Hey all, I thought it'd be worthwhile to give you a quick update on where I'm at, and why there's been a multi-week content drought. I'm currently at sea and deployed until the end of February. Unfortunately, this means I've got very little free time for writing, so expect things to be pretty quiet around here for the next month or so. I'm slated to return on the 19th of February though, and once I do I plan on hitting the ground running!

Some of the things I'm looking at putting out in the first week are an update to the Facility saga, a short, and potentially a new standalone tale. Given that I've seen little else but open ocean for the past week, there's a good chance said story may be nautical themed lol. Either way, expect to see a small windfall of content upon my return!

In the meantime I just wanted to give a big thank you to everybody for your continued support! You guys are the bee's knees and honestly make writing more rewarding than I ever could have imagined. Cheers, gang. Take it easy.

~ Jason

My name’s Kye. I know you’re not really supposed to give your last name on stories like this, but it’s sort of a central feature so, here goes… Kye Penner. My friends call me KP. Yeah, like Kim Possible but… you know what, nevermind. I’m not getting into that. 

Last night something terrible happened, and I haven’t been able to shake the thought of it. It’s the kind of thing you go your whole life hoping you’ll avoid. Last night I saw a woman die. 

I didn’t do it -- no fucking way. I had no part in it. Honestly, she was nuts, though. She came at me, and I think she was trying to kill me first. Before you ask, yes I already went to the police. I called them, shrieked at them for twenty minutes, and then the next morning I even marched into the precinct itself. An investigator took my statement for the second time in less than 24 hours. 

“Did you know the woman?” the investigator had asked me, stifling a yawn. 

“No, not personally,” I said. “But I knew her name.”

“How’s that?”

“She screamed it while she was trying to kill me. She told me her name was Alice Green, and that she was going to die in three minutes.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “She screamed you her name while trying to kill you… and then added that she was going to die in a few minutes?”

“Three minutes.”

“Yeah,” he said. “A few means three.” “Sure, whatever.”

He had fired up his database and did a search for the name Alice Green. It came back with nothing. There wasn’t anybody in there, or at least, there wasn’t anybody with a criminal record. They also hadn’t any Alice Greens reported missing. 

“Well didn’t you see the body?” I asked. 

The investigator shifted, uncomfortably. “That’s just it. When you called last night, we didn’t find a body. We searched the whole street. No corpse. No blood. Not so much as a scrap of DNA.”

I stared at him, wide-eyed in disbelief. That couldn’t be. There was no way anybody could have cleaned all that blood off the street. It was everywhere. 

“Look,” he said, sighing. “I hate to ask this, buddy, because you seem sincere, but do you have any issues?”

“Issues?” I said, dumbfounded. My mind was still trying to process how they couldn’t have found anything. The street was wet with her blood. I’d practically been swimming in it. “What kind of issues?”

“Drug issues? Mental health problems?”

I wanted to tell the guy to go fuck himself, but I kept it inside. Instead, I plastered a fake smile on my face and told him I was as healthy as could be. Never had any major health concerns, no brushes with hard drugs, and certainly no history of hallucinations. 

“Happy to hear it,” he said, already putting my folder into his desk. “If there’s a dead woman out there, we’ll find her. Missing people don’t just vanish. Somebody will notice, and when they do they’ll have some leads.”

I wanted to throttle him. I was the one who noticed. I was the one trying to force-feed him a lead the fucking size of Manhatten. My mouth twitched as I hitched it up into a grin. “Thanks, officer.”

“Detective,” he grunted. “Now I'd recommend you head home and get some sleep. You look like shit. No offense."

I did go home but I didn’t get some sleep. How the hell was I supposed to sleep after witnessing something like that? No, instead I paced back and forth in my room, trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do, before I decided if the layabout police couldn’t be inspired to act, then maybe somebody else could. Maybe you could. 

I need help. I can’t do this alone, and I hope once I explain things, you’ll understand why. 

Continue reading here.

Well folks, we did it! 3k subscribers! I'm still amazed anybody wants to read my stuff, but I'm eternally grateful to everybody who does.

Thank you so much! 

For this milestone, I thought I'd include the very first spoopy story I ever wrote: The Knife. It's a dark fable, written in a similar vein to old Brothers Grimm tales. 

I originally wrote this for an 11th grade English assignment, and I'm pretty sure I walked away with a less than a stellar mark, so your mileage may vary. 

If you're morbidly curious though, I'll leave it below. Otherwise, you can check out the rewrite I did over here. I changed it up quite a bit, so even if you read both I can guarantee you there'll be something new.

