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, they a