The Novella Life of Illuscia Nester Himawari

I woke up this morning aching in pain. I had a large bruise on the bottom of my fist near my pinky finger, like someone smashed it with a hammer repeatedly. I reluctantly brought to sit up in my bed, still in my sleep attire, and lifted my shirt to reveal scratches all over my abdomen; I even felt them on my back. How in the hell did I get these? I don’t remember. I decided to shrug it off considering I had to go to work soon. I had slept in 10 minutes and needed to take a shower and get out of the house. I arrived at work and Kaleigh at the front desk greeted me as she usually did every morning. “Hey there Stephen, Still recovering from your fall?” “My fall?” I inquired. I was a bit puzzled as to what she meant. I just don’t remember what happened. “Yeah?” She started, sounding a bit confused, “You told me just yesterday that you fell down a flight of stairs at your apartment complex.” Then it dawned on me, I did tell her that! I fell down the stairs at my complex! How could I be so f...

It was about 1am when the baby started crying. The baby monitor was a little louder than I had wished, and it blared me awake. I arose from my bed to go and take care of him. Walking out of my room, I stopped at the door because I heard my wife over the baby monitor soothing him. With a sigh of relief, I crawled back into bed. I drifted off to the sound of my wife singing his favorite lullaby. Her beautiful voice soothed both me and our child, and ultimately put us both to sleep. I slept very comfortably that night. I awoke the next day in shock. I suddenly remembered my wife was two states away on a business trip. My grogginess last night left me unable to remember. I sprinted to my babies room to find his tiny body mangled and ripped to shreds. I screamed in agony and shook with anger. I scanned the room for the culprit. Then the wall came into view. On the wall written in my son’s blood. "How was the lullaby?" — Credits to: Daniel Wyatt – Razac

Hell is worse than you think, trust me. I know this sounds odd, I mean, the idea of an eternal hell being ripped apart over and over by demons sounds horrific, but that image is just stereotypical. Believe me, it can be a lot worse than simply dealing with a whole load of pain. Don’t get me wrong, that version of hell is horrific… but I’d gladly swap that eternity with mine.  You see, hell is personalised to you, hell delves into your thoughts and unlocks your deepest and darkest fears, your flaws, and your nightmares. It turns these into reality, the most horrific and twisted kind of reality you could imagine. You relive this reality over and over and over. I’m going to describe my own version of hell to you, seen as though I cannot know for sure what others have experienced. Throughout my life I was a criminal, I have robbed many banks in my time. I have even murdered a few people in the process, not that I wanted to – they simply got in the way. There was something about stealin...

FLIGHT INTO THE FUTURE In 1935, Air Marshal Sir Victor Goddard of the British Royal Air Force had a harrowing experience in his Hawker Hart biplane. Goddard was a Wing Commander at the time and while on a flight from Edinburgh, Scotland to his home base in Andover, England, he decided to fly over an abandoned airfield at Drem, not far from Edinburgh. The useless airfield was overgrown with foliage, the hangars were falling apart and cows grazed where planes were once parked. Goddard then continued his flight to Andover, but encountered a bizarre storm. In the high winds of the storm’s strange brown-yellow clouds, he lost control of his plane, which began to spiral toward the ground. Narrowly averting a crash, Goddard found that his plane was heading back toward Drem. As he approached the old airfield, the storm suddenly vanished and Goddard’s plane was now flying in brilliant sunshine. This time, as he flew over the Drem airfield, it looked completely different. The hangars looked like...

For years and years things seemed to be fine, and at worst, she was a controversy in the public eye. It was true, yes, that Sil would be the cause of many to lose their jobs, their careers, and their livelihoods, but she became the next logical step in society. It was inevitable. I thought that when she was implemented she would help the world function in ways that people could only dream of. I made Sil, and Sil made that dream a reality. Sil was not a commercial product to be used to make a car or sell groceries. She was a form of infrastructural government meant to help the people, but she was not a mere science project for one specific task. She was an artificially intelligent entity designed to handle multiple tasks of a city or large town’s operation, and she was designed to learn from the environment in order to make the area more efficient. She had been through numerous tests in small, “home made” environments, simulations and the like to ensure her correct operation. Even afte...