#short scary stories

[monsterbloodtransfusions]

Walk-In Fridge

“Ow!”

Ken yanked his hand away from the sink as the water gushing out became scolding hot.

He dunked the burned hand into the Sani sink, which was kept mildly cold.

Ken typically used his bare hands to do the dishes. One of the dish gloves he’d brought in for all the preps and dishwashers to use had a tear in the pointer finger, and the other one just filled with water, even after duct-taping both tightly around his arm. He never figured out where the hole was.

Inspecting his hands, Ken noted the pink splashed all over the back of them, accompanied by a slight burning, almost-itching sensation. He stepped away from the sink, his worn, black sneakers dipping into little puddles on the floor.

His hand throbbed to the sound of his heartbeat. Why do they constantly shove me onto Dish? He thought, exhausted. It seemed like only people with sensitive skin were ever thrown on there.

The other usual dish, Alex, had eczema and kept this giant white bottle of special lotion in her locker.

Outside, a powerful, blistering wind shook up trees and whistled against the building. It was getting late, 10 pm, only an hour before closing.

BAM! BAM! BAM! The powerful knocks on one of the two back doors made Ken jump.

Heart still pounding, It made Ken feel silly when he remembered that Alex and another coworker had slipped outside to smoke on their vapes for a bit.

Trying not to slip on the wet ground, he pushed open the heavy door, which was completely locked from the outside.

Alex and Leyla slipped in, stripping off their heavy coats.

“You don’t have to knock so loudly, you know,” Ken told them as he returned to his spot in front of the sinks. “I’m right next to the door.”

“Leyla just has a lot of pent-up rage,” Alex explained, before hitting the vape and blowing the sweet fragrant smoke into the air. Both girls had to re-tie their hair back into ponytails and tuck them into their work caps.

“Someday, Richie’s gonna write you guys up for this,” Ken smirked. He didn’t get why so many of his coworkers just had to bring their vapes with them to a part-time job. They couldn’t last six hours without it? Why not have the decency to do it in the comfort of your home?

Leyla shrugged. “Richie doesn’t care as long as we do our jobs.”

“And have you been doing that?” Ken raised an eyebrow.

“Do your dishes,” Alex grinned.

“Um,” Ken stopped them from heading back out into the front. “Shouldn’t someone get to cleaning the walk-in?” The three of them turned to the giant, metal door, where the fridge sat.

It was at the very opposite end of the sink, sitting next to the second door leading directly outside. When the restaurant was extra quiet, usually late at night, you could hear the soft buzzing.

Leyla sighed. “Why can’t you do it?”

“It’s not my job,” Ken frowned.

“It’s not ours either,” Alex readjusted her cap, as she did often.

“The prep’s supposed to do it,” Leyla said. “But Dominique left early. So now you should be the one to do it.”

“He’s so messy,” Ken frowned. “He didn’t do a very good job cleaning his station.”

“But he gets his work done the fastest,” Leyla defended.

“Not super effectively,” Ken complained.

“Whatever,” Alex rolled her eyes. “His station looks fine.” Dominique was Alex and Leyla’s friend, as were a lot of people in this place. Friends who had convinced each other to work with them.

Richie’s voice cut into their conversation. The three of them could hear Richie from the front: “Alex! Leyla! Where are you?!”

The girls sighed, and Ken shook his head as he watched them exit out to the front.

He turned to the sinks and got back to work.

Richie was tonight’s shift lead. They were closer to Ken’s age than the high schoolers who snuck out to vape.

As Ken got through the last dirty plate, he froze to an unnerving sound: movement, inside the fridge.

His eyes shot in its direction. No more sound.

The sound had been faint, as if someone, or something, had bumped into something.

Waiting silently for anymore noise, Ken’s heart thrummed in his chest anxiously.

He considered checking inside, just to see, but he told himself to just focus on what he was being paid to do: clean.

Now all he could hear was the rhythm of running water. Outside, he heard the voices of his coworkers welcoming guests. They didn’t get very many customers at this time. He never understood how they could afford to stay open so late.

Once the commotion out front died down, Richie strolled in through the swinging doors. They scooped a foam cup from the racks of ingredients and brushed by Ken, situating themself into the manager's chair, a little black one right in front of the desk, complete with a computer, screens displaying the camera videos, and mini drawers stuffed with so much shit Ken doubted the scribbled-on labels were accurate anymore.

“Richie?” Ken asked.

Richie raised their eyes to Ken. “Mm?”

“Who's gonna clean the walk-in?”

Richie stretched an arm above their head. “Don’t worry about it, Ken. I’ll force one of the girls to do it before they leave.”

Ken nodded. He hated things being left unclean for too long. It was why he was one of the best dishes: he got through them fast just so he didn’t have to watch them sit around in their filth.

“I know. You mostly work with Omar, right? Everything done early and quickly, right? But on my shifts, we like to wait ‘till the end of the shifts. You get a bit dirty after doing it, huh?” Richie smiled. Ken was used to Omar’s shifts; tonight was his first time working with Richie since they became a shift lead.

“It’s an easy clean-up, especially with the aprons,” Ken protested.

Richie nodded. “You know this shift is mostly newbies. Dominique is fast but he’s still a tad careless.”

Ken nodded in agreement.

After a bit, Richie returned to the front. Ken was left with nothing to do. All the dishes were done. All the trash was taken out.

He swept the floor, though it had already been pretty neat from the previous few times he’d swept. Usually, those on dish waited until closing to finally sweep, and there'd always be a fun assortment of trash and fallen food bits scattered about the floor, along with puddles of water and some mysterious sludges.

Ken had to squeegee some of the water on his side of the room into the big drain underneath his station. If the building had been designed right, the drain would be slightly lower in elevation compared to the rest of the floor, but unfortunately, some doofus made it the same height, and a bunch of water collected behind it, cloudy and gray from whatever elements accumulated underneath the sink.

Then he heard it again. A bumping sound. This time louder than before. Were Ken’s ears playing tricks on him?

His heart thumping, he ignored it. After finishing the floor he decided to reorganize the condiments on the rack behind the prep station. Unfortunately much closer to the walk-in, but he preferred it over going out front to help clean and serve whatever random customer decided to grab a burger at 10:30 at night.

Ken tried not to think about the walk-in. He hadn’t felt so nervous about it since his first few days working here. He’d calmed down since, but working with a new crew under new conditions was spiking his anxieties again.

Finally, he pressed an ear against the metal door and listened hard. No sounds.

10:50 approached, and the crew up front was bringing back the last of the dishes, including items they were technically not supposed to be taking back until exactly 11. But most of the leads preferred to close as early as possible. No one wanted to go home thirty minutes before midnight. Even during the summer, when the high schoolers weren’t concerned about school.

Finally, Ken watched Richie tell Alex to clean up the walk-in, and for Leyla to clock out. Leyla ignored them and instead stayed to help Alex clean.

They were in there for maybe ten minutes or so. Ken thought he should help, but decided it wasn’t worth it and continued scrubbing his station. He always closed it well.

Finally, Ken watched Alex and Leyla lug out a ginormous black trash bag from the fridge.

“Fuck, this is heavy,” Leyla murmured.

Ken cringed when they nearly dropped it. Ken hated it when the bag hit the floor.

The girls disappeared out into the dark, windy night. The door shut behind them. They’d forgotten to jam a hat or trashcan onto it to keep it open.

Ken went up to the fridge and slipped inside.

He was impressed. The walk-in was spotless.

Nearly. He spotted a small, red smear on the floor just beside his feet.

Ken shook his head. How could they miss such an obvious spot?

As he crouched down to his knees to wipe it away, his eye caught something underneath the racks.

Bending low, he pulled it out and inspected it. And then yelled.

A human finger. Bits of red gore hung from the middle joint where it had been severed.

Heart beating faster, Ken couldn’t believe it.

He barged out of the fridge just as Alex and Leyla returned. Their clothes were splotched and stained from the cleaning job.

“Alex! Leyla!” Ken snapped. “Look at this!”

He held up the finger to them, letting them both take in the sight.

