Showing results by author "Mike DeFrench" in All Categories

"The Game" is a futuristic VR game that works kind of like the dream machine thing in Inception. One person is the “host” for a game and the other players enter the host’s mind. But when Camille finally hosts a game for the first time, she sends her friends to Hell. Like, literally Hell. It only lasted for a few seconds. But it felt like eternity.

Lila is just about to close up shop at The Spine Mine in downtown Conners Switch, Indiana, until one last straggler walks through the doors. Late at night. While she's there alone.

A man in an insane asylum believes his handlers are lizard-people wearing human skin.

The Galactic Delivery Company will delivery anything, to anywhere in the galaxy.... Gus Valentino is finally moving up the ranks within the company. So the last thing he wants to do is fail now. But the package to be delivered is within a highly secured bank vault....

When Kris visited that psychic, she thought it would be fun. She thought the woman would tell her things that she wanted to hear: that there was true love in her future, that there was fortune, fame...but what she got was a dire warning. "The woman you kill will come back to you, asking for forgiveness. You must give it to her." But Kris would never kill anyone....

A woman gets a cursed tattoo on her hand. A crow. If she does something against "the rules" it pecks at her. At first the rules are easy. Don't eat this food. Can't use that color lighter.... But they've gotten worse. So has the pain from the bites.

A journalist finds something on a recording that she made. A soft, ghostly voice. Her reporting piece is put on hold as she tries to discover who the voice belongs to. Or belonged to...

When Pfc. Chester Michael had gone over all the ways he that he might die in the war, when he thought about them back at the barracks weeks before Utah Beach ever happened, the top things on the list were: gettin shot, gettin blown up, and gettin fuckin shot. Weren’t those the normal ways that soldiers were dying in this war? Yeah. So that’s probably how he would die too. By getting shot at, and those shots not missing.

When sixteen-year-old Sui Nihl found a program that allowed him to hack into any phone or computer on the planet, he decided to use it to expose all of the corruption and evil in the world. It didn’t take long for him to become the world’s most infamous hacking vigilante.

A kindergarten teacher has show and tell day earlier on in the school year. It goes down the alphabet, so the first day (today) is "A". A boy brings in an empty box, saying that he brought an "alien" to school.

I’ve been having the same dream now for a long time. It’s a recurring dream…or nightmare. I can never tell for sure because the emotion is different. The details are the always the same—the smells, the sounds of my shoes, etc.—but I never know what’s on the other side of those doors. I do now.

Contrary to popular belief, to be ignorant is to be left in the light. For in the darkness truth and madness reign, and once you glimpse the horrible, abominable truth you may never again bask in the blissful illumination which is unknowing.

A volunteer candy-striper stays over night at St. Mary's hospital to watch over a boy from her class. The same boy that had asked her to the school dance five times already. The same boy that she'd rejected five times already....

Teenager Andy Cogen just discovered that he can use the predictive text on his phone to affect the real world.... But does he know that the genie doesn't always grant your wish the way you wanted him to? A short story of suspense and weirdness set at the St. Michael's High School from The Game We Don't Play Anymore.

A criminal wakes up locked in a walk-in freezer.

A group of bandmates celebrate the recent success of their album and tour by going a trip. But it's a bad trip. A very bad trip...

I didn’t want to do the holograms. I never did. I reiterated this fact to myself as I saw her standing there, beautiful as ever. My sweet Mollie. She even was wearing that blue dress that she loved so much (I loved it even more, if that was possible—she looked so good in it!). And even from where I was standing, 10 feet away, I could see the curls in her blonde hair bounce as she turned her head. I could see her blue eyes. Vibrant. Real. So real...

One winter night, as the snows fall outside their home, and a boy cannot sleep, his father tells him the story of a saint. A martyr. She is well known to all Christians in the land. Her, and her infant child. She is credited with stopping the reign of the pagan king.

A man is tortured by a sound that only he can hear. It was easily ignored at first. But now the insomnia is getting to him. He must find a way to stop the noise.... Anything is better than this.

Two men are trapped in darkness. A shipping container, buried underground. No idea who locked them in there. It's been days. A week. Maybe more. And then the lock opens. Something is thrown inside with them. A gun. With only one bullet.