My grandmother tried to kill me in my crib when I was two months old. She’s dead now. Did I kill her? I don’t know. It’s not a simple question, and there are no simple answers. All I remember is being covered in blood, her blood, as I lay in my crib. # I never met my father. He was a passing fancy, my mother told me. Someone to keep her loneliness at bay. I never met him, but I’ve seen him, swimming in my underwater dream...

He squeezed his eyes tight and placed his palm over his ear in a vain attempt to shut out the noise that felt like a hammer blow to his brain each time it ricocheted into the bedroom. He lay in his bed, in the darkness, facing the window, the warmth of the duvet cocooning him like a caterpillar. Rain lashed the window, and thunder rumbled away in the distance, but the shed door continued to bang away in the wind, and his...

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result so maybe I am insane for no matter how I protest my innocence I am still going on trial, and my trial begins today. Insanity is the state of being seriously mentally ill, it can be described as extreme foolishness or irrationality but no matter what description or definition can be given, none of it helps me. I am innoc...

When he pulled up his Honda Civic in the village, he noticed that there seemed to be an air of trepidation, of suspicion. It would not have surprised him if the locals were watching him from behind their curtains. Especially with him being a total stranger, and the first time he had ever been there, or been so far out of his area. As a reporter for the Lincoln Chronicle, he had been sent here to investigate the ongoing st...

'Hey, you're home early,' speaks Pedro as he greets his beautiful fiancée with a brief kiss on the lips as she returns home. 'Yeah, got a half-day I wasn't expecting,' speaks Monica with a smile. 'You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, now would you?' 'What? Who me? Nah ... not at all, c'mon, let's go?' 'Go? Where? ... I only just got in.' 'Don't worry about that. Bags are packed, and we're ready to roll.' 'Roll...

He watched as the blood ran its small river, falling off her chin to cascade onto her chest as the gentle rise and fall of her bosom ceased. This was not what he expected. This was not how this day was supposed to end. Ben stepped into the bright sunshine of the day. Many of the other students were running past him as they left; some bumping into him, none of them apologized. They irritated him. Some would holler, “Hey Do...

I hear it said it is darkest when you cannot recall the exact moment that change took you though we don't really know anything about darkness or being taken anywhere by it, now do we? When the light leaves us and we are only left with the dark, there is only one place that any of us will go. Speaking of which... In total darkness, you see nothing, nada, not a thing and all you can hear is the sound of your own breathing....

We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell. Oh, how dark a place the mind can truly become. Everyone has a dark side. Most of us don't go to, show, or even acknowledge this unilluminated place but it is there all the same, inside each and every one of us. It itches and claws. It scratches and delves. It pulls and pushes. It constantly asks questions of you and you hear these questions being asked whether y...

Seventeen-year-old Jenny Ford was home alone one evening early in the month of December. Her parents were out at a Christmas themed ball and Mary, Jenny's eleven-year-old sister, was having a sleepover at a neighbours house just down the street. The evening darkness had come quite some time ago and it had also been snowing for more than a little while. Jenny sat by the living room window with a book in her hand. When she...

Insomnia ... I can’t get no sleep ... Can he who is haunted by his actions pass on such a haunting with one single final action? Total darkness, eyes open, disturbed by an unending plop ... plop ... plop ... all there is, and it is all around, an eternal mind-numbing drip that must be stopped, it needs to be stopped. Fully awake in a conscious slumber, that drip must be found and ended. In truth the drip is internal, the...

“Your parents are crazy.  Did they really tell you that?”  Patricia said and laughed at her best friend. “Yes,” Amy said. She felt defensive at her friend’s mocking attitude.  “Come on. You expect me to believe that your parents made up a whole person to make you and your brother behave?”  Amy shook her head and thought, not for the first time, she wished she hadn’t told Patricia. They were friends, but sometimes, like no...

The call came in over the scanner that sat on the corner of Sheriff Rockwell’s desk. It was a little after 2 AM.  “Tank...this is Sam…you got a copy?” Sheriff Tank Rockwell pushed back in his chair. Thick hands were folded over the perfectly bulbous belly that his wife always said looked like a swallowed watermelon. His eyes were shut and his chest was raising and lowering in the rhythmic pattern of sleep. “Tank..come in…...

Something flew past the bedroom window as Shannon closed it for the night. The dark shape went by quickly, so quickly that Shannon could not really see what it was. Startled, she jumped back. “Probably just a bat or bird,” the young woman muttered as she quickly closed the window and curtains. She did not quite believe that. The shadow passing through the night had seemed too big for any wildlife. Shannon scurried to the...

Lydia placed a meagre collection of coins into the taxi driver’s outstretched hand. “I’m a bit short,” she said. “I’m terribly sorry.” He sighed but closed his hand around the money without counting it. “Thank you,” she said quietly and fumbled with the door handle, eager to escape before he changed his mind. Outside was freezing. The weather had taken a turn for the worse, a bitter wind whistling while icy rain lashed do...

‘The dolls!’ was Emma’s first conscious thought. She was sure she heard the delicate sounds of pitter-patter across her hardwood floors.  With a shaking hand, she grabbed her phone and prayed to God that nothing had touched her. Emma’s fingers slid silently along the now lit screen and unlocked it. Every movement was stiff and deliberate. Fear and panic had seized her muscles.  She pressed the flashlight button and shined...