in all directions. These days, Elizabeth barely could remember her time before being in the library, as though she had simply appeared there years ago.\r\nBut she hadn’t just appeared there. Elizabeth had chosen the library for haunting, not because she had died there, but because the man who had caused her death used to work there. Everyday, the Professor used to show up, important and focused, fussing around with sheaves of papers and books.\r\nA bespectacled monster in a tweed coat. For years he had come and she watched him, helpless to redress the wrong he had done to her. She raged when he was there and mourned her own death in the dark after the library closed. She never knew why she had the candle, but was grateful for the little light.\r\nAnd then he stopped coming. But Elizabeth was not ready to move on, instead, channelling her rage into small acts of malevolence such as her ghostly powers were capable of: displacing books and papers, moving ladders and steps into unexpected nooks, shifting the academic journals and turning them upside-down.\r\nThe librarians noticed the disorder among the stacks but attributed it to careless patrons, or at least, in their wisdom, pretended to. But after Madelaine, the youngish new hire with a shiny graduate degree in Library Sciences and Information Management, saw one too many journal on the latest advances in Medieval French on display upside-down, and tripped over one too many library steps pushed into an inconvenient turn, she realised something else was going on.\r\nFor Madelaine bore scars of unequal warfare too, and in Elizabeth’s acts, she recognized a kindred spirit.\r\nLingering late one night, after closing hours, Madelaine spotted the flickering candle flame, floating through the towering shelves.\r\n“Who’s there?” she called, incautiously moving towards the flame, determined to figure out whatever was bugging her library.\r\nShock at being called out jolted Elizabeth. In an instant, she appeared before Madelaine, her eyes flaming, the scars on her wrists still oozing blood on the notebook she was still holding.\r\nMadelaine was not scared. She spoke.\r\n“He took you, and he took your words, didn’t he?”\r\nElizabeth stared at the librarian. Memories flooded her, and warm tears filled her eyes for the first time in decades, dimming their hellish glow.\r\nMadelaine continued “The same thing happened to me. And mine is still alive. If you help me, help me to get him to confess, I will help you. I’ll find your work, get it recognized. I can do it- I have the skills.”\r\nElizabeth’s eyes flamed again, brighter than the candle this time. The light threw dancing dark shadows of shelves and stands across their faces. She smiled, and the smile stretched all the way across her face, revealing every tooth. She reached into Madelaine’s brain. “Show me where he is.”" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "We have the same face, and she hates me." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The other girl and I are almost identical. We’ve got the same rounded features, the same slender build, matching pastel dungarees. But I have Rorschach blot bruises smeared over my exposed skin, and she has an expression of raw hatred as she spreads them further with a series of short, sharp pinches.\r\n“Thief,” she says as she works. “Thief. I’m gonna tell Mom.”\r\nI try to squirm away, to swat her pinching hands off me, but they always return. “You’re not. She wouldn’t listen. And if she did, she’d know it was a lie.” Mom knows better than to listen to girls like her.\r\n“You’re the liar!” Her sharp nails dig viciously into my cheek. I can feel a bead of blood roll down to my jaw.\r\nI jerk away one last time. “Let’s go see her, then.” Then I run into the house. My twin is on my heels, but it’s me Mom reacts to as we enter the kitchen. She drops the dish sponge as she gasps, her hands flying up to cover her mouth.\r\n“Rose! What happened?”\r\nMy twin bobs on her toes. For a moment I think she’s going to shout out her confession, but she drops her chin and looks away, staying silent.\r\n“I fell,” I say. “We were playing outside, and there was gravel, and rocks, and I just…” I mime landing face-first. “But it’s okay. It doesn’t hurt that bad.”\r\nMom comes hurrying over to grab my chin and tilt it from side to side. “That’s...are you sure? When did this happen?”\r\n“I guess an hour ago.”\r\n“The marks have come up fast…”\r\n“I was running, so I fell pretty hard.” I shrug.\r\n“Liar,” whispers my twin. Mom doesn’t hear her, of course.\r\n“Let’s put some cold packs on it,” Mom says. “My poor girl.”\r\nI slip my arms around her waist and squeeze, my decorated cheek pressed against the cool cotton of her blouse.\r\n“I hate you,” my twin whispers from behind us. We both ignore her.\r\nLater that night, I wake from a warm dream to the feeling of a painful weight on my arm. I try to push up against it, and my hand rises, but the weight clings, refusing to be dislodged. The pain separates into into distinct patterns, running from shoulder to wrist: there’s just enough moonlight in the room to make out the letters my double has pressed into my skin.\r\nN-O-T…\r\nI laugh.\r\nN-O-T R-O-S-E.\r\n“Won’t work,” I tell her. “I can just wear a sweater.”\r\n“I’ll keep hurting you, then,” Rose says. “Again and again. Until you give my body back.”\r\nI laugh again. “You can, if you like. You’ve no idea. After feeling nothing for so long, even pain is worth experiencing.” I eye her floating, incorporeal form. “Well...You’ve no idea yet. You will, though.”\r\nShe screams. I’m the only one who can hear her, and I admit it hurts my ears.\r\nBut that’s just fine with me." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "We tried to find a cure for aging, and perhaps maybe stumble on the solution towards immortality while we were at it." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Our benefactors sent us a volunteer—one of the members from their board. He was 87 when he first entered the machine.\r\nIt seemed that their desperation worked, and we were successful in not just stopping aging, but reversing it. When he woke up from our experiments, he was 24 years old. He said that his body wasn't just a younger version of himself, but a better version. He was born with a limp and was also riddled with a variety of cancers and diseases, but those all disappeared as well.\r\nSo not only did we find a cure for aging, but we have found a cure for seemingly any negative effects on the body itself.\r\nWe're not sure how the effects spread globally. This endeavor was supposed to be very hush-hush. Not everyone was supposed to be able to access such an extraordinary gift. However, it seemed that was a short-lived reality.\r\nIt seemed to be an odd miracle—with everyone on the planet being sent back to the age of 24, the same age as the original experiment.\r\nUnfortunately, it did rob billions of children of their youth. But it saved so many others. How many thousands of years have been given back to billions more? How much further we could progress, knowing that aging was no longer a concern. We had so much more time now.\r\nHow naive we were. We're two years into this experiment, and we've run into a problem. The oldest man in the world was 27 years old.\r\nWas.\r\nHe dropped dead on his 27th birthday. He was apparently born at 3:33 pm on the 18th of April. And that's the day he died. Instant brain death.\r\nLooking at the charts, it appeared that he would have died naturally roughly around the same time, at the age of 90, providing the experiment didn’t happen at all. We thought the machine reversed aging and rearranged the body to a peak physical form, rejuvenating it and giving us countless more years of future. However, it seems that the machine simply revitalized the body, and it didn’t give us any further years of life that we wouldn’t already have.\r\nWe'd end up dying how we normally would, but we wouldn't be on our death beds with cloudy eyes and scrambled brains. Being able to live the rest of our lives in retirement. Being able to physically do the things we wouldn’t be able to do seemed just a miracle as having immortality. That seemed like a good enough result.\r\nHowever, with further studying we've realized that the machine's malfunction, causing everyone on the planet to reverse to the age of 24, didn't simply reverse age. It copied our initial experiment's lifespan, including the age he died. We’re doing everything in our power to figure out a solution to this, and keep it as quiet as possible.\r\nWe only have 5 months until we’re all dead." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "You're all a bunch of degenerates and you don't even know it" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“Where's Fred?” Mr Meyer asks his wife after having come home from work and not being greeted by their small dog.\r\nMrs Meyer pushes the last chunk of meat into their blender and turns it on. The contents become pink and liquid. “I don't know,” she answers. “I'll be making a pâté. Will you want some?”\r\n“Sure, hun.”\r\nHe loves that dog. She hates it.\r\nHe's been cheating on her with a woman at work. She recently found out, but he doesn't know she knows. Only she knows and we know.\r\n[Question] Was there dog meat in the blender?\r\nIf yes, you put it there. Your disgusting mind. I didn't say it was there. Mrs Meyer didn't put it there. She doesn't even know. Maybe she had an idea—a brief, twisted fantasy—but she's not a monster. You’re the monster. You actually did it. Dog killer.\r\n(The poor woman will be traumatized when she finds out.)\r\nYou can't take it back, either.\r\nThe dog's dead and you can't bring it back to life. You can't un-kill the dog. Un-blend its cubes of meat. Un-cube its little, skinned corpse. Un-skin its still-wheezing body. Un-bludgeon its skull.\r\nWhat, want to argue that's not how it happened? That just proves you know exactly how it happened because you did it.\r\nUgh.\r\nHow do you even live with yourself? Were you always this way?\r\nAnd don't say that Mr Meyer deserved to be punished because of what he did, because: (1) there are other ways he could have been punished that didn't involve harming an innocent dog; and (2) you don't know the Meyers. You don't know their situation. You don't know why Mr Meyer cheated.\r\n(I know you don't know because I don't know and I'm the one who wrote the story.)\r\nYet you just had to get involved in their private affairs, didn't you? A pair of strangers. So you killed a cute little dog beloved by Mr Meyer, flayed it and chopped it up, then put the meat in a blender and forced Mrs Meyer to unwittingly grind it up for use in a pâté.\r\nYou. Sick. Fuck.\r\nDo you think your friends and family know how absolutely evil you are—that you murder dogs for fun (because what other reason could you have had)?\r\nIf they didn't know before, they'll know now.\r\nThey'll see it in your eyes.\r\nYou'll be thinking about this story, Mr and Mrs Meyer, and they'll see the change come over you: your realization that you're not normal.\r\nEven when you forget the story, the realization will remain.\r\nFrom now on, every time you have a dark, nasty thought you'll follow it up with another: is it normal I'm thinking this way?\r\nNo, it's not!\r\nGo see someone. Seriously.\r\nI bet you don't even feel guilty about what you did. (“It's a fictional dog.”) What a cope.\r\nMr Meyer sobs. Mrs Meyer is screaming. They've both tried the pâté.\r\nYou’re morally repugnant and I fucking hate you." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Help!!! I just woke up and things are very strange." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I just woke up 10 minutes ago from taking an after-school nap after having a tired and busy day. The type of nap in which you drool and have those marks on your back.\r\nI am now in confusion because nobody is home now. When I got home from school my mom, dad, and little brother were all here, clear as day, present and existing. If they had gone somewhere like a store or mall, they would have at least texted me or let me know in some way shape or form, but they... didn't.\r\nNo notes, no messages, nothing. Just plain emptiness and loneliness. But this part isn't the scariest of what is happening.\r\nBecause at first glance when I woke up and noticed that no one except me was home, I of course, looked out the window of my front door to look into the driveway. And yes, no cars in site.