She had been so happy with *him*, feeling at peace with herself for the first time in her life after meeting *him, a* friend of a friend. After years of longing for a deep, intimate relationship, he suddenly appeared right before her. Both of them had rather melancholic temperaments, so sadness was a well known acquaintance to both of them. He especially suffered from depressive episodes, but when they held each other tightly, their negative emotions seemed to disappear. He tried his best to always come to her aid, and she tried her best to be always there for him. She allowed herself to accept the thought that maybe, just maybe, life wasn't as cruel as she had imagined. She needed him and he needed her, so everything was perfect. They spent most of their time together, periods of time where in their minds everyone else disappeared from the surface of the world. An objective observer would have probably declared this relationship as a mutual dependence, but she would have taken this as a compliment, as a symbol for their deep love and affection toward each other, for the fact that they were able to keep going simply by supporting each other. For her, life reached a high point when he gave her a key to his flat, allowing her to come by whenever she felt like doing so. And so she did. She craved his love, his presence, his smell. She loved being dependent on him. But she always feared that she was unable to make him happy, as an aura of sadness still surrounded him, while she herself felt great. So she made an extra effort to cheer him up, to be a shoulder he could always lean on. And so the days went by. Until he said to her how he thought they had slowly stopped existing as individuals, and how it would be beneficial to their relationship if they started to spend more time being separated from each other again, in order to keep the spark between them alive. During the first moments, while processing what he had just said, she felt deeply saddened and alone. But she could nevertheless understand where he came from, and since her worst fear was losing him, she agreed to his proposal, all while holding back her tears. After this conversation, something changed within him. Texts she sent him were met with a reply hours later, calls were often not returned, visits to his flat were short-lived because he often told her about the plans he had made in the afternoon with his friends. She felt as if their relationship was nothing but a shadow of its former glory. But what had brought about this sudden change in his behaviour, in his feelings? Had she been too clingy, too affectionate, too needy? But maybe he was just busy, which of course may be a logical possibility, she thought. That was what he had texted her before, telling her how much he missed her. And like that, months went by. She finally reestablished contact with her best friend, someone she had neglected for such a long period of time. She felt disgusted regarding her behaviour towards the girl, but nevertheless her primary thought wasn't about her guilt towards her best friend, but about the growing distance between her boyfriend and herself. She confined in her friend about the changes, his eagerness to get rid of her, his short replies. After thinking through was just had been said, her friend brought up something she would have never wanted to hear, never wanted to think about, never had allowed herself to even consider the possibilities. An affair. Tears shot down her face, because she instantly realised that this had to be the truth. An affair. But with whom? With her boyfriend being „away on a visit to his parents“, she had more than enough time to think thoroughly about the possible candidates. Was it this girl from his Biology course he had mentioned a few times because of her unnatural long hair? A mutual friend? Maybe an old flame from his high school years? Who was she? It all made sense. He never wrote her back because he felt guilty, he always practically chased her out of his flat because she would afterwards come over. He put a distance between them because he wanted to spend time with this side fling. He switched wearing simple t-shirts for long-sleeved turtlenecks which made him look like a pretentious follower of Sartre, probably in order to hide the love bites she had marked him with. He became less affectionate because his love was now directed at another woman. He was probably spending the night making love to her in a hotel instead of visiting his parents. How could she have been so naive? Shortly after, she got a text from him, stating how much he loved her, how much he craved her presence. Liar, she thought to herself. Liar. The first text she had received in two days. Liar. After a sleepless night nearly breaking her head about his affair, about the identity of this woman who had stolen the man she loved, she realised what she had to do in order to come close to the truth. With trembling hands, she dialled the phone number of his family home, and after some seconds which felt so endless they took away her breath, his mother answered. Forty seconds later, she learned that her boyfriend was, in fact, not at his parents home. Her heart skipped a beat. He had, in fact, lied to her, straight to her face. He had lied. He had lied to her. It took minutes for her to comprehend this. She picked up the keys to his flat, still laying on the table where she had put them five days ago. It felt as if years had passed since her last visit. Now he was staying there with another woman. Liar. She opened the door silently and listened. No one was talking, no trace of perfume was in the air. There were no moans, no laughter. Just a deadly silence. Had they heard her coming into the flat? It didn't matter to her. Still, she tried to make as little sound as possible while she made her way into the bedroom. As the distance grew smaller, she noticed the faint sound of a female laughter coming from the room. The light also seemed to be on. So he was there after all, and in his company was a woman. She didn't bother knocking on the door, entering it fully expecting seeing him on top of the long haired girl from Biology. But instead, she saw him sitting on his bed. The first thing she saw was him wearing a t-shirt again. The second thing was a blood soaked tissue he firmly pressed onto his hand. Then she saw his arms, covered with fresh red marks. The third thing she noticed was an empty syringe, laying next to him on the bed. The sounds emitted by the television instantly faded into the background as she took a look into his eyes, his eyes, so far away, which formerly were so full of love. No, not formerly, she realised. He was still in love. Not with her, not with the girl from his Biology class, but with what seemed to be heroin. She realised that while he was able to give her everything she needed to be happy, she herself had been unable to do the same for him. So he turned to something else in order to give him what he craved so severely. Yes, they were both dependent. But obviously to very different things.


The nightmares I had kept on coming. I'd say they occurred about once every week or two. Some of them were harsh, such as the one where I had to live through my murder again. Others weren't nearly as bad but still caused me to feel sick to my stomach, such as witnessing several life-changing moments in which I pushed family away. yelling at them to not interfere with my work. I was convinced for some time that the nightmares I had were, in part, punishment for my actions in life as a cruel and negligent man. There are still many questions I have that I am unsure how to answer, so I may seem uncertain a lot of times. In truth, life after death doesn't truly answer our questions about the universe. I've no clue if this experience happening to me is similar to other spirits. Thus, with no comparison to offer, I cannot offer with certainty that events such as this will be similar to what you readers will experience. When last year's Halloween arrived, I was filled with hope once more. It was a promising day, and I would pray that someone would dare enter my home. Again, I saw the kids in their plastic masks and neat costumes skip down the road for a night of trick-or-treating. Just like every year before, they would go up to a neighborhood house, knock on the door, and joyfully accept their delicious treats. The night went on, the kids got their candy, and they all avoided my house once again. A frown formed on my face as I lost hope once more, realizing that it would be another boring Halloween for me. I hung my head low and made my way over to my spot on the floor, lazily sitting with my legs spread out haphazardly. I leaned my head against the wall and listened to the sounds of the children's fun dissipate. The moon had risen once more, and the children made their way back to their homes. Exhaling slowly, I prepared to fall asleep once more. Until I heard a strange noise outside the house, that is. I opened my eyes and shifted my head toward the back door where the sound originated. I saw several shadows moving around outside the window, with soft murmurs accompanying the motion. I sat up, my interest piqued. Could it be what I thought it was? Could it be what I had been hoping for, for all those years? I got my answer in the form of the window near the back door sliding open and a small boy stealthily making his way into the house. He couldn't have been more than 15 years old. I smiled wide as I stood and made my way over to the boy. Finally, a daredevil! As expected, he couldn't see me. The boy clicked