---

Sharon’s Note: Sometimes we see things we don’t want to believe. Sometimes, we don’t have a choice. Warning: More questions and willful ignorance.

---

After a quick look up on Social media and various web searches, we found a Ruben Cruz in the area. He was actually a professional blogger, covering subjects strange and supernatural. His second to last post was one talking about some great urban legend he was hunting for, and would post on, soon. The last post was put up by someone on his behalf Sunday morning. He was sick with a bad sinus infection, and wouldn’t be able to post for a couple days.

I’d messaged him, telling that we had hooked up Friday night, and that he might have my phone. I’d asked if he could meet me somewhere to get it back, and he’d replied instantly that he’d meet me at a nearby coffee shop in a half an hour. Excitedly, I filled Katy in, as she turned the car around. The coffee shop was in the opposite direction. She was kind of distracted, and nearly got us rear ended by the large black van behind us. One of those huge, but sleek suckers with Windows tinted so dark they were probably illegal.

“He thinks he’s having a sinus infection. Maybe he had a nose leech, like me. Maybe he knows more about it.” I was practically bouncing in my seat. Now, I might finally get some answers.

“You caught a parasite from some guy you hooked up with at a bar while drunk. Yay.” Katy’s voice was flat. She seemed thoroughly unimpressed.

“Yeah, because nose leeches are a totally normal type of STD.” I made sure she heard the sarcasm in that. “Come on, Katy! You know as well as I do that something strange is going on here. What about the leech? What about the scratch on my face. What about the thing in the mirror?”

“I never saw whatever came out of your nose or what you supposedly saw in the mirror. You probably gave yourself that scratch when you were flailing around in the car.” She said this with the surety of someone who didn’t completely believe what they were saying, but really wanted to. “You’re just exhausted. We’ll get your phone back from this guy, and then I’ll take you home to get some sleep. You’ll feel better, I promise.”

“I don’t want to sleep.” I blurted. 

“What? Why?” She asked, sparing me a glance from the road.

“Something’s waiting for me to sleep. I can feel it.” I hugged myself and stared at the dashboard. “It’s what scratched me, and what did that thing to my reflection. It’s just waiting for me to sleep again. It can only get me in my sleep.”

“Beth, you need some help.” Katy said quietly.

“Maybe.” I was equally quiet.

We got to the coffee shop, and Ruben was already waiting at the table. I recognized him from his online pictures. He looked a little scrambled, his hair in disarray, and his foot jiggling like he was impatient. I walked up to him, ready to introduce myself with Katy just behind me.

I smiled at him, and his face lit up with manic excitement. He jumped to his feet. “You’re Beth right? You saw me Friday? Awesome! Maybe you could tell me what happened to me. I don’t remember a thing.”

---

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James’s Note: This poem is inspired by old folk ballads and fantasy literature. Feel free to mentally superimpose your favorite Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings characters onto the charterers of this poem. Also, much like how you can sing any Emily Dickinson poem to the tune of “Yellow Rose of Texas”, you could sing this one to the tune of either “Iko Iko” or “Matty Groves”.

---

My Lord was decked out all in green.

Your lord was dressed in red.

Two shining hosts were gathered close

to hear what would be said

My lord was far too sharp of tongue

and hotly cursed your lord.

Your lord’s steel was sharper still;

he struck with flashing sword.

His blood flew high, lit by the sun

and before it hit the ground,

in burning wrath the armored mass

was embattled all around

I drew my great two handed sword,

as heavy as the tomb.

The honor guard, their banner charred

all fell before it’s doom.

Your lord rushed to meet my wrath,

a stunning figure made,

but the crimson lord’s fine red steel sword

was shattered by my blade.

As I went for the killing blow,

his hilt fell from his hand.

The hero red of battles dread,

spun like the wind and ran.

As he ran, he passed a horse

who’s rider had been felled.

He turned its head and on it fled,

like they were chased by hell.

Even though I bent my breast

and ran with all my might,

my heavy feet were far from fleet,

my armor far from light.

I roared out my bleeding hate

and flung my great sword round.

