I was alone in the library when I heard the first scream. I had snuck off to take my own tour of the museum. Don’t get me wrong, the teachers were doing great--it was the students who were driving me insane. Sure, field trips and museum tours were probably lame for a senior in high school, but I was loving it. The museum made me feel like I was in Europe, and since I’d been dreaming to get out of Oklahoma my entire life, I was soaking it up. I had left my group and made my way to the ancient library when it all started. I was browsing through the shelves and admiring the heavy leather texts when I heard the sound that made everything go cold. Quietly but quickly, I made my way out of the library and toward the cafeteria. There hadn’t been any more screams. Is that a good or bad sign? I forced myself to go down the stairwell instead of running away. Everything in my body wanted to sprint the opposite way, but something in my gut was telling me to figure this out. Again, good or bad sign? I had to see where the scream came from. It wasn’t a playful scream like you’d be unsurprised to hear from high school students having a day away from classrooms. It was a scream of pain that slipped into a guttural cry by the end. I’d never heard anything like it, but I imagined it’s what dying animals sounded like. When I found the cafeteria, everything was quiet. Maybe the scream hadn’t come from here? Or maybe I’d imagined it? Maybe it *was* a dying animal- something had probably made its way into the museum from the outside and gotten itself trapped. I almost convinced myself, but that same gut feeling from before told me I needed to stay and watch this unfold. That’s when I understood the danger. There was no screaming, but it was completely silent. When I had walked past the cafeteria on my way to the library, I’d heard the usual sounds of students and friend groups as they ate and hung out during the lunch break. Now there was nothing. I made myself control my breathing as I felt my stomach making its way into my throat. I wanted to throw up, something was terribly wrong, but I couldn’t move from this spot. I had pressed myself against the wall and now I slowly moved to look around the corner into the cafeteria. The adrenaline pulsing through me got stronger and I felt like my entire body was moving with it. I moved until I had the cafeteria in full view. At first, it looked empty, but then I realized that all the students were in the wrong places--under the tables. Except for two. Two students were slowly walking down the center aisle of the room. They seemed...off. They were walking too slow, too calculated. There was something else too, but I couldn’t place it. I looked at the students under the table closest to me. One of them was staring at the two walking students, but the other was looking at me with wide, fearful eyes. I think she was shaking her head at me. *Was this a horror movie?* Suddenly, noise and movement erupted from the center of the room. One of the walking students had flipped a table with incredible ease. The other reached out and grabbed one of the hiding students and lifted him off the floor. Then, as easily as you’d move a bite of food to your mouth to eat it, he brought the student closer. And ripped his throat open. Now it was color’s turn to erupt. Bright red flashed almost instantaneously over the boy’s body. Everything moved in slow motion as I watched the liquid flow over his clothes and onto the floor. I looked up at his face. In the slowest moments in time, it changed from confused and panicked to completely empty. The blood stopped flowing from his throat and his body drooped, only held up by the arm of the attacker. Without so much as a breath, the attacker dropped the boy and his body hit the floor with a thud. Somehow, no one was screaming. The students under the tables weren’t moving. They were staring at the lifeless body of their classmate as it lay in the puddle of blood on the linoleum. I think we were all waiting for what was going to happen next, even though there’s no way any of us saw it coming. The two walking students hadn’t moved since the attack. The one who had flipped the table was standing cooly and looking around, except his eyes didn’t really seem like they were seeing anything. The other student was staring down at the pool of blood on the floor, his eyes also slightly out of focus. There was something extremely off about them, and I was clenching my jaw in an attempt to get my brain to work faster. I know I had noticed something, I just needed to make it clear. Then three things happened in the same instant. The lifeless body on the floor twitched. The attacker’s eyes came sharply into focus. And I realized a piece of what was happening.


This is what she wants more than anything in the world. I just can’t give it to her. God, what’s wrong with me? I felt like I could, at the start of our relationship I was smitten. I tried to be everything she wanted. She opened up to me so much back then, and…yeah, I felt like I could get there, too. But I can’t, I know I can’t She’s been asking about it a lot lately. I have to be honest with her. It will break her. It’s time to let her know. She’s been in a good mood today but this conversation will change everything. She was cleaning up in the bathroom when I knocked on the door frame and asked if we could talk “Yeah, just give me a minute, cleaning up in here a bit” she said as she was gathering up wet towels. She was wearing cleaning gloves as she walked past and handed me the load that I took instinctively. The pile was heavy. I looked down at it. There was an axe wrapped up in there. The towels were blood soaked. I dropped them and ran to the bath. Turning on the lights, I saw him immediately. He was in the tub, partially decapitated. Dead. I fingered the broken razor blade before I realized what I was doing and pulled back, dropping it into the crimson red water. The water that had already gone cold. “LILLY, what did you do?” I cried out She was standing right behind me “Surprise” she yelled. She was beaming. “Lily, no, God, what have you done?” “I knew you were having trouble with it. You’ve been distant lately. I thought you might back down” She responded “You know how bad I wanted this, for us” Fuck. “Lily, no. I came here to tell you that I couldn’t do it, that I didn’t want this” I said as I stared down at the blood on my hands and shirt “I know you didn’t” She smiled as she spoke “so I took matters into my own hands” “We have to tell someone” I said “I’m sorry…I…I..just can’t do this and we have to be honest about it” She looked at me quizzically. She was pristine. No blood on her anywhere. “Well” she said “I mean, I guess we could tell someone. But it looks you’re the one covered in blood, and I think you touched the razor blades and the axe” She bit her bottom lip “It’s not a good look for you” I started to feel woozy. She was right. And this was blackmail. She took her phone out of her pocket and dialed 9-1 and then she held it up to me and asked “Should I call? Should I call and cry? Should I tell them that I came home to this” She wailed, crying and faking a scream. She turned off the phone and laughed.


Eighth Grade was a really tough time for me. One of the reasons was during this time my parents split apart and by the time I was fourteen I had to choose who I wanted to live with. I chose my mother and she ended up moving to Arizona and that meant Chicago was no more and I had to find another school. All the schools that we looked at were already in the middle of the school year and my mom wanted me to do an online school but fortunately I was able to find one. I took about a week to prepare myself for this new school even though I knew I wasn't going to be able to fit in. Eventually the time came around to go to my new school. I remember the first day being actually quite easy. I realized that I wasn't the only student on his first day. This kid named Gregory was also on his first day. I quickly befriended him and we helped each other find our classes and since he was really good at science and I wasn't he would help me out with homework too. But unfortunately, there was something really wrong about him. Everyday, it didn't matter where he was, he would get bullied to death. Kids all over the school were shouting hurtful words and terrible things at him. Everyday kids would call him, freak, loser, the reason his parents divorced. He said it didn't let it get to him but the demons were building up inside him. Gregory was a really smart kid but his one weakness was his feelings. He said his parents divorced about a month before school started and he decided to live with his dad who is known for having gambling and alcohol addictions. His mother left his dad and ended up taking her own life after realizing she was living like hell. His parents were both sick and honestly I couldn't believe he was able to keep up with both of them. A Lot of the kids at our school said he was adopted but I knew not to believe them since it was another tease. Soon his head was not in the right place after about a month of being bullied. One day after our history class, we were sitting outside in a secret place we shared when he told me something that made me question if he was still himself. “I can't hold on anymore,” Gregory told me, “my eyes are filled with smoke, I feel like I can't breathe no more. I think I might give up.” After the day he told me that, he had only gotten worse. His grades began to slip and he started lashing out on himself. He would cut his hands open and try to turn the mental pain into physical pain. I kept saying to myself “he’ll be fine, he can make it through this” but I knew he might not. It hurt like a blade in my chest that I couldn't help him and I really tried to give him all the advice I could give, but he still had demons inside him. Later on, he started not talking to me at school. I would wait for him in our secret lunch spot but he never came. The only time I got to see him was when I would sit right next to him in a few of my classes. After more and more weeks of him being like this, I think he may have snapped. I checked his notebook one day and I found a list of names. The names were people I knew and they were also people who bullied and picked on him. I spotted a total of 5 names written on the pages. The names were Johnny, who is one of the most annoying kids in the school so I wasn't surprised. Then I saw Tanner and Adam, who are also people who tease him a little bit but I'm sure they don't mean anything bad. The one name that scared me was the name Andrew. To make it worse the name was crossed out in red pen. I've been around the school and I know who everyone is and I can guarantee there is no Andrew in this school. I thought for a minute on who could ruin his life outside of school. Gregory was a really sheltered kid so that narrowed it down to one answer, his dad. The more I thought, the more it seemed to be true. His dad is the reason his mother is dead and his dad is also a sinner, it all lined up. I assumed the worst and began to think this was a death note, he’s keeping track of his targets. I kept thinking and thinking but then I heard something coming from outside. Our teacher stopped to go look outside the window and a few kids followed her. I put Gregory's notebook back and ran to see what the noise was. I looked out the window and I couldn't believe what I was staring at. I felt like I couldn't move and couldn't breathe and I couldn't look away. There was blood on the ground, shaped in a way where I couldn't read unless I got closer. Then I saw Gregory, he was standing right next to the blood with a rainbow bloody knife in his hand. I saw people coming out of their classes looking at Gregory as he stood above the blood. He had a smile on his face and blood spots on his shirt. “Don't come close to me.” Gregory said giggling. Gregory killed 3 kids and a father that day, and there was no coming back from it. When Gregory was there on that day, he never did anything when the police came and took him away, he just watched us. He was taken to a mental hospital and when he was asked why he did it he simply replied, “for the fun” and wouldn't say anything else. The school was never the same. It changed in a small way by getting rid of bullies in our school but some people still bully. Gregory became a name feared by everyone who ever went to that school. Even new staff are warned about Gregory. Things only got worse when people found out Gregory escaped that mental hospital. People feared him, people still poked fun at him, and some even adored him and what he did. I'm now 25 years old, and Gregory I assume is the same age. Eventually Gregory roamed the streets of our town once again. People who used to go to the school claim they see him stalking their lives. They say Gregory dawns a Plague Doctor mask to keep himself hidden but he rarely takes his mask off. From what I've learned, they say he walks at night so his black clothes can blend in. Newspaper articles claim he's killed more people but nobody has ever found him. He watches people at night then he strikes. I've been studying Gregory ever since I found out he broke out of the mental hospital. I'm just waiting for the day for him to come after me.


