Turkey Day

Thanksgiving 1997, as usual the Stevinson family was preparing dinner for later that night. Although it was not much, Mr. Stevinson had lost his job and his oldest child was still only 7 years old. Their mother had just gotten out of rehabilitation, she was an addict but she had recovered at the center for a few months before coming home to be a mother again. She hadn’t thought it would be so hard to be a housewife after all she had been though, it was so mundane compared to her old life.

The Stevinsons had decided that the children were in the way, this meal was made very special. It was just for the children, the turkey had shards of glass. The mashed potatoes were laced with ricin, a very fatal amount as well. They sat around the dining room table and called the kids downstairs, Mrs. Stevinson had been cooking for hours and Mr. Stevinson had prepared the shed for the aftermath. The children rustled and ran down the stairs with excitement, little did they know their demise would meet them very soon.

The children ran downstairs with excitement, turned to the kitchen, and sat in their places at the table for what would be their last time. Their parents smiled, Mr. Stevinson said prayer and wished them all a good meal and a safe trip. The children didn’t know what he was talking about but they assumed it was for their vacation in a few weeks, though what he really meant was a safe trip to heaven. He said dig in and they did, their parents smiled as they started to eat their last meal. The oldest was choking on the turkey with the shards of glass slicing his throat. The youngest was turning blue and going into convulsions on the floor. Their parents smiled at each other and said their goodbyes to the kids, and then they were gone.

Nobody really knows what happened to the Stevinson children, some say their parents cooked and ate them before fleeing the state and starting a new life, others say their father chopped them up and threw the chunks in the river. The bodies were never found, but their vengeful spirits walk the globe in search of revenge. No matter how far they run, they will be found and killed by the children they murdered. Maybe they already were. And after they get revenge, who knows who will be next.

Original work by P.H.

Monster in my Mind

It only comes out at the worst times, it has many different forms. Every last one of them terrifying. It knows all of your darkest secrets. Nothing is sacred, every vile thing it can do to you is fair game. The paranoia, the anxiety, the depressing truth of the world is all revealed by this creature. It claws at your soul, shoots your hopes down with every bit of ammunition it can muster. You’re left helpless in the demonic tornado of hate.

You beg it to stop and it just laughs in your face. It only exists for one specific purpose: to ruin you. It spends every second tearing at your brain, slicing it up and mixing everything around. It jumbles your memories, makes you confused, and scared. Nothing you can do will stop it. 

The darkness closes in slowly, day by day it inches its way in. Digging deep into your soul, until every last speck of light is gone. The light at the end of the tunnel gets dimmer, and eventually its gone. Anything you try is useless and you feel distant, like you’re outside of yourself. Then that’s the end. Everything fades away until there is none of you left for it to destroy. It feeds off of you, and when it dies… you die with it.

Save Her.

I found her rotten corpse alone, beaten, and bruised. Just lying there. She was so cold and lifeless in life, she was no different in death. I could have saved her. I should have saved her. What could a mortal have done about them? Nothing, that's what. They are just too powerful. I cradled her empty vessel in my arms, her skin soft. I wept into her hair. My tears fell onto her and disappeared.

That beautiful girl that I once knew was dead. She was gone forever, I'd never see her laugh or smile. She will never weep to me and whisper little things to me. I'll never feel her warm embrace. She will be buried, or cremated. Unreachable for the rest of eternity. I cried until I couldn't anymore but it was no use. It was too late... I was gone.

I couldn't take it anymore, all that pain, all that sorrow. I lost everything. The abuse and bullying pushed me over the edge. I grabbed that ugly old pistol and pressed it to my temple. The click of the barrel turning gave me comfort. I pulled the trigger and it went dark.

 It was cold, and I couldn't see anything but dark. The light came in slow, but it was the brightest light I had ever seen. They told me it isn't worth it, they said life is a gift. They told me to live, it was too late.

 Then, I was home. I ran upstairs to my room, but my footsteps made no noise. I ran straight through my father as he was walking through the hall. He didn't see me. I screamed at him and begun crying, he didn't hear me. I ran to my room and saw her, lying there. It was... Me. But it wasn't me. Not anymore. She was the old me. The one who lived her life in the dark, she doomed herself to spend eternity in the dark as well. I could have saved her. I could have saved..... Myself. 

Original work by P.H.

The end

They picked up the large knives one by one, then turned to face me lying there almost unconscious. They had beaten me for weeks now and I don't remember anything past that. Small pieces of memories come back to me but are soon beaten out again by them and their metal rods. This was the end. They were standing over me, their smiles stretched from ear to ear. Their faces horribly ugly and mangled beyond recognition. They lifted their knives at an agonizingly slow pace. 