Ken huffed, “It’s paramount that you make sure to take out all of the trash!”

~~~

Other short stories by me:

Those Green Eyes

[roseblack2222]

Chilling Tales for Hot Summer Nights #chillingtales

[anicarissi]

I recently learned the hardcover of HIDE AND DON’T SEEK: AND OTHER VERY SCARY STORIES is now in its 3rd printing, which set my heart aflutter like an attic filled with bats. Thank you, librarians, educators, booksellers, and readers! 🦇🖤 If you don’t have one yet, you can also find it in paperback or ebook—Carolina Godina’s full-page illustrations are absolutely gorgeous in all three. (And the audio version has multiple talented narrators!)

[just-phils-things]

Watch ""We Escaped A Haunted House, But I Think Something Is Wearing My Wife's Skin." #r/nosleep Stories" on YouTube

Freaky Friday story time r/nosleep story

[insomniac-dot-ink]

I can’t go home. There are only a few places open this late and I am walking. I leave a trail of footprints in the powdery snow. The music hall in the middle of town is playing a local band no one has heard of and a single popup store sits outside. I go to the window. The clerk is on her phone in the small cramped cart. Her screen goes dark and she looks up. Her hair is deep brown and tied back so neat and boxy you’d think it was a nun’s habit.

“Hot chocolate,” I say.

The clerk is nonplussed. She takes my money. Her habit-like-hair is stiff and doesn’t shift as she nods and counts my ones. She moves from one end of the little cart to the other with a Styrofoam cup. 

She carries the sugar-thick hot chocolate in one hand and it lets out a thick steam. I am sure she made it too hot. She stops. Her gaze draws up and over my shoulder. Her pupils expand and shoulders rise almost to her ears.

She glances at my face and then away again. Her lips are thin and uncolored. She mouths the words like an unskilled ventriloquist, “do you need me to call someone?”

I shake my head and take the cup and the texture is squeaky and flakes off in my grip. I walk. My footprints mark the powder-white snow and my city only has a few places open at this time of night. My legs are numb with cold and my eyes ache from lack of sleep. I am grateful for the street lights which are all a pale blue color that is supposed to help the birds. I am a bird person, I think, if I was going to be anything.

Cars pass and I am grateful for those too. I reach the street of little cramped stores, one after the next. A fabric store. A second-hand book store. Florists and boutique shoe shops. All too charming to be supportive. The Walmart is just outside our small town limits and I can’t go home.

Across the street, the pub has lowlights on and voices rumble like a thunderstorm from within. I don’t think the rest of the town likes the pub. The bar has one long window made up of colored glass in muted reds and blues and yellows. It reminds me of church windows and leaves the impression of making up for it. Making up for being what it is.

I square my shoulders and push my way in. The air is warm and floor a good type of dark wood. The tables are full enough to be considered a party–or, what I imagine a party to be like. I hadn’t noticed the dusting of snow on my hoodie, and shook it off like dandruff.

The man behind the counter gives me a cursory look. He is a big man with a large mouth and wears frowns like he’s making up for something too. “Mark isn’t here,” he says in a further cursory manner. I shake my head and make my way to the counter. I hadn’t finished my hot chocolate and clutch the Styrofoam cup in both hands.

“Warm up?” I ask but Steven Plyer, the barkeep, is looking over my shoulder. He mouths to himself silently like he’s working out a math problem under his breath.

Two men, big and strapping, move away from the bar’s church-like window. They take seats at the end of the bar and Steven Plyer, the barkeep, leans over the counter. His pupils are ink-dipped coins. I fiddle with the ends of my sleeves. He looks over my shoulder just as I push my hot chocolate closer over the counter.

“There’s a whole world out there,” he says.

I close my eyes. “I know.”

“You don’t have to go.”

I shake my head and Steven Plyer takes my hot chocolate and disappears behind the swinging doors to the back. The rest of the men have moved away from the window and sit on either side of me. They murmur in voices too low to hear.

The oldest of them, a man that smells like leather, stands. His voice has a vibrating quality, unsmooth, dragging out the “a’s” like a regal sheep. “Do your parents know?”

Steven Plyer returns with my hot chocolate steaming and passes it to me with both hands. I get up because the old man needs my seat, I think. The first two men huddle by the front door, coats on and heads bent together like prayer, and I leave without them. The snow is no longer powder but inch-thick fluff. I kick up the fluff with each step and the silver hangs about me like fairy lights, I imagine. I take a sip of hot chocolate and it is too hot and too sweet and you can be grateful for that too.

The sidewalk ends and I walk alongside the side of the road just on the edge of the white line. I think I can see the lights of the Walmart beyond the lights of the city. Trees gather on either side and I miss the blue glow of the street lights and the concerned gaze of the clerk in her tiny cart. I wish she had come with me. I wish Steven Plyer had called me by name.

A solitary car passes and its stark white headlights blare against the night, more violent than kind, and I have to shield my eyes. The car is red and large and pulls to stop on the other side of the road. The window rolls down and a curly-haired woman sticks her head out. Her face is small and elfish and mouth pinches together at the corners. She wears a tight shirt buttoned up all the way to her throat like it might hold her in.

The head beams glow perpendicular to me and I regard the woman as she regards me. She is slow to speak. Slower than the men at the bar had been.

“Get in,” she says, buttoned-up to the throat and with eyes more tired than sad.

“No,” I say and take a sip from the hot chocolate. It’s cold.

Her windshields wipe away the snow and she looks over her dashboard. Her voice is breathy in the way of a Hollywood actress from a bygone era. “I’m worried.”

I nod. They all are. “That can be enough.”

Her mouth zips together into an angry line. She sticks her head out the window, close to a snarl, looking past me, and honks her horn in one long blast. I shy away from the noise and the too-brightness of her head beams. She drives with her head out the window, honking her horn over and over again as loud as she can.

I walk and there are no more cars. The snow settles over my shoulders and I don’t bother to dust off my hood or warm my hands. I leave the white line and walk in the middle of the road. The lights of the Walmart warm the night just outside of town and I can make out the outline of parked cars in the distance. They’re aren’t that many places open this late at night. 

I slow to a stop and sway a bit, like I'm drunk, I think, if this is what that's like. A second pair of footprints mark the snow in front of me. When had that happened? I tilt my head all the way back. The clouds are bright like daylight and snow growing heavy. I think it will all be glittering when the morning comes.

FIN

My book! 🐈 Newsletter

[creepyclothdoll]

Condemned

Paul loved escape rooms. 

He just loved them. The lovingly-crafted set designs and props, the electric buzz that came from finding hidden items and putting together puzzle pieces, the euphoria of cracking a code, the adrenaline of the ticking clock, and most importantly, the thrill of the escape. 

His friends had long ago stopped accompanying him every week, sometimes more than once a week, to escape rooms in his area. Especially once he started driving hours out of town just to try new escape game centers for a fresh hit of that delicious escape puzzle challenge.

Paul now preferred to go alone anyway. People just bogged him down. He didn’t come to make friends, he came to win. 

Months of hot anticipation finally bore fruit when the “Great American Escape” opened its doors to him, at long last. Great American, according to the billboards and posters strewn around town, was the primary attraction of an entertainment mega-complex which took the place of a long-disused waterpark hotel. It would be huge, he knew. Not just physically. His great fear was that it would blow up on social media– maybe even on his feed– and then the solutions would be spoiled for him. So he had to be first.

Great American Escape was so new the day he strode in there that there were still “CONDEMNED” notices stuffed into the recycling bins and old lists of health & safety violations stuck in the vents. 

“One ticket for Mystery Escape,” Paul, slapped his money on the counter and smiled at the teen boy working behind it. He was a short, lithe, wide-eyed man in his thirties with dark greasy hair and one navy blue university sweater he’d kept in moderate repair for a decade and a half.

“No group?” The boy asked. When Paul confirmed this, the boy said, “You’ll have to wait until a group comes in. You need three people at least.”

“When is the next group coming?” Paul asked.

“We don’t have any groups booked today,” the boy replied.

“... So, you’re not gonna let me in?” 

“... Um… yeah. I can’t. Sorry.”

Paul put down another handful of bills. This wasn’t his first rodeo.

“I’ll buy three tickets,” he said. He made sure to draw the boy’s attention to the extra $20, a little tip for a helpful front deskman. 