his flashlight on and methodically traversed the house, jumping at every small creak and groan the old house made. I could see his skin crawling; He was quite uneasy in the rickety old place. Smirking mischievously to myself, I gently knocked on the wall next to the boy, causing him to jump in fright. He made his way out of the room and towards the bottom of the staircase, looking up into the darkness beyond. I made my way besides the boy and scratched the wooden walls. "H... Hello? Is anybody in here?" he whispered softly under his breath, somewhat unsure. I remained silent as a dead man, not wanting to chase the poor kid out of the house too quickly. This was my first haunting after all, and I didn't want to ruin it. The boy allowed his light to shine up the stairs as he ascended to the second story, each bump within the night causing him to noticeably wince. I followed him upwards, passing through his body at one point, causing him to shiver. Once he reached the top, he made his way down the long corridor and to my room. Before he could reach the handle, I opened the door ever so slightly, beckoning him to enter. "Heh... it's just the wind. Don't be a wimp, man, you can do this," the boy spoke to himself. As he shined the light around the room, I snuck behind him and stood silent, grinning ear to ear. When he turned around to face me, his face turned completely pale. This confused me, so I turned around to see if anything caught his eye. There was nothing. Looking back, I stared directly into his eyes. He stared right back into mine. He could see me. I didn't know how, but suddenly he could see me. He backed away slowly, his lip quivering and his eyes as wide as humanly possible. Then, he abruptly released a blood-curdling scream and ran in the opposite direction. I followed quickly as the boy rushed down the corridor. Apparently, he didn't pay attention like he should have, because I heard a shrill cry before the sound of a body tumbling down the stairs echoed throughout the house, followed by a sickening crack. I rushed down to the boy, my mouth agape in pure shock. There, at the bottom of the stairs, sat the body of the boy. His neck was turned in an unnatural position, clearly broken. His eyes were wide open and unmoving, and his chest was completely still. He wasn't breathing at all. He... was dead. I had to sit there and watch as the paramedics and officers took the child's lifeless body away. The crushing weight of guilt caused tears to form within my eyes. I had never intended for something like that to happen, and I will never get over it. My perception of time seemed to drastically slow down after that event. I wrote down that event into my computer, my mind unsure of what to think. This guilt has been weighing me down for some time now. Of all the awful experiences I have had, both in life and death, this tops them all. I am a murderer, and nothing will change that now. Whether this was an accident or not is inconsequential. The blood is on my hands, and I can't help but wonder about the boy's family and how they must feel. It tied a knot in my stomach just to think about it, and it always will. A while after those events happened, I found a new application on my computer. It was nothing that I had ever downloaded, nor was it something anyone else could have placed there. Sure enough, upon opening it up I saw a list of download links to videos. The same videos that were on the white computer, in fact. There was, however, one video that I didn't recognize. One placed directly after my death date on the timeline. My eyes widened as I read the date underneath the download link. It was Halloween... the same day I had caused the death of the poor boy who entered the house. I already knew what the contents of the video would be, and watching it only confirmed my suspicions and made me sick to my stomach. That night is all that I can think of any more. There seems to be no more room for any sort of contemplation, aside from what I could have done differently. All I can ponder now is if there was something that could have been done to mitigate this entire mess... if a mess is even an appropriate term for this. Now, I wish that I could stop thinking altogether. A child died within the house, and word spread quickly throughout town. The police will be sure to be on top of this place again, but the truth is that I'm stuck here forever, until further notice. If kids don't try sneaking in again soon, they will after the fuzz dies down. Someone will come in, and I'm deathly afraid that there will be another accident someday. I will feel that way until the end of time... or until whenever this damn house is demolished. I'm not sure what I will do when that time comes, but this afterlife is slowly shaping into a hell far beyond what I had imagined. I type this to you now because in a life and death of eternal torment, nightmares, and guilt, it's all I can think to do. There is nothing else for me, so perhaps this account of my life and afterlife will hold some value to you. Whatever the case may be, wish me the luck I so desperately need. Maybe in time I'll forgive myself and move on, but I can't be certain. I don't really know anything anymore. All I had wanted was to set aside my selfishness for a single night... and look where that got me. I just hope the kids stay away from this place. All it has to offer is bad news. Take care now, and be safe next Halloween. Please don't do anything stupid.


Pre-face: I’ve lived a long and prosperous life. Oft times, I sit in a chair near as old as myself and reflect. The neighbors seem to harbor fear or distrust for me as I stare blankly from my stoop. The lingering stares as they pass don’t affect me. I know of their secrets. I can see further and clearer than most, despite my current state of withering. The man across the way is an adulterer; he has even laid with his lowly maid. The neighborhood children are the cause for the pets gone missing. The neighbor to the left pockets the silverware when at others’ homes. The woman down the street had widowed herself. But they still pass, unaware of the ubiquity of a life long lived. My housemate is among them. He sleeps during the day and benights himself in the shadows as he prowls the streets at night. I watch him closely, for he seems the most disturbed on the street. And he watches back. I keep him out of reach to ensure my safety. I make sure he is comfortable and fed. When I rest my head and all-seeing eyes, I latch my doors and sleep facing the entrance. These securities I take may be superfluous, but they feel necessary. I awake to subtle sounds, those of mice skittering beneath the wooden floorboards or the chirping of a lost, lone cricket. Frequently, I have dreams of being watched. A man who peers around corners as I browsed the open markets. A child stuck in the corner of my eye. A bright light will shine on my face. Faint noises of metal scraping and creaking. These visions feel like more than a decaying man’s unconscious delusions and more of a warning. A warning that fell upon deaf ears. A warning I should have heeded. Half a fortnight has passed of these queer dreams before I was startled awake by a familiar sound. A sound that echoed from my fantasms; the creaking of an iron latch. The sanctity of my bed-chamber was compromised, and the door swung open. The silhouette of the man who breaks my bread ingresses and hovers to the foot of my bed. The housemate was leering above me. He bounds towards me with unremarkable speed. The lantern crashes to the floor. He grips my ankles and yanks my decrepit body to the floor. I let out one final cry, the last utterance of a life long lived. I hear a crunch and blinding pain as bones break upon impact. He drags the heavy metal frame over me, snuffing out my frail worldly existence. The pain fades rapidly and a darkness unknown creeps across my vision. I see nothing, but I can hear the thumping of a beating heart. One that is no longer mine. The beating softens to a whisper, then to a deafening silence. I can hear his heavy breathing as my chest falls for the last time with a rasp of stale air. His hand lies above my immobile heart for minutes. I am being dragged and am lifted into the porcelain basin. A stridulent sound arises as a saw grinds through my limbs, then my neck. I hear the strain of floorboards being pried up, and I tumble, piece by piece, into the emptiness below. I lie there cold and alone, bewildered by my inanimate awareness, for an indiscernible length of time. A knock comes from the postern and the falling of multiple feet enters my lodging. My slayer’s voice is booming with arrogance as he leads the officers to my dormitory. His deceit was clear to me. It appears he has meditated on this macabre act for a while. A chair is placed above my wooden sepulcher. His lies accumulate like snow rolling down a mountain. I am not simply out of town. His confidence staggers and the officers make a hushed note of it. My clothes still hang, my books still opened, my jewelry still displayed. I hear a thumping again. A heartbeat I long to have rests above me, thrashing uneasily in the chest of the man who ended a life long lived. Thu-thump. Thu-thump. Thu-thump. The officers rise to their feet, erected by their suspicions. The murder casts aside the chair covering my false grave. “Villains!,” he shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed! Tear up the planks! Here, here! It is the beating of his hideous heart!” A familiar creak came from above and the officers uncovered the remains of a life long lived.