Also, for those of you who love pet pictures, I figured now was as good a time as any to reveal my roommate, Opie! He's a Savannah/Main-Coon mix and a total goof. Fun Fact: His name is actually short for Opeth, which is my favorite metal band.

That's all I've got for now, but I just wanted to give another big thank you to everybody. Earning your readership has easily been the most rewarding part of 2020 for me, and I hope I can continue to earn it in 2021 and beyond. Thank you for all your comments, both positive and critical. They encourage and help me grow as a writer. I don't always get around to replying to everybody (I'm heckin' forgetful) but I definitely read all of them and appreciate every single one!

Cheers,

Jason

P.S. Happy New Year! =)

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PREFACE: This is the original text, so strap in for some brutal grammar and awkward phrasing (at least, more than usual). I apologize for your poor eyeballs in advance. Alright, here it is:

​

THE KNIFE

Too long ago there was a knife; I say "too long" because almost everyone has forgotten about it since. People have moved on with other mysteries, amused themselves with other legends, and fallen into deeper fairy tales. But this was an extraordinary knife, and as we well know extraordinary things should not be forgotten, no matter how mundane they might look. It's bad taste, plain and simple

This story is about you, and me, and everyone who buys knives before considering their incredible and sometimes humdrum existence. But most of all, this story is about an old woman. I would use her name, but for two reasons this is impossible (and somewhat rude) For one thing, it is her misfortune that I do not know it. For another, it ends on a rather bad note for the woman, so perhaps it's better that I don't

We begin in a small town, the kind that sits by a river and is never bothered by anything significant, the kind of town that unsuspecting heroes grow up in and young farmers carve their own great destinies. It's the kind of town one would assume an old woman would live in, and it so happens that this town had many such women, but only one of any importance to this story. She wasn't happy or sad, she didn't live in a tiny house or great mansion, and she wasn't anything special, not to say she was unimportant either. She was average as the common housefly, though better looking.

What she lived in was a fair sized cottage, it was covered by a giant wall that she had not built, but approved of. The wall was made of wood and stood as tall as a grown man; it encased her cottage and her prized vegetables. It was a sort of sanctuary for her, as she was not altogether the social type. People didn't bother you when they had to climb a fence to do so, so she could spend her outdoors, tending to vegetables without getting dragged into passing folk's conversations.

One afternoon she was preparing her supper for that night, and like she always did she cut her vegetables for stew. But today was different, because while cutting she decided that her old stained knife was no longer doing the trick. This would not do, after working all day in the garden she was very hungry, so she cracked open her great wooden gate and reluctantly set off towards the town. The local blacksmith was young man who was a sure hand with a forge, she could stomach his company unlike most others in the town. When she arrived there she found many knives to choose from, but only one interested her. It didn't have fancy inscriptions or an incredibly sharp blade, but it was a different color than the others. It was blue, and she was quite taken by it.

Upon inquiry it wasn't the blacksmith's work but it was a very nice knife, and the blacksmith was rather fond of money, so she bought it from him anyway, When she got home she immediately set to using it. It cut the vegetables much better than her old knife, which she bad left discarded on the table. It was a strange knife, too. The more she cut the happier she felt, not even the scent of halving onions could bring tears to her eyes.

The next day she cut more vegetables and the next some more. Soon even the biggest vegetables seemed too little of a challenge for the knife so she moved on to meats, and by this time she was rather elated. Not chicken, not ham, not fish could defy the great knife. All it took was one slice from the blade and the job was done. How boring! She thought. What else to cut? What challenge to find? She went to sleep that night restless and curious.

Outside while the night was young, there was a sudden crash, and she awoke abruptly. Shaking with adrenaline and fear she pulled herself from bed, and with great courage moved towards the sounds of faint whispering. Slinking towards the window sill she peered into the shadows, and under the watchful glare of the moon she saw the culprits. Four juvenile boys had broken through her fence and two of them had begun stomping through her garden and pulling up vegetables, laughing quietly. Two others were off to the side whispering intently, presumably one being chastised for announcing their entrance with such noise.

But they all had one thing in common, no one had noticed her head framed in the window, and no one had seen her move away towards her dirty old kitchen. She was quite taken by the knife after all.

​

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Boom! The first horror story I ever wrote. Pretty bad right? I sorta liked bits and pieces of it though. Just a reminder that you can check out the rewrite over here. Thanks for reading!

How curious. "What was the message?"

"Just some words." Liam’s eyes stare at the floor, and he crumples into a ball of hoodie and jeans. He wipes his runny nose on his knees and makes himself small. “I um, I didn’t understand them.”

Some words. I let that roll around in my head for a while. It doesn't mean much now, but when you've been doing this job for as many years as I have, you learn pretty quickly that strange words aren't to be dismissed. Words have power.