They were all I knew. The first thing I remember was that they had pinned me down and "treated" me with electro-shock therapy. I don't know why. I'm not crazy... At least I don't think. I don't remember. I think that they did it before, many times. They had zapped the memories out of my head in a painful surge of electricity.

My breathing increased as their hands stopped, they were about to use the knives for something horrible. They looked to their leader who was watching from an odd looking throne across the room. She nodded and their grins widened more, some of their cheeks tore open and dripped blood onto my face and arms. They looked at me and in an uncomfortably synchronized motion sliced away at my skin. It hurt. All of those rusty knives plunging into my soft, tender flesh. 

I wanted to scream. More than anything I wanted to. But I couldn't. They had just zapped my mind away before bringing me here. The synapses in my brain were still trying to connect but just couldn't do it. I was helpless, scared, and alone. The pain was overwhelming and I passed out. I dreamt of the electric pulses coursing through my veins. Then nothing. 

There was nothing. The world was empty, so empty it felt like the darkness would swallow me whole. Soon after, it did. I disappeared into the darkness. After all this fighting, this was the end. This was what my life chalked up to. The last thing, my last thought was their hideous faces looking at me. Disgusting and disfigured. 

Original work by P.H.

Control

Some people say everything in life happens because somebody made it happen, others say everything just happens by chance. I'm here to tell you that the only reason anything happens is because of what resides just out of sight. They control all. They watch and wait, sometimes forever for anything small. Anything they can do to make you miserable. Their purpose is to push you to the edge and make you either go insane, or kill yourself to avoid it. If you take it upon yourself to end your suffering, you become one of them. It's true what they say, you either die young, or live long enough to become as evil as them.

Original work by P.H.

The Dark

The dark.

You may not fear the dark, thinking that there isn’t anything there. If that is you, enjoy your blissful ignorance and stop reading now. If you fear the dark and you spend many nights with the lights on, let this be a warning to you. I have seen the beings behind the curtain of darkness, and they are extremely jeopardous. If you are ever misfortunate enough to cross paths with them, never look into their eyes. The eyes are the windows into the soul. They will see your most amazing dreams, and your worst nightmares. They will use this to their advantage, and they will show no mercy no matter how good or pure of a person you are. 

Those beings are from beyond the veil of our existence. They have talked with our ancestors and learned our weaknesses, and our strengths. They know the secrets of unlocking the human brain and all of its deepest secrets, they know how to tear us apart from the inside. They can’t feel remorse, or sadness, nor happiness. They are numb. They will make the worst physical pain you’ve ever felt seem like nothing, and your best memory feel like it never happened. They will ruin even the deepest parts of your mind that you never even knew existed, everything you ever knew will be erased and in its place will be complete hell. 

Nothing you have ever experienced will compare to anything they will do to you. First they will take over your mind, making you loathe every second of your existence. Making you wish that you were dead, racking your brain with excruciatingly painful thoughts. Creating for you, your own personal hell. Right when  you think you have nothing left for them to take, they will start to torture you. They will start by ripping your skin off in patches. Then using their long, dirty nails along the bleeding, and exposed flesh. Digging them into the bloody and bare strings of muscle that have been uncovered. 

After you have no skin left to tear, they will rip each limb apart from the joints. Segment by segment. They will do this as slowly as possible so that the pain is unbearable. You will be unable to lose consciousness because they will continue to have a grip on your mind, making you feel everything amplified more than ever. They will pin you to a table with large skewers, like a frog that’s being dissected. A large mechanism drops from the ceiling and a laser shoots out and slices open your abdomen, leaving your internal organs exposed.

They will use their long claws to pick through them and puncture them, sending strange fluids all over you and the table. Over and over again they will do this. More pain flooding through your system each time. After a while your vocal chords will give out and your screams will stop, but the pain only gets worse. You are helpless in their grasps, unable to move or speak. Alone in your pain. Your mind will stop and the only thing you are is pain. 

They will then drop you back in your house. Where they found you and abducted you. Your body will be completely restored as if nothing happened. They know that nobody will believe you. Who will believe that you were stolen by the creatures in the dark, and dissected like a middle school science project? You will suffer in silence by yourself, not a friend in the world. You will be ostracized by everyone, put in a mental hospital and left to rot. And they will watch you and love every minute of it. 

That’s where your story will end. You will be alone, enduring the hell of your mind. Every time you see the dark, you see them. Laughing at your pain, while you’re left crying. Fear the dark, it is the worst thing that can get you. It’s also the most inescapable. Don’t get caught by the dark, you will never truly escape.

Original work by P.H.

Scratches

Scratches

Hello, my name is Mikha. I’m going to tell you about the most horrifying experience of my life, but be warned: this could happen to you too. I take no responsibility for anything that might happen to you. The only reason I am even telling this story, despite me dreading saying these words out loud, is to maybe save somebody. Somebody else to live through what I’ve been through, though I doubt they’ll want to. Either way, here we go.

