Coming from the Appalachian foothills of West Virginia, where driving to town was a big to-do, I realized at a young age that people tend to lean toward the supernatural for things that they cannot understand. The women in my family were particularly guilty of this kind of superstition – […]
Delia jogged into the forest, smiling as she listened to her mother’s cry to be careful. She was going to play with the fairies, they would keep her safe! Running over upturned roots and thick underbrush, Delia’s slipper-clad feet barely touched the ground as she sprinted past the tall Elms, […]
The flawless white of the perfect snow stretched ambitiously towards the amber horizon. The immense glass walls seemed to amplify the majesty of the Norstu desert. I’d have been struck down by awe if perfection were not now a staple aspect of everyday life. The ochre support panels of the […]
Share Your Unusual Fears Happy December, everyone! Since submissions are closed, I thought it might be nice to have a discussion topic that will be – I hope – conducive to inspiring new pastas. Closed submission periods are intended not only to give me time to catch up on the […]
Publisher’s Note: If you enjoy this story, the author encourages you to read its companion piece, Sniff. My first job was at a 24-hour restaurant called Flavi’s, on Third and Burlington in Westlake. It was a real hole-in-the-wall place, the type where patrons line up beneath the menu board; specializing […]
JayJay suspected herself of having a mild form of ADHD to balance out her high IQ. It was undiagnosed, if so; she had better things to spend her money on than psychoanalysis. Still, there were the occasional days like today, when her concentration was shot, and whatever was in her […]
My grandfather was an inventor. All his life he’s be tinkering with something, either taking something that existed and changing it, making it into something brand new (Or at the very least different) or inventing something entirely from spare parts. And while nothing he invented was ever earth shaking it […]
“Everybody ready?” Our tour guide called out from the front of the bus. All of us let out a collective, “mmhm,” in agreement. “Great, because we’ll be there in ten minutes.” He said back to us. I stared out the window at the beautiful white landscape, it was like something […]
During the summer of 2014, when I had just turned 17, I left my home in a Northern European country to live with a host family and study at a high school in the province of BC in Western Canada. I unfortunately cannot tell you the name of the village […]
I’m a bit of a light sleeper, so any noise at all will wake me up. It’s part of the reason I live alone. I don’t want some roommate waking me up in the middle of the night. But because of that night, I wish I had one. I was […]
It had taken only a few seconds but the old lamp-lit street you were walking on suddenly melts away, and you stand in a crowded thrum of bodies and shouting. Looking around you notice the things around you are far from human. Goblinoid creatures with silver-white flesh, Amphibious bipedal creatures […]
There is nothing quite as unsettling as being lost. It’s an oppressive feeling where the world seems to stare down from the sky, maliciously following your sad progress like a kid with a magnifying glass. For Lucile Bradle it was her first encounter with hell on earth. She was sixteen […]
Even from the far end of the platform, seeing the whole of the lower station at 190th Street, Harold noticed only one other person waiting for the train. Granted, it was quite late, around 2:30am, on (what day was it?) a weeknight, but still, it seemed unusually quiet. Harold could […]
Within The Carcass Of Lunar Rot I have been sending this distress call repeatedly, and I have been trapped on this moon for what I hope to have only been the past two sidereal days. Can anyone hear this message? Can anyone send help? I do not know what to […]
It was your standard blue collar work day—in at 9, work for eight hours, out by 5. My dad was on his way home to have a standard blue collar evening when something not-so-standard happened. Driving home from work, his car was hit by some douchebag pickup truck driver on […]