Creepypasta Archive

Shiny and New

2013-07-25T13:56:00.001-05:00

Shiny and New

Maria’s dentist looked at her teeth in total awe. They were the shiniest, whitest, and by far the most perfect set of teeth he had ever seen.

Except for all the cavities. Each tooth had some. He was going to have to remove them all, he said to her.

Maria didn’t look to happy about the news that her pearly whites were going to have to vacate her mouth. Maria looked downright scared.

Facing an uncooperative patient, the dentist was going to have to remove them by force. She didn’t deserve those perfect teeth anyway.

It's A Real Book!

2012-10-17T12:16:00.002-05:00

https://www.createspace.com/3868532

I'm a published author now. Yay for me. I usually only post stories here, but I thought I would take the time to point out that I took 100 stories and turned them into a physical object. I'm like magic, or some sufficiently advanced technology.

Available via CreateSpace eStore now, and Amazon.com/Amazon.com UK in 5-7 business days from now (10/17/12).

Happy Halloween, and watch your back.

Face in the Crowd

2012-04-03T23:53:00.001-05:00

I saw a woman the other day, and I'll never forget her. She wasn't particularly pretty or anything like that.

I was putting groceries in the trunk of my car when I looked up and saw her, sitting in the back seat of a car, some feet away. There was a man outside the car, talking on his phone, but I was too far to hear him. She mouthed something but I couldn't tell what she had said. Not then, at least.

It wasn't until I got home, put away my purchases, and turned on the television that my heart sank.

There, on the local news, was the story of a kidnapped woman. She was the woman in the car that I had seen. Thinking back to her I realized what it was she had tried to say:

"Help me."

Clenched and Sweating

2012-04-01T00:01:00.001-05:00

Joey clenched his teeth hard as the railing next to him shook with the force of his grip. He envisioned his mother warning him about doing that. Sweat cascaded down his tanned face, intermingling with locks of his long black hair. His striking blue eyes were bloodshot as he prepared himself for the fight of his life. He didn't want to be in the arena, with the expectations it placed upon him, but he was there. He knew what he had to do to relieve the curse placed upon him by that gypsy. He had to shit, and shit bad.

Carpet-Maker

2012-03-02T21:08:00.000-06:00

Why am I here, and where is here? Eric thought to himself. He had awoken to find himself nestled between and covered by several ruptured bags of trash, their dark emerald hues glistening with the morning dew. The whole alley smelled of that particular odor one comes across when many different horrible scents commingle and merge to form a single, inscrutable foul stench.

He couldn’t be sure if he was what reeked of urine, as a considerable portion of what he could see was covered in various forms of human waste. Human waste, and dew in various patterns on the ground, all covering what looked to be carpet. He found the notion of a carpeted alley to be odd, but since he had spent a good many years homeless, he had seen stranger ways for people to bring what little comforts of home to wherever they lived.

As he scanned the area, he noticed a good many of the bags were filled with what looked like ground meats in various stages of decay. He decided it was remarkable, because from what he could see there was a definite lack of trash, aside from the oozing bags of meat, rolls of carpet, and the occasional items of discarded food lying around.

A wind picked up and blew an even fouler scent from further down the alley, toward a tall, dark pile in a corner against a taller wall where the alley terminated. It smelled strongly of rot and fungus, which stood out against the ambient stench of the whole area.

He tried to stand up, but noticed he was incapable of moving outside of rolling from side to side. Attributing this to the mound of trash bags on top of him, he tried to move them away. It was then that he noticed he was unable to move his arms, let alone feel them.

He looked down at his legs, something that he had previously never thought was necessary, and saw that his entire body was covered in one of the green trash bags. He tried to scream for help, but all he could muster was a hoarse grunt. He tried rolling out but he seemed reasonably affixed to the ground. It was about that time that he heard a rustling sound from further up the alley.

The harder he struggled, the faster and closer the rustling got until the source of the sound stepped out from the shadows of the alley. A fat, squat man with glasses stepped forward and took a closer look at Eric, who was struggling fiercely. His shirt had an odd pattern, and he was almost bald, with his head and arms covered in only a scant few hairs.

“My oh my. It looks like you are awake. That’s unfortunate. Another homeless person wandered into Tengenaria’s alley. I do so love feeding them, but they always get too close and I just can’t help myself,” the man said, giggling with excitement at the sight of Eric’s far more frantic motions.

