Horror

The End
A cold breath of wind slipped under the door and crept stealthily across the room before licking at the lighted candle. The flame flickered and threatened to extinguish, but it clung to life, casting dancing shadows across the wooden walls of the log home.
By John Watson2 months ago in Fiction
From the Bamboo Shoots, She Bore
The debris scattered across the old paved road reminded me of pictures of the streets of Hiroshima, their crumbled Earth grinding under the pressure of patchwork taped rubber tires. My father pressed on the heavy pedal, lowering the gear as we heard the high clunk of the gearshift, pushing us up the untouched path wrapped in canopies of old pine and oak. Puffs of miasma spat from the exhaust; a plume of inky smoke escaped into the heavy summer air. As my head turned, I stared into the thickets surrounding us; the unfettered eyes had been masked by foliage as they watched from their shelter.
By Thomas Bryant2 months ago in Fiction
Catechism Schism. Content Warning.
The twisted fibers cut his skin. Wincing, Alexander pulls his hand to his mouth, cleaning the blood from his fingers. The rope is rough, and it hurts to grasp. It hurts more than he had been used to. He doesn’t let go.
By Roman Hale2 months ago in Fiction
Ashes of Tomorrow. AI-Generated.
Mara Whitman crouched behind a crumbling wall, the ash-coated wind stinging her face. The city, once alive and vibrant, now lay in twisted ruin. Rusted cars leaned into cracked sidewalks, and buildings rose like jagged scars against the gray sky. She pulled her jacket tighter, the fabric damp from mist that carried the faint, metallic scent of decay. The streets were eerily silent except for the occasional gust of wind that rattled broken windows and sent litter skittering across the pavement.
By William Ebden.2 months ago in Fiction
THE SKIN WE SHARE: THE CO-PILOT (Part 2)
The first two weeks within Alex’s body were a period of pure, intoxicating denial—a brutal honeymoon where the physical euphoria drowned out the memory of the voice. Eli didn't just walk; he flew. He spent hours simply marveling at the mundane: the smooth, firm skin where tremors once ravaged; the effortless rise and fall of healthy lungs; the ability to stand still without a fight. He ran through a park during a soft rain, the cool air against his face feeling like a benediction, drawing deep, clean breaths that were a profound prayer of gratitude. His body was a pristine vessel, and Eli was drunk on its vitality, desperately clinging to the illusion of control.
By Wellova 2 months ago in Fiction
The Clockmaker’s Promise
M Mehran Everyone in the quiet town of Eldenbrook knew Elias Thorn, the old clockmaker whose shop stood at the corner of Willow Street. The windows were always fogged with dust and time, and the shelves were filled with clocks—grandfather clocks, pocket watches, delicate sand timers, and curious contraptions no one had names for.
By Muhammad Mehran2 months ago in Fiction
The Maple Key
It began with a perfect day. The kind of autumn day that exists mostly in memory: the air was crisp, the sun was a gentle gold, and the maple trees in the park were a blazing cathedral of scarlet and orange. For Leo, a man whose life had become a grey blur of commutes and deadlines, it was a glimpse of heaven. As he sat on his favorite bench, a single, perfect, crimson maple key spiraled down and landed in his palm. He felt a jolt, a strange, static charge, and then… the world dissolved.
By Habibullah2 months ago in Fiction
THE SKIN WE SHARE (PART 1)
Start writing...The Donor The advertisement wasn't just a classified listing; it was a ghost of data clinging to the deepest recess of the dark web, a whisper in the digital graveyard of broken dreams. Its text was simple, yet offered a staggering promise: "Tired of your broken shell? A new vessel awaits. The Samsara Procedure." For Eli Croft, whose existence had devolved into a slow, systematic dismantling at the hands of Huntington's disease, the message wasn't an ad. It was a direct answer to a prayer he’d been too cynical to voice. His body was a foreign country, a treacherous cage where his muscles spasmed and failed with violent, humiliating autonomy, betraying the sharp, screaming consciousness trapped inside. His life was an agonizing countdown to suffocation. The man he met, who insisted on the title Dr. Silas, did not possess the comforting aura of a savior. He looked like a coroner who had been interrupted midway through his work and had forgotten his corpse. His skin was unnaturally pale, stretched tight over sharp bones, and his eyes were a flat, depthless grey that seemed to absorb all light and emotion. His voice was toneless, almost mechanical, yet it carried an unsettling authority that demanded attention. Despite his macabre appearance, his credentials—at least the digital ones presented in the sterile files—were impeccable. "The mind, Mr. Croft, is nothing more than a signal," Silas explained in that chillingly flat tone, gesturing to a sleek, silent monitoring console. "It is pure energy. The body, conversely, is merely the receiver—a machine built of carbon and water, subject to the inevitable decay of entropy. Your receiver is failing, systematically shutting down. We will perform the signal transfer: migrating your core identity to a new, fully functional machine." The "new machine" was the catch, the terrifying compromise. It wasn't a synthetic body. It wasn't an artificially grown clone. It was a donor. A living, breathing, perfectly healthy donor who had, according to Silas's chillingly dry delivery, "volunteered their physical form as an act of ultimate spiritual altruism." Eli, grasping at the last, thinnest thread of