The Omniscrolls

Our town’s annual wax art competition was just two weeks away and I was getting excited. This was going to be my first time taking part in it, so I was daunted at the same time since the competition was dominated by Logan Marvin. Logan had won the competition three years in a row, starting with the first one he took part in. My friend Corbin and I both hated him. He bullied us for years in school since he was older than us. As Logan was always so smug about being the “unbeatable champion” on his socials, the same as he was back in school, if either of us could snatch that title and erase that obnoxious smile he always wore, it would have been a delight. When Corbin and I were signing up for the competition, Logan made a snide remark about us never being able to reach his level of skill. He soon came to regret those words. I was awarded first place at the end of the competition, while Logan named the runner-up and Corbin came in third. The look on Logan’s face when it was announced was ...

I never fell ill as a child, and even when I got injured, any cuts and bruises would heal in less than a minute. I broke my arm once and it healed in just two minutes. Everyone in town was scared of me, and even my own parents resented me because both our neighbours and their colleagues avoided them as well. Neither of them had such regenerative abilities, so I had no help at all to understand what was different about me. They were too scared to have the doctors run tests on me, although they didn’t say why. When I was sixteen, the town I lived in became ground zero for an epidemic that swiftly spread to nearby towns and cloaked the entire district in just three days. Thousands of people were falling ill; hundreds more were dying. It was then that a group of scientists called my parents. I overheard my parents on the phone and decided to eavesdrop on the conversation that followed. “If only it were that easy to get rid of her. She has been nothing but a burden from the moment she was b...

Trigger Warning: Bullying/Gore Growing up a socially awkward child, I was often bullied both by my siblings and by other children at my school. When I reached my teens, I had no shred of self-esteem left. Teachers never cared, and my parents were always telling me to “grow up” and “stop being so sensitive”. They often called me a drama queen and an attention-seeker. I couldn’t rely on anyone, anywhere. I ran away from home when I was sixteen but was caught by the cops that same night and brought back to my parents. I tried explaining to the police that I couldn’t take it anymore in that cursed neighbourhood, but they brushed off my words as teenage angst. The moment the cops left, my parents beat me senseless for what I did. I hated them—I wished they’d die. But it was not just them: I was beginning to despise the entire town. I wish I could erase them all. After that day, I made it a point to loiter at different shops and the town library to escape my siblings and bullies after schoo...

I had just moved to another town and rented a new house. Many neighbours advised against it, some saying it was haunted by a vengeful spirit, and others saying it was a gateway to hell. I shrugged off their comments, not giving them much thought. This was the best I could do at the time. Haunted or not, it was all I could afford while keeping my new job. The summer heat was torturous; I had no energy left after unloading my belongings that afternoon. All I could do was lie down on my mattress and pass out for the rest of the day. Before I knew it, I was waking up in the middle of the night to a sharp chill that bit into my bones. Shivering, I grabbed my phone to find the weather saying it was the usual summer temperature. What’s going on? Is this…? I wished mom had been around longer. I would’ve honed my skills as a witch if she were still with us. I used one of the few spells I learned when I was young and repelled the freezing air around me by creating a shield. I turned on the light...

I had just stepped into the Castle Hotel when, suddenly, I felt a strange presence surrounding me. The lobby was nearly empty; save for a little girl who couldn’t have been more than ten years old sitting on a sofa, the only other person in the room was the receptionist, but I still couldn’t brush off the feeling that something was crawling around the corners. The receptionist himself was a young boy who looked barely eighteen. My mind suddenly returned to the tales I had heard about the castle before it was recently turned into a hotel. Even though the events were over two centuries into the past, the gruesome history of this place was still known by many: a nobleman kills his daughter, and his son then wreaks vengeance upon his abusive father and neglectful mother. However, the fear that grew in the back of my mind slowly disappeared as I conversed with the receptionist. He was a polite young man, explaining everything I needed to know in great detail. It was already midnight, so I d...