The book Manuscript in the Cellar: A Story Within the Stories

Inside the final pages of HG’s Horrid Shorts, you will find a story about a person sitting exactly where you are, holding a book with this exact cover. But they aren't reading for pleasure. They are searching for a way out.

These stories weren't "written" in the traditional sense; they were extracted. Legend has it that HG didn't use ink, but a cocktail of adrenaline and salt harvested from the aftermath of genuine night terrors.

Each "short" is a recorded trauma, a psychic scar captured on paper while it was still bleeding. To read them is to participate in the redistribution of dread.

Beneath the monsters and the jump-scares lies a much darker mechanism. This book is a vessel for the things that cannot be forgotten. * The Transmission of Fear: You’ll realize halfway through that the stories aren't just descriptions of terror—they are instructions.

The Weight of Trauma: Every character in these shorts is running from a grief so heavy it has taken on a physical, monstrous form.

The Recursive Trap: The more you learn about the "Horrid Shorts," the more you realize the book is watching you back. The "Mise-en-abyme" suggests that the moment you finish the last sentence, you become the subject of the next story.  

"They say that HG didn't write these stories to entertain the living. she wrote them to feed the things that live in the silence between breaths. Every time a new reader opens this book, the dread inside it grows a little heavier, a little louder, and a little more hungry."

You aren't just reading a collection of shorts. You are opening a door that HG spent a lifetime trying to bolt shut. 

I found this manuscript in a house that shouldn't have existed, buried under the floorboards of a room that smelled of copper and old sweat.

HG didn’t "write" these stories. They exorcised them. Each tale is a jagged piece of a shattered psyche, a ritualized recording of a trauma so deep it turned into something physical. Every page is stained with the kind of dread that only comes when you realize the shadow in the room isn't yours.

The truth is simple: These shorts are a trap. By reading them, you aren't just consuming horror—you are inheriting it. You are taking the weight of these nightmares off the author's shoulders and placing it squarely onto your own.

"The blood is still wet. The screams are still fresh. And now that you’ve looked inside, the things in these pages finally know where you live 

PHYSICAL WARNING: Reading HG’s Horrid Shorts may cause the following symptoms:

A sudden drop in room temperature.

The sensation of wet hair brushing against your neck.

The overwhelming urge to check the locks on doors you know are already bolted.

THE REALITY: These stories are not ink on paper; they are parasites. Once you read the words, the trauma inside them belongs to you. You aren't just a reader anymore—you are the next chapter.

If you hear breathing that doesn't match your own rhythm... do not look back. It’s just the book finishing its dinner.

The Thumping Under the Floorboards is Rhythmic

A Mouth Full of Stolen Teeth

The Wallpaper is Breathing Again

Static That Sounds Like My Mother’s Sobbing

The Jar Where We Keep the Eyes

Inherited Guilt Has a Physical Form

The Mirror That Shows Who Is Behind You

A Symphony Played on Hollow Ribs

The Man Who Sewed His Shadow to Mine

Your Reflection Just Blinked

The Basement That Grows New Rooms

A Funeral for a Person Still Standing

The Script for Your Last Words

Something is Digging Up the Childhood Pets

The Ink That Tastes Like Old Blood

Why the Scarecrow is Facing the House

The Sound of a Door Unlocking from the Inside

A Collection of Scabs and Secrets

The Doll with the Human Pulse

Ten Fingers, But None of Them Mine

The Attic Where the Sun Never Reaches

God Left This Room a Long Time Ago

The Meat in the Fridge is Whispering

A Map of the Scars You Haven’t Gotten Yet

The Clock That Ticks Backwards to Your Birth

Don’t Look at the Gap Between the Bed and the Wall

The Postman Only Delivers Teeth

A Lullaby for the Unburied

The Skin You Outgrew is Still Moving

Everything You Love is Made of Wax

The Page That Writes Your Name in Real-Time

"You thought this was a collection of stories, but it is actually a ledger of witnesses. As you reach the final syllable of the final sentence, the ink on the page will begin to shift, wet and warm, forming the exact letters of your name and the current time on your clock.