The man dropped to his hands and legs and began to eat from one of the ruptured bags, gulping and slurping loudly all the while. Eric stared at him with all the look of disgust and horror he could muster.

“Oh,” the man said, taking note of his guest’s somewhat-apparent look of displeasure. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about any of this. I mean, really. It’s going to pop off eventually. I wouldn’t worry about it though. But of course I wouldn’t. That’s just me, though. I’m really looking forward to when you are ripe.

With that said, the man went back to eating the meat-slime from inside the dark emerald green bag, its dew glistening in the morning light. Eric looked around as much as he could before his vision faded and thought to himself, why am I here, and where is here?

Dial Tone

2012-02-25T13:08:00.000-06:00

“Hello?” answered David, picking up the kitchen phone. He put his finger in one ear to try to drown out the clinking of silverware and dishes coming from the living room.

“Father, I just want you to listen,” the man on the line said calmly. David could hear the faint nervous crinkling of paper.

“Father, I am sorry for everything I ever did and said, and I’m sorry that I’m not everything you wanted to me to be. I tried to make you proud, but nothing I did seemed to make you happy. Please, just tell me you love me and I’m not a bad person. That’s all I want to hear from you. If you can’t tell me that, then I understand and will never bother you again.”

“Look, kid. I don’t know who you are, and I damn sure don’t have a son,” said David, hanging up the phone in disgust.

Sighing, David made his way to the dinner table. “Who was that?” asked his wife as she scooped some mashed potatoes out of a serving bowl.

David shrugged and said, “I don’t know. It was a wrong number.”

Epiphany of the Spheres

2012-02-18T10:09:00.000-06:00

I just had an epiphany and it is the most beautiful thing I have ever come to understand.

I have always had trouble wrapping my mind around how big the universe could possibly be and how small we are.

Then I though about Carl Sagan's statement of how we are a "mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam" and I realized something while looking at dust floating in a ray of sun.

If you think about it, on one of those specks of dust, there are probably hundreds of smaller bits of microscopic dust that comprise the single mote. On any given microdust bits, there are atoms that make it up, and on any given atom, there are electrons orbiting a nucleus. We are an electron, orbiting a nucleus, on one of many microdust bits, and that one mote of dust is out galaxy.

Then I looked around, and I could only see so much dust. All the dust I could see in that one room...that is as much of the galaxy as we can see.

Now, if you think about it, there is dust in all the houses in the world, and all around us. Each mote of dust is a galaxy, and all the dust on this planet is about the size of the universe. We're just a single electron on a single molecule of one of those motes.

Head Trauma

2012-02-11T14:30:00.000-06:00

I must have been babbling incoherently at the hospital, because when I asked the doctors how my husband was, the only response I got was confused looks. To be fair, though, I was just in a serious wreck. I don’t remember anything they said to me while I was in the hospital. Everything was just a blur.

What I do remember is getting home. My husband took extra good care of me since my leg was broken. I didn’t want him working too hard, because he had a head injury. I knew he did because nothing he said was coherent in the least. He made gestures, though, that made his intentions clear. Some of the best ones were a bowl and churning spoon for food, drinking motion to ask if I was thirsty, and a toilet flushing gesture to ask if I needed to use the bathroom.

As the weeks passed, he began to regain his coherence, and he was starting to understand what I was saying to him. After about four months, everything was back to normal. Well, almost.

Everything would have been well and good if that man had never spoken to me about my bedridden state. He told me that he was worried after the first few weeks when I was still babbling incoherently.

Gallbladder

2012-02-04T13:12:00.002-06:00

“Don’t worry, Dad. You’ll be home soon enough. Then you can lie down in your bed. It’ll be more comfortable than this old car, for sure,” said Jeremy, who kept glancing over at his father in the seat next to him. His father was shifting around uncomfortably in his seat. The two were coming home from the hospital following his father’s successful gallbladder surgery. Jeremy was happy to hear his father did well.

“See?” asked Jeremy with a smile as the car pulled into his father’s driveway. “Told you it wasn’t going to be that long. Let’s get you into the house.”

As he wheeled his father into the house, his mother appeared and waved a wooden spoon at her husband. “I told you all those cheeseburgers would do you no good,” she said, scolding him for his diet.

“Woman,” he groaned. “I told you I had to eat my own burgers. I ran the joint. It would have looked bad otherwise.”

