Story Number One
by Come and visit my world
Roger Frank was a young man living in Des Moines; he had wanted to move away. The reason behind his decision was mainly to get out of the somewhat ‘big’ city. He would announce this Friday that he was moving, most all of his family lived in the same street as him, so he figured he would have a get together in his backyard. The fact that he had to use his backyard frightened him, there was an 19-year-old guy who lived behind him and he has never seen him smile or even show expression. In fact he did not even know what his name was. He wasn’t going to worry about it though because he had to invite everyone on the block. He sat down and planned out his invitations and how he was going to announce his news.
Everything was perfectly planned all he had needed was decorations and party snacks. He scoffed and made his way to the bus stop. He sat on the hot metal bench and waited for the bus. The plain blue city bus pulled up to the curb and he slipped into the sliding doors. He picked a seat by a old woman who seemed friendly, she asked him where he was going with a smile. He responded telling her he was going to the nearest grocery store. She answered with a wink and a enthusiastic “good.”
This alarmed him a little but when his stop came the old woman got off with him, he thought she must have told him it was good he was going to the store because she was also going. He walked into the shallow building and turned a corner into the party decorations, he picked up a moving away ribbon and gulped at the price. He wouldn’t be able to afford it with all the moving expenses. He picked up and off brand plain green ribbon and went on his way to the chips. He picked up a bag of off brand Cheetos and tortillas with salsa. The drinks were the only thing missing, so he headed to the beverage aisle.
There was a large puddle on the floor, he cautiously avoided it. Looking up from the puddle he saw the guy that lived behind him walking down the hall holding a sleeping toddler in his arms. He smiled and thought of how cute that was. Then he thought quickly about the invites, he ran up to the man and pulled a card from his pocket and held it up in his direction. The man took it from his hands and thanked him. he didn’t smile, wink , or even look directly into his eyes. Roger walked away feeling embarrassed about what happened. He quickly snatched a bottle of Coke and headed for the checkout isle. He paid for his items and began waiting for the bus again. The bus corgi-ally picked him up and returned him home. He went inside and began to set up the poorly made decor. He quickly put the food away and ran up the stairs, he was ready to read and head off into sleep. He yanked the comforter up to his shoulders and stuck his elbows out so he could hold his book. It had been a famous novel by the young writer “Cole Evans” It was a wondrous novel he had been reading.
An imaginative story about fairies and trolls, it refreshed his youth. His eyelids struggled to hold themselves up, he went into a sleep. He pictured the little fairy girl in his book twinkling around. The girl began to talk, she said “Sorry, can’t make it this time.” He woke up immediately out of confusion. He didn’t know what that meant. He began to get scared for some odd reason, he turned his head too fast and thought he saw the little fairy girl in the hallway. He shook his head and thought if he went to bed he would be okay. He quietly crept to the door and shut it. He fell into a deeper sleep and stayed that way.
The next morning he awoke and went into the bathroom, he did his usual morning procedures and made his way to the backyard to see if the decorations held up with all the rackety wind he heard last night. Everything was perfectly fine, he was expecting everyone to show up around 7:00 p.m. He had time to go and drop off all of the invites throughout his block. The invites were sent out in less than 30 minutes. It was around 4:00 now and the anticipation was setting in, he was ready to announce his news to everyone. The clock rounded and rounded until it was officially 7:12, the doorbell rang and the entire neighborhood came inside. They swiftly made their way into the backyard and were wowed by the lights strung over the pool. Everyone immediately asked if there was any alcohol they could drink.
He nodded and got two cases from the fridge, he brought them out and yelled, “Who wants to have a good time!” They all screamed and began dancing. The party was getting to be very great; everyone reacted greatly to the news of his moving plans. Everyone was drunk and ready to party. He was intoxicated, so he looked around and wondered where his neighbor was. He hopped the fence separating the houses and put his face up to the young mans window.
