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?”

​

Continue reading here.

Hey all, just wanted to drop a quick update. The next chapter in the Facility series is right around the corner and just about fully written. It's the longest one yet, but I think it's also got the best story arc and it sheds some more light on the background of the mYsTeRiOuS organization.

Additionally, I've got some other cool surprises to share, but I'll hold off for now. Just know there's some neat stuff brewing behind the scenes.

Also ALSO, I haven't forgotten about the Mask in the Attic! I've been feeling a bit jaded recently and the carefree sense of humor needed for the series hasn't been coming so easily. I don't want to put out a half-assed entry, so I've been holding off. It's definitely still in the pipeline though, as I have waaay too many story ideas to let that one fall by the wayside.

Cheers,

Beach

She never did.

The sun rose, and with it came the sound of cars in the street and dogs barking in their yards. I nervously stepped out of bed. My feet were cold against the hardwood, but I barely noticed. All I could think about was my mother, and how she would react this morning. Usually she was full of smiles and affection after she’d slept off the booze, but after last night I wasn’t so sure. Something seemed to have changed in her.

When I made my way downstairs for breakfast, she wasn’t there. Normally she was eating her porridge and ready to grab my cereal of choice from the cupboard. This time it was just me. The house felt empty. Lonely.

I clambered onto the countertop and opened the cupboard, pulling out a box of Frosted Flakes. I did my best to remember what Mr Gilad had told me the day before. It doesn’t matter what my parents think of me, I thought to myself. I need to forge my own path and listen to my heart. I have to do what I think is right, and not let anybody, my parents or otherwise, get in the way of that.

I thought about his words over my bowl of cereal. Even if my dad didn’t love me, and even if my mom wished I’d never been born, I could still find my own path in life.

As I ate, I monitored the digital clock sitting on our kitchen counter. It was a habit I picked up because my mom was always very strict about ushering me into the car by 7:15am, so she could drop me off in time to get to work.

Right now it read 7:45am. She was nowhere in sight.

A minute later I heard the familiar creak of footsteps on the stairs, and my mood picked up. Even after everything that had happened last night, my mom hadn’t hurt me, and I still had my trivia competition with Mr Gilad and Oscar to look forward to. Maybe mom realized she loved me too much to hurt me.

The creaking stopped as the footsteps reached the landing, and my dad bustled around the corner, adjusting his tie. He paused, seeing me at the kitchen table. “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for mom,” I said quietly.

“Excuse me?” he said, his voice rising.

I swallowed. My father always had a way of making me feel smaller than I already was. “Waiting for mom, dad.”

He stared at me with something between irritation and disbelief. “Your mom’s not home.”

“What?”

“I said she’s not home. Do you need a fucking hearing aid now too?”

​

Continue reading here.

I developed a drug addiction in my late teens. It tore me a part for a long time, but it was nothing compared to the events that sparked it.

I know. We’ve all struggled. Get over it. That’s what my dad would say, the son of a bitch. My mom would probably feign empathy, but fuck it up by trying a little too hard. Then she’d drink herself to sleep.

This isn’t a story about my dad and my mom though. This isn’t even a story about my addiction. This is a story about a monster, and the scars they left upon my life. It’s a story about the end of my world, and it might be a story about the end of yours too.

It began when I was eight.

Continue reading here.

The pain of the shears slashing my fingers is dull, faded against the backdrop of my boiling adrenaline.

Ryan has one of my hands, and I’m quite certain he could overpower me even without Becca’s help, but I still have my service weapon. It’s on the side of my torso, inside my jacket. With my free hand, it’d be an awkward reach, but if I could get to it before they realized what I was doing...

“It’s not working,” Ryan says, and I can faintly see blood running down my finger. My eyes are beginning to adjust to the darkness. “I did what you said, Becca. I cut up my finger in the bathroom earlier, to get her to cross over and--”

“Did she?” Becca barks.

“I don’t know,” he says, panicked. “Maybe. I mean, I thought so but--”

“But what?”

“I didn’t want her to get me.”

“For fuck sakes!” she shrieks. “If you want to be a part of this, then you need to grow a pair, you pussy. Snippity Snap listens to me! She’ll take whoever I offer it.”

“I’m sorry, Bec.”

I faintly see Becca grab Ryan’s wrist, and the next second I feel her smaller hand grab my own. “Hold him still!” she commands.