#Welcome to Serial Sunday! To those brand new to the feature and those returning from last week, welcome! Do you have a self-established universe you’ve been writing or planning to write in? Do you have an idea for a world that’s been itching to get out? This is the perfect place to explore that. Each week, I will post a single theme to inspire you. You have 850 words to tell the story. Feel free to jump in at any time if you feel inspired. Writing for previous weeks’ themes is not necessary in order to join.   *** #This week's theme is Fear! This week we’re going to take a look at ‘fear’. It’s a very primal thing, going down to our very core. Each person fears something or someone different, and many times, it’s related to our life experiences. And we all react differently when faced with our fears—some cower and hide and some may turn it into anger, charging into danger head first. Fear is a physical and emotional battle. What are your characters afraid of? How does it drive them? Does this change how they behave or respond to the people around them? What happens when the danger is close to home, and threatens those closest to them? Maybe this installment is about how fear*less* a character is. This could be a possible turning point for them or anyone within your world. These are just a few things to get you started. Remember, the theme should be present within the story in some way, but its interpretation is completely up to you. |   *** #Theme Schedule: I recognize that writing a serial can take a bit of planning. Each week, I release the following 2 weeks’ themes here in the Schedule section of the post. * October 24 - Fear (this week) * October 31 - Adaptation * November 7 - Vulnerability   *** **Previous Themes:** | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | *** #How It Works: In the comments below, submit a story that is between 500 - 850 words in your own original universe, inspired by this week’s theme. This can be the beginning of a brand new serial or an installment in your in-progress serial. You have until 6pm EST the following Saturday to submit your story. Please make sure to read *all* of the rules before posting!   *** #The Rules: * **All top-level comments must be a story inspired by the theme (not using the theme is a disqualifier).** Use the stickied comment for off-topic discussion and questions you may have. * **Do not pre-write your serial.** You may do outlining and planning ahead of time, but you need to wait until the post is released to begin writing for the current week. Pre-written content or content written for another prompt/post is not allowed. * **Stories must be 500-850 words.** Use to check your word count. **You may include a *brief* recap at the top of your post each week if you like, and it will not count against the wordcount.** * **Stories must be posted by Saturday 6pm EST.** That is one hour before the beginning of Campfire. Stories submitted after the deadline will not be eligible for rankings and will not be read during campfire. * **Only one serial per author at a time.** This does not include serials written outside of Serial Sunday. * **Authors must leave at least 2 feedback comments on the thread (on two different stories, not two on one) to qualify for rankings every week.** The feedback should be actionable and **must** include at least one detail about what the author has done well. Failing to meet the 2 comment requirement will disqualify you from weekly rankings. (Verbal feedback does not count towards this requirement.) **Missing your feedback two consecutive weeks will exclude you from campfire readings and rankings the following week.** You have until the following Sunday at 12pm EST to fulfill your feedback requirements each week. * **Keep the content “vaguely family friendly”.** While content rules are more relaxed here at r/ShortStories, we’re going to roll with the loose guidelines of family friendly for now. If you’re ever unsure if your story would cross the line, please modmail and ask! * **Begin your post with the name of your serial between triangle brackets** (e.g. <My Awesome Serial>). This will allow our serial bot to track your parts and add your serial to the full catalogue. Please note: You **must** use the exact same name each week. This includes commas and apostrophes. If not, the bot won’t recognize your serial installments.   *** #Reminders: * **If you are continuing an in-progress serial, please include links to the prior installments on reddit.** * **Saturdays I host a Serial Campfire on the discord main voice lounge**. Join us to read your story aloud, hear other stories, and share your own thoughts on serial writing! We start at 7pm EST. You can even come to just listen, if that’s more your speed. Don’t worry about being late, just join! * **You can nominate your favorite stories each week**. Send me a message on discord or reddit and let me know by 12pm EST the following Sunday. You do not have to attend the campfire, or have read all of the stories, to make nominations. Making nominations awards both parties points (see point breakdown). * Authors who successfully finish a serial with at least 8 installments will be featured with a modpost recognizing their completion and a flair banner on the subreddit. Authors are eligible for this highlight post only if they have followed the 2 feedback comments per thread rule (and all other post rules). * There’s a Serial Sunday role on the Discord server, so make sure you grab that so you’re notified of all Serial Sunday related news!   *** #Last Week’s Rankings With another small week, we have just three top spots. But as always, everyone who wrote deserves a pat on the back! - - u/rainbow--penguin   - - u/WorldOrphan   - - u/Zetakh   - - u/GammaGames   *** #Ranking System There is a new point system! Note that you must use the theme each week to qualify for points! Here is the current breakdown: **Nominations (votes sent in by users):** - First place - 60 points - Second place - 50 points - Third place - 40 points - Fourth place - 30 points - Fifth place - 20 points - Sixth place - 10 points **Feedback:** - Written feedback (on the thread) - 5 points each (25 pt. cap) - Verbal feedback (during Campfire) - 5 points each (15 pt. cap) *Note: In order to be eligible for feedback points, you must complete your 2 required feedback comments. These are included in the max point value above.Your feedback must be **actionable**, listing at least one thing the author did well, to receive points. (“I liked it, great chapter” comments will not earn you points or credit.)* **Nominating Other Stories:** - Sending nominations for your favorite stories - 5 points (total)   *** ###Subreddit News - You can now post serials to r/Shortstories, outside of Serial Sunday. Check out to learn more! - Sharpen your micro-fic skills by participating in our brand new feature, - Have you ever wanted to write a story with another writer? Check out our brand new weekly feature on r/WritingPrompts.