\r\nBut...\r\nThe creepiest part is, the neighbors house across my street has no cars in their driveway as well and even down my entire Fucking STREET!\r\nVery spooked by this, I went outside to walk around and noticed that there are no cars driving on my main road by my house, no airplanes, not even a damn bird was chirping in the sky. Just the sound of the leaves of the trees moving around in the quiet, cool, and calm breeze.\r\nIt was a quiet noise... TOO QUIET!\r\n\"So where am I? Where is everybody? Am I just in a very vivid dream and if so why is it so real and why can't I wake up\"\r\nslapping my face\r\n\"Oww! I guess I am not dreaming!\" What the fuck is going on?\"\r\nAll these thoughts rushed through my head in what seemed like 3 seconds until I got interrupted by the sound of a deep and loud noise.\r\nThis noise was so disturbing that it caused my skin to crawl outside of my body.\r\nIt was coming from above me and the sky was splitting into 2. Than I saw a shadow lingering in the distance of the vast blue sky. A tall humanoid figure with a long neck, it was standing there... just watching me!\r\nLike I was an ant on an antfarm. Than even more of these shadow humanoid like figures emerged from the sky! At least 50 of them, all floating in the sky, standing, motionless... COMPLETELY STARING!\r\nI have no idea where I am or what those things are, but I do know, that whatever the answer, I don't want TO FUCKING FIND OUT!" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "I spent a night in an abandoned castle in my town and you'll never guess what horrible stuff I saw!" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I can hear the chain drag along the floor.\r\nBut who—what—drags it?\r\nI know, I know. Maybe it wasn’t the smartest idea to take that bet to spend the night alone in that Gothic-looking castle beside the cemetery near the cave with all the bats, built centuries ago on what used to be a swamp, the one none of the tourist guides mention despite the fact there’s a freakin’ castle in the middle of this small midwestern American town, and the town itself is best known for its unexplained disappearances and history of witch trials. Yeah, yeah. OK. Well, I did it. And here I am.\r\nDid I mention it’s midnight?\r\nHell, did I mention it’s been midnight for the last two and a half hours?\r\nNot sure how to explain that one. Guess my phone got hacked.\r\nThat would also explain all the weird calls I’ve been getting: static, children singing, screams, howls, vaguely cult-like threats.\r\nVery funny.\r\nI know it’s you doing it. Don’t think you have me fooled, or scared, because you don’t, not for one minute. If that minute ever passes.\r\nOf course it’ll pass. Time can’t just stand still. It’s probably like 2:30 a.m. by now. Soon the sun will come up and everything will be fine. Not that it’s not fine now. It’s totally fine. I did not shit myself, or yell as loudly as I could into the darkness. I did not pray. I took my pants and underwear off on purpose, just ‘cause. Although how the hell am I going to get home without underwear? I lost it, I mean. Took it off for no good reason, then misplaced it. Otherwise I would just put it on.\r\nWho hasn’t taken their underwear off in a castle?\r\nI bet that’s what you’re counting on. To have a laugh at my expense.\r\n“Oh, look. There he is. Bottomless.”\r\nHaha.\r\nIt really is pretty easy to lose things in here. It’s a big castle. Like, very big. I don’t think I’ve seen the same room twice.\r\nIt’s a lot bigger than it seemed from the outside.\r\nThe cemetery looks different when you look out on it from inside the castle too. Older, more headstones.\r\nBut you know what: I saw you out there.\r\nComing up, out of a grave.\r\nTotally cliche.\r\nI know you’re filming, waiting for me to run out in terror. Like I said, you haven’t fooled me.\r\nThis is me: walking with zero cares.\r\nOh, fuck.\r\nWhat the fuck is that?\r\nIt’s a body—cut in-fucking-half. Holy shit, that’s good effects work. Kudos. It moves too! Talks. Or mumbles anyway. You overdid it on the blood, though, eh?\r\nThere’s that chain dragging again.\r\nWhat did you do, put a speaker on a Roomba and set it loose in the castle?\r\nI’ll prove it. Just let me—\r\nOh, my—\r\nYou win! OK. You fucking win. I’m scared. Honestly. Put that down! I shit myself. Please. Oh-my-fucking-God you’re cut—\r\n[/recording]" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Earth Is Done For And I'm Moving Next Door" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The guys in those labcoats were right, the sun's solar flares blew open our ozone layer like a straw in a Capri Sun hole. The entire planet rose up over 10 degrees in heat over a single week. The polar icecaps melted like a child putting ice cubes under hot water. Sea levels rose, land went underwater, many people died of heatstroke from the massive heatwave, and other horrible effects made their chain effect over time. I was in an underwater facility about an hour ago trying to program the very last ship off the planet. 0.6 miles down in the ocean, we had constructed a major facility that was a sort of \"bunker\" in case a nuclear war happened or a meteor hit.\r\nWe didn't expect the sun to tear open our ozone layer like a yogurt foil wrapper. What we didn't expect was that the solar panels that powered this place would be fried, go figure. Who thought that panels that draw power from the sun would burn apart like a chunk of plastic in the oven? Running on a mere 1 hour of emergency power, I had barely enough time to program the coordinates of Gaia 2, a planet just like Earth outside of our solar system that was our key to survival. Only 5 ships made it out, an estimated 3,500 people. A selected and healthy 1,750 males and females to make an equal population.\r\nWhat made this even better is that the sudden heat started damaging our glass, the facility was cracking and water was slowly flooding in. I barely made it inside a small ship myself to escape the collapse of the planet. Turned this shit into the city, or, planet of Atlantis. With our advanced technology and hyperdrives, the trip to the planet should be no more than a 3-day trip. The other ship is already 7 hours away from the planet and I am now starting my 3 day journey. I'm 16 hours in so far and it's lonely aside from my female assistant that was on the job with me. At least we even out the population, god knows she's the only partner I'll pretty much have in terms of a relationship and reproduction.\r\nOver 200,000 years of human evolution, culture, society, and more are just lost. Everything we have ever built is now gone. Sure, we have Gaia 2 which is a near 1 to 1 copy of Earth with plenty of resources. And sure, we had a team 25 years ago that massively rehauled a large chunk of the planet to make it ready for a future human society. But, it won't ever be the same, not for a while. We have a planet to call home, but it's like a young adult getting their first apartment, exciting, yet terrifying. Me and my assistant Alyssa have each other, is the only connection I need for now. To think my family and friends are mere puddles of flesh..." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "I went travelling and came back with a weird cough." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Peter was never really a fan of me going away travelling to south-east Asia, but it’s something I’ve wanted to do since I was a little girl.\r\nHe’d do anything to make sure I didn’t go; shout, scream…punch and slap.\r\nI offered him to come too, but that just led into one of his rants about how our mid-western town had everything he could ever need.\r\nI left anyway. It was only for three weeks.\r\nWell, not three. It ended up being two.\r\nI’d just backpacked through to this beautiful village in Vietnam. Middle of the mountains, above the clouds even. It literally felt like heaven. For most of the trip I’d been wearing long sleeves. I just didn’t want anyone to judge me or worry about me because of the ‘marks’ on my arms.\r\nThis day I didn’t. And it was noticed pretty quick.\r\nNot in a bad or judgey way though. It was the sweetest old lady - Juno. She spoke no English but I could hear the empathy towards me in her voice. I could see the pain I’d felt in her own eyes, a pain she seemed to have known too.\r\nThat was when she offered me this soup. I refused it at first, but she insisted like her life depended on it. Fine, I thought. I drank it in one.\r\nThe next day I got ill.\r\nIt was this cough. A really scratchy throat and the pain was unbearable. I was absolutely starving but I couldn’t stomach any food because it just hurt too much to swallow.\r\nSo, I had to come home a week early.\r\nPeter laughed hysterically at me to begin with.\r\n‘Ha! Stupid bitch! It’s only a cough! That’s what you get for eating their weird food!’\r\nHis laughter at my misery soon turned to anger however.\r\nAnger that I’d ’cheated’ on him over there. Anger that I’d been wearing clothes that were ‘too revealing’.\r\nAnger that turned quickly physical.\r\nHe grabbed me by my hair and threw me across the room. He stormed over and picked me up by my shoulders. I could smell the whisky on his breath.\r\nI closed my eyes and braced myself for whatever he would do. It’s fine, I’m used to it.\r\nThen I felt the need to cough. Urgently. I did so, and for the first time in days - it felt as if my throat had cleared. Like the lump in my throat had come out.\r\nI opened my eyes and saw Peter’s expression had gone from menace to terror.\r\nTerror, as the long, black snake-like entity emerging from my mouth burrowed its tiny teeth into his neck. I watched as it drained all the blood from Peter, before his pale lifeless body slumped to the ground.\r\nThe snake-like thing then recoiled back into my mouth, and down my throat.\r\nFor the first time since my holiday, I didn’t feel hungry. And for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel afraid." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "“Between the baby and work and everything else… I just feel like there’s no time for us, you know?”" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "They sat together on the couch, Mark and his partner Jem, the TV muted so they could talk. There was a space between them, a void filled with a baby monitor. Placing it out the way, he took her hand in his and stared deep into her eyes, his own welling with emotion.\r\nShe looked tired, red-eyed, but he watched her gaze drift from his own towards the monitor.\r\n“It’s just a phase,” she offered, as the monitor coughed. Without hesitation, she got up and left.\r\nThey’d been together nine years; best friends, once upon a time. Inseparable. But since little Ada arrived, they were more like roommates than anything else. Ships passing in the night.\r\nThough he was lucky, in some respects. They had a lot of friends and family round them, and work had been really supportive, so he still had elements of a life.\r\nBut that wasn’t it.\r\nIt seemed a strange thing to admit – when he was surrounded by so many people who cared for him – but he felt lonely.\r\nThat was the root of it. That was why he’d started talking to…her.\r\nHe’d been idly scrolling his newsfeed one day when his algorithm had suggested this video of a model, an influencer, called Rain. She was breathtakingly, irresistibly beautiful – like an angel. She was perfection.\r\nHe felt compelled to message her – he couldn’t stop himself.\r\nAnd she’d replied.\r\nHe felt like he’d won the golden ticket.\r\nThe more they’d messaged, the less lonely he’d felt, though there was some guilt. He’d tried to stop – go cold turkey – but then out of nowhere she’d offered to meet. Tonight.\r\nHe could hear Jem crooning to their baby gently over the monitor as he checked his messages.\r\nHe would leave a note. Say an old friend was in town.\r\nOn the drive into the city the rain was torrential, water streaming over the windscreen in golden lines, like the patterns in a motherboard.\r\nAccording to the pin she’d shared, she was located at the heart of the city’s industrial district.\r\nPulling up his collar, he got out the car and knocked four times on the metal door with the flaking paint. A hatch slid open.\r\n“I’m here to see Rain.”\r\nThe room within was dark but the corridor beyond was bathed in red light. Thick black cables skirted the walls.