Elena Rodriguez's hands trembled as she poured her coffee, spilling drops onto the worn cabin floor. Ten years as a forest ranger, and she'd never felt this uneasy. The storm outside howled, a sound she usually found comforting, but tonight it felt different—menacing, almost sentient. She glanced at the photo on her desk—her and her father, both in ranger uniforms, smiling in front of this very cabin. He had disappeared i...

"We're not fucking this heist up, this time... dumbass." I glared at Jimmy. "I'm not!" "Then hurry the fuck up." "Yeah, we need this!" Sirus cracked open the safe, using the bank manager. Last time two of their crew had to sacrifice themselves after Jimmy ruined everything not paying attention to the guard, who called the cops. They had to take hostages, knocked them out, and switched clothes with them, while two good mem...

A black cat lay on the porch of 13 Bigelow Street. She yawned and stretched, then looked at the men milling about in the street. Some were armed with bats, chains, and tire irons. All were clearly spoiling for a fight. After another yawn, the cat got up and wandered into the house. She found Grace Bigelow in her sewing room and mewed at her. “Trouble brewing, eh,” Grace said, smiling at the cat, “Guess I should have a loo...

Liverpool Lime Street train station, nestled in the heart of the city, pulsed with an undercurrent that was felt rather than seen. A grandiose edifice of Victorian ambition, its arched roof and labyrinthine platforms masked an eldritch resonance that only the sensitive could perceive. By daylight, it was a bustling hub of transit, but as dusk descended, the station’s true nature unfurled in subtle, sinister whispers. Magg...

Across Andiron's silhouette straddling feet listening to the house tuberculosis cold embers in the dark's sweet peas leaping from the pod on no man's sod on the floorboards where now lay frost listening to Mama sing, "When I reach the city where all my loved ones are" leaping from the pod on no man's sod in a house of memories without sound across Andiron's silhouette straddling feet

The two young girls played vivaciously in the cool water by the glade. As they splashed and frolicked, their laughter echoed around the mountain valley. The surrounding trees, comprising primarily of larch, beech, and spruce - and, of course, oak – gently whispered their approval. They were safe here. Locals knew not to disturb them. The sisters were special – as was the valley. The power and magic that resided in the tre...

Cold in this studio, sweet hypothermia with rigor's cummerbund. Curling around me coldly misty shadow, touching. Rising to the moonlight a little death-chilling. Laying me down in a land of dreams, spilling the skeins. Naked in my darkest dreams collaborating with 12 degrees, before freezing.

Monsters I have created under my bed of twilight's annihilation to be fed meat-based ground bait called chum of dark's pickle herring marinated in rum for me and my boogie banded gadroon wafting dead's perfumery bloom of twilight's annihilation to be fed

Giving my regards to the thin man in my dreams, twilight spills, like a plumage of dark ink spreading forming a slick sticking to the night's memoirs and periwinkle sky. Draped in black, like a crow leaving no token playing Aces to one eye jacks with death being my wild card, reflecting off the straight edge like a plumage of dark ink spreading, dripping.

Paying dues to the fortuneteller listening to your breath from speakers in my mind like whispers in a teacup taking refuge inside your dreams "Hey there, Little Red Riding Hood!" behind the shadow takers with your personalized keychain in everything that is talcum dark no glory in braiding my lost heart come sundown on the horizon lost in tequila among saguaros

With gothic melodies, peat's dark hole listing to twilight's pale shade of the saplings chaffed wheat and pallid hours, soundless tweet a tempest within my ominous sagaciously winging your soul, cold blows the midnight songs lurking the beast, in my am in the ossuary, poetic reverie rocking with Johann Bach squeezing squeegee of death's breasts giving me dickens nestled in your arms

Among the dead, we are curious. We are haunted. You scream for ice cream, and we scream out of loneliness. Walking the halls of death leaving no footprints or shadows. At times tossed out with the trash, once scented, now lost. As ghosts, we have no pedigree or degree in philosophy. We fail to exist unless in someone's conversation about passing and leaving a Will. We feel no rain or April Showers. We are the weeds of the...

The Hootie Hoot and I, my gall set me free in moral decay as the carrion's filet, squandering away with death's bitter aftertaste rising with decadence yeast, cloistered with my goiter as if a requiem for an oyster, the Hootie Hoot and I

I’d known Martin for over thirty years, since I was a boy, in fact. He has always been like an uncle to me. There is no blood relation between us; he just kind of took me under his wing, so to speak. Perhaps I should explain. I live in a small village, Altham, in the county of Kent, England. Having moved here with my mother shortly after my father died. I was ten at the time. My father worked for the financial sector in L...

Playing truant was always appealing. Always. Two nine-year-olds deep into their school days would always know better than what adults told them. Your years in school were not the best days of your life, and you don’t need to attend classes to get clever to get good jobs. They knew it all, so didn’t need to bother attending, and why do maths lessons and cross-country runs when it was much more appealing to play on railways...