Horror Nights

For ten years I worked for the asylum, only one patient troubles me. He always says that he is the doctor, and tries to force pills down my throat.His name is Patient 47, or at least that’s what the charts still call him. Everyone else just calls him “the Doctor” behind his back, half-joking, half-afraid. I’ve been a night-shift orderly at Blackthorn Psychiatric Hospital since 2015. The pay is decent, the hours are quiet, and most patients are either sedated or too lost in their own heads to cause real trouble. But not him.Every single night, without fail, he waits for me.I first noticed him during my third week on the job. I was doing the 2 a.m. med round on Ward C when I reached his room. The observation window was fogged from the inside. Through the mist I saw him sitting perfectly upright on the edge of his bed, wearing the standard gray patient gown, hands folded politely in his lap. His eyes were wide open, calm, and far too clear for someone who was supposed to be heavily me

My mother killed herself right after I was born. Some deep and dark buried in her past, and I created a time machine to save her. I went to the day that ruined her life, and watched it happen again.Let me start at the beginning. I never knew my mother. She died when I was zero hours old—postpartum hemorrhage, the death certificate said. But I always knew that was a lie. A hemorrhage doesn't make you swallow a bottle of pills. A hemorrhage doesn't make you write a farewell note stained with tears. I found that note when I was fifteen, hidden in the lining of an old coat. It said three words: I couldn't forget.That was all. No explanation. No name. Just three words that ate my childhood and spat out an obsession.I became a physicist. Not because I loved science—because I needed to build a bridge to the past. Twenty years of my life, sacrificed to equations and dark matter theories, to stolen university lab time and fabricated research grants. I told myself it was love. It was grief.

The reservation at L'Ultima was not something one booked; it was something one inherited, or, in my case, something one paid a catastrophic amount of money to acquire from a desperate, bankrupt heir. Located in the sub-basement of an nondescript brutalist building in the city center, the restaurant was whispered about in the circles of the ultra-wealthy. They didn’t serve food; they served "experiences."The dining room was a void of black velvet and soft, amber lighting. There were no menus. One sat, and one was served.When the plate arrived, it was almost jarring in its simplicity. A single, thick slab of meat, seared to a perfect, crusty mahogany, resting on a bed of dark, earthy reduction. It didn't smell like the usual game or cattle. It smelled of something primal, something ancient—metallic, yet sweet.I took the first bite. The texture was a paradox; it was incredibly tender, yet it possessed a resilience that defied gravity. It dissolved on the tongue, releasing a burst of f

The sterile scent of the hospital room was my only reality. It smelled of antiseptic and dying hope. My doctor had given me three months; the cancer had blossomed inside me like a black, choking flower, unbothered by radiation or chemo.The brass lamp sat on the bedside table, a flea market find I’d polished out of boredom and desperation. When the smoke curled out, filling the room with the scent of ozone and ancient earth, I didn't scream. I just stared at the shifting, smoky entity that coalesced before me. It didn’t look like the stories. It looked like a storm trapped in a human shape, eyes flickering with the cold light of dead stars."You have three," it rumbled. The voice sounded like grinding stones.I sat up, clutching my robe. I didn't care about the impossible nature of the being. I cared about the tumor, the size of a fist, coiled around my liver."Cure me," I rasped, my throat raw. "I want to be healthy. Take this cancer away."The entity tilted its head. It didn’t snap

The routine was as familiar as the rhythm of my own heartbeat. I would arrive early, creeping through the unlocked window in the kitchen, making my way silently to the master bedroom. I knew the layout by heart: the creaky floorboard near the closet, the specific hum of the gaming PC, the way she liked the room cooled to exactly sixty-eight degrees.Under the bed was my sanctuary. It was dark, smelling faintly of her lavender laundry detergent and the stale dust of the floorboards. From here, I didn’t just watch her stream on a screen; I watched her. I saw the way her shoulders tensed when she lost a match, the way she bit her lip when she read a particularly funny comment, the way she laughed—that genuine, sparkling sound that never quite translated through the microphone.I was watching her stream as usual, but this time, a viewer noticed me hiding under the bed.The stream was quiet. It was late, the kind of "Just Chatting" session where she sat in her oversized chair, hair pulled