Horror
6/6/66
04/12/66 “I remember when the moon was whole, and I reminisce about both of your faces. Grandma used to say that she remembered a simpler time growing up. She was right, things were complicated when I was young. Everything was up in the air. I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted to do with my life. I kept screwing up relationships over and over again. Bad news was all over the tv that I watched too much of after getting home from a bad date. A lot of my dreams sat in a drawer next to a bottle of anti-depressants. God, I miss all of that. Things were so complicated then. I don’t get to worry about a single thing I used to. Bad dates, drinking too much, cheeseburgers, depression, trying to pretend that you’re interesting to impress someone you met online when you’re really just a fickle piece of trash, I don’t have any of those blessings anymore. I don’t get to yell in traffic. I don’t get flipped off anymore. Things are simpler now, and I hate it. I absolutely hate it. And I can’t not miss you.
By Lorn Auros5 years ago in Fiction
Dead-eyes
A snap, crack, and a thud is all I hear before I feel an enormous figure slam me into a nearby tree. I brace as I feel my breath leave my body. My back screams in pain as the tree’s bark scrapes my skin. I gasp for air while my arms wither away after several strikes from every direction. Frantically, I kick my left leg forward, and the punches stop. I quickly snatch a long, sharp branch from the forest floor and thrust the back end into the ground. I tightly grasp it as the figure lunges towards me. I hear a low gurgle as the sound of impaled flesh squishes in my ear. I drop the branch. I fall to the ground as my heart pounds faster and faster. Everything goes dark.
By Brennan Hefner5 years ago in Fiction
Reflections after the end
The irony of it wasn’t lost on me. Our whole existence we have been looking for cheap solutions to expensive problems. Well, one of those cheap and easy solutions had unintended consequences. We were so arrogant and self-absorbed that we really thought we could solve these systemic problems with half measures. At this point in our species social and biological development, the power we unleashed was almost God like. We were like children playing with our parent’s gun. We destroyed ourselves and no one seemed to be able to identify why until after the fact. We had no conceptualization of the possibility that this action could have cataclysmic consequences, but; in truth, we never really considered the consequences seriously. It is now clear to me that Homo sapiens learned to walk upright before they learned to think upright. My name is Major Paul Penshire of the former United States Army, and this is my confession.
By Joshua P Doyle5 years ago in Fiction
Shiny Things
(Note: The changes in tense and elongated sentences are a deliberate, stylistic choice by the author.) You see the shiny thing, once heart-shaped and meaningful and worn by someone alive. At some point you would have considered the who and the what and the why, but giving a fuck is a luxury that has long-passed and the last thing you need is to indulge in nostalgia. You know that there will be more shiny things that will catch the dead world’s light and you know how little they all mean now.
By Phillip Mooney5 years ago in Fiction
Nocturne
Before the final nightfall there were all the others: thousands of irrelevant squandered dusks we’d all ignored, smug in our certainty that day would reassert itself the way it always had. Sunsets, we figured, were for special occasions: the drowsy tumble of the blood-red orb into the warm dark waves on some South Pacific island honeymoon, the garish spray of gold and violet against the bright slopes of a ski resort. A million obligations plucking at our psyches every instant, the kids and the coworkers and the spouses and the people with whom we were cheating on the spouses, the cryptocurrency and the foreclosures and the meal prep, the philanthropy and the high-intensity interval training and the end-of-life care for our aging parents, and we were supposed to indulge in such repetitive banalities as sunsets?
By Stephanie Pushaw5 years ago in Fiction
Senseless
Blood rushed through his ears. It was the quietest sound, yet crashed as if it was a roaring ocean. His hands gripped the rough cloth binding them tight enough to cause numbness, trying to get his mind off the pain of the bruises on his face. His tongue tasted only blood. He took a deep, racking breath, coughing as he did so at the scent of his filth. His eyes cried tears stained with blood, straining to see anything at all in his swirling vision.
By Mikayla Christensen5 years ago in Fiction
To Be Alive
Big blue pretty eyes. Big blue pretty eyes deadlocked in a vanity mirror blooming out of porcelain skin with rouged checks and supple lips, all framed by tussles of blond curls. Big blue pretty eyes staring, but in their stillness feverishly examining a slight distortion; a twitch. White teeth are revealed and then concealed again and again, a dozen times. There is something unsettlingly if not manic in this smile stretched to it’s limits.
By Jacoby Levi Vann5 years ago in Fiction
The Pen
Ara stared at the floor of the van as it rattled along, the rough road making all the prisoners’ chains swing ominously. Ara noticed that the prisoner in front of her had on flip flops. Flip flops are the only shoe named for the sound they make, she thought to herself.
By Caitlin Christopher5 years ago in Fiction
The Last Good One
The Last Good One Casey Jean is her name and honestly, I’ve never met someone so absolutely broken. She’s more devoid of emotion than the rock I watched her use to smash in a wild goats skull so we could eat. Humanity went to hell about 8 years ago now, this virus came along and well, let’s just say the human population hasn’t exactly been on the up and ups. So yes, I did watch her murder a goat, but she’s not a monster.
By Michael Adams5 years ago in Fiction
The Bonfire
Dr. Nathanial Barnes, I write to you now in hopes that you might triumph where I have failed. My name is Dr. Samuel Montgomery, and I am the last living member of the Arclight research team. I have pieced this account, together from my own recollection and firsthand accounts from those who were there at the time. I write this being of sound mind and body, under no duress other than by the consequences of my own actions. It is getting colder now, and my cough is getting worse but it is my mind I fear the virus will take before I can finish this writing. I pray, this will find you while there is still time. We can go back, back to the beginning, I remain confident of that much.
By Dick Sampson5 years ago in Fiction
After the World Ends
I can tell you what happened after the world ends but not the before, not what caused it. I’m not sure if anyone can tell you what actually caused the world to end; whether it was some global government experiment gone awry, radioactive solar flares, or if Mother Earth just got sick of our shit and decided to kill off the human race. I was just a child when it happened, so I don't recall much. I do remember there was screaming though, so much screaming and so, so much blood.
By Lisa Ellis5 years ago in Fiction