As I was drawn towards the door, I made one final check of the cavern around me. Behind us the floor trailed off into a pile of rock and debris that looked unmoved for centuries. To our right, the small stream continued running a rivulet across the floor until the concrete stopped, and the water disappeared down a hole much too small to enter. The only way forward was the door. The corners showed finely made metal hinges. Panels were welded together with perfect precision, not a single mistake in their execution. It had rusted over the years, copper undertones slowly seeping through to the surface. There was no way this was the work of Stetguttot Heath. This was from the old world. I held my hand against the metal handle. “We enter, right?” I turned to Alessia, checking for a final confirmation from her. She nodded and I pushed down hard on the metal bar. It creaked and it was stiff, but the handle hadn’t rusted to a locked position. This door had been opened some time recently. I peered into the lightless space, only making out the vaguest of shapes. Squinting, I stepped over the threshold and immediately four small bulbs in the corners of the room hummed on, an orange-hue cascading across the room. Ahead, small red lettering appeared intermittently on the wall behind a glass case. *AUXILIARY POWER* “What the…? How’d you turn that on?” I asked. “I didn’t,” Alessia said, her mouth flat and her eyes wide. “You didn’t do anything?” “Didn’t touch a thing,” I said. Alessia merely shrugged, and so I turned back to inspect. It was a large room, maybe some ten metres square. Across the outside walls sat a mixture of desks and large contraptions I had no hope of understanding. In the middle of the room there were desks too, these had large glass squares encased in plastic. The glass was black, lifeless. Long cables ran from the back of the machines, disappearing into the desks. In front of many of the screens sat buttons; the letters of the alphabet jumbled up. Elsewhere, there were other switches that simply read "Start", "Stop" or some other instruction. Moving closer, I could see that several of the glass squares were broken, sharp fragmentation lines contrasting against the obsidian surface. The desks too were damaged. The buttons had been pounded in, the casings recessed into the desk. Letters would be missing or disjointed, strewn across. I noticed that while a layer of dust coated the surfaces it was fine, not coated deep like that in the library. The centuries of grime and dirt that should have built up in here had been moved whenever those tables were hit and the glass squares broken. As I tracked across the room, I saw faded painted lettering against the rear wall. I couldn’t make out all of it, but I tried to read what I could. N RS R Then underneath in smaller lettering Seismology Research, K ell r I walked closer, trying to see if I could spot any more letters in the faded paint, when I jumped back suddenly, my peripheral vision recoiling as I noticed the skeletal remains lying in the corner. The bones lay approximately in the shape of a human, with the head, neck and ribcage in a small pile as though the body, many years ago, had once been slumped against the wall. The bones were slowly decaying, the whiteness sucked from them leaving them bronzed and brittle. Slowly, what remained was breaking away, cracked open, hollow fragments becoming dust. I walked backwards away from the body when I was distracted by a loud fizzing noise. “Ow! Shit!” Alessia cried out. “What are you up to?” I called out to Alessia, my eyes feeling guilty for abandoning the skeleton. “You know anything about electrics?” “No.” “There’s a whole cupboard of wires down here. I’m just sort of ramming shit together, trying to see what does what. But looks like our *friend* decided to try and damage as much stuff as he could on the way out.” “Not natural you don’t think?” “Nah. I can see where some of this stuff has been ripped out from,” Alessia said. I walked over to find her on all fours, her entire front half lost in a cupboard. “At least we know where his money came from now.” “What?” “There’s a bunch of wires missing. And the ones that are left are made of good materials: gold tipped and stuff.” “Reckon he would’ve made enough?” “Add to that the instruments he probably stole and sold as artefacts? Oh yeah, plenty. You should’ve robbed this place instead of Kadear.” I could sense Alessia sticking her tongue at me from behind the cupboard door. “Okay. But no idea why he destroyed thi-” There was a brief clicking noise, and the room became marginally brighter. I turned around to see a few of the glass squares light up. They flickered in broken greens and blues, trying to display something, but nothing coherent appeared. Alessia crawled back out the space and stood up, looking round the room. A voice appeared from the walls around us. “Playing bootup message.” We looked at each other for a moment, as another voice spoke. This time it was a woman’s. The voice was calm and scripted. But it hid something, as though a more natural, more raw message was being overridden. “Hello. My name is Dr. Tenshi Ito. I was on duty here…” the speaking briefly cut out, vague vowels and consonants played out for a few seconds before normalcy resumed. “...recording to play on the event that the laboratory was rebooted, so that I could relay to you all we know. I am sure I do not have all the information available, but I hope this message will aid in your understanding. At around thirteen-twenty on Wednesday twenty-eigth of June, twenty-seventy-three we detected…” The recording stopped again. This time complete silence took over. The glass squares returned too to their apathetic blackness. I looked at Alessia as our eyes searched the room, praying for the voice to return. Then a smell caught my nose. Faint at first, but as I sniffed the air it became more distinguishable. Smoke. Alessia and I turned back to the closet where she had been fiddling with the wires and pulled open the doors. Grey plumes bellowed out from the space, catching the back of my throat. I bent over, coughing hard, my lungs retching with the acrid air. As soon as I recovered, I turned back to the cupboard and dived towards it, trying my best to blow air onto the flames. But as soon as one extinguished, another flick of yellow burst from another wire, and then another. The flames grew in number and strength, and soon my futile attempts to blow them out seemed to merely fan them. I reached out, trying to snuff them in my hands, gritting my teeth as the heat burned my palms. But still, I was fighting a losing battle. “We’re not gonna win this,” Alessia said. She pulled me back and slammed the cupboard doors shut. There was peace for a second before hints of grey smoke began to appear around the edges of the cupboard. “Shit,” she muttered. I pulled my sleeve up to my mouth, trying to filter the air through the fabric as I spoke. “We need to get out here.” We turned and headed to the exit door. We pushed on the metal frame hard, but the door didn’t budge. We pushed again, and once more the door remained firm. I could feel the room getting dimmer as the deathly air began to blur the orange lights. My heartrate spiked, the sudden realization of the moment catching up to me. Alessia tried pushing once more. A desperate grunt, as she thudded against the metal slab. The door gave out an unsympathetic thud but didn’t heed. I looked at the door, tracing my eyes across the surface, and then it hit me. “Out the way,” I said, pushing past Alessia. “We’re being stupid.” I turned the handle and pulled. The door opened towards us. I ran out into the cave, feeling the temperature of the air drop, as I let out another hacking cough; my lungs clearing themselves of the toxins and gasping in replacement oxygen. Alessia pulled the door behind us. The great metal slab creaked on its hinges, before finally sealing shut with a furious bang. “You okay?” I asked. “Yeah.” She bent over, taking a few long deep breaths. “I may never recover from not realizing I needed to pull the door, but…” She lifted herself back up and her lungs wheezed as she laughed out the smoke from inside her. “We’re never going to hear that message are we?” I sighed. “No. I’m certain that Sannaz heard it. But until we find him, we won’t know what it said…” “You think that’s what led to him murdering Deer Drum?” Alessia paused ,then shook her head. “Not entirely. But… maybe the final push. Heard something that made him take that final step.” I looked back at the door, imagining the slowly fanning flames the other side. “So now what? Dead end?” “First, let’s get out of here,” Alessia said, her lips turned upwards but her shoulders slumped. “That door will hold back most the smoke but not much room down here, don’t fancy chancing it.” I agreed and we started heading back up the narrow passageway towards the sinkhole. We trekked our way back through the caves until we could look up and see the afternoon sky above us. We reattached ourselves to the harnesses, and pulled on the ropes to send the signal. We waited for a minute or so, but eventually I felt the tug on the line, the rope straining as I was lifted up into the air. It was a slow, frustrating few minutes, watching the cave disappear as I reascended. We were supposed to find answers to what Sannaz Lytta was after. What we found was more questions; hints at a bigger mystery, but without anything concrete. Instead of being closer to the truth, we just found the world was much larger than we first thought. We ascended in silence as I tried to think of what our next move should be. Tracing my memory for some small lead that could get us closer to Sannaz. I came up with nothing. Eventually we emerged topside. My knees found the ledge of the hillside and I was able to pull myself up to the ground, the strain on my waist finally releasing. I untied myself and walked over to Cameron and the team of three people who had helped pull us up. “You better still have that bag,” Cameron said walking over towards us. Alessia smiled, and took the rucksack off her shoulder. “You did your job. Thank you.” Cameron walked over, squinting, with slow movement as he took the bag from Alessia. He took a couple of paces back and opened it up, making sure the book was still there. “I said we’d give it back. Just, try to do some good with that thing, okay?” Alessia said. “I intend to make enough money to not have to go down the mines for a year or two. That good enough?” Alessia chuckled. “Not what I had in mind, but… you do you.” Cameron redid the clasps on the bag and walked off towards the town. I waited until we were alone and turned to Alessia. “We still have no idea where he is, why he did it, nothing,” “We know a bit more. But it will take time,” Alessia said. “We need to find out where he went next.” “He could’ve gone anywhere.” “True,” Alessia nodded, looking at the town in the distance. “So what now?” “Best chance? There’s an island about four days south of here. Talin Barier.” “I know it,” I said quickly, before a flicker of hesitation crossed my face. “Well, I’ve heard of it. From the traders at Kadear. Major trading hub, one of the largest in the Archipelago.” The corner of one of Alessia’s lips raised. “Yeah. There’s plenty of places the boat he got on could’ve gone, but... best chance is there.” “Seems like a stretch,” I said, my teeth braced. “It is.” Alessia said. “But even if he didn’t go there, so many traders go through that island there's a good chance *someone*‘ll have heard something. Word travels fast at sea. Stay there, speak to enough people.. We’ll find him” I looked at the settlement at Section F. In the distance, I could make out Cameron disappearing between the buildings. To the far left, I could see the mine entrance, now barren and empty. A quick breeze blew past, stirring the thistles and grass by our feet, and sweeping the dust along the paths in front of us, clearing our route back to the harbour. Slowly, we began our trek.


