Horror

Heart-Shaped Locket
The horizon glowed a sickly pale yellow as the dying sunlight touches a sea of spores congealing along a baleful skyline, obscuring the roads, decorated with bones of all who failed to escape. From the outskirts of a city, long dead and overtaken by the spores, a man enters, alone. Prepared for the unforeseen doomsday, the man had built a bunker in his basement, seal-proofed to prevent radioactive contaminants, supplied with oxygen tanks to ensure years of survival, and hazard suits that would allow him to venture outside, if he needed to. Living alone in a bunker out of reach of the spores, out of reach of the world. This was not what he had pictured it would be like. He could never have guessed the form of which the end of the world would take, but at one point, he thanked God for surviving. Now, he cursed him. In his mind, he had been left behind. He was alone.
By Cooper Chapman5 years ago in Fiction
Poppy, hand me that locket, dear!
Act One Tim drummed on his desk with the fingertips of his left hand while he waited for the webpage to load. His other hand contained a silver heart-shaped locket, the protective coat had begun to wear and the metal underneath was tarnished. After gently scrubbing the surface using baking soda and an old toothbrush, Tim had switched on his desktop to investigate its origin.
By Shazia Copley5 years ago in Fiction
Heart to Heart
Every day is the same. We wake, we eat what we can, and we run. The world outside is twisted and changed. Our family is gone. Our friends are gone. In their place are hundreds of leering, rotting faces that yap and bite, desperate for a taste. Nowhere stays safe for long. Each night when we finally find somewhere to rest, I feel my wearer’s heartbeat jump and stutter at every noise outside. Her body strains underneath me to hear whether it is just noise, or the tell-tale footsteps of an approaching monster. It takes longer and longer each night for her heart rate to subside, and the rise and fall of her chest settles into a steady, soothing rhythm.
By Ashlyn Tegg5 years ago in Fiction
And so, I dream...
And so, I dream of my love. I look at her heart swinging from the shell tube of my shotgun. Not her actual heart, her heart shaped locket. The one she kept a photo of us in. Now it is sealed in black electrical tape to hold in the drops of her blood I collected after she was gone. I tap it and it swings free but concealed in its cover. No shine, no sound. No problem.
By Steven Parker5 years ago in Fiction
From the voice journal of Emily B, New Era 437
This is it, the last piece. This small piece of jewelry resting on my palm is the last remnant. It’s shaped like a heart and made from sterling silver, though the metal is now encrusted with rust. When you click on the tiny button in the corner, a small mechanism opens it up to reveal a photograph. I don’t want to talk about the photograph. I’d rather forget about it, but I can’t, no more than I can bring myself to throw the locket away, no more than I can fully let go of the past.
By Merrill Beckstead5 years ago in Fiction
MOTHERSHIP
The old homestead was twenty-five miles north of the New Highland Garrison. An hour’s drive through the scalded stretch of woodland tracks that scattered the northern hillsides, so she told him. She was much older now yet still retained those distant memories of a life long ago, before the coming of the great, black eye and the culling of humankind. She remembered the preeminent strike upon the cliff of battle, and over the edge. She remembered the mighty fall and what fears she felt when the destruction of the MOTHERSHIP was set and the world plunged into darkness, the darkness that grows darker still. She pointed to the weathered map, on an insignificant blotch drawn next the abandoned highway.
By Aden Halsey5 years ago in Fiction
The Desolation Of Sanity
Well this is… unfortunate, I think as I examine the blood stains splattered across the walls. I sigh and take a sip of my drink, feeling the heat as it goes down. It's always a good day for a drink when you have to put an axe through a man's face. I take another swig and pull out the cigarette I had tucked behind my ear. Out of all the things that could have brought the apocalypse it had to be this! I think pulling matches out of my backpack to spark up my smoke. I begin to wander around the house to collect anything useful. Wilted flowers, old dishes in a china set... Goddamn does this house have anything useful? My eyes fall on a sword hung on the wall. Hell yea, now we’re talkin I think reaching up yanking it off the wall. I wander back over to the man's corpse and stare for a moment before yanking my axe out of his forehead, watching as the blood slowly oozes out.Gross, I think putting my cigarette out on his face before walking out of the house.
By Sarah Mileski5 years ago in Fiction
The World Ends
The civilized world had ended five hundred years before, and many continued to argue about what, exactly, had caused The Cataclysm. Whether it was the result of one of the superweapons theorized to have existed at the time or the countless demons that poured out of underground vents at night was entirely unknown. Trevor had been born into the post-Cataclysm world, and frankly his work wasn’t impacted by what caused two thirds of the world to be eradicated in a single year. He was interested only in the prospect of finding remains, which had almost all been devoured by the demons hundreds of years before, leaving no organic traces of the previous civilization. The fame from such a find, he thought, could get him all he ever wanted.
By Travis Wellman5 years ago in Fiction
Hawk Roosting
“It is safe in here,” the mouse repeated to itself as the eternal chorus of a song stuck in its head. “It’s safe…” The place was dark and damp, a safe den where it lived and where it found the ideal refuge from his menacing claws; his deadly grip that could end its existence. He did it with its family, one by one, tortured them; decapitated them. It could still hear them screeching shouts of resistance, “creeeee! creeeee!,” their last sound as they unsuccessfully tried to climb the peak of life, their lives. That tree trunk was its home, a place where it was born and it refused to leave. Home, the place where you are supposed to be happy and unafraid…
By Jose Molina5 years ago in Fiction
The Shapeshifter’s Seduction
The rhythmic ticking of the church clock in the tower above provided a strange sense of familiarity for Tara. The consistent reminder of time marching on proved hypnotic as it mingled with the utter exhaustion swirling through her body. It felt like a taunt… seducing her with the far-fetched idea of rest without consequence. She releases a deep sigh of aspiration as she leans against the wall of the chapel and slides down slowly until her legs are fully extended before her. She groans under her breath as she slides her backpack off, one shoulder at a time, then tosses it weakly beside her. Ominous slithers of red and blue light dance across her heavily bruised legs, and she shifts her attention to the relentless sun hammering down directly through the broken stained glass skylight. It must be around noon. She started walking as the sun came up, and this was the first break of the day. As reluctant as she was to rest now, her swollen ankles all but demanded it.
By Grace Baldwin5 years ago in Fiction
The Silence
Atticus couldn’t resist snickering loudly, looking at the faded image of a woman plastered on the face of the billboard near strangled by overgrowth. It jutted out of the mass of trees oddly like a sore thumb. Though faded it had somehow been spared other destructive hallmarks from the fall of civilization - no rust marks, jagged edges of metal, not even tears in its picture. He could easily make out the gentle slope of chin. The delicate way her fingers brushed at her collarbone. A subtle enticement for any onlooker to invest their hard-earned wealth into the golden heart-shaped locket adorning the woman's neck.
By Gabrielle Rife5 years ago in Fiction
I Dreamt of Her In Passing
Beneath the skin of the world, behind the eyes of mankind, and under the spell of sleep, the realms of Dream were changing, and under their mercurial, starless skies, the Keepers brooded on the future. There was a cataclysm on the horizon, like a restless Dream at the edge of waking, and in the shadowland where Nightmares brewed, something wrong was stirring.
By Shiv MacFarlane5 years ago in Fiction