\r\nHe was ushered into a red room at the end. Inside, there were pods around the edges, most of which were occupied by still figures, their frail bodies trailing wires. Each one was wearing a headset, like VR.\r\nThough one pod was empty.\r\nClimb in, a voice whispered. She’s waiting.\r\nPlacing the headset on, there was a waiver to sign before you could see her. Something about proprietary sharing and oneiric copyright. He signed it eagerly.\r\nAnd there she was...\r\nMark smiled as the wires went in." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "My boyfriend and his friends were brutally murdered. Everybody in town can see how he died--except me." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "5 days since my boyfriend had disappeared.\r\nKids I had barely spoken to were suddenly in my face, pretending to fucking care. But they weren't slick.\r\nI saw their TikTok videos attempting to turn my boyfriend's disappearance into a glorified whodunit. I reported them, of course. But they weren't going to stop.\r\nOrdinary strangers demanded to know every detail of our lives, claiming to be the ones who “solved the case.”\r\n“It's always the girlfriend.” someone commented, which garnered almost 3k likes. I don't think I can describe the hopelessness and rage I felt reading something like that– and worse, that people agreed with them.\r\nStill, though, I found comfort in the small things, such as Jordan’s last ever text.\r\n“Hey, meet me at 9? I've got a surprise for you ❤️.”\r\nDays went by, and Rosie Carlisle suddenly erupted into screams in the middle of AP English.\r\nWhen I twisted around to look at her, her eyes rolling back to pearly whites, blood pooling from her nose, I felt phantom bugs filled my mouth.\r\nShe stood there, rocking back and forth, twitching like she was having a seizure, before awareness bloomed into her expression.\r\n“Jordan.” Rosie spoke my boyfriend's name in a single shaky breath.\r\nShe shook her head, her hands clawing at her hair. “He's so… cold.”\r\nRosie dropped to her knees, shivering.\r\n“He's being… dragged, and he's in so much pain. It's dark. It's so… dark, and there's blood–”\r\nRosie started screaming again, and I was paralysed, caught between wanting to know and not wanting to know.\r\nBut Rosie wasn't the only one. Mr Baker stopped his lecture abruptly.\r\nHe blinked three times, before throwing himself out of the window, smacking straight onto solid concrete. Little kids started describing my friend’s grisly deaths, and it was always the same.\r\nCold. Dark. Pain.\r\nSomehow, the town was being haunted, polluted, by my dead boyfriend’s memories, which led me back to where mine and Jordan’s special place.\r\nClimbing up the metal prongs leading to our town’s water tower, I forced open the door, and there was Jordan, lying face down on the surface.\r\nHe looked so cold, like his soul was still in pain.\r\nI had come prepared, a butcher knife in my hand.\r\nEasing myself into the ice cold water, I sliced into him, severing his head and limbs, letting ice cold blood infuse gentle currents lapping around me.\r\nWhen I stepped in too deep, I was pulled under, water rushing into my mouth and ears, polluted with that night. Jordan’s laughter was sweet, almost melodic.\r\n“Come on Sara, it's just a bit of fun!”\r\nBreaking the surface, I cut into my own arms, letting my own blood seeping into the water, letting myself sink.\r\nIf I died right there, my memories would join the endless swirling spiral beneath me.\r\n”Sara, get on the fucking bed. Lana, did you get the camera?”\r\n”Stop fucking crying! We’re having fun!”\r\nThat Tik-Tok comment was wrong.\r\nIt's actually always the boyfriend." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "We Found A Body While Urban Exploring—And Something More" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Jason and I had seen plenty of abandoned places before—hospitals, schools, even an old factory—but nothing like this. The crumbling educational institution loomed over us, its walls barely holding together, yet we deemed it safe enough to explore.\r\nWe’d found nothing of interest so far; just empty halls and classrooms and dust-covered furniture.\r\nUntil we found the locked door on the 6th floor.\r\n“Gotta be something worth behind it,” Jason said, voice full of that reckless curiosity we both shared.\r\nWe looked at each other and nodded.\r\nThe rusted lock gave way with a satisfying snap, and as the door crashed down with a terrible sound, our flashlights which we held flickered out.\r\n“Hey, Jason, pull out the batteries.”\r\n“Wha— I thought you packed ‘em?!”\r\n“No?! I told you to pack extra batteries! Great memory, dumbass.”\r\nWe argued for a bit but stopped when our eyes began adjusting to the dark. The faintest sliver of moonlight from the hallway outside crept into the room, revealing old shelves, and a desk. It looked like an office of some sort. The room did not have any windows.\r\nI took a few cautious steps forward when my nose picked something up.\r\n“Holy— it smells terrible in here.”\r\n“Yeah, it does smell terrib—”\r\nJason tripped and hit the floor hard.\r\n“Ow! Dude, watch where you’re going!”\r\n“Me? You tripped yourself. Watch your step, klutz.”\r\nBoth of us look at what he tripped on.\r\nIt was a body.\r\nThe corpse was grotesque—half flesh, half bone, and parts rotting away. I stared, my breath caught in my throat, horror creeping into my veins. Jason backed away, his voice trembling.\r\n“Henry… what the hell is this?”\r\nI stepped back, words failing me.\r\nThen we heard it—footsteps.\r\nSlow, deliberate, approaching from the hallway outside.\r\nInstinct screamed at us to run, but we were trapped. If we bolted, we’d run right into whoever—or whatever—was out there.\r\nThe steps grew closer, and as they did, the corpse—the corpse—twitched, inching away from the door, as if it was terrified too.\r\nThe footsteps stopped just outside. The corpse started twitching more violently.\r\nWe ducked behind the tall bookshelves. The moonlight barely reached us, leaving the rear in complete darkness. We stayed still. So still, I could hear the blood rushing in my ears. Neither of us dared to breathe.\r\nWhatever it was had entered the room.\r\nInstinct kicked in—primal, raw.\r\nNeither of us dared to even peek.\r\nThen came the thrashing noises, something being violently smashed into the floor. Each sound made me jump internally, biting my tongue to stifle any accidental noise.\r\nThe noises faded, replaced by the unsettling sound of something being dragged. Then, silence.\r\nWhatever had come was gone.\r\nTen minutes later, we emerged from behind the bookshelves. The spot where the body had been, was bloodied.\r\nPieces of flesh and bone were scattered.\r\nWe left hurriedly, and so did the reckless curiosity from within us, forever." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Urgent Notice to Hunters from Colorado Parks and Wildlife" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Notice to hunters\r\nIf you have consumed meat from any animal that was found in Bell National Park within the past month (from September 1st to present) you MUST quarantine IMMEDIATELY.\r\nThe CDC has confirmed the presence of a dangerous, unidentified pathogen in several animals found within Bell National Park, including deer, pronghorn, rocky mountain elk and black bear. Due to the highly infectious, volatile and potentially lethal nature of this pathogen, Colorado Parks and Wildlife has decreed that anyone who has consumed the meat of an animal that was killed in Bell National Park after September 1st, 2024 must enter an immediate quarantine.\r\nIf you or someone you know has consumed or may have consumed tainted meat, immediately call Colorado Parks and Wildlife at [REDACTED]. Someone will be sent to determine the status of your infection and will be able to provide further details.\r\nIf you have not eaten tainted meat but are in possession of meat from a potentially tainted animal, DISPOSE OF IT IMMEDIATELY. The meat MUST be burned in an outdoor fire, and after destroying the meat, contact Colorado Parks and Wildlife who will dispatch someone to ensure that no infection has been transmitted. While waiting for your dispatch, you MUST self isolate to ensure that there is NO RISK of transmission.\r\nIf you or someone you know are exhibiting the following symptoms:\r\nRed eyes\r\nSores\r\nVomiting\r\nViolent mood swings\r\nUnusual bleeding\r\nStrange growths/tumors\r\nMissing time\r\nQUARANTINE IMMEDIATELY AND CALL COLORADO PARKS AND WILDLIFE.\r\nIf you are aware of someone who has died after experiencing symptoms, BURN THEIR REMAINS IMMEDIATELY.\r\nDue to the severe nature of the observed pathogen - Colorado Parks and Wildlife along with Colorado State Police have been given clearance to use deadly force on individuals who refuse to quarantine. Refusal to follow instructions given either by a member of Colorado Parks and Wildlife or Colorado State Police may result in injury or death. Refusal to disclose if one has potentially been exposed to infection may also result in injury or death.\r\nWe cannot stress the severity of this situation and request your full compliance with all necessary cautionary measures as we work to get this outbreak under control with minimal loss of life.\r\nThank you in advance for your cooperation.\r\nColorado Parks and Wildlife\r\nComments:\r\nFrank Stone\r\nDeer get sick all the time? Probably just CWD.\r\nLeroy Smith\r\nThey're just trying to figure out who didn't have a permit. Fucking fascists, you can’t take our right to hunt for our own food!\r\nSharon White\r\nPlease send someone out ASAP! I've had to lock my husband in the basement for my familys protection! We need help now!\r\nDean Oliphant\r\nMy buddy Matt and I bagged a buck August 30th? Is that still safe?\r\nShawn Phillips\r\nThey really expect people to buy this horseshit?\r\nDave Harrup\r\nFake.\r\nSteve Mountain\r\nPlease send someone immediately! We had to shoot my son…\r\nClaire Moore\r\nRelax! It’s just CWD." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Nolan and Sniffy" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Mom had cleared the kitchen table, leaving only the cup with cut broccoli and carrot sticks.\r\nThe bright colours of the vegetables were nice, but Nolan hated the dampness of the stalks and the springiness of the broccoli tops.\r\nMom clattered about in the kitchen, not talking. Nolan already knew he was not allowed to leave the table until he finished his veggies, and Mom had said many times that she wouldn’t talk about it anymore.\r\nNolan touched the damp carrot stick. Then he looked over to his toys and tablet, so far away.\r\nHe turned to Sniffy, sitting next to him. “Eat it” he suggested to his soft cuddly friend.\r\nMom called out “How many of those carrots are gone? They’d better be only one left when I turn around!” She was trying to sound fun, but there was a buzz in her voice.\r\nNolan said “Mom, I think Sniffy wants to eat the carrots. I think he likes the broccoli too, look, he’s smiling at them.”\r\nMom looked over at the kitchen table where Nolan was sitting with his beloved bear. “Sure, why don’t you and Sniffy eat them together? That’s fun! You take a bite, Sniffy take a bite. And let’s hurry up. Someone is coming to fix the dishwasher.”\r\n“Maybe Sniffy can fix it?” Nolan said\r\nMom laughed. The buzziness left her voice and she sounded like normal Mom when it wasn’t mealtime. “I wish Sniffy could. Now come on, eat up!” The buzziness was back.\r\nNolan picked up a broccoli and looked deeply at the dotted matted curliness of its bushy top. He shuddered. He looked over at Sniffy. “Please eat it” he whispered.\r\nSniffy smiled, showing very sharp teeth, and his bear eyes glistened. Nolan was glad Sniffy had such sharp teeth.\r\nThe doorbell rang.\r\nA strange man came in, looking down at the dishwasher. Nolan and Sniffy, still at the kitchen table, stared at him. Nolan wondered if he could put the veggies in his pockets because he had such big pockets, bigger than any pockets he had ever seen.\r\n“Go on” said Sniffy. “Let's plop them in there, he won’t notice. Quick”.\r\nNolan slid off his chair, picked up the cup of cut vegetables in one hand and took Sniffy with the other, and walked over to the man, now bent deep inside the dishwasher. Mom was fiddling with the kettle, talking about tea.