He could not see anything, he decided he would go inside and fined him. He entered the home and noticed tons of family pictures. His face lit up when he recognized the little girl he saw at the store. He smiled and walked down the hall while he held a picture of them together at the park. He came to a stop when he reached a pink door, he automatically knew that it was the little girls room. He crept the door open and peeked inside.
There was no little girl there, just candles lit on the dresser. It was strange, the candles were melted into the surface of the dresser. He walked around the room and noticed tons of pictures of the girl smiling and swinging on monkey bars and playing. He knew the man was not in here so he traveled further down the hallway. He met with a door that led to the basement; it was identical to his basement door. He opened the wooden door and set on his way down the stairs.
He turned his head and he saw the man staring directly at him, he was knelt down holding the little girl. He was licking her eyes. The man turned his head and asked Roger a question, “Did you not get the news?” Roger frantically shook his head. The man said, “She told you we could not make it this time.” Roger thought back to what the fairy girl said in his dream, “Sorry, can’t make it this time.” His eyes widened at the man sitting on the floor petting a young girl and kissing her forehead. The man looked up from his sister and said, “You won’t make it this time either.
Fairy girl
In Des Moines, a 24-year-old man went missing on Maple road. There was no evidence except for his back neighbor had also gone missing that same evening. Both homes were searched and a great discovery occurred. The little girl that had gone missing that past year was found dead in the same home. She had been dead for at least four months.
The man that had lived in the house was in no way related to the girl. The girl was found naked with two fairy wings sewn into her back. The man who had allegedly done this torture to the girl went by the name of “Cole Evans”. He was a young novelist that previously lived in California. The case has went into the trash due to the evidence running cold.
Story Number Two
by Never You Mind Who
People always want answers. Yet people are seldom ready to accept those answers. The problem is that sometimes the answers can be more disturbing than the unanswered question and sometimes they only lead to more wondering.
Sometimes answers aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.
That’s what I’ve learned in my experience as a detective working on missing persons cases. A few weeks ago, I began work investigating a particularly disturbing case. Three young girls had reportedly gone missing in the town’s nearby woods and their parents were worried sick.
The disappearance was huge news in the small town. Search parties were out in full force. I was with one of the many groups of people out there scouring the woods in every direction. We knew we had to act fast if we wanted to find them alive.
For several days, we found absolutely nothing and we had entered into our fifth night of looking. No one dared to say it out loud, but we knew what we were looking for at this point; corpses. We knew those girls weren’t going to come walking out of the woods unharmed like nothing ever happened.
I kept on looking, walking through the dark woods alone, guided by my flashlight while my team looked elsewhere in other directions. The search was an incredibly somber and isolating experience. It’s a very grim and morbid task to be searching for the remains of three lost children.
It was a cold fall night. A waxing crescent moon loomed high above. The autumn leaves blanketed the muddy ground as I trudged onward.
Suddenly, I heard an eerie sound. It sounded like soft singing in the distance.
I turned all around but saw nothing in the autumn maze of orange, yellow, and brown.
In hopes that it might somehow be the young girls, I yelled out: “Police! Do you need help?”
There was no response.
I sat there in silence for a moment before I continued walking.
I noticed something very bizarre up ahead and went to inspect it. It was what I can only describe as an archway made of sticks and leaves. They formed an oval the size that a person could walk through. The formation appeared to be naturally occurring rather than man-made. It looked like something someone might want to stage for a wedding or a photography shoot. It was like something out of an old folklore story.
What happened next is beyond comprehension.
A small creature walked by me in the darkness, moving in a dancing motion as it went, and humming a peculiar tune. It moved into the view of my flashlight and I could see that it appeared to resemble a very small old man with a long whitish-gray beard and a maroon pointed hat.
The creature casually walking along looked identical to any “gnome” you’d see in a generic fairytale depiction. Seeing something so cartoonish, but yet there right in front of me in real life, was very surreal, uncanny, and disturbing.
This couldn’t be happening. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I felt like I was losing my mind.
I watched as the mischievous little gnome skipped along towards the wooden archway. With a laugh, he walked through and disappeared completely before my very eyes.