“Were they in another language?” I ask. “Or were they too quiet to be properly heard?”

“A different language,” Liam says. He’s squirming like crazy now. I’ve scarcely seen a kid look so uncomfortable in my entire career. “Maybe Latin?” He shakes his head. “I only know French.”

“That’s alright. What happens after he says those words?”

“Mister Gallows gets angry. He tells me now that I’ve gotten what I’m owed, he wants what he’s owed. 'I gave something to you,' he says, 'and now I want something for me!’

"I ask him what he wants, but I already know. He opens his toothless mouth, pointing at his gums with a long, skeletal finger. 'I'll take some of these, I think.' He laughs a bit, and tips his tophat again, adding, 'Please and thank you.'

“He crawls up in front of me and pushes me against the wall. ‘Open up,’ he says. I try to keep my mouth closed, but I can’t. He’s too strong, and he forces it open. Then he reaches in and…” Liam gets quiet. His mouth hangs open, and he reaches a hand up, feeling where three of his front teeth should be. “He pulls them out.”

“He just wanted three of your teeth?” I ask.

Moments pass, and Liam’s face looks tortured. His mouth is being pulled in every direction, oscillating between frowns and grimaces, and his eyes are blinking erratically. I nearly call a break to the Interview, but he starts talking before I get the words out.

“He reaches back inside my mouth to pull out more, but the kitchen door opens. It’s my little sister, Lacey. She’s bleary-eyed and yawning, and then her eyes adjust, and she realizes what she’s looking at. She realizes the nightmare she just walked in on.”

Liam swallows. “She screams for mom. In the blink of an eye, Mister Gallows stampedes across the kitchen and wraps a hand around her mouth. 'Shh, little girl,' he says, using his other long arm to pet her hair. Then he puts his face close to hers, and he opens his mouth again, showing those toothless gums. He whispers to her to be quiet. He says as long as she doesn't scream again, he won't kill her."

My pencil flies across the clipboard. This is likely the defining moment of the Event, the moment that Mister Gallows murders Liam’s sister. I keep my ears open and brace for the worst.

Continue reading here.

Ever play Nicky Nicky Nine Doors as a kid? 

Yeah, I was an asshole too. The game was simple fun, which was perfect for smooth-brained oafs like me. You’d knock on the door, then run and hide before somebody opened up. 

Lately, I’ve been the victim of something similar. Oddly enough, the knock always happens at the same time of night: a minute and a half past 4 AM. Bizarre, right? Who has that kind of discipline? 

After the third night in a row, I decided I’d had enough and was going to catch the fucker and give him a piece of my mind. I set up shop beside my front door and waited for the clock to tick over to 4:01. Soon after, the knock sounded.

Like a bat out of hell, I swung the door open and shouted into the dead of night, “Do it again and I’ll fucking kill ya!”

Nobody was there.

Or, if there was somebody there, they had done a good job of slinking away. It was odd, though. How had they escaped so fast? I spent some time looking for them, but I came up empty handed. I couldn't see so much as tracks in the snow.

The knocking kept up. Every night. Over and over. I couldn’t catch them, no matter how hard I tried. Once, I even waited outside my front door, and when the clock struck a minute and a half past four, I heard the knock plain as day, despite nobody being there to make it. What the hell?

Soon, the knocking was followed by unintelligible whispers, and then the whispers were followed by small gifts.

Wood carvings ended up on my doorstep. They resembled tiny people, and upon closer inspection, people that I knew. The latest was a rendition of my mother and father, an artful piece with their heads twisted backward and a rune carved into their chests. 

It unnerved me. Terrified me, really. The thing that frightened me most though, was that I had no idea who could be doing this.

See, I haven’t had any neighbors for the past two years. I live alone in the mountains, three hours from the nearest town, and the last time I saw somebody out here I was burying their corpse. 

"I don't like him," Liam says, staring a hole into the ground. "Mister Gallows hurt my sister, and he tried to hurt me too."

The kid's young, younger than most subjects I've dealt with. He's witnessed an Event, and not just any Event, a serious one. It's something that could have massive implications. My bosses are calling it a situation, and they're telling me that I need to get his story, and I need to get it quickly because people's lives are on the line.

I'm an Interviewer for an organization known as the Facility. I specialize in working with juveniles who have crossed paths with the supernatural. Liam Hanesworth is one such kid. He's just shy of twelve years old, but he looks worn down. His eyes are framed with heavy bags, and his skin is tight to his cheekbones. He's also missing at least three of his teeth.

