The Omniscrolls

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...