I was shocked to be really experiencing this. My entire conception of reality was shattering.
“Had I somehow been drugged?” I wondered.
This was something beyond what tiredness could explain.
I approached the mysterious arched formation and studied it closely. It was just made of sticks and leaves. Nothing special. I put my arm through and held it there for a moment. Nothing at first, but then it started to slowly feel a bit numb. I took it out and stared at the archway once more. The feeling soon returned to my arm.
“Am I actually considering this?” I thought.
With an abundant lack of explanations for what I just saw, I decided to risk whatever danger I might face by walking through this apparently mystical archway. Feeling a bit silly, I took a deep breath and walked carefully through the natural oval stick structure.
Suddenly my mind was in a daze. It was like waking up from a dream.
I looked around to see the same woods I had been standing in, but it was bright and sunny. All my senses were strangely heightened. My mind was buzzing. I looked down to see that the flashlight I was carrying had vanished. The leaves seemed brighter, the air felt nicer, and all seemed calm. Where was I?
I looked around and that’s when the little creatures came in, appearing from behind the nearby trees. There must’ve been about ten of them. The gnomes were smiling as they danced around in a circle, laughing and singing an oddly familiar song.
One of the gnomes walked up to me and began to mischievously dig through my pockets. He found the change I had in there and stole a single quarter. He lifted the shiny silver coin up in the air and it reflected the sun burning brightly above. He let out a tricksterish laugh, put the quarter in his pocket, and joined back with the others in their dance. I had no idea where I was, what I was witnessing, or how to react to any of this.
Suddenly, the gnomes all took off and ran further into the forest.
I chased after them. Running through a narrow opening in the dense section of brush, I was greeted with a disturbing new environment and the intense feeling that something was horribly wrong. I found myself standing within a large ring of trees deep in the woods. My run soon gave way to a slow and unsure walk forward.
At first, what I saw looked to be a pile of yellowish off-white rocks neatly stacked up on top of each other in a row, but when I got closer it was clear and unmistakable that these were piles of skulls.
Their laughter grew louder and more sinister and their dances became more frantic as I crept slowly forward. The taste of iron unexplainably filled my mouth. As I grew closer I could see that the ground was covered in a dark red substance. The air became thick and humid and I began to feel very claustrophobic.
Dancing faster in a circle and cackling maniacally, the gnomes were holding entrails and viscera. All around them on the ground, it appeared to be the gore of dozens of unrecognizable bodies.
There was so much blood. The foul and deathly odor assaulted my nostrils and turned my stomach. I was hit with waves of panic. I felt like my mind shut down completely and I was paralyzed where I was standing.
The gnomes all turned to me smiling and simply continued their dark and morbid singing.
I just remember screaming and screaming and screaming as loud as I could.
Then, just nothing. The rest is all a blank.
I don’t remember a thing, but according to my partner, he found me zoned out and lying on the muddy ground of the dark woods where I had been searching for the girls. I was apparently clutching my flashlight and mumbling to myself. He says I must’ve had some kind of psychotic episode. I’m not so sure.
I would be tempted to blame it all on the stress of the job, but when I checked my pocket, a quarter was inexplicably missing.
I spent the next few days looking over the case files. I had a lot of theories, but none that made sense.
According to reports, the neighbor of the lost children had been looking out of her kitchen window while washing dishes. She purportedly saw the older sister leading her two younger siblings by the hand into the woods. They were humming a strange tune as they disappeared off into the wilderness that day and were never seen again.
The case files also revealed that the missing girls reportedly took a book from their playroom’s bookshelf before vanishing. It was a children’s fairytale book with bright happy illustrations of gnomes dancing through the forests.
It was called “The Friendly Sunshine Gnomes.”
I can still hear their odd singing in my mind at times when I’m alone.
I don’t think we’ll ever find those girls, or truly know what I experienced, and I’m convincing myself more and more each day that I really don’t need the answers.