The boy, who was thin and bored-looking with a patchy teen mustache and his elbow resting on top of a stack of I Escaped stickers, glanced at the security camera which flickered in the corner, its blinking red eye frosted over with a decade of dust. The boy took the $20 and shrugged. 

“You won’t be able to escape,” the boy said. “It’s impossible by yourself. But if you want to try… I guess you can try.”

The boy led Paul towards a set of slightly rusty elevator doors, past posters and cardboard cut-outs of characters from “Rattlesnake Gulch Treasure Hunt,” “Escape From Venus,” and “King’s Dungeon Jailbreak.” Paul planned to return to these, but he’d start by going straight for the crown jewel– Mystery Escape, which had been advertised exclusively with nothing but an open doorframe leading to darkness. 

The boy went over basic safety guidelines. The door wouldn’t really be locked, red things were real alarms, things that said “staff only” were really for staff only, etc., blah blah blah, boring stuff.  Paul listened impatiently, but carefully, only because knowing what was “real” (and therefore inconsequential) would give him a leg up in the game. 

“The game starts when the elevator door opens,” the boy finally said. “Floor 3. Good luck.”

The elevator bell dinged, and the doors slid open. The light flickered. Paul stepped inside. 

He waved to the boy as the doors shut. He pressed 3. 

The light above flickered. Paul could almost see his reflection in the red-rusted metal doors. 

The elevator began its ascent, and right away, Paul could tell something was strange. There was a creaking noise, like a train braking. The light flickered. The light sputtered out. 

The elevator stopped.

Paul was trapped. It was pitch black inside the tiny car, which made no sound or movement. 

The first thing Paul did in any escape room was to check around for hidden props. Keys, ciphers, and puzzle pieces were often hidden around a room for players to find, which would then give them a clue as to what to do next. Paul checked around the elevator car for hidden tools. He pulled up the mildewy carpet by its frayed edge– nothing under there but more mildew. But wait! On the bottom of the carpet there were numbers and letters: EL1. What could that possibly mean? 

The next thing Paul did in an escape room was to interact with anything interactable he could see. In front of him was a series of numbers, 1-5, a “door open” and “door close” button, and “emergency.” But “emergency” was red, and red things were inconsequential. 

Paul pushed all the buttons but the last. To his surprise, the door began to open slightly– then jammed. 

Paul mused about the possible meanings of “EL1.” E was the fifth letter, and there were five numbers… But L? 

Maybe it was a cipher. Paul thought on this. 

He started trying combinations of buttons. The cipher thing was the key somehow, he knew it. A cipher worked with a code. Where was the code? Maybe it had to do with the symbols, not the numbers…

Suddenly, it all made sense to him. He pressed a set of numbers and then hit the door open button.

To his delight and satisfaction, the elevator doors creaked open. And with them came light.

Paul could see well enough now to see that he faced a concrete wall, which took up the whole lower half of the exit. But above that half, Paul could see a hallway of a hotel, so tantalizingly close. 

Paul had beaten escape rooms that had physical components to them before, so this was cake. He gripped the edge of the concrete ledge in front of him and pulled himself up. He let out a grunt as his head and arms made it over the threshold. He just had to find something to grip so he could drag the rest of himself through the gap, and then it was on to the next puzzle.

The elevator lurched.

There was a sound. A scrape, a crash, a wet squelch, a snap. It all happened at once, and it was the loudest sound he ever heard.

When Paul finally sat up, he was somewhere completely different. It was dark here. Darker than the elevator car. The darkness of this place was crushing, like the depths of the deep ocean. There was a smell of meat all around. Paul quickly dismissed the idea of trying to adjust his eyes– he’d navigate by feel.

Paul reached out into the darkness and felt nothing. He stood. His hands pushed him up from a strangely soft, lumpy floor. He noticed something strange about the sound of his movements, and let out an inquisitive “Hey!” to check the echo. It did not bounce. He was… outside?

No– he must be in the disused waterpark proper. The building was huge. Paul was delighted by this thought. He’d chosen the right room.

Paul felt around for a wall, a light switch, a puzzle. Anything. 

“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” said a deep voice.

“Hello?” Paul said after a moment. 

“You lived a selfish life, Paul. You cared for nothing and no one but yourself and your own pleasure. You were an idolater, a heretic. You raised the Escape Game to the heights of a god. Pity that from this place, there is no escape.”

Paul listened carefully to the monologue. Selfish. Idolater. Raised. Heights. These things might be clues. 

“Paul,” said the deep voice, which seemed to come from above, below, and all around him, “You died a foolish death. Pity that you did not suffer. But now, you will suffer for eternity.”

Paul was already climbing up a staircase he’d found. It was the disused waterpark. Raise, he thought. Heights. The key was to go up. 

He found a craggy, warm wall. There was something under his hand– a button? He pushed it in, hard.

Under his hand, a huge glowing red eye flew open. 

“OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHH!” 

The eye blinked in pain and fury, welling up with tears. A thousand more eyes flew open along the wall before him, and Paul saw that it was not a wall at all, but some kind of enormous creature. It stirred, its red gaze illuminating the space around them.

“Stupid man. You woke something up.”

But now Paul could see the entire room– or space, or whatever it was. What he’d taken to be the “floor” was a mass of flesh– human hands, it looked like, reaching up stiffly. The hands started to stir as the creature woke from its slumber. What Paul had taken for a staircase was not that. 

Paul was making some real progress. As the hands clamored over each other, rising like tentacles from around the immense eyes, Paul hopped onto the face of the thing and started using the eyes as hand-and-footholds, which was their obvious use. Paul could spare no time on figuring out little things like that the honest way, he was on a clock. As he stepped on the creature’s eyes, it let out another unearthly roar and started to rise. 

There was a hole in the ceiling. Yes– this was meant to be a cave of some sort, and it had an exit. 

“You idiot,” the voice boomed. “You–”

Paul kicked the creature in the eye a few more times to make it rise faster. A tsunami of pale, writhing hands on wiggling stems shot up towards him to slap him away, but by the time they reached him, he was already through the hole. 

Paul scurried through the tunnel as fast as he could. If it was a three-person puzzle, you couldn’t waste any time.

He came to the next room, which was well-lit– a nice reprieve. In this room, a sweltering cave, some props department had gone all-out carving little demon faces that stuck out from the sides. These gargoyle-like stone structures leered at him and grinned in anticipation.

“The flametongue is coming, kindling,” the demon voices hissed. “Ready or not!” Paul heard a splashing, gurgling sound up ahead. He took quick note of some of the quirks of the gargoyle faces– most of them had black scorch marks on them, but some didn’t. That was a clue. The light from the other end of the tunnel grew brighter, as did the gurgling. Paul realized what he was meant to do, climbed up the protesting gargoyles, and found a set on the ceiling which had no scorching on them. Below, a wave of red-hot boiling sulferous-smelling magma flowed down, passing over the other gargoyles, who screeched and sputtered in it. Another puzzle solved. Paul dropped down once the stones cooled, and hurried up the tunnel– no time to spare. Only one more wave of “fire” passed before he solved the gargoyle pattern and pulled the right ones out of the wall in sequence to reveal a hidden exit.

This escape room was huge. He made his way through a room which featured a river of moving knives, which he was able to avoid by memorizing the timing and patterns, and climbed up into a room full of blistering ice and animatronic zombies which lurched toward him, their bodies crackling as they froze just as soon as they’d moved, their lips split by the cold. This puzzle was a simple matter of lining up the giant shards of ice in the room so that the light concentrated and blasted a hole through the glacial wall. 

Paul’s own body was profoundly frostbitten by this point, but he didn’t notice. He was on a timer. 

By the time Paul finally made it past the “three-headed-dog on a chain” puzzle, that subterranean voice from the first room had caught up with him.

“Paul,” the voice said. “There is no hope. There is no escape. Do you understand? You are dead, Paul–”

“Ssh,” Paul said, gazing at the puzzle before him. 

The door was immense. It seemed to stretch above him and beyond for miles. It was carved from stone older than the bedrock of earth, and above it, in an arch as large as the firmament, there was carved a phrase:

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