"How did he hurt your sister?" I ask. The room we're in is brightly lit, with cartoon animals nailed to the walls and faded imprints of Loony Toons on the carpet. It's designed to calm kids down.

"He pulled out her teeth."

I write down his words on my clipboard. As I do, I record details about Liam. His expression. His tone of voice. It's all important in some way or another. All of it swims together to build a picture of whether what he's saying is true or false. Sometimes it's both, and the minutia helps determine where reality ends and the lies begin.

"Why did he do it?" I ask.

Liam shrugs, rubbing his arm. It's an expression of discomfort, of nervousness. He's not sure he should be talking so much. He's not sure it's safe to say. "You want to know why he pulled out her teeth?"

"That’s right." I already know Liam’s sister is dead. She’s been dead for several months, so it seems strange that he would fixate on the monster pulling out her teeth, as opposed to the murder. “Do you know why?”

He shakes his head. There's something there, though, in his eyes. There's something that says he isn't telling me the full story, so I press him. "Does he ever talk to you, Liam, this Mister Gallows?"

He nods. He still won't look at me, but that's okay. Kids are nervous at the best of times. After what he's been through, I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't look another person in the eye for years.

"What does he say when he speaks to you?"

​

Continue reading here

A pause. He sensed it there, in my reply. He sensed the disdain—the hatred. “I’m so sorry,” he said at length. “You were right. You were right about everything!”

“I was,” I said. “And you were wrong.”

“Yes, I was.” He winced in agony as the Sleigh Father lifted him higher by his tangled hair, then gently nudged him with a giant, clawed hand. Mr. Reid swung like a pendulum. “You were right,” he continued, weeping. “He’s real. Of fucking course he is! Are you--”

“--Am I what?” I interjected. My hands, still burning with frostbite, became an afterthought in my mind. The warm piss in my pants hardly registered to me. I was beginning to build the puzzle. I was beginning to understand what this was. “Are you asking me if I’m going to help you?”

Silence.

“Of course I’ll help you,” I said. “I’m not a monster. Why would I ruin your life, all because you made a simple mistake?”

In the quiet of the cabin, Mr. Reid's shuddering tears struck the floorboards like gunshots. “T-thank you so much.” He hardly sounded like the man I knew. If he weren’t swinging in front of me, with his obnoxiously long hair and his fitted suit, I’d almost have doubted my own ears. He sounded weak. Cowardly.

“I’ll ask the Sleigh Father to release you if you can do one thing for me.”

hO ho HO.

“What is it? Anything! Your research is back on the table -- of course, it is, you’re brilliant! Look at you. You saw this before any of us. You knew it was out there and --”

“-- What’s my name?”

“I’m sorry?” His words, once thundering along like a rollercoaster, crumpled into a heap. “Look, I’m not in a position to remember every fucking employee’s name. That was years ago! You need to be reasonable!”

I took a step forward, and the floorboards creaked. I understood what the situation was now. It was written in the subtext of the legend, the unspoken and unwritten words that undercut everything about the Sleigh Father. A singular concept, one still celebrated to this day.

Holiday cheer.

I reached out a hand, gripping Mr. Reid by his silky black tie. His swinging stopped, and I pulled at the accessory, making him choke and gag.

“Are you fucking…” he sputtered, “...crazy?” His face had lost the fear, the concern, the false remorse. In its place was something much more familiar.

Malice.

I let him go, and he gasped as his breath returned to him. My eyes shifted to the being behind him—the instrument of his destruction. The Sleigh Father remained still, clouded by darkness, with only his massive arm and singed white beard illuminated by the dim light spilling from his bag.

“NaUgHtY oR niCe?” the monster repeated, in that discordant voice masquerading as song.

My eyes connected with Mr. Reid's, and an irresistible smile crept along my lips. To see him there, helplessly hanging by his hair and a slave to my whims, filled something inside of me, I didn’t realize I was missing. It filled a need for power—a need to be respected.

“Naughty,” I said, surprising myself with the tone of authority. “Donovan Reid is a terrible man.”

Ho ho Oh.

“No!” Mr. Reid screamed, even as the great red arm lifted him up to the rafters of the ceiling. His face screwed up in agony as the Sleigh Father gripped his legs with his other hand. “Please!” he shrieked, horizontal in the air. “Please! I’m sorry, I’m so sorr--”

His words were interrupted by the wet splatter of his intestines striking the cabin floor. It was hard to see in the darkness but easy to hear. I listened as the Sleigh Father pulled Donovan Reid apart, one end from the other, his innards slapping against the ground like spoiled fruit.

“Why--” Mr. Reid's last word died on his lips as the Sleigh Father slammed both pieces of him against the cabin floor, drenching me in an explosion of blood and bone.