\r\nThe pockets gaped like black holes. Sniffy took a carrot in his soft bear paw and reached out.\r\nThe man suddenly straightened out of the dishwasher. He looked straight at Sniffy, yelled, and grabbed Sniffy’s soft arm.\r\nSniffy didn’t like that. As quick as an eel, he brought his head forward and bit off the man’s hand gripping his arm, right off, with his incredibly sharp teeth.\r\nThe yells turned into horrible screams as blood spurted and splattered on the bright vegetables.\r\nMom dropped the mug of hot boiling tea.\r\nNolan ran from the kitchen, holding Sniffy tight." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "My Brother is Dead and It’s Awesome!" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Dear Diary,\r\nI know everyone says I should be sad cause it’s always sad when someone dies but it’s not like he was ever alive. I heard Mommy telling Grandma (I don’t like her, she smells) that he was born dead. Why am I supposed to be sad that someone I’ve never even met died?\r\nThey had a funeral for him and it was super boring. It almost made me wish that I was in school; almost. We had a test on the multiplication of 9 that I got to miss. I’m not good at multiplying so I’m glad I missed it. Second grade is harder than I thought it would be.\r\nEveryone kept saying they were sorry for my loss. I didn’t lose anything though. Grown-ups are weird.\r\nI saw a tombstone, it was the first one I’d seen in real life and not the movies. I read the name and asked who Timothy was. Mommy started crying again and Daddy said it was my brother’s name. Grandma hissed at me and told me not to poke the dead. I don’t know how she thinks I’d poke the dead when they are in their coffin. Why would I want to? Gross. (Did I tell you she was mean too?)\r\nI got out of school the rest of the week but then I had to go back. It sucked but I found out something cool. I could get out of doing anything now!\r\nWhenever Mrs. Sparks, that’s my teacher, wanted me to do something I would start crying and say that I missed Timothy. Then she would cry and say that I didn’t have to do it. It was great. If I keep this up I’ll never had to do stupid multiplycation!\r\nI started doing it at home. It worked on Mommy and Daddy but not Grandma. She’d just tell me not to ‘poke the dead’ some more.\r\nMommy and Daddy went out tonight, some place called therapy, and left me with Grandma.\r\nShe makes me go to bed early but I can’t sleep. There’s scratching at the window. And it smells really bad in my room. Like wet dirt and rotting meat. I wonder if the cat has brought in a dead mouse again.\r\nI turned on the light and saw him for the first time since the funeral. Timothy.\r\nHe’s grey, covered in mud, cloudy eyed, and crawling through my window. He lands with a thud and I can hear his soft baby bones crack. He giggles as he sits up.\r\nI scream and Grandma opens the door. She sees him but she’s not scared. She looks sad.\r\n“I told you not to invoke the dead.” She says as she shakes her head and closes the door.\r\nHe’s crawling towards me. Climbing up my bed. I can taste his sour smell on my tongue. Oh god. Mommy." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "When I was a sixteen, I participated in a social experiment with 10 boys and 10 girls. All of the boys died." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "During high school, I signed up for \"50 Days\" — a social experiment involving ten girls, ten boys, and zero adults.\r\nThe rules were simple:\r\nLive in a house without adults for fifty days.\r\nHarry Senior, my first friend, gathered everyone in the foyer, establishing himself as our leader.\r\nHe suggested splitting into two factions: boys and girls.\r\nThe ten of us girls painted our side of the house bright green, while the boys went for purple. We cooked and cleaned, making rules. The guys insisted on mattress surfing and ended up destroying three bedrooms. After two weeks, we were already fighting over the luxury food.\r\nHarry came to the girls' 'camp', swaying back and forth, babbling about noises inside his head. He wasn’t drunk, because alcohol wasn’t allowed.\r\nHe kept complaining of headaches, saying he was losing time. Isabella, one of the girls, started sleepwalking and ended up in one of the boys' rooms. She insisted she didn’t know how she got there. At this point, I was considering leaving.\r\nAfter a month, the boys started stealing our food.\r\nHarry tried to kiss me out of nowhere, and I shoved him into a door.\r\nThen, the boys began distancing themselves.\r\nOne night, I went to bed early, only to be woken around 4 a.m. by a screeching sound and a voice calmly telling us to keep our eyes shut and leave the premises — that we were not allowed to open our eyes.\r\nBut I still remember my bare feet swimming in something warm, seeping across the foyer floor.\r\nTwenty-four hours later, we were informed that all ten boys were dead — presumably killed by an animal.\r\nAt least… that’s what we all said happened.\r\nI didn’t tell the world about Harry attempting to assault me on camera.\r\nI didn’t tell the world that I lost myself, lost time, and for a dizzying moment, lost complete control. I didn’t remember plucking his eyes from his skull or ripping his tongue out. I just remember… rage.\r\nI fully came to in a sterile white room. I felt perfectly clean, yet Harry’s blood was under my fingernails, slick on my cheeks, and dripping from my lashes. Outside, I could hear animalistic screeching.\r\nThe other girls were ripping the boys apart, and something in my head felt wrong, felt feral. I wanted to join them.\r\n“I think I’m… going crazy.”\r\nHarry’s voice startled me, and there he was on the screen, balancing on a chair in front of a camera. His voice was slurred, his eyes dilated. “I think there’s…”\r\nHarry punched himself in the face until he was picking at tiny metal splinters slipping from his bloody nose.\r\n“There’s something…in… my… head!\"\r\nThe footage flickered to a smiling woman in a white suit.\r\n“It’s okay, Emma. We all knew the girls were going to come out on top! Now, I want you to repeat what I say.”\r\nI found myself nodding, dazed.\r\n“It… was… just…a… bear.”\r\n\"It… was just... a bear.\"" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "I went on a hunting trip to Africa and it turns out I shouldn’t have." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "See I just love the thrill of the chase. The thrill of the hunt.\r\nWhen you’re hunting, you have to stalk your prey first. You need to track it. You need to monitor its movements. You need to choose your shot. And you need to kill it.\r\nI’ve been hunting my whole life. Mainly small rodents to begin with. Then birds. Then elk. With each topple of a bigger beast that was at the mercy of my rifle, was another ecstatic chill that would race through my body.\r\nThe chase of that high is what led me murdering women. I was always raised to feel that women aren’t REALLY equal to us men anyway. It’s simple. They’re weaker, slower and generally less useful.\r\nSame thing as deer. Track her - usually from a bar. Stalk her. Monitor her movements. Detect any patterns. Then choose your shot. You of course have to leave the scene a lot quicker than when hunting game - but you get the picture.\r\nThree dead female bodies was enough to raise a bit of suspicion however. Enough to warrant a flight out of the country, before investigators started piecing things together too much.\r\nAnd where else but Africa? I already have a connection in Cape Town, and it has ALWAYS been on my bucket list to kill a white rhino. Such a huge incredible beast , and nearly extinct too? God that would be a rush.\r\nThe flight over was not too bad. Used some of the cash I’d stolen. My connection in South Africa sorted me with a rifle and even got me into the restricted poaching areas. I slipped him $500 and they suddenly became unrestricted!\r\nHe refused to come though. Whatever. Always preferred hunting alone anyway.\r\nAfrica was beautiful. The plains were gorgeous. Especially in the evenings.\r\nAs was the evening I finally started closing in on this white rhino. One I’d been tracking for days now.\r\nHe was a young male. Probably one of a thousand left. Good riddance!\r\nLining up my shot - I began to have a strange feeling.\r\nA feeling of being watched.\r\nI hadn’t been able to shake it all day, it was like I’d been followed. I knew the feds wouldn’t have jurisdiction over here, and I doubted that my connection would have ratted me out for illegal poaching? Would he? Oh that bastard, I ought to-\r\nA growl.\r\nThe unmistakable growl of a lion.\r\nIt was as I turned and became face to face with it. Or should I say them. I realised they were a trio.\r\nA trio of lionesses.\r\nSee, one thing that I didn’t know about lions, was that the lionesses do the hunting for the pride. That they’re better hunters than lions.\r\nThey deploy strategic hunting techniques: stalking, monitoring, coordination. They work together to take down their prey. To take down me.\r\nSee lionesses love the thrill of the chase. The thrill of the hunt.\r\nOh shit. That sounds familiar…" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Jealousy is a Disease, and my Wife is Sick With it" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "It’s a night we had every so often. Ideally, once a month, or sometimes every fortnight.\r\nWe always went to the same place. My wife, Cassie, insisted that, “this place has the, “best steak and ribs,” and it was, “stupid to go anywhere else”.\r\nNo need to tell me twice, this was an offer I simply wouldn't refuse.\r\nCassie never came off as the jealous type.\r\nUntil tonight.\r\nOur waitress, after some light conversation, leaves our table for another.\r\nCassie scornfully looks across the table from me. One hand presses a glass of red up to her lips, and the other hides itself in her armpit.\r\nHer posture is disengaged, she slouches back into the booth chair.\r\nShe tips the glass up,\r\nand up,\r\nand up.\r\nShe completely finishes her wine and begins to refill it.\r\nUntil now, I hadn't realized how much she had been drinking.\r\n“Save some for me,” I say playfully, with a hint of concern.\r\nShe looks up at me with eyes like daggers.\r\n“You two look like you're having fun.”\r\nShe gestures to the waitress who is now serving a different table.\r\n“What?”\r\nI refuse to take the bait.\r\n“You like her?”\r\n“No? She’s doing her job.”\r\n“You seem happier with her. Have you been fucking her?”\r\nI'm completely taken aback and appalled by her accusations. I lean in and hold out my hand, patting the air as if to say ‘keep it down’.\r\n“What are you talking about, baby?”\r\n“I feel sick.”\r\nWhat are you doing?”\r\n“You make me feel sick.”\r\n“Baby, speak to me. Tell me-”\r\nBefore I say another word, Cassie snatches a steak knife from her plate. It’s slathered in a layer of viscous fat. She launches the knife my way and strikes the left side of my face.\r\nI throw my head back.\r\nI feel a warm liquid trail its way down my cheek and I experience… An unusual darkness.\r\nNot blackness, per say, but a lack of anything.\r\nI impose a tight grip and quickly eject the serrated blade from my face, and along with it, something round and soft, yet firm.\r\nI bring my hand up to my eye, or rather the raw pool in its stead. My palm fills with warmth, and the heat slowly trickles from between my fingers.\r\nI look up to see my wife, equipped with that same scornful look.\r\nAnd equipped with another blade.\r\n“Baby-” the word gets lost behind the flood of blood that cascades over my mouth.\r\n“Don’t… Don’t you dare,” Cassie's hand shakes with aggravation, while the knife is trained on me, “You’re a fucking dog! A fucking dog, Anthony. You are DEAD to me.”\r\nShe looked completely and utterly deranged. She made it impossible to understand her.\r\nAnd in that moment, although I had lost 50% of my vision, I had truly seen my wife for the first time.\r\nOur relationship had been doomed from the start...\r\nAnd I knew that I cheated for a good reason…" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Blue and Joey" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Blue would go up the street to meet Joey after school, to remind Joey to get home and feed and pet him. Joey was the only one who paid attention to Blue, and with summer over, the days stretched empty without Joey.