An Incomplete List Of Unsettling Short Stories I Read In Textbooks

the implications of this poem by Maggie Smith from her book Good Bones, astonishing

did it work

OFF is one of those games whose entire legacy is built around its swag. like mechanically it's not really a great game but it deserves to be a cult classic rpg because the swag is insurmountable

what is HAPPENING

Traffic

On Sunday, a lambent crevice opened up in the street outside my house. By Tuesday, birds were flying into it.

“I probably won’t miss you,” my mother said. “I’m only interested in the end of the world,” I replied.

Many find it difficult to breathe without the atmosphere, but we knew how; we just stopped breathing.

We’re at the Moonlight All-Night Diner, and they’re serving up fruit from the plants growing out of the waitress. The closed sign whispers, “Please, don’t touch me.”

We watch bodies fall to the ground outside like deep sea creatures surfacing. You turn to me and ask, “Do you ever think about suicide?” I look away from you and close my eyes, eat the raspberries to confuse the blood in my mouth.

Now you’re in the only car in the parking lot at midnight and you’re watching me throw stones at the moon which hangs low in the sky so that he can look into your house. Your sister tried to touch him from her window once, and he flinched.

Now he and the oceans watch her with a quiet concern. The lilac sky is trying to rest her head on his shoulder, all trees gradually growing through her.

A hummingbird whispers to you, “Be careful. Under her dress is her skin,” and then builds his nest in the middle of the highway.

I look back to you, and you close your eyes

-Katherine Ciel

Welcome to Night Vale Episode 20 - "Poetry Week"

Poster I did for fun

Love is a shambling thing, gray-faced and gasping.

It moves in from the west, the setting sun behind it. Those who see it avert their eyes.

Love stumbles and shutters, Love grasps but is not grasped. It sees a man, and the man does not look away.

Love reaches out a gray hand.

The man touches the hand just lightly, just on the palm, and the man feels heat inside of him. His heart is on fire.

This is not a metaphor.

His heart is on fire and so, soon, is his skin, his hair, his teeth become more and more visible as his face shrinks and melts away.

Love watches dispassionately. Love does not love what it does, Love only does it. Love does not have eyes and neither, now, does the man.

Love is a shambling thing.

It climbs through a window into an infant’s bedroom.

When one of the mothers comes in to check on her baby son, there is love, too, in the crib, curled up inside him.

Love murmurs, and the baby spits restlessly. The baby does not burn, the baby will eventually burn, but by then he will not be a baby.

The woman looks down at the ghastly form of Love curled up beside her son and she thinks, “What have I done?” She cries, not because she is happy or sad, but because that is what her body needs to do next.

Love rises from the crib and passes her without a glance.

Love is a shambling thing. It shambles out of her home.

Love, with skin that peels and pops and joints that moan and snap, climbs to the top of a tall building and surveys its surroundings. So many people.

It opens its mouth. Its teeth are the only part of its body that look new and healthy.

It has so many teeth...

It yelps and howls, an inarticulate sermon of lost and loss, and everyone hears it. They hear it as a shudder in their stomach and hitch in their step.

Love does not eat or drink, love separates its many teeth and consumes.

Love is a shambling thing, grey-faced and gasping.

It moves out to the east, the night drawing closed behind it. Those who see it avert their eyes.

am taking perverse pleasure in reminding people it's 2025. that's a star trek year. silly little science fiction number. except it's happening, and DANG ain't it underwhelming!