“Whatever,” she replied. “Oh, and Jeremy, honey. Someone from the hospital keeps calling. You know I don’t answer calls from the hospital, not after what happened there the last time I went there.”

She was referring to her visit to the hospital the previous year. While she was there, she caught a cold from someone in the waiting room. It was just something she never got over.

“Well if they call again, I’ll answer,” answered Jeremy. “I just have to put Dad in the bed. Did they leave any messages?”

“Oh, no. They only called three times, but they never let it go to the answering machine.”

Jeremy shrugged and helped his father into the bed. It wasn’t long after that the phone rang again. Jeremy sighed and picked up the phone.

“Hello? Mr. Evans?” asked Jeremy’s father’s doctor.

“Yes, doctor?”

“Oh, good. Did you make it home okay?”

“Yes, and he’s resting just fine.”

“Ah, about that. The staff and I were concerned when we saw you leaving. Are you sure everything is okay? I know that your mother was hard to deal, but your father must be something else.”

“Oh, I’m fine and so are they. We just don’t care for the hospital is all, so that’s why we might have seemed a bit edgy about the whole ordeal. Dad can be grumpy, but he’ll calm down when he gets to feeling better. Thank you for checking up on us, though,” said Jeremy, hanging up before the doctor could respond.

“What did they want sweetie?” his mother asked from the other room.

“Oh, it was just Dad’s doctor calling to check up on us. Nothing to worry about.

At the hospital, the doctor sighed as he hung up the phone. “Nurse, do you have the number for Jeremy’s therapist still?”

“Yes sir, why?”

“Well, staff said he was wheeling an empty wheelchair out of the building, and he never got over his mother dying from her pneumonia. I don’t think he took his father’s death today any better.”

Cheeky

2012-01-30T11:51:00.001-06:00

My aunt Silvia loved pinching my cheeks every time she saw me. She called herself the best aunt I had because she was going to make my cheeks nice and strong.

I tell you, she had problems. For twenty-five years, that woman pinched my cheeks as hard as she could. If—and when—I screamed for her to stop, she would laugh and pinch even harder after stopping just long enough to tease me with relief. She would always tell me she didn’t know when to stop. I honestly think she believed that was a valid excuse for any and everything.

She had the nastiest habit of licking the serving utensils. She, not one for just settling for mildly obnoxious, would coat the spoons she licked with a thick layer of saliva. Again, she would claim not to know when to stop.

If she wasn’t trying to rip my face off or orally violating the silverware, she was drumming her long nails on any surface she could (literally) get her hands on. If she were going to be the best aunt I had, it would have to be the best at annoying every living creature.

I guess it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to her when she woke up, bound with rope and held inches away from a large nest of fire ants. Well, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me, as I always imagined someone would become fed up with her enough to want to torture her.

It didn’t come as a surprise to me, and frankly that’s because I was the one holding her ratty head above the ant bed, while my parents looked on. They reflexively rubbed their cheeks as her very presence evoked painful memories embedded deeply in the cells of their cheeks.

It also wasn’t a surprise that her cheeks had been painstakingly grated off with the fine side of a cheese grater. Grated cheek goes well with sliced tongue, which is best served cold, of course. It would have to be fed to her, because my mother personally removed Silvia’s fingers by inserting each hand into a blender. It was the only thing in our house that could drown out that drumming sound.

I saw Silvia look toward me, and it almost sounded like she was asking me not to shove her bloody face into the mound of furious fire ants. I smiled, feeling merciful, and pulled her back away from the ants. She seemed to have learned her lesson by the feeble attempts she was making to apologize.

I brought her face close to mine, so I could tell her I was sorry too.

I told her I was sorry I didn’t know when to stop.

Irresistible

2012-01-26T00:38:00.002-06:00

Jeff cradled his wife’s head in his arms. It had been weeks since their ship crashed, but it seemed like forever since his wife, Sylvia, had spoken to him. They got into an argument about how it was all Jeff’s fault that the storm crashed their ship and how he should have listened to her when he told him to steer away from land.

Sometime in the argument, Jeff—out of sheer frustration—pushed his wife. She landed on a pile of debris, and cried for a while. She calmed down after a while, but she refused to do so much as acknowledge Jeff’s presence from then on.

This only furthered Jeff’s animosity toward her. Though he resented her for ignoring him, he would continue to talk to her, as if she were going to listen to anything he had to say anymore. He tried to feed her, but she consistently refused anything he offered her. There was next to nothing on the island, so Jeff had to make due with what he had on hand.