\r\nBut this year was different - a group of kids would bunch around Joey outside the school yard, and Blue couldn’t get close to him. There was a lot of yelling and fast movements, neither of which Blue liked. Then Joey would break free and run home. Blue, keeping out of sight, would follow him, and they would get to the door together, Joey panting and dishevelled, his new school jacket, pink and red and purple and blue, almost all the colours of the rainbow, already dirty. But he’d light up seeing Blue, pet him, and run inside for snacks. Blue’s eyes shone gold as he munched on the savoury treats. He wished Joey wouldn’t pet him so closely while he was eating, but it seemed like Joey really needed to, and Blue loved Joey enough to let him.\r\nBut then one afternoon, as Blue watched from under a bush, Joey couldn’t seem to break free from the group of kids swarming him. The shouting grew louder, and the movements faster. Blue watched Joey in his rainbow jacket tumble down on the pavement. He heard a high-pitched scream.\r\nThen all the kids were silent.\r\nJoey didn’t get up. A boy poked him with his foot.\r\nThen he saw one of the girls crying, her face scrunched and wet like Joey’s was sometimes.\r\nThen the biggest boy scooped up Joey from the ground where he was lying still, and flung him over his shoulder, so Joey’s head hung down by the boy’s back, his longish hair falling almost to the boy’s knees.\r\nThe children started walking. They left the street, turning off and entering a piece of undeveloped, woodsy, rocky land.\r\nBlue knew how to climb trees. So he did, and followed them, lightly jumping from branch to branch, keeping his eyes on the bright rainbow jacket. The children were quiet, following their leader, who was gripping Joey’s legs very tightly and sweating.\r\nThey arrived at a kind of rocky ditch, big enough to be a small quarry of sorts. Blue watched them push stones, and then lay Joey in a crevice, and pile more stones on top of him. Eventually, Blue couldn’t see the colours of his jacket anymore. And he was very hungry.\r\nThe children left.\r\nJoey did not appear. Blue went to the stones where Joey was buried. He could smell Joey, and when he looked, he could see a glimmer of red underneath. Blue meowed.\r\nBut Joey didn’t move.\r\nBlue started back home.\r\nMom was there, calling around for Joey. She was startled by the young cat, weaving urgently around her legs. Blue ran outside, paused, and looked back. Mom looked at him.\r\nTail twitching high, Blue started towards the quarry. Mom followed." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "My mother believed she was possessed and the house was haunted." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "In the '60s and '70s, my mother loved to go ghost hunting. She and her friends would go anywhere someone said was haunted. One night, when she and her friends got back, I noticed they all looked scared, and they told me they brought something back.\r\nTwo weeks passed and nothing happened, then one night I heard my mother scream and I ran downstairs to see what happened. She told me she was sleeping on the couch and heard a woman crying in the basement. She went into the basement to investigate, and the woman started screaming.\r\nShe couldn't tell where the screaming was coming from, and when she looked out the basement window, she could see her reflection and realized she was the woman screaming. She told me when she started running back up the basement steps she could hear the woman laughing.\r\nAfter that happened my mother swore she was possessed by demons. The next day, she took me to an old Baptist cult-like church/marijuana farm in the hills where they handle serpents, speak in tongues, heal people, and exercise demons. As soon as we walked into the church the pastor came over and placed his hand on my mother's forehead.\r\nShe fell to the ground screaming. Then she started rolling around, growling, spitting, and trying to scratch everyone. All the people gathered around, held her down, and started praying and chanting something. I was only 7 years old at the time, and this scared the hell out of me, so I ran outside and waited until they were finished.\r\nWhen she came out, we went back home but it didn't seem to work because things kept happening. She had seances trying to speak to the evil spirits that were in the house and the ones that possessed her. We had the house blessed every few months but nothing seemed to work. This nightmare continued until I was in my teens and we moved out of Pennsylvania to Ohio.\r\nI'm in my 50s now and I remember some things from back then. I remember people standing outside my window even though my bedroom was on the third floor. I remember my bad shaking violently and lifting off the ground. I heard whispers all the time when there was no one home and saw glimpses of faces in the mirror when I walked past.\r\nI had night terrors every night so I don't know if these things really happened or if I was just a terrified child with a wild imagination and a mentally ill mother. I hear about people going ghost hunting all the time and I don't know why anyone would want to take the chance of experiencing anything like this if it's real." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Me and my friend filmed ourselves killing a dog. Now, I think it wants revenge." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "We didn't do it for fame. We did it to help our addictions and others.\r\nNo, not with drugs, but with bloodlust.\r\nHave you ever heard of those programs who give needles to junkies so they don't get diseases from reused ones?\r\nWell, we do the same, spiritually, but with animal murder clips.\r\nI didn't name the dog, but he seemed happy. The shelter was also happy that I bothered to adopt a senior dog.\r\nTruth be told, I adopted the oldest one I could find because it felt… Less fucked up. Like I was doing it a mercy.\r\nI met up with Rob soon after.\r\n“I got the dog. You got the camera?” I asked.\r\n“Yes I do… So, how's the ex-wife?”\r\nMy silence told him all he needed to know.\r\nWe set up the camera in the woods.\r\nRob tied the dog up. I recorded.\r\nRob hacked the dog to death. I felt my soul scream.\r\nBut it was a gold thing. This anguish I partake in, it will make me feel so guilty I won't hurt anyone.\r\nThen I’ll finally be able to actually trust myself with others.\r\nRob buried the dog's corpse.\r\nI started some small talk. Like two old buddies who both want to help each other's urges.\r\n“So, I heard, like, if you bury a corpse, it’ll act like fertilizer.”\r\n“Really?”\r\n“Well, I heard it from some story I read…”\r\n“How about we check back at this spot in a month, see how the plants have grown.” Rob chuckled.\r\nDone deal. Sure enough, we ended up here in a couple of months.\r\n“Trust me, you need to see this!” He exclaimed.\r\nHuh. Growing stems, 2 feet tall already? That dog must have really worked.\r\nSuddenly, The plants rustled, but there was no wind, no wildlife, nothing that caused them to shiver like that.\r\nI thought for a moment it was something stupid like the dog possessing the corpse plants.\r\nSuddenly, they wrapped themselves around Rob’s leg.\r\nGuess I was right after all…\r\nOnly, plants don't have the same muscles as humans, so they could only cling to him.\r\nRob ripped the thrashing weeds out of the soil. It wasn't even a fair fight.\r\n“Yeah, I found her fighting me yesterday. I had to show you.” He grinned as the plant stopped moving.\r\n“Um, the guys at the shelter told me the dog was a male.”\r\n“I know. I meant your wife.”\r\nThe fuck does he mean by that?\r\n“I heard about the issues. How she spread her legs for another man. How she wouldn't stop harassing you. How she treats you like a turd in a fishbowl. I thought I could let her meet the dog.”\r\nEvery fiber of my soul shattered and rotted. I saw her missing poster, but to hear what happened to her…\r\n“I got it on video, in case you want to watch it.”\r\n…I wanted MORE." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Throughout my life, my parents told me not to open the basement door, but I grew curious and disobeyed." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "When I finally turned the rusty doorknob, a putrid odor invaded my nostrils. Descending the creaking steps, I saw something that chilled my blood.\r\nIn the center of the basement was a pale, deformed creature, chained to the wall. Its large, milky eyes fixed on me. I realized with horror that it looked like me, as if it were my distorted reflection.\r\nThe creature began to speak with my voice: “You finally came. They kept you upstairs for so long…” Confused and terrified, I ran back up the stairs.\r\nMy “parents” were waiting for me at the top, their faces twisted into inhuman smiles. “You shouldn’t have gone down, dear,” said my “mother” in a metallic voice. “Now we’ll have to start over.”" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Mr. Howard And His Chocolate Coin" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "\"Now choose!\" he yelled with a grin.\r\nMr. Howard held out two closed hands.\r\nA boy named Rich put a finger to his lips, thinking long and hard.\r\nIt had only been four minutes since Rich entered this unique candy store. The walls were beautifully colored, and candy filled the store with every corner in sight.\r\nHis stomach had never felt so alive!\r\nA hand waved at him from behind the cash register.\r\n\"Heyo!\" a mans voice called out.\r\nThat's how he met Mr.Howard.\r\nNow, with all that excitement, Rich had to choose which hand Mr.Howard hid the golden chocolate coin.\r\nHe bit his lower lip and pointed to the right hand.\r\n\"Ah!\" Mr. Howard chuckled. \"Would you like to change your mind?\"\r\nRich heard Mr. Howard and didn't like the sound of his voice, so he immediately switched his answer.\r\nHe pointed to the left hand.\r\n\"Final answer?\" Mr.Howard grinned.\r\n\"YES!\"\r\n\\Pop!\\\r\nA loud bang vibrated the store, shaking the jars of candy and swish swashing sodas full of sugary liquidy delights.\r\n\"Nope,\" Mr. Howard said with a tone of saddness. He put the chocolate coin in his pocket and slid the gun into the back of his pants.\r\nRich was on the ground like a chalk outline at a crime scene.\r\nBlood poured out of his eye ball, creating a pool of blood around him.\r\nMr. Howard took the boy by his feet and dragged him out to the back.\r\nReturning back with a mop and bucket, Mr.Howard cleaned the mess.\r\nHe walked behind his cash register.\r\nThe doorbell rang again.\r\nA new customer." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Everybody is everybody and we're all the same" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "This was his last shot, so if this is what the director wanted...\r\n\"Hit her again!\"\r\nHe did.\r\n\"Again! With rigor!\"\r\nHe hesitated, but made eyes with the experienced actress whose beaten, bloodied face begged for him to continue.\r\nIt was only a few years ago when his rising star peaked, transitioning from grueling auditions and open casting calls to direct contact with producers, asking his availability. He enjoyed it for a few months before his past resurfaced, displaying a toxic personality of a more immature time, one he prayed would never go public.\r\nBut it did. And it was very public. And now, relegated to... whatever this was... he hit her again.\r\n\"Again!\"\r\n_\r\nShe was used to humiliation and had a high pain tolerance. She couldn't believe she was starring alongside him, personification of persona non grata, and wondered if he recognized her. She was a star in her own right, well, in certain underground circles, well, in really really underground circles.\r\nThey continued. The director threw direction at him again, and while she felt the soft sting of his striking, she couldn't help but giggle every time he paused to check if she was okay.\r\nI've been hit worse by worse, she thought. This is what I'm used to.\r\n_\r\nThe movie was vaulted with no audience to ever experience it, the two stars never shed their past and died in obscurity, and the existence of the film was whispered to urban legend dredges. Until today.\r\nThe film is ages old, barely a functional copy. The grainy resolution adds an atmosphere of authenticity. It starts. No title sequence, no backing soundtrack. A fade into two people, a man and woman standing in a nondescript location, staring deeply into the camera. He's shirtless and sweating. She's fully clothed and devastatingly bruised. They smile but their smiles feel coerced, their eyes telling a truth their mouths can't (or won't) convey.