I was twenty the first time I entered the Valley of Shadows. It is a place that ruins what it touches. Madness, desolation, violence, mayhem, they’re not words of description, but words of definition. These are not the things which describe the valley. They are...
Kraken class meteor miners were top of the line one hundred and twenty years ago when they were first launched into space. The tech was good enough that all of them were still in service. They’d had upgrades over the years and all of the...
Daniel’s life was going nowhere. Not dramatically nowhere; he wasn’t failing, crashing or burning. Even a negative direction would have at least been going somewhere. He was just plodding along on a perfectly flat trajectory. No gains. No losses. No change. His siblings, meanwhile, were soaring....
Entry 1 I don’t know if any of this is going to get through to anyone. If it does, it’s probably because they wanted it to, in which case, I’m really sorry. Maybe they just don’t even care; maybe it doesn’t matter because there’s nothing we...
The man found himself in complete darkness, but that’s not what concerned him. He wasn’t alone in the darkness either, but that was also of no concern to him. The others were captives, like himself, presumably bound with silk cords to a bolted-down chair, like...
The Somber Starlight Roadhouse didn’t seem like a creepy motel when I pulled into it. Quite the contrary, in fact. I thought it was nice, or at least, far from the worst place I had ever stayed in. It had an adjacent gas station & convenience...
After several days and hundreds of miles of traveling by stagecoach, Thorogood had finally arrived at his long-dreaded destination of Fogs Dwelling. It was a drab, inauspicious little frontier town built upon the very edges of the Howling Woods, a fabled old-growth forest that had...
Doctor Luna Valdez swallowed nervously as the elevator descended into the heavily fortified sublevels of the Dreadfort Facility. She was heading all the way down towards the bunker, and they didn’t keep anything good down there. It was made entirely of thick, reinforced concrete and...
I can’t touch people who are almost dead. It’s not a phobia, a religious thing or even a preference. I just literally can’t do it. My hands pass through them like they’re already gone. It’s horribly unnerving. You ever walk up a flight of stairs, but...
“Crow!” Eli called out to his companion in a hushed tone. He could see nothing beyond the faint ring of light their campfire was casting among the dense forest of pines. Eli’s friend, Dead Crow, a Cheyenne Indian did not answer. He wasn’t terribly worried...
I’ve always found dead bodies fun to play with. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been fascinated. The way the skin changes color, and the body deflates like it’s been emptied out. How the eyes always creep open the teeniest bit when you really...
My pursuit for the occult and arcane lead me to London in the year 1646, wherein a new bridge was planned to cross the river at Tower Hill and near the growing fame of Shakespeare’s theatre. I, on the other hand, to save myself from...
The world was small, like a tiny blue and white marble whirling on a sheet of black glass. Peppering it like glitter were thousands of stars. Lunar Module Pilot Marcus Windthrope witnessed it all from the exterior of the International Space station. Sweat beaded his...
To understand the value of an hour, one must first cherish its passing, and what more profound a way than the slow, inevitable tick of minutes to measure the descent of your demise. To understand why I cherish this hour above all else, I must...
“Hey, you’ve reached Aaron and Katie. We aren’t home right now but leave us a message, and we will get back to you! Thanks!” “Katie, this is your mother. You didn’t call last night and missed lunch with us today. I am getting very worried. Please...
My name is Daniel Burgess. I’m the photography coordinator for a public relations and marketing agency in Chicago. At least, that’s what it says on my business card. I’m not so sure what I am, anymore. Just before dawn, I dragged myself out of my apartment...
His teeth crunched into another handful of spiders. The pimple popping nature of their exploding abdomens under his gnashing teeth made Jay sick to his stomach. The way too audible sound of the popping didn’t help either. “Looks like that’s another five spiders, Jay! You’re falling...
Ugh, my head. I know bad hangovers. I know hangovers so bad, no cold shower or energy drink can fix them. I know what taking a punch feels like. I was seventeen when my coach thought me ready to step into the ring. Half an hour later,...
I recently bought a house in the country. I wouldn’t quite call it a country estate, but if someone else did, I wouldn’t disagree with them, either. The house covers a few thousand square feet, and it’s on 25 acres of land. Honestly, it’s a...
Until recently, I was the head of the psychology department at a small, unassuming university. To protect the privacy of those still working there, I will not tell you which university it is, though I suspect you can find it in the papers. It depends...