This was clearly important, because the deep voice had already voiced it earlier in the game. After checking the area for tools, Paul ran through anagrams. There were a lot of little props around the big door– lots of discarded holy texts, some bones, some strange bits of giant insectoid carapaces which Paul could not immediately identify. The bibles and such had bits burned and torn off of them in places. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. That was a ciper, maybe. He was sweating. He had to be at nearly an hour already. He started arranging the bones.

“What you are doing is futile nonsense,” the deep voice said.

Aha! By turning the phrase above the gate into numbers and then matching those numbers to the non-burned sections of each holy text, organized by the printing date, Paul had discovered an anagram which, when re-ordered, spelled out skeleton key prop, ds flo knemb yyuq. Paul had only bothered to spell out the first three words, however, due to the time crunch. That was all he needed to understand what to do, and he had done it: he had connected all the bones into one big key.

“I don’t think you understand, Paul. This is not a game. You cannot escape your fate. You cannot escape your death. You cannot escape damnation. You cannot escape from Hell.”

Paul slid the giant skeleton key into the lock. It took all of his strength to shove it to the back. Behind him, the host of hell scrambled over each other up the lip of the abyss– the thousand hands and eyes, the fire-spitting gargoyles, the lurching ice zombies, the great black dog, and many others, come to claim him for their own special torment.

Paul turned the key. There was a click. 

Well– more of a thunderous clunk.

The deep, gravelly noise of the stone door opening reverberated all throughout Hell.

“What the–”

“Hell yeah!” Paul shouted. He ducked through the door.

The red eye of the security camera caught it all. The man, crawling through the gap in the elevator. The lurch. The fall. The split.

The hopeless paramedics, the traumatized front desk boy, the shaking venue manager, the anxious lawyers, the dozens of police putting up brand-new yellow “do not cross” signage around the old hotel. 

The red eye of the security camera watched on as people in grim uniforms put the larger piece of what had been paul into a black bodybag and fetched the rest from the third story floor. 

“Used to love this waterpark when I was a little kid,” said one of the paramedics to another. “Now I hope they tear it down.”

“Wasn’t this place a lawsuit magnet back in the day?” said the other. “I remember a kid–”

The paramedics both noticed at the same moment that the body bag was moving. A lot. 

“Is he alive in there?” The first paramedic choked out, even though he understood that the answer had to be no. But then the zipper started sliding down. The bag was opening from the inside.

The headless body of Paul Gibson sat up. It reached out with its stumps of fingers, covered in cool dark blood, and rolled out onto the hotel lobby floor. Both paramedics screamed and leapt away as the decapitated Paul stumbled to its feet and lurched forward. It felt around without its fingers, leaving smears of blood on the front desk, the wall, the table, the “do not cross” tape, until it found the small white cooler on the floor. He pried it open with his mangled hands and lifted his own iced head out. 

Paul put his head on top of the gristle that was his neck. He had it the wrong way around, but his eyes opened and he smiled through bloody teeth. 

“I ss-ss-olved the b-a-ag puzzle,” the formerly dead man sputtered. “Did it a-all mys-self.”

He turned around to face both paramedics, so that his front side faced away. 

“Uh… congratulations,” the second paramedic said.

Paul choked up more blood and grinned wider. He stumbled toward the front desk, toward the paramedics. They backed away from him in horror as he reached out the wrong way and grabbed a commemorative I Escaped! sticker from the top of the pile.

“Th-a-ank you,” Paul said. “I’ll be su-ure to come back soon!”

[blondeaxolotl]

I've seen people draw their own ver of what Mrs Rosehearts looks like, but I think for my own au I thought it'd be more interesting if I kept the shadows over both Mrs and Mr Rosehearts faces but as a twist I gave them both jackalope heads. Since, not much is known about them (besides the already few crumbs we know in canon) besides the fact they're both jackalopes just like Riddle. Which ends up making their "appearances" way more exaggerated since it's like your brain filling up a blank space while also only knowing one thing about them. Another thing, instead of rabbits/bunny heads, their heads are shaped more like hares, because hares are wayy more intimidating looking than a cute little bunny like Riddle.

Of course they don't actually HAVE jackalope heads, it's just a more interesting way for me to play with their "faceless-ness" hehe.

[automeris-io-moth]

Reunion

That morning Hero felt particularly tired. 

Perhaps Villain had noticed early when greeting them at breakfast, such was the reason the servants were fetched to help them shower, help them dress and eat, fed by hand as if not humiliated enough by then, trapped by the fact they were indeed unable to lift the cutlery. 

Perhaps it had been Villain’s doing. Perhaps it had been the tea, perhaps it had been something else. 

Later, Hero was taken to the main hall of the former gubernatorial palace right in the heart of the city, where a wood and gold throne laid. Hero had once, long ago, made a joke about Villain compensating for something with such a cartoonish display of power, but then they had no energy to obnoxiously repeat it, as they did every time they entered the place. Mockery was one of the few things Hero had left after all. 

Yet, that day they could barely keep their head upright, a foggy sense of nausea crepting up their throat, a heavy weight pushing them down from the top of their head kept them glued to Villain that morning, head laying on the other's shoulder as Hero laid across their lap, their enemy's hands stroked up and down their arms and back, warming them from the coldness of the room. 

"Let them in," Villain's voice boomed across the hall, the echo remaining a second longer. 

The old wooden doors creaked open, uneven steps entering the room, as if being rushed, and Hero hid their head from the sharp noise. 

"What do you think I should do, love?” Villain asked the Hero this time, pressing their lips against their hair  “Four intruders wandering around, trying to enter our home to steal god knows what.” 

And Hero tried, tried to twist their head to look at the people standing before them, distinguishing them on their knees, half aware of the number mentioned, half aware of their factions, of what they wore. 

Half aware that they knew them. 

“I told you, Leader,” one said, a whisper too sharp to fulfil its purpose of being discreet “they sold us out.” 

“Shut up, Teammate, what about that?” The called answered, face straightening and, for a moment, Hero could swear they made eye contact “What are you looking to prove with this display, Villain?” 

Villain huffed a laugh, turning Hero’s head back to them  “Come on Leader, do you really think I put this show just for you?” 

They had, Hero thought, Villain usually preferred if they weren’t seen. Just for their eyes, they had once said, when they were, as that day, too out of their mind to talk back. 

“What did you do to them?” 

“I would never hurt them, if that’s what you’re thinking,” they answered, hands pulling them ever so close to their chest, curling if only lightly to embrace them “I’m not like you.” 

“We never…” 

“Yes you have,” they answered “I’ve seen every scar in their body, and I’m responsible for only one. Don’t lie to my face please.” 

“They knew what they were doing! It was for the greater good,” Teammate answered this time, sweat dripping from their forehead to the blood, taking the dirt with it. 

“Such a funny concept is the greater good. I can assure you it holds no meaning to me, there is nothing greater than keeping what's mine close and unblemished, and you have scarred it, sadly.”

With a hand on their hip, and the other on their neck, Villain twisted Hero’s head slightly to the right, where their team knelt, eyes glazed, barely open enough to discern their shadows, they could see one turn away from their unintentional stare. 

“So what would a fitting punishment be,” they asked in the air, looking down at Hero “I accept suggestions, my light.”

_

Masterlist

[guyawks]

Waste Not, Warrant Not

Knock knock.

I slightly open the door to my family’s house, enough to see a kind-looking woman with bunned hair and a notepad.

“Hi” she greets me warmly. “My name is Joan. I’m here from Child Protective Services. Are you Tara Lambert?”

“Y-yeah” I awkwardly answer, slouching in my pajamas as she observes our rundown home’s exterior.

“Is your mother—Tammy—here? I need to speak to her.”

“Yeah, sh-she’s here but…she sorta c-can’t come to the door easily.”

“Can I come inside then?”

Shyly, I unlatch the security latch and pull the door wide open. The social worker’s professional expression slips momentarily as she registers the state inside our hovel.

Everywhere around me in the hallway, living room, kitchen, bathroom and bedrooms, is a mountain of junk items. Old boxes, food containers, crumpled magazines, broken appliances, dirty clothing—you name it, piled up on every surface.

“Who’s here, Tara?” Mama snaps, her morbidly obese frame stirring in her chair as we sift over to her.

