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      • when colored bulbs turn to white lights
      • Red Lavenders bloom just the same
      • Rust Belt Blues
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      • Echos
      • The Dance Becomes Your Very Own
      • The Pink Elephant
      • Sunset in Kamakura
      • Sleepy Hollow
      • An American Sonnet to Dying Flowers
    • Our Metamorphic Stories (2024) >
      • Editors' Note (2024)
      • Fifty-two Minutes
      • The Day I Love Myself More Than You
      • Shadows
      • Bloodlust: The Metamorphosis
      • Canvas
      • picture this
      • rite of passage
      • Bathroom Floor
      • Cat
      • M
      • 삼년상 (Sam-Nyun-Sang)
      • Valley
      • I'm More Than
      • I'm Not a Toy
      • Rising Phoenix
      • Grow
      • red :3
      • Green Cousins
      • The Lighthouse
      • Sea of Plants/Planets
      • Kitty's Poem
      • Fin
      • tomie
      • Library Class
      • Our Lie
      • Weavers
      • An Old Tree
      • A World Without You
      • All Must Die
      • Flower
      • The Canoe
      • It's Scary Up Here
      • Beautiful Things
      • Ma Vie
      • The Final Wall
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      • two faced feelings
      • imposter syndrome
      • Feminism
      • Pretty Girls
      • It's Just Us
    • See You in Another World (2023) >
      • Editors' Note (2023)
      • Voices of the Summer Night
      • Lightning Glut
      • All The Little Things
      • From a Distance
      • Confined
      • The Night Hours
      • A Contrapuntal for the Girl in My Dreams
      • Go Back (before they do)
      • Snippet of Thought
      • The Darkness
      • Her Nature
      • I Listen
      • Stranger In The City
      • What Music Does
      • Fallen Stranger
      • The Black Dress
    • A Fire of Words (2022) >
      • Editors' Note (2022)
      • The Floor Wallows Lower
      • Cornflowers
      • Erudite
      • That One Morning
      • mom, im afraid
      • selenophilia
      • Roses and Rainbows
      • If a poisonous snake bites itself, will it die?
      • Rochester
      • Crown of Branches
      • Stairs to the Sea
      • A Poem Written Entirely From Advertisements
      • Pyromania
      • silhouette of a bird against winter stars
      • thunderstorm in the bedroom
      • A Night in Recovery
      • sleeping gypsie
      • paper dolls&goodbyes
      • We Are Women
      • Village Air
      • Sunshine's Laughter
      • the male gaze
      • The Forensic Entomologist
      • Lacking
      • Drowning
      • Adelie
    • Create the Wonders We Dream (2021) >
      • Editors' Note (2021)
      • Zove
      • I'm Sorry
      • Fake Smile
      • My Friend the Balloon
      • Eyes Intertwined
      • Perfect
      • Only a Moment
      • A Dangerous Word
      • My Dreams
      • The Last 100 Meters
      • The Green Void (Villanelle)
      • The Whimsical Galaxy (Sestina)
      • The Silent Kindness
      • Pressure
      • Table on the Hill
      • The Yukon
      • The Shore
      • Repentance
      • Her and I
      • Infections of the Soul
      • Threads
      • Dream of a High Schooler
      • Empty
      • little flame
      • scars
      • black and white
      • The Cat
      • Joy
      • Sweet Honey Bee Stings
      • If There Were One Day
      • Delete
      • Our Hearts to Central Vietnam
      • him or Him?
