Fire Belly Newts (15) : Pranks are common this time of year, and what’s funnier than a little arson? A lot of things, actually, but for some reason there are frequent reports of small fires being set and abandoned all throughout the city. Most of the time, these fires burn out before causing much damage, but things are escalating and it’s only a matter of time before things start getting dangerous–especially with how dry it’s been, and all these dead, fallen leaves. But, it’s worse than just flammable debris. Sometimes, there are small patches of boiled pavement. Melted metal–guardrails, lamps, fire hydrants. Destruction is rampant, and no one knows why. But you do. You saw one of them. A foot long, black newt, with a bright-red belly that glowed brightly when it spat up real, liquid flame right in front of you. Lava pooled from its round little belly, ignited like a match to oil. It darts through alleys and storm drains, too fast to catch. At least you tried.
The scent of smoke came first—faint at first, but sharp enough to sting the back of her throat as she walked home through the quiet streets. Howick slowed, slipping her phone from her pocket to check the time. Past ten. Too late for kids playing with sparklers, too early for the midnight crowd that tended to spill from the bars down on West Street. She frowned and glanced up. The orange flicker at the end of the block wasn’t the soft, steady glow of a streetlamp. It was alive—erratic, dancing, wrong.
She hesitated at the corner, the edge of her coat brushing her knees as the night breeze shifted. The city had been full of rumors lately—arsonists, vandals, “fire pranks,” as the local news so casually called them. Except pranks didn’t melt metal, or leave perfect circles of charred ground in alleyways. The thought made her shoulders tense. Her instincts prickled, that low, uneasy hum that whispered this isn’t natural.
Curiosity won out over common sense. She stepped forward.
As she neared, the smell thickened, acrid and chemical, tinged with something almost… earthy. Like scorched soil after rain. Her boots scuffed to a halt a few feet from the source: a puddle of something that shimmered faintly under the streetlight, viscous and black-red like cooling magma. She crouched, squinting at it—but before she could reach out, it moved.
The puddle rippled. Then, from its center, something small and slick slithered out—a creature, no longer than her forearm, black as pitch and gleaming like oil. Its belly glowed from within, molten orange and red, pulsing in rhythm with its quick, reptilian breaths. A newt. Or something like one.
Howick’s breath hitched. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she whispered, straightening slowly. Her pulse drummed hard against her ribs. The thing looked at her—or at least she thought it did. Its eyes were tiny beads of ember-bright light, and when it blinked, the air shimmered with heat.
She took one cautious step back.
That’s when it opened its mouth.
A gout of flame spilled from it, real and liquid, like someone had poured gasoline through a match. The air cracked with heat. Howick threw up her arms, stumbling back as the fire splashed across the pavement, hissing and bubbling where it struck. The road blackened instantly, the surface blistering before her eyes.
And then, as quickly as it came, the blaze began to fade. The newt darted away, vanishing into a storm drain with a sharp hiss and a final flick of its burning tail. Silence rushed in behind it, the kind of silence that rings in your ears after something too loud.
For a long moment, she could only breathe—shallow, shaky, tasting ash on her tongue. Then she straightened, exhaling through her nose, forcing her heartbeat to slow. Her gaze lingered on the drain’s shadowed mouth.
“Guess that answers what’s been starting the fires,” she murmured, voice steady despite the adrenaline thrumming beneath her skin.
She slipped her phone back into her pocket, eyes narrowing.
Whatever that thing was, it wasn’t natural. And if it was loose in the city…
“Well,” she said softly, turning on her heel, “I suppose I’ll have to find you again.”]
Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2025 10:18 am
(S) The Silverfish Message
Quote:
Silver Tongues (14) : What a shame, to open a book–an old favorite, an antique, something new–just to find the pages absolutely destroyed. A silverfish–or several–scurry away, so you know what caused the damage. But you don’t understand how. This isn’t just senseless, random destruction–if you look at the pages, they’ve chewed out messages. Maybe they’ve eaten the words right off the page, leaving only a few to spell out a cryptic message–or maybe they’ve eaten holes in the page to spell out something. It’s too precise to be random but it seems impossible, both for the precision and the intention. What kind of message could a bug want to leave you–and why?
The first sign that something was wrong came from the smell.
Books weren’t supposed to smell like that. Not the crisp, warm dust and faint sweetness of paper and glue—this was sharp, like wet wood left too long in the dark. Howick frowned as she flipped the lock and stepped fully into the little secondhand shop. The air was thick, humid, the kind of damp that made her curls cling to her temples.
