What Is Happening To Me?

You know, I used to think I was alone in here, in my own head. But I’m not. There’s something else with me now, something cold and strange, creeping through my veins like ice. At first, I thought I was just ill, a bug or a virus. But it’s not like that. It’s smarter. I can feel it, moving inside, taking bits and pieces of me, like a squatter in an abandoned house, making itself at home.

It whispers to me when the lights go out, tells me things no human ears should hear. I want to scream, to tell it to leave, but there’s a part of me that’s curious. What does it want? Why me?

Every day, I wake up a little less me and a bit more it. My hands don’t feel like my own anymore. They move with a mind of their own, touching, feeling, knowing things I don’t. My reflection… it’s me, but there’s something off in the eyes. They’re hungrier, wilder.

I’m scared. I don’t want to lose myself. But maybe… maybe it’s not about losing. Maybe it’s about changing. And I wonder, what will I become when it’s done with me? Will I even recognise myself? Or will I just be the vessel for something new, something otherworldly?

An Invitation

At midnight, under a crescent moon, the invitation arrived. Embossed on black card, its silver letters promised an evening of “unforgettable experiences”. Curiosity nudged Clara towards acceptance. The address led to a dilapidated mansion, its silhouette highlighted against the night sky.

Inside, masked figures danced in silence, their movements too smooth, too precise. When a masked stranger offered a hand, she hesitated, then accepted.

The moment their hands touched, the room spun. The dancers stopped, their eyes on her, gleaming with hunger. Clara understood too late—the invitation was not for entertainment, but a selection. And she had been chosen.

A Drabble – exactly 100-words long.

Dreams and Nightmares

Beneath the cloak of night, in the silence that suffocates like a thick fog, my true work begins—work that the faint of heart would dare not even whisper about. It’s a craft that dances on the edge of shadows, where the line between the ethereal and the corporeal blurs.

Each step I take is measured, a silent pact with the darkness, as I weave through the alleys and backstreets of this sleeping city. My tools? Not the crude instruments of flesh and bone, but the delicate threads of fear, ambition, and desire. I’m an artist, a sculptor of the intangible, moulding the very essence of human emotion into something palpable, something that can be touched and felt.

As the world slumbers, ignorant of the forces that sway just beyond the veil of their comprehension, I toil. And as dawn’s first light breaches the horizon, I retreat, a spectre dissolving into the mists of morning, leaving behind my creations to stir and unsettle the waking world. My work is never seen, but always felt—a whisper in the mind, a shiver down the spine.

For in the quietest moments, in the depths of night, I am the architect of dreams and nightmares alike.

Sally, From The Tills

In the glaring fluorescent lights of of aisle three, between the tins of beans and the packets of rice, there’s this sort of quiet that settles. It’s like the world pauses for a breath, and in that stillness, I find myself thinking about her. Sally. It’s a simple name, isn’t it? But there’s something about the way it sounds when I whisper it under my breath, amidst the shuffle of products and the beep of scanners, that feels like it’s filled with unsaid things, with stories only I’m privy to.

She’s over there now, on till four, the one closest to the exit. It’s always the busiest, but she handles it with this grace, you know? Like she’s dancing between the barcodes and the bags. I watch how she smiles at the customers, and every time, I can’t help but wonder what it’d be like to have that smile directed at me, just once.

I know it sounds daft, me, a shelf stacker, harbouring these secret feelings for the girl on the tills. But when you spend your days surrounded by the mundane, by rows of products that never change, you start finding the extraordinary in the people around you. And Sally, well, she’s like the burst of colour in my otherwise grey day.

We talk, sometimes, when the manager isn’t looking and the queues die down. About normal stuff: the weather, the latest offers, the state of the staff room fridge. And in those moments, I’m not just the bloke restocking the soups or checking for expired yogurts; I’m someone she’s laughing with, sharing a part of her day with. It feels like being let in on a secret, like I’m suddenly more than what my name badge says.

But as quickly as those moments come, they vanish. Reality rushes back in with the next customer, the next shift, the next delivery. And I’m left stacking shelves again, holding onto the echoes of our conversations, replaying them in my head, imagining different endings, braver confessions.

It’s not like I haven’t thought about telling her, about stepping out from behind these aisles and saying what’s been simmering in me since the day she started. But what then? What if she doesn’t see me the way I see her? What if I’m just the background noise to her daily routine, as forgettable as the awful inshore music we pretend not to hear?

So, I keep quiet, keep stacking, keep stealing glances when I think no one’s looking. Because in a world where everything has a price tag, these feelings, this hope, it’s mine. And maybe, just maybe, that’s enough for now. To be here, in the quiet corners of a supermarket, secretly in love with Sally from the tills.

Abyss of Space

In the abyss of space, an otherworldly creature lurks, born from ancient stardust and cosmic nightmares. Its grotesque form, writhes in the vacuum, its drool crystallising in the cold. 

Eyes like frozen moons stare unblinkingly, reflecting a universe indifferent to its existence. With each silent scream, it echoes the solitude of the dark, a guardian of the void. 

It is both the hunter and the hunted, a being that defies reality, twisting the fabric of the cosmos with its mere presence. 

It is the unknown that whispers in the back of astronauts’ minds as they peer into the endless night.

A Drabble – a story told in exactly 100-words.