End over end the blade did spin

and struck him to the ground.

I drew forth my bloody blade

that struck him to the core.

He drew a breath as cold as death

and then he drew more.

The battle raged, we fought for days.

The pillage fires glowed,

until your men, these crimson kin

across the river flowed.

Now my host is shattered

and I stand the field alone.

A thousand swords that loved your lord

surround like standing stones.

I’ve lost my shield, I’ve lost my sword,

my dagger and my bow,

but any knave that thinks him brave

I’ll slay with just one blow.

I should not live if my lord dies

and so I take this stand.

Come and seek your vengeance bleak

and kill me if you can.

---

James’s Note: This is a creepy little poem I came up with while looking at a spider in the wing mirror of our car, who, for just a second, looked like he was on the other side of the mirror. Heck, maybe he was.

---

There’s a spider in the mirror 

though it sometimes tries to hide.

It’s kind of hard to see it

‘cause it’s on the other side.

You needn’t fear the spider. 

It won’t do you any harm. 

It sits and spins and guards the mirror, 

like a lucky charm.

Because, you see, the mirror

is a gateway made of glass 

and on the other side of it 

are things that want to pass.

Like the thing that looks like you

when you look in the mirror, 

and when you look away 

it tries to creep a little nearer.

Deep down you know 

those aren’t your eyes.

You know that’s not your face,

and everything about it 

seems just slightly out of place.

Flies swarm inside its empty head, 

maggots fill its eyes, 

and a thousand squirming centipedes 

writhe under its disguise.

If it dared, it’d catch you

with its countless vermin claws

and drag you through the mirror 

to it’s black and writhing maw.

Sometimes people die this way, 

sometimes the mirror wins. 

They vanish without any trace 

and are never seen again.

But you needn’t be afraid 

’cause there’s a spider in the glass.

It spins a web the demons fear

and never lets them pass.

---

James’s Note: This short story is my take on an urban fantasy detective story. I always end up being annoyed by the characters in the ones I read, so I decided to make my own. I have some plans to eventually expand this into a full novel. If you’d like to read more of the Witcher Man’s adventures, let us know in the comments or on social media.

---

I was not on fire. Considering my day so far, that’s about all I had going for me. I propped my feet up on the desk, reflecting on the list of annoyances, problems and general pains in the ass the day had brought me. This caused epic levels of annoyance in the werewolf sitting across from me.

I considered that last bit a bonus, since the werewolf in question was the largest pain in the ass so far. It wasn’t just his personality, although it was my considered opinion that he didn’t have one. It was more that I had a long standing aversion to dealing with werewolves at all. 

This owed less to the rather inconvenient maulings I had been involved in on two separate occasions and more to the fact that I considered the vast majority of them to be either insufferable bullies that needed to be taught some manners or mewling prats who liked being bullied. Neither of these are really what I consider “my sort of people”.

My interactions with them usually ended with somebody getting mauled, although only on one of the aforementioned two occasions had that somebody been me.

“Are you listening to me, Witcher Man?”, the werewolf growled. I noted that he actually did growl, which if you ask me was totally uncalled for. 

“If I say no, is there even the slightest chance you’ll stop talking?” I asked wistfully. I thought he might go into an apoplexy any moment, or at least start foaming at the mouth. His name was Damien (which I would have bet the testicle of your choice was not the name he had been born with unless his parents had been incredibly active in 60s drug culture) and he was the Beta wolf for the local pack. 

This meant he was technically the second in command but in reality he mostly served an enforcer and errand boy for the Pack’s Alpha. It also meant that he was totally unused to the kind a lip he was getting from my charming self.

Damien lunged to his feet, slamming both hands down on my desk and baring his teeth. This caused the tarantula in the terrarium on my desk to hide under it’s rock in fear. 

“You listen to me, Witcher Man. My Alpha sent me here to hire you, so that’s what I’m going to do, but don’t think for one minute that I’m going to put up with this kind of crap from anyone, let alone a meat bag like you.” 