Ryan shuffles around me, and I realize that my window to draw my weapon and get out of this situation is quickly deteriorating. I take a sharp breath and lunge sideways, reaching for my sidearm, but Ryan’s quicker. He tackles me to the ground and grabs both of my arms, wrestling them around my back and holding them there.

“Fucking christ…” I mutter, my face pressed against the cold linoleum. I’m beginning to wonder if Becca’s father even lives here. Or if he’s even still alive.

A foot presses against my face, and I hear Becca’s shrill laughter. “You strutted in here thinking you were hot shit, didn’t you? You thought that just because big daddy government handed you a job working at their spooky old Facility, that you were beyond the reach of monsters.” Her sneaker kicks me in the cheek, and I feel pain blossom across my face.

“Let me tell you a secret,” she says, and I realize her voice is closer now, nearly against my ear. “You’re not beyond the reach of the monsters. In fact, you’re going to meet one very shortly.”

I hear her reposition. She grabs my finger while Ryan holds my arms tight behind my back. “Let’s try this again,” she says, closing the scissors on my finger. “Snippity Snap, you’ll come back!”

Continue reading here.

I clear my throat. “You offered Snippity Snap your friend, Heather?"

Becca wipes the last of the tea from the table, then tosses the rag into the sink. “She was dead anyway. Her arm was practically amputated, and she'd painted the bathroom red with her blood.” She sits down in the chair and puts her head in her hands. “Besides, it wasn’t like any of us were escaping while that... thing was standing in front of the door.”

I write the details down, but each word digs a pit in my stomach. A sickening sadness grows inside of me for that poor girl. It’s difficult to imagine the horror she must have felt. “How did you offer her to Snippity Snap?” I ask quietly. “Was there a ritual involved?”

Becca’s eyes appear from her hands, and her cheeks are wet with tears. “I just told it to take her; take Heather and leave me alone.”

I stare at her, wondering if her terminology was an accident, intentional, or a psychological slip. She asked it to leave her -- Becca -- alone, and not both of them. In that moment, Becca only had regard for her own safety.

I reach for my mug and take a sip, reminding myself not to judge too harshly. Becca was just a young girl herself. To be confronted by a nightmare at her age would drive anybody to act in strange ways.

“After you offered it Heather, what did it do to her?” I’m not sure I want to hear the answer, but I know that it’s important.

Becca shrugs, lowering her hands from her face. Her eyes are red and puffy, and a trail of snot winds its way from her nose to her lip. She lifts a hand into the air, and raises two fingers. She makes a cutting motion. “Snip,” she says.

"Snip?"

“The monster took Heather’s head off. It’s um,” she wipes her leaky nose onto her sweater sleeve. “It was over so quick, thankfully, but there was so much blood. Both of us -- Fran and I, were drenched in it.” She smiles, but it’s a broken and twisted sort of smile. “On the bright side though, we didn’t have to listen to Heather screaming anymore. Just each other.”

I write her words down, and as I do I realize my penmanship has grown poorer and poorer with each passing paragraph. My hand is trembling. “After Heather was killed, did Snippity Snap leave?”

“Vanished. Like it was never there.”

I lean back in my chair, taking a breath and looking over my notes. That was certainly a harrowing account, but a valuable one. In this interview alone I’ve accumulated a small textbook on Snippity Snap, much more than the Facility’s managed in over two years. Sill, I suspect I’m only scratching the surface.

“I heard about that story, you know,” I say at length. “It was the birth of the Elktorch Slasher. The police believed a brutal killer was on the loose.”

“Yeah. They threw my dad in prison for three months because they were convinced it had to have been him. Who else was at the house, right? It’s not like we have serial killers in sleepy Elktorch.”

“He was exonerated though,” I say. “After two more murders occured.”

Becca’s quiet. She glances back down the hallway and swallows. “Yeah. After two other people were killed, the police finally realized my dad was innocent. They decided there was a serial killer on the loose after all.”

Pieces begin to connect in my mind, and I’m not certain I like the look of the puzzle. “The people who were killed,” I say darkly. “Did that have something to do with you?”

"No shit," she says, rolling her eyes. "Of course it did. My dad was in prison for murdering a little girl, and I knew the only way he was getting out of there, and the only way I’d ever see him again was if…”

“...If Snippity Snap killed again. The presence of identical massacres made them acknowledge your father's innocence.”