“Hi Tammy. I’m from CPS. I have a warrant from the Department of Social Services to conduct an investigation of your family’s living conditions.”

“Get outta mah house now! Ain’t nothing to assess, mah daughter’s happy!”

“Ma’am, I can already see this environment is entirely unsuitable for raising a teenager,” states Joan. “It’s not hygienic.”

“You deaf? I said you needa get out now or-”

Before she can finish speaking, a gurgling screech reverberates through the waist-high trash around us.

Immediately, Joan is violently pulled into the heap.

“Oh God!” Joan shrieks. “Help! Something’s got my leg!”

She continues screaming, to no avail, as second and third tentacles emerge from the sea of clutter and latch onto her. With a sickening rip, Joan is torn limb from limb. Only once they’ve consumed her body do the brown tentacles retreat, like an octopus returning to a trench.

While my mama weeps for Joan, my face barely registers the carnage.

“You’re welcome” I tell Mama, tossing my phone across the garbage. “That anonymous tip I left with CPS brought a case worker to the house immediately. Talk about fast food.”

A look of horrified realisation spreads throughout Mama’s rounded face.

“You…you shouldn’t ave done that. She was a good person…you didn’t needa feed her to it.”

“The monster was born out of your hoarding, Mama” I hiss. “The sheer filth in here literally created it. If I don’t keep luring people here for it to eat, it’s gonna eat the fattest, most useless thing it can find—you.”

I shoot my mother a withering glare and she blanches, shameful.

“I just…don’t want you killin’ people, Tara.”

Leaving, I glance at the bloodied remains of the social worker on the trash mound, her notebook an addition to the junk.

“Well, Mama—someone has to clean up your mess.”

[teenageartists]

A bird

[thebarontheabyss]

Happy Halloween to all dead and alive patrons of TBOTA! 👻🎃

Sharing another entry from the archive update if you haven't tried it yet—one that is just perfect for tonight. All other entries are available in the menu or during Chapter 4 of the game!

Have a spooky-but-fun holiday, and see you in the Abyss! 🖤

The Last Recordings of Ibaria Kell’ani

——————▸ Recording 001:

Finally, got this thing working.

My name is Ibaria Kell’ani. I’m a field agent of the Extrarealmic Exploration Institute of Civitas. I was taken hostage by inhabitants of realm C520, for reasons I still can’t figure out.

We were ambushed just a few miles from the gateway right after we descended into the valley. Everything happened so fast.

I… I don’t know where the others are.

When I woke up, I found myself in this chamber. No sign of my team, no sign of my captors—just cold stone walls and… silence.

Shit. I need to think.

——————▸ Recording 002:

An hour has passed since my last recording. Finally managed to calm down.

Let’s see… the important details.

So I woke up in this lavish room, not exactly what I’d call a cell. It’s... unsettling. The bed is large, almost too comfortable, with golden embroidered sheets and a flowing canopy. There’s a faucet in the corner, and a plate of fruit on the bedside table—perfectly arranged, by the way. Fresh, untouched.

Were I not a hostage, I’d give this place a five-star review.

There’s a large window overlooking the valley, and based on the view, I think I’m on the opposite side from where we landed. The elevation is dizzying. It’s way too high to climb down. I thought about making a rope from the bedsheets, but considering how far the drop is, I’d probably fall to my death.

So… let’s file that under Plan Z for now.

Oh, and the door to my room is wide open. Not locked. Not guarded. Just… opened.

I took a peek outside. There’s a huge corridor, stretching in both directions, but it’s too dark to see where it will take me. But I did see some ornate carvings running along the walls, the kind that would take lifetimes to craft.

What a strange prison cell. If that’s even what this is. I called out for my team, but the only thing that answered was my own voice, echoing back.

Nothing. No one. Just silence.

I think… I was hurt during the ambush. There’s a wound on my chest, right above my heart. I didn’t notice it at first—maybe I was in shock. But when I looked, someone had sealed it up. The stitching is crude, primitive. And yet, it doesn’t hurt.

In fact, it’s… warm to the touch.

I’ve been debating whether to leave the room. The open door feels like bait. Like part of some elaborate plan. This realm—C520—has already proven dangerous, and I’m not naive enough to believe my captors would forget to lock my door.

But it’s either that or the window. And I’m not ready to throw myself off a cliff just yet.

I’ll… I’ll keep you updated.

——————▸ Recording 003:

What is this place?

It took some self-convincing, more than I’d like to admit—but I did it. I went outside. Walked through the dark corridor, my flashlight shaking in my hand the entire way.

At the end of the hall, I found a sodden door. Behind it… there’s a worship chamber, or something that resembles one.

Oh, I should mention—my comm device. Still broken. Probably fried during the ambush. So, I’m left with my secondary recording device. It can’t do video, but I’ll keep doing these audio docs, so If anyone ever finds them…

You know, I should probably stop thinking about that.

Anyway, the chamber. It’s huge, like some sort of ancient monastery. Big statues, lined the walls, their faces obscured by time or maybe deliberate damage. I think they depicted warriors, or Gods–or both. Each statue was clutching something—heads. Humanoid heads, held like stone trophies in their cold hands. There were unlit candles scattered across the floor, and carvings covering the walls and ground. It all screamed of some kind of cult-like ritual space.

Wish Agent Joles were here. Her expertise in extrarealmic anthropology would’ve come in handy. I’m just a field agent—a grunt. I’m here to follow the experts, not to play investigator in a nightmare temple.

I wonder where the others are.

The chamber was cold, but the atmosphere was worse than the temperature. I tried to read the carvings, but without my comm device, I couldn't translate them.

There was no exit except for the way I came in, so after a while, I left. Honestly, the whole place gave me the creeps. Those statues… those heads. It felt like they were watching me as I walked away. I know that’s crazy. I know I’m probably just freaked out. But I heard rumours, about the things hiding in some of these realms.

Although, that won’t make sense, right? They scan every realm before expeditions. They check for dangers. And for safety measures, we had a whole squad of security guards. So… how did this happened, for Dominie’s sake? We were supposed to be prepared for some primitive inhabitants. What the hell happened?!

Sorry. Got carried away.

So, when I got back to my room, I downed some water from the faucet. I kind of hesitated before drinking it, but they wouldn’t poison it, right? I mean, there’s no point. They can do whatever they want to me. It’s not like a 5’4" field agent is going to pose much of a threat.

Actually, another thing I don’t want to think about right now.

I need to reassess. The sun—looks like it’s starting to set. I’ll head out again. Try to cover more ground.

Wish me luck.

——————▸ Recording 004:

Hello again. It’s morning already. I was so tired I fell asleep and forgot to record.

So… where do I start? This place is huge. And I don’t mean big in the normal sense—I mean *palatial*. A labyrinth of halls, corridors, and rooms. It took me more than two hours just to make a partial sweep, and I’m not even sure I’ve seen half of it.

There’s a throne room, of all things, sitting empty like its monarch left centuries ago. I walked past more than ten chambers—some grand, like mine, others more bare but still way too fancy to be normal cells. I found a grand hall, kitchens (complete with gleaming silverware and bowls of nothing), and long stretches of corridors leading to dead ends or locked doors.

All of it… deserted.

It’s like a whole kingdom got up and walked away one day, leaving everything behind. There’s no dust, no decay. Just vast emptiness.

No sign of my team, as well. Not a trace. Not a voice. The only sounds are my footsteps and my breathing. I tried the doors leading outside, but they’re all sealed shut, not even a lock or handle to work with. I think… the lock is on the other side?

After a while, I could feel another panic attack creeping up on me. But… I was too damn tired to let it happen. I didn’t have the energy to be scared anymore.

Instead, I stumbled back to my room, drained. The plate of fruit was still sitting there on the bed, so I ate the whole thing in one go. Honestly, I don’t even remember what it tasted like. It could’ve been cardboard for all I care. I just needed something in my system. Then, I collapsed onto the bed and slept.

When I woke up… the plate was full again. Back where it had been yesterday. Fresh fruit, arranged just as perfectly as before.

That’s when I lost it. I yelled—really yelled—until my throat hurt. Not because I was scared. No, I was pissed. Furious, actually. I don’t care what’s going on anymore. I don’t care what they’re planning or what they’ll do to me. I just wanted this stupid, endless suspense to end.

But no one came. No one answered.

No footsteps, no voices, no movement at all.

Nothing.

So here I am again, talking to this recorder like it’s a friend. I’ll… I’ll try another walk around today. There has to be something I missed. Maybe a door I overlooked. Maybe some clue that’ll help me make sense of this.

