The Novella Life of Illuscia Nester Himawari

You might think that the most terrifying things about Australia are the spiders, or the snakes, or the fact that most of us don’t own guns. But in all honesty, those aren’t scary things to most of us. You get used to it. Oh, great, a redback, I’ll swat it with a shoe. Oh, great, a snake in my toilet, better call the snake catcher (we have a local one where I live, he’s very busy). As for the guns, well. I’ve never needed one. In actuality, the scariest thing about living in Australia is the silence. I live pretty far out of the way, in a teensy little inland town in Queensland. I used to live in a rural town (still only about 5,000 people there), and what really gets me about living further in is how fucking quiet it gets. You stand outside on a summer night in 35 degree heat and you won’t hear a peep. You might hear a cricket, maybe. Or a bird. But mostly you won’t hear anything. Just the empty, empty quiet of the land. You probably know where this story is going, if you’ve seen Wolf ...

The elevator door opened and I stepped out. The lights were out, for some reason. My apartment unit was somewhere further down, near the end. It was a walk I had taken so often, every single day, without even thinking. But never in the dark. I began walking, eyes turning involuntarily to each passing doorway. Then I heard it. Scraping. Dragging. And a noise that I convinced myself, oh so hard, was due to an old air-cond unit starting up. Until I saw it. Emerging from the doorway. Hollow eyes. A flayed mask for a face. Ruined, fingerless hands, reaching forward. And oh so much blood. I had stumbled back two steps, nearly falling over, before the reptile brain kicked in and I sprinted for the elevator. Behind, I heard it croaking. And the scraping. Dragging itself after me. I didn’t look back. I punched the elevator button over and over and over. Scrape Then, mercifully, the doors opened, flashing a ray of light into the hallway. I dashed in, hitting the wall, nearly weeping in relief....

Philip started the video clip as soon as Rose closed the door to the editing bay. Charlie Clark, the newly elected President’s head speech writer moved on screen. He was familiar to the small group in the sound-proof room; he had worked at their news station for three years before taking his current position in November of 2016. He was dressed nicely and spoke eloquently enough, but his hands betrayed his nerves. He kept running fingers through his hair, straightening his tie, and sipping water. “…and, unlike the President, I can say whatever I want,” Charlie quipped onscreen to the laughter of the assembled journalists. “But seriously, the goal of a speech writer is not to tell the President how he feels – we are not in danger of running the world accidentally – it’s to put the President’s feelings, the feelings he was elected to have, into the perfect words. “Say the President is fuming over a human rights violation. The President is human, he’s allowed to be angry. In fact, he’s so ...

What are nightmares? We all have them. I know why everybody has those messed up dreams that they want to get out of. It’s not something but someone. I will tell you who makes and controls your nightmares. It is based on what type of gender you are. If you are a girl, your nightmare is a girl. On the other hand, if you are a guy, your nightmare is a guy. The creepiest and unsettling part about it is that he or she is you. Well it’s actually not you. It looks like you, but you can’t see it because our dreams are in first person. He or she has your same hair, nose, hands, everything except your eyes. No your eyes are not cut out or anything. Your eyes actually have no pupils that are just blank, white eyes. But read and listen very closely because I will tell you something about how the nightmare takes over your dreams. They know where you are going to sleep at. How? Well when you wake up, they follow you all day trying to figure a way to creep you out. When you go to bed it’s above you, ...

When I was twelve, I came to the conclusion that everyone in the world, including my own family, was against me. I was never a problem child, but my parents sure treated me like one. For example, I used to need to be home by 5:00pm every day. This clearly restricted my amount of “play time” outdoors. I wasn’t allowed to have friends over to play at the house, nor was I allowed to go over anyone else’s. I had to finish homework directly after I came home from school, no matter how long it took. My parents refused to buy me video games and forced me to read books and then  write a book report on them  to prove I actually read it! Now, even though those rules listed above were quite frustrating to me as a child, they aren’t what upset me most. What really hurt me was the lack of compassion on behalf of my parents. My mother was a bitter woman who always made me feel guilty of accidents or mistakes I’ve made. My father only knew one emotion: frustration. The only time h...

I run a niche online shop called Pulled Threads. You may have heard of it if you’re into the Deep Web. It’s a second-hand store that only sells things people have died in. Some call it sick. Macabre. Unethical. I agree. But I also find it so damn fascinating. It’s a way of remembering someone, of carrying a torch through to the next generation. You get to wear their legacy. Pants, shirts, jackets. Accessories, too, like watches and ties, belts and shoes. No underwear, socks, or hospital gowns. And definitely no baby clothes, that’s just depressing. The majority of the items come from people who died of natural causes. You know, old fashioned clothes from old people. Tweed, corduroy. Lots of pajamas. A few work clothes, like coveralls and uniforms (army, fire, police). Sometimes people kill themselves and leave donation instructions in their suicide notes. Car accidents are another source. And, of course, murders. Each item comes with an envelope. I call it the Proof Pouch. Inside is (i...

