The Omniscrolls

I struggled to maintain friendships as a child since we were constantly moving from city to city and town to town. Some years, it would be only a couple of times, but in others, it would be even four to five times. I was still in middle school when I started to suspect that something was wrong with my parents; I wondered if they were on the run from the law, and even asked them about it. Mom and Dad said they were shocked that I even suspected such a thing, but I could see in their faces that they were hiding something from me. As the years passed, I became numb to the routine, but once I met someone who became a close friend more than anyone else ever had, and I had to leave her behind as well, I decided it was time for me to investigate my parents. Whenever they were occupied, I went through their phones and laptops, but I found nothing outside work documents and other general topics. Neither of them had social media, and they had strict rules about my having social media as well. I ...

I struggled to open my eyes as my vision blurred with each blink. When the haze finally cleared, I found myself in a hospital room. I tried to sit up, but a sudden jolt of pain shot through my neck and head, forcing me to stay still. It was then that a doctor and a nurse walked into the room and examined me. It pushed through the pain to speak, asking them what had happened to me. The doctor said that I had been in a car crash the night before and was lucky to have survived with relatively minor injuries. I tried to remember the details, but all I saw was darkness; I tried to recall other details, but I was left with emptiness. I couldn’t remember a single detail about myself… The doctor said I was most likely suffering from amnesia. She said my parents were on their way to see me again, and that I should be fine to leave within a day or two. Half an hour passed before my mother and father arrived. They tried to help me remember my past, but nothing jogged my memory. Everything was bla...

My father was a strange and secretive man who would disappear on us for days or weeks without a word and return as if nothing had happened. My younger brother, Alex, and I were still in primary school at the time; we never understood why he disappeared like that, and Mom wouldn’t give us a straight answer either. I don’t think even she knew all the details. As a few years passed, however, Dad’s disappearances became increasingly frequent, and he and Mom often argued when he was back. This led to our parents divorcing, and Mom getting full custody of us because Dad was never around. He was barely even present for his own divorce. After the divorce, we rarely heard from Dad. He would call us once in a few months, but it was always brief. After a few years, we stopped hearing from him altogether. We received no word about his whereabouts, and Mom was worried, but she never told us anything. She knew more than she told us; I was certain of that. When I was fifteen, we received a package th...

My life changed when I was just twelve years old. I was woken up in the middle of the night by my parents’ screams. The screaming prevailed only for a few seconds; I rushed out of my room to see how my parents were doing when I heard my twin baby brothers crying as well. Instead of checking on my parents, I went to my brothers’ cribs to console them, and while talking to them to get them to smile, a woman stepped into the room. She wore a hood, and had gloves on. I stood in front of my brothers, even though my entire body began to tremble. “I won’t let you hurt them,” I said. The woman sighed and gave a faint smile. “I’m no child-killer, unlike your parents. You’ve got heart, Lia. I hope you grow up to be a good citizen, not be part of a global organisation hell-bent on propagating terrorism and racial supremacy." The woman turned to leave, but paused to say one last thing before disappearing into the shadows. “I’m sorry about your parents, but I had no other choice. There are too...

Having lost both my parents at an early age, my grandmother was my world growing up. She taught me so much about school and life, and always made sure that I had everything I needed. I was spoiled, even in my teens. I never moved out after finishing school, even though I got a scholarship to a university; I decided to stay with Grandma and work at a local shop. A few years passed, and Grandma began to say strange things, as if she knew she was going to pass on within a month. I paid little attention to those words because of her age, but I regretted not taking her seriously when one day, I woke up to find that she had passed in her sleep. I took two weeks off work to be alone after the funeral, and while going through old memories, I came across something I had forgotten about: it was a mirror that was a family heirloom. I remembered asking Grandma about it when I was around six; her answers were rather short and vague. I wiped the dust off the mirror and looked in, and to my surprise,...

Growing up, I could never shake the feeling that I was being followed. Almost everywhere I went, I felt like someone was watching me from a corner. I never caught anyone following me, but it kept me on edge all the time. When I opened up about the issue to my friends and family, my parents secretly assigned a private investigator to keep an eye on me. We had an argument about it, and they agreed to call the PI off. I tried not to allow myself to fixate on my fears of being stalked, and to some degree, it worked, as I started to spend more time with friends during the latter stage of my highschool years. However, those fears slowly crawled back into my mind once I moved from my hometown to work in the city; and in my small apartment, I began to sense a presence I had never even felt anywhere else. Or so I thought… Towards the end of the first week at my new apartment, I began to see the same recurring dream from my childhood that I had long forgotten. It was of a cloaked figure, enshrou...