I worked as a Disneyland employee for 30 years. Disney is a pretty good employer, giving me a retirement package that’ll take care of me for the rest of my twilight years. It’s been many seasons since I pulled my last shift. They even had a retirement party for me at Club 33, which was very special. I started off as a suit back in the 70s, doing insurance adjustments for the park and all its new rides. It was a pretty good gig, but I barely got to spend any time in the park itself. I ended up taking a major pay cut when I saw that a Ride Operator position opened up for my favorite attraction: The Haunted Mansion. I walk my dog Pluto by those gates nearly every morning. We go up and down these streets for hours, taking in the familiar sights and smells of Anaheim. Sometimes I’ll see other retired members of the old guard and we’ll exchange some old stories. I like getting coffee at that mexican joint, they put cinnamon in it and don’t overcharge. Even with a nice pension, you gotta find all the good deals, you know? After coffee and walking Pluto around I’ll go home and open a clamshell or two, maybe heat up one of those TV dinners. That’s pretty much how the days go for me. The nights on the other hand, well, that’s a whole different story. For a guy whos worked in a Haunted Mansion his whole life, you’d think he’d get used to all the ghosts. Take it from me, you never do. I know the names and faces of all of them. I thought they’d start to go away over time, like memories. I can’t seem to shake them. You know the mirror bit with the hitchhikers? Its kinda like that. But when you’re a normal park guest, you just get these nice funny memories. When you’ve seen what I’ve seen, those ghosts ride with you all the way home. The first time I ever saw a dead body was on the job. Real religious guy had his ticker stop after seeing Madam Leota’s head talking to him in that crystal ball. I mean, normal people like you and I know this stuff aint real. But I think these old timers who get talked into it by their grandkids, I mean, they got scared of the mummy and the wolf guy in those black and white movies. Maybe it was just his time to go? He had slumped over in his pod, and I noticed pretty instantly on the cameras that he was in distress. I hit the kill switch, which stops the entire ride. From there, I exited the control booth and made my way into the ride. I was able to free him and lay him on his side. You see, back then we didn’t do CPR or any of that. I knew to check his breathing and his pulse, but I couldn’t really tell whether the old guy was still among the living. Turns out he wasn’t, and the doctors said he died pretty much instantly. The whole thing gave me quite the fright, and I was pretty jumpy for a couple of weeks there. One of my buddies from the insurance department got ahold of me one night and said that the old guy’s family was really putting the park through the wringer. I’m talking a damn near seven figure settlement. They paid it though, because if there’s anything the Disney company has, it’s a bottomless pit of dough. They’re used to throwing huge chunks of the stuff at every problem they encounter. Need a hard to get permit to expand the park into public property? Bam, done. Need to pay off a boatload of people who got sick during the Country Bear salmonella fiasco? Cha Ching, everyone’s happy. You get the picture. Money fixes everything... but you’d probably be shocked to find out the lengths Disney will go to save a buck. There was a kid who fell off Splash Mountain and got injured pretty badly. Like, the kinds of injuries that entire generations of Walt’s family would have to pay for. Treatments, surgeries, medications, all of it... and that’s AFTER the seven figure settlement. It really spooked my old department, as well as the shareholders. Who would’ve thought one lousy kid could cause such a fuss? I mean, at this point Disney was the largest and most successful company in the world. You’d think that they’d find some way to keep this sort of thing from happening again. Well, turns out they did. They called all of us loyal long haulers into a meeting one day. I thought the whole thing was a joke, like a prank or something. They were rolling out this parkwide program called “The Sleeping Beauty Protocol”. It was a type of contingency to make sure there weren’t any more situations which would cost the park any extra money. As it turns out, a dead guest is much more inexpensive than an injured guest. Well, despite my better judgement, I agreed to this whole Sleeping Beauty Protocol. This is what it entailed: Each ride and park section had a team of three Fairy Godmothers. I guess in my case, I’d be a Godfather. These were normal employees, like ride operators or cast members. They each had a key to a mini-fridge hidden in their section. Within this mini fridge were a series of discreet looking syringes, which we would administer to the occasional severely injured guest. We called this deadly injection the “Witches Apple”. I heard it didn’t hurt or nothing, it just put them to sleep. Pretty crazy, huh? We all had to sign nondisclosure agreements, but the pay increase was incredible. I was wearing a custom Rolex watch after my first year of being part of the Sleeping Beauty Protocol Team. Luckily I only had to give out three Witches Apples during my entire tenure at the park. The first one went pretty swell. A lighting fixture had come loose and fell on one of the guests in the Graveyard Jamboree section of the Haunted Mansion. I, of course, was working the booth. I hit the kill switch, but decided to leave the lights off. The insurance guys made the call within a minute or so, and they called a Code Sleeping Beauty on him. I grabbed my key, unlocked the fridge and shagged ass. We had to make sure to do this quick and efficiently, and make sure there were no witnesses. I was able to reach the guest, whose head looked like a split cantaloupe. I’ll never forget the gurgling sound they made as the blood ran out their mouth and nose. I pulled the cap off of the syringe, located their AC vein in their forearm, and then performed my first successful euthanasia. The gurgling stopped, and voila! Old man Walt Disney was smiling down on me that day, that’s for sure. The second time was when I was on my break outside Thunder Mountain Railroad, tucking into a delicious caramel covered apple. I like standing by the tracks and listening to the rail car roll by overhead. Its such a satisfying sound--so powerful. Well, as luck would have it, there was a loud mechanical snap that happened just as the train car sped by, and a piece of metal from the track came loose. Nobody on the ride itself got injured, but the metal shard plunged into a ladies chest right across from me. I mean, this thing hit her with so much force she slid across the ground several feet. My pager began buzzing immediately. I knew what the numbers stood for. It was time for us to clear the scene and let loose the Sleeping Beauty Protocol. We quickly ushered everyone out of the area, and I waited for the Adventure Land team to show up with the damn apple. They were taking too long, and I was starting to get nervous. They finally showed up after three minutes. The poor kid’s hands were shaking, looking at this barely alive woman with a metal shard stickin out of her chest. At this rate he was gonna drop the damn syringe, so I grabbed it and plunged it into the womans jugular. Another day, another dollar saved. The third one was the worst though, and I really didn’t get all the credit for it. Right before I retired this big fat guy fell out of the car on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. The car kept going, but he stayed there laying on the track. You see, those older rides don’t have such good cameras. I happened to be covering a shift that day, and I was dozing off at the controls. I woke up to a scream, which I found out came from the fat sonofabitch who got ran over by the next two cars. People were screaming to stop the ride, but the button was stuck. By the time I was able to unstick the piece of crap, all hell had broken loose. People were running, screaming, filming it all on their nifty new smartphones. I pushed my way through the many colorful sets which made up the frog ride, and the blood trail led me right to the guy. His legs were twisted in all sorts of mangled directions, chunks of flesh stuck in the chains and gears in the track. He was sitting up against a 2D cutout of wooden crates, looking at me with desperate eyes. He was wide awake and talking. “My legs! My goddamn legs! Look at them! Oh my god please help me!” he yelled. The code was called and my coworker came in with the magical cocktail that’d make this big fellas dreams come true. They let me do the honors. I pulled off the cap and stood over him. “What the hell is that thing? What are you giving me?!” He shouted accusingly. I told him it was for the pain while we waited for the EMTs. Well, I was half right. I administered the Witches Apple into his blood speckled arm, and he immediately started seizing. He didn’t die though. He just breathed hard, occasionally thrashing around and moaning. I got a call from the shot callers upstairs and they said videos from the smartphones had gained such attention on social media that the EMTs were actually on their way. This was bad. We had to improvise on this one. There was a new hire who wasn’t on the Sleeping Beauty Protocol team per se, but he was a suited cast member. Nobody would be able to really identify him coming in or out of the Mr. Toads ride. I knew he was on shift as Donald Duck, and I quickly coordinated with the suits to pull him aside for a favor. You see, there was one thing I knew about this new recruit. He was big, strong, and trained in brazilian jiu jitsu. I knew he would have what it takes to finish the job. Time was running out, and we got a suit on site to get the kid up to speed. They offered him a “Dreams Come True” package, which was a serious amount of up-front money, a pay raise, and of course, a nondisclosure agreement. The kid signed, pen held in his big white donald duck hand. They escorted him into the ride, and over to the portly liability, sitting up again wide awake. “What the hell? Donald Duck? Whats going on here? What did you shoot me up with? That stuff almost killed me! You’re all gonna pay for what you’re doing here!” He shouted, pointing at us accusingly with his weak semi-mangled gesture. Donald looked over at me, and I nodded approvingly. Donald moved in quick, positioning himself behind the fat man. He placed him in a rear naked chokehold, squeezing with all of his might. He even started singing in a perfect duck voice “A dream is a wish your heart makes... when you’re fast asleep” from Cinderella. He sang so gently and soothingly while he drained the life from the man’s body. His rubbery, brokens legs stopped thrashing and went limp. I’d like to say that the guest died with a smile on their face, given that they were gifted a top notch Disney quality experience in their last moments. But nope, it was a twisted, oxygen deprived grimace, frozen forever in my memory. His loss though, Disney really goes out of their way to deliver one-of-a-kind custom tailored experiences for all their guests. Especially special ones like this now blob of lifeless grey flesh. That was the last one I was ever part of. I don’t regret being part of the Sleeping Beauty Protocol. Disney was a good employer and they took great care of me. People die all the time, but how many people can say that they died at the Magic Kingdom? I’ll tell you, only the ones that wake me up at night. Only the ones who ride in the back seat of my car. Only the ones who look at me from behind the closed gates every morning. It’s not just the ones that I gave the Apple to; It’s all of them. To my understanding, the Apple has been given to more than a hundred guests over the years. I think one day I’ll end up joining them. Maybe someday when Pluto’s gone and my legs cant carry me through my daily walks anymore, I’ll have myself a little accident on my favorite ride. Maybe then you might find me dancing with all my friends in the ballroom, flying around the graveyard, or maybe even riding home with a guest in the backseat of a car.