My response to this was to yawn hugely while still reclining precariously in my office chair. I also extended my middle finger in the universal sign for live long and prosper. Or maybe it means, “Go bugger a goat”.

I always get those two mixed up.

Part 1     Part 2     Part 3     Part 4     Part 5     Part 6     Part 7     Part 8     Part 9     Part 10
Part 11    Part 12    Part 13     Part 14     Part 15     Part 16     Part 17     Part 18     Part 19
Part 20     Part 21    

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Sharon’s note: Things can always get worse. Hopefully before they get better, but life isn’t always that kind. Warning: Some language and evidence of poor life choices.

---

So, I was unemployed. 

The woman who was in charge of the college bookstore had been looking for an excuse to fire me for months. Too many Monday mornings showing up late or heavily hung over. This, as well as mysterious nose leeches, was making me seriously reconsider my life choices. 

Katy wasn’t fired, but she had been a good enough employee to have a little leeway. Perhaps I could have fought my job termination because I had gone to the hospital, but the doctor hadn’t believed me, so why would any of the school administration?

At this point, I was just procrastinating telling my parents about my job status. So, in the spirit of the rest of my college career, I was using my phone to avoid obligation. In this case, I was searching for it. 

Again, Katy was driving me. It was like she didn’t trust me not have an aneurysm while driving, or something. I let her drive me, because I didn’t trust me either. No matter what the hospital said, I was not ok. Between whatever had come out of my nose, and the thing in my nightmare that had attacked me, I hadn’t slept at all that night.

Mike’s bar was not open 24/7. They closed from four a.m. to ten a.m. We showed up at eleven, and there was already a smattering of faithful alcoholics stopping in for a lunchtime drink. The bartender was named Howie. He was an older guy who I knew and loved from my first time in the bar when I was 19, because he never checked IDs. He looked in the lost and found for me, but the phone wasn’t there. I asked him if he remembered the guy I had been with that night, on the off chance either the guy had taken it, or I had left it at his place.

Howie was not exactly a man of principle, and I was a regular who tipped well. He did remember the guy, and agreed to look for the name on the credit card receipts for me. As he went to the back, I stared at my face in the mirror  behind the bar. I usually loved that mirror. It made me think of an old timey saloon. Today I hated it, because it showed my baggy eyes and sickly pale reflection.

“I don’t think you should be focusing on your phone.” Katy sniffed disapprovingly.

“And what else should I be focusing on?” I glowered at her. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, you don’t know what’s wrong with me, so what should I do? If I find the guy I was with the night I lost time, maybe he’ll have some answers.”

“Or maybe he’ll be some kind of serial killer.” She grumbled.

“Well, that will at least be an answer.” I huffed, and turned back to my ugly reflection with a scowl.

My reflexion cocked her head, and smiled with a wink. I was most certainly not smiling, but my breathing hitched as the me in the mirror opened her mouth, and kept opening it. And kept opening it. And kept opening as her face, my face, distended into something long and thin and monstrous, screaming at me in silence.

“Shit!” I barked, pushing away from the bar.

“What?” Katy looked around for the source of my distress.

I pointed at the mirror, which in the blink of an eye had returned to normal. “You didn’t see that?”

“See what?”

---

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Sharon’s Note: Poor Beth. Nose leeches aren’t fun for anyone. To bad it gets worse. Warning: Any resemblance to an actual hospital stay is purely fictitious. Really, nurses rock!

---

The emergency room had been surprisingly busy considering it was a Monday morning. After Katy had used the master key to open the door and found me screaming and bleeding in the bathroom, she had screamed herself. Then, ever practical Katy had grabbed me and dragged me to her car and drove me to the hospital. She had called the supervisor for the school store on the way to let her know what happened.

In typical nurse fashion, no one in the ER seemed impressed by my bloody condition. After a quick chat with someone in scrubs in a side room, it was deemed that I wasn’t dying, so I had to sit in the waiting room like everyone else. I used the time to wash the blood off my face, so it wasn’t all bad. 

