Worthing Flash

By Garry Engkent [ Prologue: This is a true story—okay, not quite. I changed a few facts and details even though my therapist suggested the whole truth and nothing but the truth as a kind of confessional to ease the stress. “Confession is good for mental health.” I insisted on not giving real names, not in first person. Just Tom, Dick and Harry. To give some distance, perspective. My female therapist sighed. It has been a tough six months for both of us here in the institute .] On a Wednesday, he killed his three closest friends—violently, mercilessly, deliberately. Why? Twenty years ago, he and his buddies played a childish game on an old woman. “Hey, your shoelace is undone,” he said, pointing down at her shoes. Automatically, the old lady looked down. “Made you look!” he laughed, and his pals joined in to humiliate the white-haired woman more. When this trick was played, many times before with his friends taking turns, the tricked person looked embarrass...

Darkness My Old Friend It’s only a shadow on the wall, but it makes the hairs on Carrie’s arms rise. She wakes from a nightmare, just in time, as one does when the chase is on and you’re the prey, and she can’t drop off back to sleep. She goes downstairs to get a glass of milk and check out the shadow. She lives alone in the woods and enjoys the dark. It feels primitive. Makes fear scintillating. Spawns bogeymen. She never locks her doors. Makes no sense, since all an intruder has to do is bust a window on the first floor. No burglar alarms either. If some fool is that desperate, come on in! She makes her way down the stairs, half asleep, half on instinctive alert, and again spots the shadow, sliding across the fridge like a smudge. Forget the milk. She slips silently outside. The night is warm, and she knows her way around as well outside as in. She tiptoes down the hill toward the creek, to the clearing she created as a meditation space. Leaves underfoot are damp, mu...

They barely fell in love, and she disappeared. He searched for her for months, frantic with despair. One night he got unlucky - a vampire caught him. The young knight managed to kill it but was bitten and became a bloodsucker. He wandered around the world and kept looking for his beloved. Then he found her, and she was dead too. She decided to remain on Earth as a ghost. Love was more important than eternal peace. Vampires are immortal. The knight went to the settlement and allowed people to kill him with a stake.. Together they went to the other side. Christopher T. Dabrowski https://krzysztoftdabrowsk.wixsite.com/krzysztoftdabrowski https://www.instagram.com/krzysztof.t.dabrowski/ https://www.facebook.com/Krzysztof-T-Dąbrowski-166581686751600/ Note about the author: Books in USA: "Escape" (2019 - Royal Hawaiian Press), "Anomaly" (2020 - Royal Hawaiian Press), "A Monsters Pretending to be Human" (2024 - Alien Buddha Press), "Dest...

Pale. Wide-eyed. Troglodytesque we step into silence. The silence, thick and heavy. A curtain. An intermission until it begins again. Begin again it will the howling, rattling, crashing, banging, clanking destruction. The wind’s revenge. Its revenge will subdue us for a heartbeat, then we will forget until the curtain rises.         by Dorcas Wilson