So most days she doesn't even recognize me. And most days that's fine. It's fine because as hard as all this is, it only gets harder if she sees me as who I am—her son— and she's made aware of the fact that the person laboring over her, feeding her, wiping away the spare soup from the corner of her mouth, listening to her mad ravings, and having to hold her and rock her in his arms until she finally calms enough to sleep, is someone she cares about; someone she loves. And other days, on the good days, I am nothing short of destroyed when she fails to recognize me; when her eyes look directly into mine while she's telling me some happy story from my *own* childhood and I think I see in her a spark of recognition only to be let down when she calls me by my father's name or, worse yet, asks me who I am. She needs more help than what I give her. She needs help dressing herself, washing herself, going to the bathroom, and I cannot help her in these ways so she has a live-in nurse to do these things for her. But in all the areas that I am qualified and capable and emotionally able to care for her, I do. I do because those exceedingly rare moments when she is both in a good mood and able to remember me make the other shitty times mostly worth it. *Mostly*. But if I don't help her as often as possible, even through the awful, gut-wrenching and heart-breaking moments, then I'll miss those rare good moments, and I know she has a very limited supply of good moments left. And in this fact there is a strange and uncomfortable reversal of life. When we're young, our parents spend as much time as they can spare watching us and interacting with us so that they can catch all of our joyous first moments. They lose their minds at our first steps, they shed tears of elation when we utter our first 'momma' or 'dadda,' they clap and cheer the first time we ride a bike without training wheels, and they cry along with us when the world first breaks our heart. We mark all of these firsts in life because as a species we value people entering the world and coming to experience all that it has to offer. We find our joy in watching a new life become a thriving member of our shared world, and we all aspire to leave our own marks in that virgin clay, to help shape a child into an adult so that some small part of who we are will live on in them. But what we almost never acknowledge is that for every first there is a last. And we never mark these events because it’s too depressing to think about. And even if we wanted to mark these occasions, we can’t because we can never know which otherwise routine moment will be the last of its kind. Still, you’ll experience exactly as many lasts as firsts in your life. It’s an unavoidable, mathematical certainty. There will be a last time you'll ride a bike, a last time you'll fall in love and a last time your heart will break. There will be a last time you'll use the words 'mom' or 'dad' out loud, a last time you talk to the people to whom those labels apply. And as I approach the limit of my mother's ability to share any sort of meaningful moments with me or anyone else, and realizing that all of her firsts are behind her, I do my best to celebrate her lasts with her in a grim and depressing way. Maybe celebrate isn't the right word ... commemorate maybe? Or simply to commiserate. I never got to share my father's lasts with him, and he hardly got to share in any of my firsts. He was taken by cancer when I was only four years old. In the many years since, everyone in my life has asked me if I remember him. All I can say is that I've always tried to. I have memories that I'm almost sure are real, but I can never be truly certain if I'm remembering events as they actually occurred or if I'm just creating an image of them based on stories that my mom has told me. But in any case, almost everything I know about my father comes from other people. I'm told he was a good man. I'm told he loved my mother and me more than anything in the world. I'm told by some people that he's watching over me from heaven. I’ve never been sure if I believe this last thing. At any rate, my mother was the only one who shared all of the firsts of my childhood with me. And together we shared many last moments, too. I actually remember the last time she ever picked me up and carried me around. I remember distinctly that she told me I was getting too heavy for her, and that soon I’d have to walk everywhere on my own, and she was right. And that was it; a last moment that no one marked or recognized or even realized until after the fact. "Daniel," her voice calls me, feebly. I look up, torn from the endless and self sustaining cycle of cynical thought that pervades my day to day existence and for a moment a smile cracks my lips. "Hey, mom," I say, "How are you feeling?" "Oh, I'm fine. How are you?" she asks, as if we're just two old friends catching up, as if this is all routine, and in a way it kind of is. I can tell she's only about halfway here, but then, so preoccupied am I with my musings and reflections on the ancient past and the near future, I'm not much more than halfway here either, I guess. Her eyes look into mine and there is a connection there. Some part of her understands that this lucidity she's experiencing is only a temporary state. There is a darkness etched into the shadows of her face by this understanding, and I can tell she longs to make some deeper connection before the ephemeral awareness passes. I know what the look on her face right now means because this has happened several times before, and it will probably happen again. But I can't *know* that. I can't know this won't be the last time she’ll be here and aware enough to know who I am. "Daniel, my baby, my boy. I love you so, so much." She has said these words or some variation of them many times before in these fleeting moments of near consciousness. "I'm going to see your father soon, you know," she says, wisely, smiling. These words she has never spoken before. At least not out loud. At least not to me. I wasn't planning on telling her that Jamie is pregnant. I couldn't see the point in it. But her mentioning my father has brought a completely unexpected emotion to the surface. "I know, mom," I say, "You know I'm going to be a dad soon, too? You're going to be a grandma." She smiles at me warmly as the recognition and the lucidity fade from her face and once again her mind recedes behind that curtain of fog beyond which I cannot hope to reach it. If this is the last time she's ever truly awake and aware again, I'm glad to have left her with something to smile about. And at the thought of never speaking to my mother again, I am suddenly and undeniably broken. I pick myself up and get all the way to the front hallway before I cannot contain the tears any longer and I let them flow. And flow. And flow. I have had endless arguments with Jamie lately about how much time I'm spending with my mom while I have a pregnant girlfriend to look after. It's not that Jamie is unsympathetic, but she grew up in foster care and has never really felt towards anyone what I feel towards my mother. And she's not wrong, either. If I'm being truly honest with myself, my mom has been gone for months already. She's still breathing, but she isn't living. I am trading feeling my child's first kicks from within my girlfriend's womb for watching my mother shed her last tears in a home she no longer knows. I am trading being a father to a child for trying to parent a parent. But this is my obligation, I tell myself, this is my duty. But now I am choosing to interpret my mother's smile as her consciousness fades away as a blessing. I believe if she could, she would say "go and be a father, you've already been a good son." But I'll never hear her say that. I'll never know if she really feels that way. I just have to trust that I knew her well enough to guess what she would want. And I suppose my guesses as to how she might interpret any given situation is all I’ll have of her going forward. I leave my mother in the nurse's care and I drive home to my girlfriend and my future child. I am leaving behind a few last moments with my mother to ensure that I don't miss too many with my child.


#Welcome to the Spooky Micro Monday Challenge! Hello writers! Welcome to Micro Monday! I am excited to present you all with a chance to sharpen those micro-fic skills. What is micro-fic? I’m glad you asked! Micro-fiction is generally defined as a complete story (hook, plot, conflict, and some type of resolution) written in 300 words or less. For this exercise, it needs to be at least 100 words (no poetry). However, less words doesn’t mean less of a story. The key to micro-fic is to make careful word and phrase choices so that you can paint a vivid picture for your reader. Less words means each word does more! Each week, I’ll give you a single constraint or jumping-off point to get your minds working. It might be an image, song, theme word, sentence, or a simple writing prompt. You’re free to interpret the prompt how you like as long as you follow the post and subreddit rules. **Please read the entire post before submitting.** Remember, feedback matters! And don’t forget to upvote your favorites and nominate them via message here on reddit or a DM on discord!   *** #This week’s challenge: **“Death was at the door.”** *Bonus Constraint: Death is personified. (everyone gets the bonus points this week for a wonderful month of spooky and creative stories. You all earned it! The bonus is just for fun this week)* As we enter into our fifth and last week of the Spooktober Challenge, I encourage each of you to step out of your comfort zones! Try something new. And for those who live and breathe horror, or want to give it a shot, this is your chance! Keep in mind you are not bound to write horror. If the prompt inspires you to write something different, go for it! This week’s challenge is to use the above sentence in your story, in some way. You may add onto it, but the original sentence should stay intact. *Changing POV and/or tense is acceptable.* Stories without the sentence will be disqualified from rankings and campfire readings. The bonus constraint is not required.   *** #How It Works: - **Submit one story between 100-300 words** in the comments below, by the following Sunday at midnight, EST. No poetry. One story per author. - **Use to check your word count.** The title is not counted in your final word count. Stories under 100 words or over 300 will be disqualified from campfire readings and rankings. - **No pre-written content allowed.** Submitted stories should be written for this post exclusively. - **Come back throughout the week, upvote your favorites and leave them a comment with some actionable feedback.** Do not downvote other stories on the thread. Vote manipulation is against Reddit rules and you will be reported. See the ranking scale below for a breakdown on points. - **Please be respectful and civil in all feedback and discussion.** We welcome writers of all skill levels and experience here, as we’re all here to improve and sharpen our skills. - **Send your nominations for favorites each week to me, via DM, on Reddit or Discord by Monday at 2pm EST.** - If you have any questions, feel free to ask them on the *stickied comment* on this thread or through modmail. *Top-level comments are reserved for story submissions.* - And most of all, be creative and have fun!   *** #Campfire and Nominations - On Mondays at 12pm EST, I hold a Campfire on the discord server. We read all the stories from that week’s thread and provide verbal feedback for those authors that are present. Come join us to read your own story and listen to the others! You can come to just listen, if that’s more your speed. You don’t even have to write to join in. Don’t worry about being late, just join! Everyone is welcome. - You can nominate your favorite stories each week, by sending me a message on reddit or discord. You have until 2pm EST on Monday (or about an hour after Campfire is over). You do *not* have to write or attend Campfire to submit nominations!   *** #How Rankings are Tallied I have made some significant changes in the ranking system. We’ll see how this works over the next few weeks and make adjustments where necessary. Here is a current breakdown: - **Use of Constraint:** 10 points - **Upvotes:** 5 points each - ***Actionable* Feedback** 5 points each (up to 25 pts.) - **User nominations:** 10 points each (no cap) - **Bay’s nomination:** 40 pts for first, 30 pts for second, and 20 pts for third (plus regular nominations) - **Bonus:** Up to 10 pts. (This applies to things like bonus constraints and making user nominations)   *** #Rankings: This Past Week - - Submitted by u/katherine_c   - - Submitted by u/C_Wendt   - - Submitted by u/rainbow--penguin   - - Submitted by u/Major-Tradition-8037   *** ###Subreddit News - Try your hand at serial writing with - Have you ever wanted to write a story with another writer? Check out our brand new weekly feature on r/WritingPrompts - You can now post serials to r/Shortstories, outside of Serial Sunday.