She’d been coming here for years. The old woman who owned the place rarely said much, but she always saved things for Howick—first editions, out-of-print histories, forgotten atlases with penciled notes in the margins. It was her sanctuary. Tonight, though, the shop was empty. The counter was unattended. The bell over the door had barely finished jingling before silence swallowed the room.
Howick made her way between the shelves, the familiar creak of the wooden floorboards grounding her. “Hello?” she called softly. No answer. Only the faint sound of dripping water somewhere toward the back.
That’s when she saw it—the stack of books on the table by the window. Or what was left of them.
At first, she thought they’d been burned; the edges were ragged, the pages curled and torn. But when she got closer, she realized it wasn’t fire damage at all. Each book looked *hollowed out,* as if something had eaten through them from the inside.
Her stomach turned. The paper had been chewed into thin lace, so delicate that even her breath made the pages tremble. And then—movement.
A flash of silver darted beneath one of the covers. Then another.
“Silverfish,” she whispered. She’d seen them before, of course, tiny glimmers in the dark corners of her apartment, but never like this. There were too many. Dozens of them, maybe hundreds, slipping between the mutilated pages like quicksilver threads. The sight made her skin crawl.
She crouched, bracing her hand against the edge of the table to look closer. The damage wasn’t random. The holes, the missing words—it all followed a pattern. Her eyes traced a single open page, the light from the window catching the faint shimmer of scales as another insect disappeared between the lines.
The remaining words read: **“Underneath. Look.”**
A chill worked its way down her spine.
Howick hesitated only a moment before carefully lifting the ruined book. Beneath it, the table’s surface had been scraped raw. Lines carved into the wood formed a faint crescent shape—almost like a symbol. Fresh, too; the edges of the grooves still caught the light.
She exhaled slowly, pulse steady but heavy in her chest. The silverfish were gone now, melted into shadow as silently as they’d come.
“This can’t be real,” she murmured, though she didn’t quite believe her own voice.
She straightened slowly, the ruined book still in her hands. The shop was silent again—too silent.
The faint crescent carved into the wood caught the light just once before fading back into shadow.
Howick exhaled, steadying her breath. “Right,” she murmured, setting the book down. “That’s… not normal.”
She glanced once more toward the shelves, half-expecting to see the silverfish return. Nothing. Just stillness.
With a final look at the carved table, she whispered, almost to herself, “I’ll come back in the morning.”
Then she turned and left, the doorbell’s chime echoing like a heartbeat in the dark.
Oh, Rats (7) : Destiny City is a metropolis, of course there are rats. This is not new, not unusual. Fat little rodents scrounging amongst the abundant scraps of the city are expected. What’s not expected is how destructive they’ve suddenly become. It’s not for a lack of food, there’s still plenty of that. They look like normal rats, but they aren’t stopped by walls, wires, or even steel. They gnaw through everything. Plastic, wood, metal–nothing can stop them. They’ll destroy anything. Pipes, doors, walls, fences. They come and go in a matter of minutes, or hours. Could you chase them away if they came after you? …Would you risk them chewing through you?
Posted: Tue Oct 21, 2025 9:45 pm
(S) The Endless Night
Quote:
There and Back Again (10) : The hallway looked like it belonged there, maybe even felt like it had always been. There was nothing immediately disarming about it, except perhaps for one flickering light. But, you’ve been here enough times to know that this place is strange–foreign. It’s not supposed to be here. Or, did you really just miss it, all this time? Well, it’s here now. Why not investigate? The hallway stretches on. And on. And on. And the worst part is, you don’t even realize how long you’ve been walking until you turn around and there’s nothing behind you but an endless hallway. Maybe there is furniture, or decorations, or doors that never open, but there doesn’t seem to be any end to this hallway in either direction. You’re stuck here, under the harsh lights that buzz loudly around you. Maybe it feels like a moment passes, maybe an eternity–eventually, if you keep walking, you reach the end–and you’re right back to where you started, and it’s like no time at all has passed. The hallway is gone–but the hum of electric lights vibrates in your ears for hours after the experience.
Jelani almost didn’t notice the hallway at first. It wasn’t supposed to be there—she knew this building too well for something like that to escape her attention. And yet, there it was, stretching out in front of her as if it had always existed, blending so perfectly into the rest of the architecture that it felt natural. Familiar, even.
One of the lights overhead flickered, buzzing faintly. The sound crawled beneath her skin, but curiosity tugged stronger than unease. She hesitated only a moment before stepping forward.
The air changed as soon as she crossed the threshold—cool, stale, humming faintly with electricity. The walls were plain, the floor polished but scuffed in the center from what looked like years of footsteps. There was no reason for the hallway to feel wrong. And yet, something in her chest tightened with every step she took.
