Short Story

By: Jaque Rizzuto After the death of my sister, I moved away from my home and town, everything I had ever known, to escape the debilitating memories of the past. I found a quiet town on the shore. It was small, and no one knew me. I found a place where I could start over. The house was small, with the outside painted blue, which had faded with the seasons. Wilted flowers lined the garden, leaving only a remnant of the formal glory this house once was. I opened the door, and

By: August Rosenthorpe WARNING: THIS PROCEDURE MAY CONTAIN INAPPROPRIATE SUBJECT MATTER. IT CAN EXPOSE YOU TO EMOTIONS INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO: DEPRESSION, ANXIETY, MELANCHOLY, AND/OR SUICIDAL IDEATIONS. READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED. Today, I am going to teach you how to decay. And, no, I don’t mean going out into the forest and lying dead on the fescue grass like a deer carcass. I mean that I will be teaching you how to emotionally decay, to deteriorate mentally thr

By: Jacob Greene He sat down on the right-most of the two settees positioned on either side of a small circular side table complete with ornamental lamp and cream-colored lamp shade, something withdrawn directly from his grandmother’s house to make him feel at home. The settees were exquisite too: hard mahogany back splats shimmering as if taken straight from the menuisiers in eighteenth-century France, an oceanic high-back arching in waves that crashed down smoothly, flowin

By: Maddie Apgar The way his opponent’s fingers moved over the controller was like nothing Leo had ever seen before. Leo wanted to gather some intel on the guy he’d be facing in the final match at the Super Smash Bros Ultimate tournament, and he suddenly wished he’d seen all of Jack’s matches. Most players had little tells that they were nervous. Their fingers would tremble slightly over the joysticks, they’d grip the controller a little tighter, or they’d press the

By: Charlotte Martin Collected Anomalies: Case 08-17-23: Subject Duplication By Charlotte Martin Dr. Lucille Wieszczek: “Statement recorded September 24th, 2023, at 1800 hours. First-person testimony. Please proceed with your account of the events.” [Name Redacted]: “...Okay. It was–no, it is around 10 o’clock at night and” The clock that hangs above the customer service desk across from my register ticks increasingly louder as it inches closer to the end of my shift. The

By: Erin Wright Why won’t Brother talk to me? I always wonder in my head. We’re a small family; just Mother, Father, Brother, and me. My dear Brother, you sure know how to grab my interest for someone who won’t talk to me. No, you reserve your attention for sports and hanging out with your friends. I’m just your bothersome Little Sister. Even now at the dinner table, the two of us eat like total strangers while Mother and Father have their own conversation. You don’t even sp

By Ananya Ohri It was in the spring, in the months that are meant to clean what winter had left in its wake, the months where the barren tree branches clothe themselves with green leaves and buds grow into flowers, that I finally broke into the Brekker house. Whispers around town informed me that the Brekker house only appeared abandoned, that inside, there was an entire ghost family, and that if you stood at exactly the right place, you could hear their footsteps. The impl

By Olive Caruso Trigger Warning: mentions of blood, suicide, and death Tears have made my vision blurry. It isn’t helping me with my dizziness. I’ve always been afraid of heights, no matter how low. I could be one foot above the surface of the Earth, and I’d be worried about falling. I’m on my school’s roof. The building is two stories high. I think I’m thirty, or maybe forty feet from the ground. It’s hard to tell. Heights this high are so scary to me. But zombies are ev

By Charlie Miller My dearest Lillien, Things are looking up, the war has died down, and I can see how weak the enemies have become over the past week. I have hope that we, as a whole, will come back all in one piece soon. I miss you more than the words on this paper will ever be able to explain; you have my promise to come home. Just know I may not be the same man as when I left. I love you, -Theo Theo. Theodore Minsworth. The man who was trapped in a bloody

By Corwin Trouteaud Willardwood Elementary School . On the grass outside the playground, I stand alone. The other twenty five kids in my class are huddled together in front of me. They’re opening and closing their hands as they pass a dark gray rock one of the kids picked up earlier between them. Eventually, they stop. They close their hands and line up shoulder-to-shoulder with their arms behind their backs. Now it’s my turn. I scan the line of kids, each of them avoiding

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