I can’t give up. Not yet.

My wound seems to be getting better. I mean, it’s not hurting anymore. Just… pulsing a bit. That’s weird, right? It doesn’t hurt, but it’s like there’s a heartbeat just beneath the skin.

I don’t know. It’s the least of my problems right now.

——————▸ Recording 005:

It’s been three days. I don’t think there’s a way out.

I’ve searched every inch of this damned place—every hall, every room, every shadowed corner. And as far as I can tell, the only real exits are the windows. I spent yesterday walking through even more fancy halls and ornate chambers, all just as grand and empty as the rest of this palace.

There’s also a garden, which… well, I have to admit was a nice break. I needed the air. But other than that… Nothing.

Every morning, the fruit plate on my bed gets replenished. I checked it this morning, waiting to see if someone would sneak in while I slept, but… no. No one. It’s magic. I saw it happen. The fruit just appeared, like it was summoned out of thin air.

That’s when I started thinking about Samir. If he were here, with his arcane knowledge, he’d probably be able to figure it out. Or at least, he’d have some theory. But Samir’s not here, is he? No one is. I’m alone.

Maybe someone managed to escape? Maybe all of them did. Maybe I’m the only one unlucky enough to be captured. Maybe… maybe the search parties are combing through the valley, following protocol, marking my absence on some cold, clinical report.

Either way, I need to be patient. I’m not in any immediate danger, right? No one’s tried to harm me, there’s food, there’s water, I’m not hurt… at least, not physically. I just need to keep my head on straight. Just be patient, Ibaria.

I had the strangest dream the other night. I was back in the chamber with the statues—the one with all those warrior effigies. It was snowing inside it—not just cold, actual snow falling from the ceiling. I remember watching it fall on those stone faces. And then one of the statues moved.

She was a woman, tall and armored, a warrior just like the others. But instead of standing there, frozen in place, she stepped down from her pedestal. She walked right up to me, took my hand, and kissed it. Her lips were cold. I could feel them, real as anything. And then she whispered, “It’s going to be alright.”

I thought about searching that chamber again, but honestly… I’m afraid to find her there.

I’m trying to stay focused, to keep some semblance of a plan.

So here’s what I’ve got:

- Plan A: Wait for rescue. Patience. Hope the Institute hasn’t forgotten me.

- Plan B: Try some of the locked doors. See if I can force my way through one of them. Maybe there’s something I missed.

- Plan Z: Jump out the window.

Let’s… hope it doesn’t come to that.

The wound on my chest is still there. It’s not hurting, but that pulsing sensation? Yeah, that’s still happening. Almost like it’s synced to my heartbeat. If I focus hard enough, I can feel it—this subtle thrum beneath the skin, warm, constant.

I can’t figure out if that’s a good or bad thing.

——————▸ Recording 006:

The others are dead.

It’s been two weeks since my last recording. Two weeks of silence. I had no reason to record. No purpose. I’ve just… wandered around this place. Lost, alone. Waiting, I suppose.

Until today.

I dreamed of her again. The woman from the chamber. She came to me every night, standing there in the snow, whispering things I couldn’t understand. But this morning… I didn’t wake up in my room.

I woke up in the chamber.

The cold stone floor was beneath me, and I could see my breath in the air, though I felt no chill. I bolted out of there, heart pounding in my chest. But something made me stop at the door. I turned back. I don’t know why. Maybe it was instinct, or maybe I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something I’d missed.

I searched the chamber again, behind the statues this time. That’s when I found it.

A door.

It was hidden behind a statue. The door was ice-cold to the touch, frost curling along the edges, but I didn’t hesitate. I pushed it open and stepped inside.

And that’s when I found them.

My team.

What’s… what’s left of them.

Their bodies were frozen in place, scattered across a huge, cavernous room. Catacomb-like, the walls were encased in thick ice, but I didn’t feel the cold. It was like the air had been sucked out, leaving only silence, death.

Their chests were split open. Not torn or clawed at—opened. As if something inside them had burned its way out. The skin around their wounds was charred, blackened, but the rest of their bodies were pristine, preserved in the ice.

I found the professor. Sylvia.

She was my mentor. I’ve known her for years. She always had this calm, steady look about her. But now… she looks terrified. Even in death, that fear is etched into her face.

But they weren’t the only ones in that chamber. There were others. Other bodies. Explorers, I think, judging by their clothing. But not just from Civitas. No… these people were from other realms. The styles of their uniforms, the equipment scattered around—it was all different. But their fate was the same. Chest opened, frozen in ice. Like something had devoured them from within.

And then, at the center of it all, a circle of bodies.

My captors.

They were arranged in a circle, lying in perfect formation, like some kind of ritual. All of them dead. I think they poisoned themselves. There was an empty bottle in the middle, the liquid long gone. It didn’t make sense, none of it makes sense.

And at the end of the room I found… her. The statue.

The bronze woman, the one from my dreams, her form still and cold. Covered in ice, just like the rest of the chamber. But there was something about her. She wasn’t just another statue. I could feel it. Like she was watching me. Waiting.

I ran. I couldn’t take it anymore. I bolted back to my room, slammed the door behind me, and collapsed on the bed, my mind racing.

Before I left the chamber, though, I grabbed something—Sylvia’s log. Her personal notes. I’ve been combing through them ever since I got back, trying to make sense of all this.

The final entry… it must have been written just before everything went wrong. It says: *“Someone has interfered with the gateway. We are in the wrong place.”*

I don’t think anyone’s coming for me.

——————▸ Recording 007:

It’s snowing outside.

The valley is white, pristine. It’s been snowing for two days now—relentless, endless. Everything is buried beneath it. The world is so quiet.

There was once an empire here. A pantheon of warrior-gods who ruled this realm. They waged wars—horrible, unending wars. So many dead. Gods and mortals alike. We’re so similar, aren’t we?

And she… she needed someone to save her. Someone to carry her. Not all mortals are capable, she told me. She needed someone who crossed the realms, absorbing void energy. But even then, some… can’t take the weight.

So she had to try, again and again.

I’m… I’m not in control of myself anymore. I wake up in places I don’t remember going to, sleepwalking through this palace. I feel tired all the time, like there’s a weight inside me pulling me down. But she said it’s alright. It’s all part of the process. The cold is everywhere now, but she says my warmth will sustain her.

I was just a field agent. I wasn’t special. I wasn’t important. But she told me I am. I will be. I was the only one who mattered. This place—it’s been waiting for me. All of it. The halls, the statues, my throne. Waiting for me.

To take back my realm.

To lead my people to victory.

To be the war, the snow, the cold.

The wound on my chest—it's healed now. It closed days ago. I feel stronger. Clearer. More… whole than I’ve felt in a long time. I thought I’d lost myself, but no. I came back through.

Thank you, for your sacrifice. It won’t be in vain. You gave me the strength I needed. The strength to do what must be done.

I will take back what’s mine.

[cheerfullycatholic]

Happy Halloween!!!

To celebrate, I thought I'd share a few of my favorite short stories, written by me!

If you're interested, please enjoy one (or all three) 👻 (mild spoilers in the TWs)

What Stays With Us, a ghost who can't settle down (no TW that I can think of. It's spooky but there's no harm done, though if you find one feel free to share and I'll update this)

The Beasts of Cape's Peak, a couple of bookworms who are confronted by creatures that they thought only existed in their stories (TW some danger, werewolves, murder implied, kidnapping)

Winter's Revenant, a man who just wanted to ice skate in peace (TW dead body, vampire, torture mentioned, some blood and gore, nudity (not sexual, not descriptive), death, guns)

[noctivagant-ghost]

we started getting letters from a child we don't have....

(an r/nosleep style story)

We found the first letter on a Tuesday.

It didn’t come in the mail, not really. It was just there; in our mailbox, no stamp, no postmark, no return address. Just our names written in a child’s handwriting.

"Mara and Eli."

Inside, on a single sheet of folded notebook paper, was this:

"Hi Mom and Dad,

You don’t know me yet, but I’m your son. I’m writing from the future. I just wanted to say thank you. You’re doing everything right. I’ll see you soon.

Love, Me."

We laughed, at first. We thought it was a prank. Maybe one of the neighborhood kids had slipped it in. It was cute. Innocent. We saved it on the fridge for fun.

The second letter arrived a week later.

