It was difficult to be the type of person Serenity was in this day and age. Her last boyfriend Crenshaw did not understand her attraction to buildings over people. He didn’t understand why she hoarded, collected housing magazines and architecture manuals like others collect other more normal things. It was the geometry and beauty of them. They held a kind of symmetry that humanity didn’t. And so when she found this house,...

“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...

  "Go into the Lavender Tower at night," they said.   "We dare you," they said.   Obviously they'd never had the courage to try it for themselves. For the fourth time the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end as something in the cold, dark room flitted amongst the headstones commemorating countless deceased Pokémon. Shaye tried to ignore the dark shapes he saw―or thought he saw―moving just outside his field of vision...

Em asked her Dad to mount a full length mirror on the inside of her door when she was nine years old. The mirror whispered to her just after she turned ten. Or rather, something in the mirror whispered. She had just started fourth grade, and for the first time in her life noticed that others looked at her, others judged her: her clothes, her skin, her weight, her hair. She started hearing words that had been around her al...

The girls had been getting along pretty well together in El’s room, El playing teacher, Em playing student (they always played the same roles without variance), but then Em had turned rebellious on her teacher and was threatening to not do her assignment until El shared some of her apple. Now they were fighting. John and Alice knew this because they were on the first floor of the house, in the family room, directly below...

In retrospect John blamed the incident on his own suggestibility, and on the scrapbook. The previous owner, Henry Stode, considered himself to be a bit of an amateur historian, at least when it came to the house. He had inherited an overstuffed scrapbook from the previous owner, who had inherited it from another previous owner. The book was not organized in any way; it had originally been a photograph book, with clear pla...

Supper was grilled chicken and rice, with green beans, one of El’s favorites. Her Mom noticed the subdued reaction when her plate was placed in front of her. “Is something wrong, honey?” asked Alice. Silence, at first. Eventually, El told the family that she saw a ghost in the house the night before. “Where?” asked Em. “In the bathroom,” said El. Em started laughing. “Were they pooping?” She laughed again, and John and Al...

Jacob scaled the jump from rooftop to rooftop followed by Tommy and Jake, as they took on the ghettos on the outskirts city, they didn't bother taking on a human body as it would only slow them down and waste time as they trailed after Dia's energy. It was odd when the initial search started, it was as though Dia was all over the city causing them all to split up to cover more ground, so far they heard no word on the othe...

I only did a short run last night. The day had been hot, and I had already run almost every day this week. Also, I was on call for work. Technically I'm not supposed to be more than 15 minutes from being able to get online in response to some technical issue with Nordstrom's credit card application system. Normally, this isn't a big deal. In the absence of some new software being pushed out, we don't get many issues, and...

I awoke on my side, staring at my alarm clock. The red LED lights were declaring the fact that was 2:58 in the morning. In the second that the time registered in my mind, the LED’s rearranged and it became 2:59. I gradually became aware of the fact that I needed the bathroom and, inwardly groaning that I had to get out of my warm bed and walk to the bathroom, I tried to get up. I said try because that’s exactly what happe...

Her name is Betty Bowens, though all the neighborhood kids call her Betty Bones, and she lives in the old house at the end of the street with her three dead children. They are dead; she is not, merely old, very old. Her children died of different causes, at different times: hit-and-run, cancer, suicide. Two were adults when they died, the cancer and the suicide. Her boy Tristan, poor lovely Tristan, he was the hit-and-run...

The television buzzed in the background flipping through various channels before just landing on some movie no one cared to pay attention to. Dia busied herself on her laptop hacking into the wifi and investigating all the residents in the housing complex and the one next door. She clearly paid no mind to the boys who were scattered about the room each keeping to their own thoughts. The silence disturbed Fatima immensely...

Dark watched the sky turn from the endless black to grey and then soft hues of pink and orange, as he walked down the empty streets of the city. Occasionally, he would pass a vagabond or two muttering nonsense to themselves. These mortals not only disgusted him, but a few managed to unnerve him slightly, one dirty old lady looked to be an old gypsy. She took one look at him and kept repeating, "Wings drip red." He made hi...

Red hair flared out from the gusting wind as what little amount of moonlight illuminated the color enough to stand out. The wind whistled and howled whilst being joined by the constant lapping of choppy waves far below. With her feet hooked just under the railing, she hung down letting herself dangle from the bridge. She saw from a distance the lights of the city, she would do this on a closer bridge, but too many passers...

Normally travelling around the city took a while, following Dia to work and back home took, at least, thirty minutes. However, some perks of being dead, it was simply easier to run through walls to get to their destination. Dawn and Light trailed slightly behind Steve, as they knew. He finally had an excuse to rally the rest and take care of the demon girl. They also knew Dia would not like that in the slightest.When they...