The graveyard was silent, the air thick with the weight of things unsaid.

I didn’t know how I had gotten here. One moment, I was walking home, my mind drifting like a loose thread in the wind. The next, I was standing among the dead, rows of headstones stretching out beneath the cold glow of the moon.

But it wasn’t just names and dates carved into the stones.

Each one bore a final sentence.

I ...

I wake up precisely at 7:07 AM. Not 7:06, not 7:08. Seven is a lucky number, and I need all the luck I can get.

Before I step out of bed, I tap my left foot against the floor three times—one for luck, one for safety, and one to ward off anything lurking in the corners. I do the same with my right foot. Only then is it safe to stand.

The morning routine is strict. I brush my teeth with my left ha...

The café was nearly empty, the hum of the espresso machine filling the silence between them. Olivia stirred her coffee absently, though she hadn’t taken a sip in ten minutes. Across from her, Ethan scrolled through his phone, pretending to be engrossed, but his fingers hovered motionless over the screen.

The air between them was thick—charged with something unsaid, something neither of them dared...

I don’t want to stick out like a weed in a field of wildflowers.

I want to blend, to sway with the wind,

To wear petals soft enough to be admired,

To bloom where I am expected to bloom.

But the earth beneath me tells another story.

My roots are stubborn, tangled in defiance,

Stretching deep where the flowers dare not go.

The rain does not choose where it falls,

And still, I drink as if I belong.

...

Eddie had been dead for six months before he got the invitation.

It arrived in the usual way—sliding under the door of his shabby, spectral apartment in the afterlife, written in an elegant, looping script.

THE DEAD MUSICIANS’ SUPPORT GROUP

For those still adjusting to the silence

The address was scrawled at the bottom, but Eddie didn’t need to read it. He already knew. The abandoned nightclub ...

Emotions were not a right; they were a privilege.

In the Dominion, every citizen was implanted at birth with a Regulator—an intricate neural device that restricted feelings unless permission was granted by the Bureau of Emotional Stability. Happiness, anger, love, sorrow—all rationed, monitored, and distributed like rations in a war-torn world. Without clearance, any attempt to feel was met with ...

Sacrifice

Pay the price

Lose it all

Claim your vice

Sacrifice

Heed my advice

This life of nothing

Is not so nice

Sacrifice

I'll only tell you thrice

Is it worth it?

Do think twice ...

It was the beginning of the end, and the duck only confirmed what they had feared. Old town lore had always claimed that a duck on misty waters was a bad omen - one of the worst, in fact. Things had been on a downward spiral for days; the duck on the pond one foggy morning was simply the nail in the coffin. As soon as one person saw it - the water rippling as the duck glided with fluttering wings ...

The lights were too bright. That was the first thing Olivia noticed when she stepped onto the set of Perfect Match. The studio audience roared as her name echoed through the speakers. She smiled, the way they had told her to in pre-show prep, but there was something off about the whole thing. The way the host’s grin never faltered. The way the applause cut off like a switch had been flipped.

This...

(Soft static crackles in the background. A man’s voice, weathered but steady, cuts through.)

You don’t believe me, do you? None of you do. I see it in your eyes—the way you tilt your heads, the way your fingers twitch toward your radios, ready to call in a psych eval. Two years gone, and I’m the only one who came back. Of course, you don’t believe me.

But I remember everything.

I was flying rou...