It all began when our grandfather died. He had been a solemn man; stoic, dour, he never placed a smile on his face for us, even when we were children. But he had not been mean and he would always bring us candy when he visited. He had dark, piercing eyes, hollowed in a grave, sunken face. We knew he had had a brother but that his brother had mysteriously died when they were both boys. Our mother claimed she didn’t know how he died and told us not to ask our grandfather. My younger brother and I used to tease that he was secretly a monster that devoured his brother and stray children. “He only brings us sweets,” we…

I have nightmares where I’m trapped in a shower. The drain is plugged, and the the water won’t stop pouring down on me. Water rises to my ankles, to my waist, and then over my head. The shower curtain turns to glass, and my screams turn to gargles. A dark figure presses its face against the glass on the other side, and it watches me. I plead, but it won’t let me out. I swallow water and flail helplessly in my glass coffin. I wake up gagging. I know where the nightmare came from – I never have to dig deep. The incident is never far from my subconscious. Finding it is easy. Getting over it is not. It was…

There had been many rumors of a shooting that was supposed to take place today. All these rumors had me on edge all day and I was still fidgeting in my seat even though I knew it would be fine and nothing would happen. It was lunch time when the school shooting was supposed to happen and that’s where I find myself right now. All I can think is that a school shooting would be such a terrible thing… I see a kid open his backpack and maybe it’s him. Maybe it’s the kid standing in the lunch line right now. Or the shady kids hanging out at the back of the cafeteria. I’m just sitting there zoning out and…

My husband and I loved each other very much, but just as most couples we would get into arguments. Out biggest argument always revolved around a single disagreement: children. I wanted children, he did not. As the years passed I had hoped he would eventually come around and warm up to the idea of having children, but he remained stubborn and wouldn’t change his mind. I reminded him that if we waited too much longer we’d never be able to conceive a child of our own, but he didn’t seem to care. I even suggested adoption and fostering children but he wouldn’t hear it. “You’re not fit to be a mother!” His cruel words burned into my memory. I loved…

I was staying at a hotel in Chicago Illinois during a business trip and I was going to stay for the whole weekend. It was an older hotel, one that still used small keys rather than keycards to enter the rooms. I didn’t mind, it seemed nice to get away from the onslaught of technology. When I checked into the hotel it was packed full. A nasty storm had struck, standing many tourists and cancelling flights. No more rooms were available and many people were being turned away because of the lack of vacancy. When I approached the front desk to check in I noticed that all the keys for the rooms on the eighth floor were still on the…

He never smiled I never understood why he cried. I would see him everywhere I went, he would cry over everything I did, he would always be sad.. like he just lost some one he loved. His hysterical sobs would fill my senses and I could never block him out. His woeful eyes, dull and glazed over would stare in my direction, but never directly at me as he heaved for breaths between his trembling tears.. he.. it… never smiles. The first day I saw him, my mother had just past away. I was 17 years old. I had lost my mother to a fire at my high school, which claimed 9 lives including that of my mom. It was…

It matters not which religion you claim to be, “God” has abandoned us. Without the threat of being sent to Hell, or being judged by the almighty creator, humanity has become chaos at its worst. No rules guide us through life. Nothing can stop the rampages and murders, the robberies and crimes of all natures. The only thing that can stop it now is the return of the “One true God”. Without “Him”, humanity will cease to exist. As it stands now, the entire human population is… well, it’s not human. They’re monsters, and those monsters who aren’t out killing, are committing other crimes and trying to repopulate. It’s chilling really. The monsters we tried so hard to hide, to…

“Bobby! Pay attention!” he heard his teacher say. He snapped out of his reverie and looked up to see her glaring at him. “Did you hear anything I’ve been saying?” she continued. Bobby shrugged his shoulders. Prior to being disrupted, he was daydreaming that he could freeze time, and before that he was imagining himself navigating the classroom if he was only 5 inches tall. The teacher continued to rant at him, just as they all did, then she placed him on detention Friday night after school. Why is it that schools are so intent on crushing a child’s imagination? What is it about creative kids that piss so many teachers off? They punished him for sketching or writing stories…

In 1983, a team of deeply pious scientists conducted a radical experiment in an undisclosed facility. The scientists had theorized that a human without access to any senses or ways to perceive stimuli would be able to perceive the presence of God. They believed that the five senses clouded our awareness of eternity, and without them, a human could actually establish contact with God by thought. An elderly man who claimed to have “nothing left to live for” was the only test subject to volunteer. To purge him of all his senses, the scientists performed a complex operation in which every sensory nerve connection to the brain was surgically severed. Although the test subject retained full muscular function, he could…