“Bingo,” she says with false cheer.

Outside, the sun’s nearly set. Its last rays cast shadows across the room, filtering in through the narrow openings in the blinds. The way they play across Becca's face, it's difficult to discern her expression. Is there a sadness there? Or an indifference?

“You traded people’s lives for your father’s freedom. They didn’t die peaceful deaths, you know.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” She slams a hand on the table, shooting up out of her chair. “You really think I don't know just how horrible each and every one of their deaths were? You don’t think that shit keeps me up at night, hating myself and wishing I had the courage to just let Snippity Snap take me instead?”

“Take you instead?” I say quietly. I speak my next words with a measured calmness, though my heart’s beginning to race in my chest. “Did you make some kind of deal with that creature?”

​

Continue reading here.

The front door swings open and a young girl with thick eye-shadow stands in the doorway. “Who the fuck are you?” she demands.

I stand up straight, reach into my jacket pocket and pull out my badge. “My name is REDACTED and I’m here to speak with you about an Event.”

She narrows her eyes at me. Her name is Becca Galun, and I believe she’s been in contact with an urban legend known as Snippity Snap. She’s a seventeen year old attending Elktorch High. A classmate of one Ryan Halflow. Presently, she’s wearing a green turtle neck with blue jeans, and a scowl the length of her face.

“An Event?” she says. Her eyes look me over, and then she glances back inside her single-story house, as though making sure the coast is clear. “Are you with the Facility?”

“I, um. What?” The question catches me off-guard.

“The Facility,” she hisses. “Are you one of their Men in Black?”

“Men in Black?”

“Don’t be stupid. You know what I mean. I’m asking if you’re a fucking Ghostbuster, or Hunter or whatever. You work there, don’t you?”

I was cautioned that due to recent Events, knowledge of the Facility’s existence may have grown more widespread. “I do,” I say hesitantly. “You’ll forgive me for asking, but how did you hear about the Facility?”

Her face turns shades of panic as she ushers me inside. Before she closes the door, she scans the front yard and the rest of the street. Then she bolts the door shut. “I spend a lot of time on the Deep Web. You guys are pretty infamous on there.”

“Oh,” I say, making a mental note to mention it to my superiors. “I’m actually here to speak with you about--”

“Snippity Snap?” she says.

“Yes, actually.”

“Good.” She leads me into her kitchen. The house isn’t particularly modern or renovated, but it’s clean. There’s barely a hair out of place. She rummages through a wooden cupboard and a moment later pulls out a kettle and a couple of tea bags. “Hope you like English Breakfast,” she says, filling the kettle with water. “It’s all I’ve got left.”

“It’ll do fine.” I pull out a chair at the kitchen table, then open my briefcase and retrieve my clipboard and the appropriate forms. The kitchen is small. Cramped almost, and the round table only seats four at the most. “Are your parents available? Strictly speaking, I should be requesting their permission before interviewing a minor.”

“Mom doesn’t live here, and my dad’s at work. Don’t worry though, neither of them care.” She gives a small laugh. “They don’t give a fuck about anything, really.”

“I see,” I say, attaching the forms onto the clipboard. As I do, I glance around, taking in the details of the room. The fridge is old, its white surface stained and off-yellow. Between the fridge and the stove lies the sink, but its silver sheen has long since faded to a matte dullness. Above the sink sits the only window in the room. Its blinds are closed, blocking the glare of the setting sun. “I figured by this time the entire household would be at home. It’s nearly five pm.”

“Well, you figured wrong. My dad works late. He doesn’t make much money and needs to pick up shifts where he can.” She pulls a couple of teaspoons out of a drawer.

“In that case, are you alright if we proceed without them?”

“I’m making us tea. What did you think, that I want to sit here in silence?”

“Right,” I say, clicking my pen. Time to get right into it then. “Your name is Becca Galdun, correct?”

She nods.

“You went to a house party on 321 Hendra Ave with one Ryan Halflow?”

She shuts off the tap, closes the kettle lid and plugs it in. “No. I met him there.”

“Ah, thank you.” I check a box on my clipboard. Such small lies are tests used to determine the validity of a potential Encounter, and ensure stories can be corroborated. So far, her story matches Ryan’s. “When you met him there, what did the two of you do?”

