At 42, Raena Meinhardt has lost everything. Only two years ago, she’d been a senior partner at Crast and Moore, a New York wealth management firm, and had taken a sleek town car to work every morning, reading the Wall Street Journal over a customized coffee, headset permanently clipped to her ear, manicured nails tapping impatiently on the leather interior. But a series of late-term miscarriages, expensive IVF treatments and a botched Somali adoption derailed her career and ruined her second marriage. When Conner finally moves out on Christmas Eve, taking most of the furniture with him, Raena pickes up a bottle of vanilla vodka and a chocolate cake, sits in front of her still undecorated faux tree and begins to drink herself to death. She doesn’t hear the first ring of the doorbell, but the second pulls her up from her stupor. Stumbling, bleary-eyed onto the front porch, she finds a sleeping baby, bundled tight against the wind. And a note pinned to the carrier which reads:

My Dear Raena,

Meet Farah. She will be yours for the next 365 days. When I return next Christmas Eve, she will disappear and you will once again be a childless suicidal alcoholic! Or…behind door number two…you can be that good little mommy you always wanted to be and run, run, run!

Oh, you better watch out

(Because I’m watching you!)

You better not hide

(Oh, please do Raena! I love a good game!)

You better not shout

(Don’t you dare tell the cops. I will kill you BOTH.)

I’m telling you why

(Raena, are you listening?)

Santa Claus is coming to town

(You have a year to plan your escape! Think of all the options!)

He sees you when you’re sleeping

(You moan in your sleep Raena. Did you know?)

He knows when you’re awake

(Your robe is open Raena. Cover up, you whore!)

He knows when you’ve been bad or good, so….WATCH OUT RAENA!!! I’M COMING FOR YOU!!!

XXXOOO

Your Secret Santa

There's nothing to decide.  Raena sweeps her eyes over the circular drive, then tucks Farah inside her robe, nuzzling her soft cheek and backs into the house.  She doesn't have a lot of time.  She needs help and there's only one person who might be able to save her and Farah.  She picks up the phone, dreading the call, and starts dialing.

Dorothy Anne doesn’t know who is fucking with her, if she is going completely insane, or if the letters are in fact true messages from her mother, who had mysteriously died 10 years earlier—5 months after she warned Annie that she would. It started with the letters randomly showing up in her spam inbox, but soon there were unexplainable hardcopies found in places she was drawn to look. The first time was the back of a picture frame; art her mother had purchased for her—Thomas Kinkade’s Garden of Prayer.

Annie tried to talk to her husband about the letters, even her sister, who could, without-a-doubt, confirm they are their mother’s words, but no one would hear her out. She was quickly labeled crazy and was recommended to go back on her medications; and ultimately it was assumed that she had relapsed, again. So Annie began a second life; she had decades of experience keeping secrets, so this was no difficult task. But the longer she kept her mother’s secret, and the more the relationship with the dead grew, the more she began to completely separate herself from reality.

Years passed and the more she believed and behaved, the more she seemed to activate communications. Messages continued to show up in her life, and eventually they began to tell her what to do; regardless of law, morals and sobriety, Dorothy Anne was completely committed—committed to the dead, or to her insanity . . .

Beneath the sheet, above the stone

Around the Christmas tree

The chains and links, the clanky clinks

The wailing jubilee 

A spirit in a mug appears

And sloshes whiskey round

The presents hover through the jeers

And lift up off the ground

Unlikely as it all may seem 

A table soon arrives 

As if a sugar plum-like dream

A feast of forks and knives

A demon and a goddess join

To spread good faith and hate

Embracing all the souls set free

Or ones the demon ate

Forever, all eternally 

Eclipse the season's treat

The holidays are ghastly frays 

For no ghost gets to eat

#poetry #horror #supernatural #paranormal

Dismembered, bloody bodies are turning up on the sandy dunes of small town Flagler Beach, Florida.

Plunge yourself in the tale of twists and turns in this psychological thriller as seen through the eyes of renowned psychiatrist, Dr. Patel. And only Dr. Patel believes he knows who is committing these murders as he valiantly explores his client’s aberrational thoughts and feelings.

Drawn into the darkness of his client’s multiple psychiatric disorders, he is duped into the belief that he can help his client before more murders are committed. But his cunning client is immersed in a profession where her delusions can be hidden. If only he can find some way to break his oath of confidence to hint of her involvement to Police Chief Ritter, who is engaged in solving this whirlwind of deaths.

Dr. Patel believes that his intelligent and beautiful client has a dissociative personality with limited perceptions in which she operates on a different plane than the rest of the world. Honestly believing that unresolved childhood issues have numbed her so that she feels nothing, he realizes that something is very amiss because she is unable to connect with others. But is she fully aware of the murders she is committing and can Dr. Patel come to the bottom of her problems before more scattered bodies are found? Or is this some Machiavellian plot devised by a person who is pure evil? And is Dr. Patel correct in believing that she is the perpetrator or is the murderer really someone else, perhaps even Dr. Patel? Even the Police Chief has a hidden and devious background as he hides out incognito in the stunning little seaside town.