Up until a few days ago I was steadily employed as a laboratory technician at one of the cancer hospitals in my city. Now, for those of you not in the know, lab techs get paid jack shit even after getting a science degree. If you ever spend any time on r/labrats then you’d know what I mean. Even worse, the pay scales in academia are a joke compared to industry. Luckily for me I somehow worked my way into a decent paying lab tech job in one of the research groups at the hospital. My boss (whose name I can’t say, I’ll explain later) was probably the most successful and well-funded researcher in the entire research division. Our group would crank out several publications in a single year in Nature, Cell, New England Journal of Medicine you name it. (Not bragging but I made co-author on one of the papers!). My job as a lab tech was actually pretty easy. A lot of it was the usual lab stuff that no one here would care about but where I really excelled was apparently my ability to grow tumours. I never understood how I did it but my boss and some of the other post docs would grow tumours on me and somehow I could grow them faster than the other techs. The solid tumours were the easiest like melanoma and lung cancer, even some of the rarer ones like bone cancers. I would consider those an easy project. For obvious reasons I absolutely drew the line at testicular cancer. My boss and I had a long discussion about it but even he knew I wasn’t budging on that one. The worst was leukaemia. I hated it and so did the other techs. If you’ve ever had a bone marrow biopsy you’d know what I was talking about. That hurt like a son of a bitch! So as a rule you’d only have to do a leukaemia project once a year. Anyway, after they, or I should say I, had grown the tumour my boss or some of the other post docs would then either excise the tumour or give me a drug to try and reduce it in size. From this we would get some of the most amazing and ground-breaking data in the field. My boss would give these talks at conferences and I’m not kidding, other prominent researchers would lose their shit! But here’s what happened and this is how I lost my job. Goddam OHS. Two weeks ago some OHS representatives came to give a talk to our lab. Turns out, my boss hadn’t been filling out the proper paperwork to be working on human subjects. The ethics committee were losing their minds and we had to stop research on humans immediately. They were however allowed to continue their research but only using mice. And that’s how I lost my job to goddam mouse! Me and the other lab techs were pretty much sent packing that day. We had to sign an NDA, which is why I can’t mention my boss’ name. I’ve tried contacting the other techs to see how they’re going but it seems like they’ve all ghosted me and I can’t get in touch with any of them. I’ve started looking for other work in the meantime. We got a decent payout which should keep me afloat while I look for another job. But I am *definitely* moving into industry.


I grew up in a loud home. Not the bad kind with arguments and screaming but the kind that invited midnight jam sessions and spontaneous singing. My parents were musicians; pops was a D.J. in the 90’s underground hip hop scene and my mom was a pianist. And my sister? Boy, my sister plays drums like Animal from the Muppets, her purple and blue dreads flying around. The music gene skipped me. All I knew how to play was Street Fighter and Battle Toads. My family never made me feel bad about my lack of musical talent. They never pressured me to take up an instrument. They were cool like that. They understood that I just liked quiet. Even though the noise I’m talking about was stuff like Mozart in the living room or Run DMC from the basement, it was still noise to me. Inescapable, loud noise. Until I found my refuge. The kitchen cupboards. I crawled inside one of the cupboards and discovered it was pretty much soundproof. We usually ordered takeout so there weren’t any pots and pans in the way. It gave me plenty of room to read comics, mess around on my GameBoy or just be alone with my thoughts. My parents were real cool with it. They got me a hand-crank camping lantern so I wouldn’t have to hold a flashlight while reading. They even put a sign on one of the doors that read “Luke’s Place”. Which is what it was; my happy place. But overtime I wouldn’t just go there to escape the sound of admittedly good music... I’d go there to escape the sound of kids calling me names or laughing at me. While I knew my family was cool as hell, kids thought they were weird for not having 9-5 office jobs like their boring ass parents. I’d defend my folks at first, protect their honor like in the comics. That may work for Wolverine and Batman but it didn’t work for the smallest kid in school. I soon learned that my best defense against bullying was to play dead. I don’t mean curl up on the floor and lie still, I mean play dead on the inside. I kept my head down, my mouth shut, and just gave in to the taunts and attacks. I let them tear my homework, steal my shoes, whatever, so long as I looked like it didn't bother me. Just a blank, numb reaction. It usually worked and kids would stop when they failed to get a rise out of me. Except for this one kid a year above me. Tom was his name and he was a cruel mother fucker. Tom would do things like push me into traffic if I was standing close the curb or choke me until I passed out. He’d laugh each time. Especially when he'd eventually make me cry or worse, I'd piss myself. My parents tried to help but Tom’s family was rich and big time PTA donors. No matter how many times my folks tried to have him punished no one did anything. Not Tom's parents, not the school, nobody. What it did do was make Tom angrier. I eventually told my parents that Tom had a turn of heart and had stopped messing with me just so they’d stop calling the principal. All that's to say, most of my early childhood was spent alone. Until I met Doobie. It was 1994, the middle of winter break. I was in my cupboard after the worst run in with Tom I’d ever had. He didn’t put his hands on me but what he did -- what he said -- hurt me worse than an elbow or slap. He called me and my family names that just... that just made me feel less than human. I felt so awful about myself that I couldn’t concentrate on reading my newest issue of Uncanny X-Men. I kept seeing the slurs written in ink. Instead, I sat there turning the handle on the electric lantern my parents had gotten me. The hand crank was what charged the batter. It made this electric whine -- *mmmreee... mmmmmreee... mmmreee* \-- with each rotation. The sound used to sooth me more than any piece of music I’d hear outside the cupboard door. But it wasn’t working that day. I was broken. So I took my notebook and started to write. *When Tom kills me, I want my sister to have...* It was my last will and testament. It wasn’t because I had plans to off myself -- I’d never do that to the people I loved -- but because I was convinced that Tom would kill me one day. I had gotten to bequeathing my Super Soaker to my Uncle Ron when my lantern went out. I reached for it, started cranking... *mmrreee...mmrreee*... and it'd take some time for it to be a steady light but it did start to flicker back to life. Like each crank would create this blink of light. It was in one of those flashes that I saw I wasn’t alone. It was someone in the far corner. I worked up the courage for one more turn of the handle. It granted me another second’s worth of light, enough to see a boy, huddled in the corner with his back to the wall. The lantern's light once again blinked out of existence. I froze, clutching my lantern in the cupboard's lightless interior. Then I heard the boy in the dark ask in a soft, sandy voice... “Whacha writing, pal?” I responded by freaking the fuck out. I dropped my lantern and scrambled to get out of there. The cupboard door wouldn’t budge. Stuck inside the pitch-black interior, I pounded on the door, kicking and screaming for my parents to rescue me from my special place. It was useless. “Hussshhhhhh... you know better than that.” said the boy in the dark. “Good boys are quiet. Aren’t you a good boy, Luke?” he asked. He made my name sound more like a croak than a word. Believe me, I still wanted to escape... but cowering in the dark like that made my survival instincts kicked in. I played dead inside. I said yes. “That makes me happy. I’m a good boy too.”, he responded. Then I heard my lantern... *mmmreee...mmmreee...mmmreee*... and its amber glow returned, giving me a better look at who was keeping me company. The boy in the corner hugged his legs, knees brought up to hide the lower part of his face. I could see just enough to notice that his cheeks were raw with pimples. He had a crewcut but patches of hair were missing. Otherwise, dressed in jeans and a Ghostbusters t-shirt, he looked somewhat ordinary. Ordinary enough for me to I ask him his name. “Promise you won’t make fun of me?” He asked, bashful. I promised. “My name is Doobie.” I was suddenly hit with this overwhelming sense of kinship. His name, his features, the way he looked at me, everything told me that this kid was bullied