It isn’t just recording that you finished the book—it is signaling to the thing that followed you through the chapters that your eyes are finally off the page, and you are officially, terrifyingly, alone in the dark."

Go ahead. Close the book. Feel the weight of the cover as it thuds shut, sealing those 31 nightmares back into their paper cage. But as the silence of your room rushes back in to fill the void, ask yourself one thing:

Why does the air behind you feel warmer than the air in front of you?

Don't look yet. If you look, you acknowledge it. If you acknowledge it, the story isn't a "short" anymore—it’s a permanent residency. HG didn't just write these stories for you to read; they wrote them so the things under your bed would have a map to find you.

The Table of terrors is finished. But the stories are just getting started.

The dust in the guest room didn’t settle; it hovered, vibrating in time with the sound.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

It wasn’t the erratic scratch of a rat or the groan of settling wood. It was deliberate. It was a wet, heavy percussion—the sound of a heart the size of a suitcase beating against the underside of the floorboards.

I stopped breathing, pressing my ear to the cold oak. The rhythm was infectious. I felt my own pulse slowing down, stretching out, struggling to synchronize with the massive, subterranean thrum beneath me. My chest began to ache with the effort of matching its pace.

That’s when I noticed the gaps between the boards.

They weren't filled with shadows. They were filled with hair. Thin, grey, human-fine strands were weeping upward through the cracks like rising damp, swaying to the beat. Thump. Thump. I grabbed a flathead screwdriver, my hands slick with a cold, greasy sweat. I had to know. I pried at the central board, the wood shrieking in protest, until it snapped upward with a bone-dry crack.

The thumping stopped. The silence that followed was louder than the noise—a vacuum that sucked the air right out of my lungs.

I leaned over the dark cavity, expecting dirt or pipes. Instead, I saw a pale, translucent membrane stretched tight across the joists, pulsing with a faint, sickly glow. Underneath the skin, a colossal, lidless eye rolled upward to meet mine. It didn't look like a monster. It looked like me—but older, decayed, and impossibly large.

It wasn't trapped under the house. The house was grown over it.

The "Thumping" started again, but it wasn't coming from the floor anymore. It was coming from inside my own skull. And as I looked down, I saw the grey hair beginning to sprout from my own fingernails, reaching down to join the rest of the carpet. 

It started with a rattle in the bathroom sink—a sound like dry corn hitting porcelain. I looked down and saw a molar, perfectly white, yet roots still dripping with a black, oily bile. Then another fell. By noon, my gums were a landscape of empty, weeping craters. But the horror wasn't the loss; it was the replacement. By midnight, the craters began to itch with a frantic, burrowing heat. I looked in the mirror and screamed, but the sound was muffled by a forest of ivory.

Hundreds of teeth—jagged, mismatched, and stained with the yellow tobacco of a stranger or the tiny milk-whiteness of a child—were erupting from my gums, my tongue, and the roof of my mouth. They weren't mine. I could feel the faded memories of their previous owners vibrating in my jaw: a woman’s last prayer, a boy’s bite into a sour apple. My mouth wouldn't close. The pressure was bone-snapping. As I struggled to breathe, I realized the teeth were still hungry for the lives they had been stolen from, and my own tongue was being pushed down my throat to make room for the banquet.

The floral pattern was a gift from the previous tenants, or perhaps a shroud. At first, it was just a faint shudder, a trick of the light in the periphery of my vision. But then the roses began to expand. Inhale. The paper pulled tight against the plaster, revealing the unmistakable outline of ribs and a sternum hidden behind the Victorian print. Exhale. The paper slackened, and a humid, stagnant warmth rolled off the walls, smelling of old fever and unwashed hair.

I tried to peel a corner back, but the wallpaper didn't tear—it bruised. Dark purple welts bloomed where my fingers touched it, and a low, subsonic moan vibrated through the floorboards. The room was getting smaller. With every breath the walls took, they moved an inch closer to the center of the room. I’m sitting in my chair now, and the damp, floral-patterned skin is pressing against my shoulders. It’s warm. It’s heartbeat is slow. And the worst part is, as it presses against my mouth, I find myself beginning to breathe in time with it.