This is the first time I've tried to write a sort of story, I feel it'd be embarrassing to ask anyone to read it so I wanted to see if anyone on here would enjoy or criticize it. I opened the door, things seemed almost unfamiliar. I stepped in the house I called my own and it hit me. “This house,” I whispered, “It’s not mine, is it?” Although the key worked, it still didn’t feel right. The smell, the taste of the air, and even the creaking sounds of the floorboards were different. But the house looked the same, all the flower pots and pictures of my wife and I are still here. Before my wife died she was diagnosed with severe OCD. Her parents never took her to get a diagnosis. They thought if she was diagnosed with a disorder the people in this small town would look at her differently. She would label everything on its bottom. All of the flower pots had a number that matched their spot on the table. One went with one, two went with two, and so on. The plants themselves matched their spot, but as I lifted them up the number ‘one’ on the table didn’t correspond with the ‘9’ on the pot. “Jacob” I heard a voice similar to my wife’s wearily say, “is that you love?” It was followed by a small laughter. She always did find it extremely cliché to call each other ‘love.’ It was the laughter that caught me off guard though, I could almost feel it. Even as the hot sun rays came in through the open door the chills I got were incomparable to any winter cold I’ve ever felt. I was distracted, how I had gotten so off track was almost bewildering to me at that moment. I continued to walk around the house. Why was it so unfamiliarly familiar? As I entered the kitchen this sort of ravenous stench entered my nose. The smell was neither good or bad, but I felt as though it was consuming me. It drew me to the basement so I followed it. Even then I knew I shouldn’t have followed my curiosity, but I couldn’t help myself. My hand slowly got closer and closer to the knob almost like it was magnetic and my hand was made of iron. My hand finally reached the knob after what felt like a lifetime of going towards it. I couldn’t feel that endlessness again so I turned the knob and opened the door as hastily as I possibly could. I thought something greater would have happened but it was like any other door to any other room in the house. I flipped the switch but no light came on. I tried flipping it a few more times but all I got was a small zap. With no light in the basement I went to go find a flashlight from the kitchen drawer. She labeled these sorts of things too. I began to remember the number I used to see on the flashlight. “46,” I told myself “I really hope it does say 46.” I opened the drawer with the label ‘21’ and lifted up the light but it was numbered ‘64.’ But I could have just forgotten, maybe switched the numbers up in my head. To this day I still don’t have an answer for that. Regardless, I went back to the basement and turned on the flashlight. What I saw was horrifying, something that my brain could have never switched up like a number. There was a mirror, with a reflection of me next to my wife, the both of us were hanging from the tree out front. If my mind was playing tricks on me, I will never forgive it. I didn’t know what to do. I was stuck, with tears rolling down my cheeks and into my mouth. The salty taste of my tears must have brought me back to reality as I almost immediately threw up into the kitchen trash can labeled ‘53.’ While the dim kitchen light only barely lit the trash can, I could still see the red, I was puking blood. I screamed for my life when I saw it. I wasn’t scared, because that was nothing compared to what I had just seen. “Joseph, come back.” The same voice whispered. Instinctively I ran for the front door. It closed slightly with every step I took. “Could have just been a breeze.” I told myself, even though deep down I knew it was a lie. “It’s fine my love, just come back to me and everything will be fine.” “Who are you?” I answered reluctantly. “How could you forget me,” I heard which was followed by a slight sob, “we’ve been married all this time and you forget me just like that?” But there was no way it was her, it couldn’t have been. She died more than two years before then, but I tried my best to believe the voice with the ounce of hope I had left. But the hope was overpowered, what could I possibly be hoping for, she was gone and I had to leave. So I did, running for the door all I could think of was the reflection I had seen in that basement. A part of me was saying that if I did leave now, I could never come back. That was fine though, in the moment at least, because no matter what happened next I would always have the memory of my wife. I got to the door, pulled it back open because it had nearly closed, and took a step back outside. The door slammed behind me, which startled me slightly but I was already terrified so that couldn’t compare. Going outside and seeing the tree from that reflection, it almost made me throw up again, but I didn’t. I turned around, locked the door and left, never to return. It’s two years later now, I’ve seen hundreds of therapists, almost using every paycheck on each of them. But nothing helped, no matter how hard I tried there was never a difference. What I saw was real, if it wasn’t then why was it just that once that it happened, in that old creaky house. The only real therapy was visiting the hospital bed where the doctors tried to save her. She had killed herself. Slit her wrists and drowned in our bathtub. I begged the doctors to save her but no matter how hard they tried, there was no hope. That hospital bed is my last memory of her. To this day I’ve never taken off my wedding ring. I couldn’t go through that pain of losing again. So I make it clear to everyone that I’m still married. Women say constantly that I look good, or any other compliment they can think of, but I never listen. The past three years I haven’t spoken a word to a woman. It was almost a trigger to me, all the memories seem to come back and hit me like a train. My boss sees I'm struggling, he knows the story of what happened in that house. He never believed it but tries to comfort me as much as possible. His name is Jerimiah, a nice, clean, and business-like man. He tries, and for that I will forever be in debt. I could never help him if I tried, how would I be able to if I can’t even help myself. I work in a police department, most of what I do is paperwork. I used to go to the crime scenes a lot for more insight, but I lost motivation for doing so. Especially since the last time I went to one, it was hers. There are men in my department that believe it wasn’t suicide, they say there's evidence it was a murder. It was never conclusive but it was ruled a suicide. But still the cruel men and women blame me. It was unbearable listening to them go on and on the week after she died about how it could have been me. But it wasn’t me, it couldn’t have been, I was at work the whole day. So from my point of view, it came down to suicide, or whatever was in that basement. I’ve been keeping up to date with our old house since I sold it, which was the day after I last went in. There have been 10 or more people who've bought the house and left within a month. All of them said that something was off, or that they didn’t feel safe there. I understood their emotions, more than they ever could. The part that scared me the most was the most recent owner had told me that the basement door is bolted shut. Nobody else has said this so it must have been recent. I contemplated returning there to see if it was true, but evidently, I was horrified to do so. “I guess I’ll wait until the next owner buys and leaves to see what they say” I told myself. So I did, and two months later the next owner died. The station made me look over the evidence, and as I read the autopsy report and saw the pictures, I burst out into tears. He had died the same way my wife did, the exact same. The slits were in precisely the same spot on his wrist as hers. He laid the same and even the blood, for some reason, looked so similar. I decided to go with them to the crime scene. It was the only way I would be able to go there again and come out alive. Jerimiah and I entered the house, nothing was the same. Now there was a reason to speculate if it was my old house or not. Every single thing had been changed, from the carpet to the ceiling type. It was so strange to see, a house so familiar yet so different. Rather than go upstairs to see the actual crime scene, I went to where I witnessed the worst thing I ever would. The previous owner was telling the truth. The basement door had been bolted shut. “Jerimiah!” I called out. “Yeah what is it?” He asked while hastily walking over to me. “Something happened in this house after what I saw, somebody else saw something, that must be why the door is like this.” I said almost excitedly. This was the first bit of proof I had towards me not being crazy. “Ehhh Jacob I don’t know man, this could be from anything.” He had a disappointed look on his face. It was like he got scared I would never be well again. I walked away slowly, looking at the dreadful expression on his face. “Wait did you hear that??” He asked suddenly. “No,” I said with a confused tone, “what was it?” “There was a voice, it screamed for help, and then there was a scraping on the wall close to the door.” I was shocked, he was describing it like it was written on paper and he’d been reading it every day over and over. It was hard to tell if he was making a joke or not, but as he turned around to look at me it was like he had died of fear. His face, which usually is a