The Omniscrolls

I woke up in the middle of the night to voices echoing around me. I couldn’t tell where they were coming from; it almost sounded like they were sinking into my head. I grabbed a bat and inspected every inch of the house, but there was no one there. Yet the voices never ceased. Was I hearing things? I never had this issue before, so I didn’t know what to do. Then I heard them calling out my name. “Who are you?” I asked. “We’re your creations.” I figured that all the overtime I was pulling at work while also working on my novel was beginning to wear me down. My mom’s words from the previous day just echoed in my head: “You’ll have to choose between that newspaper company and your books, Shanelle. You can’t run on two to three hours of sleep forever.” Perhaps she was right. “No, you’re not just hearing things. We are truly your creations. You wrote us to life!” Maybe I needed to see a therapist. The voices kept saying that I was the goddess that created their worlds and lives, and that th...

“Rowena, I’m done. I am not going back to that little monster’s house.” “You, too, Zodd?” “No monster can frighten him. There’s something unnatural about him.” “He’s just a kid.” “More like a demon in a kid’s body. He almost trapped me under his bed.” “Fine, I’ll reassign you to someone else.” That was the third monster scared away by the same child, Joshua. I couldn’t comprehend how a mere nine-year-old could strike fear in the hearts of actual monsters. Giving the matter much thought, I decided to take matters to my own hands. That night, I appeared under Joshua’s bed and bided my time. When the time came to scare him, he grabbed a baseball bat and looked under the bed; and to my surprise, it was my twin brother, Cormag. “Rowena? You’re the monster this time?” “Cormag, how are you alive? It has been centuries.” He told me he’d explain and asked me to come out from under the bed. We hugged each other, and then he told me what had happened all those years ago. “Back when I drowned, I c...

A man was hiking on a mountain trail for almost half a day. He had accidentally lost his food along the way and was growing weary by the minute as even his water supply was running low. At one point on his journey, the man fell off a ridge and found himself before the mouth of a cave. There before him was an old bronze jar, and an inexplicable urge suddenly rose within him to get close to it, as if it were calling out to him. When he tried to move, the man felt a sharp pain spread across his entire left leg. It was most likely broken. He crawled forward and forced himself to sit up, and then he grabbed the mysterious jar that was before him. The lid of the jar then popped off, releasing a gust grey mist. Suddenly, there was a being before him that took the form of a humanoid shadow, undulating where it stood like a mass of black and grey smoke. “Human, you are granted three wishes.” The man didn’t know what to say; he couldn’t even move his legs. “I mean you no harm. I’m a djinn, and I...

I heard my parents arguing over my dad flirting with other women once again. I put my headphones on and cranked up the volume to drown out their voices. The next morning, I came downstairs to find dad crying on the couch with a letter in his hand. I was scared to ask what had happened. “Dad, where’s mom?” “She’s gone,” he said, handing over the letter to me. Mom had told dad that she could not stand to be around him anymore, and that she had to leave. The second half of her letter was addressed to me: Dear Sienna, I’m so sorry for leaving you like this. I just want you to know that none of this is your fault. I just can’t take this anymore. Be safe, honey. I’ll miss you. Love, Mom I did not believe that it was written by mom. I asked dad if he had written it himself after asking her to leave, but he denied it. I knew mom; she would have never left like that. Dad was a liar. Not even three months later, dad started dating another woman. Things moved so fast that they were married in a y...