Follow the subplot of real estate developers who may be involved as they try to get the townspeople to sell their property in abject fear of more murders, hoping to scoop up the distressed properties.

The suspense mounts to a shocking and unexpected conclusion as the hazardous path of strewn remains leads in sinister zigzags to the perpetrator.

Sterling Claymoore, a veteran corporal from WWII comes home to his mansion in the near of Wetherby. The memories of his last mission, where all of his commrades die  still haunts him. Almost everyone blames him, as the only survivor. Lots of people tried to kill him, even after the War, most of them were the loved ones of his now dead commrades. Sterling fears, that more people will want to murder him. Because of that he only has a few employees, but even they have to make an oath not to speak about him or his whereabouts to anyone else.

The angry mourners finally leave him alone, after so many years. He thinks he can finally forget the past and move on, but his memories of that day would not go. Years pass, and suddenly the memories fade away, but something worse comes in its place...

He starts hearing a voice in his head. One of his commrades, Johnson speaks to him. At first he only chats with Sterling about his favorite TV show or about sports, but in a matter of months Johnson becomes aggressive. He asks Sterling to kill his employees. At first Sterling ignores the voice, but That just makes it angrier...

She smiled impishly at me, then took the strawberry lollipop out of her mouth. The last of the warm August sun glinted on the tendril of saliva bowing between the pink head of the sweet and her slightly open mouth. It parted deliciously. A tiny swarm of shadows flitted across her tanned skin as insects intersected the space between her and the sky.

Time became honey, sweet and slow, as I sensed my friendship with Jayne was about to change. Nerves crackled and flutters teased my guts. The thoughtful mist over my eyes sharpened immediately upon her delighted laugh, half snorted through her freckled nose. 

She was looking at me in a new way. Into me. I watched her bright eyes taking me into her mind fully for the first time then down at the daisies threaded together that I’d just pushed softly into her sticky palm, and back up through the safety of her long lashes. 

Jayne sighed so deeply it heaved her recently budded chest. My stare followed her moistened tongue as it shined her plump lips. A bee bumbled by and the river babbled to my right and her left. No one else in the world existed.

Her head lifted from the slight yellow and white reflecting off the held daisies, and with her eyes, she absorbed this shy boy that sat in front of her, with a leg either side of hers; hers which were crossed with grass stained knees peeking over sock tops.

Have you ever kissed anyone, Paul? she breathed, pretending to be the confident girl she read about in stories in her teen magazines.

My pulse took my voice, until I coughed it back into action. No. Not really. I lied. Then, realising time had paused and was waiting for me to seize the moment, I added, but I’d like to. I immediately regretted the slight question mark I’d added to the end of the sentence meant to be as cool as The Fonz.

Her delighted giggle tinkled through heated air to tickle my heart, the one she now held in her pretty hands. I could see blushes creep up her neck to join their friends on her sunkissed cheeks. 

Then let’s help you out she barely whispered and sprang forward, trapping my sharp intake of surprised breath with a soft mouth that tasted of sugar and long summers. The ice of uncertainty that held me melted and instinct tilted my head so that noses no longer clashed, tongues touched then wrestled as confidence and nature took hold. I smelled the sun on her skin, her hair’s clean shampoo scent and the slight hint of sweat from a day playing together by the river.

Moving from her kneeling position, Jayne climbed onto my lap and straddled me and my young stiffness that was more sensitive than I’d ever remembered being before now. I glanced down as she started moving against me, her summer dress hitched up her thighs, showing her white knickers, a mound of secrecy I’d yet to see outside of magazines peaked in private. I saw a vertical line of darker material and a cleft, a wetter place, and my air was held prisoner in my chest.

She broke away from our kiss and huffed in my ear, her hips moving faster, her head down. My instinct was to lift my hips higher to increase the rubbing sensation through my shorts. Hair swayed in my face as she muttered oh god, oh god, almost hurting me with the urgency of her grinding, pushing material and rough seams against my aching erection.

I felt a wave build and rise through me, different to when it was just me touching myself, entirely new, making the hairs stand up all over and the world disappear around me; tunnel vision making this beautiful girl, my past friend, all that I saw. Then her bright blue eyes locked with mine, her upper lip twitched slightly on one side and then she began to judder, pushing her hot pudendum roughly against me. I tipped over the edge, and a long moan I couldn’t hold in escaped as I pumped hot wetness into my shorts. Her shaking increased then was replaced with trembles and hot, wet kisses full of spit and gleaming smiles.