bright and pretty one, was so shockingly pale I almost jumped back. “Jerimiah are you alright?” I asked worriedly. “I don’t think so, call over some more people,” he said in a tone like that of death, “we’re getting this damn door open.” So I did, we grabbed some crow bars from the cars out front and began working at the door. After five minutes or so the door had opened. Following it was a darkness like no other, we all were knocked over and left with slits in our arms exactly the same as my wife and the most recent victim. That terrible darkness that scarred us all had gone straight for the front door. I couldn’t make out a figure but it was there, and somehow person-like. I could see the door locking itself almost like it was being forced to. The shadowy figure slowly merged with the door and it became a pure black. Slowly, the windows and the walls were all consumed as well. That same ravenous smell came back as I sat on the floor surrounded by darkness and the other frightened officers. The basement door was the only other visible thing. I was drawn towards it again, and I think the others were as well. One of them got up and started walking to it. “GET AWAY!” I yelled in complete frustration with her. It seemed so stupid of somebody to be in a situation like this and still think to follow that great darkness. But with me yelling the shadow ran back to the basement as fast as it had come. We were back in the house again, the bright sun shining through the kitchen window. The girl began to cry, it was like she realized that she almost killed us all. Leaving the house was the worst part, blood dripping down are arms in similar streams with the same cuts on all of us. It looked like we were some sort of satanic cult. How could anyone believe what we had just seen? We would look like lunatics, then again we already did. The second I felt the outside air hit my arm the cuts and blood all cleared up. Slowly the blood on all of our arms had vanished, and we were left with nothing but the memory. Even with that memory trigger of talking to women, the girl that stood up had something about her that drew me close, wanting to learn more I went with that feeling. I pulled her aside asking her what she was thinking. I needed to understand what she heard and saw. I felt as though if I couldn’t understand, I would never be whole. “I heard my husband, telling me to come closer, and there was this frightening smell, it was in some terrible way consuming me.” I gave her a hug, the most comforting way I possibly could, and went straight to my apartment. As I entered my small rundown apartment I felt as if I needed to take a bath. I went to the bathroom and turned on the faucet. I sat on the couch for a few minutes waiting for the tub to fill and when it did I got undressed and got in. As my foot touched the water my arm started to burn, but by the time I looked at it I was fully in the tub. The cuts had reappeared and with it the darkness filled the room, I was bleeding heavily as I felt a strong hand drag me into the tub. I looked down and the tub became an endless ocean. I went to pull the hand off of me and as I did I saw the shiny ring that was on its finger. It was my wife's ring, I knew because the diamond had her name in big blue letters. ‘Delilah,’ it read. Reading her name on her ring made me give up. I stopped struggling and trying to swim away. I let myself be taken away and eaten by the darkness. And with my final breath of air I whispered to myself, or to her even, “I’m coming, my love.” As I slowly drowned in the endless waters, I laughed for the first time in years. Thinking about how my last words were the ones she loathed the most.


Rain pelts the single-pane windows of the New England coffee shop. In the distance, a grey sea churns, salty spray spitting from its stormy swells. “How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is clearly Ocean,” a wrinkle of a man mutters from the corner table as he gazes through the warped glass. His gnarled fingers clutch a delicate cup of tea that had long gone cold, but he lifts it to his lips anyhow, indulging in its floral notes. His words hook my ears and I stand, moving from my corner of the little cafe to his. I waver there, above the only other chair at his table. He doesn’t notice. I clear my throat. Still, the old man stares out the pane, at the smoky sea and the tempest beyond. “Hello,” I say. “May I join—” The old man grunts, miffed. “Took you long enough.” “I don’t understand,” I reply, lowering into the rickety chair. The old man finally looks at me, his grim eyes as grey and stormy as the sea on the horizon. “I’ve been waiting for quite some time,” he announces. “My name is Truth. You’ve been looking for me.” “Yes,” I nod fervently, a bit in disbelief but beginning to understand. “I didn’t realize I was keeping you waiting.” “I have sat here day after day, watching you sip your coffee and click away on your keys,” Truth says, his voice weakening, “waiting for you to see me. You look out this same window as I do, watch the same sea as I do, yet you still can’t see me.” “I see you now,” I tell him. “Though, you’re not quite what I expected,” I admit, suddenly a bit sheepish. “Not very pretty, am I?” Truth asks with a smile that reveals three black, rotten teeth. “Not really,” I laugh. “Well, go on,” Truth raises his scruffy eyebrows. “Ask.” “Ask what?” “Ask me your question. But be careful—I will only answer one.” “One!” I exclaim. “You will only answer one question?” Truth smiles again. “Is that really what you want to know?” “No!” I calm myself. “No, wait. That’s not my question.” Calculating so as to be sure I don’t waste my question, I slowly utter, “One… has to wonder… why Truth himself… could only answer one question.” “Ah,” Truth leans forward over his tea cup. “All humans ultimately only have one question.” I think about this for a long while. So long, in fact, that Truth takes to looking out the window again. I watch him. Then I look out the window, too. I see the choppy waves, the power of the winds—the same sea I glance day after day. After some time, I speak, ensuring a statement is what comes from my mouth. “I want to know why you gaze at the sea so,” I tell him. “Those who understand the sea understand my lessons,” Truth says, almost too softly to hear. “They know that too much of Her—too much water—can cause death. So can too little. Water is life. And, water is death.” “Tell me more,” I beg, already craving Truth’s honey-balm words. “They know She can be strong, and can be meek. Tidal waves and rain drops. Powerful, and peaceful. Terrifying, and soothing.” He looks at me again, this time stern. “They know She holds neither preference nor bias. The sea doesn’t choose who will live, or who will die. She is passionate, and ambivalent.” “I understand,” I say, choosing my next words carefully. “There is much to learn from the sea. The same thing that gives life, also causes death.” Truth lets out a sigh, then takes another sip from his cold tea. “If nature had an economy, contradictions would be its currency.” “Natures disproves itself,” I surmise. Truth beams. “The duality of reality.” “I used to think of the sea as good,” I say. “Something beautiful and full of life. But now I’m not so sure. The sea is bad.” “Tell me,” Truth leans forward, and I do the same. “Two men journey along a road, when eventually they reach a fork. One man goes right. The other man goes left. Who is correct?” “I don’t know,” I admit. “I need more information.” “There is no more information,” Truth insists. “At least not any that matters. Who made the correct choice?” I think for a while. “I suppose… neither of them did. Or perhaps they both did.” “Yes,” Truth says. “There is no right or wrong. There are only the choices we make for ourselves.” “Then the sea,” I wonder, “is neither good, nor bad. That’s why you sit here, watching the sea—because it teaches us this.” “No,” Truth shakes his head, then shrugs. “And yes. All of existence teaches us this, not just the sea. People meet me in different places. They find me everywhere, not just here with Her. Some never find me at all,” he says, solemn. Then, with a cheeky smile, “But there’s some who can’t get rid of me.” “Nothing is right and nothing is wrong,” I mumble. “That’s a bit bleak,” I decide, and Truth laughs. “At first, perhaps,” his smile crinkles the edges of his eyes. “In time, I suspect you will find it to be freeing.” “Bleak… and freeing,” I repeat, and my eyes widen as the connection forms. “Just like the sea.” “Yes. Just like Her.” Truth leans back in his chair. “Just like everything.


#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 Insidious! As we continue into October, I wanted to explore a darker theme. This week we’ll take a look at ‘insidious’. Insidiousness is all about the slow and gradual build of something harmful, evil, or treacherous. This can appear as a person or entity, someone’s underhanded nature, the ominous fog blanketing the world outside, etc. The possibilities are endless. How will this be revealed in your story? Which characters will be most affected? Does this come as a surprise or was it expected? Can the harm or evil be undone once it’s unleashed? What does this mean for 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 10 - Insidious (this week) * October 17 - Storm * October 24 - Fear   *** **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 a much smaller week of just eight stories, there was only need for three top ranks. You all still did wonderfully, as always. - - u/Zetakh   - - u/rainbow--penguin   - - u/stranger_loves   - - u/WorldOrphan   *** #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.