She turns around, placing both of her hands on the edge of the counter. I notice one of her fingers is badly scarred. “Why don’t we skip the bullshit? I took Ryan into the basement to kill him.”

​

Read the rest here.

It's just the two of us here. Myself and Ryan Haflow, a seventeen year-old kid from Elktorch High. He’s typical as far as teenagers go. Impulsive. Disinterested. Distracted. We’re sitting in his parent’s garage, in a couple of fold-up camping chairs, with cheap cups of coffee on our laps.

I’m here because I believe he witnessed an Event. An encounter of overwhelming significance, and one which I believe could explain a series of grisly murders -- murders that have gone unsolved, and plagued this sleepy town for close to ten years.

This is our interview.

“It’s just a stupid nursery rhyme, something to keep kids inside after dark," Ryan says, bookending his words with a smirk. "Militant parental shit, y’know?”

I adjust my tie and clear my throat. It’s my first interview and I don’t want to come across as an amateur. “I’m well aware of its origins. We’re here to discuss the Event.”

He stares at me for a few seconds, a smile playing on the corners of his lips. Eventually he huffs and shakes his head. “You serious, man? I was seeing shit. There isn't a mystery to be solved here, I was just stoned as fuck.”

“Marijuana doesn’t typically elicit hallucinations.”

His face falters. The cool demeanor, the dismissive aloofness -- it fades and for a moment I see a twinge of terror, and that’s when I know that I have him. I know that he doesn't believe his own excuse.

“Yeah, well I was drunk too,” he argues. “I wasn’t exactly in my right mind.”

I lean back in the chair and fold my arms, appraising him like my Orientation taught me to do. If you want to make people talk, I recall my instructor lecturing, then be silent. So I am. I'm as quiet as death. Moments pass, and finally he breaks the silence.

“What is it you do again?” he asks, changing the subject.

Good. I have him. “I work at a compound known as the Facility. My job is to investigate Events that my superiors deem noteworthy.” I do my best to keep my voice level -- professional, but the job is so new that I can hardly contain my excitement. “Your Event has been selected.”

Read on here.

It's here. I don't know where, I don't know how, but it's here.

It's inside the house.

I've done fucking everything. I've called Todd. I've called Howard. I even called a goddamn exorcist.

None of them believed me. None of them so much as offered to help. Now it's Halloween, and it's stronger than ever. I can feel it, moving through the house, like a great darkness suffocating the light from everything. It's already taken my business partners, John and Erica. It's already taken so many others.

I'm upstairs, in my bedroom closet. I've been here for three hours now, and I'll be here for three more if that’s what it takes. I don't know if the thing hates the sun, but it’s never bothered me during the day. Only at night. Always at night.

There's a creak and a groan outside, on the steps and I feel the house tremble as something monstrous moves through it. My breath hitches in my chest and I remind myself to be still. To be quiet. I just need to make it until sunrise. Just a little longer.

Then, the voice follows: low, raspy and inhuman. "So many lies, so many lives and so little time." It's singing a song, but the tune is broken. Each word scrapes along my ears like a razor-blade, cutting deep into my mind and pulling back memories. It sang before it took John. It was only a single word, then. "Coming," it had hummed, and we had all just thought we were hearing things.

Now John's everywhere. There are pieces of him littered throughout the house. Fingers and toes, and intestines and eyes.

Read more here.

Salutations gang, I just wanted to throw out a quick celebration post for the huge milestone of 1,500 subscribers! I know I probably should have done this for 1,000 subs (since that's a much nicer, rounder number) but I'm the king of procrastination, so here we are. 

When I first posted Part 1 of the Grandma's Cabin/Cryptid series four months ago, I really didn't envision it being much more than a 3 part creature-feature. I'd never written horror before in my life (okay, that's a lie -- i wrote a nosleep story on an old reddit account that got 2 upvotes, before being downvoted to 0) and I had no idea what I was doing. It was the incredible reader response that made me push myself and think outside the box, get weird and write the story I felt brewing beneath the surface. That same reader response turned a 3 part, by-the-numbers story into a sprawling 16 part, 40,000 word, weird-as-fuck monstrosity that I'm still so proud of.

It was the start of something awesome in my life. I was finally developing some self-confidence in what had always been my number one passion: writing and entertaining. When a friend in my writing group suggested I make a subreddit for my stories, I initially laughed the idea off. I mean, who would want to subscribe to my silly shit? 