He still found it in his heart to hold and comfort her. She was mad at him, but she couldn’t object to his comforting embrace.

Literally.

Out of Mind

2012-01-25T10:14:00.001-06:00

If I told anyone that I hear voices in my head, they’d think I was crazy. I hope no one finds this, because I am just writing this to put into words my feelings. I read it was good therapy for crazy people, though I really don’t consider myself crazy.

It would be only so bad if there were only voices, though. At night, the creatures behind them haunt my dreams. They’re always talking, screaming, yelling. I can’t sleep now, because if I do, I’ll have to see them. Hear them louder and clearer than I do when I’m awake.

Some days it’s a struggle to focus on my day-to-day tasks as a phone consultant for a local toy store. I have trouble in hearing customers sometimes; that’s just how loud the voices get.

There’s Aglagox, the headless teddy bear. The stump of its neck is one big eye that looks about nervously, and each little furry toe is a mouth that spits a different kind of bee. He’s the least threatening one in my opinion.

The creature that calls itself Kevalwor is a 16-legged spider with 16 eyes and 16 mouths. All of its mouths are drooling and slobbering; where a droplet of drool hits a surface, it becomes a swarm of tiny spiders. It is especially fond of crawling on heads for obvious reasons. I hate spiders. Hate.

One of the oddest is Jack. Jack is a severed head with a spring jutting from the remains of each of its eyeballs. They honestly look as if they burst outward from within the eyes themselves. On the end of those eye-springs are crude and ironic boxes. Their sole purpose in existing seems to be to function as a sick parody of jacks-in-the-box. It occasionally and unceremoniously will flop its tongue about. Its tongue is a mass of writhing earthworms, swollen with pus and one will occasionally explode to release a foul-smelling white substance. It is from this pus-like goop that a misshapen, bloody chicken fetus will emerge only to squawk noisily and in great pain before dying.

As much as I hate spiders, I would gladly wear Kevalwor as a hat if it never meant having to see Olee-o again. Olee-o is a Rubik’s Cube, though each face of the blocks is a mouth that beckons you to solve it. It whispers lies and horrible truths, and the only defense against its 3x3x3 gnashing mouths would be to try to solve the puzzle. That’s its gimmick. Once you are holding Olee-o, it will begin to eat your hands. You become so engrossed in trying to solve it that you lose the ability to feel pain. By the time you have lost your hands, you have undoubtedly gone completely mad. Olee-o will berate you before attempting it and more so while holding it. It’s unsolvable, though. I dreamed so many times that people were tricked by it. It should be obvious. No two squares share the same color. Once Olee-o has taken your hands, the cube breaks apart into a small swarm of gibbering blocks that I have seen strip a body clean far too many times for my own comfort.

Though there are only four entities in my head, they make a horrible amount of noise. They say different things to different people, but they always say the same thing to me. They want me to destroy them, I think. I can’t imagine why these nightmarish creatures would tell me how to get rid of them. They keep telling me I have to get them out of my head, whatever that means.

Milk and Cookies

2011-12-19T21:32:00.002-06:00

Ah, the innocence of youth. I remember when I was just a carefree child. I honestly can say I will never forget it.

I remember being around six years old and playing with my friend, Billy Marsh, who was eight—the coolest, oldest kid in our neighborhood. It was December, and almost Christmas. Billy was telling me about Santa Claus.

To put some context on this, there had been a rash of home invasions in the area, and my parents had been telling me to watch out for prowlers.

Billy, being the wiser of the kids around, knew how gullible we younger kids could be. He told me that Santa was the ones breaking into houses and that he was trying to get take away kids to go be helpers at his workshop at the North Pole.

Now, that would have sounded like a pretty sweet gig to me, had it not been for the fact that Billy told me I would never get to see my mommy or daddy ever again. All the toys in the world weren’t worth missing my mother’s kisses or the cool stuff my father would sometimes bring home from his late-night job as a worker at a chocolate factory.

It was the afternoon before Christmas when I thought of my plan to make sure Santa didn’t kidnap me. Mom let me bake some cookies for Santa, and I added my own special ingredient. Father set out these green pellets for the mice that came into our garage. He told me the mice were being bad, and that the pellets would make them leave us alone. My six year old brain took this notion and ran with it.