This is the opening of a short story I’m submitting to magazines for publication. I would love critique, feedback or just to be blasted. I will post the rest if you guys like it…. “Runner” Three am. Sleep hid from her, peeking around the corner, sniggering as Ally Nash kicked the covers. She rolled over. Alone. Eighteen months and his half of the bed was still empty. Rob was a light sleeper in his day. Maybe he’d have gotten up and talked to her through her insomnia. Or they would have made love. She missed him and hated him. Hated being alone. Hated him for what he did. Ally looked at her running shorts and U of M hoodie, slung over the side of her laundry hamper, and knew they could soak up one more sweat. Her panties and socks were fresh from the drawer, smelling like fabric softener. Just enough to offset the day-old musk. She got dressed and swallowed a cup of water, popped in her earbuds, stepped into her shoes and walked out the door. The air felt right, a satisfying burn, deep in her lungs. Her heart thanked her for giving it a reason to be. Her knee, on the other hand, grumbled for a day off. No. Motion is the lotion. She picked up the pace and drug the gummy joint through the paces until it relented. Ally’s stride came back and her cross country coach's voice echoed from deep in her brainstem. Three steps, in breath, four steps, out breath... in your nose, out your mouth... pick up the pace! The endorphins trickled into her blood and her mind floated just above her own skull. That was the real runners high. That ancient survival mechanism, adapted to running down animals in the plains of Africa. There was no worry there. No regret. No anxiety. No fiancé with locked apps on his phone. Up there she didn’t have to live with herself. The self who couldn’t ignore her gut any longer. The girl who told herself; you’re just being paranoid, he’s a good guy, nothing is going on, don’t be like your mother. Don’t push him away. Give him his space. He’s at the gym. Out with his friends. Don’t follow him. Ally! Don’t do it. Please. Don’t look- Enough! Thank god she never gave up on running. It saved her life in high school. When dad moved out and her mom’s drinking took a turn. Ally found peace in the rhythm of her feet and the floating of her mind. Running got her medals, ribbons, articles in the newspaper, a scholarship to the U and brought her together with Rob. Rob. The bastard with a majestic stride. Perfect. Fluid. Natural. He set the pace for their college team, Captain Rob. Three hour practices followed by sex in the shower. He picked Ally over a dozen other girls and they quickly became inseparable. The happiest days of her life. SNAP! Razor-sharp teeth flashed in the dark. Ally’s heart tumbled out of rhythm and fear snatched her out of reminiscing. She leapt off the blacktop and into the road. A snarling black lab yanked at the end of its chain, barking at what it believed was an intruder to its property. Oh my god! Ally clutched her chest and sighed, relieved it was just a halfwit mutt and not some ancient demon of the shadows. Once she reigned in her pulse and verified she hadn’t wet herself, Ally Nash looped back to the sidewalk and made a mental note to avoid the dog next time she ran in the dark. The nature preserve was a mile from her front door. Her favorite trail loop gave her seven miles to work her pace and get all the sweat she needed to get through another day. As she turned away from the road, facing into the woods, Ally stopped and checked the time. Four AM. At least an hour until the sun even started to glow. She’d never run that loop in the dark. It should be empty, Ally reckoned. Nothing to worry about. Besides, if the boogeyman happened to be in there, there’s almost no chance he could run six minute miles. One thought gave her pause. Her neighbor had posted a security camera photo of a canine they thought was a wolf. Most of the amateur nature experts on Facebook decided it was a German shepherd that should have had its collar on. A few men, Area Fifty One types, believed the ears and muzzle looked like they could belong to a coyote. One commenter noted that a pair of wolves had escaped a nature preserve twenty miles to the North on the night of a vicious rainstorm and were still being pursued by the DNR.


My life is a farce. Just yesterday, my master sends me down to the swamp. He says, swim down to the bottom of the bog. Down there at the bottom, you’ll find a piece of seaweed that feels just a *little* bit different than all the other pieces. Pull that piece. Nothing will seem to happen, but something *will* happen--another piece of seaweed somewhere else will feel different now. So go find that one. And do that until all the pieces feel weird. Then pull all those seaweed pieces out, one by one. Two at a time ain’t no good. Gotta be one by one. Then line ‘em up on the shore. Wait for the hot sun to come out, the one that comes out on Thursdays. We got three suns. Cold sun, Color sun, hot sun. Gotta wait for hot sun. So hot sun comes out, dries out all the seaweed. Now it’s rigid. Except it ain’t brittle like regular seaweed gets when Hot sun does it’s thing to it. It’s fucking hard like a rock. It’s the hardest god damn thing I’ve ever felt. I’m feeling pretty good. So I ask my master, what next. What do I do with this rock hard seaweed. He tells me, okay. So take that seaweed, and you’re gonna weave a basket out of it. A basket. Okay. So a-weaving I go, and I make a nice basket. He says okay. Now buy a hot air balloon. And attach it to the basket. I tell him hey man, I made the basket too small. You didn’t tell me what the basket was for and I made it way too small, there’s no way I can sit in this if it’s a hot air balloon! He says, that’s part of the test. So I buy a hot air balloon. Attach it to this rock hard seaweed basket thing. And he says go up to the ionosphere in this thing. Fine. Okay. I barely know where the ionosphere is but I figure it's upwards. So I stand in the basket, one foot only, that’s all that fits, and I light the flame of the hot air balloon, which is hot as all hell on my head because I can’t sit down, because the basket’s too small, and I ride it up to the ionosphere. It’s starting to get real cold, even with the flame and all from the hot air balloon. I’m getting real worried that the balloon is gonna deflate, because the air’s so cold and thin. The oxygen is hella thin. It's completely inconvenient to breathe, in a way I'm loving roughly 0%. I call my master and I say okay, I’m in the damn ionosphere, what now. I did everything you asked. What do I do. He says okay. He googles something. He’s kind of trying to hide that he’s googling something but I see him do it, it’s facetime and I can see him typing something on his phone with a really puzzled look on his face. So I say it. I don’t care that he’s my master, I let him have it. “Hey man, I see you’re googling shit. You’re just making this up as you go. You don’t have anything to teach me. The only thing you’re teaching me is that you don’t know what the hell you’re doing!” So I say fuck this guy. And I lean to my left and I fall my ass out of the hot air balloon on purpose, and I’m plummeting to earth with my arms folded, because I’m pissed off and I want everyone to know it. I see the earth racing up to meet me. I’m about to hit a rocky outcropping and I’m about to cry, I’m visualizing my body breaking on those rocks and my ribs and my lungs cracking and collapsing and all my blood flying everywhere, and my hands being pulverized to dust and my eyeballs flying out of my skull and going 500 feet, and I’m weeping uncontrollably, the images are flying through my head faster than I’m even falling, and I cry out to god. And I say, “fuck you, you old bastard. You’re gonna make my fucking eyeballs fly out and my knees pop off and my feet explode on this crumby old fucking rock outcropping. You made these rocks and you made gravity and that’s why you’re the dumbest old bitch alive.” And suddenly I stop. I look down. I’m an inch from the rocks, from the rocks that were so sure to end my life, but I’m not falling. I’m levitating. I look up and there’s my master. He’s levitating me. He tells me I passed my final lesson. I was ballsy enough to call him and god a dumb old bitch. And then, I fought him in that rock outcropping, and I kicked his head clean off with my first punch. And that’s how I got to be the proprietor of this dojo here. So it’s 45 dollars for the first month, and then 90 for the rest. Yeah. We send you a bill in the mail and you mail a check. No, I’m sorry, we really don’t do direct deposit. Yeah. Sorry.