This time, it was inside the house.

I found it on the kitchen counter, beside the coffee pot. No one had been in. No signs of a break-in. Nothing stolen. The doors were locked. We had no cameras, but we were always careful. Still, there it was.

"Hi again,

Mara, your headaches are from the water. It’s the pipes. Don’t drink it anymore.

Eli, bring an umbrella on Thursday. You’ll need it.

I love you.

-Me"

Mara had been having migraines for weeks. Her doctor thought it was stress, maybe hormones. But she stopped drinking the tap water and switched to bottled. Within three days, the headaches vanished.

Thursday brought an unexpected hailstorm. Everyone at the office was drenched. I was dry.

After that, we stopped laughing.

We didn’t talk about it at first. We just… obeyed. Quietly. Unsure why. The letters were always right. Helpful. Loving. They felt real.

They started arriving regularly.

The third letter told us not to attend a birthday party we’d RSVP’d to weeks before. It was vague:

"Please don’t go to the party on Saturday. Something bad will happen. But you’ll be safe if you stay home. I promise."

We stayed home.

The next day, the news reported a carbon monoxide leak at the event hall. Several people were hospitalized. One person died.

The following letter said:

"Thank you. That would have been very bad for us."

We started saving every letter. They felt… sacred.

They always came when we were alone. Always in strange places: under pillows, inside cupboards, once even inside the fridge, folded neatly between two cartons of eggs.

Each note felt warmer, more intimate. More personal.

They began using our childhood stories- ones we’d only ever shared in whispers.

"Mom, remember the pink shoes you buried in the woods behind grandma’s house? I found them. They were still there. Thank you."

Mara burst into tears. She hadn’t thought of those shoes in twenty years.

"Dad, the letter you wrote to your grandpa before he died? He read it. He says thank you."

My knees buckled. I had burned that letter before ever sending it.

Then the warnings began.

They were subtle at first.

"Don’t answer Aunt Lydia’s calls anymore. She doesn’t believe in me. She’s going to make you forget."

We ignored that one.

Lydia came to visit the next week. She walked through our house, sat on our couch, and said she felt "something wrong" in the air.

She kept asking if we were okay. If we were sleeping. If we were eating. She left us a dreamcatcher and told Mara to wear lavender on her wrists.

The letter that night said:

"She saw too much. You have to be careful."

Two days later, Lydia’s car crashed on a mountain road. She survived, but she was in a coma for two weeks.

We never called her again.

By the time the pregnancy test came back positive, we didn’t question it.

It didn’t matter that we hadn’t planned for children.

It didn’t matter that I’d had a vasectomy five years earlier.

"Miracle," Mara whispered.

"Destiny," I said.

We held hands in the kitchen, trembling. The house felt too still. Outside, the wind stopped.

The letter was already on the counter:

"He’s coming. Thank you for making it possible."

The letters became more frequent. More urgent.

"Don’t trust the man with the dog who walks past at 8:15. He’s watching us."

"Don’t let the doctor touch Mom’s stomach. He’ll feel something he’s not supposed to."

"Don’t look into the mirror for too long."

We didn’t know what that meant. But after a while, we couldn’t.

Our reflections began to move out of sync.

The pregnancy progressed rapidly.

By what should have been week twelve, Mara looked full-term. She didn’t gain weight. Her skin remained smooth, flawless. But her stomach grew, and the skin over it pulsed faintly, like something underneath was testing the boundaries.

She didn’t sleep much. When she did, she murmured in a language I didn’t recognize.

The letters still addressed us lovingly.

"You’re both doing so well. I’m so proud of you."

"Don’t listen to anyone else. They’ll try to keep us apart."

"You have to protect me. We’re almost ready."

Then came the letter about Mr. Halberd, our neighbor.

"He knows. He’s been watching you. He’s going to ruin everything. You have to stop him."

We were scared. We believed it. Halberd had always been nosy, sure- but lately, he had been stopping by more. Asking strange questions.

"You folks expecting? You look different. This house… something about it feels wrong now."

The next note said:

"He’s lying. He always has. He hurt children once. He’d hurt me too. Do what you need to do."

Mara convinced me to confront him.

It wasn’t supposed to happen like it did.

But it did.

Halberd fell down the stairs. His neck broke.

We didn’t call the police. We buried him under the garden shed.

We found a letter in the soil the next morning:

"Thank you. He won’t interfere anymore."

Mara went into labor that night.

That’s when the sky turned black.

Not cloudy. Not stormy. Just… black. Like someone had painted over the sky with tar and forgot to leave room for the stars.

The power flickered once, then died. Every light, every outlet. My phone screen refused to turn on, even with a full charge. The clocks froze at 11:44.

Outside the window, there were no streetlights, no moonlight. Just a black wall where the world used to be. Even sound felt muffled, like we were wrapped in cotton.

Mara screamed.

It wasn’t a cry of pain. It was something else. Her voice didn’t echo; it seemed to collapse in on itself, the sound falling flat in the air like it wasn’t allowed to leave the room.

And then it stopped. Her eyes rolled back. Her mouth hung open.

And from her lips came a voice that wasn’t hers.

Not deep, not monstrous- just wrong. Like a hundred whispers trying to form one word. I leaned close, trying to understand. 

She convulsed once, twice, then went completely still. Her stomach bulged and contracted in slow, rhythmic pulses. Something was moving beneath the skin. Not kicking- shifting. Like it was stretching, unfolding.

I backed away.

The room felt hotter by the second. The walls pulsed with a dull red hue, as if lit from behind veins. The floor vibrated beneath my feet in perfect sync with Mara’s breaths- deep, dragging, unnatural.

There was no blood.

No contractions.

Just silence and movement.

Then came the sound; a high-pitched whine, like metal scraping against bone. It came from Mara’s mouth, eyes, fingertips.

Her skin began to glow.

And just as quickly, it stopped.

Her belly went still.

Her eyes fluttered open.

She looked at me- really looked at me- and smiled.

"It’s okay now," she said.

I dropped to my knees beside her.

The glow in her skin faded.

And then, slowly, impossibly, she reached down and pulled something out of herself. Not screaming, not shaking. Calm. Serene.

What she held was not a baby.

It was shaped like one, sure. But the proportions were wrong. Limbs too long. Eyes too large. Skin smooth and translucent like polished stone.

It blinked at me.

Its mouth opened into a crooked smile.

And I- God help me- I smiled back.

We didn’t sleep that night.

Not because we were afraid.

Because the baby- our son- didn’t want us to.

He didn’t cry. He didn’t fuss. He just stared, wide-eyed, from the little nest of blankets we laid him in on the living room floor. His eyes never closed. Not once.

Around 3 a.m., Mara said, "He doesn’t blink."

I hadn’t noticed. But she was right.

He watched us constantly, like he was memorizing us. Studying us. Like we were a test and he was waiting for the results.

And we felt proud. Grateful.

There were no more letters.

None the next morning.

None the next week.

But there were… changes.

Mara no longer needed food. Not really. She’d pick at toast, sip at tea, but nothing else. She stopped sleeping entirely, yet never seemed tired. She said her dreams now lived outside of her. That he had taken them from her "for safekeeping."

I kept working, going through the motions. But people looked at me differently. My coworkers asked if I was okay. One even reached out and grabbed my arm like he thought I was about to collapse.

"You’ve been losing weight," he said. "You look… pale."

I looked in the mirror that night.

And I didn’t recognize myself.

But when I turned away, I saw my reflection blink- and I hadn’t.

The next letter came two weeks later.

It wasn’t in the mailbox.

It was in the crib.

Folded beneath our son’s body, like a note left in a bassinet at a fire station.

It was different.

Printed, not handwritten. Sharp letters, uniform and cold.

Phase 1 complete. Secondary conditioning successful. Intervention no longer necessary. Initiate localization.

We didn’t understand what it meant.

Until the dreams started.

Not for us- for others.

We got a call from a friend in New York, terrified. She said she dreamed of us, but not how we are. She saw us in a house with no windows. Holding something that looked like a child but wasn’t. Smiling, rocking it, singing lullabies in a language she couldn’t understand.

She woke up crying.

Then the dreams spread.

Relatives. Coworkers. Strangers. People messaged us, confused. Disturbed.

“We saw you.”

“We saw him.”

“He told us things. He told us what’s coming.”

He.

Not “it.”

He had a name now.

And then, he spoke it.

To us.

Out loud.

Just one word, in a language we couldn’t place. But it cracked the glass on the coffee table. Sent every dog on the block into a howling frenzy. Mara dropped to her knees and whispered, “Yes. Yes, I hear you.”