for the simple crime of existing. Like me. It made me forget how bizarre our meeting was. Me and Doobie quietly talked for hours. He knew all of the comics I was into, all the cartoons, he even told me cheat codes for Battle Toads. Conversation came easy... it came easy because of the way Doobie spoke and expressed himself. It was familiar. I could tell he was holding on to a lot of pain. Like me. The more we spoke -- the more relaxed he became -- the more I noticed things about Doobie that were... off. Cupping his knees, his flat hands were way too wide for a third grader. His fingers were too long for an adult, dangling like a willow’s branches. I noticed his waxy skin would crease in thick folds whenever he moved or spoke. It reminded me of a Stretch Armstrong -- that rubber doll from the 90’s with sand inside. I didn’t say anything about how he looked. I knew what it was like to be picked on for things you can’t control. Doobie finally asked, “Can I see what you're writing?” I showed him. I explained what it was and how Tom treated me. Doobie listened the same way my parents did. He cared. “Does he call you mean things, too?” I said yes. “Tell me.” I felt self-conscious but eventually told him. When I was done, I heard him giggle. I assumed he was laughing at me so I called him out, saying how I didn’t laugh at his name. “I don’t think what he called you is funny at all, Luke. No, no. Not at all.”, Doobie said. “I’m laughing because he’ll get what’s coming to him.” That’s when Doobie leaned forward and, for the first time, his face was fully illuminated by the lantern’s light. The whole time I had thought Doobie had dark eyes like me but, with his face fully lit, I realized his brow had been casting a shadow over green eyes peering from deep, deep sockets. I had never seen eyes set so deep in a person’s skull. What struck me the most, though, was his smile. It was wide with too many gray teeth bunched so tight that many overlapped. Like his eyes, they were also deep set, like an inch or two from where his lips began. It reminded me of a muppet. Again, I didn’t say anything about his appearance. It’s funny but I worried if I did that I'd scare away my new friend. I just asked what he meant by "He'll get what's coming to him". Doobie leaned closer, like he was letting me in on a secret. He smiled, gray teeth gleaming, as he whispered... *Bad comes back, round and round.* *Cupboard kids see you’re found.* *Even home, safe and sound.* *Cupboard kids don't mess around*. It was lyrical, Doobie’s sphere-shaped head bobbing in time with his sing-song tone. Knocking at the cupboard door startled us. It was mom. We were going to Pizza Hut for dinner and I had to get ready. Doobie made me promise to come back the next day. I said yes, forgetting that my plans to visit my aunt and uncle across town. I’d learn that Doobie didn’t like that. I’ve always had trouble sleeping in other people’s homes. My Auntie Mona and Uncle Ron’s was no exceptions. I was lying on the living room futon, playing on my Game Boy while the rest of my family slept. Then I heard something over the snoring. *Mmmmrrreeee...mmmrrreeee...mmmrrreeee.*.. It was my cupboard lantern. I hadn’t brought it with me. I rolled out of bed and followed the rhythmic cranking to the kitchen. I wasn’t scared. I knew it was Doobie coming to visit. I never had a friend visit me before. Auntie Mona's kitchen was tiny. There was no way my little ass could fit in any of those cupboards much less Doobie. But when I saw my lantern’s light flicker from behind one of the cupboard doors, I knew he could. I thought it was cool. For a moment. I opened the cupboard door and there he was, contorted with his knees up to his ears. He glared at me, with my lantern between his fingertips. His long fingers reminded me of daddy long legs. “You lied, Luke Puke.”, he hissed. More than Doobie being there, more than seeing him squashed into the cramped cupboard, it was him calling me one of the names my bullies used that surprised me. I asked him why he insulted me, tears forming at the corners of my eyes. “Bad comes back, round and round.” he snarled as he extended a long, lean arm from the cupboard, lifting the lantern close to my face. His eyes narrowed on my tears. “You lied about seeing me today. Lying is bad, Luke Crywalker.” I apologized. He asked if I meant it. I did. His smile returned. “I knew you were a good kid. Just like me and my friends.” Doobie craned his head and addressed the cupboard door beside his. “Right, Chi-chi?” The cupboard door opened. A girl in a Care Bears Christmas sweater poked her head out. “That’s right, Doobie. Cupboard kids see that you are found.”, she whispered with a slight squeak. Chi-chi had the same features as Doobie -- the deep-set eyes, the fingers -- but her hair was in sloppy braids and her pale, waxy skin hung loose from her face and neck. Like a bloodhound. I asked what they were doing there. Doobie said he liked me so much that he wanted me to meet his friends. Then the three remaining cupboard doors opened. A different cupboard kid poked their head out. These ones looked less like kids and more like toothed tadpoles in t-shirts. Their pit-like eyes on me made my scared. I pissed myself. It wasn’t the first time I’d pissed myself in front of other kids but it was the first time it wasn’t because of bullying... like the time Tom threatened me with a baseball bat with a nail in it. I was expecting Doobie’s buddies to do what all the other kids did; point and laugh. They didn’t. Instead they quietly told me how cool my Garfield pajamas were and how Doobie said I was awesome at Doctor Mario. Then they asked me about Tom. I was embarrassed to tell these new “friends” what I’d been through. “If you tell us you’ll feel better.” Squeaked Chi-chi, her smiling revealing dirty teeth and bleeding gums. “You can even say naughty words if that makes it easier.” Even though most of my dad’s music was full of curse words, our house had a strict no swearing policy. But I let it rip, whispering how much I hated Tom as I described every insult he’d called me, every slap to the back of the head, every rock that hit me. I had the cupboard kids’s full attention and, yeah, they smiled the whole time. I was too by the end. Chi-chi was right. It felt good to let all that out. When I’d finished, I noticed Doobie was stroking his chin with his spindly fingers... like he was toying with a thought. Then he said, “Tom needs to know he’s a bad kid.” I told him how me and my family tried. How it was pointless. “But you have us now.”, said a cupboard kid named Lefty, his skin so tight his mouth barely moved. “Bad kids listen to us.” he added with a thin lipped smile. I imagined what that would look like. Me and my new posse walking up to Tom at school, cursing him out, making him feel small and weak and dumb. Adrenaline pulsed through me. I wanted to do it. I asked when. “No time like the present, Luke.”, giggled Chi-chi. Then she shimmied backward, disappearing into the cupboard and gently closing the door behind her. I watched Lefty, Bingo, and Waddles -- the other two cupboard kids -- retreat into their cupboards the same way. It was just me and Doobie. I looked at him, confused. “It’s time we show him how bad comes round again.” Doobie reached his hand out to me. With it so close to my face, I could see how blue green veins pulsing beneath thick, callused skin. It was ghoulish. But I took it anyhow, my hand wrapped in a nest of five long fingers. He gently pulled me into the cupboard. I gently closed the door behind us. Doobie kept a firm grip on my hand, pulling me deeper inside the dark, musty space. My heart pounded, fearing I’d end up in the dark forever. But in seconds I heard door hinges creak. Suddenly I was stepping out of the cupboard in the biggest kitchen I’d ever seen. The lights were off but I saw that the other cupboard kids were there. In the little bit of light that entered through the kitchen windows, I saw how different they looked when no longer confined to the cupboard. It was awful. They were short, shorter than me, and stood on stubby legs. Even though they were shorter than me, their torsos were wider, bodies like pot-bellied tree trunks. Their arms also defied proper proportions, so long that they all rested their palms on the linoleum floor. Even while standing. “That him?”, asked Chi-chi. She had a twisted, branch-like finger pointed at a family portrait. It was of a dad, a mom with a baby in her arms, and Tom. I said yes. The cupboard kids hurried out of the kitchen. They walked on their hands, legs dangling. The only sound they made were whispers cloaked beneath their heavy breaths... *Bad comes back, round and round.* Doobie led me out of the kitchen down a long hallway. The cupboard kids were in front of us, quietly opening each door to see what was inside. They didn’t make a sound, not even the floorboards creaked beneath their weight. But I could still hear them whispering... *Cupboard kids see you’re found.