Horror
Rock And Roll
His name was Eddie Funsull, they took him one night, put him in a van and took him away. They didn't like him, his music, or the way he looked. He stood out. He was one of the few Black guys in the Goth rock scene in town. But it wasn't because he was Black that they took him, it was the fact that he wasn't afraid to be what he sang about. Rock Music was his life. He lived for it. When he took the stage, it was as if he transcended time and space, as if he wasn't part of human existence. He'd sing of love lost, love yet to be, he'd sing of the freedom of existing beyond the constraints of conformity, about being that creature that we all longed to be but feared because of the doldrums of life, family, and its traditions.
By John Scipioabout 14 hours ago in Fiction
Terminus
The crisp April air bites like teeth, and the sun rises as my feet hit the pavement in a steady rhythm, the burn building in my lungs. Silence and stillness all around me, the world sliding by like a painting; this is the best way to start any morning. Neon signs dominate the once suburban skyline,
By S. A. Crawfordabout 14 hours ago in Fiction
Magpie. AI-Generated.
The world did not end with a bang, but with a frame-rate drop so severe that reality stuttered into a series of jagged, frozen tableaux. Merlina Magpie stood in the center of what used to be Leo Vance’s luxury penthouse, but the floor had surrendered its texture, becoming a flat, unrendered grey plane. Above, the sky had peeled away like wet wallpaper, revealing the terrifying architecture of the substrate: pulsing veins of neon light and vast, incomprehensible structures of shifting geometry.
By Eris Willowabout 15 hours ago in Fiction
Magpie. AI-Generated.
The horizon didn’t just shudder; it tore. Beyond the glass of Leo’s floor-to-ceiling windows, the skyline of the city—a place Merlina had known only as a concrete cage—began to unspool into jagged, neon-green geometry. The sky, once a smoggy, bruised purple, flickered into a flat, blinding white. It was the color of a blank canvas, or perhaps the void of an unlit monitor.
By Eris Willowabout 15 hours ago in Fiction
Magpie. AI-Generated.
The date on the screen didn’t just feel wrong; it felt like a physical assault. 2226. The blue light of the monitor reflected in Leo’s wide, vacant eyes, making him look like one of the very ghosts he feared. Merlina stood frozen, the heavy iron of her cuffs suddenly feeling like the only real thing in a world made of light and lies. The document, 'Prisoner Iteration 7.4,' stayed perfectly rendered, a crisp testament to a future that had already happened—or was happening forever.
By Eris Willowabout 15 hours ago in Fiction
Magpie. AI-Generated.
The horizon didn’t just shudder; it peeled. For a fraction of a second, the deep violet of the dusk sky over the sprawl of New York—or whatever this place claimed to be—fractured into a jagged lattice of neon green and abyssal black. It was like looking at a cracked monitor, the liquid crystal bleeding out into the void. Then, with a sickening lurch in Merlina’s stomach, the image snapped back. The sun was once again a perfect, orange orb, dipping behind skyscrapers that looked too clean to be real.
By Eris Willowabout 15 hours ago in Fiction
Magpie. AI-Generated.
The silence in the loft wasn't the peaceful kind found in the sprawling estates of the elite; it was the pressurized, ringing silence of a vacuum. Leo sat at his workstation, the blue light of the holographic interface carving deep, artificial shadows into the hollows of his cheeks. He looked older than he had an hour ago. The 'Empathy Initiative' files sat abandoned in a corner of his screen, a collection of soft pastels and rounded fonts that now looked like a cruel joke.
By Eris Willowabout 15 hours ago in Fiction
Magpie. AI-Generated.
Leo clicked his mouse with a soft, rhythmic precision that made Merlina’s skin crawl. Each click was a heartbeat in a world made of plastic and glass. On the oversized monitors, the Bureau of Magical Regulation’s logo—a stylized, geometric eye—underwent a transformation. Leo was smoothing the edges, softening the harsh obsidian lines into a 'calming' cerulean. He called it 'The Empathy Initiative.' Merlina called it a fresh coat of paint on a gas chamber.
By Eris Willowabout 15 hours ago in Fiction
Magpie. AI-Generated.
Leo Vance’s workspace was a cathedral of glass and silicon, a temple to the god of the clean line and the sans-serif font. Sunlight, filtered through the high-rise windows of the downtown loft, hit the brushed aluminum of his dual-monitor setup with a clinical precision that made Merlina’s eyes ache. It was too bright, too perfect. In the hidden nomadic communities where she’d grown up, light was a fickle thing—dappled through forest canopies or flickering from a guttering candle. Here, light was just another regulated resource.
By Eris Willowabout 15 hours ago in Fiction
Magpie. AI-Generated.
The elevator ride to the penthouse was a silent, soaring ascent that made Merlina’s stomach drop. It wasn't just the height—though the thought of the hundreds of feet of empty air beneath the glass-floored lift made her palms itch with a cold sweat—it was the transition. She was leaving the grit of the processing centers and the smell of ozone and unwashed bodies for something far more dangerous: the sterile, curated silence of the victors. Leo Vance stood beside her, his reflection caught in the polished chrome doors. He looked like a man who spent a lot of money to look like he didn’t care about money. His hands, soft and unscarred, rested lightly on the handle of his designer briefcase.
By Eris Willowabout 15 hours ago in Fiction
Magpie. AI-Generated.
The transition from the Bureau of Magical Regulation to Leo Vance’s sleek, silver SUV was a masterclass in sensory whiplash. The Bureau smelled of industrial floor cleaner and the ozone-heavy discharge of containment fields; Leo’s car smelled of expensive sandalwood and the faint, artificial scent of 'New Car' misted from a hidden vent. Merlina sat in the passenger seat, her wrists still heavy with the iron cuffs, though the chain connecting them to her waist had been shortened to allow for a semblance of comfortable posture. Leo hummed a melody that didn't quite resolve, his fingers tapping the leather-wrapped steering wheel in a rhythm that felt mathematically precise.
By Eris Willowabout 15 hours ago in Fiction