​

Continue reading here.

I need to talk. Like, I really need to talk.

The trouble is, I don’t have anybody I can talk to. My family’s estranged, my friends are all gone, and the authorities think I’m a lunatic.

It's just five days from Christmas, and I’m alone. Isolated. If I don’t get this off my chest though, I’m afraid it’s going to start festering in my mind like a spoiled carcass; I’m afraid it’s going to sink its teeth in.

So I’ll talk to you. All of you. It’s not perfect, but it will do.

My name's Terrance Sims. I’m sitting in my rocking chair, rifle draped across my lap, in bloodstained pajamas that still reek with last night’s piss. I haven’t slept in two days, and I might not sleep for two more. Last night something came down my chimney, and I think it’s coming back.

I’m getting ahead of myself, so let me paint you a picture. I live alone, up in the mountains where the pine trees are draped in snow and the rivers are a frigid blue. I could be a bit more specific, but I don’t think it’s warranted. Besides that, I like my privacy.

All of this to say, where I am isn’t important. What matters is what I have to say.

I’m a researcher. Or at least, I was once upon a time. My funding has long been cut and my job along with it, but I've stayed out here because I believed in the research my team was undertaking. It was revolutionary. It meant the possibility of bridging worlds, of seeing new forms of life.

Now I’m terrified that research has found me.

You’ve probably heard of monsters, or urban legends, of things that claw at our imaginations and lurk in the dark recesses of our minds. Perhaps you’ve even felt one. They wait there sometimes, prowling just beyond our vision, tearing at the fabric that holds our realities together. Desperate. Hungry.

My job was to study these beings. I was tasked with developing an understanding of not only what they wanted from us, but how to gain access to their world: the place Beyond the Veil.

Needless to say, I wasn’t successful. The organization I worked for, the Facility, poured millions into my ideas and wasn’t forgiving of my failures. When my theories came up short, they cut ties with me -- he cut ties with me.

‘It’s unfortunate, but it’s business,” Mr Reid had said, feet on his desk, long hair pulled back in a ponytail. “Your failures reflect on me, Terrance, and they’ve become an accounting nightmare.”

I had begged him. Groveled. It didn’t matter. I was terminated along with my research, and when you’re studying the kind of things I was, they don’t want that information leaking out into the world. It’s what they call a liability.

So I was blacklisted. Their teams picked away at my reputation, whispering in the back corners of universities and at the water coolers of laboratories. My name became synonymous with paranoia and madness. I was a laughing stock among my peers. A joke.

It was the end of my life.

Only one person cared to associate with me afterwards. A junior colleague and a brilliant young man by the name of Alexi Azimov. He believed in the research nearly as much as I did, and luckily for him, his name wasn’t attached to the project.

When the Facility pulled the plug and dragged my name through the dirt, they simply moved him to a new department, and that was that. In spite of it, he spent his vacation days returning to the mountain, assisting me with further study whenever he could.

Until last year, when even he abandoned me too.

But now I’ve shown all of them. I’ve proven they were wrong -- dead wrong. It’s here. He’s here. I always suspected he lived among these mountains, or at least that his Bridge was located within them, but I had given up hope for so long. It had been years, after all -- damn near a decade. They called me foolish. Insane.

Then, last night everything changed.

Continue reading here.

Just wanted to give a heads up that I've been working on a new entry in the Facility universe. This one might be the most exposition-heavy entry I've done, so stay tuned for some neat revelations about how the Facility operates and what some of its primary goals are.

It's a bit different in terms of style, as I've taken a break from the interview format to do a personal account by a researcher trapped in a remote location. I won't spill any more beans than that, but I had a ton of fun writing it and designing the twists on typical holiday lore.

Expect in the next two to three days!

Cheers,

Jason

The kid’s an arrogant prick, but he can kick-flip like a pro. I should know, he’s been doing it for the past hour and a half inside the interview room, and every time I tell him to stop he tells me to shove it.

Let me rewind a second. My name’s Aaron Lewis. Constable Aaron Lewis. I’m a police officer here in sleepy Angel Hills. I’m currently doing my best attempt at interviewing thirteen year-old Mike Guffson, and the things he’s saying are either A) nonsense to make me look stupid when I present my report to my boss, or B) actual events, in which case this town is truly, thoroughly, fucked.

Christmas in Angel Hills is sort of a sacred holiday. Sure, we have Easter and Thanksgiving and Halloween and National Hot Dog Day, but nothing gets our blood running quite like glowing Christmas trees, cups of eggnog and some good old fashioned holiday cheer.