It’s hard to tell where to begin, so I’ll just begin with me, and my friend. We’re spelunkers. I don’t know if you could call us ‘professional’ spelunkers, but we’ve done some of the pretty insane things you see on National Geographic or Discovery or whatever. Y’know, like squeezing through caves hundreds of meters down in the darkness, or doing cave diving, where you put on scuba gear and go through flooded and underwater caves. I’ve seen some pretty breathtaking things, but nothing like what I’ve come to tell you about now. I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m Collin, and my partner is Craig. We’re just twenty-somethings with crappy jobs who are always looking for a new ‘fix’, a new place to discover. I think we were drawn to caves because, unlike mountains, nobody yet knows what’s the biggest challenge, or what’s the best cave. We all know about Carlsbad or Mulu, but unlike Everest or K2, we don’t know if Carlsbad is one of the biggest caves. You never know when you’re going to stumble ...

Many of you probably know what sleep paralysis is, and if you have ever experienced it you know how terrifying it can be. But for you folks who don’t know what sleep paralysis is I shall tell you in a vague way. Sleep paralysis is closely linked to lucid dreaming, but instead of a dream its actually happening. It is when your mind wakes up, but your body is still asleep, therefore causing you to feel paralyzed, as you cannot move anything due to it not being awake. Now that is sorta creepy on its own, but what makes it even worse, is when this happens, you tend to hallucinate both visually and auditory. On very rare occasions people get something funny like a group of penguins stumbling upon each other (just a random example), but almost every time what you hallucinate is terrifying. People often refer it to a very bad trip on some form of Hallucinogenic or Psychedelic. So if you have ever experienced that you can sorta relate. Now to my story… If I remember correctly I was around 11 y...

"You’re not even trying. Again!" My calloused hands dance across the keyboard. A finger slips and the piano groans. "Your father would be ashamed. Again!" My blurred vision falls from the yellowed sheet music to the faded ivory. I miss another note. "Faster. Again!" I stumble once more as the tempo increases. She rises from the bench. “Absolutely worthless. You’re done for today.” I hang my head in shame. I know what’s coming. The floorboards creak as Mother returns from the kitchen. I wince. It’s hard enough to play with three fingers. It’ll be even harder with two. By reddit user  whiteddit

This is a personal experience and I haven’t really talked about it since it happened. Before I go on, I want to say that there’s no way my cats did this since my room was well below 0 degrees Celsius at night since it wasn’t insulated and had holes in the walls. They stayed upstairs where it was habitable. A while ago, I had this dream where I was looking at myself from above my body. That’s not unusual for me, and I watched myself sleep on a bed that wasn’t mine. There wasn’t anything in the dream besides the bed and myself, but there wasn’t a darkness or emptiness surrounding me either, it was just vast nothingness. Pretty abruptly, I was surrounded by this incredibly dark purple with lighter spots that weren’t exactly spots, more like where light comes in when you peek through blinds. 6 human-ish figures with cloaks were on each side of the bed, with another, larger figure at the foot. They never moved. They just hurt me by wanting to, as in they wanted me to have a giant gash in my...

I woke up Monday morning with a little bit of a tickle in the back of my throat. We’re all familiar with that wonderfully non-specific symptom that can mean you have a cold or are suffering from allergies or you’re going to die next week. I assumed it was my seasonal allergies acting up so I started my Monday off with a heaping helping of antihistamines. They didn’t end up working and I resigned myself to becoming sick with something truly awful sooner rather than later. I could only hope that I got better quickly because I was unreasonably busy at work. Those TPS reports weren’t going to file themselves. On Tuesday I tried to ignore it the best I could but I could feel this growing, throbbing pain beginning to accompany the nearly constant tickling. I tried to cough it out but had no luck. I began to think it was a sinus infection which was just wonderful. I usually get one or two a year but apparently this was my lucky year because it was number 3. As I sat at my desk I vaguely wonde...

Have you seen the ghost of John? Long white bones and the rest all gone Ooh,ooh-ooh-oh, oh, oh Wouldn’t it be chilly with no skin on? --:-- Behind folklore and legend, lies truth. Sometimes it is pretty truth. Sometimes it is partial truth. Sometimes it is ugly truth. Many folk songs have ugly, disturbing truth hidden behind their seemingly innocuous facade. Consider the nursery rhyme, “Rock-a-bye baby.” It starts out nice enough: “Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetop When the wind blows, the cradle will rock” And then it turns subtly sinister. “If the bow breaks, the cradle will fall and down will come baby, cradle and all” Death. It finds its way into even the most innocent things. It’s woven into the very fabric of life; the one thing that every person on earth will experience at one point or another is DEATH. I tell you this story, not because I want to, but because I have to. You see, some curiosities are better left unresolved. As the old adage goes, “Curiosity killed the cat.” O...

A laptop computer was found in the city sewers on Monday, April 22nd of 2013, after screams were heard echoing from below. As far as authorities could tell, there was no owner. All picture files on the hard drive were corrupted, and forensics failed to reconstruct all but one of them. The reconstructed photo partially revealed a terrified man in his late teens or early twenties, and some sort of face behind him. Analysts have disputed whether or not that actually is another face, or simply image noise created as a result of the reconstruction of the photo. Apart from the single image, all that remained on the laptop was a cryptic word file left open, unsaved. Some see this as the suicide note of a deranged lunatic. Others see it as a prank. All that is known for sure is that over the past three months, there have been over twenty disappearances, all leaving no trace. ********** I just hope I can finish this. I need to tell it. I can’t NOT tell it. But I don’t have time to ...