When I was finally called in, I was given a small, curtailed off area and a bed in the hallway. All the rooms were taken. They’d asked me lots of questions, and had me repeat my story several times. There’d been pee tests and blood tests, and once I had told them that my blackout had occurred after I had gone out drinking, they didn’t believe a word I said.

 No matter how many times I denied it, they assumed I was on some kind of drugs. In our hasty rush to the hospital, neither of us had picked up the dying leech thing. With no evidence, and no witness, since Katy had never seen the leech at all, they had no reason to believe my story. I was discharged with the politely passive aggressive advice to drink plenty of water and get out of the bed that was needed for someone else.

As Katy was driving me back to my apartment, she ranted about the hospital, about me, and about the crappy state of the universe in general. I’d known her for long enough, that the sound of her complaints was almost soothing. My eyes started drooping. I was feeling so tired and . . .

I gasped, arms flailing. My left arm stuck something, and Katy swore, slamming the breaks. Heart thudding in my chest so hard it almost hurt, I tried to breath around my sobbing. Katy pulled the car into a strip mall parking lot, which after a moment I realized was only a couple of blocks from my complex.

“What the hell, Beth?” Katy hissed at me.

“I don’t . . . don’t know. A night . . . nightmare, I guess?” My breath hitched, breaking my speech. 

“Must have been some nightmare.” I didn’t miss the vague hostility in Katy’s voice, I just couldn’t deal with it right then.

“I . . . I don’t know. It was just . . . so intense. It was dark, and there was something chasing me and . . . I think it had claws or knives and it slashed at me. . .” I raised my hand to my face, where I remembered it striking, and felt the moisture of tears. The dream had been so vivid I could still feel the sting as I touched where the thing in the dark had cut me.

“What happened to your cheek?” Katy asked, apawled.

I screwed up my face in confusion, and she pointed to my hand. I pulled it away from my cheek to look, and my throat seized in terror as my stomach turned to ice. It wasn’t tears on my fingers, it was blood.

---

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Sharon’s Note: The story continues. Warning: General grossness.

---

I opened my mouth. I think I meant to scream, but blood flooded into my mouth, gagging me. As I collapsed, I vomited, and the pain in my head started painting auras across my vision. On hands and knees, I screamed at the floor. There might have been knocking at the door, or it might have been my pulse hammering in my ears.

Collapsing on my side, I screamed again. Each noise or move I made intensified the pain. Darkness ate chunks out of the world, as the pain literally blinded me. While I couldn’t see, I could feel. Something was moving in my head, and agony followed it. It started somewhere above my right eye, and was travelling slowly down the center of my face.

Suddenly I couldn’t breath, as whatever was moving in my head lodged in my right nostril. Gasping through my mouth, I realized that the pain was lessening, so I screamed again. Suddenly, I sneezed, and whatever was lodged there shot out of my nose like a bullet. 

The pressure in my head dwindled so suddenly I almost passed out in relief. An ache remained, like someone had shoved a pencil up my nose till they poked my brain and then pulled it out again. I imagined that it felt a bit like an ice pick lobotomy. My vision cleared, and while there was blood on the floor, it looked like so much less than I felt like I had lost. 

There were splatters of black among all the red, including one big shiny one about the size of a quarter. It was actually a blob, and my aching brain slowly figured out that was what must have been inside my head, and I recoiled. Maybe I had some kind of infection or something.

“Hey, Beth?” Katy’s voice was muffled by the door, which I vaguely remembered locking. “I heard you scream. If you don’t say anything I’m coming in.”

I tried to clear my throat so I could say something, but as I did, the blob started to move. Leaning closer in morbid fascination, I watched as the blob started to unfurl. As something like a leech curled and thrashed, dying on the floor. Raising a shaking hand to my nose to touch the tacky mess that was drying there, I shrieked, “Katy!”

---

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James’s Note: This is one of my older poems. In fact, it is probably the oldest one I will admit to writing. It was born of my love of western heroes and ghost stories. It was also influenced by the couple of Texas rangers in my family line.

---

Five horses pounding thunder,
throwing dust up in the scrape.
They're riding hard for Mexico
and desperate to escape.