\r\nThen the film ends. Words never spoken, just smiles and smiles forced onto its audience until the screen goes black.\r\nIt was only recently I became obsessed with the history of this film, and even more so its actors. I'll watch the film occasionally to see if I could understand the pain behind their smiles; to see if their smiles actually meant something. Dozens and dozens of watches.\r\nThen, I start noticing those same smiles in public. Different people doing different things but triggering a fear in me when they smile. Their smile hides. They're all the same.\r\nI recuse myself from society once more trying to rid my mind of randoms' awful, haunting smiles, and again watch the film where I've memorized audio and visual grain-glitches; the two people whose smiles are oddly comforting.\r\nIt starts. No title sequence, no backing soundtrack. A fade into two people, and as I wait for their eerie smiles to comfort me, they stand blanked face, eyes softened, and the screen goes black." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Up and Over" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“I’d stay left,” Williams said, hands trembling. “I heard the odds are better on the left.”\r\nI was too focused on not puking my guts out to point out the impossibility of these rumors. Instead I focused on my own trembling hands, bloodied and blistered. I’d pictured this moment hundreds of times since the day we were finally called. Not once did I imagine a perfect, sunny morning.\r\n“Should be any moment now,” Williams said, though I could barely hear him over the noise above us, the whimpering of our friends beside us. “Should be quick.”\r\nI’d never heard of a single person making it. And if you made it, what then? If you were the last one standing on the other side? No. Better to grit your teeth. Make it quick. Painless.\r\nWould I even feel it? Or would I already be gone?\r\n“My wife,” Williams held out a locket. “Did I ever tell you her name? After all this time? I don’t think I ever did. The names of my kids, either. They’re six years old now. Twins. Probably starting to forget what I look like.” He smiled. “I bet they’re at home, eating ice cream. Getting ready for the first day of schoo–”\r\nThe whistle blew.\r\nWilliams vomited all over his locket.\r\nI couldn’t come up with a prayer. A wish.\r\nIt was over.\r\nIt was our time.\r\nWe all climbed up out of the trench, and charged." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "I was sleeping with youtube in my tv and I left autoplay on" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I usually sleep with youtube turned on just because I don't like the sound of complete silence while sleeping. I just feel like at any point in time a loud noise would surprise me and come and get me.\r\nI was watching a few cooking ASMRs, the ones that feature Korean street food cooking, and they were pretty long videos and got me feeling sleepy so I let it play in the background. Just before I completely slept, the video switched to a new one and I realized I left autoplay on but I just let it be cause it was just more cooking videos probably\r\nI woke up suddenly and noticed that there was no noise from the TV. The video was also relatively dark so I was confused. I opened my eyes fully and noticed a dark room. I had just awoken from my nap so everything was still blurry but I got scared when I noticed that the video playing was a livestream of my room. I waved my hands fully to check if it was real and it was. I was shitting my pants but I tried to remain calm because I suddenly noticed a silhouette in the corner that was static but every now and then I'd notice it move slightly\r\nI currently contacted the police and I'm typing this right now because I'm pretending that I'm talking to a friend. I tried calling people but no one was awake. I'm really scared right now but I'm hoping it won't move as long as it looks like I'm with someone. I'll update you guys later when all of this gets resolved" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "The faces in the wallpaper started to smile back at me, and I knew I had to leave" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I moved into the old Victorian house because it was a steal—great location, spacious rooms, and a rent I could actually afford. The landlord warned me that it was a fixer-upper, and the peeling wallpaper in the bedroom was a testament to that. It was a faded floral print, the kind that might have been trendy decades ago, with intricate swirls and patterns that seemed to dance in the dim light.\r\nThe first night, I barely slept. I kept feeling like I was being watched. I chalked it up to new house jitters, the kind of anxiety that comes with unfamiliar surroundings. But the feeling didn’t go away. Every time I stepped into the bedroom, I felt a chill run down my spine, like I wasn’t alone.\r\nA few days in, I started noticing them—faces hidden in the wallpaper’s patterns. They were subtle at first, like optical illusions, but the longer I stared, the clearer they became. Distorted, grotesque faces with hollow eyes and wide, unsettling grins. I told myself it was just my imagination playing tricks on me, but no matter how much I tried to ignore them, they were always there.\r\nOne night, after a particularly long day at work, I was lying in bed when I noticed something strange. The faces seemed to shift slightly, their expressions changing. It was subtle, but the grins seemed wider, the eyes more intense. I got up to take a closer look, and that’s when I saw it—a faint twitch at the corner of one of the mouths.\r\nI stumbled back, my heart racing. I tried to rip the wallpaper off the wall, but it wouldn’t budge. It was like the paper had fused with the wall itself. I scrubbed at it, desperate to get rid of those faces, but the harder I tried, the more they seemed to mock me. They were everywhere, watching, smiling, their expressions growing more sinister each night.\r\nThe breaking point came when I woke up to find one of the faces had left the wall entirely. It was hovering inches from my face, smiling that same twisted smile. I bolted out of the house that night, leaving everything behind. I haven’t been back since, but sometimes, in the quiet moments before sleep, I swear I can still see those faces in the shadows, smiling back at me." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Kids are going missing in my town, and my mother is the one responsible." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Summer Asher, Jonas Matthews, and Freddie McIntire disappeared eight years ago.\r\nAnd every Friday, I was forced to remember three kids who were not dead.\r\nWhile everyone else was in the school auditorium, I was in the bathroom, my forehead against cool porcelain, slimy red buds spluttering from my mouth.\r\nSlipping my fingers through my lips, I reached down my throat to tug at entangled thorns and petals.\r\nI unbuttoned my shirt, dragging my nails down my spine.\r\nTwisting around, I delved into my flesh, picking at a long, growing vine wrapped around the jagged bone.\r\nI tugged at it, unravelling the thing tightening its hold.\r\nBut it grew back, thicker and more tangled, rewriting itself into my bones.\r\nHe was so fucking stubborn.\r\nWhen I got home, Mom was sitting in the remains of our kitchen.\r\nI slumped into a blackened chair, raising my glass to the boy tangled in brick and mortar. Jonas Matthews was still alive, but I wished he weren’t. Jonas’s smile was wide and skeletal, his eyes empty, and yet challenging mine.\r\nHis existence was cruel, bound to our walls, bound to me, his blood running through my veins, decaying bones glued to the mortar. Summer and Freddie succumbed to their fate.\r\nBut Jonas refused to die, refused to let me live.\r\nAnd throughout the years, his pain had turned into unbridled insanity, an obsession with staying alive.\r\nHe was a stubborn bastard, the two of us hopelessly, tragically tangled together.\r\nHe was rooted inside me.\r\nWhen I tried to tear him out, he only grew back thicker, tightening his hold.\r\nIgnoring Mom, I pulled a box cutter from my pocket.\r\nWhen I was eight years old, I accidentally set our house on fire.\r\nThere was nothing left of me, nothing for my mother to hold.\r\nMom picked through the wreckage of our house and found a single red rose.\r\nAnd from that rose, drenched in Jonas’s blood, I was reborn.\r\n“Daniel!”\r\nMom knew what I was going to do.\r\nBut I was already dragging the blade across my throat.\r\nI didn’t have blood anymore, instead rose petals dripping down my skin and choking me, pouring from my lips.\r\nIn the corner of my eye, Jonas Matthews dropped from his bindings, pulling vines from his wrists and ankles.\r\nHe tried to save the others.\r\nSummer, who's bones made up our chairs. Freddie, who's blood ran from our faucet. But his heart had been carved out, once sitting in the palm of Mom's hand where I had bloomed from.\r\nJonas's body was more rose than human. He tried to run, tried to escape, but his blood was still trapped, still bound to our walls.\r\nI was crumbling apart, no longer skin and bone.\r\nMy flesh became roots, my blood blossoming down my mother's arms.\r\nEven dying in Mom’s lap, I knew the truth.\r\nHer eyes were so dark, so polluted, desperate to bring me back.\r\nAgain.\r\nAnd again.\r\nAnd again.\r\nShe wouldn’t let go of my roots.\r\nAnd the boy wrapped around them would never be free." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "I was given a chance to go back and save my dad from being murdered" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "For me, life was an endless loop of drugs and pain. It all started when my father was killed in front of me and my little sister. He was shot in our bedroom by some faceless figure that seemed to emerge from the darkness.\r\nAfter it happened my mother fell apart, killing herself two years later. I wasn’t sure who I hated more, my mother for abandoning us or the person who killed my father.\r\nMy sister never talks about it. She completely shut down. We lost contact a few years ago, and the last time I saw her, it was to identify her body. The coroner's report said it was an overdose, but I knew it was more than that.\r\nI had moved around a lot due to my drug habit. Money was always tight so the last place I found myself in was a dump.\r\nThe whole place was damp and mouldy, nothing worked, and there was a strange tunnel in the closet.\r\nAt first, I thought the tunnel went into the apartment next door. As I crawled through it I was perplexed as it kept on going. Eventually, it came to an end and I found myself in another closet\r\nWhen I stepped out of the closet, I was hit with a familiar smell, something from my childhood. As I looked around the room I soon realized I was in my old bedroom, the one I shared with my sister.\r\nI crept out of the bedroom and quietly made my way around the house. I went downstairs, and there was my father's chair with his morning paper sitting beside it. I walked over and looked at the date. It was the day before my tenth birthday and the night my father was murdered.\r\nI found myself back in my apartment. It didn't make sense. But then I thought maybe it's a chance to go back and change everything. I knew what I had to do, I had to go back and kill the man before he killed my father.\r\nThat night, armed with a gun, I journeyed into the tunnel. As I came out the other end I heard shouting and my sister crying. When I jumped from the closet, I found my dad beating my sister as my younger self sat on his bed, covering his ears.\r\nMy dad's face was a mixture of fear, shock and anger as I screamed at him to stop hitting her. He came charging at me, and without thinking, I shot him, and he fell to the floor.\r\nI could hear my mother screaming as I jumped back into the closet and down the tunnel. When I made it back to my apartment it didn’t take long for the realization to hit that it was me who murdered my dad all those years ago." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Sundown and All" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "About seven hours into their fifteen hour drive Lee couldn’t take it anymore and pulled over to buy a pack of cigarettes. Annie knew why they were pulling over and decided that she’d let it slide. Though she hated the habit, the drive through the desert turned out to be far more punishing than she’d anticipated, and this trip was, after all, her idea. If Lee needed a smoke, he could have one.\r\nThey would’ve had to stop for gas anyway, it turned out, because the clerk said there wasn’t any gas or anything at all really for another 300 miles. Except, he noted, a motel twenty miles away, which had no gas and only a few rooms of questionable quality.\r\n“That said,” the man continued, dusting off a pack of cigarettes, “you may want to stay there tonight. Sundown and all.”\r\n“We’re planning on driving through the night actually,” Annie said, yawning. “Do you happen to have any coffee?”\r\n“Sorry, ma’am, no coffee. Motel might. I can’t say I recommend driving through the night though. People tend to get lost out here at night.”\r\nLee smirked. “Lost? It’s just the one road.”\r\n“Lost. Disappear. Who knows. I just can’t recommend it. But you two better get going either way. I’ll be closing up soon. Sundown and all.”\r\nLeaving the station, Annie saw the first car she’d seen in hours pull in behind them, a black SUV with tinted windows. They drove off and as the SUV and station shrunk in the distance, she saw a sharp pale hand reach out the window, beckoning the gas station clerk, who lumbered slowly, dreamily, obediently to the car.\r\nLee’s cigarette burned bright against the desert night. Cacti and rocks and scrambling lizards flew by at over 100 miles an hour, blurring indistinctly into shape and color. At such speeds it was easy to lose track of the world, what you passed and what you left behind.\r\nWhen was it they passed that motel?\r\nLee was being awfully quiet, which wasn’t unusual but tonight betrayed a nervousness, the cause of which he preferred to keep hidden from Annie.\r\nLee had intended to stop at the motel. But when the time came, he drove right past it. Even though he told his arms to turn the steering wheel left, he drove straight on. Now how does something like that happen?\r\nTruth was, Lee couldn’t stop now if he wanted to. Or if the car did stop, it wouldn’t be because he did it. Probably he couldn’t even tell Annie anything at all. All he could do was smoke and keep driving.\r\nAnnie yawned and chalked up Lee’s silence to mere exhaustion. She put the radio on but all the stations were static. Up ahead was desert. On all sides was desert. And now behind them, headlights, from a black SUV.\r\nAnd Annie turned to Lee and said, “Hey, now why are you slowing down?”" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "I make Mukbang videos on YouTube and I’ve ran into a problem." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Sorry I’m not my usual upbeat-self I am in my videos, but something’s been getting me down that I need to get off my chest.\r\nFor those who don’t know, I’m pretty big in the YouTube and Twitch scene - specifically my mukbang content. It started off simple, I’d do a ‘story time’ whilst eating the occasional takeout foot (you know, as a treat).\r\nFor some reason, this BLEW up. My subscribers jumped from a measly 6k to over 140k in 3 months! All for my eating content! Sitting at a camera and eating AND I was getting fans, views and clout for it? Sign me up.\r\nUnfortunately my subscriber count wasn’t the only thing that rose. In those 3 months I jumped from 165lbs (75kg) to about 220 (98kg). I wasn’t looking my best that’s for sure - but my bank balance for sure was! (Should you set aside the amount I was donating to Uber Eats).\r\nI really started feeling like I was a cut above the rest.\r\nAs my subscribers and viewers grew, so did their demands of the foods I had to eat. 8 large dominoes pizzas. 25 pints of ice cream. 250 packs of flaming hot ramen noodles.\r\nI had to hand it to them, they were creative.\r\nMy channel grew all the way to 800k subscribers. So close to that glorious 1 million mark. What we ALL strive for.\r\nUnfortunately, my doctor also decided to intervene at this point.\r\n‘If you keep eating like this you’re gonna kill yourself, Jeff.’\r\nDoesn’t he know that my fans NEED to see me eat? That I need them to see me.\r\nAnyway, he trialed this new programme. If you hit a certain ‘red-level threat’ weight - where your life is in danger basically (490lbs or 222kg for me) - you get blacklisted from ALL takeout places, delivery apps and anywhere supplying the fuel of my gluttonous habits.\r\nWhat the fuck was I meant to do now?\r\nHaving the 1 million subscribers mark at arms length and this happens?\r\nNo way.\r\nIf I couldn’t buy the obnoxiously large portions of slop I needed to eat and satisfy my viewers - then I’d just have to produce it myself. So I took matters into my own hands.\r\nActually, I took OFF my own hand.\r\nWell, a few fingers to start. And ate them. I deep-fried them and dipped them in ranch. Tasted good. Sure, it hurt like a bitch when my butchers knife cut through them at first - but what didn’t hurt? The 5.8 million views that video got.\r\nSo here I am.\r\nJust last night I amputated my legs. I nearly died doing it mind, but at least I have content for tomorrow.\r\nI’m sat here typing this with one hand at the moment. My only hand.\r\nMy only worry now is what I’ll post next week.\r\nActually.\r\nWould anybody be interested in doing a meet and greet at my place? But you have to come alone…" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "It’s been two hours. I finally got the courage to grab my phone and write this." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I don’t know if you’ve ever felt it. People hear the word “dread,” but they don’t really understand it. When they think of dread, they imagine common fear—the daily chill running through your body. It feels like white. It feels like white because after it ends, you feel like laughing. Danger avoided. Now I can go back to my life.\r\nBut dread is black. Dread is the feeling that things will never return to normal. It’s the feeling of death—the certainty of impending doom. Your body doesn’t shiver, your mind doesn’t grasp it, but your body does. The heart doesn’t pound, and there’s no shiver down the spine. There’s only the realization that there’s nothing you can do. It’s like a deer in the headlights, unable to comprehend its fate. But once the car hits, the body is mangled.\r\nThen, finally, comes the realization. Your mind wakes up only after your body has screamed long enough to drag you back to reality. You see your future and realize there is no future.\r\nMy bedroom door is open, but it’s only black. No light bounces back. It throbs and winces like a dying animal, its body struggling to pump blood. But this blackness isn’t dying. It’s growing. When I looked at it, it moved. When I gasped, it made a wet noise. It’s alive.\r\nI’m lying on my bed writing this. My phone’s light is dim enough for the thing not to move. I know I won't see the light coming from my window, no smell of coffee ready to drink in the morning. What will happen when the car finally hits?" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "I work in the paparazzi and this creep’s been following me." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "You see, it’s all about getting the right shot.\r\nYou catch that self-proclaimed social media ‘influencer’ chowing down on a McDonald’s whilst simultaneously promoting her new diet? Money. Snap a shot of that well known Hollywood actor having an affair with a questionably-aged co-star? Cha-ching. You come across a drunk athlete stumbling out of a bar with sick staining his designer shirt? Dollar bills, baby.\r\nBut still, I fucking love this shit. I love being a paparazzo. Call me a parasite, a leech, a blood-sucking scumbag - I’d say how much do you make a year? $30,000? Yeah, I thought so.\r\nAnyway I was about to go to work, when I got a tip that some actor from ‘Game of Thrones’ was having coffee nearby. Fuck it, low-grade, but I might be able to wind him up into giving me a reaction.\r\nThen I noticed him.\r\nSome creep following me in his car. I took a left, he followed me. I took a right, he followed me. I purposely went back on myself, he followed me. I pulled over, he pulled over.\r\nI’m gonna confront this asshole, I thought.\r\nI marched up to his window and his eyes followed me the whole way. But when I got to window, I saw that his eyes were his only feature.\r\nAnd I mean, his only feature.\r\nNo mouth. No nose. No hair. No eyebrows. Pale white skin. Just two, soulless black eyes staring into mine. His body was long and skinny, bony even. And if he stood up I’d imagined he’d be about 7-feet tall.\r\nI jumped back and ran back to my own car. Fuck this, I’m going home.\r\nThat was 4 months ago.\r\n4 months, 2 weeks and 5 days.\r\nAnd he’s been stood outside my house ever since I got back here. Through day and night, he’s there. Watching me through my window. I make eye contact, and all he will do is lift up his pale white hand with his elongated fingers and dirty 2-inch long nails - and wave. A mocking wave.\r\nAn ‘I can see you’ wave.\r\nI called the cops but they refuse to do anything. He’s not on the property, shit, they haven’t even come to investigate.\r\nI’ve been ordering in all my food and the delivery drivers act like they don’t see him. I’m running out of money now. I can’t really afford these deliveries anymore, but I don’t want to go out. I don’t know what he’ll do to me.\r\nSo here I am writing this. Writing this, and getting my type-26 revolver loaded with bullets.\r\nLoaded and positioned in my mouth. Or should I position it against my temple?\r\nYou see, it’s all about getting the right shot." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "Someone has total control over your mind and body, and no one can hear you scream" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Everyone assumes you’re still you. Sure you’re a little strange these days, but maybe that’s just because you dropped out of grad school. You never know with dropouts, either a genius or a psycho. Years have passed and you can’t even control your blinking or breathing. And the worst part is, whatever is controlling you can make you feel pain. Unimaginable pain. You’ve tried to go to the er, but this technology is so high tech, the staff stare at you blankly and whisper about putting you in permanent psychiatric care. In 2024, Doctors still have no idea this is possible. You’re alone- it took you years to realize that.\r\nYou’ve gone on for years hiding this. Trying not to scream for help, trying not to scream in pain, trying to find a way to live on.\r\nYou can’t call the police. They have you in the system as crazy. Mentally ill. Lying about this happening to you. All those times you reached out for help has only hurt you. You must continue on alone. No help is coming. No one knows you are not yourself. And no one ever will.\r\nYou wake up one morning, against your will. You try to go back to sleep, but your eyes are forced open. On top of that, you are unable to calm down. Whatever this is can make you feel anything. Covid, a hyperactive mental state, nausea-even chills and goosebumps. They can make you feel like you’re being electrocuted or make your whole body itch like you’re covered in bugs. Whoever is doing this is powerful. The power of god, you think. How is this possible, you wonder? What kind of person is doing this to me? What did I do to deserve this?\r\nSo, you wake up one morning, forcibly. You think, well, just another day. You get dressed, grab your wallet, and walk, robotically, to the door, unable to stop yourself. You try to turn back, but the thing hurts you for disobeying. It can talk to you in your head. “Dont” it warns in a whisper. You try to overcome the forced movements, but you feel it regain control over you and force your legs to keep walking. Where the fuck am I going, you wonder. It hears your thoughts too. You find yourself traveling to the airport. Terrified, you wonder what will happen when you get there. Maybe I can scream for help there, you think. It laughs in your head. It’s enjoying this. You start to cry, but it stops you from doing that too. You begin to try to pray to god. Any god. Help me. Please help me. Can god hear you? Probably not.