The Novella Life of Illuscia Nester Himawari

  That's what Josh, my best friend, asked me one night while we were camping in the woods. "Seriously? Is this another story you made up, Josh?" asked Sue skeptically. "No, no, this story is 100% true. Seriously, you've never heard of it?" I shrugged my shoulders in denial. Josh loved telling stories. Especially the urban legends he'd read on the Internet. Most likely he'd prepared a dozen of them in advance for the night. "The story begins one late night in the forest where we are," Josh began seriously. I smiled out of the corner of my mouth, and exchanged a glance with Sue, who knew as well as I did that, now that he was off and running, there was no stopping him. "Milly was a high-schooler like the three of us, and ever since she was a little girl, she'd been picked on by the other kids. You see, Milly was different from the others. She always kept to ...

    I got a doll for my birthday. She looked just like me. Same brown hair, same blue dress I wore. Mommy said she found her at an old shop and knew I’d love her. I named her Lily. Lily was fun at first. We had tea parties and I told her secrets. But then, weird things happened. I’d leave Lily on the chair, but find her on my bed later. “Maybe you forgot you moved her,” Mommy said. But I knew I didn’t. One night, I heard a noise. Like tiny feet walking. I peeked from under my covers and saw Lily sitting on my desk, but her eyes were looking at me. It made my heart beat really fast. Next day, I put Lily in the closet. I didn’t want to play with her anymore. She made me feel strange. But when I came back from school, she was sitting on my bed again. Her smile looked different, bigger. I told Mommy, but she just laughed. “Lily’s just a doll,” she said. Then, the scariest thing happened. It was night, and the moon w...

    I used to know a girl called Mistletoe. “My parents thought it'd be cute to name me that as a nod to their first kiss,” she always joked. “Shame they didn't realise mistletoe is a parasite that literally sucks the life out of its host.” Understandably, she went by Miz . The day Miz disappeared started like any other. My hometown had humble beginnings as a handful of shabby buildings erected in a Sherwood Forest clearing. Centuries later there are rows of terraced housing, small businesses and the forest has receded. There are still pockets of ancient woodland within walking distance though and, with only five TV channels and the internet still in its infancy, these woodlands were where we spent most of the summer holidays back when we were kids. At first they were just hangouts to trade Pokémon cards and build dens. But when we got older The Trees (as we came to call our favourite spot) was a great place to drink...

  Have you heard of the Cinnamon challenge? I bet some of you have. Or at least a version of it. The version most people are familiar with is this trend from a long time ago where you eat a spoonful of raw cinnamon powder and swallow it. Apparently, the rough powder causes immediate coughing and wheezing. It’s almost guaranteed that you can’t keep it down. The real challenge is actually kind of dangerous. It was on New Years day this year that my family asked me if I wanted to try it for myself. It sounds stupid but you can’t imagine how excited I was to try it. I didn’t really know what the challenge was at first. I looked it up on my phone as soon as my dad brought it up to me. One thing you should know, before I finish telling you what happened, is that I’m the youngest child in my family. I have two older brothers and a really mean older sister. You would think that I would get attention from our parents since I’m th...

  A few years have passed since I moved out of my parents' house to stand on my own two feet. While most things were difficult to manage at the beginning of my independent life, I now do them in my sleep. a daily, weekly, even yearly routine that has always worked and there's not much that can break it. except when you realize sooner or later that the perfect life you've supposedly built isn't so perfect after all. For example, when you realize that the monthly costs are too high to put any significant money aside and it will probably be difficult to pay off your student loan. and when the tax authorities come knocking at your door for a tax audit, you really realize what it means to be an adult. some time ago i was in a terrible crisis because i had massive debts that i couldn't pay and my mother also died. and as i was an only child and my father died when i was a child, my mother was the last person i could c...

  I've always been afraid of being attacked on the street at night. Despite years of working in a bar, and coming home late around midnight, this fear had never left me. The pay was lousy and the boss forbade employees to park their cars in the parking lot reserved for customers. So every night, I had to walk alone for several minutes to my car parked a little further away. One day, as I was talking to one of my friends, she told me about this application. "Don't you know this app? It's called "Are you being followed?" or AYBF for short. Basically, the app detects the waves of nearby cell phones, and if the algorithm notices that a signal is following you, the app sends you a notification," she explained. "Some say it also detects ghosts and "supernatural" creatures that give off particular waves, but I think that's bullshit to attract views on Tik-Tok," she added. ...

  I can't explain it, but the butterflies seem to know where the bodies are. I've been a park ranger since I was eighteen, and after five years, I really can't imagine doing anything else. I was in the scouts when I was younger, and I've been an avid hiker all my life. Time spent in the woods is time well spent, and the ability to work there every day is honestly a dream come true. Being a park ranger, you see your fair share of bodies in the woods. People come out here to hike and swim and forget that there are things here that will kill you. They run afoul of animals, they get sucked under in the rapids, they don't pack enough food or water, or they just get lost and aren't found till someone chances upon them. Spring two thousand twenty-three was the year that we got some help from the butterflies. It started with the death of Angel Myers, but it certainly didn't end there. Angel Myers was w...

    When I came home from work and saw the package on the front porch, I was filled with an irrational flood of joy. You would have thought I had received something spectacular, and, to me, I had. I had been waiting five days for Amazon to send this package, and as I brought it inside and cut the tape, I couldn't wait to see how it looked. Reaching into the buffer pads, I pulled out not a game or a new Funco Pop, but a single light bulb in a package that seemed bigger than it should have needed to be. Not just any lightbulb, however, but one of those color-changing LED light bulbs. I had seen them on TikTok and thought they looked cool. They would go through a whole spectrum of colors, thanks to the little remote they came with, and I thought the whole operation looked very soothing. I liked to watch people lay in bed as the colors shifted, and I thought it might help my recent mood. I'd been experiencing some he...

  The first time it happened, I didn't think much of it. I had left my house for work in the morning, just as I always did, and when I got home that night... my yucca plant was gone. The second time it happened, I honestly assumed it was my wife. Again, I had left my house for work in the morning, and when I got home that night... my umbrella was gone. But then I remembered, that my wife had left the house earlier than me that day, and got home after me. In addition to the fact that, it wasn't even supposed to rain. The third time it happened, well... is when I started to get suspicious of the bizarre disappearances, and began to wonder whether something... else was going on inside my home. Yet again, I had left my house for work in the morning, and when I got home that night, lo and behold... my record player was gone. In all three instances, no matter where I looked for the lost items around the hou...