Posts

Last Hurrah

Image
  Sofia’s voice had been ruined by illness for years. Alone and emotionally scattered by memories of how incredible her voice once was, she decided to drown her tears in wine. During her time alone, someone knocked on her door. At the door stood a strange little boy in a pristine black suit. Before Sofia could ask if he was lost or send him away, he spoke in a childish tone. “I heard you crying, and I came to sell you a magic candy. It will give you a much better voice, but there’s a small price, which you won’t have to pay now.” Sofia was not particularly fond of children, and at that moment, she was going through an emotional and mental breakdown. So, she accepted the candy without asking what the price was or when she would have to pay it. She took the candy, shut the door immediately, and went back to sobbing. She unwrapped the candy, shoved it into her mouth, and continued drinking the wine until she passed out. She woke up with a hangover and a throbbing headache, her phone b...

Say His Name

Image
  A famous skeptic decides to destroy the Candy Man myth once and for all by spending an entire night inside the old Lin abandoned park where dozens of alleged sightings have occurred. He brings cameras, infrared equipment, security guards, psychologists and a massive livestream audience. At midnight, he confidently says Candy Man five times into a mirror. Nothing happens. Hours pass without a single supernatural event, and by morning he's celebrating what he calls the greatest paranormal hoax ever exposed.  Then viewers begin flooding the livestream chat with the same message: “Who is standing beside you?” The skeptic looks around. Nobody is there. But every camera shows the same tall figure standing inches from him. When one security guard walks through the figure, he suddenly collapses, bleeding from his nose and ears. The skeptic desperately tries to shut down the livestream, but the cameras won't turn off. Instead, the figure begins moving closer to the lenses. The skepti...

Survival First

Image
   The man had been following James since the train station. They both dropped at the bus shelter, cornered, James waited for the man to attack and do his worst to him. Instead, cold rushed in like floodwater. A figure appeared at the far end of the shelter. It had no neck, no shoulders beginning, just a void where a head should be, and it was moving toward both of them with terrible purpose. The attacker screamed first, a sound that didn’t sound human. He ran to the approaching bus without looking back, but he could hear the thing following at a slow pace. The bus pulled up and both James and would be attacker fell inside gasping. The driver didn’t seem to notice his shaking hands or the way he kept glancing at the window. No one had gotten on after him

Riptide

Image
    The current had her past the buoys and going under for the third time when someone got an arm around her chest and hauled her sideways out of the pull, shouting instructions the whole way in a steady lifeguard cadence. “Kick, don’t fight it, kick.” She didn’t have air left to obey, only survival, and the arm around her held firm, unyielding as a rope, dragging her out of that blue black corridor where her arms had stopped listening. The voice was calm in a way that made no sense in the chaos, not panicked the way she would have been or the way she would have expected anyone to be, just steady and certain. “You’re going to make it, stop fighting the water, kick toward me.” She kicked. Her lungs were closing. The arm didn’t let go. When she washed up on the sand ten yards down the beach, she was still coughing, still alive, already turning to thank whoever had held her together in the water. The actual lifeguard was sprinting toward her from his stand a hundred yards up the ...

The Detour

Image
   The hitchhiker asked to be let out early, then leaned back through the window and said, quiet and certain. “Don't take the county bridge tonight." He almost didn't listen. He took the long way instead, some instinct he couldn't name, and heard on the radio the next morning that the bridge had collapsed at 11:40 p.m. the exact time he would have crossed it. He pulled over to text his wife that he was safe, but then he jotted awake and realized it was a dream. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. Heed my words and live“ The hitchhiker said while sitting on the front passenger seat. Only then realized he'd realized he just saw what was going to happen.

Mile Marker Forty

Image
    He wasn’t speeding but suddenly the car flipped over twice before it stopped. He remembers the windshield swinging back and forth, the world going sideways, and hands. Too many hands pulling him free before the tank caught fire. Firefighters told him he'd crawled out alone; no one else had been on that stretch of highway for six miles. He believed them until the bruises came up: four distinct sets of fingerprints on each arm, matching no one who'd touched him. He drives past mile marker forty every day now. For one second, every day, the guardrail looks bent in a way it wasn't the day before and then it isn't, again.

The Anix

Image
    The villagers had one unbreakable rule: if you heard someone calling your name from the plateau after sunset, you were never to answer. They claimed something, known to their ancestors as anix lived in the cliffs. Something that listened carefully, learned every voice, and waited patiently for the perfect opportunity. Outsiders laughed at the warning, dismissing it as another local superstition. During a weekend camping trip, four friends heard Emma's younger brother calling for help from somewhere beyond the trees. Emma panicked, insisting she recognized his voice, even though he was hundreds of miles away. The others tried to stop her, reminding her that it couldn't possibly be him, but the desperate cries became louder and more convincing. Moments later, another familiar voice joined in. Her mother's, begging her to hurry before it was too late. Ignoring every warning, Emma ran toward the voices, disappearing into the darkness surrounding the plateau. Her friends cha...