Days 1 - 10

Day 1

Imagine bird feet, not legs just feet about the size of your hand and always just beside your right foot.

You can run, cycle, fly, swim but the feet will follow you.

If you look for long enough you’ll see them move. If you listen long enough you’ll hear them speak.

Softly at first, growing louder and louder the longer you stare saying all the things you thought nobody knew about you.

All the things you’ve thought when you were angry beyond all reason, when you wish you could just choke the life out of someone, when you kill someone over and over and over again in your mind.

The feet speak. The feet follow. They grow.

Day 2

Imagine your favourite song just came on your computer.

Imagine it sounding slightly off in a way you just can’t quite place.

Imagine turning the volume all the way up and realising that between the instrumental sections a voice is saying your name.

Reverently.

This voice is in every song you listen to, even on the radio it still says your name.

You get used to it after a while and even find it comforting to think that something out there acknowledges your existence so piously.

That is, until it stops saying your name and begins to say your address instead, until it begins to describe what you are wearing instead.

Until you hear it behind you instead.

Saying your name reverently.

Repeatedly.

So pleased to finally meet you.

See you.

Be you.

Day 3

Let’s talk about books.

Let’s talk about letters.

Let’s talk about the strange itching feeling at the back of your eyes compelling you to read.

Read til dawn.

Read til your eyes hurt.

Read til the words swirl... the words aren’t meant to swirl.

Rub your eyes and see them gently rotating forming strange twisted shapes.

They swirl to form faces, screaming faces.

The conglomeration of screaming mouths morphs into one singular mouth that begins to speak.

The first words are hissed, like the rustling of pages and irritated librarians shushing their patrons.

Then they become crisp words that you don’t understand, though some part of you feels you should know.

All you know is that this moment is important and you can’t comprehend it in the slightest.

You wonder when it will stop speaking at you, if it realises you are already lost.

Will it be angry when it realises that you are utterly ignorant and probably not who this was meant for?

You don’t want to stick around and find out but you can’t risk leaving.

It seems to be slowing down, its words jumbling together until it reverts to hissed nothings.

As it dissolves gradually back into words on a book that looks like an old almanac, you feel drained.

Whatever it had to say, it had been waiting such a long time and all for nothing.

You know less than you knew when you entered the library.

You don’t remember entering the library.

Perhaps you have always been there too, waiting for a message you’ll never understand.

Day 4

Have you ever felt something crawling up your arm when nothing was there?

She’s trying to lead you.

Have you ever shuddered for no apparent reason?

She runs her hands down your spine but they go right through you.

Have you ever sworn you saw something out of the corner of your eye?

She wants you to see her. You mustn’t let her know you have.

If you hear something tapping on your window tonight - it’s not rain.

Day 5

The doors of the bus sigh open as the beastly contraption sinks down. You step on. You, an unsuspecting fool, step on. The driver is surprisingly cheerful yet somehow inhuman but you can’t quite place why. He grabs your fare stiffly, sweat dripping over his face like oil over a slab of meat, and smiles slightly wider than you reckon is normal.

You sit towards the front of the bus, on the left side and your head begins to pulsate achingly. You debate asking the elderly lady opposite you for painkillers but think better of it as you see she is sweating as heavily as the driver. Looking around you all of the other passengers are sweating heavily.

This doesn’t strike you as strange, the bus is oppressively warm. The windows don’t look like they open. As the thumping in your head grows louder and slightly faster the bus pulls away from the stop and you gaze sleepily out of the window.

You jolt awake as the bus staggers over what you can only assume is the biggest speed bump ever. You resume window gazing. It takes you a while to realise that you can’t see anything out of the window. Everything outside is smothered in darkness yet your phone clearly reads 13:23. Your phone’s dim glimmer and the flickering strip lights on the ceiling reveal a gruesome sight.

The inside of the window appears to be covered by some sort of fleshy film.

So is the chair.

So is the floor.

So are your feet.

As you struggle to move the elderly lady snaps her head towards you at an angle that looks... wrong and smiles as she points just over your head.

Above you is the biggest heart you have ever seen.

And the last thing you ever see as the bus begins to fill with a sickly green liquid that hisses as it touches your shoes.

This is your stop.

Day 6

Ever pull a face at the mirror and laugh at yourself?

What if your reflection kept laughing?

What if your reflection was laughing hysterically?

What if it stopped laughing and started smiling?

What if its smile kept growing?

What if it spoke?

What if its voice sounded so much older than your own?

What would it tell you?

Day 7

Voices.

Some things have voices.

Not the things you’d expect though.

For instance houses have voices.

Homesteads have stories.

The best and worst part is not knowing what tales they hold. What curses lie in their foundations.

Stories of bloodshed - the toil and labour that went into crafting them, the agonies that happened inside them.

Some are so drenched in the past that they become horrors themselves.

Blood dripping from door handles where frantic fingers have grasped their last.

Floors creaking and screaming, echoing with the final footsteps of the damned.

Faces in windows begging, beckoning the living to follow them deep down.

And lastly, attics where fraying ropes and silent hopes lay hand in wretched hand behind locked doors.

Houses have voices. Houses have stories. Be wary of listening to them lest you become a part of them.

Day 8

We all know the tradition of leaving your tooth under the pillow for some fae being to collect in exchange for monetary compensation.

We’ve all left a tooth or two behind and woken to find it replaced.

What if you left a tooth under your pillow and found more teeth in the morning?

What if all those teeth were yours?

What if they weren’t human?

What if they kept coming?

Day after day, month after month more teeth. Bigger teeth.

Soon a whole jawbone of some creature under your pillow.

Then the rest of the creature arrives, creaks and groans under what’s left of its body.

You should have stopped leaving it money.

It ran out of anything else to give.

With one dull eye it stares balefully at you, no, at your pillow.

You weren’t supposed to be awake for it.

You weren’t supposed to see its insectoid wings twitch as it reaches inside its grubby coat.

You’ll never un-hear the loud crunch, never un-see it wince and hold back a sob.

It gently places a sharply pointed rib under your pillow and limps off with your coin.

You never leave money for the tooth fairy again, choosing instead to bury your teeth in the schoolyard.

Day 9

Your eyes are fascinating.

Your eyes are deceiving.

Convince yourself you’re alone.

Convince yourself you’re safe.

Go ahead.

It amuses us.

Ignorance is humanities greatest invention.

Ignorance is our greatest weapon.

Of course you didn’t see anything in the mirror.

Of course that noise was nothing.

Reassure yourself that humans are the top of the food chain.

Nothing can hurt you.

So open the door.

We’re waiting.

Day 10

A child’s playhouse. Wooden. A birthday gift.

Lovingly crafted and saturated with memories.

Places like this have a certain Pull to them.

The Pull of this toy home was so strong it pulled the young birthday girl into it.

It took them just over a month to find her and when they did there wasn’t much left.

What little remained of her was fused with the walls - yes walls.

Plural.

It was as if her tiny body had been stretched over the whole interior.

Spread thinly like butter, it took forensics hours to peel her corpse off the enclosed space.

Clumps of her remained stuck to the walls, sealed permanently to them.

Twice a year, on her birth and death days, she is seen the clearest. All other days she remains

translucent.

Always inside the home crafted so lovingly it became unwilling to let her leave.

Her grave lay partially empty.

Her tomb she shared with many other spirits.

All young girls.

And it draws more in. It needs more.

Its walls now heavily reinforced by their formerly fragile bodies.

It may never collapse.

Home sweet home.

Next Chapter: Days 11 - 20