As a child, I always had the feeling that someone was watching me. Whenever I was travelling, I could sense that someone or something was following me, even though I found nothing whenever I looked around. My parents didn’t think much of it at first, but seeing how scared I was, they made it a habit to never allow me out of their sight. These feelings lingered as I grew older, although they weren’t as strong as before. I would sometimes sense a presence around me whenever I did my homework—and I could have sworn I heard whispers echoing in the air sometimes in the dead silence of the school library. This weird experience led me to write short stories in my spare time, and I even got the idea to write a novel one day. Writing helped me pour out my experiences in a way that nothing else did, and I often found it soothing. Following my parents’ advice, I also saw a therapist as a teenager, but while the sessions helped me to some degree, the sense of brewing danger never truly faded. In t...

As a child, I was always fascinated by death, especially when exploring myths and legends that covered Death as an entity. This became an obsession as I reached my teenage years, and even led me to pursue subjects like mythology and theology in my higher studies. One night, I was driving home after work when my brakes stopped working, forcing me off the road and into a lamp post. When I woke up, or what I thought was waking up, I found myself in a hospital room, but my soul was floating next to my body. Mom and Dad were there, so were a few of my relatives. “Am I dead?” I asked myself. “No, you still have time, although how much may depend on you,” a voice rose from behind. I turned around to find a figure standing before me, dressed in dark attire and with an aura that was alluring for reasons I couldn’t comprehend. “Who… Who are you?” I asked. “I’m the one person you’ve been searching for information about all your life; the same person your mother asked you not to ask questions abou...

My father was a dealer at a casino, but it was not long before he himself became a gambler. It was just a hobby for him at first, but later, it spiralled into a full-blown addiction. He was on a winning streak for weeks, often bringing Mom and me lots of presents and treating us to many luxurious meals at places I had never even heard of before. However, those happy memories were short-lived once he started losing. This caused tension between Mom and Dad as Dad refused to fight off his addiction and seek professional help. Mom, exhausted by his stubbornness, divorced Dad just a year later, and I rarely got to see him afterwards. I was just ten at the time, so I didn’t understand much, but entering my teens, the reality of what happened weighed on me more and more as the years passed by. Remembering how I enjoyed Dad’s gambling stories, I feared going down a similar path. Ten years have passed since the divorce, and Dad and I meet once a month to catch up. He has relapsed a few times si...

Coming from a religious home, I spent most of my life seeing the world as black and white, good and evil, but as I reached my teens and started to follow the news, I was swallowed by the vast ocean of grey that surrounded me. People who preached the word of god, leaders who were meant to inspire us, artists who were supposed to give us hope—so many of them were the worst people imaginable. So many of them had ties with people who made such atrocities their line of work. It was not long before I began to question my faith, wondering what kind of higher power would turn their back on their creation’s suffering. My parents called my questioning blasphemous and refused to have a discussion on the topic. Even some of my friends were offended when I spoke to them about the subject. One of them said as a joke that maybe I should summon the Devil to see what they would say, but I took it seriously and decided to go ahead with it the following day. That same night, however, I was suddenly awake...

My sister, Rana, always struggled with strange experiences. She would often drift off mid-conversation and begin to wander off as if our discussions never even happened; on other occasions, we’d find her sleepwalking past locked doors. While these were not frequent at first, they became a common occurrence as she grew older. Grandma insisted that it was possession and said she needed to call her witch friend, Mina, but she was alone in her belief. My parents made an appointment for Rana with a specialist, but the treatment only seemed to work for a couple of days before she returned to her routine. Mom and Dad spent weeks checking with different doctors, but it was to no avail. Rana’s sleepwalking only escalated as time passed. One night, Mom put the door keys in a new safe she bought, but the next morning, she woke up to find the safe broken into and the front door fully open. Rana was thankfully not missing, and without harm; however, that same morning, we heard alarming news that ma...

I once saw the god Anu in a TV series when I was six and was devastated when he was killed off. He was my favourite character, and I wished so badly for his return in the series that I even prayed for it. Two weeks passed with me wishing for Anu’s return, and he indeed did appear in the series once again, but something was off… ​ It seemed that I was the only one who could see Anu in the series. My parents paid no attention to it; they probably assumed it was simply my imagination. However, things became weirder as the months progressed, as I started seeing Anu in various other TV series, and even in cartoons. I brought this up with my parents, yet they shrugged it off the same as before, saying I was just too attached to the character. I almost believed them, but deep down, I knew there was more to it than that. ​ As I grew older, however, my interests shifted, and I slowly forgot about the character I once adored. By the time I was in university, he was but a distant memory. However,...