Danny was always afraid of the dark. The kind of kid who'd slept with a nightlight until he was way too old. One who’d never dare to step out of his room if the hallway light was off. I remember our first sleepover, when tucked away beneath...
Dak and Chadwick each lit up a smoke and cracked their windows, the excitement of a good day fishing warming their spirits despite the cold wind that suddenly filled the cab of Chadwick’s truck. The sporadic raindrops that began to fall as they left the...
5/24 12:18 a.m. – Christ what a haul! I honestly don’t know how truck drivers do this day in and day out. Sitting for eons on end, bored out of your skull. Navigating legions of douchebags in minivans and SUVs who think they own the...
My wife Vicky means more to me than my own life. I’ve consulted doctors after hours, anonymous clinical helplines, even a suicide hotline for Christ’s sake. The only course of action that I have left is to release her into professional medical care. As weak...
My husband went overseas as part of the military for a few years. The entire time I anxiously awaited his return. I constantly wondered if I would ever get a phone call notifying me that he would never come home. It was strange being alone...
The carpet smells of decay and mud as I flatten my face against the floor in an attempt to hide under our queen-sized bed. An incessant banging at the door resonates through my brain, feeling like I’m being impaled with an iron spike. Each knock slams...
The Mandela Effect. That phrase never meant anything to me. Spooky, I guess, but it wasn’t something I thought about for more than five minutes. I mean, honestly, until college, I didn’t even know what it was. I’m not one for conspiracy theories or ghost...
Edward Harker waited in his office until the financial management firm of Harker, Parks & Associates was empty, and then took the elevator to the parking garage beneath the Manhattan skyscraper. He found his Lincoln Navigator and started it up for the first time in...
My name is Julien Serrault. It is the 7th of January, 1882. I am an innkeeper outside the mountain town of Briancon, at the base of the French Alps. The inn does not do much trade, and in the winter months I am sometimes alone...
The snow had stopped about an hour ago, but god damn, it was still a treacherous road. Mark turned up the radio, half to keep himself awake, and half to try to hear the music through the interfering static. The mountains weren’t good for the...
“Did you get my story written?” Christie asked as she came through the front door just after two. Normally she wouldn’t be home for another couple of hours but apparently the schools had let out early that day for something to do with testing. She...
The second Darryl’s keys were rattling in the lock Katie was off the couch and racing to the front door. “Did you do it? Did you do it?” She was practically bouncing up and down with giddy anticipation and unwilling to give him a second to...
Kevin felt the all the air leave his lungs; somehow every time it happened it caught him off-guard. He had been going to school with Aria May Pearson for nearly four years now so it wasn’t like this was the first time he had ever...
Grant could not have asked for a prettier day to drive on. He had only been driving for Uber for a couple of months now in his free time, but he enjoyed it so much it was, little by little, starting to surpass his time...
Mena had been in the shower for nearly an hour when the water-heater spit out the last drops having any semblance of warmth to them, prompting her to quickly shut off the flow before that damn chill re-attached itself to her. It was honestly the...
Curious case today. Very curious, indeed. In fact, since this afternoon, I have been sitting quietly in my study, sipping from a dwindling supply of Chardonnay, reconsidering everything I ever thought I knew about the intricacies of the human mind. Started out simple enough. Boy,...
In 1983, a team of deeply pious scientists conducted a radical experiment in an undisclosed facility. The scientists had theorized that a human without access to any senses or ways to perceive stimuli would be able to perceive the presence of God. They believed that...
Russian researchers in the late 1940s kept five people awake for fifteen days using an experimental gas based stimulant. They were kept in a sealed environment to carefully monitor their oxygen intake so the gas didn’t kill them, since it was toxic in high concentrations....