It went on longer than it should have. Far longer.
She glanced behind her once, expecting to see the doorway where she’d entered. It was gone. Only more hallway stretched in both directions, identical and unending.
Jelani’s pace quickened. The silence between the buzzing lights pressed in on her until she thought she could hear her own heartbeat echoing back. Every few meters there was a door—some numbered, some blank, some so worn that the paint had peeled away entirely. She tried one. Locked. The next. Locked. When she reached for a third, the handle twitched beneath her fingers as if someone on the other side had grabbed it at the same moment. She jerked back, pulse racing, but nothing followed.
“Hello?” Her voice sounded strange here—muted, like the air itself swallowed it before it could travel.
The hum answered her. Nothing else.
Minutes—hours—she couldn’t tell which passed. The doors began to look different after a while. Their edges blurred, their shapes stretched unnaturally, bending into impossible angles. The hallway’s lights began to stutter, casting everything into a rapid flicker that made movement seem to crawl along the walls.
Jelani started to run.
Her footsteps echoed unevenly, like someone else was following just half a beat behind. Her lungs burned, but there was nowhere to go—no turns, no exits, no end. The air felt heavier the longer she ran until finally, she stopped. The world blinked.
And the hallway was gone.
She stood back where she’d started, staring at an empty stretch of corridor that looked as ordinary as ever. The faint hum of electricity still hung in the air, almost like an aftertaste. Jelani pressed a hand to her chest, trying to steady her breathing. Her phone buzzed—it was only 3:00 AM. Ten minutes had passed.
But the sound didn’t fade. Even hours later, she could still hear it—the same low, persistent hum that had filled the hallway.
Sometimes, late at night, she swears she sees that flickering light again. Just for a second. Long enough to remind her that the hallway is still there. Waiting.
All the Wrong Places (11) : Your GPS keeps glitching. It doesn’t matter what app you use. It doesn’t matter if you walk, drive, or bike. You’ll be given the correct address, but the directions always take you somewhere else–somewhere you don’t want to be. No matter what address you type in, the directions always take you to the same place–and it isn’t even always obvious that’s where you’re headed until you arrive there. Again, and again, and again. You don’t want to be here. But something does.
It started with a glitch—or at least that’s what Jelani thought. Her GPS had frozen mid-route, the bright blue line stuttering across the screen before rerouting completely. She’d been heading downtown, a route she could have driven with her eyes closed, but somehow, the directions took her somewhere entirely different.
At first, she laughed it off. Phones glitched all the time. Maybe the signal had dropped. But when it happened again the next night—and again the next day—she stopped laughing.
No matter where she wanted to go, the map always guided her to the same place: an empty field on the outskirts of Destiny City. It wasn’t even marked on any map. The road wound past old warehouses, down cracked pavement lined with trees that seemed to lean in just a little too close, and then opened up to that same patch of grass. A single lamppost stood in the middle, its dull light flickering against the night sky.
Every time she arrived, the GPS voice would announce cheerfully, “You’ve reached your destination.”
She didn’t remember typing in that address. She didn’t even know it existed.
After the third time, she tried everything she could think of. She deleted and redownloaded the apps. She borrowed her friend’s phone. She even tried using an old paper map for good measure. But the results were always the same. Somehow, no matter what street she turned onto, no matter what destination she entered, she always ended up at that field.
It wasn’t even obvious when the shift happened. She’d start her drive on a familiar road—the old stone bridge by the park, the corner café that stayed open until midnight—and then, somewhere along the way, things would go quiet. The traffic noises faded. The streetlights spaced themselves farther apart. The buildings thinned. And before she could realize how far she’d gone, she’d be there again.
That field. That light. That silence.
“Recalculating,” her GPS would chime softly, as if amused.
Jelani didn’t know why she kept going back. Maybe she wanted to understand it, to prove that it was just a trick of her mind. The fifth time, she parked her car and got out. The air was cold, the kind of cold that crept beneath her clothes and wrapped around her bones. Her footsteps crunched softly against the damp grass.
Then she heard it—her name.
“Jelani.”
The sound didn’t come from her phone. It came from the lamppost.
She froze. Her GPS flickered in her hand, the screen flashing random coordinates before going dark entirely. For a moment, the light dimmed, and she could have sworn she saw something standing at the base of the lamppost—a shadow, longer than it should have been, tilting its head like it was curious about her.
She ran back to her car.
When she returned home, she turned her phone off and left it that way overnight. But the next morning, as soon as she started her car, the navigation app opened on its own.
“Turn left in 200 feet,” the voice said cheerfully.
And in her rearview mirror, far behind her, she thought she saw that faint glow again—waiting.
