Ethan stared up at the statue, his eyes dry and burning. No tears would come. No amount of crying could ever be enough for the guilt that rang behind them. He could hear it all again, the screaming, the explosions, the accusations, the gunshot, layered beneath the distant cheers of the crowd like a second voice mocking him.

He bowed his head and begged for it to stop as the snow melted against his face, replacing tears he could not shed. For a moment, there was nothing else. Just the wind, the sea, and the unbearable weight of what he had done.

Charlie felt the dread the moment he crossed the threshold. It pressed in on him, heavy and suffocating, like a hand closing around his throat. His heart pounded in his ears, loud and irregular, as though the house itself were listening.

For a brief, terrible moment, he considered turning back.

Then the music swelled, the lights flashed, and the feeling vanished, leaving only the certainty that something had noticed him.

This story comes from a dream that let me hold my friends again, a dream so vivid it left me weeping into morning for something that wasn’t real.

To survive, Lily learns to howl like a sheep: to mirror the laughter, mimic the cruelty, and twist her obsession into a mask that might finally make her visible.

The Maze called for blood, and two sworn rivals answered— but in its endless chambers, something deeper than death began to stir.

The walls sweat. The clocks blink out of sync. Something gurgles behind the drywall and refuses to stop.

Rose says she doesn’t want to rekindle an old flame, but she’s still making him dinner.

In a fluorescent cathedral of beige despair, a hollow man is lured toward ruin by his magnolia-scented manager, a peach-tea siren whose smile drips honey, arsenic, and the promise of unspeakable miracles behind the closet door.