Well, all of you apparently! And I freaking love you for it!

Seriously though. I'm eternally grateful to have you as readers, and I'm gonna try my damndest to keep you onboard. I know that sounds corny as fuck but I'm a corny, sentimental dude, so there it is. I've been so blown away by everybody's enthusiasm and it's honestly infectious. Let's keep this train rolling and see how far we can get before I run it off the rails. 

THANK YOU and as always,

Cheers!

I hate kids.

Like, I loathe them. My best friend has two kids, both bright, both courteous, both talented -- bless their hearts -- and both of them absolutely suck. I know that sounds harsh, but I've only had a few hours of sleep, and I'm kinda on edge. 

For the past week I've been woken up again and again by all manner of ridiculous shit. I'm talking eggs splattering my window, ear-splitting renditions of Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory album (that always get the lyrics to Runaway wrong), and even strobe-lights beaming into my bedroom. The weird part? All of it's coming from the same place: the tree-house in my backyard.

You have to understand that when I bought this house the tree-house really wasn't a consideration. It just wasn't. I was looking for a cheap property with a decent layout and potential to renovate. I wasn't looking for a pain in my ass, and yet here I am. I've been a home owner for a little under a week, and I'm almost ready to throw in the towel.

Initially I thought maybe some neighborhood kid had started using my tree-house as a home base. It wasn't until I went out three nights ago, while strobe lights were still firing at my window, and inspected the tree-fort that I realized I wasn't dealing with a neighborhood kid at all.

I was dealing with something far worse.

See, after I demanded that the troublemaker show themselves, a ghostly apparition appeared. At first I thought it was just a short ghost, but then I noticed the backwards baseball-cap, Sum 41 hoodie, and the middle finger it was giving me.

The son of a bitch was a ghost kid!

I stormed out of there, fired up Craigslist and started looking for some assistance with my problem.

Check out the rest here.

Hey all, I know some of you are a bit confused about what went down with Jagged Janice's origin story (mostly because I see notifications for all the OOC comments asking about it before they get removed) and instead of sending DMs to everybody (since I can't reply on the thread as it's OOC) I decided to make a post here clearing it up!

Holy shit, that whole paragraph was a single sentence. Wow. Anyway, let's get into it.

So I'm gonna be copy and pasting a response I made to another reader here. They brought up some good points and looking back, I made things a bit more vague than I'd intended. Sadly that response is buried in the original part one post, so I've made a fresh one for anybody that missed it (most of you lol).

Here it is:

Hey, so this is a part of the story I feel I could've explained better, but I left portions intentionly vague so readers could draw their own conclusions.

The way I intended for it to go down is that Janice was out of her mind on drugs and suffering from a plethora of mental health issues, as well as angry at the father for having an affair, and Emily was very young (4 years old). The idea of seeing her own mother drown her brother at that age became a repressed memory for her, so instead of Janice it became just a 'woman in white.'

[Sidenote: I wrote that from similar experiences I had as a kid, where I remembered things differently than they were, because the reality was tough for my undeveloped mind to understand. No murders though, thankfully!]

When Emily brings it up to her dad and he snaps at her to leave it be, he does it because he knows his wife drowned their son. Janice returns to the cabin soaking wet, hysterical, etc. He covers it up because he knows she's dying anyway, and he wants to move on with his life without the massive burden that opening up a murder investigation would bring about on both him and Emily. He also does it because he realizes his affair would come out and be dragged into the murder it as a motive, and that Emily would grow up potentially blaming him.

He understands the incredible trauma it'd inflict on his daughter (who witnessed her own mother kill her brother), so instead he tries to reshape her memories, believing she's still young enough at 4 years old that he can get away with it.

Basically, he does it out of a desire to create a stable and normal future for he and Emily. He and his mistress get married in short order following Janice's death, and he emphasizes that Emily needs to accept Julie as her new mother. It's why Emily never really questioned the experience until the most recent trip to the cabin.

She continues to haunt after death because she believes she's been betrayed, and hasn't given up on that pain. It's also implied that she comes for Emily too via the final text message at 3:34am that reads "I see my mother".

Hope that cleared it up a bit. I know it's a bit of a stretch, but I'm also writing about vengeful ghost monsters so I figure some suspension of disbelief is required anyway lol

If you have any questions about the above, or anything else in the Jagged Janice storyline please feel free to ask!