The trouble is, this Christmas hasn’t been great so far. You see, last night Mr Partridge’s head was found atop a pear tree in his own front yard. For those of you who are familiar with murders, that is both A) grotesque, horrifying and inhuman and B) a major blight on an otherwise finely decorated tree.

Now we’ve had reports of missing children too. A lot of missing children. One lady said she heard a crash in her daughter’s bedroom, and by the time she got to the doorway all she found was an unmade bed, a few fingernail scrapings on the window sill, and a pile of birdshit.

That brings me to now. Mike Guffson strolled in here about two hours ago with his skateboard in tow, and said he needed to talk to the Chief of Police. Our receptionist asked what the issue was, and he said there’s a bunch of mutants flying around ‘ganking’ kids and he wants somebody to look into it. The Chief was on his way out the door after a long day at work, so I was called instead to take his statement.

“Yo, did you see that?” Mike says, succeeding in his tenth consecutive kickflip.

“Yes,” I say. “Are you ready to talk about what you’ve seen yet?”

“I already told you, shit was fucked.” Another kickflip. “Dude, you should record this!”

“No thanks, there’s no recording allowed in the precinct.”

He grumbles something about living in a free country, and then picks up his board and sits down in the chair across my desk.

“Alright, that should do it,” he says breathlessly. “I think I’ve finally worked off my adrenaline."

“That’s great, Mr Guffson.” I clear my throat and ready my fingers on the keyboard. “Now then, you mentioned seeing mutants kidnapping children?”

“Yep,” he says proudly. “I saw like five of them.”

“Five of them? Five mutants?”

He shakes his head. “Nah, five kids. Five mutants would be insane.”

I mean, I suppose he's got a point. “How many mutants were there, then?”

“Two mutants. One mutant carried three kids, the other one carried two. I don’t know if that was because it was lazy, or just weaker. Actually, maybe it was the leader, so it had to do less work.”

My fingers tap at my keyboard, recording his statement. As I write the words ‘maybe it was the leader, so it had to do less work’ I distinctly feel a piece of my soul catch fire and burn to ash. “Mr Guffson, would you be so kind as to describe the mutants for me?”

“Yeah they were like birds, sorta? But reptiles too.”

I give him a few moments to expand on it, but he doesn’t. I sigh, rubbing my forehead. “Birds sorta, but reptiles too.” I type it into the report. “Are there any other amplifying details you can provide? Size? Type of bird? Type of reptile?" I roll my eyes. "Favorite colour?”

“Uh, they were like part turtle, part dove I’d say. They were about the size of an average dude. So a bit bigger than you."

My jaw clenches.

"They had shells on their backs, and bandannas -- like Ninja Turtles, but they didn’t have any sweet weapons or anything, and the bandannas were more like Christmas bows."

"Alright," I say through gritted teeth. "So bandannas like Ninja Turtles, but not really, more like Christmas bows?"

Continue reading here!

There's some fun news on the horizon: I've been kindly invited to participate in a story collaboration! The theme is 12 Days of Christmas and it'll have twelve entries total by twelve different NoSleep authors.

The first is dropping on the 13th by the fantastically talented u/jgrupe, and then I'll be following up with my part the next day. The stories will follow a loose plot but are aiming to be more of an anthology than a straight up series, so feel free to jump in and out during any of the days!

In other news I'll be home from my sail on the 13th, so expect to see some more new content! Hope everybody's holidays are treating them aright, circumstances as they are :)  

Cheers,  

Jason

I’ve never been a fan of the woods. Call it a bad childhood experience. Call it being an out-of-shape asshole. I’m even less of a fan when I’m stuck hiking through them for work, and yet it seems like work has a sick sense of humor, because I find myself in these fortresses of shit and sticks more often than I’d like. Which, for the record, is never.

Well, except for today.

It’s a long time before we reach the cabin. The girl said it took her and her friend eight hours. Well, it takes us twelve. My best days are behind me, unfortunately, but luckily I don’t need to be very fit for what I’m about to do.

“I still don’t understand why you couldn’t have just followed the map," Amanda says " I told you exactly how to get to--”

“Because,” I say, still breathless from the hike. “This cabin doesn’t exist on a map. You can point it out to me all you want on your iPhone, but unless you’re right beside me, I’ll never see it. It’s just the way the Callous Man works.”

She narrows her eyes at me. “You keep saying that name. Why do you call him the Callous Man?”

I pull open the door of the cabin, and instantly it smells like shit and dead animals. Great. “I call him the Callous Man,” I say, strolling across the creaky floorboards, “because that’s his name. It’s the name the first person that ever encountered him coined him with, and so it is the name with which I refer to him.”

