Popular belief has it that the universe is comprised of atoms. In reality, the universe is actually made up of…

If ever a person’s monicker did exactly what it said on the tin, it was Penny Century.

She was the first baby born this century in a daisy field who grew to a certain age and never looked a day older even as family and friends withered and died around her.

As her 100th birthday approached, she weaved herself a bikini made of daisies to commemorate her birth place, stood in her backyard, lantern in hand with her trusty dusty companion, Skip, and welcomed the turn of the century with open arms.

And she was damn well determined to add another 100 notches to her belt.

Popular belief has it that the universe is comprised of atoms. In reality, the universe is actually made up of…

‘Twas the wee small hours and sleep was something on which Christine could find no purchase. Restless, she felt the pull of something beyond herself, a force that drew her to the sitting room window of her stepfather’s house.

At first she feared a hallucination, or perhaps she had fallen asleep and what she witnessed was little more than a fever dream. Rubbing at her tired, bloodshot eyes, she sought to clear her vision, but the image held fast. Outside the window, standing naked as a jaybird in the front garden, Christine beheld a bizarre woman whose gold-flecked skin glistening in the moonlight.

“Call me by my name,” the woman said. Her voice was clear and sharp as if it came directly from Christine’s own mind. “And the wrongs will be righted.”

“But I do not know your name, madam,” Christine said in her softest tone as not to wake her family of light-sleepers. She was suddenly very self-conscious about the bruising on her upper arms, the only signs of abuse that were visible in her nightgown, and sought to cover them from the stranger’s fiery gaze.

“Every woman knows my name,” the woman replied.

And somehow Christine knew this to be truth, for in the back of her mind, balanced on the tip of her memory’s tongue, was a word that no man alive today knew and even if they did, would not have been able to pronounce it for it was the ancient name for the weapon capable of cracking a man’s soul in half.

“Xelintailbheniamh,” Christine whispered, and from the bedroom, her stepfather’s screams of agony pierced the frightened silence of the household.

“You are free, my sister,” Xelintailbheniamh smiled, before moving on to the next woman in need of her services.

Popular belief has it that the universe is comprised of atoms. In reality, the universe is actually made up of…

Priscilla wasn’t a foolish woman, she knew full well that alcohol was a bad prescription for the depression that ailed her but it was a necessary evil to help keep her personal demons at bay.

What wasn’t necessary was the incessant song of nightingales that dragged her from a drunken stupor, and even though she was barely lucid, Priscilla knew that her husband was gone. The vacated atmosphere of the tiny one bedroom apartment was undeniable and final.

It was the exact same feeling as when her father abandoned her as a young child, which forced her into the foster care system that shattered her brittle spirit.

Some people simply weren’t meant to be loved, and what good was love anyway if the person you attached your happiness, hopes and dreams to could walk away so easily?

But she’d show them, show them all how it felt to be left behind. Her plan was to drink herself to death so then they, all the theys who ever abandoned her, would have to choke on her vacated atmosphere.

Popular belief has it that the universe is comprised of atoms. In reality, the universe is actually made up of…

For eons, all we had ever known was peace, happiness, and contentment, but Willa Simonson, nosy parker and malcontent that she was, decided it was her right as a free thinker to peek behind the veil of perfection to see if there was more to life than gaiety and tranquility.

And when she tinkered with the machinery that ran the universe, that was the day the Garden of Magnificence began to crumble to dust all around us, ruining paradise for everyone.

Thanks a lot, Willa.

Popular belief has it that the universe is comprised of atoms. In reality, the universe is actually made up of…

Funny how the mind worked and how sometimes the most obvious connections went overlooked.

Case in point: I only realized that my girlfriend, Melanie Houdini, was related to the famed magician and entertainer, Harry, after I asked her to marry me and she disappeared in a puff of smoke like a fart through hemp pajamas.

But she didn’t leave empty handed, though. I noticed that the engagement ring had vanished as well. Lesson learned for not doing a background check before blowing two months salary on a piece of jewelry.

Popular belief has it that the universe is comprised of atoms. In reality, the universe is actually made up of…

It wasn’t always like this.

I wasn’t always like this.

I remember a time when I wore a younger man’s face, when I discovered what true happiness was, when the word love took on a whole new meaning, when the world finally made sense.

When you were still alive.

Popular belief has it that the universe is comprised of atoms. In reality, the universe is actually made up of…

Where was the dividing line between genius and madness? Between passion and obsession? Somewhere within that neutral zone was where my father spent most of his life.

He was born with an inquisitive mind and his thirst for knowledge led him down the trail of the sciences. Not contented to mimic the old world experiments of his mentors and colleagues, he struck out on his own and carved a new path into the exploration of what he called the human genome.

The scientific community, responsible for the breakthroughs that propelled the human race to the top of the food chain, was also surprisingly close-minded when it came to new concepts that could not be proven by old mathematics. Thus was my father mercilessly mocked, ridiculed and labeled a mad scientist for his preposterous theories of designing the perfect human being in utero and supplanting the Almighty by replicating life within a test tube.

Despite being dismissed as a lunatic, he was a stubborn and dedicated man who continued his research even as his health declined. It was not until his deathbed that my father, branded a failure his entire life, finally found success.

And now I am beside myself.

Popular belief has it that the universe is comprised of atoms. In reality, the universe is actually made up of…

Once upon a time there lived a woman who was born an ordinary parcel, but deep down inside she knew that she was a special gift.

Her dream was to be delivered to a purchaser in a far off land of opportunity, somewhere lush like America, where she could trade in her dull brown kraft paper packaging for expensive, ornate gift-wrapping tied in a beautiful silk ribbon bow.

She placed herself in catalog after catalog, listing herself at the price she thought she was worth, and she received many offers that attempted to apply coupons to get her at a reduced price, but she held strong until she finally met a buyer who was willing to pay full retail value.

Her head swam with visions of her new and better life as she was being shipped to the destination that inhabited her fantasies, but those dreams were soon dashed upon the rocks the day her delivery was refused.

Now she was a mail order bride, returned to sender.

Popular belief has it that the universe is comprised of atoms. In reality, the universe is actually made up of…

If any patch of land on Earth was truly haunted, it would have to be Moppet Forest.

According to legend, the woods were originally purchased by a plangonologist before it was part of any U.S. state or territory in the post-Civil War years but during the Westward Expansion, the government seized the land after the dolllmaker met his end under mysterious and gruesome circumstances.

Near the dollmaker’s house, land surveyors discovered a doll nailed to one of the trees and beneath it, carved into the bark was a phrase written either in sigils or an indecipherable language that many believed to be a curse.

Over the subsequent decades, horrible fates befell every owner of the property until the forest eventually became ownerless and it remains unoccupied to this very day.

Those foolish enough to venture into the dense woods on a dare, for social media views, or as a satanic cult tourist destination, claimed to have seen all manner of eerie apparitions, such as:

• Numerous paths of mysterious doll footprints that led to a transparent figure sitting on a tree stump carving a child-sized effigy from a piece of timber as the wood bled and screamed in agony;
• Human corpses floating in mid air that were slowly being dismembered and stitched back together to resemble stringless marionettes;
• And the sound of a drawstring being pulled, followed by the echo of a tinny, almost childlike voice, singing, “Blood and gore, blood and gore, you shall trespass here no more.”

For every person that went missing, a new moppet was said to have been nailed to a tree, so heed my advice and stay away!

You have been warned.