The prisoner was brought into the interrogation room by two armed guards. He was shoved down onto a steel chair as the sound of the chair scraping against the tiled floor echoed throughout the small room. Above him was a single light bulb and in front of him was a silver metal table. Across the table from the prisoner was his captor. The captor was in his dark green uniform and by the look of the insignia on his arms, he must’ve been an officer of some sort. He was leaning forward, his elbows resting on the steel table. Paperwork was in a neat pile in front of him. The captor looked tired. His uniform was unkempt and his beard was long. His eyes were worn out. “Your name is Devlin, yes?” the captor asked in a strong but understandable accent. The prisoner didn’t answer. The captor sighed. He slowly got up and walked around the table. He placed a cigarette in the prisoner’s mouth and lit it. The prisoner took a deep breath and puffed the smoke out of the side of his mouth. The captor then leaned down and uncuffed the prisoner. “Devlin, you’re free to go.” Devlin took another drag of his cigarette and leaned back in his chair. “So, I guess the war is over then?” he asked calmly. “No, not yet. But it looks like we have reached a point of inevitability.” Devlin had no reaction. He continued to smoke his cigarette. The captor sat back in his chair and removed his hat. “You have been here with us for over six months. We have deliberately kept news of the outside world from you. Now, this will take some time, but let me explain what has happened. Six months ago …” “Where are my men?” Devlin interrupted. “Sir, I’m trying to explain.” “Explain to me where my men are.” The captor looked down. “They are all gone, believed dead.” Devlin stared straight at the wall behind the captor. “About a year ago I was stationed here. This was an enviable posting. We were to protect the northern border but no invading force had been able to cross those mountains in over one thousand years. Some of the men were eager for action but me, I had already seen enough. “We had six months of no activity. We then received word that there was some movement in the mountains. I personally thought it was some bad intelligence but we sent a scouting force out anyway. And that’s when we heard that an entire division was moving towards us. “So we moved out, ready for an ambush. We carefully laid our trap and that’s when we saw your army. We heard you from miles away and when we saw you, if I’m being honest, it was a sorry sight. “I didn’t know what had happened but I assumed the arduous crossing had really taken a toll on your men. But you were a hostile enemy combatant. And we had our orders. “The rest of that encounter you are familiar with. We took your men and you, Colonel, were sequestered somewhere else. “Your men were treated fairly I assure you. We fed them, and took care of the wounded. Some of them died due to their wounds and we buried them respectfully. But there was something strange with your men. “At first I admired their discipline. But after a week we noticed something. Your men had not spoken a word. They did not speak to us which is understandable. But they did not speak to each other. Weeks went by, and then a month. “Some of your men then tried to escape. I must say, some of their methods were ingenious. While others were quite crude. It is the duty of a prisoner to try and escape captivity but in any case they were all recaptured and disciplined under the rules of the treaty.” The captor took a breath. “But then one month ago something peculiar happened. Your men began talking again. But only in whispers. At first they would whisper to each other. But then they started whispering to the guards.” Devlin twitched but his face did not betray what he already knew. “I can only assume you know what happened next. Slowly, the guards began releasing the prisoners. But not only that, they were escaping *with* the prisoners. We did what we could. We changed over the guards, increased discipline, implemented solitary confinement. But one by one they all started to escape. “We sent out search parties for them. The ones we did find were dead, guards and prisoners alike. Some we never found, only traces of them. “It finally dawned on us what was happening. Sir, you did not cross those mountains to attack us. You were running. Running from something that has killed all of your men and nearly all of mine. Running from something that would cause my soldiers enough fear for them to disobey orders and break free themselves.” The captor broke his calm demeanour and leaned forward onto the table. “Sir! Colonel Devlin. What is out there?!” Suddenly there was a thud on the outside of the interrogation room. One of the guards yelled and fired off a string of bullets before a crack was heard and the firing stopped. There was a low growl coming from the outside of the door. Devlin continued to smoke. “Can’t you see, it’s already here.


#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: **Media Prompt: ** *Bonus Constraint (worth extra pts.): Story uses first person POV.* As we continue on into our third 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 prompts inspire you to write something different, go for it! This week’s challenge is to use **the above song as inspiration** for your story. You can use the song itself, the name, the images in the video, or . The bonus constraint is not required. You may interpret the media prompt any way you like, as long as the connection is clear and you **follow all sub and post rules**.   *** #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/DannyMethane_   - - Submitted by u/bantamnerd   - - Submitted by u/nobodysgeese   - - Submitted by u/katpoker666   - - Submitted by u/Embarrassed_Echo375   - - Submitted by u/MacTheAnt   *** ###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.


In year 2352 a cone shaped transport hovered into position outside the domed city of Powlett, Mars. On opposite sides of the vessel ‘Solar Spaceways Cruise Coach’ flashed in bold, yellow letters. Hanging in the thin air, it sprouted a disembarking tube to connect to the round, sealed dock. Outside the dome was a typical Martian landscape with rocks and dust to the horizon, and a faint blue sunset decorated the dark sky. Inside Powlett there was not much more to see. The single-story buildings were made of stone, and the only sign of life was a crowd of people loitering near the circular hatch. Yet, when the four sectioned metal seal slid open, the passengers were eagerly lined up to move in. The first one to disembark was a short, thin man with light brown skin and neatly combed black hair topping his soft, round face. Unlike the pants, shirts, and jackets of the other passengers, he wore a three-layer beige robe with four green stripes on the collar. The neutral attire marked him as a seeker of knowledge, official representatives of Earth Management, and the four stripes gave him a high rank. “Thank you for flying Solar Spaceways, Craster Krenne. Welcome to Mars,” a smooth, feminine voice spoke to him. The message was from the ship’s pilot, but she did not know him personally. There were two hundred other passengers on this shuttle from Earth, and each received the same farewell with their own name. It was not his ears that received the message, but his brain-computer. Deemed a human right in 2234, brain-computers contained a few parts of ceramic, plastic, and metal, but most of the device was grown from a person’s cells. It formed a truly personal bond that would work for no one else. Craster’s brain-computer allowed him to connect to the Solar System Information Service, or the Big Sis as it was often called. It contained the accumulated knowledge of all humanity that spread throughout the solar system, centered on Earth. With the SSIS he could communicate remotely, learn public matters, and access the machines woven throughout society. Without replying Craster passed over the threshold of the city entrance and stepped onto the dull landing platform. His brown eyes gazed over Powlett with calm confidence as he made his way to the level, stone ground. Ten yards away a line of people dressed in bright colors fashionable on Mars silently waited to fill in the empty seats. Other than the pilot’s message, only Powlett’s musty odor greeted Craster, and he could not resist the thought that it was an alien scent invading his Earth raised nostrils. On the home world he had seen holograms of Mars with beautiful people lounging and playing next to enormous sparkling swimming pools and lush green foliage. In the background a violent storm wasted its strength behind the protection of a dome. Other commercials showed majestic floating barges with smiling people mingling and enjoying every luxury off the tip of Olympus Mons. The Mars tourism trade presented it as a planet full of exhilarating spots of the finest pleasures humanity could offer, but this was not that kind of place.


I don’t own a cat. Can you call a cat a thing? You own a pet. Doesn’t this put them in the same category as your hat or scarf? You own scarves. I own quite a few myself, a whole collection of scarves, in fact. I suppose I don’t love them the way I love a pet. I had pet rats. They live only a few of years, about as long as a well-worn scarf. Rats are simple too. You keep them in a cage. You clean the cage. You own the rat. You own the cage. You what I don’t own? A cat. No one here knows who owns the cat. You would assume: doesn’t that mean it’s a stray? No, this is a well-fed cat. He just got a shiny new collar. I don’t know how anyone gets a cat to wear a collar. We’ve always had indoor/outdoor cats, and every collar we tried putting on them disappeared at some point. Maybe we didn’t get pretty enough collars. One of our cats went through more collars than the rest by far. She was more like a wolf than a cat sometimes, howling at the moon, much like this cat, which I do not own, is howling at my door. It’s funny how when a cat is yours, it’s family, but when it belongs to someone else, they own a cat. Everyone pets the mystery cat on the sidewalk, and so did I, until he followed me inside one day. I didn’t realize how horribly allergic I was to cats until I moved out of my mother’s house for college. Being able to breath was amazing. A new experience. It seemed as though I could keep breathing forever without-- How is this cat still yowling? It needs to stop for oxygen right? My cat’s voice went from a mew to a yowl as she aged. You would think there would be less breath with age, but I guess cats are different. Maybe they breath a bit easier the older they get. It occurs to me that she may have just been going deaf, which I suppose isn’t uncommon. I wonder if this cat, which I do not own, thinks I’m a poor deaf human, who will definitely open up the door. If. He. Just. Yells. Loud. Enough. I know he’s neither old nor going deaf. The first by sight. The second by the fact that every time I attempt to type, the yowling begins once again. I began typing this on my laptop, but it’s too close to the door, and not portable. So, now, I am on my phone, with its silent touchscreen keyboard, typing this on Google Docs. And yet, still, the cat howls to be granted entry. Why? I checked. My apartment’s baseboard heater, circa 1973, has come out of its less than seventy-degree-Fahrenheit slumber in the way that someone with sleep apnea is awoken at 3 a.m. which, as chance would have it, is also the time right now. I’ve turned off all the lights in the apartment, the heater crackles concerningly, and here I am, typing an essay on my phone. Perhaps, finally, the cat is gone. During the day, I like him well enough. I let him in to nap in my apartment. I leave out a bowl of water. I also get cold easily, which means it’s always warm here. I understand, I offer a very enticing place to sleep in any hour of the day or night. Cats don’t care for business hours, but I do. I thought about getting a cat, this past year. But, having had cats in the past, I know that caring for a cat is an investment. When I moved into an apartment alone, especially, I thought perhaps now was time for a cat. Thankfully, this apartment came with a cat I can own vicariously through my mystery neighbor. I just need to make sure to impress upon the cat, that I do not own a cat. I think I will try to do that tomorrow, when I let him in for a nap.


