Story Number One
Floater
by Tewahway
It’s hard to know how long I’ve been drifting… Bobbing, ebbing, flowing with the mostly gentle current. The fact that I know anything at all boggles the mind that I should no longer have access to.
It feels like an eternity ago, the point at which I wasn’t soaking wet. In fact, I’m not totally sure I remember what it was ever like to be dry. Despite the horrible feelings in my gut, the bloating and pressure, I don’t feel any real discomfort. Not like before, at least.
The worst thing I’m capable of remembering is also my strongest recollection. Everything before it feels like a conjured dream, with details that don’t quite add up. Like a puzzle with improperly shaped pieces. I think, at some point, I was in love… but maybe that’s just the gas.
That terrible aforementioned memory is what, I suppose, led to me becoming so wet. I remember thrashing turning to splashing, screaming turning to gargling, and a strange salty taste in my mouth. My feet felt as though they were entombed in concrete, a nemesis to my own body. All that movement, struggling, and action, all for nothing. God, how I wish I could move even just the tiniest bit. I’d absolutely love to turn my head, to be able to take in my surroundings, but honestly I’d settle for a twitch of my pinky…
To paraphrase the lizard king himself, “I was down so goddamn long, that everything looked like up to me.” I knew, once I woke in this state, which way was up in a literal sense, as I knew it was the opposite of where my body laid. That is until the gas pains, if you can truly call it “pain,” began.
Shifts and changes, twists and turns of the current liberated my shackled feet. I’m not sure how, I couldn’t so much as squeak my eyeballs half an inch downwards to see anyways. I felt myself raising, ascending from the darkness to the strange light that tickled my peripherals for what felt like an eternity. Driven upward by my gut, I was certain that I was shedding my mortal coil.
And yet…
That certainty betrayed me. As I gracelessly bobbed above the surface, I swear I felt a wrenching in my lungs. It seemed as though they hadn’t received the memo from the rest of my body yet. Nothing filled my chest but briny fluids. Somehow, I found it hard to care.
Now, I see the sky. It’s all I’ve seen for an immeasurable span of time. While not terribly exciting, it’s so much better than the alternative…
A short while after my body emerged from its watery metamorphosis, a particularly cruel tide caused me to flop onto my belly. Limp, like a ragdoll, I was powerless to resist. Robbed of the serene blue above me, all I received in return was the haunting depths from which my body escaped. A dark, unforgiving abyss. Sight is all I have, and thus I hungered for stimulation.
I’ve considered how I’ll finally end, and what will give me release from this passive prison, but for now I satisfy my mind with the views. Although, I wish I could see something new, for a change…
But lo, my prayers are answered! Something snags my leg briefly, turning me to face the mass I float towards. Land ho! I can almost smell the sweet scents of a forested land on the breeze! Feelings I didn’t know I had have begun to wash over me.
Tall, lush and beautiful green foliage looms overhead. It’s a testament to nature’s artistic virtues, contrasted against the sky. The land under me, presumably sand, crunches and shifts as the tide gently places my body on the shores before receding once more.
Perhaps this will be my new home for a while. Plenty of sights to take in. But I can’t help but wonder how much longer I’ll be stuck in this body.
Suddenly, something catches my eye, if only my eye could follow. A shifting… something moving in the nearby shrubbery? All thoughts of release wash away as I hear a squeaky whine. A small doglike creature, maybe a coyote, appears in front of my sideways-bent head. A paw lands squarely on my sternum, as more of the beasts come into view. The first one’s snout is right in front of my face, blocking my view.
All I see is saliva dripping down pointed fangs, as I feel a small twitch in my pinky finger…
Story Number Two
by Humanlike Giraffe
We Are Afraid of What We Cannot See
The oozing inky blackness of his cell seemed to swallow any signs of hope. This wasn’t what it was supposed to be, he wasn’t supposed to end up like this. How had he become the villain? He shuddered as something cool and fleshy brushed against his leg. This void of solitary confinement nulled his senses, the darkness enveloping his body.
The day his mother left was a sunny spring day, the breeze happily rustling the green trees. He remembers it vividly, the scenery not matching the tone of their bleak household. The bruises on his mother’s wrist, her shrill and his father’s brash voices growing louder and louder. He remembers the slamming of a door, the rumbling of a car’s engine. Then she was gone.
The clicking of an officer’s steel-toed shoes pierced the silence of his reflection. The footsteps paused, but didn’t come closer. The soft whispers of a cold, dead breath upon his neck made his hair stand on end. It was slowly getting closer. He wished he could find the strength to scream.
A cold, hard rush of static screamed through his thoughts, numbing his mind and his body. An icy, bony hand caressed his cheek, slowly trailing its way down to his arm. He stayed motionless as another hand softly gripped his throat, his breathing growing faster.
