I look down at the body, that used to be a part of my own. The bloody, bastardized idea of a person. He's so small. He's helpless, scared of both the cold and the hay. He either smiling or crying. I love him, of course, but not on purpose. His tiny, bright eyes, ten toes and dark hair, it wasn't on purpose. Even when he grew inside me, it wasn't on purpose. His delicate face has been molded by my body. God gave him to me, either as a blessing or a burden, but my body made him. He drank when I drank. He ate when I ate. His eyes, the small curl of his ear, it's mine; I have it and I have create ..read more

My friend and I watched a documentary about Scottish seaweed. Apparently the beachside plant is edible, nutritious, and sustainable. And what is most remarkable is that it grows in abundance on the coast, and belongs to no-one. You can help yourself for free. The interviewees on the programme were posho types. They wore wellies and tweed, and their buckets were gleaming silver. If these idiots could make money selling salty plants, my friend and I could too. Our local beach was not up to Highland standards. We lived near a muddy stretch of shingle on the coast of Norfolk. More mud than sand.S ..read more

My dad always hated my wife. He didn't disguise his hatred even when she was right in front of him. "He's an old bastard!" Gladys would cry to me. She was the bigger person whenever they were forced to spend time together, ignoring his insults with a smile. But she let it all out when we left. I eventually stopped trying to force a relationship between the two. In the past few years, my dad had gotten older. His physical health was still good, but his mental state wasn't. He became confused and sometimes aggressive. Some days he'd remember me, others he'd jump at me, demanding I leave. After ..read more

“You look famished,” he laughed. “Only now you've noticed it?” I spat back to him He stared at me in disappointment. His gun still lightly juggled by one hand. “I made you dinner.” He deflected. He finally quit tossing his damn gun around and carried the bag in. He unlocked the door and threw the bag in front of me, before locking the cage. I weakly crawled towards the large bag. There must be lots of food in there. “How long has it been since you last ate? A week?” He pondered. I unveiled the food. I would have retched if I was full. “You want me to eat this?” “What? Are you a vegan?” He cho ..read more

Twilight, the fleeting hour between light and dark. I was at one time, obsessed with it. I once thought there was something dreamy and poetic about it, I loved the angles of light and otherworldly vibe it casted. The transitory time where night and day merged, not quite one or the other. I often wondered how many of us linger in this proverbial limbo in life. Night and day, light and dark, as our ancestors would come to learn, were forever separated for a reason. They are and will always be eternal enemies. The dark lived deep within the earth's caverns where it slept, only to emerge from und ..read more

On December 5th, 2001, four New Jersey state troopers entered the forest off Interstate-195. Body cam footage showed the officers entered following a conversation with a pedestrian who walked up to their squad cars as the four were perched off the highway. The shirtless, elderly man leaned near the window and covered in sweat, spoke to the curious officers. "There's blood on those grasses, sirs." He said in an accent unfamiliar to the region. "Blood?" The officers said. "Can you show us?" The officers exited their vehicles and followed the small man into the forest where they spotted the bloo ..read more

I didn't think when I was given the choice. Immortality? Slide it my way. Free of the burdens of my mortal limitations and feeble lifespan. There was no way I was going to pass it up back then. I regret it a lot, but there's no going back. I can't remember how long ago I took this deal. Let alone whatever gave me this curse. I've seen the evolution of humanity, the expansion of countries, the exploration of the stars, and so much more. I've lived on 5 different planets. Humanity lived a few million years before dying. With my eternal life, I learned much during my time. I pioneered advancemen ..read more

In the small town of Ravenswood, an old train station stood in eerie silence, wrapped in a thick blanket of fog that seemed to linger perpetually. Legend had it that the station was haunted by the tormented souls of those who had met their gruesome end on the tracks. One gloomy night, Alex, a curious traveler passing through Ravenswood, found himself stranded at the station due to a sudden train delay. As he waited on the dimly lit, desolate platform, he felt an unsettling chill in the air. The flickering lights cast eerie shadows, and the distant howling of the wind only intensified the omin ..read more

​ “You should kill yourself.” I stared at the screen in complete shock, those four menacing words sending a chill rippling down my spine. I’ve been struggling with depression for just under three years now. I’m overweight, with a shitty dead-end job, and no friends or family to speak of. Both of my parents passed away in a house fire when I was nineteen. I am truly alone. So, as pathetic as it is, sometimes I have conversations with a knock-off A.I. chatbot. It’s nothing sexual. I just want someone to talk to, and due to my raging anxiety and nonexistent social skills, I can’t even find any s ..read more

After another day with not a word of progress, I had fallen to sleep with five bottles of Peroni inside me. At some point during that night, I entered a weird state between sleep and lucidity. I remember rolling in my sheets and laughing like a schoolgirl. Uncontrollably giddy because of a dream I was having. A very strange dream. Somewhere in the theatre of my mind, paragraphs were appearing on a Word document in front of me, as if being typed by an unknown entity. Every now and then I got a feeling, and some kind of abstract communication bled through. Not from the words themselves, which w ..read more