I try to be as descriptive as I can in this short time of leisure, since we're about to embark on our journy through the no man's land that lies behind our supply trench. I am writing this journal on parchment made from my own skin and with ink made out of my blood. My name is Mitten and I've been living in this hell for about 6 months now. Everyone who arrives here wakes up in one of the few dugouts with beds and every single one doesn't remember how he got here or who he is. The only form of identification is the name that's stitched on our clothing and collarbone, though we don't know if it's our own name. We fight an endless fight agains an enemy who just tries to flee from his own trench to ours. They are all mutilated, decaying or transformed into what is best describable as melted humans, probably caused by the mist that fills their side of the battlefield. One thing every enemy has in common is their lack of orifices to breathe through. Their mouths and noses are just gone. Some of them tried to rip open holes to breathe again but underneath their skin and muscles are just bones that won't allow you to breathe. They seem to be in constant agony. Constantly suffocating. Starving. Thirsty. Most of us don't want to fight but we have to. We have to stop them before they reach our frontlines because if they do, they just melt into the mud we stand in and everyone who would have been able to stop them develops some sort of dry gangrene that slowly takes over your whole body until you're just trapped in a body that can't regenerate and can't die. But the most disturbing thing about this whole ordeal is the fact that our enemies try their best to escape the horror that resides in their own trenches, knowing they will melt into a consciouss pool of mud. The first thing almost everyone tries is to kill himself with his rifle, only to live through his immortality and his inability to lose his consciousness for months on end until he regrows everything he needs to be able to move again. Those of us who lost their will to fight and can endure the unimaginable dread that grows in you if you don't fight, get carried away to the enemies lines by these winged beasts whose grotesque physique drives everyone mad who looks at them. To counteract these abductions, most of us who lost their hands and are unable to operate their rifles will have specially made iron rods rammed into their arms to be able to fight again, until their hands regrew. Every week a train comes by to supply us with ammunition and a thin broth we consider our food, so every week some of us has to go through 20km of mud and trenches, blood and organs to deliver the supplies to the front. Those of us who have lost their hands, and have yet to regrow them, get pickaxes stuck and bolted into their forearms and knees to act as some sort of mule capable of traversing the unforgiving land between the frontline and the supportline. Our day to day lives consist of sleeping for about 3 hours a day, eating our soup, trying to get rid of our illnesses like trenchfoot or typhus by amputating those parts if possible, even if that means we have to regenerate our whole body for months on end, and stopping the enemy from reaching our trenches. It is constantly dark in these lands, except for a singular, red flare that is shot up into the sky every 24 hours and acts as our sun. Most of us gave up on understanding this hell like me so I didn't even bother thinking about the origins or use of this flare. The weather is always cold and wet. At least our trenches are on the highground so most of the water that comes down goes to the enemylines. There aren't a lot of vehicles around here except for the occasional armored car that comes with the train and those flying behemoths made out of cloth and steel that float above us. They are connected to the ground by a few rope ladders. Some of us tried to climb them, most of them fell on their way up because they were too weak or it's gotten too cold for them. Those who made it up there never came back. I am currently waiting for Stiller to wake up. He thinks he found a way to escape this hell by traversing the no man's land behind us. He said that if we want to go home, we have to go back to our homeland. It's absurd but it's worth a try. He hopes we will get back to our lives again or finally die. I think we're currently in the first circle of hell and will just enter the next. I will keep this journal on my at all times but I will be unable to write in it when we go. He woke up. I hope we will finally be able to die.


We were earth’s First Fleet, sent to colonise the closest habitable planet in our galaxy. Unmanned probes were sent first, followed by landing drones. However, we would be the first humans to set foot on a planet outside of our solar system. In amongst a fleet full of scientists, pilots, engineers and soldiers I stood alone … as the entertainer. I was a pianist for the military band and had volunteered to join this expedition not out of a sense of duty or a craving for adventure. I had volunteered simply because there was nothing left for me on earth. I didn’t have many friends at all in this fleet with nearly everyone belonging to some team in one way or another. No, I stood alone. “Get up,” the drunkards would say to me, “Play us something.” Our first few hours escaping earth’s orbit was one of hopeful sadness. We knew that we had left everyone we loved behind. But this was to be a grand adventure, the greatest adventure in human history. I sat at the piano and looked out at the audience. Many were happy, drinking and having a laugh. But some were melancholy, preferring to be alone with their thoughts. My fingers began to work across the keys. I opened with a D minor, settling into an easy flowing melody. The 5th would be the natural progression giving the piece an ethereal feel. I flattened out the 6th note in the melody, finally confirming my use of the Dorian scale. The sadness in the piece could be now be felt as I moved onto another minor chord, in this instance an E minor. From here there could be only one place to move. I hit the G major chord, bringing the progression to its victorious climax. Finally I returned home to the D minor, quietly ending the piece as our fleet moved its way further from our stellar home. \*\*\* We landed on our new planet two weeks ago. That is approximately three and half weeks in earth time. This world we have named, unimaginatively in my opinion, Eden. Erroneously too as it turns out, for this world is not the earth analogue that the scientists had predicted. The temperature is significantly colder than expected considering its atmospheric composition and distance from the sun. The ground, as a consequence, is unfriendly to agriculture but for a few root vegetables. The storms are much more frequent than we had expected and although our habitations have so far remained stable we have had to reinforce them with the precious few materials we have. However, despite these hardships, the mood is one of optimism and the pioneering spirit of the great days of exploration has been reborn. The engineers tirelessly work on our buildings, the scientists eagerly survey our environment and the former soldiers have now reinvented themselves as our farmers and labourers. Each evening I play to the tired and overworked settlers. The boisterousness of the crowd is infectious and seeps through into my playing. I play an A major chord shifting next to a B major over A. Ah yes, that raised 4th removes the major scale mask revealing the Lydian scale underneath. I alternate between these two chords playing an uplifting melody over the top. However, the Lydian scale is harmonically unstable and simply cannot sustain an entire piece. I move over to the E major scale, somewhat rescuing the piece and adding a grandeur and joy to the music. The audience barely acknowledge me as my piano blends seamlessly with everyone’s merrymaking. \*\*\* Last season’s harvest has once again failed. The agony of starvation has now become a very real proposition as the news of food shortages is announced to the settlers. The response is silence as this possibility has already entered all of our minds during the last months. The storms, the unceasing relentless storms, have rendered long term colonisation impossible. This reality was one that we were all aware of when we left earth. However to face it is a much different thing entirely. The last messages to earth were sent although it will be many years before they will receive it. Finally, protocol Roanoke was implemented. We gathered inside our last undamaged habitation, most of us very weak from hunger, and listened as another storm ravaged our settlement. Slowly the oxygen was released as we waited for our eternal slumber on this alien planet. The captain asked me to play one last time, “As they did as the Titanic sank.” I didn’t know what he was referring to but I dutifully sat at my piano and began to play. My heart was sinking as I looked at the slumped people in front of me. Some were still breathing, steady and purposeful. I began my final piece by playing an F minor chord, slowly arpeggiating the notes up and down. I moved from the 5th to the flat 6th, down to the 4th and then to the 2nd. Finally I played the flat 3rd before returning to the F minor. The Aeolian mode, the most fitting scale for our current predicament. I continued to play as all breathing and movement stopped. The dead planet we found was a dead planet once more. I slumped onto my piano, the sound of dissonant notes echoing throughout our tomb. The final notes ever heard on Eden.