      • Ocean
      • Es Llaner Beach
      • Sewn Together
      • Rain
      • Yes, I Like
      • The Legacy of the Moon
      • The Wind Whimpers
      • From Here I See
      • To Feel Clean
      • Red
      • Survival
      • Substance
      • Golden Lies
      • Midnight Tango
      • Ode to a Spleen
      • Modern Siren
      • The Night's Diamond Tears
      • Beats In Double Time
      • A Day in the Flight
      • Carved By Venus
      • Lifeline
      • Everest
      • Education
      • How Much of Reality Can Be Observed
      • What is a Spork
      • What is the difference between love and in love
      • What would you have wanted? me to say
      • Planet Caravan
      • The Journey of a Minute
      • The Circus of Scars
      • Mosaic
      • Color
      • Love and Acceptance
    • Colors I Never Knew Existed (2020) >
      • Editors' Note (2020)
      • Two Weeks' Notice
      • A Curious Man
      • An Eternity Swathed in Cobwebs
      • Hidden Memories: A Villanelle
      • A Better Place
      • Conscription
      • Just Breathe
      • Akko
      • The Hungry Dark
      • And Then Something Shuffled
      • Deodorants are a Girl's Best Friend
      • The Old House
      • Willow
      • Perfection
      • She Will Be Queen
      • Nothing But Space
      • a wicked thing
      • Anthony
      • Cheesecake
      • Za
      • Coco
      • Coexist
      • der böse Mann
      • Feeding
      • Catharsis
      • I HAD TO RENAME THIS POEM DUE TO COPYRIGHT ISSUES
      • For All The Kids Who Were Told They'd Never Make It... and Believed This
      • i Will Always Love You
      • Our 4
      • Rainy Day
      • Space
      • The Ocean Cares Nothing of Man
      • Sickly Sweet Love
      • I call the eating disorder hotline
      • Bright and Sunny Day
      • Grandma in the Moon
      • Interminable Education in Seventeen Syllables
      • Macrocosmic Creation
      • Middle Class Psyche
      • My Sister
      • From a Park Bench
      • Rain
      • A Recollection of Our Memories
      • Sadie Got Me in My Feelings
      • Uranium Rose
      • When I Grow Up - Paige Rhoads
      • Who am I?
      • 49-53
    • Words Become Reality (2019) >
      • Editors' Note (2019)
      • Bear Down: A Sestina
      • Kidnapped & Killed
      • Lemonade
      • Rise
      • Someone Who always Pays
      • A Simple Story
      • The King's Battle
      • Aftermath
      • Aging Population
      • Can we still be friends?
      • Carpe Diem
      • Coffee
      • Day to Day
      • Do Not Hold me Closer, Let me Go
      • Gift of Time
      • Love Everlasting
      • A Message to the Youth
      • Peach
      • Waiting for the Bell
      • Randy
      • The River & The Earth
      • The Show Goes On
      • Summer Love
      • Sundae
      • West Coast Wishing
    • Watch Every Second (2018) >
      • Editors' Note (2018)
      • White
      • eleven eleven
      • Growing Up
      • Claustrophobia
      • The Cage
      • The Soldier's Return
      • Spacing Out
      • Depression
      • Mona Lisa
      • Childhood Cancer
      • Puberty
      • Languish
      • A Magical Ending
      • Life
      • Barter
      • Descent into Space
      • Red Water
      • The Short Film
      • Starting Line
      • And I Am From?
      • Such a Foreign Concept
      • You Say
      • My Creator
      • The Most Common Illness
      • Reflection in Time
      • Ode to My Mirror
      • Time
      • See Me
      • Consequences
      • Where I'm From
      • Unstoppable
    • Her Voice Remains (2017) >
      • Editors' Note (2017)
      • Alone in the Halls
      • Ideal Love
      • Cliff at Dusk
      • I Will Never Forget You
      • Lost
      • OCD
      • Cannibal Animal
      • A Poem for Grandpa 2
      • Solvent
      • Risky
      • Shannen and Graces’ Long Road
      • Dear Bubbles
      • A Tree in the Air
      • Losing Myself
      • ABC's Poem
      • My Glorious Flight
      • Birth Giver
      • Flat Line
      • Eternal Beauty
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    • Staff 2024-25
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    • Staff 2021 -22 >
      • Staff 2020
      • Staff 2019 >
        • Staff 2018
        • Staff 2017
  • Issues
    • Margins of the Mind >