I’ll never forget the look on my father’s face when he found me crying about how I told mommy those cookies were for Santa, but she ate them anyway.

All About Allie

2011-12-08T10:00:00.000-06:00

“But mom!” Sammie whined as her mother nudged her away from the bathroom door. “She’s been in there for over an hour! It’s always about Allie! Her birthday parties, Christmas, even last month on vacation! It’s never all about me! Me!”

Sammie’s mother just shook her head, ignoring her youngest daughter’s overly selfish remarks. “Honey, your sister has a big date tonight, so of course it’s all about her. How about we have games night here, just you, me, and your dad? You can even pick.”

Sammie pouted her way to her room and closed the door with a muffled thud. She twisted the lock violently, for an audible metallic click in order to signify her indignation. Sammie grinned once in solitude. She had been waiting for her mother to confront her so she could storm off in atypical fashion. Now, she knew, her mother would leave her alone for the night. This, of course, was part of her moderately thought out plan.

Now alone, Sammie quickly changed into her nicest dress and casually slipped out the window. The man Allie was meeting hadn’t met her in person—only online had they chatted—so she figured she could pass herself off as Allie, as she was only three years younger than her sister of 21.

Since her sister, being the blowhard Sammie mentally made her out to be, just could not get enough of telling her parents where she was going, and when, Sammie knew right were to go, and even managed to add something to Allie’s makeup to stall her: cocoa power. Since Allie was mildly allergic to it, Sammie figured that the hives her sister was about to get would mimic acne enough that the self-centered freak-out would buy her the time needed to arrive at the date location.

Sammie’s plan, much to her delight, worked as far as she could tell. She arrived at the parking lot of the local mall right at 9 PM. She was confused, though, as the only car in the lot of the since-closed mall had a man leaning against it, one who was much older than Allie had claimed she was meeting. The faint embers of his cigarette barely illuminated his tanned face.

She approached him, and called out, “Ex…excuse me, sir? I’m looking for Michael and was wondering if you’ve seen someone who was waiting for a lady named Allie.”

“Then tonight’s my lucky night. I’m Michael,” said the man. He took a long drag and flicked the cigarette to the ground, its embers danced as if they were trying to escape their fate.

Just then, another man came from behind the car. He snapped a length of rope taunt and grinned, his paler skin better visible in the night.

“Wait, I think I should tell you,” she whimpered, taking steps backward as the two men moved to overtake her. “I’m not Allie. My name is Sammie! I’m just her sister!”

The tanned man grabbed her by the throat and quickly and firmly placed his large hands across her mouth. They were scarred with what appeared to be dozens of bite marks.

“Allie, Sammie, it don’t matter none. All that matters is tonight, it’s gonna’ be all about you, sweetheart.”

Sweet Scent

2011-10-04T00:01:00.000-05:00

The entire neighborhood loves my pear trees. It’s almost winter, and the sickly sweet scent of decaying fruit fills the air. At first, they told me I should be cleaning up the rotten fruit, but after I pointed out that all the local hornets were too busy feasting in my yard to be stinging their children, they quickly warmed up to the notion.

That, well, and the massive influx of all manner of butterflies that flocked to my yard to join the hornets in their smorgasbord.

It’s a shame that most of the fruit rots on the tree, but such is life. I don’t much care for the fruit. I give what I can away. Each year I get at least one new tree.

It’s days like today that I can really sit outside and savor the—pardon my pun—fruits of my labor. There’s a cool, autumn breeze blowing the fragrance all over. I must say that the smell of rotting pears oh so very well masks the scent of other rotting.

Loneliness Comes First

2011-10-03T00:01:00.000-05:00

“Where are you, demon? Show yourself! It’s midnight, or are you admitting I’m smarter?” shouted a man, standing at the crossroads on the outskirts of his town.

“That’s a whole lot of hollering you’re doing young man,” said a creature that stepped out from the lunar shadows cast by a nearby tree. The man couldn’t make out much about it other than its piercing red eyes and two curved horns. “It’s hard to believe anyone would count you as smart with as much of a fool as you’re making yourself out to be.”

“Don’t underestimate me demon. I summoned you here because I want to prove I can outsmart the Devil himself,” said the man with a broad grin.

“Oh, He knows. That’s why He sent me to deal with you. He accepts your challenge. I am here to grant you three wishes, mortal.” The demon drew close enough to the man that he could see its face, which was a ruddy red in the moonlight. It smiled in an odd, upside-down manner. It looked almost as if it were frowning out of pleasure.