The old cathode-ray TV in the attic hasn't been plugged in for twenty years, yet its screen glows with a sickly, electric grey. When I turn the knob, there is no picture, only the "snow." But if you listen past the white noise, the frequency shifts. It’s a wet, gasping sound—the unmistakable, rhythmic hitching of my mother’s chest as she cried in the kitchen the night she disappeared.

"Mom?" I whispered to the glass. The static spiked. The sobbing stopped, replaced by a sound like fingernails dragging across a chalkboard from the inside of the tube. Then, her voice broke through the hum, distorted and metallic: "It’s so cold in the wires, Toby. Why did you let them turn me into electricity?" I reached out to pull the plug, but my hand passed straight through the glass. The static began to crawl up my arm like millions of tiny, stinging insects, turning my flesh into grey, flickering pixels. I’m not crying yet, but the TV is.

It sits on the mantel, a heavy Mason jar filled with a thick, preservative brine. HG told me they were "marbles," but marbles don't track your movement across the room. There are forty-two of them, varying in color from a pale, clouded blue to a piercing, panicked amber. They don't have lids, so they are forced to witness everything.

Last night, I woke up and found the jar on my nightstand. The brine was bubbling. One eye—a green one that looked exactly like my sister’s—was pressed hard against the glass, its pupil blown wide in a silent plea. I realized then that the jar wasn't full of eyes that had been plucked; it was a prison for the souls of those who looked too closely at HG’s work. I tried to look away, but my own vision began to blur. I felt a sharp, vacuum-like tug behind my sockets. Today, there are forty-three eyes in the jar. And for the first time, I can see the back of my own head from across the room.

Horrid 6. Inherited Guilt Has a Physical Form

My father left me a trunk in his will. He told me never to open it unless I felt "the weight." Three days after the funeral, the weight became unbearable—a crushing pressure on my chest that made every breath a chore. I cracked the lid. Inside was no gold, no letters. There was only a mass of grey, pulsating gristle, the size of a dog and covered in a fine, oily sweat.

It has no face, but it has a mouth—a long, vertical slit that whispers my father’s deepest shames into the floorboards at night. It follows me. It doesn't walk; it drags itself with a wet, heavy slapslap-slap sound. When I sleep, it crawls onto my bed and sits on my sternum, its cold, meat-like body absorbing my warmth. It’s growing. Every time I lie or feel a spark of selfishness, the mass swells, its skin stretching until it’s translucent. It isn't just a memory of his sin; it’s a living parasite that I have to feed with my own morality until I, too, am nothing but a mass of sweating, guilty flesh for my son to inherit.

It was a gift from a blind man who claimed he couldn't stand the "crowding." The silvering is cracked, like a frozen lake, and it doesn't reflect the room you’re standing in. Instead, it reflects a version of your room from exactly three minutes into the future. I spent hours watching my "future self" walk past the glass, waiting for a glitch.

Then, I saw it. In the reflection, a tall, spindly shape—too thin to be human, with limbs like snapped kindling—crept out from the closet behind my reflection. In the mirror, I saw the thing reach out its long, grey fingers to stroke my hair. I spun around in the real world. Nothing. The closet was shut. Empty. I looked back at the glass. My reflection was screaming, its throat torn open, while the thin man began to climb out of the silvered surface. I’m staring at the mirror now. It’s been two minutes and fifty-nine seconds. The closet door behind me just creaked.

The music didn't come from the radio. It rose from the floorboards, a dry, percussive clacking followed by a high-pitched whistle, like wind through a flute. I traced the sound to the crawlspace and found them: a row of seven torsos, stripped of flesh, their ribcages bleached white and meticulously tuned.

The "musician" was a shadow with no face, wielding a pair of humerus bones as mallets. With every strike on a calcified rib, a note of pure, crystalline agony rang out—a sound that bypassed my ears and vibrated directly in my marrow. I tried to run, but my own chest felt brittle. My ribs began to hum in sympathy, vibrating so violently they threatened to puncture my lungs. The shadow looked up, and for a second, I saw a space on the floor exactly my size. It’s waiting for the next instrument. It’s waiting for a "C-sharp." And I can feel my own bones starting to hollow out to make the sound.