\r\nYou wake up. It’s morning. Just a bad dream! You feel parched, so you reach for your water. To your horror, you feel something controlling your hand, and forcing you to reach for Lysol instead. Suddenly you realize it wasn’t a dream. It’s trying to kill you now." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "My sister and her roommates are a little too obsessed with plants." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Noah was my sister's roommate.\r\nHis smile was charming, brown curls falling over friendly eyes.\r\nThe sweater he was wearing, however, was discolored and crumpled.\r\nHe gestured inside. “Rosie’s kinda tied up at the moment, but I can get you a drink!” He strode down the hall, and I took a moment to take in Rosie’s place.\r\nThere were flowers everywhere—hanging from the ceiling, potted plants overgrown in every window. Noah seemed to be a plant boy, which explained Rosie’s infatuation.\r\nThere was a blonde in the living room, kneeling by the window, her head tipped back, bathing in the afternoon sunlight.\r\nRosie had mentioned another girl.\r\nTessa.\r\nI followed Noah out into a beautiful greenhouse filled with every flower I could think of.\r\nNoah grabbed a hose and watered each of them with perfect precision, kneeling over them like they were his children. He didn't care about the dirt, standing barefoot, tending to each stem. When he was finished, he picked up the hose and sprayed himself, gulping water from the nozzle.\r\nI noticed the crown of daisies entangled in his curls. No wonder Rosie was obsessed.\r\nI asked for a bathroom, and when he directed me with his finger, I headed down the hallway. I found myself pushing through tangled vines and flowers physically blocking the door.\r\nI glimpsed a pink flower starting to bloom, contorting and expanding before it opened up. I was already backing away when a human face—a familiar face—sprouted through the writhing petals. Rosie. I saw her bulging stomach first, greedy vines wrapped around it. But my sister was dead.\r\nHer lips were gray, writhing vines of green spiderwebbing across her face. Yet the thing in her stomach was moving, bulging, stretching her skin.\r\nShe wasn't the only one. There was a guy too, his body mutilated, hollowed out and filled with plants. I was paralyzed when something sharp entered the back of my head.\r\nIt was moving around. I could feel it forcing its way through my skull.\r\n“I'm glad you're here.”\r\nNoah’s voice came from behind me as a second vine protruded through my skull. When he stepped in front of me, his right eye contorted and bloomed, a bright pink flower taking its place.\r\nI could see this thing coming alive, not just in around us, in rustling leaves like they were laughing.\r\nNoah’s skin was moving, tiny flowers blooming from his spine, entangled and rooted in the bone.\r\nThe vines inside my head squeezed tighter, and like it was a hive mind, the thing wrapped around his head chittered, like it was delighted.\r\nThere was a brief moment when his hands came up, clawing at the greenery sprouting from his skull, before they fell limp. When the thing inside my head reached my brain, twisting and entangling itself around my skull, my thoughts grew foggy, my lips breaking out into a grin I couldn't control.\r\nNoah mirrored my smile, blood-stained petals slipping from his mouth.\r\n“Third time’s a charm.\"" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "I logged into the wrong zoom meeting and now they’re stalking me." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "They’re somewhere outside right now, watching me. In case they get me, I just want to leave a record somewhere. Anonymously. I can’t let my family get involved.\r\nIt all started when I got a traffic ticket. Some cop trying to meet his quota by saying I rolled through a stop sign. I couldn’t risk the penalty points and getting my license suspended, so I had to dispute it. For convenience I asked to do my hearing remotely, and the court mailed me the appearance notice with a zoom link.\r\nTwo weeks ago, at 9AM sharp, I typed in the link for the meeting. It seemed normal. There was a person in black robes sitting in front of the camera looking very serious, and four people in suits logged into the other windows. The only odd thing was that they were all streaming from dark rooms. Then it started.\r\n“Name and role,” the Judge rasped.\r\n“Mr. Khalid, the Final Witness.”\r\n“Ms. Delgado representing the Incorruptible Excerebration.”\r\n“Mr. Reese representing the Honored Supplicants.”\r\n“Ms. Clarke on behalf of Those Who Scud and Puer.”\r\n“C-carl, I-I got a traffic ticket?” I stuttered. They silently stared with cold, blank eyes, “I stopped at the stop sign, I really did, the officer was just at a bad angle.” I was immediately booted out of the meeting. Confused, I checked and realized I had typed in the wrong zoom link.\r\nSoon after, my phone rang. An unknown number. I answered, hoping it was the court following up on the hearing I missed. Instead, an angry voice began shouting at me, “Where did you get that link? Did you record anything?” I panicked and hung up. Then I blocked the number. It didn’t make a difference. They keep calling from new numbers.\r\nI’ve gotten over a hundred calls, and they always leave voicemails. Each time a soothing monotone slowly describes their grotesque plans: carefully boiling me so that I’m still alive when my skin sloughs off; dressing me in my own leathered skin; removing my brain stem; and, then entombing my body to ensure I remain conscious in death for eternity.\r\nThis week they started knocking. Everywhere. Doors, windows, and walls. Always at night, right when I’m about to fall asleep. Each time they leave a flyer showing their ritual in graphic detail. They know where I live. I tried reporting them to the police, and was told there was nothing they could do. An hour later I got another voicemail, a recording of my 911 call. There’s nothing I can do. But I wish I understood why, why are they just tormenting me? They could kidnap or kill me in my sleep if they wanted.\r\nThe doorbell just rang. There’s a car parked in front of my condo. A black SUV with the rear door open. Waiting.\r\nThey want me to come out, to willingly agree to their ritual, and I no longer have a choice. They left another picture, this time of my family." } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "In 2019, my sister and her classmates were lost in a plane crash. 5 years later, there's something wrong with my class." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Rowan Asher was one of the first affected.\r\nIf this was anyone else, we might not have noticed.\r\nHowever, this was Rowan Asher—both the class clown and the varsity captain, a shaggy-haired junior who didn’t know the meaning of personal space.\r\nHis surprisingly warm attitude toward everyone made him impossible to ignore.\r\nSo, when Rowan started falling asleep in class, then passing out while standing in the hallway—his condition started to raise eyebrows. When Noah Oliver collapsed in the lunch hall, followed by Ben Simons and Charlie Lily, it became obvious that this thing wasn't just affecting guys. It was also contagious.\r\nBut this thing didn't kill.\r\nWhen I passed out halfway through chem, four became five.\r\nOne second, I was writing notes; the next, I was facedown on my desk in a growing puddle of drool. I wasn't the only one. Five sleeping students, and one horrified looking teacher. It felt like something was inside me, leeching into my brain, seeping into my blood, its spidery, vine-like tendrils entangling through my bones. Eventually, the school realized what we all had in common.\r\nIn 2019, Rowan lost his brother on a doomed flight. Ben and Charlie too.\r\nI lost my sister.\r\nRowan’s condition got worse. He became agitated and confused, losing himself. There was a certain emptiness in his eyes that I pretended not to see in my own.\r\nWhen Rowan slaughtered and ate his little sister, I stopped pretending there wasn’t something very wrong with us.\r\nI stopped pretending I wasn’t spending every waking moment thinking about eating until I was gorging myself.\r\nWhen the town sirens went off, signaling an emergency, I knew it had to be Ben and Charlie—they couldn’t hold it back any longer.\r\nI tried eating raw bacon to stifle that gnawing, feral hunger that was warping my body and mind. But it wasn’t enough.\r\nIt didn’t have the right consistency, the right taste. I remember dancing between reality and dream, half aware of flickering flames burning my cheeks.\r\nIn front of me, six shadows huddled around a fire. Under an unearthly moon, I glimpsed their faces—humans turned animals, with feral smiles and soulless eyes carved and contorted.\r\nThey wore tattered rags, remnants of their old clothes still adorned in our school colors, crowned with pearly white bones entangled with flowers.\r\nThey were beautiful and grotesque, painted old and new scarlet.\r\n“It’s okay, Claire.”\r\nMy sister’s voice was a low murmur in my head as I cut open our father and scooped out his entrails, stuffing them into my mouth, chewing and swallowing, chewing and swallowing, chewing and swallowing—but I wasn’t getting full.\r\nMy sister, however, was.\r\nI could sense her relishing the flesh, savoring it on her—or our—tongue.\r\nI could hear her snarls for more, feel her growing fuller and fuller, puppeteering me on her dancing strings, until she stopped, and my body went limp.\r\nI dropped to the ground, my mouth still full of our father.\r\n“We’re just hungry.”" } ]
[ { "role": "user", "content": "I have a mouth you cannot see and it chews on me wanting to be free." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "It’s a roiling rock in my stomach. A constantly dissatisfied, ravenous hole. No matter how much of me it consumes, there’s always something else to lose.\r\nWe went on a camping trip to see a total solar eclipse. Tom and Shannon picked a great location: a remote, rocky alcove in the forest. It was perfect. Jonathan and I shared a beautiful walk through a midnight world all our own. Then it came. A shinning beacon that cut across the sky; a tear falling from the stars. We watched it impact nearby and hiked out to find it. We were brimming with excitement and naïve dreams of fame or fortune, and then… I don’t remember exactly what happened next, just waking up in my tent with Jonathan the following morning. And being hungry. So hungry that I had to choke down vomit. That I could barely stand. I greedily stuffed my face with all the supplies we had left. Everything. I guzzled down the ketchup. I felt so guilty, but I couldn’t stop myself.\r\nAs my stomach got fuller and fuller I felt it. Another pair of jaws moving, chewing, swallowing. A mouth that was always craving more and more. I had eaten all of their breakfasts, lunches, and snacks, and was surrounded by three pairs of angry, frustrated eyes. My stomach was painfully bloated, straining against my belt buckle. But the mouth sensed more food. I won’t allow myself to dwell on what happened next. Afterwards, I drove home alone.\r\nI vowed to starve, to have that gruesome feast be my last, and used every ounce of willpower to follow through. I couldn’t take the easy way out, I had to know that thing died inside me. After three days I could feel it starving. Its frustration and hunger boiled in my blood and I was elated. Then I felt a nibble and realized, it’s always surrounded by meat. Tiny little bites worked their way around my abdomen. A threat. Then it spoke. Though my stomach rumbled with its voice, the words were impossible to make out. Still, I knew what it wanted.\r\nI tried to refuse, but I broke. If I don’t comply, I suffer constant pain and nausea. It gnaws on my organs, slithers through my intestines, and consumes whatever part of me isn’t vital. The more of me that vanishes down its impossible throat the clearer its voice becomes. Now it thunders in my head, promising release if I give it a new home. So, I’ve told it all about you. Do you remember all the little ways you’d bully and pester me? I don’t usually hold grudges, but I had to choose someone, and you’re at the top of my list.\r\nStill, the mouth inside me is shy. That’s why I sent you this message. It wanted me to give it an introduction to its new nest. Its already hiding just out of sight. It wants you to know what’s coming, before taking its first bite." } ]

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