He wondered if he would welcome death or if he would cower, like a dog flinching at the harsh tone of his master. He wondered if he could go to heaven. He wondered if there was a heaven. Would his family mourn? Would they miss him? Or was he just another lost cause, just another criminal?
He remembered going to church, and remembered his father. He remembered being afraid, and the cold dark hallways, cloaked with grief. He remembered silence.
The grip on his throat tightened, and he screamed. “HELP ME, PLEASE!” The sharp nails of the hand began to dig into his flesh. “PLEASE HELP ME, THERE’S SOMEONE IN HERE WITH ME!” He began to scratch at the flaky, rotting flesh, its stench filling the cell. He screamed again, his most primal sense of fear surfacing, trying to keep him afloat. The darkness seemed more hostile now, malevolent.
It was all around him now, within him, beside him, behind him. He couldn’t feel his body, his mind running on adrenaline. He couldn’t breathe, both hands now enclosed around his frail neck. His vision began to fade, his lungs burning. He strained his eyes trying to see any speck of light, but there was nothing to be seen. It was too much for him, he could no longer persevere.
Later, the Presley family would receive a letter in the mail. “This letter is to inform you of the passing of the inmate Robert Presley. The cause of death has been ruled a suicide by strangulation. Due to his history of mental illness (paranoid schizophrenia) and the bruising and scratches on his arms and throat, it is believed that after a panic attack, he strangled himself within his cell in solitary confinement.” No funeral or memorial was held in his honor.
Story Number Three
The Cuckoo Clock
by TheAtrociousAuthor
When spring cleaning started for David’s family, the last thing they’d expected to find was an antique cuckoo clock. David found it odd that neither he, nor his parents, had seen it before. When they had finished for the day, his father went down to the basement and returned to the foyer with a box of nails and a hammer. David’s father held the nail up against the wall. KA-THUNK, KA-THUNK, KA-THUNK, the hammer pounded. David flinched at each strike of the hammer.
As soon as David’s father had the cuckoo clock set up, David walked up to it to take a closer look. The dark brown surface had a red tint, and seemed to be crumbling around the edges, as though someone had held a match up against it. The numbers seemed smudged, and the hands rusted. He heard gears grinding, and a small blue bird popped out from the door at the front, a distorted melody coming from the mechanism.
The clock seemed interesting at first to David, who wondered how such an old piece of equipment produced sound. It quickly became annoying though, as he could hear it clicking from anywhere in the house. And most annoying of all was that little melody. The only ones who didn’t seem bothered by the clock were David’s parents. They said he was exaggerating, making stuff up because he didn’t like it. David always thought of denying it, but what they said was half true. David did indeed hate the little clock.
Then, the trouble around the house started. At first, it was minor things, like someone dropping a glass, or David being unable to sleep. Then things became more dire, like David dozing off in class, or that he kept feeling a prickling sensation, as if someone was watching him. The most disturbing thing, though, was that he kept hearing the clicking of the clock. TICK. TOCK. TICK. TOCK. David heard it everywhere. At school, in the shower, on walks in the park; the clicking even worked its way into his dreams. David felt like there was something terribly wrong with the clock, so one day, while both of his parents were out of the house, he decided to take it apart.
He unhooked the clock from the nail and took out the screws. He carefully lifted the cover up and set it down on the coffee table. David peered inside and gasped. The only pieces that were in there were the axle that held the clock hands and a small wooden box that was nailed together. David puzzled how this was possible, but put the cover back on. He considered telling his parents, but they would probably scold him for taking it apart without their permission.
In the weeks that followed, David became sleep deprived and paranoid. He would flinch any time he heard the melody play. His grades dropped from A’s and B’s to C’s and D’s. The words “time,” “clock,” and “bird” made David clench his fist and grit his teeth. He had talked to the school counselor, but she had given him a look of suspicion that said, “What are you, crazy?” When David could sleep, it was far worse than his waking hours.
In his nightmares, David would dream of an old man who worked a wooden cuckoo clock, using his pet bird as a model. David would always awaken in a cold sweat, heart pounding. On more than one occasion, David would hear raspy breathing that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. The last large development would happen two months later, unbeknownst to everyone who knew David.
On June twentieth, after an exhausting day of school and another bad grade on a test, David stepped into his room to start doing his homework. On the wall next to his bed, gouged into the plaster were the words: TIME’S UP. David turned around to face a creature that was not quite a bird, but resembled a feathered robin chick, and the same old man from his dreams. As David stared at the monster before him, he could see that the ticking was coming from the creature itself, whose neck vertebrae rotated as it stared David down, and raising both front clubbed legs, brought them down into David’s heart.
EPILOGUE
The ghost of the old man from David’s dream stared down at the still body of what was once a middle school boy. He shook his head sadly and faded away. The creature that had caused the death took one last look at David and it, too, faded from visibility. David’s body was dragged into the closet, never to be seen again.