* I had no idea what they were looking for but when they discovered the room they wanted, they quietly entered. Waddles smiled and waved at me as he carefully closed the door behind him. Doobie and I entered the last room. There, in a big bed beside a window with a view of the entire town, was Tom. Fast asleep... safe and sound. I felt a weight rest on my shoulder. It was Doobie’s malformed hand. “Ready, pal?”, he asked encouragingly. I said yes. Doobie pulled himself to Tom’s bed and pounced onto my bully’s chest. Tom woke up with a gasp, the wind knocked out of him from Doobie’s weight crashing onto him. Doobie covered his mouth with one shovel-like hand and lifted him up with the other. Tom tried to push Doobie off of him but the cupboard kid was too strong. “Go on, Luke. Go on.”, Doobie said as he effortlessly held Tom in place. I looked at Doobie’s face. His lips were curled over his swollen gums and gray teeth. It was a smile but without a hint of sinister intentions. In fact, he looked supportive... almost loving. It was a stark contrast to Tom’s look of bewildered terror. I whispered at first, remembering what Doobie had told me about staying quiet. “Speak up, Luke! It's okay for good kids to shout at bad kids!” Doobie barked. I did. I unleashed years of pent up anger and shame and sadness and hatred, calling Tom every name I could think of. I made sure to say how it affected me, how he hurt me and my family. Then I heard screaming from the hallway. It was a man begging for mercy. A woman’s screams soon followed. Then I heard Chi-chi shout... *Think he's good, mom and dad,* *Even though he acts real bad?* *Such a shame your kid's a rat,* *We cut your skin and eat your fat!* Tom heard it too. He started thrashing against Doobie’s powerful grip. It was useless. Tom quickly gave up, reduced to blubbering, tears streaming not the cupboard kid ringleader’s unnaturally large hand. My anger began to fade. “What’s wrong, Luke?” I asked Doobie the same thing, asking what was happening outside. Doobie told me not to worry, that it was part of teaching Tom what happens when bad comes back. Then I heard Lefty shout over the screams. Bingo joined in. Then I heard a baby cry. *Still think he's such a prize,* *Even when we take your eyes?* *Keep the egg but kill the flies,* *Teach him good with your cries!* I wanted to run. I wanted to call out for help. My legs wouldn’t let me. My voice was caught in my throat. “We brought you here for this, Luke. Don’t be ungrateful! Only bad kids are ungrateful!” It was the first time I’d heard Doobie raise his voice. It was halfway between a pig’s squeal and the roar of an enraged old man. It made my ears ring and my legs shake. I felt like I would whenever Tom cornered me, demanding I give him my lunch money. I was going to have to do what I was told. My forced tirade ended an hour later when Chi-chi entered. “Hi, Luke!”, she said as she dragged herself in on her long, sinewy arms. I was expecting to see her wool sweater soaked with blood. She looked no different than how I’d seen her earlier that evening. “How do ya feel? Better?” She asked as she approached. I tried to answer but couldn’t; my throat was too hoarse from shouting over the screams and the cupboard kids’s haunting rhymes. “I think he got him pretty good.”, said Doobie. “Let’s find out.” Tom had stopped crying a while ago, his bloodshot eyes fixed on me. I thought he was angry, biding his time to run and tackle me like so many times before. I even flinched when Doobie’s fingers unwrapped from around his mouth. All Tom did was cry and beg to be let go. Chi-chi whipped her head around to face me. Just her head, her neck cracking as it spun 180 degrees. She smiled, proudly displaying her infected gums. “Great work, Luke!” she squeaked. Chi-chi’s head returned to a “natural” position, her beady eyes focused on Tom as she stalked toward him. Tom whimpered as she leaned close to him, her unnaturally wide mouth near his ear. She whispered something that made Tom gasp. He turned to her, horrified as he stared into the black pits where her eyes presumably were. Then the other cupboard kids walked in. There wasn't a drop of blood on any of them. It made me question if they had hurt Tom’s family at all. I watched as one-by-one, they whispered something in Tom's ear. Tom grew quieter with each word, my bully’s affect sinking deeper and deeper into despair. I looked at Tom and in a moment of clarity understood what they meant. He was staring into nothingness, expressionless. No whimpering or whining, just a vacant stare. Tom was dead inside. Then we left. I silently followed the cupboard kids down the hall. I kept my eyes ahead, making sure not to look into any of the rooms on our way to the kitchen. The smell of blood was enough. “Same time tomorrow?”, asked Doobie as he helped me out of the cupboard back into my aunt and uncle’s kitchen. I said yes. My auntie found me in the kitchen the next morning, hugging my legs beside my lantern. I didn’t say anything about what had happened. My family and I returned home later that afternoon. I went straight to my dad’s tool box, grabbed a screwdriver, and removed all the doors from the kitchen cupboards. My family even helped -- like I said, they’re cool like that. I had fucking amazing parents. I spent the rest of winter break in what became the new “Luke’s Place”: my bedroom. I believed that at any minute the police would show up and arrest me for what had happened. They never came. Tom never came back to school. Rumor was that his family had abandoned him, just got up and left, leaving only him behind. His neighbors found him in his bed days later. No blood, no bodies, just Tom, catatonic and unresponsive in bed. He lives in a mental hospital now. If you're asking yourself why I'm telling you my story thirty years after it happened, it's because I have a kid of my own now. A nine-year-old girl. She's been a great kid up until my wife and I separated. Despite our best efforts, she hasn't been taking it well. Me and her mom were called into the principal's office today. She'd been ruthlessly picking on this one girl. Of course we're going to do something to try and get her back on the right track, starting with having our girl apologize to the girl she'd been bullying. This girl wasn't interested in an apology. Instead, she looked my daughter dead in the eyes and said, *Bad comes back, round and round.* *Cupboard kids see you’re found.* *Even home, safe and sound.* *Cupboard kids don't mess around*. There aren't any doors in my home's cupboards, I made sure of that long ago. But my wife's new place does. And they're staying there tonight.


“I’m home!” I dropped the keys into the dish. I expected an answer, a call in return that would tell me where my partner was. But there was nothing. I frowned and moved through the house, checking each room as I went. The lounge room was empty, the front window open and the curtains blowing in the breeze. The kitchen was silent also. Dishes didn’t clutter the bench and a freshly baked cake sat on the bench, still cooling. I took a drink from the fridge, cracking it open and letting the cool liquid roll down my throat. The back deck was filled with nothing but sunshine. The seats that usually sat in the sun were folded up and leaned against the wall. They must have been cleaning the deck today, it looked as new as the day it had been built. I trailed through the house, peering into the den. The computers were off, the windows and curtains closed. All of the books that I had left sprawled over my desk were put away on the shelves. I ran my fingers over the spines. I was lucky to have someone who cared so much about how our home looked. But where was that special someone? I frowned, setting my drink down on the edge of the bench as I walked back through the kitchen. There was really only one place left. I climbed the stairs, keeping to the edge so that the creaking wouldn’t give me away. If they were in bed, I didn’t want them to get up before I got there. I so rarely caught them in bed while the sun was still up. Even though I would really love to have a shower before I crawled in with them, I didn’t want to miss this chance. Silently, I eased open the door to the bedroom. There, with the blankets tucked under their chin, was my partner. I couldn’t help the smile that came to my face as I stalked towards them, shedding my clothes with as little noise as possible. Their face was peaceful, unmarred with the small frown they often wore when they were awake. It made them look much younger. I lifted the blanket on my side of the bed and slipped into the cool sheets. My arm wrapped around their waist and I pressed a kiss to their forehead. There was a wriggle, the small frown appearing on their forehead. Slowly, like I was watching a flower open, they came awake. They lay still for a moment, staring blankly in front of them. “Good morning, my sleepyhead.” I murmured. But they didn’t say anything back. Instead, they sat up, clutching the blanket to their chest. Their eyes swept over the room, a wobble in their downward turned lips. I sat up with them, worried as I saw the broken expression on their face. “My love?” “You have to let go.” They whispered to the room. “Please… stop haunting me. I can’t take it anymore. You have to let go. I miss you more than anything, but you’re gone. I love you so much. But I can’t love a ghost.


