8:45pm — Yeah, hi. Maintenance? This is Paul Gneiss. That’s G as in golf, N-E-I-S-S. I’m in building 408, apartment 103. Uh, so I know it’s after hours, but uh… I saw this number posted on the office door and didn’t know who else to call. I don’t think that it’s a maintenance emergency exactly, …
“Oh fuck, no, shit, shit…” Sara mumbled to herself, more out of concern for her own safety than for that of the dog she’d just ran over. To be fair, this wasn’t a part of the city you’d want to get out of your car in. A man approached offering help, startling her, and she …
A clown walked up to the gates of Hell carrying a gallon of gasoline. He was bathed in red light from a big sign that read “HELL.” Before entering, he paused. It was hard to believe that he had built this enormous thing. He and Jane. The first room was meant to look like a …
Henry is sitting as still as a statue. The morning sun is coming in through the blinds, making bands of light across the patient charts on his desk. His desk phone rings. Henry makes no move to answer. After a moment, there is a polite tapping at his door. Henry stares straight ahead; even his …
Jade called me from a phone number I didn’t recognize. “Come to Arcadia,” she said. “Come alone”. Arcadia is the side of town that burned out years ago. No one wants to go to Arcadia. Not even bums. “It’ll be worth it,” Jade insisted. I wasn’t sure what to expect, especially in Arcadia. But my …
I think the strangest thing about lying there in her arms was how comfortable I was with the entire situation. Hours before, the first sight of them had come. I’d been warned countless times of their existence, and given a plethora of methods to skirt their spells, yet despite all this, I never expected to …
“Look at them all!” I told her, glee and fascination mingling in my voice as I watched dozens of little lights float around me. I caught one in my hand and gazed at it. I let it crawl on my arm. It was then I realized this wasn’t a firefly.
“Swallow your tongue, or I will.” She found herself uttering to a reckless man in the middle of a bakery, of all places. The smell of sweet bread and sugared pastries lingered in the air around them, trickling into her nostrils and down her throat, and weaving their way between her abrasive, jagged teeth. She …
It was at the witching hour did she awaken, feeling as if somebody had been sitting over her bed while she was asleep. Yet, when she peered into the darkness, she could make out nothing but the four walls black that surrounded her. It was the witching hour did he awaken, feeling her eyes upon …
No one fully knew what the factory on the edge of town was for, but as she drove by one night and smelled the stale stench of decay, it occurred to her what exactly they were burning in this concrete contraption. This was where they took you when you died.
