All I remember was the setting of climbing up Everest. The cold feeling in my jaw like I was going to fall climbing up with my pickaxe with my feet touching the slippery ice. After all it was the human state of fear although it felt different, Am I climbing up to Heaven or am I climbing down to hell. Hours passed as I was still climbing up the reflective blue cliff. I was feeling paralysis. I couldn't even stop for a canteen of water because I would fall and become a bloody corpse, I finally got to the top and I saw thousands of green, black, red, and yellow backpacks everywhere. As I approac ..read more

Jerry is finally going to figure out where that sound is coming from. It only happens before dawn, building from a whisper to what sounds like the faraway roaring of a big cat, only to die off in a whisper once more. For the longest time, Jerry has told himself that it’s surely just road noise or some other explainable phenomenon, but lately it has occurred to him that perhaps the noise is something else. He didn’t know if the feeling came from intuition or paranoia. Either way, he figures if he walks to the entrance of the neighborhood he ought to be able to get a better idea about the origi ..read more

When I was a kid, I opened up my friend's closet door one afternoon to find a bunch of my toys sitting behind a set of drawers. God knows how long he and his little brother had been keeping things I left there and stashing them away. Thieving little ratbags got off scott-free, because my mother was a pushover with no agency. Worse than that - my mother was a pathetic alcoholic. Growing up, she preferred the company of her mindless pub friends rather than me. Almost every day I'd get back from school to an empty home, and find her an hour later in some pub - after searching the town in the day ..read more

Did you know that hearing an adult criticising their own body can cause lifelong body image issues to a child? Or that leaving only one apology unsaid can leave someone else feeling incurably worthless? It's incredible how far into the future our actions can reach without us ever finding out. And the thoughtlessness this ignorance curses us with! That's bugged me. But instead of whining about it on the internet, I decided to do something about it. I built a machine. The time machine? Phuh, easy! Anyone can build a time machine. Problem was hooking it up so that it gathers impartial informatio ..read more

A man trudges home from his mundane 9-to-5 job, the weight of his sorrow hangs heavy upon his shoulders. His formal attire, though decent, appears ill-fitted, mirroring the disarray of his emotions. With a handbag clutched tightly, he marches through the gates of his society, barely acknowledging the gatekeeper's greeting, lost in his own world of misery. As he passes by, snippets of gossip pierce through the silence, slicing his already wounded soul. Three women, their voices dripping with judgment, speculate about his wife who eloped with someone else just a few days ago, painting him as th ..read more

After a few months, I finally found a place to live. The landlord seemed nice enough, and the house was just the right size for one person. I signed the contract, paid, and received the keys. The first week I spent sorting out everything and finding places for everything I owned. After a few months, when the excitement started to wear off, I started noticing odd smells, chemical smells, and dirt in places that I'd already cleaned, like the hallway. Instead of delving deeper into a paranoid state of mind, I decided to investigate by putting up CCTV. While I was at work a few days later, I rece ..read more

The Dark Shadow gripped its pale hand upon my stickish throat, its hands a work of malice as they pounded my face until blood seeped from my eyes. The Dark Shadow threw me into the cold and icy abyss of a snowy apocalypse, two fistfuls of ice chilling my body as the ferocity of Its Rage roared and burned like a wildfire as the creature walked away. Tears trembled down my young face as my heart felt conflict grow, a raging battle of mental anguish brewing each time their fury let free. My mind was a battlefield, and my body an object of aggression on the icy ground. A cacophany of glass breaki ..read more

My therapist suggested that I vent about my experience by typing it out on my laptop so here goes nothing… Okay so I moved into this apartment a few weeks ago. With my dogs. Crap, now I’m crying on my keyboard, just great. So um, my apartment room was upstairs. Everything seemed normal at first, when I first moved in, the room smelled nice, it was clean and cozy and easy to decorate and unpack. My first night there was when things started going downhill. So at two am when I was lying in my bed I woke up to the faint sound of a man, weeping, somewhere outside my bedroom. This really gave me th ..read more

Wouldn't you think with age comes wisdom, but no... They’re like dealing with toddlers at that age, I'm telling you. Except you can’t discipline them, at least not without getting a smack back that is. Not that I’d smack my grandma, she’d bury me like she did to poor little Jimmy Thomson for peeing on her flowers. She locked him in the back yard all day instead of babysitting him like she was supposed to. What did she expect him to do, he was only 5 for God's sake. Of course, no one suspected her when he disappeared a week later, she was the one that organized the search party. “Poor Mrs. O C ..read more

I was drawing a sunshine when the boy next to me, Peter Atlas, went pop!. Dropping my crayon, startling red smeared my eyes. I was half aware of the sound of it rolling across the table. When the crayon hit the floor, I knew what I was covered in it. Feel it, smell it, taste it running down my face, a wet sludge I'll never get out of my head. Screams erupted behind me, first slowly, growing into a wail. I pressed my hands over my ears, and felt the slightest whoosh! of air, another wet paint splatter on my cheek. Then another. And another. Alice Chambers and Kai Simon. Like balloons, they wer ..read more