Geraldo, a 73-year-old man, decides to learn how to fight jiu-jitsu. For no particular reason, just out of curiosity. Geraldo believed he was still young enough to face physical challenges, so he thought of the first sport-related thing to practice: jiu-jitsu. Geraldo went directly to the first dojo he found. He enrolled on the spot and attended his first class. During class, all students, mostly children and teenagers, looked at him with curiosity. Was he an assistant to the master, they thought. Could it be that the master was actually the helper and this old man was actually the master? Or was he really a new student who had enrolled in junior high school? The master, a heavyset who in other times was the head of the drug trade and killed innocent people with his own hands, and now uses his fighting skills to kill even more, stared at him with a look that no one could tell what it meant. During the first practice, the students formed pairs where they practiced some moves, and Geraldo seemed to have difficulties. The master approached him and tried to explain in more detail the hip movements and so on. Geraldo, tried to do as the master explained, and then... The entire class was stunned by what they saw. Geraldo was doing breakdancing. - Not like that, Geraldo! - said the master, confused. Geraldo couldn't stop and could only scream in terror. - Aaaaaaaaaaah! The master tried to hold Geraldo's legs but was kicked away when he touched him, falling on top of one of the smaller students, who broke his arm. All the students who tried to stop him flew away when they were hit by Geraldo's spinning legs. The master returned very pissed, and tried to use a blow on the old man, but was killed instantly by a kick in the face. Within hours, the police had arrived at the scene and tried to apprehend Geraldo without success. Reinforcements were called in, and two police officers were wounded. Geraldo, from spinning around on the floor so much, ended up moving out of the dojo, and found himself in the street, surrounded by patrols, and a belt of television channels covering the news: "Old man takes the life of a jiu-jitsu teacher and does breakdancing non-stop. Two police officers injured." The news spread quickly over the internet and reached the world. On the same day, Geraldo went viral as the breakdancing grandpa. The absurd story that he killed a jiu-jitsu master, who had more than 30 years of experience, made his death a laughing stock. His family, even before receiving the news of his death, already received death threats, both from internet strangers and from loan sharks and enemies of the master's secret life. But things started to get serious when the number of injuries started to increase. And the number of bodies. Hours had passed and Geraldo hadn't stopped breakdancing. He didn't look tired either, as the pace of the turns never changed. It was the same movement where the dancer uses both hands to support the body while rotating the legs 360 degrees around the body. While screaming. Geraldo had taken the lives of five other police officers who had tried a heavy-handed approach to getting him off the ground. Two broke their necks in contact with his legs, one suffered trauma to the rib cage and did not survive, and two others were thrown violently away and suffered a head injury. They called negotiators to try to convince him to stop. One after another. And no answer other than "aaaaaah!" Nobody knew how to stop him. The TV News started to talk about the case as a constant event, always updating viewers about what happened between one news and another. The following dawn, Geraldo had traveled 100 meters and hit and shattered the edge of a building into several pieces. The city, upon learning of this, triggered an evacuation of the neighborhood, and then, the only inhabitants of that region became Geraldo and the authorities. There was an intense court case over the issue of using lethal force on the old man. It was finally decided that they would find a new way to end the situation, or public opinion would turn against this decision. After all, Geraldo was a worldwide sensation, and as far as everyone knew, the deaths were accidental, as he had no control over his body. Geraldo's case became the target of conspiracy theories, scientific debates and proof of divine forces. Nobody could explain how a 73-year-old man managed to breakdance so long and consistently, almost professionally, and have so much strength to be unstoppable and destroy everything in his path. The world only talked about Geraldo. A plan was soon formed to move Geraldo off the streets and into an area free of casualties. A helicopter would arrive with a metal plate measuring 5 meters each side in the direction where Geraldo would move, and then, when he climbed onto the plate, the helicopter would lift him up and take him to a field far from the city, where experts would do more in-depth studies with he is, who knows, more dangerous. Since Geraldo had no control of the direction he was going, his trajectory was unpredictable, and when the helicopter dropped the metal plate next to him, Geraldo changed course and hit one of the suspension cables, throwing the helicopter into a building like a whip. From then on, images were no longer broadcast to the public. The accident shocked the world. It soon became clear to everyone that Geraldo was a real danger, and public opinion allowed radical decisions to be taken. First, they tried to shoot him down with firearms. The military made a firing squad and unloaded everything on him: Nothing. They used rocket launchers: Geraldo kicked them away. Out there, no one knew exactly what was going on in the exclusion zone. Any information coming out of there was prohibited. People around the world were demanding news about Geraldo: If he was still dancing breakdancing, if anyone else had died... humanity was taken by a morbid curiosity. For a month, scientists from all corners of the world, the most brilliant minds of a generation, worked together to solve the Geraldo case. Tents were extended across the streets where laboratories were set up for analysis. They studied Geraldo as a being from another planet, with the sole purpose of saving the world from this indestructible and unstoppable being. They checked radiation levels and stuff. Nothing seemed abnormal apart from the obvious. Geraldo was neither hungry nor dehydrated. He neither urinated nor defecated. Didn't sleep, didn't stop. His breathing was steady, his muscles didn't tire, didn't break. It looked like a scratched disc, repeating the same movement over and over again. The greatest biologists were called in, the greatest physicists, chemists... Analyzed his heartbeat and nervous system with unprecedented long-distance equipment... No conclusions. During that one month of profound silence, the world changed radically. Extremist groups, who believed that Geraldo had detached from reality, and that the world was a simulation, started a wave of collective suicide. Others caused chaos and violence in the streets. Some thought it was all a lie invented by the government for whatever reason they came up with. But the real skeptics, the intellectuals, didn't know what to make of this story. It felt like everyone was caught in a cold shower. Cults were created around Geraldo. Religions were strengthened by the idea that Geraldo was proof of the supernatural, and superstition grew more than ever. Inevitably, Geraldo caused immense damage to buildings, shops, cars, houses... Wherever he went, destruction was certain. His legs went through concrete like water. Soon, the armed forces took over the situation again, and continued their war tests on Geraldo. It wasn't just the neighborhood that was evacuated anymore. The entire city had become an exclusion zone. And from far away, people saw mushroom clouds. After two atomic bombs failed their purpose, Geraldo started to get faster. His breakdance got faster, his displacement from one point to another got bigger... With every attempt to stop him, he accelerated. It got more frantic. Geraldo spun faster and faster, until he became a blur. In a flash, he crossed the ruins of the city and escaped the exclusion zone. It was carnage. Geraldo zigzagged through the streets, inside houses, inside malls, in parks, and killed and destroyed everything in his path. No matter what they did, Geraldo got faster and more died... Wherever they hid, Geraldo would kill them. He crossed continents taking cities with him. He destroyed nature wherever he went. And when there was nothing left to destroy, Geraldo continued dancing... The Breakdance of Death.


I live where the wind never stops blowing, where the rain never stops hammering, where the wolves howl in the middle of the day. I am as sleek as an otter, cunning as a crow, and as fierce as the black rat himself. But unlike these beasts I was not born to a mother. I was made from the silt in the stream and the spit of every animal in the wood. My maker mixed me up in a hollow tree, found red roan berries for my eyes and shards of flint for my teeth. Then he summoned a storm and made the lightning strike the hollow tree again and again, until fire lashed about me and baked me into something hard. When evening settled about us I awoke among the ashes. My maker led me through the woods on a rope because I was a wild and frightened thing. He showed me the untamed country, let all the animals inspect me in turn, taking little pieces of me into their mouths so they would recognise me when they met me again. He taught me how to speak and found me a home in the mountains. Then he left me there to live my own life. For the first few centuries I waited for my maker to come back. I was still a child then and hungered for his love and protection. But in time I became more resilient. I no longer needed anyone to care for me and, besides, everything else lived so briefly and died in so many clumsy ways. So perhaps my maker was already dead. At first I imagined that he would be as long-lived and canny as myself, but perhaps he is like the potter whose ceramics will stay whole and perfect long after he himself, the product of an inferior craftsmen, has crumbled into dust. No I do not miss my maker. I choose not to think of him. Besides I have not always been alone through the years. I have known many of *your* kind. Such clever beasts. If you come boldly into my cave and address me respectfully I will welcome you. I will make soup from the bones of field mice flavoured with wild garlic and let you sip the broth which will strengthen you and make your eyes as keen as mine. And we will go hunting in the forest. I will show you how to climb the tallest pine without bending its branches and we will gorge ourselves on the nesting birds. We will dive from the highest rock into the deepest pools and we will tease the monsters who dwell in its black depths. Then later I will take you to my bed of furs and feathers and we will make a perfect circle. But, if you skulk into my home, keep to the shadows and don’t properly announce yourself I will take you for a thief and an enemy and I will close up the mouth of my cave behind you. Then I will play games with you in the dark. And if I ever let you out your eyes will never be able to take the light again. The sun will burn and blind you, and you’ll be keeping to the shadows till the day you die. The people you loved will not recognise you, they will take you for a fiend or a spectre and they will hunt you with axes and burning branches for fear you’d hurt their children. There have been times in my solitude or when I have come across a former lover, grown old and near death, that I have thought about making a companion for myself, making a husband or a daughter. I would make them better than myself. Make a thing that didn’t feel my loneliness, that did not have my instinct for cruelty. I would not birth them out fire. I would shape them from the wind and the water. They would flow and dance with such grace and I would never be alone again.