Horror

The Satellite
Nobody knows what it was or who might have done it. It may have been a cause of nature. It may have been man made. But if it was nature, it was so unexpected. Nature can be very mean and cruel and deadly when it needs to. When the balance of our world has been so thrown out of whack that it feels it needs to put it all back right, it doesn't do it by mail or email. It doesn't do it with a pleasant phone call or a nice quiet visit and discussion. It does it in a ugly and violent way. It screams in your face, because up until then you have ignored its whispers. Nature makes sure it gets your attention, or you die.
By Amber Smith5 years ago in Fiction
One Less
Sighing, I glance outside across the hardened sand and fierce spires that litter the horizon line. It’s a beautiful view, believe it or not. Sure, the whole landscape is a delightful shade of beige, but it’s the only landscape we’ve known for the past twenty years. Ever since the Ruin. And trust me, in today’s society, you’ve really got to appreciate the little things. For me, it’s the view from this godforsaken room.
By Elle Ware 5 years ago in Fiction
For a Second Time
“Make sure to look for the correct medicine.” Devon says, as we search cabinets in this beat up hospital. “I know what I’m looking for.” I say. “None of this is what we need.” I turn to look at him, frustrated. We’d been searching for hours and have found nothing, anything of value has already been taken.
By Lauren Caver5 years ago in Fiction
It happened one night in summer
Trigger warning: rape It happened one night in summer. I don’t know exactly what it was, but there was a palpable shift and my ears started ringing. My husband came home from work with a bunch of random shit he bought, acting weird. He put our one-year-old daughter on top of the dryer and just left her there, seemingly uncaring if she fell or not. We argued about it, and then all of a sudden there was a party in our backyard. I felt the shift trying to make me believe this was normal and okay, not strange at all. I played along, but I knew there was something wrong. My grandparents were there, which made me feel better, but there were these women. I can’t remember how many, the number seemed to always be changing. One minute it was three, then five, then eight, then three again. The shift did that. It made me so disoriented I could barely speak above a whisper. Some of the women went inside, and I immediately wanted them gone. They started going through things, a few went into our bedrooms, and one lay on the couch suggestively. I couldn’t speak loud enough that they would listen, so I went and got my husband and told him to make them leave. When they came out they were carrying boxes and I saw that they had stolen a bunch of random things from us. Some of my kids’ arts and crafts, some of their toys, some photos, a heart-shaped locket, clothing. I tried to take it all back, but then the ones responsible fled and drove away before I could confront them. I was so angry. Suddenly almost everyone was gone except for my grandparents and the friends of the women. I demanded the friends tell me the womens’ names so I could find them. I feared they had gone into my kids’ rooms and done something to them while they were sleeping, in addition to stealing things from us. I got into a physical altercation with one of them, until she told me their names. I had the hardest time writing them down. It was like I had forgotten how to put pen to paper. That was the shift. The number of names kept changing, too. I was finally satisfied with what I had written, confident that I could decipher what was there. I thanked the women, my hard feelings softening a bit when they told me they never liked the other women who had stolen from us. I realized it was just us in the yard now. I decided to let them out through the front door, rather than make them walk around the house to the driveway. We made it to the entryway when they started taunting me, and laughing with each other like they were all in on some joke that I wasn’t. Then they said something about my husband. I realized I hadn’t seen him. Our bedroom was right off the entryway and the one I had gotten into a fight with was staring through the door. I turned to look and I could see someone in the closet. I walked into the room to see better, and that’s when I saw my husband fucking one of the women in the closet. I screamed for her to get away from him, and he shoved her away. That’s when I saw his eyes. They were glassy and unfocused. Something was wrong, and I could tell he wasn’t aware of what was happening. I started screaming as loud as I could at the women that they had raped my husband. I ran out to the front porch and called the police but could barely hear the operator speak. I looked at my phone and saw it wasn’t my phone. It was an old cell phone I’d had as a teenager. It took all my energy to speak loudly as I told the operator my husband had been raped and I needed the police now. She brushed me off, saying that she didn’t think the police could come. I felt so much dread and so much anguish. Something was happening and I couldn’t figure out what, and there was no one coming to help us. I begged and pleaded with her to send the police, breaking down and sobbing because we needed help. Then a silver car pulled up, the same one the women had driven away in earlier. I ran back into my house and there were so many people inside. They were dressed like doctors and nurses. I immediately panicked when I saw them going in and out of my kids’ rooms. I ran into my daughter’s room and saw her intubated and swaddled tightly in what looked like a straight jacket. A woman was rocking her back and forth as she slept. I was horrified. They had done something to my kids. I ran into my sons’ room and found them in the same condition, but unswaddled and with no one in the room. I quickly pulled their tubes out as carefully and quickly as I could, then grabbed them and ran out the front door. I don’t know why I left my daughter. I just ran while holding my boys. I thought if I could get out I could get help. If you turn right on our street you will find a busy road at the top of the hill with a police station on it. I turned left. I don’t know why. Left, there is nothing but woods and a few houses. I ran left. A car came up behind me and a teenage boy got out, asking if I needed help. I kept running, afraid of anyone. Then he said he was sent to get me and began chasing us. I had seen a house with a light on that I was going to run to, but the boy was too fast. I ran straight into the woods. And then he jumped at us, like an animal. Everything went black after that. The next thing I remember I was running up my street to the main road, alone. My boys were gone. I started screaming as I ran, begging for help. It took everything in me to make any noise above a whisper. Grey daylight was breaking as I made it to the top of the street and saw the police station. The next thing I remember, I was sitting in the police station with a rosy-cheeked, middle-aged cop. The ringing in my ears was gone, the day was no longer grey, and I didn’t feel the shift. The cop was laughing. I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten there, or what had happened, but I knew this wasn’t the same day that the shift began and all those horrible things had happened. The cop was saying how crazy all of it was, and the more he spoke the more I understood. The shift was real. It had happened. It wasn’t just a dream or some figment of my imagination. It had really happened. And now, we were supposed to just go back to normal, move on, pretend like it didn’t affect us. Like they didn’t rape my husband, like they didn’t hurt my babies, like they didn’t ignore my pleas for help. So I sat there with the cop and smiled and said how crazy it was, and tried to pretend like it didn’t happen as I went back to my normal life. But those events would always live inside me, I’d never forget.