“When you wish for the third one, after one year I will kill you and take your soul back to hell where you will be tormented for all eternity,” spoke the demon, his voice like two warm chunks of coal smacking together.

“Well, that sounds fair. I agree, and—being smarter than you—know what my first wish will be.”

“You sure you wouldn’t like some time?”

“No, and quit trying to weasel your way out, demon. My first wish? I want to be immortal.” The demon’s expression abruptly changed to a scowl. “Can’t be killed no matter what.”

“You are a clever one,” the demon said, snapping its fingers. “You’ll live forever now, but I still will torment you for all eternity on your third wish.”

The man patted himself down, as though he though that something had been added to his body in some way or another. “Well, hellspawn, I am also smarter than that. As long as I don’t make a third wish, you’re just out of luck. It’s going to be no fun living forever with nothing to do. I wish I was insanely rich and famous. I’ve never gotten enough attention and it’s high time I got the attention I deserve!”

The demon snarled and snapped its fingers. “Tomorrow, you will awake rich beyond your wildest dreams in a fabulous mansion.”

The man clapped in joy. “Goodbye and good riddance,” said the man as he walked back toward town.

***

The next morning, true to the demon’s word, the man awoke to find himself in an exquisite mansion, filled with money and made out of gold. Outside, he could hear a crowd of people chanting his name and begging him to come outside. “Carl! Carl! Carl!” they chanted.

“I would hate to disappoint my adoring fans,” Carl said as he made a grand exit from his house and out onto his lawn. There before him were thousands of people, all holding knives, guns, and other sorts of weaponry.

“What the hell is going on?” he shouted as the crowd rushed him and began to stab, shoot, and otherwise maim him.

“We want your money!” several shouted. “You told us whoever kills you gets all your money! We’re tired of waiting!”

“Stop!” choked Carl as his multiple wounds closed up and were promptly reopened anew. “Stop I don’t remember saying that.”

“Money! All of it! Kill him!” the mob chanted as they continued to attack him.

“Stop!”

“MONEY!”

Carl managed to break away from the pack and barricaded himself inside his mansion. The angry crowd pounded on his doors. If the mansion had windows, they would have been the first to go.

“What the hell did I get myself into?” muttered Carl as he tried to hold his doors shut. He was in intense pain. “I wish everyone was just gone. I can’t handle these crazy people.”

Carl would have missed what he had just said had it not been for the sound of fingers snapping. Everything was quiet.

“No! I didn’t! No! This isn’t at the crossroads, it doesn’t count!” shouted Carl as he looked around, trying to find the demon.

“Now, now. All’s fair in love, war, and deals with The Devil. One year, human.”

“Show yourself! How can you take me to hell? I’m still immortal. You can’t kill me or drag me there alive. I still win you idiot! I’m going to live forever.”

“Yes, and you just wished away the entire population of this planet..”

“So?” shouted Carl as loud as he could, hoping in some weird way that being louder would reveal the demon. “I sill won’t die. I win, you lost!”

“Apparently, Mr. Lingam, you don’t understand the concept.”

“What concept?”

“Hell on Earth.”

Seeing Red Lights

2011-10-02T00:01:00.001-05:00

Simon was a man cursed with the most mundane of things, but it became the bane of his existence. Every traffic light he encountered turned red. It didn’t matter what color it was before, it would almost instantly turn yellow as soon as he approached.

Since getting his license at age 16, the red lights made him late for everything. From dates to his grandmother’s funeral to being late for classes and jobs, he had been running late for most his life. It wasn’t just when he drove either. Anywhere he went, from walking to taking mass transit to being driven places, the red lights slowed him down constantly.

One day, his wife, fed up with his constant tardiness gave him an ultimatum. He could either stop being lazy—as she saw it—and make it to his son’s game, or she would leave him. He had been fired many times for being late, and had missed so many dates and so many of his son’s baseball games that she was fed up with him.

Simon sat impatiently at a red light, knowing the one a block away would be red as well. He had left early, but the red lights always backed up traffic. He gripped the steering wheel tightly. He thought about doing something he never had before: running the light.

He knew the light took forever to change, and he didn’t see any police cars. He loved his wife, and really didn’t want to lose her. He looked around one last time to check for any police and boldly made his move.

He was promptly broadsided.

