When the sun inexplicably disappears for a fleeting moment, the town of Plainville dismisses it as a strange cosmic anomaly. But as the blackouts grow longer and deadlier, Michael Thompson and his family are thrust into a desperate struggle for survival. Battling freezing temperatures, dwindling resources, and mounting fear, they must confront the possibility that the sun’s instability is only the beginning of a far more terrifying cosmic unraveling. An atmospheric and chilling exploration of resilience and hope in the face of planetary catastrophe ...

Just a little over a week ago, I was awoken at seven in the morning by a startling phone call from my mother. She informed me that her sister had just passed away in the hospital. For three years my aunt was battling leukemia to little avail, and although I ...

I’m a veteran detective working in a mid-size city, retirement age but not ready to rest yet. Among all of the standard assignments I’ve covered, I’ve seen my share of strange cases, only a few of which have made me struggle when it came to writing a final report that ...

In the summer of 2025, a large house just outside of a small town in northern New Hampshire went on the market. I’d been watching and waiting for years, because it was where I grew up. I was even born there, after my mother suddenly went into labor a month ...

“It’s just a mirror”, that phrase echoed in Elisa Smith’s mind every time her gaze fell on the blackened glass hanging in the long hallway of her grandparents’ house. The mirror was nearly her height, its opaque surface barely reflecting the outlines of the room, while the carved wooden frame, ...

“Six. Seventeen. Nineteen. Forty-five. Twelve. And…Twenty-three,” he finished, the last of the lotto numbers rolling off his tongue, which was suspiciously dry considering the speckles of spit that now clung to the sneeze guard separating him and the attendant. He cleared his throat before wetting his whistle with a gulp of ...

In Milan, under the relentless sun of a summer that seemed intent on sealing the city in an endless embrace of heat, a website appeared almost by chance in the dark labyrinth of the deep web, a digital recess that very few dared to enter. Its name was “VitaXchange,” and ...

The following anonymous tip was deposited into the mailbox of the Lincoln Police Station in Lincoln, Nebraska. * * * * * * The ice cream place on the corner of N 48th Street and Vine is a front for human trafficking. It used to be called Soft Serves (and still might be) ...

Part I When I applied to Skybound Jump Arena, I thought my biggest problems would be screaming toddlers, the occasional vomit in the foam pit, and maybe the off chance I’d have to tell someone twice my size to stop having fun. I was wrong. So, so wrong. On my ...

Part I Bob came to the vague realization that something had gone wrong the moment he opened his eyes and found himself standing in an infinite white void. There was no light source, yet he could see. No walls, yet he could feel the space around him. No sound, save ...

To the writers of Retlaw and Drummond’s Almanac, I’d like to thank you for the vestige. Your county map, in its textured patchwork of onion yellow and copper goner green, was among the last to list my fair town by name. Of course, I understand why that needed to stop ...

I inherited this house only three months ago and it haunts me. I’ve walked its slim hallways and dark rooms, checking again and again if the doors are locked, the windows closed tightly, and the drapes drawn. No light and no peering eye may pierce my Mecca. And yet, though ...

Born from smokeless fire, they straddle the line between seen and unseen, good and evil. They move betwixt those spaces between life and death. They may choose to help or destroy on a whim. Beware in the shadow valley, the cursed Jinn. Chapter 1 “A Den of Iniquity” Fists hammered ...

I suffer from a condition called Charles Bonnet Syndrome, or Visual Release Hallucinations if you want to get more technical. It’s a condition that’s far more common than you might realise — it’s estimated that as many as half of people with gradual loss of vision will experience one or ...

ONE Unlike most psychiatrists, Fiszman didn’t have a sofa or a chaise longue in his office. Nor did he have a bookshelf. Nor were there any sharp objects on his desk like pens or paperclips. He didn’t wear a tie, either, or shoelaces. In fact, anything that could be used ...

This autumn, a couple of work friends are going deer hunting. It’s been the talk of the office for two months straight. It became the conversational watering hole, and everyone who doesn’t take part is left to dry out in the sun. Hell, even Vicky, the receptionist, is coming along ...

I fear the hulking giant that waits just outside my home. I'm too afraid to even look up at him in his full size. He stands two, maybe three stories tall, silently watching me, his silhouette a pitch-black void against the starry night sky. At any moment, he could rip ...

I can’t explain why I was drawn to that thing in the antique store; I just knew I had to have it. By outward appearances, there was nothing remarkable about the horsehead bookend - smoothly carved from black stone, expression unreadably bland. The weirdest thing was its lack of counterpart, ...

Part I “Who is he?” my son inquired, pointing to the tall figure drawn upon the dusty, nearly crumbling page. As a reproduction of a reproduction of a reproduction, the history book could have easily been mistaken for the mad scribblings of troglodytes in their firelit caves. “A great leader,” ...