hope and desperate to escape the biological nightmare of his own failing flesh, chose to believe that grotesque lie. The room where the procedure took place was a blinding white, sterile chamber, utterly devoid of comforting human warmth. There were no flashing lights, no complex surgical rigs, and no scalpels. Only two heavy, slate-grey stone slabs lay separated by a short expanse of polished floor. Eli was gently, carefully, helped onto one slab. He struggled to turn his head, his gaze immediately locking onto the other slab. Lying there was the donor: a young man named Alex. He was built lean, strong, and effortlessly healthy, his face unblemished save for an intriguing, faded scar above his left brow. His eyes were closed in a deep, drug-induced slumber. This was the vessel. The prize. Silas began the ritual. He simply paced, his shadow flickering unnaturally on the white walls, chanting in a language that sounded ancient and profoundly alien—a sound like dry bone grinding against marble, or maybe the whisper of static electricity given dark form. The air pressure in the room grew heavy and cold, a cold that felt internal, pressing directly onto the fragile dome of Eli’s skull. Then came the pain. It was not a pain derived from physical injury; it was a horrific, raw, tearing sensation inside his mind, as if his very consciousness—the 'I' of him, his accumulated soul and memories—was being brutally pried loose from the soft, fleshy moorings of his brain. It was like tearing a root system from the earth. The sound in his head was a high-pitched, electric scream, accompanied by a dizzying, nauseating sense of movement in total, suffocating stillness. His vision blurred, then terrifyingly doubled. For a single, agonizing second, he was looking at the cold white ceiling from two distinct sets of eyes. He saw his own withered, slack-jawed, twitching body on the slab opposite him, a thing of ruin. And simultaneously, he saw the ceiling through Alex's eyes, clear, focused, and unblinking. He was pure signal, vibrating between two receivers. Then, the world was swallowed by total, crushing, merciful darkness. He woke up screaming. But the voice that tore from his throat was not the weak, reedy sound of a dying man. It was strong, resonant, masculine, and young. His new body hummed with a startling, almost painful surge of vitality he hadn't known in over a decade. He pushed up, sitting bolt upright, his movements fluid, precise, and devoid of the tremors that had been his constant companion. He looked at his hands—they were large, the knuckles thick, the wrists strong and unmarked. They were Alex's hands. Driven by a desperate, terrifying urge to confirm his existence, he stumbled to a mirrored wall, his newly powerful heart pounding a healthy, rhythmic drum against the inside of Alex's ribs. The face staring back was Alex's. The sharp jawline, the dark, intense eyes, the faint scar above the brow—the perfect vessel. But the expression—the wide-eyed, disbelieving, utterly terrified expression staring out from that young, perfect face—was undeniably, completely, agonizingly Eli. He had done it. He was free of his dying cage. A slow, giddy, triumphant laugh bubbled up from his healthy lungs, a sound of intoxicating freedom. The laugh died instantly in his throat. In the reflection, just for a flicker, the face in the mirror—Alex's perfect, strong face—moved independently of Eli's own muscle command. It curved, just slightly, into a small, secret, knowing smile. It was a smile that never touched Eli's own horrified lips. And as quickly as it came, the smile was gone, leaving only Eli's paralyzed, disbelieving visage staring back. The first thought, alien and chillingly unwelcome, slithered into his newly acquired mind, uninvited, in a voice that was perfectly clear, calm, and utterly not his own: "My turn." Continue the terror! Wait for Part 2: The First Demand to discover what The Co-Pilot truly wants.
By Wellova 2 months ago in Fiction
Halloween House Party (9). Content Warning.
Chapter 9: “Oh, I get it. You don’t actually care what happened, you just want to get me to confess to a crime I didn’t commit so you can look like a hero for wrapping things up so nicely. Am I warm?” I find my voice, snipping back at him.
By 𝓗. 𝓒. 𝓡𝓾𝓫𝔂2 months ago in Fiction
Letters from Nova — The Last Echo of Time. AI-Generated.
Letter I — The First Spark My dearest Alaric, I remember the first moment our eyes met — the world stood still. You didn’t notice it, but the rain outside froze midair. I felt the seconds hesitate, waiting for you to breathe again. That’s when I realized — you weren’t just a man who fixed clocks. You were a man who made time feel.
By shakir hamid2 months ago in Fiction
The Ghost in the Greenhouse
The Ghost in the Greenhouse When Science Meets the Supernatural, the Roots of Truth Run Deep Dr. Elara Voss had never believed in ghosts. A woman of science, she trusted in chlorophyll, carbon cycles, and the silent genius of photosynthesis. When she accepted the post at the Aurelia Conservatory a sprawling tropical greenhouse built deep within the Amazon basin she thought it would be a quiet retreat from the noise of academia. A sanctuary where she could study rare, endangered flora without the politics of funding or the interruptions of city life.
By Farooq Hashmi2 months ago in Fiction
The Shadows Beneath Marrow Hill
Subtitle: Marrow Hill was a forgotten place — a crooked village swallowed by time and fog. No map marked its boundaries, and no one ever claimed to live there. Yet, travelers who dared cross its forest road often whispered of strange figures, flickering lights, and voices calling from the trees.
By Iazaz hussain2 months ago in Fiction