Identity

2011-10-01T00:01:00.005-05:00

I grabbed my bat. If it was my face they wanted, I was going to make them work for it.

I carefully rounded the corner and saw that one of those creatures had climbed onto the wall. I wasn’t going to let them steal my face.

I shouted loudly as I jumped out, hoping to catch it by surprise. I didn’t give it a chance to attack. I just swung over and over, smashing it to bits. I gloated for a moment over the corpse of my slain enemy, before remembering something. I ground its body into the ground as it tried feebly to steal my face

I turned around, the bathroom door was open. I could see its blank face staring at me above the sink. It was trying to steal my face.

Noisy Island

2011-09-27T00:01:00.000-05:00

I can't take the voices in my head. I can hear all the campers, chattering away loudly in the mess hall.

This entire island echoes with the loud hum of activity.

I know they're all in my head. This island is secluded and secret. It was their treat to bring the summer camp to here. So much noise. I never knew kids would be so loud.

They can't be real voices. Only I know where the island is, where I live. If people knew where it was, I would have been found by now.

Why is this island still filled with their loud, screaming voices? It's supposed to be filled with silence.

I thought I killed them all.

Reverend Chad

2011-09-26T00:01:00.000-05:00

Reverend Chad jerked awake; the sound of his cell phone ringing had snapped him back to reality.

“Another soul needin’ to be saved,” he muttered as he checked the number in a vain attempt to see if it was another repeat caller.

“Unknown number, eh?” he said, rubbing his eyes and answering the call. “Thank you for calling Reverend Chad’s Pra-.”

“Are you a Holy Man?” a man on the other end asked. His tone was strict, with a slight hint of enjoyment.

“I beg your pardon?” Chad stammered, no longer sure he was awake.

“You heard me. Are. You. A Holy Man?” the man stated in a demanding tone.

“Yessir, I am. How may I help you this fine morning?”

“I want you to say a prayer.”

“A prayer? What’s your name young man? Who would you like for me to say this prayer for? Your mother, your father? I can see troubled times.” The reverend reached for a pad of paper.

“Not for me. For you. Your family. The whole world.”

“That’s very kind of you. I will keep you and the whole world in my prayers today.”

“No.”

“I’m sorry, sir. What?”

“Not me. Just, well, just the whole world. They’re going to need it. The apocalypse is coming, and you are the one, prophet—as you claim to be—to warn everyone.”

With that, the man hung up. The reverend scratched his head in confusion.

“Who was it honey?” his wife asked, rolling over and placing her hand on his shoulder.

“A man, asking for me to pray,” he responded, flopping back onto his pillow.

“Isn’t that why you set up that prayer hotline?” she asked, rubbing his arm.

“Yeah, I guess I’m just tired. It’s nothing. Let’s get some rest. We’ve got a big sermon tomorrow,” said Chad as he curled back up in bed.

***

Weeks passed, and the odd phone call was wearing on his mind. He kept thinking that he had to tell someone, so he finally told his wife.

She laughed at him.

“I don’t know what kind of cuckoos you have on your line, but we both agreed when we started this thing that you wouldn’t let anything anyone said get to you,” she said, shaking her head. “Now get ready, the storm’s headed this way.”

For the past week, bad weather had been ravaging the northern hemisphere. Hurricanes, tornados, droughts, and floods.

Chad stepped outside, to check on his chickens. As soon as he left his door, the tornado sirens went off. Through the chaos of flapping chickens and thunderclaps, he was able to make out a huge tornado churning off in the distance, and headed his way.

His wife came out, screaming at him to get to the tornado shelter.

But he couldn’t hear here.

All the noise that was around him consumed her voice, and spat it out as nothing toward him. The only sounds left were the swirling winds, slapping rain, loud sirens and houses being destroyed.

Chad could hear less than that, even.

He, a man who felt he had been disobedient to what the messenger had wanted him to do, could only hear the sounds of the tornado sirens.

To him, they sounded a lot like trumpets.

Muse Abuse

2011-09-25T00:01:00.000-05:00

John turns away from his computer. The characters in the story he is writing desperately want to be saved from the incoming meteor, but John doesn't like neat, happy endings. When he comes back from the bathroom, he fully intends to finish wiping out the planet, which had been pock-marked by several smaller meteorites, the harbingers of this new, massive chunk of incoming rock.