They had shot a Texas ranger
when they busted out of jail
and ever since they'd swear to god
there'd been someone on their trail.

Every night when they made camp
they'd shiver in their skins,
'cause in the distance they could hear
hooves pounding in the wind.

They finally made the Rio Grande.
Mexico looked safe and warm.
Then like wrath of an angry god,
there came a thunder storm.

Their horses spooked and bolted;
they threw them to the ground
and when they looked up they could see
a rider coming down.

Lightning forked behind him
like a fearsome demon's horns
and the wind was screaming murder
as he rode out of the storm.

His horse was throwing moonlight,
white fire filled his eyes,
and a golden star shown on his chest
like it had fallen from the sky.

The pair of pistols in his hands
roared liked beast from hell.
The world was filled with thunder 
and five screaming outlaws fell.

No one knows what really happened,
those outlaws were never found,
but there's a place on the Rio Grande
they say is still cursed ground.

But you can bet the scores got settled up
for each and every one
because you can't kill a ranger
with a desperado's gun.

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Sharon’s note: This is my attempt at a creepy pasta, broken into parts because . . . well, because. Warning: Some language and blood. Possibly some guts. Possibly Chuthalonic horror. I haven’t decided yet. If you like this, please leave a comment.

---

“Are you Ok?” Katy poured fake sympathy into her voice like spoiled syrup. She knew very well I had a headache, just not for the reasons she thought.

“Go to hell.” I growled, holding a glass of ice water against my forehead as I tried to leave the breakroom. 

She moved to block the doorway and prevent me from leaving. “Have you ever considered not binge drinking the night before you come to work? Maybe you were misinformed, but a hangover is not actually mandatory for coming in on a Monday.”

“Oh, really?” I put the hand not holding the water over my heart and gasped in mock surprise. “Thank you so much, Katy. I would have never have known if you hadn’t of told me. For your information, I didn’t drink at all, yesterday. I’ve had this same headache since Sunday morning. I barely slept last night.”

My coworker eyed me suspiciously, peering into my eyes as if she could catch me in a lie. Good luck with her on that. I wasn’t lying. “Did you hit your head or something?”

“I don’t know. Maybe? I did go out Friday. I had a few drinks, but not that many.” Catching the disgusted disbelief on Katy’s face, I corrected, “Not many for me. Anyway, I remember meeting this guy and a little after that, I don’t remember anything until I woke up in my apartment Sunday morning.”

Katy’s eyes went wide. “Holy crap, did he rape you?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. When I came to, I was still wearing the same clothes, and everything was still, you know, in place. I felt fine, except for this bitch of a headache.”

“He didn’t rob you or anything?” Katy hadn’t been this interested in my affairs since we’d stopped being friends. 

“My cell phone was missing.” I admitted. “He could have taken it. I also could have left it at Mike’s. It’s happened before. I’m going to swing by after school. Hopefully they found it when they were cleaning up.”

Katy hesitated for a long second before asking, “Do you need a ride?”

I laughed, then winced as it felt like someone was stabbing me between the eyeballs with an ice pick. Lacking my planned enthusiasm, I groaned, “You don’t have to come with me just to find out what happened. I’ll fill you in tomorrow, when I find out what happened.

Frowning, she thumped me in the side of my head with her index finger, and I whimpered. “You’re in no state to drive. I’ll take you.”

“You are a scholar and a gentleman.” I gave her a wan smile, and her frown deepened as she waved me away.

“Go in the back and receive those boxes we just got this morning. I’ll watch the register. Looking like that, you’d scare all the customers away.” She sulked, but I could swear there was genuine concern in her eyes.

“Bless you lady.” I went to make an exaggerated bow, but as soon as I went to lean forward, a dizzying wave of pain shot through my head. I straightened up, and slinked off to the back. Kelly laughed at my misfortune, but I couldn’t really blame her. I’d have done the same in her position.

