Wonderful Life

It was a cold winter evening. A thick blanket of snow covered the countryside as a gentle flurry descended from the sky. There was a stillness in the air, with not a sound except for the occasional plow truck clearing the roads. A long, unplowed road leads to a cottage in the distance with smoke…

Consuming the Light

Darkness crept over the room like a dense fog. The thick oppressiveness of the darkness extinguished the light that it enveloped. It was almost suffocating. As the darkness crept in, breathing became more difficult. He had to stay close to the candles to keep his breath. Tom had lost track of time. He did not…

The Boogeyman

Her eyes opened slowly to her alarm clock to read 3:32. She scrunched her face up, mouthed no, and held her breath as tears began to run down her cheeks. The clock switched over to 3:33, and her closet door opened. The covers behind her lifted up, and it climbed into bed with her. She…

Lemon Peel

Fifteen-year-old Jennifer couldn't sleep. She had woken up in a cold sweat as though something was terribly wrong. Throwing the covers off of her bed, the young girl swung her legs over the side and hopped out. She felt not ill, but also not right. She needed water. Standing up, Jennifer made her way out…

Imaginations

With unrelenting sorrow, the man quietly laid down in his hole. His world seemed to unravel before him, and before long, he could not tell reality from fantasy. Imaginations ran wild, convincing him of that which likely didn't exist. Shovels above heaped dirt upon his body. The weight of it held him down as he…

Final Girl

Christina had been living all alone since the bombs dropped seventeen years ago. The apocalypse had come, and to her knowledge, she was the last human alive on earth. For this reason, her body paralyzed with fear when three men emerged from the edge of the forest. Christina was out in the open and nowhere…

Communion

With a sharp carving knife, the pastor sliced off a thick slab of the terrified man's calf as he screamed in agony. "Our Lord Jesus Christ, on the night when He was betrayed, took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and gave it to his disciples and said, 'Take; eat; this…

The Goat

The discomfort she felt was not a result of his touch or even the overly tight metal restraints that cut into her flesh. It wasn't even that she had been tortured for days upon the slab, unable to move. These were all traumas, to be sure, but nothing was as unsettling as the goat that…

Angel

Eleven-year-old Shawn had recently moved to the small town of Salisbury, Idaho, with his parents and six-year-old little sister, Amanda. They arrived in an old but well maintained Station Wagon and moved into a large suburban house with a two-car garage and white picket fence. Although his sister adjusted to life in Salisbury relatively quick,…