Unbeknownst to him, the citizens of his fantasy world had a better idea. John was writing about an advanced race, light-years from Earth. He didn't know it, but the idea for his story was coming to him from them via their technology. Whatever he wrote happened to them.

Dismayed that the one person from Earth they tried to get to help them let their planet become scarred and left in ruin, and was about to let their planet be destroyed, the moved to their "Plan B," which was to build a machine to teleport the meteor to a different location in space. Before, they had no location in mind that would not possibly result in the loss of a valuable society.

As John returned to his computer to finish writing the story of how a planet he dreamed up one day was destroyed by a meteor, the citizens prepared their device.

They could still see what he was writing, and in all the gory details in which he described their people dying.

Fed up, they took over this process. John gleefully typed on, by then blissfully unaware of what he was writing.

In his mind, he was writing about some far away planet, about to be totally annihilated by a massive meteor.

To the people of the advanced planet, what he was writing couldn't be any more true.

That's Final

2011-09-24T00:01:00.000-05:00

You’re moving out and that’s final!

I couldn’t believe that, just like that, our marriage was over. I mean, we didn’t get along anymore, but I didn’t know she had the papers drafted in advance.

I did love her, at first. She just had a superiority complex that manifested after a year.

All things considered, though, I counted my blessings a few weeks after I got the boot. Her house caught on fire, burned everything inside it. My poor ex-wife included.

“I’m sorry,” I told her mother at the funeral. She told me not to feel bad. I don’t apologize unless I mean it, though.

Best Served Warm

2011-09-23T00:01:00.001-05:00

My father wanted to force me into being a chef, like his father, his father’s father, and so on. He thought I couldn’t cook, and was constantly berating me for not wanting to follow in the “proud” family tradition.

He would scream at me for wanting to do something, anything else with my life, and forced me to learn to cook. I wanted to be a pilot.

One day, he scoffed at my cooking abilities, telling me that since I didn’t want to learn, I would never make anything taste above dog-food level.

I challenged that notion by baking him one of the tastiest apple pies he had ever eaten. Best of his life. Well, okay. It wasn’t really that good. After the first slice, he just couldn’t keep eating.

He didn’t think I was a good chef, but I think it takes a pretty good chef to hide such bitter poison in a pie.

With the Punches

2011-09-22T00:01:00.001-05:00

I still don’t know what happened today to make me wind up where I am, but I’m pretty sure it had something to do with kicking my brother this morning.

It’s not my fault, I mean, well, I did kick him. Pretty hard, in fact. To be fair, though, he did flush the toilet while I was in the shower. He’s a huge jerk like that.

Anyway, that’s not the worst thing that happened to me. Today at school, my friend Steve invited me to join a group of people who were going to go to an old graveyard. Something about fighting back the hordes of the undead. My brother, naturally, was going to be the leader of this expedition. He had a history of leading us to victory against school policies and bullies, so he was a shoe in for the position.

Well, I only remember heading to our house and then my brother pulling out this old book. He started reading to us, and the next thing I knew was I was staring down a horde of skeletons. There had to be at least ten of them, and their bones rattled through the air.

I was alone. Somehow, my brother had managed to separate me from the rest of my part. I looked at the old club in my hands, and then back to the shambling bones in front of me. I then heard my brother’s voice from somewhere, almost laughing at me. He was so cruel. I think he’s trying to kill me.

His voice echoed in the wooded area surrounding the graveyard. He said the worst words possible.

ROLL FOR INITIATIVE.

Boil the Water

2011-09-21T16:28:00.002-05:00

Stupid hurricane.

I’ve been stuck in this stupid house ever since this stupid storm decided to blow inland. No, I didn’t leave. I’m not a wuss.

Power’s been out for days.

No food. Hungry.

No water, other than what’s flooded in. Supposed to boil it. Parasites or something. Not worth the time, since there’s no power. Just drank it raw.

There’s a lot of people out in this stupid storm, just wandering around.

I haven’t felt good since I drank all this water. My eyes burn. My skin is peeling, but that’s because my stupid house is practically underwater. I just think of it as an all-day pool.

I am tired of this house. I’m hungry. I wonder what those people out there are doing. Maybe they know where to get food.

I’m really hungry. I think I want to see what they found.

It’s weird, being outside in a storm. The sky goes boom. The people here look worse than I do. Some are missing parts. What an awful storm. They don’t look so good.

The people in that house do.

I think I found dinner.