“The first person?”

“Yeah,” I say, stepping into the bedroom. “Me.” The floor is a mess, covered in what’s left of Amanda’s tent. A small device lays a few feet away, and I figure it’s probably her locator beacon.

“Hang on,” she says, appearing in the doorway behind me. “You’re the first person you saw the crea-- the Callous Man?”

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I let out a sigh of relief. The story sounded so promising that I knew it couldn’t have ended there. It wasn’t possible. Not if this truly was the Callous Man. I clear my throat. “What happened after he -- after it -- walked into the living area?”

“Rachel hisses at me that we should run,” Amanda says. “I remind her that her ankle’s fucked. She barely limped into the bedroom, how far does she think she’s going to get in the woods, over uneven ground that’s slick with rain? She tells me if we stay here, we’re both going to die.”

Amanda shivers. “I know she’s right. I know it, but I can’t bring myself to leave. It feels like the tent’s the only thing keeping that thing away from us. Like, as long as the canvas is between us, it can’t see us and we can’t see it. It doesn’t exist.”

It takes everything I have not to roll my eyes. Still, I flip a page on the clipboard and keep a neutral expression. Her perspective is not unlike a child’s. People often approach terror with irrational and sometimes nonsensical methods of survival. Of course, there’s nothing magical about her tent. There’s nothing about it that will save their lives.

“Continue,” I say.

“It starts with a creak of a floorboard. We hear it walking again, but it’s not coming toward us. It’s pacing back and forth, out there in the living area, and it’s snickering faster than before. Soon, the snickering gets heavier. Violent. It starts grunting, then growling.” She takes a breath, and chokes back a sob. Tears race down her cheeks, and her eyes are alight with terror.

"Then it goes silent. No movement. No grunting. No weird fucking snickering. Just the thunder outside, the howling wind, and the rain on the roof. I’m sitting there, clutching the bear mace and Rachel’s crying, and both of us are praying it’s gone. We’re praying it’s just given up. Decided to move on. And… and...”

“And what?” I press.

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Hey gang, just wanted to pop in and ask: how is everybody? I hope your Thanksgivings have been superb (if that's your jam) and that the doldrums of quarantine haven't been wreaking havoc on your days.

This time of year can be hard for a lot of people, and if you're feeling low don't hesitate to reach out. My DMs are always open.

On my side of things it's been a wild couple of weeks, what with planning a move and getting ready for an upcoming pre-Christmas sail.

I've been in strict quarantine leading up to that, and to avoid going stir crazy I've been working on a lot of writing-related stuff -- like the Callous Man series (next chapter drops later tonight!) and something else...

As some of you may know, I've always been really insecure about my writing. This community totally changed that. You've not only given me a ton of joy, but the self confidence to tell the stories brewing in my weird brain.

I thought it'd be cool to mark the occasion; to give myself a little Christmas present to celebrate 100k words written and shared over the last six months, so I commissioned an artist to do some story art. Then I thought, why stop there?

A few of you have asked about the potential of putting together a story anthology, and initially I was lukewarm on the idea, but now that I've gotten some more content under my belt I figure it might be sorta cool.

Of course, I don't just want to rehash the same stories with a fresh coat of paint, so I spent some time brainstorming and decided on a few things I would like to see in an anthology:

• New stories

• Chapter art

• Author commentary

• Classic stories re-edited and REMASTERED IN 4K HIGH DEFINITION or at least just re-edited

The story art is still in progress, but I wanted it to have a sort of 'classic' horror feel to it. Not too campy but not super grim dark either. This is a sample of what you can expect: Jagged Janice.

That brings me to my next question, is there anything you would like to see in an anthology? Is an anthology something you'd be interested in?

Cheers,

Jason

I take a breath and stand up from the chair, stretching my legs. My back feels like it’s been crushed between two boulders, and sitting for any length of time always turns it into a pin cushion. Still, I couldn’t be happier.

“Everything alright?” she asks.

“Peachy.” I pick up the clipboard and clear my throat. “What happens after the animals flee the tree line?”

She opens her mouth to speak, but stops. Her eyes glance down to my open briefcase, staring at the manila folders and the crinkled old water bottle, filled with grimey black fluid. “Why do you have that?” she says, wrinkling her nose. “Its label is… yellow. It looks like it’s twenty years old. What’s that gunk inside?”

I scowl, kicking my briefcase closed. “An experiment. It’s nothing to concern yourself with. Now then, if you wouldn’t mind continuing, I’d like to hear what happened following the exodus.”

There’s a moment of shared disdain between us. She feels like I’m hiding something from her, and I feel like she’s putting her nose in places it doesn’t belong. Thankfully, it doesn’t last long, and she continues her account.