By J. Lozada5 years ago in Fiction
A World of Ghosts
Patrick didn’t feel sad when his mother died. Instead, he felt numb as the coroners came to take her body away. They interviewed her ghost. She had died of natural causes in her sleep. Heart failure, sudden and unexpected. It would have been impossible for him to have gotten her to the Death Houses. That was where all the nearly-dead-but-not-yet-dead went to remain in cryosleep rather than becoming ghosts forever haunting a person, place or thing.
By Kelsey Reich5 years ago in Fiction
Under the Lifeblood Sky
Amélie huddled in the corner of the cold skeleton; walls once bricked and beautiful, now reduced to crumbling faces and soot-like dust. The air was dank; thick with excrement and decay with no outlet to vent itself. It caught, musty and taut in her lungs like splayed filaments of spun cotton, fibrous and expansive. It reeked like the sewers her family frequented, moulding and rancid and so very dreary, but it was home. Something foul was drip-dripping against her forehead from the massive, sagging rafters, but she didn't have the energy to move away. It slid down her cheek, caught in the limp tangles of her tresses, mixed with the fine coating of dust there to dye a wash of raw umber. Amélie longed for the great outside-- up above --the adventures and the dangers and the heaving ocean with its mantle of blue-white seafoam. She yearned to feel the sun switch freely across her face like warm fingers, to have her golden curls laden heavy with morning dew instead of languid with condensation. Of these things she had only tales; sweet stories stitched to the fibre of her heart by rote repetition and the promise of more. The outside was not safe anymore, her mother warned. It had taken her father. It would take her too, if she gave it half a chance. There were monsters there, lurking in the dark, in alleys and entryways, ruins and graveyards and even churches. Hungry, brutish beasts that longed for little more than the opportunity to snatch her away. Mother said she wouldn't give them the chance. Amélie barely cared anymore. They were dying down here, in the lifeless dark. They had to do something.
By Elizabeth Noyes5 years ago in Fiction
Dreams of Paris
Acid rain beat against the apartment block and down onto the dead Earth, which grew more incapable of sustaining life by the day. Inside, a woman waited in the dark.
By Charles Oldfield5 years ago in Fiction
Alone with Sin
Sin truly believed that nobody understood her the way he did. The others seemed like simple creatures, little jackets of skin with warm flesh and strange ideas. They were simplistic and dangerous.
By B.K HUTCHEON5 years ago in Fiction
Bitter Almonds
Across America long dormant televisions and radios sputter to life as Washington makes their final transmission to the people and soldiers still fighting.
By M R Britton5 years ago in Fiction
The Fox Hunter
Every night, at exactly ten o’clock her consultation with the moon began. Without fail. At exactly ten o’clock, her face was illuminated with a glowing satin, as the shafts of moonlight extended their fingers from the cracks in her blinds. Slowly, they traced across her like a mournful searchlight, before disappearing again and again. Night after night.
By Bianca Pole5 years ago in Fiction
Would you like to see my locket?
Look at her! Look how beautiful she is, shining in the candlelight like that. I just got her back, you see. Oh, that shitty, sneaky little thief thought he could get away with stealing her from me, but he was dead wrong. Dead wrong.
By Thaddeus James5 years ago in Fiction
Number 203
Keep your head down and don't make a sound. There are eyes and ears everywhere. Eyes from the indestructible security cameras swiveling upon whitewashed walls, ears from the tiny microphones embedded in every slave collar clasped around our bare throats. There is no such thing as privacy anymore, not since the incident of 2095—Callagan's Rebellion, led by Reese Callagan, an immoral anarchist who set the White House aflame, opened fire in the Senate, and threw the whole country into chaos.
By Netti5 years ago in Fiction