A trickle of moisture slid onto my upper lip, and I swiped the back of my hand under my nose. It came away smeared with blood. Oh, great. I totally needed a nose bleed on top of everything else. I hooked a right to stop by the bathroom to wash my hands and hold my nose with a paper towel. The blood was trickling down in a steady stream, and I was starting to taste it. My headache intensified, and between that and the copper taste, my stomach started to churn. 

I groaned, and gripping the edge of the sink, I leaned forward to rest my forehead on the mirror. In headaches past, resting my head against the cool glass had brought relief. This time, the pain of the pressure made me yelp, and straighten up. Dizziness washed over me, and I would have fallen if not for my hold on the porcelain. My eyes fluttered open, and I beheld, among the river of red now flowing freely from my nose, there were individual threads of black.

---

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James’s Note:
This is a micro fiction inspired by the historical fact that a Victorian gentleman, a disgraced Samurai, a wild west gunslinger, and an elderly French pirate could have all lived at the same time, and possibly gone on adventures. If you would like to read more about them, leave us a comment.

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Emerson Battenburg III was sweating profusely under his top hat as his hands flew back and forth between the vault door and his roll of thief’s tools spread out before him. His lock picks twitched and jiggled inside the doors complicated mechanism.

“Sooner would be better than later, Emmy,” Cherokee Jack remarked cooly as he braced heavily against the barred door that he and the samurai, Masaski Kenshin, were vainly trying to hold shut against the battering ram being applied for the other side.

“Well , Mr. Jack, I have informed the tumblers of your haste, but they are quite rudely refusing to pop themselves open in spite of that fact,” Emerson responded, his voice prim, although his face showed intense concentration. After all, he fancied himself a proper English gentleman, and that meant never losing one’s cool.

As the door began to splinter, Masaaki took a step back and drew his katana. “Let them come. A hundred of them will die by my blade before I fall.”

Cherokee Jack rolled his eyes, and continued to brace the door. “While I would never dream of questioning your martial prowess, you will forgive me if I have no particular desire to test it.”

“If you had thought of an escape plan, we would not be currently stuck in this room, with no means of egress, trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea.” Emerson shot over his shoulder.

“While I do beg your pardon, even a stunning intellect such as myself cannot rightly think of everything,” Jack grunted, the door finally starting to give away.

“Will the two of you stop blithering, the guards are almost through,” Masaaki spat disdainfully as Jack was thrown to the ground, his cowboy hat knocked from his head, displacing the eagle feather he wore in it.

Jack didn’t bother to rise, but smoothly drew both his revolvers from where he lay.

Just as the two warriors were preparing to face down the overwhelming force of guards, the corridor outside the room was rocked by a series of explosions, forcing them to cover their ears

After a brief pause, the broken door swung open easily to admit the pirate captain, Jean-Luc La Croix, his hat perched jauntily on his long silver hair.

The old pirate quipped in his thick French accent, “I’m sorry I’m late, but you all seemed to have been having a bit of a problem. Luckily, it was nothing a few granados couldn’t solve.”

As he sashayed in, a pistol on one hip and an ornate rapier on the other, he had to step over one of the many strewn bodies that littered the corridor.

“Explosives are a coward’s weapon. It would have been more honorable to face them with your sword”, Moussaka said haughtily.

“I piss on your honor, boy. I am far too old for that nonsense. Although making men explode does give me an exquisite thirst.” Jean-Luc then proceeded to pull an enormous flask of wine from his voluminous coat and began a heroic effort to drain it.

Jack laughed aloud, rising and holstering his pistols. “I for one don’t give a damn what you piss on, I’m just glad to see you. Emmy here was just remarking how we was caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.”

La Croix scoffed in a very French way, and waved his hand dismissively. “Don’t be silly boy, I am the devil in the deep blue sea.”

The samurai seemed about to respond, when he was cut off by a loud clicking noise and Emerson’s whoop of victory.

“I’ve got it! Now if you all are done fooling about, I propose that we get what we came for and vacate these premises before more guards arrived.”

“Hell, Emmy’s got my vote,” Jack smirked, and with that, the four of them, weapons drawn, entered the vault.

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