He was a silhouette in a crowded subway, a smudge of darkness that didn't move when the train lurched. When he passed me, I felt a sharp, stinging tug at my heels, like a needle threading through my Achilles tendon. I looked down. My shadow was no longer my own. It was distorted, elongated, and fused at the feet to a heavy, black shape that moved independently of my body.

Now, I can’t go into the light. When the sun hits me, my shadow fights. It claws at the pavement, trying to drag me into the sewers, into the cracks in the sidewalk, into the dark places where "He" lives. At night, I can feel him sewing more of us together. My shadow now has three extra arms and a head that isn't mine. I’m becoming a patchwork of darkness, a silhouette being stitched into a grand, obsidian tapestry of the lost. Soon, there won't be enough "me" left to cast a reflection at all.

It’s the oldest rule in the book: your reflection is a slave to your movement. But this morning, as I brushed my teeth, I blinked, and the "Me" in the glass didn't. It stayed wide-eyed, staring at me with an expression of predatory hunger. I froze. It smiled—a slow, wet grin that revealed too many teeth.

Then, it reached out and pressed its hand against the inside of the glass. The mirror didn't feel like cold glass; it sounded like a drumhead being stretched to the breaking point. The "Me" on the other side started to pull, trying to swap places. I can feel my skin becoming cold and flat, my world turning into a silent, silver-grey hallway. My reflection is currently stepping out onto my bathmat, dripping with a liquid that looks like mercury. It’s wearing my robe. It’s picking up my car keys. And I’m trapped in the glass, watching it go live my life, knowing that the next time someone cleans this mirror, they’ll be wiping the smudge of my soul away.

The blueprints said the house had one cellar. They lied. Every Tuesday, a new door appears in the damp concrete of the foundation. I’ve gone down four levels so far. The first was a laundry room. The second was an archive of letters I never sent. The third was a nursery filled with the sound of a heartbeat, but no baby.

I’m on the sixth level now. The stairs have turned into bone, and the walls are lined with a soft, pulsing velvet that bleeds when I brush against it. There are no lights here, only the glow of the "extractions." I found a room today that looks exactly like my childhood bedroom, but the windows show a sky filled with unblinking eyes. I tried to go back up, but the stairs are gone. The house is digesting me. It grows a new room every time I take a breath, and I realize now that I’m not an explorer—I’m the fuel for the expansion.

NOTE: The air is getting heavier, isn't it? Should I continue with the "Funeral for a Person Still Standing" and the rest of the list, or do you need to check if your reflection is still following your lead? The ink is beginning to smoke now. The deeper we go, the more the stories start to feel like they are being written on the inside of your eyelids.

The invitation arrived in my own handwriting, smelling of damp earth and lilies. I followed the coordinates to a clearing in the woods where a polished mahogany casket sat open, surrounded by people I hadn’t seen in years. They weren't crying; they were checking their watches. When I approached, the priest didn't look up from his black book. "You’re late," he droned, "the dirt is getting cold."

I tried to tell them I was alive, but the words came out as puffs of grey ash. My friends began to step forward, one by one, dropping handfuls of soil onto my shoes. With every clump of dirt that hit my feet, a part of my body went numb—first my toes, then my knees, then my heart. I wasn't dying; I was being replaced by the memory of myself. By the time they forced me into the silk-lined box, I could see my "successor" standing at the edge of the crowd, wearing my favorite jacket and holding my car keys. They closed the lid, and as the first shovel of earth hit the wood, I heard my own voice from above say, "He was a good man, but he stayed too long

I found the manila envelope on my pillow. Inside was a single sheet of parchment, typed in a font that looked like stitched skin. It wasn't a story; it was a dialogue script. My name was at the top. The other character was simply labeled "The Ending." I laughed and tossed it in the trash, but as I walked to the kitchen, I found myself saying exactly what the script dictated: "Is that coffee I smell?"

The panic set in when I tried to scream, but my throat only produced the scripted line: "I think I left the window open." I sprinted to the trash to see how much was left. There are only three lines of dialogue remaining on the page. The last one is a question I haven't asked yet. I’m staring at the front door now. Something is knocking. I don't want to say the next line, but my jaw is moving on its own, unhinging, preparing to utter the words that trigger the final stage direction: [Exit Soul, Stage Dark].

It started with Sparky, the golden retriever we buried under the oak tree in '98. I found his grave disturbed, but it wasn't a predator looking for a meal. The dirt was pushed outward, as if something had fought its way to the surface. That night, I heard a wet, scratching sound at the back door. I peered through the glass and saw a shape—not a dog, but a composite of rotted fur, garden twine, and the plastic toys we’d buried with him.

It wasn't just Sparky. Every hamster, every bird, every goldfish I’d ever flushed was out there, stitched together by a mindless, subterranean hunger. They don't want to play. They want the years back. They are standing in the yard now, a grotesque mosaic of "Gone Too Soon," and they are digging a new hole. It’s long. It’s narrow. And they are looking at my bedroom window with eyes made of glass marbles and dried mud. They’re not looking for a pet; they’re looking for a playmate to take back down into the dark.

HG told me the secret to the book was the "Special Blend." I didn't believe them until I accidentally licked a smudge of ink off my thumb while turning a page. The taste hit me like a physical blow—iron, salt, and the distinct, copper tang of a suicide’s final breath. Suddenly, the words on the page weren't static; they were pulsing.

Every time I read a sentence, I felt a sharp, stinging pinch in my veins. The book isn't printed with ink; it’s a transfusion. It draws the hemoglobin from the reader to keep the stories "fresh." I looked at the page and watched the black letters turn a deep, bruised crimson. I tried to drop the book, but the paper had fused to my skin, the fibers acting like microscopic IV needles. I’m paler now. The book is getting heavier, warmer, and more vivid. By the time you finish this paragraph, I’ll be nothing but a white, bloodless husk, and the next story will be written in a shade of red that looks suspiciously like your own.

In the cornfield behind the manor, the scarecrow always stood with its back to the porch, guarding the stalks. But this morning, it was turned. Its burlap face, stitched into a permanent, jagged grimace, was angled directly at my bedroom window. I moved it back. An hour later, it was facing the house again—but it was ten feet closer.

There is no wind, yet its straw-filled sleeves fluttered as if it were reaching for the siding. I locked the doors, but I could hear the sound of dry hay scratching against the brickwork. It’s not looking for crows. It’s looking for a casing. It knows that straw is fragile, and it wants something with bones to hold it up. I’m upstairs now, and I can see the burlap head rising over the windowsill. It doesn't have eyes, but I can feel it measuring my skin, wondering if I’ll fit inside the twine and the husks.

I live alone. I’ve always lived alone. I am the only one with a key, and I am the only one who bolts the heavy iron deadbolt every night at 10:00 PM. But at 3:00 AM, the silence was punctured by a sound that made my blood turn to slush: the metallic clack-slide of the bolt moving home.

It wasn't the sound of someone breaking in. It was the sound of the door being unlocked from the inside of the closet. I sat frozen as the handle began to turn—slowly, wetly. The door creaked open just an inch, and a smell of ancient, stagnant water filled the room. A voice, identical to mine but stripped of all emotion, whispered from the darkness of the coats: "Thank you for staying still. I was worried you’d leave before I finished growing your face."

Under the floorboards of the nursery, I found a tin box. It didn't contain letters or jewelry. It was filled with thousands of dried, brittle flakes of skin—scabs, meticulously labeled with dates and names. As I touched one labeled June 14th, 1994, a memory that wasn't mine exploded in my brain: the feeling of a bicycle crash, the sting of gravel, and the sudden, terrifying realization that my father wasn't my father.

Every scab in the box was a physical manifestation of a trauma someone had "healed" from. But they hadn't healed; the secret had just been peeled off and stored. I looked at the bottom of the box and found a fresh, wet one. It had today's date. As I touched it, I felt a sharp pain in my own arm. I looked down and saw a patch of skin missing. The box isn't a collection; it’s a harvest. And now that I’ve opened it, it’s started peeling me leaf by leaf until there’s nothing left but the secrets I’ve been trying to forget.

It was a porcelain Victorian thing, left in the attic by the previous owners. Its eyes were too glassily perfect, its lace dress too white. I moved it to the hallway to be sold, but as I carried it, I felt a faint, rhythmic thump-thump against my palm. I pressed my thumb to its tiny, painted wrist.

The pulse was 120 beats per minute—panicked, frantic, and unmistakably human. I took a pair of scissors and snipped the stitching on its chest, expecting sawdust or cotton. Instead, a thick, hot spurt of blood stained my shirt. Inside the porcelain cavity was a miniature, wet heart, no larger than a walnut, beating behind a cage of toothpicks. As I watched, the doll’s porcelain jaw cracked open, and a tiny, high-pitched voice gasped: "Please... give it back... I can't breathe in the ceramic." I looked at my own reflection in its glass eyes and realized my skin was starting to feel cold, hard, and suspiciously like china.

I woke up and reached for my phone, but my hands felt... heavy. I looked down and screamed. My arms ended in wrists, but the hands attached to them were wrong. They were huge, calloused, with dirt under the nails and a jagged scar across the left thumb. They were the hands of a laborer, a man who had died forty years ago.

I tried to move them, but they moved on their own. They reached up and began to wrap themselves around my own throat. I fought, but my "new" hands were stronger, fueled by a forty-year-old grudge I didn't understand. As the world began to dim, I saw the ghost of the man standing at the foot of my bed, staring at his own empty, spectral stumps. He wasn't trying to kill me; he was just trying to feel something solid again. And as my own hands detached and floated toward him, I realized I was being disassembled, piece by piece, to satisfy the hunger of the forgotten.

The sun was at its zenith, scorching the roof of the house, but when I climbed the pull-down ladder to the attic, the temperature plummeted to freezing. I shined my flashlight around, but the beam seemed to be swallowed by a thick, oily darkness that defied physics. In the center of the room sat a chair.

In the chair sat a version of me—starved, skeletal, with eyes that had filmed over like a dead fish. "It’s been eighty years," the thing whispered, though I had only been in the house for two weeks. I realized then that the attic wasn't a room; it was a time-leak. For every minute I spent in the light downstairs, a decade passed in the dark up here. I turned to run, but the ladder had already rotted away into splinters. I am sitting in the chair now. I can hear the new owners moving in downstairs. They sound so fast, like hummingbirds. I’m waiting for them to find the ladder. I’m waiting for a fresh set of eyes.

The chapel in the basement wasn't built for prayer; it was built for containment. The walls are lined with lead and etched with psalms that have been systematically scratched out by fingernails. In the center of the room stands a wooden crucifix, but the figure on it isn't a savior—it’s a mirror.

When I stepped inside, the silence didn't feel peaceful; it felt vacant, like a house abandoned in a hurry. I looked at the altar and saw a note in a priest’s trembling hand: “He isn’t listening here anymore. Something else moved into the silence.” That’s when I noticed the shadows weren't being cast by the candles. The shadows were detached, crawling across the ceiling like spilled ink. I tried to pray, but the words felt like ash in my mouth. A voice, ancient and hollow, rose from the floorboards: "Why call for someone who fled the moment I arrived?" I looked up, and the crucifix was no longer wood; it was pulsing with a grey, necrotic heat, and the door behind me didn't just close—it vanished into the stone.

It started as a low hum behind the hum of the compressor. I opened the door to the refrigerator, expecting a loose fan. Instead, I found the Sunday roast. It wasn't graying; it was blushing a deep, healthy crimson. As I reached for it, the muscle fibers twitched.

It wasn't a sound, but a vibration that bypassed my ears and went straight to my teeth. "Wrap us back up," the beef whispered, the sound wet and glutinous. "The cold makes it hard to remember our names." I slammed the door, but the whispering only got louder, spreading to the bacon, the eggs, even the milk. By midnight, the fridge was shaking on its hinges. I peeked inside one last time and saw the various cuts of meat had begun to fuse together into a single, limbless torso. It’s growing a throat. It’s learning my name. And it’s very, very hungry for the parts of me that are still attached to bone.

I found the parchment in a copper tube. It was a detailed anatomical drawing of my own body, but it was covered in jagged red lines, numbered and dated. I looked at my arm—perfectly smooth. Then I looked at the map: Line 14. November 12th. Deep laceration. I laughed, until I tripped on the stairs five minutes later. A broken vase sliced my forearm in the exact spot, the exact length, and the exact depth of Line 14. I looked at the map again, my blood dripping onto the parchment. The lines go all the way to 100. Some are small—slight burns, surgical nicks. But there is a thick, black circle around my throat dated Today. I’ve spent the last three hours locked in a padded room, but the map is starting to glow. I can feel the skin on my neck beginning to itch, a thin red line appearing like a ghost’s necklace. The map isn't predicting the future; it’s demanding it.

It’s a grandfather clock with no face, only a single, obsidian needle that moves counter-clockwise. I found it in the hallway of the new house. Every time it chimes, I feel a strange, hollow sensation in my gut. Yesterday, I noticed my wedding ring was loose. This morning, it fell off.

I looked in the mirror and the crow's feet around my eyes were gone. I was getting younger. Most would call it a miracle; I call it a countdown. I’m shrinking. My clothes are becoming tents of denim and wool. The clock is ticking faster now, a frantic tock-tick, tock-tick. I realize with a jolt of pure terror what happens when the needle hits the bottom. I won't just be a child; I’ll be an idea. I’ll be a memory. I’ll be a wet, screaming thing that eventually disappears back into the void. The clock is chiming now. I can’t reach the door handle anymore.

It’s only two inches wide. A dark, dusty sliver of nothingness where I occasionally drop a pen or a sock. But lately, when the lights go out, I hear a sound like someone leafing through a book made of wet parchment.

I made the mistake of looking down with a flashlight. There are no floorboards in the gap. There is only a vertical drop into a space that looks like a throat. And at the very edge, three small, white fingers—too long to be human—are hooked over the carpet, pulling something up. Every night, the bed moves an inch further from the wall, widening the gap. The thing in the dark is growing, and it’s using my lost items to build a face. I found my missing sock today. It was stuffed into a mouth that wasn't there yesterday. Tonight, the gap is wide enough for a head.

The bell didn’t ring. It never does. There is only the sound of a heavy, wet thwack against the porch—the sound of a saturated envelope hitting wood.

I waited until the shadow of the mail carrier retreated past the gate. He is a tall, reed-thin man who moves with a disjointed, clicking gait, his uniform a shade of blue so dark it looks like a bruise. He doesn't carry a bag; he carries a lead-lined bucket.

I opened the door and picked up the mail. The envelope was translucent, soaked through with a clear, foul-smelling enzyme that made my skin itch instantly. I tore it open.

There was no letter. There were teeth.

Dozens of them. Molars still rooted in bits of jawbone, bicuspids with jagged, fresh breaks, and tiny, milk-white incisors that could only belong to a child. They were warm. I dropped them, and they clattered across the floor like dice. That’s when I saw the return address. It was my own. But the date on the postmark was tomorrow.

I ran to the mirror and pulled back my lips. My reflection was fine, but as I watched, my gums began to throb with a sickening, rhythmic heat. One by one, my teeth didn't just fall out—they were ejected. They shot from my mouth with the force of bullets, snapping against the glass of the mirror, leaving bloody craters in my jaw.

I fell to my knees, gagging on the copper taste of my own dissolving mouth, watching as the "Postman" paused at the end of the driveway. He turned his head—180 degrees, his neck snapping like dry kindling—and smiled a wide, toothless hole at me. He reached into his bucket, pulled out a handful of my bloody molars, and dropped them into a new envelope addressed to the house next door.

The mail must go through. And tomorrow, I’ll be the one providing the postage.

The song didn't come from a music box. It came from the plumbing—a low, gurgling melody that sounded like someone humming through a throat full of swamp water. I followed the vibration to the bathtub and found the drain clogged with long, translucent ribbons of what I thought was silk. I pulled.