She pulled her face away and held mine in her hand, squeezing my cheeks and staring into my dilated pupils, laughing as my body spasms quieted. Then she playfully slapped me. Oh, you naughty boy, Paul, uttered through a dazzling toothy grin. We held onto each other and what we had been, our sexual scents lazily rising between our interlocked bodies, and we knew everything had changed as dusk began to fall.

A figure stands in the road and no one stops. The blinding yellow raincoat assaulting skies that threaten rain with its radiant color. So out of place against the blacktop and dark green infringing forest. But one car stops, an out of towner, he doesn't know any better.

The townspeople whisper, gathered around a fire, the legend of Jane. Betrayed by her cruel husband, losing the love of her life to another woman and, finally, the revenge that followed. Nothing could be proven, Jane was freed. She wanted to let everyone know just what she thought of them, too. How she had gotten away with murder, and how she would again and again and again..... They knew not to stop because one person had made that mistake. It was common knowledge how she had killed Betty Prue. Without mercy or remorse. And, reportedly, many others. Again, nothing could be proven. But now Jane's eyes are alight. At first this had started as revenge, but now it was almost...enjoyable, euphoric, indescribable! The car slowed to a stop, the shining blue paint job contrasting with Jane's coat. A man with stubble and a kind face rolled down the window, his shirt revealed broad shoulders and arms that knew hard work. Perfect, he deserved what was coming to him. Jane thought he looked like the kind of man who handed out bulletins in the back of the church, or went to his local recycling plant to thank them for their good work. Some people were too good for this world... He smiled cluelessly, "Do you need a lift?" Jane nodded quickly, "That would be excellent, thank you." He opened the door and she stepped daintily inside. "Where do you need to go, ma'am?" His eyes sparkled, wanting to help. It sickened her, making her stomach turn over. This one needed to go, and soon! She directed him to a small cabin obscured by a stand of trees. Dramatically, she exited the vehicle and feigned a sprained ankle. He immediately rushed to her aid, helping her inside. He settled her onto the sofa and smiled. "Anything else?" Jane smiled sickly, "Yes." She leaped up and locked the door, turning her pistol on him. "Go down the stairs, and nobody gets hurt." The man's eyes were wide but he went down to the basement. He saw chains and contraptions so he turned to plead with her. "Please just let me leave!" Jane laughed ,a harsh sound, "You won't be leaving here alive." To drive home her point she knocked him on the head with her pistol and he crumpled. She set to chaining him up before he woke. The man must escape her madness, but can he survive her sick games? Betty Prue and all the others before could not. Maybe he will be the one to finally end Jane's reign of terror.

Chloe's Facebook is acting strange. Yesterday, she woke up to find a status typed in, but not sent, saying she was "hanging with the besties" with her location tagged at the nearby mall. Confused, she deleted it as she heard her phone ring. It was one of her best friends telling her to come hang out at the mall.

Today, the same thing happened. Only now her unsent status states "saving Shayla" and the location tagged is three states away. Chloe doesn't know who Shayla is, what she needs to be saved from, or how it involves her. But she plans to find out. 

Dead standby

Bones start to pop as the soul forgets who's boss

Facial expression reminds you of your worst accident

Pain fills your heart

It's not sympathy you feel it's the lack of understanding

As Fear flows through the veins of the solid being trying to find the blood that remains

Only bringing down the walls that hang

Like putting the finishing touch on hangman

You can see the smell and the air collide like best friends coming in for high fives

Innocent people stand by not willing to give a hand because there hand won't bring him back to life

As time goes by people's cries turn into secrets for their eyes tell no lies

They just watched a man die.

People are scared cause they don't know why

Afraid it will haunt them for the rest of their lives

Only if it could be justified as in why the man died

There was no time to say good bye

As the white sheet covers his eyes

You can only hope the bugs don't get the best of him

Police collecting testimony from every one that standby

Only to find out stress is why the man died

Trevor Queens graduates from Brown. Just like his father, he is a psychologist and can't wait to put all that he learned into practice. To his surprise, the acclaimed Nerz Institution offers him a position. When he leaves for New Caledonia, he is astonished by the beauty of the clinic; his future workplace. He settles into his study, and begins working as the psychologist of the nurses working in the facility. After a few months, he is familiar with everyone, except the treated patients, because he never sees any. Every nurse seems reluctant to answer his questions regarding the maintenance, while they are eager to share every detail about their life. Trevor can hardly disguise his qualm. Adelaine, the Chief Nurse offers him a 2-week recess as their patient.

Trevor abides and makes two discoveries: how The Nerz Institution provides such successful research and why they employed him.

He was the only missing piece.

The only missing specimen in Adelaine's Zoo of Schizophrenia. There is no way back.

Can he escape? Is he able to convince the other inhabitants to stand with him?

But most importantly, should they leave at all? Is the Zoo a prison, or a shelter?