      • Editor's Note (2025)
      • The Eternal
      • Mask Gleaners
      • The COVID Nightmare
      • Cafe Terrace at COVID Capacity
      • Behind the Falling Window
      • premature assurance
      • A Walk On the Tears (Of Mother Earth)
      • Infused Proverbs
      • To Dreams, To Dappled Light, and To a Stone
      • what's she waiting for
      • The Red String
      • The Blue Girl
      • Ink Forms
      • Sylas Yarad
      • Origamy
      • Abstraction
      • I Wish You Loved Me Like The Mountains
      • Bathroom Hash
      • Desperation
      • Impact
      • when colored bulbs turn to white lights
      • Red Lavenders bloom just the same
      • Rust Belt Blues
      • The Badass
      • The Reader's Reverie
      • Echos
      • The Dance Becomes Your Very Own
      • The Pink Elephant
      • Sunset in Kamakura
      • Sleepy Hollow
      • An American Sonnet to Dying Flowers
    • Our Metamorphic Stories (2024) >
      • Editors' Note (2024)
      • Fifty-two Minutes
      • The Day I Love Myself More Than You
      • Shadows
      • Bloodlust: The Metamorphosis
      • Canvas
      • picture this
      • rite of passage
      • Bathroom Floor
      • Cat
      • M
      • 삼년상 (Sam-Nyun-Sang)
      • Valley
      • I'm More Than
      • I'm Not a Toy
      • Rising Phoenix
      • Grow
      • red :3
      • Green Cousins
      • The Lighthouse
      • Sea of Plants/Planets
      • Kitty's Poem
      • Fin
      • tomie
      • Library Class
      • Our Lie
      • Weavers
      • An Old Tree
      • A World Without You
      • All Must Die
      • Flower
      • The Canoe
      • It's Scary Up Here
      • Beautiful Things
      • Ma Vie
      • The Final Wall
      • Hosts
      • Waqe Zhiga
      • two faced feelings
      • imposter syndrome
      • Feminism
      • Pretty Girls
      • It's Just Us
    • See You in Another World (2023) >
      • Editors' Note (2023)
      • Voices of the Summer Night
      • Lightning Glut
      • All The Little Things
      • From a Distance
      • Confined
      • The Night Hours
      • A Contrapuntal for the Girl in My Dreams
      • Go Back (before they do)
      • Snippet of Thought
      • The Darkness
      • Her Nature
      • I Listen
      • Stranger In The City
      • What Music Does
      • Fallen Stranger
      • The Black Dress
    • A Fire of Words (2022) >
      • Editors' Note (2022)
      • The Floor Wallows Lower
      • Cornflowers
      • Erudite
      • That One Morning
      • mom, im afraid
      • selenophilia
      • Roses and Rainbows
      • If a poisonous snake bites itself, will it die?
      • Rochester
      • Crown of Branches
      • Stairs to the Sea
      • A Poem Written Entirely From Advertisements
      • Pyromania
      • silhouette of a bird against winter stars
      • thunderstorm in the bedroom
      • A Night in Recovery
      • sleeping gypsie
      • paper dolls&goodbyes
      • We Are Women
      • Village Air
      • Sunshine's Laughter
      • the male gaze
      • The Forensic Entomologist
      • Lacking
      • Drowning
      • Adelie
    • Create the Wonders We Dream (2021) >
      • Editors' Note (2021)
      • Zove
      • I'm Sorry
      • Fake Smile
      • My Friend the Balloon
      • Eyes Intertwined
      • Perfect
      • Only a Moment
      • A Dangerous Word
      • My Dreams
      • The Last 100 Meters
      • The Green Void (Villanelle)
      • The Whimsical Galaxy (Sestina)
      • The Silent Kindness
      • Pressure
      • Table on the Hill
      • The Yukon
      • The Shore
      • Repentance
      • Her and I
      • Infections of the Soul
      • Threads
      • Dream of a High Schooler
      • Empty
      • little flame
      • scars
      • black and white
      • The Cat
      • Joy
      • Sweet Honey Bee Stings
      • If There Were One Day
      • Delete
      • Our Hearts to Central Vietnam
      • him or Him?
      • Ocean
      • Es Llaner Beach
      • Sewn Together
      • Rain
      • Yes, I Like
      • The Legacy of the Moon
      • The Wind Whimpers
      • From Here I See
      • To Feel Clean
      • Red
      • Survival
      • Substance
      • Golden Lies
      • Midnight Tango
      • Ode to a Spleen
      • Modern Siren
      • The Night's Diamond Tears
      • