The Omniscrolls

Growing up, I always felt as if I were being followed, even when I was all alone. I spoke to my mom about it once, but she brushed it off as me being paranoid. She was always dismissive. When I reached my teen years, the voices grew more incessant. One day, I locked myself in my room and called out to whoever was there. “Over here,” one voice said. I turned to my left and found an odd figure. They were nearly shapeless: a mere undulating mass of smoke that barely held a humanoid form. “What are you?” I asked. “She’s a spirit of discord,” another voice said. I turned to my right and found another figure before me. “If anyone’s a spirit of discord, it’d be her,” the first voice said. “My name’s Ryzele, and that is Grinnyr.” “I am a guiding spirit, but she is a trickster,” Grinnyr said. “You liar!” Ryzele said. The two spirits began to argue. I asked them to shut up and stormed out of the room. Their arguing became a recurring event of my daily life. Throughout highschool and even into my...

It had been three years since we last went on a vacation. At the end of the year, I took my husband, Josh, and our two daughters, Helen and Carina, to the Canary Islands. According to the weather forecast, it was going to be sunny and warm for a week. The night we reached the house we had rented, Helen and Carina woke Josh and me up with excited yelling around 1:00 a.m. “What’s going on? Why are you two up?” I asked. “Mom, it’s snowing outside, and there are huge snowmen!” Helena said. Josh and I held their hands and walked over to the front. The air was much colder than it was when we had arrived that evening, and to Josh and my surprise, when we came upon the living room windows, we found the outside world blanketed by snow. It was most likely ankle deep. While the snow was just unexpected, what was bizarre and eerie were the snowmen that towered around the vicinity. Each of them was of humanoid form and were well over eight feet tall. How could anyone have made them so quickly? The ...

I was just eight years old when my parents, the king and queen, were murdered by my paternal aunt, Arana. I had never met her in my life; all Dad ever told me was that she left the city soon after he was crowned king, and that no one had seen or heard from her since. Now, she had returned, and as a dark witch at that. Arana spared my life, but forced me into a life of servitude. She gained a great following, mostly out of fear, but many royal guards and servants who remained loyal to my parents feigned fealty to her so that they could bide their time. I did the same. I couldn’t wait to overthrow her one day—she would regret sparing my life. A decade passed by. Although Arana made me her slave, she couldn’t stand the sight of me once I reached the age of fifteen. She said I reminded her too much of my father. Not long after, she locked me away in the donjon, where I remained for three years, plotting my revenge. Servants and royal guards that remained loyal to me would sneak in books on...

( Trigger Warning:  suicide) Growing up, I found out firsthand how mental illness can impact relationships. My mom believed she could foretell future events and would prevent me from going to places she deemed dangerous. She only ever warned me and not Dad, but I never gave it much thought. My dad grew frustrated with her words; he began to shut her out and call her crazy. Dad had her institutionalised and, eventually, she stopped warning me altogether. However, that same year, Dad left Mom and me and disappeared with one of his colleagues. Mom was devastated. One day, I came home from school to find Mom lying on the floor with an empty bottle of pills next to her. She was gone… That day, I decided to become a psychiatrist. I didn’t want any other child to feel the same way I did. Fifteen years later, I started working at the same mental institute that Mom was sent to. That’s when things took a strange turn: four new patients not only exhibited the same symptoms that my mom did, th...

Ever since I was a little girl, I had been fascinated by dragons. Every Christmas, I would wish for a dragon, only to be disappointed the next morning. One year, I got a puppy, and the next, I got a kitten; and although I was happy to receive them, I still longed, more than anything, to meet a dragon. Now as an adult, although I recognised that dragons weren’t real, my fascination with the myths that surround them still remained unchanged. I even had recurring dreams where I turned into a dragon. When I brought it up to my brother, he laughed and called me weird for being so engulfed in fantasy stories. I hated him for it. If I had the chance, I would have sold my soul to become a dragon. It was an odd thought to have, but my interest in dragons was just that intense. It was an indescribable feeling. One night, as I drifted off to sleep, I heard a voice in my head. “Do you want to know the secrets of the dragons?” it said. “Yes,” I replied. “Then open your eyes.” I suddenly woke up to ...

It had been a long day attending the trial of a drug trafficking case as the lead detective. Things weren’t going our way: two of our witnesses were suddenly unwilling to testify. That evening, Trudy, my childhood friend and the prosecutor of the case, said we should have some drinks at our usual place. The bar was in my sights when I suddenly got a call from Trudy’s emergency phone. I rushed to my car and raced to Trudy’s house in two minutes. When I arrived near her house, parked at a safe distance across the street, I found three men escorting her to a van. One of them was holding her arm and pointing a gun at her under his coat. Pulling out my gun was not an option; she’d be dead before I could do anything. The neighbourhood was quiet and barren at that hour, but I couldn’t risk a full transformation either. I tapped into my dragon core and dashed across the street, knocking the assailants unconscious in a split second and taking Trudy to my car. I then called for backup and rushed...

I was nearing my deadline, yet I found myself void of ideas. Only three days were left for the short story competition I was taking part in to end, but I hadn’t even written a single sentence. My best friend, Rana, suggested that I stay at the family cabin she recently inherited. I accepted her offer and went to the woods that morning. It was peaceful there. The cabin wasn’t too far from the road, and there were no wild animals nearby, so it was the perfect spot to relax and find some fresh ideas. But the journey to reach it was so long that by the time I got there, I fell on the bed and slept until the next sunrise. I woke up feeling more refreshed than I had been in weeks and finally found myself with ideas for my story. It was going to be a sci-fi thriller about an intergalactic war that pulled Earth into the crosshairs. I went to grab my laptop but found it nowhere in my bag or anywhere around the house. It was strange. I was sure that I brought it with me; how could I have forgott...

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I had just finished my second brain surgery for the day when yet another patient who needed one was brought to the ER. What’s going on today? I’ve never had three in one day. Things became stranger once I saw the details of the patient; all three of my patients were women in their sixties who had fallen from high places. The latest had fallen down a flight of stairs. Was this just a coincidence? Then, just minutes into the surgery, I started hearing a whisper in my ear. “Cassandra, help me…” What’s happening? Am I hallucinating because of the stress? “Did you hear that?” I asked my team. “Hear what?” A nurse asked. “Nevermind.” I shook my head. “Maybe you’re a little too exhausted,” the nurse said. “You’re not hearing things, Cassandra. It’s really me,” the voice said yet again—and this time, the patient herself grabbed my hand. I tried to break free, but her grip was too strong. Everyone in the room jumped back and scattered everything they were holding. “You all…leave,” the lady said...

Growing up, my parents often pushed me to follow their footsteps and become a doctor. My elder brother was fine with it, but that’s not what I wanted. Even if I did, I didn’t have the talent for it. Science was the bane of my existence; I couldn’t retain any information no matter how hard I tried. I would have preferred a career in either art or writing, but no, they always dismissed those ideas. By the time I reached my final school year, things were looking bleak: I was constantly hearing complaints from my parents about how bad my Science grades were that it even affected the grades of the subjects I was good at. One night, I overheard my parents talking about me in the living room. I got out of bed to grab some water, but they made me wish I had never woken up at all. “Simone, just what are we to do with Sherry? At the rate she’s going, she won’t even be able to become a nurse.” “I don’t know, Clyde. Maybe we’ll have to get her to redo this year’s work.” Hearing those words was dev...