It wasn't silk. It was umbilical cord, cold and rubbery, miles of it coiling out of the pipes. And then came the voices. Thousands of tiny, wet whispers from the "almost-born," the ones who never got a name or a grave. They aren't sad; they’re spiteful. They began to climb out of the drain—limbless, translucent shapes with mouths that opened like lampreys. They don't want a mother; they want a body. They began to latch onto my ankles, their needle-teeth sinking into my calves to drink the life they were denied. I’m standing in the tub now, and the "lullaby" is getting louder, because they’ve finally reached my throat.

I found it in a box in the attic: a "person-suit" made of every shed cell, every peeled sunburn, and every clipped nail from my childhood. It was a hollow, leathery shell of the boy I used to be. I laughed and tucked it away, but that night, I heard a wet, crinkling sound from the corner of my bedroom.

The skin-suit had inflated. It wasn't filled with air; it was filled with a black, viscous bile that pulsed like a fevered heart. It stood up on shaky, boneless legs, its empty eye-holes fixed on me. It doesn't want to be a memory. It wants the bones back. It lunged, its leathery fingers wrapping around my face, trying to peel the current me off the muscle so it can slide back over the skeleton. I can feel it tearing at my eyelids now, its dry, dead skin itching to be "alive" again.

I went to hug my daughter, but her skin felt unnaturally smooth—slick and slightly warm. When I pulled away, my hand left deep, permanent fingerprint indentations in her cheek. Panic set in. I ran to the kitchen to grab my phone, but the plastic softened and dripped through my fingers like honey.

I looked at the dinner on the table; the steam was actually white smoke, and the steak was a molded block of paraffin. Then, the sun hit the window. My daughter didn't scream; she just started to slump. Her features blurred, her nose dripping onto her chin, her eyes sliding down her face like blue marbles in a melting sundae. I reached out to catch her, but my own fingers fused together into a single, blunt stump. The world isn't real. It’s a gallery, and someone just turned up the heat. I am a puddle on the floor now, and I can hear the "Artist" coming with a wick to start the fire.

(Read this slowly. Do not look away.)

You’ve reached the end. You think you’re safe because the "story" is over. But look at the screen. Look at how the light reflects off the glass.

While you were reading about wax and skin, the book was doing something else. It was localizing. Every time you blinked, the text adjusted itself to the GPS coordinates of your phone. Every time you adjusted your grip, it recorded the temperature of your palms.

Right now, in a font that looks like your own handwriting, the screen is flickering. It’s writing your name. Not your username. Your given name. And underneath it, it’s writing a description of exactly what is standing directly behind your chair right now.

You feel that? That sudden, sharp prick of cold air on the nape of your neck? That isn't a draft. It’s the "Thing" from Title #26. It followed the words. It used the story as a bridge, and now that you’ve finished the last sentence, the bridge has collapsed behind it.

It is in the room with you. It is waiting for you to do the one thing it needs to become physical: it is waiting for you to turn your head and acknowledge it.

Don't look. Don't yelp. Because the moment you see it, the story isn't HG's anymore. It’s yours. And it ends in exactly three seconds.

So, did you like the thrilling stories? Are you hungry for more? Or are you so frightened that your breath is catching in your throat like a splinter?

I didn’t write these to entertain you. I wrote them to empty myself. Every word you just read was a pound of pressure taken off my chest and placed directly onto yours. You felt it, didn't you? That tightening in your ribs? That’s the dread finding a new home.

The truly horrid thing about a "short" story is that it doesn't have enough room to contain the monster it describes. Once the story ends, the monster has nowhere to go but out. Out of the book. Out of the screen. Into the room where you think you're safe.

You’re a part of the collection now. You’ve read the names, you’ve tasted the ink, and you’ve felt the rhythm under the floorboards. You can close the book, you can turn on every light in the house, and you can tell yourself it’s just fiction. But deep down, where the cold starts, you know the truth:

The stories are over, but I’m still writing you.

Sweet dreams. Try not to grind your teeth; the Postman is expecting a delivery.

sincerely/HG