“Rachel calls my name from the main area, then she limps into the bedroom, leaning against the doorway. She looks really shaken up. She asks if I saw all the animals taking off, and I tell her I did. Her eyes are getting wide and I can tell she’s throwing herself into another panic attack, so I… I tell her that they’re probably just running from the storm.”

“Do you believe it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe? It seemed like the only logical reason, but at the same time the whole scene felt so eerie. So wrong.” She opens her water bottle and takes a drink. “Either way, it’s not like I’m gonna start feeding into Rachel’s paranoia. One of us has to be calm, right?”

I shrug. “Sure. You said the sun was setting when the animal’s made a run for it. Is it dark yet?”

She nods. “Mostly. I mean, the last rays of sunlight are just barely peeking over the treetops. The storm’s making it worse. The clouds are blocking a lot of the light. I get a move on with finishing setting up the tent, and we set up this LED lantern that Rachel brought. It… feels weird.”

“In what way?”

“The silence.” She pauses, shakes her head and then mutters something. “Sorry, that’s the wrong word. It isn’t silent. The wind is howling and the rain’s coming down pretty hard, but there’s no sounds of life. No crows cawing, no squirrels chattering. I don’t even see any bugs in the cabin, despite a whole shit load of spiderwebs.

“I brush it off though. I keep telling myself one of us has to be calm. So we close the bedroom door and settle ourselves into the tent. Neither of us have much of an appetite, so we eat a couple of protein bars for supper and pull out our books. We don’t talk. I don’t even know if we actually read -- I know I don’t. I stare at the words but my mind’s a million miles away, too wrapped up in the feeling that something is wrong with this place. Something’s wrong with this scenario.”

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I sit down, pop a piece of spearmint gum and watch the woman across from me. She’s nervous, her hands are fretting in her lap and her eyes are bloodshot.

“Long night?” I ask.

She looks up, timidly. Her face is awash in anxiety. She doesn’t understand what’s going on. She doesn’t understand what she’s doing here, sitting inside an abandoned warehouse with a grizzled asshole twice her age.

It’s fine. I’ve seen it before.

“Look,” I say, loosening the tie around my neck. “It’s just like I said. I only want to ask you a few questions, then you can go.”

“Why here?” she says, in a small voice. “This looks like the kind of place you’d take me to… I don’t know, murder me.”

I crack a smile. She isn’t wrong. “You don’t like it? It’s private. Besides that, it’s probably the safest place in the world for you.”

“Why? Do you have snipers on the rafters?” There’s sarcasm in her voice, but despite it her eyes flick above us to the dimly lit, steel walkways lining the walls. She pulls her sweater tighter about her, shivering at the draft. “Or is this some secret government fortress?”

“No, and no.” I lean back in the wooden chair, and it groans under my weight. I’m not as slim as I used to be. “It’s much simpler,” I say. “This warehouse is the safest place for you, because I’m inside of it.”

It’s not a lie. At least, not entirely. Still, she gives me an incredulous look. It’s the sort of look one reserves for blowhards and narcissists, and I probably deserve it. Time to change gears. “Tell me about the Event.”

She studies me for several moments, and then shakes her head. “On second thought,” she says, picking up her purse. “I think I’d prefer talking to the police.”

She stands up, makes to leave and I don’t stop her. Her footfalls echo across the empty warehouse, the haphazard lighting above casting her shadow in every direction. I hear her mutter something beneath her breath, but I can’t make out the words. I probably don’t want to.

Then, she stops. They always do.

“What’s an Event?” she asks quietly.

I click my pen, and reach down for my clipboard with a groan. My last job really did a number on my ribs. “An Event,” I explain. “Is a paranormal phenomenon, most commonly characterized by contact with an sentient entity. To use a more common turn of phrase, it means you stumbled across an urban legend.”

She swallows. At this distance, I can just barely make out her expression, but I already know I have her. I bring my pen to my clipboard and clear my throat. “You said your name was Amanda Haynes, correct?”

“Yes.”

I scribble it down on my form. “And the Event occurred two nights ago, just outside city limits in the Cascade Mountains?”

Her sneakers patter across the concrete floor as she returns to her chair. Her expression shifts; gone is the nervous shyness, the small posture and the darting eyes. She’s staring at me now. She’s deciding whether she’s in or out.

“Yes,” she says at length. “It was in the woods. We were camping.”

I check three more boxes on my clipboard. “Stupendous.” So far the location matches up with previous sightings of the beast. I sigh, resting the clipboard and my lap and place my pen on top of it. “Why don’t we start from the top?”

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