The Omniscrolls

Two centuries ago, the Great Solar War drove many Rhoarons to take refuge in two other planets in our system. One of them was Alveroth, which was among the top three most powerful planets in our solar system; the other was Phyron, my home planet, which was yet to catch up with the rest of our system. However, the majority of the Rhoaron refugees chose Phyron over Alveroth since our home had more free land; and while this helped expand our growth in the intra-solar market with time, eventually, the majority of the Rhoaron descendants here demanded rights to more land and industries, claiming that Phyron wouldn’t be where it was without their hard work. While we acknowledged their hand in developing of our economy, their demands were far too extreme. However, while many of our neighbours agreed on this, the superpowers of the solar system—especially Alveroth—did not: they saw it as an opportunity to further their own ambitions. And thus began the Phyronian Civil War. I lost everyone I lo...

Trigger Warning: Gore / Violence Against Children As a homicide detective, I thought I had seen it all until, one day, I came across a sight I never thought I’d see. The bodies of multiple children were thrown into a pile on the outskirts of the town. I felt knots form from my stomach to my throat as my partner and I investigated the bodies; the children were tortured before they were shot in the back of their heads. They were all minorities, so we started cracking down on supremacists and other gangs in the area, but every route we took led us to an impasse. As we ran around in circles, the bodies kept piling up every other week. By the time the second month rolled around, we were staring at a three-digit body count. I saw their faces every time my head hit the pillow, and I stared at the ceiling for hours, hoping and wishing to get my hands on those responsible. I could barely even eat anymore. My partner’s hopes of catching the murderers slowly eroded as this dragged on, but I doubl...

I had just finished the latest chapter of my ongoing novel and was getting ready for bed early because I needed to leave the house by 5:00 a.m. to visit my parents for the weekend. It was a four-hour drive out of town to their place, but I made it a point to meet them at least once a month. It was the least I could do since they adopted me when I was just a newborn dropped off at their doorstep with nothing but a sheet wrapped around me. However, things took a strange turn when I was woken up around 2:00 a.m. to the ringing of the doorbell. Looking through the peephole, I was dumbfounded to find a woman carrying a backpack, whose resemblance was eerily similar to the protagonist of my book. She kept a vigilant eye on her surroundings and whispered into the door. “Please let me in. This is an emergency.” Seeing the fear on her face, I unlocked the door and asked the mysterious woman to come inside. She thanked me and rushed to the sofa. I took one more look outside and then locked the d...

Being a naturally reserved and shy child, I often found myself being bullied by my classmates, but I always followed my mother’s advice and forgave them each time. Being a religious person, she asked that I never fight back against them because I’d be no better than them. My father, however, disagreed. “You’ll only be a carpet for them in the long run,” he said. “If you let them get away with it, they will never stop.” I hated to admit it, but he was right. Even though I mostly agreed with Mom’s ideals, I found Dad’s words eventually ringing true. As the years passed by, the bullying only got worse, and those responsible were never punished. I wanted to stay true to my beliefs and be the good person Mom wanted me to be, but at what cost? What was the point in being “good”—whatever that even meant anymore—if it only brought me suffering in return? It was not long before I was the only prey left in the class. I tried getting to know my bullies in a desperate attempt to find something we ...

I was sitting on a park bench waiting for my next client who was running late when a girl in her early teens approached my bench. She had some scrape marks on her face and hands, and she was also missing a shoe. “What happened? Did someone hurt you?” I asked. “My foster father. He beats me every day; I couldn’t take it anymore.” The girl, who introduced herself as Leila, said that she had complained to the police several times, but they never listened to her because of the status her foster parents held. Her foster mother didn’t care about her either. I felt my stomach twist inside. Having lost my parents to a contract killer, I was in and out of foster homes until I ran away at the age of sixteen and found myself in my current career. Leila asked if I could take her in, but I declined immediately. My work as a contract killer allowed me no room to be a mother. Instead, I saved my number on her phone and asked her to give me a ring if she ever needed my help. I usually had two rules: n...

Three years had dissolved since my husband passed away. Working late on murder cases kept my mind busy, but whenever I was home, the emptiness that surrounded me was deafening. We had been together for twenty years when Jeff died of cancer. My best friend, Aria, suggested that I download a dating app. I was reluctant at first, but with much persuasion, I finally caved in. I matched with a guy called Rick within a week and we decided to have a double date with Aria and her husband. That first date went smoothly and, a few days later, Rick asked if I would like to go on a second date two weeks from then. I agreed. Rick and I dated for another couple of months before he asked me to move in with him. His house was in the suburbs, surrounded by trees and a lake. It was so gorgeous and serene there, but I had to decline due to my work. Instead, I asked him to move in with me. He agreed without any hesitation, saying he’d keep his house strictly for his writing since the surroundings provided...

I was woken up in the middle of the night to the shattering of a vase downstairs. I grabbed my bat and got behind the bedroom entrance, listening for movement. A minute passed. No other noise arose from outside the bedroom. I wish I hadn’t put my phone to charge overnight in my office; my husband, Matt, always said it was a dangerous habit. I had no other option but to move to the hallway. I opened the door and checked the corners before heading towards the staircase. As I reached it, however, I was hit in the back of my head with a club . I lost the grip of my bat and fell to the floor, gasping as my vision began to blur. “I told you your habit was a dangerous one, Bella.” The voice was fuzzy, but I recognised it—it was Matt. I couldn’t believe what was happening; he had lied about his business trip to hurt me. “Wh...” I struggled to muster any energy. “It’s because you listened to your father and signed that damn prenup!” His words were seething. “Now you’ll die like one of your char...

My SciFi book, The Timeless Emprise, will be free for 5 days from this Saturday (April 13th) on Amazon KDP. Check out the link below: https://www.amazon.com/Timeless-Emprise-Sharon-Jansen-ebook/dp/B0CP6KDWYQ/

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...

I was nearing my deadline, yet I found myself void of ideas. Only three days were left for the short story competition I was taking part in to end, but I hadn’t even written a single sentence. My best friend, Rana, suggested that I stay at the family cabin she recently inherited. I accepted her offer and went to the woods that morning. It was peaceful there. The cabin wasn’t too far from the road, and there were no wild animals nearby, so it was the perfect spot to relax and find some fresh ideas. But the journey to reach it was so long that by the time I got there, I fell on the bed and slept until the next sunrise. I woke up feeling more refreshed than I had been in weeks and finally found myself with ideas for my story. It was going to be a sci-fi thriller about an intergalactic war that pulled Earth into the crosshairs. I went to grab my laptop but found it nowhere in my bag or anywhere around the house. It was strange. I was sure that I brought it with me; how could I have forgott...