A while ago I noticed a small scratch on my arm; I thought nothing of it because it hadn’t even broken the skin. I thought that maybe I had scratched myself with my fingernail or something. I had recently started taking sleeping pills to help with my insomnia, and one of the side effects was restless sleeping. I brushed the thought that maybe it was something else out of my head quickly and ignored the sinking feeling washing over me. That was a mistake. I wish I had realized what was going on, maybe to figure out how to prevent it, or stop it, anything. But how could I have known that what was happening was something much more ominous than a scratch on my arm? There was no warning, nothing to prepare me for what was to happen to me.

 Slowly the scratches progressively got larger and deeper, all over my body. Every week a new cut was somewhere on my body. Whenever I visited with my friends they told me they were worried, and asked if I had purposely cut myself. I was taken aback by these accusations and quickly replied no, explaining that they mysteriously appeared while I was sleeping. Some of my friends believed me and were scared for me; others didn’t and told me I needed to talk to someone. I thought that maybe it was my sleeping pills causing all of this, seeing as I was still taking them and kept ignoring them because my doctor had said it was perfectly normal to accidentally scratch myself in my sleep. I wasn’t going to stop taking the pills; this was the most sleep I had gotten since before I can remember. A few tiny scratches weren’t going to stop me from feeling good and normal again.

About eight months had passed and the scratches were so deep that they left permanent scars, large and ugly scars. My prescription for the sleeping medication was running out, and I never thought I would be happy to have my insomnia back. I would only take a pill when I had something very important the next day so that I could ration them. At first I had been taking them 2-3 times a week, and then slowly I was taking them less and less until I was only taking them once a week. The scratches would only be there the morning after I had taken the medication; the scratches were larger though than when I had been taking them more. I assumed that my body was just reacting stronger to them since I had gotten used to them and was now almost not taking them at all. I took less and less of them until I had run out. This is where I wish the story had ended.

It had been a week since I had stopped taking them and the scratches had stopped. I was relieved to find them all gone. Unfortunately my insomnia was back, and worse than I had remembered. Maybe going almost a year without it had made me forget just how terrible it was. I had gotten another prescription for medication that was not as strong as the one I had gotten before, the pills were the same shape as the ones I had gotten before but ovals were a common shape for pills so I thought nothing of it. I took the pills the same as the others, had a sip of water with them and went to bed. I fell asleep slightly slower than the last ones had made me, but at least I was sleeping. Or so I thought.

I woke up in the middle of the night to a dull pain on my ribs, it was strange. This sensation was like someone was… sucking my blood through the cut. It couldn’t be though; there were no lips or weight on me. The moonlight was the only light I had to see what was going on. I felt petrified, I didn’t want to move. At that moment I knew I would regret investigating what was happening. I slowly looked down towards my stomach only to find a tall slender figure bending over me. This wasn’t a person, it wasn’t even alive. It wasn’t even from this universe. This creature was rotting, its flesh barely hanging onto its old brittle bones. Its jaw was only attached to one side of its disgusting face. That was the worst part. It wasn’t even a face. Its head had some horribly disfigured and mutilated bunch of humanlike mutant features attached where its face would be. It was using its tongue to slurp the blood out of the cut on my torso. I wanted to stop it but I couldn’t move. 

I was frozen with fear. Apparently the cut wasn’t deep enough to supply the amount of blood that it wanted so it took its long, yellowed, rotting fingernail and dug it in. I flinched and let out a quiet whimper at the pain. I wasn’t quiet enough. The creature noticed and tilted its head towards me as if it were looking at me, it moved its head closer to my face and plunged its fingernails under my ribs and punctured several internal organs. It moved its hand down and kept slicing away at my skin until all that was left were shredded pieced of red flesh. I laid there until noon the next day in agony; I was supposed to go to lunch with a friend during my break at work. When I didn’t show up and wouldn’t answer her calls she headed over. We were good friends so she knew where the key to my house was and let herself in, she found me. When she saw me she screamed, she thought I was dead. No, I only wished I was. I hoarsely croaked out “ Heeellllp mmeee…” and attempted to turn my head towards her; she yelled and told me to lie still as she dialed 911.

The police and people at the hospital tried to get me to explain what had happened, I wouldn’t say a word. I simply told them I didn’t know. But that was the problem, I couldn’t forget no matter how hard I tried. The gut wrenching image of that thing still etched into my mind. Now, every night I’m thankful that I have insomnia. I only sleep during the day when I‘m not alone, fearing what that thing will do to me if it finds me again. I knew that wasn’t even close to the worst it could do, and I didn’t want to find out what it could really do. So that’s it, my story. I just needed somebody to know before I’m gone. I can’t take it anymore and I’m sorry. Goodbye…

Original work by P.H.