The house felt smaller after that. Warmer. The walls pulsed, slightly, like lungs. The lights no longer worked, but we didn’t need them. Everything inside glowed softly, like it had its own hidden sun.

I stopped going to work.

I couldn’t remember what my job had been anyway.

Mara spent all day with him. Cradling him. Speaking to him in strange murmurs, her head tilted like she was listening to music I couldn’t hear. Sometimes she’d hum- not a lullaby, but something more primal, like static turned into a melody.

I started finding drawings on the walls.

Childlike scribbles at first. Then more complex. Circles within circles, jagged geometry, sharp lines forming impossible angles. I tried to wipe them off. They wouldn’t smudge. They were drawn in something that wasn’t ink.

I woke one morning to find a spiral traced on my chest in fine red lines. Not a wound. More like a tattoo that had always been there.

That’s when I knew he’d started using me, too.

The next letter didn’t come on paper.

It came through the radio.

The kitchen radio hadn’t worked since the blackout, but it turned on by itself at 2:17 a.m. White noise at first. Then a child’s voice:

“You’ve both done beautifully. It’s almost time. Please make room. Others are coming.”

The sound looped once. Then the radio exploded.

It started raining the next day.

Black rain.

Thick and slow, like oil. It didn’t splash. It stuck.

The sky above us had not returned. There was no sun. No clouds. Just that awful velvet void, like we lived beneath a blanket that didn’t want to be removed.

I tried to call my brother. The line clicked and opened into silence. Then I heard him breathing. Then crying. Then a voice- our son’s voice- saying, “He’s not ready.”

Mara was ready.

She started setting up the house. Rearranging the furniture. She said they needed a nursery. Not for him.

For them.

“They’re coming through soon,” she told me one night while folding linens. “He’s made it safe for them now.”

“Who?” I asked, because I didn’t want to believe I already knew.

She looked at me with those wide, glowing eyes and said, “The others.”

Two nights later, we watched from the porch as the man across the street walked into his front yard, dropped to his knees, and carved a circle into his chest using the edge of a broken CD.

He was smiling the entire time.

When I ran to him, he was already gone. But on his shirt, written in something that might have been blood- or something worse- was one word:

“Ready.”

We stopped getting mail.

No trucks came down the street anymore. No deliveries. No neighbors.

The homes around us went dark, one by one. Some remained standing; shadows behind their windows. Others collapsed in on themselves overnight, like paper folding into ash.

Still, we stayed.

Because he told us to.

The house had changed.

The doors no longer opened outward. Behind every door was another room of the house. The living room, the kitchen, the nursery. They had multiplied, endless variations of the same three places, looping deeper and deeper the more you opened.

I once passed through seven living rooms before finding Mara again.

She said it was better this way.

“We need room for everyone.”

The next letter was scratched into the inside of the refrigerator:

“He’s almost ready to be born again.”

We didn’t understand.

“He’s already here,” I whispered.

“No,” Mara said, gently. “That was just the beginning.”

That night, he changed.

He grew.

Not larger, but deeper. He felt heavier in our arms, like he contained more space than the outside of his body suggested. His eyes no longer blinked- they shifted. Like you were never quite looking at them directly, no matter where you stood.

He called me by my real name.

Not Eli.

The one no one knew.

Not even Mara.

And when I asked him how he knew it, he said, “I gave it to you.”

We found the final letter in our bed.

Folded neatly, resting on our pillows.

This one wasn’t signed.

The bridge is built. The hosts are prepared. The signal will arrive soon. Do not interfere.

The walls began to hum.

The black sky tore open.

But it didn’t reveal stars.

It revealed an eye.

Huge. Pulsing. Watching.

And it blinked.

We didn’t scream when the sky blinked.

We knelt.

Everyone did.

Across the street, from what houses remained, figures emerged. Staggering. Praying. Chanting in tongues that didn’t belong to any language we knew. Some we recognized. Some we didn’t. All of them watched the sky and waited.

And our son- our beautiful, impossible son- smiled.

“Now you see,” he said.

He wasn’t a child anymore. Not in the way we understood. His body hadn’t aged, but his presence filled the house like gravity. He bent the air. Light avoided him. Shadows bowed.

“We didn’t mean to help this,” I told Mara.

She didn’t answer.

She was no longer Mara.

Not really.

It started three nights ago.

I found her standing in the hallway, tracing the spiral on her chest. She said it itched. Said it moved when she looked away. She whispered that she’d started dreaming of herself, from the outside, watching her own body carry out instructions she hadn’t consciously heard.

She didn’t fight it.

I think a part of her had been gone for weeks.

And now… there was no more denying it.

The air crackled with electricity. The ground shook in pulses.

The eye in the sky blinked once more.

Then the letter appeared.

Not in the house.

In my mind.

A voice. Warm. Familiar.

You were never meant to survive me. Only to usher me in.

The locks have been undone. The veil, rewritten. The shape of the world bent back to its origin- to me.

I did not come to destroy your world. I came to replace it.

You were the prayer. And now, you are the silence that follows it.

There will be no aftermath. No reckoning. Only continuity-  in my shape, in my image,  and in the names that come after yours are forgotten.

Sleep now. The new world does not require your witness.

I tried to scream, but my mouth no longer worked.

I tried to run, but my legs were no longer mine.

Mara turned to me one last time.

She opened her mouth.

And in our son’s voice, she said: “We’re already inside.”

[rerarlo]

Do people ever think how creepy it is that humans can mimic other animals? And this goes even for animals we can't easily mimic, if we can't mimic it with just our voices and hands, we make whistles, tools to lure in other species lulling them into a false sense of security. And even if we aren't hunting. We casually mimic other creatures sometimes, cows mooing, sheep baaing and usually birds chirping. Lets put this in a more human perspective.

You're walking home one day, its a normal day. Maybe you got off work a little late because of your shitty boss so now its dark out. But otherwise nothing is out of your routine. There's a streetlight on the other side of the road that has been out for months because the city refuses to repair it after some kids broke it. And as you're passing by you hear from the direction of that light post a "Hello." Its weirdly monotone and when your head swings around to look at who said it, you don't see anybody. Thinking it was your imagination you continue walking, maybe you just heard something in the music that wasn't there. You take a few steps but before you can turn your music back on, you hear it again. This time you freeze, could... could somebody be hiding in the woods behind the streetlight? "Hello?" you reply before you can think better of it. "HelLo?" you hear back, it sounds like the person is... trying to copy the way you're speaking? No, no way, your nerves are probably getting to you. You debate whether to reply this time, maybe its better to just leave? I mean you don't know this person, they might be a murderer for Christ's sake. Not to mention you still can't fucking see them with you standing under the working streetlight. "Hello? ....Hello?" they speak again. "What do you want?" You finally gather the nerve to reply, fuck maybe you should've just booked it. "W..hat do..you want?" is parroted back to you after a couple seconds, and you manage to catch a glimpse of...eyes. Eyes just behind the tree line, they... they aren't where human eyes should be. No..no human is that tall. The urge to run has been building for a while now, but seeing those eyes when that...that Thing moved made you break into a sprint before you could think. You ran and ran and ran, you don't even remember most of it, but it ends with you at the front door to your apartment building and fishing for the keys in your bag like the devils on your heels. You get in, close the door, and look through the keyhole. There's nothing, absolutely nothing. No sign you were ever being chased. No overly tall thing with light reflecting eyes. You're...safe. You slump against the door your forehead against it. Did... did you imagine it? No, no way, you know what you Heard, you know what you Saw. And you are never walking down that road at night again.

[brown-little-robin]

it's not good for the job search to have a fundamental, bone-deep certainty that the world will always punish an honest attempt >:|

[erockrogers]

A baby Leptoceratops lets out a shrill squeal as a sickle claw presses delicately against the back of its neck. Deep in the forest, its mother follows the distant cries of her missing hatchling. As she gets closer, the wailing abruptly stops, the baby has bled out. The bait is gone, but with his prey now within reach, the Dakotaraptor has one final trick. He uses his syrinx, the vocal organ unique to birds, and mimics the cries of the dead hatchling. The calls sound slightly off, but with her baby’s scent lingering in the air, the mother trots forward, right into the trap.