The Omniscrolls

My father was a heavy gambler, and he seemed to have luck on his side for the longest time before one day, he began to lose again and again. Mom pleaded with him to stop, but he ignored her and continued to spiral down that rabbit hole. Eventually, she filed for a divorce, and he was barred from seeing us. Dad once told me that his late mother was a witch, and that she had a grimoire that he would use from time to time. He said it granted him luck. I wondered if whatever spell he used had backfired at some point, or if it simply had run its course. As I grew older and reconnected with Dad, I learned that he had indeed stopped using the grimoire around the same time his winning streak ended. He said the spell he used consumed a portion of his soul at a time, shortening his lifespan. He didn’t want to continue that spell, but he couldn’t let go of gambling either. I pitied him. I asked Dad if I could borrow Grandma’s grimoire to boost my research. Dad agreed, but he warned me not to make...

For as long as I could remember, I had always been clumsy in the most dangerous of ways. I would often fall down stairs and run my bike into trees, but somehow, I would also walk away from such accidents with barely a scratch on me. My parents were both terrified and astonished; they said I had the wildest luck imaginable. I found ‘chaotic’ to be a more accurate description of it as I grew up. Even after I had moved out and started working, I would often run into accidents both indoors and on the road. I would often fall in the office or crash my car on the road. My accidents were so frequent that the insurance company knew me on a first-name basis and dreaded it whenever I called. My parents urged me to sell my car and use a taxi, or even public transport, but I did not feel it was necessary. I never got hurt, and I never hurt anyone else either. I found it strange, recognizing the pattern of not even causing any property damage in my accidents. However, given how many times I crashed...

I had a brown bear soft toy for as long as I could remember, and we were inseparable. Ms. Bear and I would often have long conversations, and I always loved listening to her wise words. However, she never spoke in front of my parents. The first time I attempted to speak to her in front of them, she stayed silent, making my parents laugh and brush it off as my imagination. I was disappointed and ignored her that evening until she told me that if she revealed her powers to anyone but me, she would cease to exist. Ms. Bear was my guardian angel; her presence was meant to be a secret. She made me promise never to reveal it to anyone. I agreed. As the years passed by, Ms. Bear saved my life several times, much to the confusion of my parents, who didn’t understand how I managed to get out of the pool when I couldn’t yet swim, or how I avoided injuries after falling from my bike. Ms. Bear even protected me from threatening strangers, driving them away with what she called her “foreboding aura...

Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence I had heard many fairy tales from my mother before she passed away, many of them being so spooky that they kept me up at night. However, our lives were far more cruel than any scary story she told me about witches and ghouls. My father was an abusive drunk who beat my mother to death when I was just six years old. I was left alone to take care of both household matters and raising my two younger siblings. I wished there was a witch out there who would punish him for what he did, but it seemed that things wouldn’t come that easily. For the next three years, he beat my siblings and me every evening once he returned from work. I bore the brunt of the beatings, pleading with him not to hurt my two younger sisters, but he was often ruthless. One day, I decided that we had suffered enough at his hands and started hiding both money and rations in my room in hopes of fleeing with my siblings. A month later, everything was in order. I woke my siblings up in th...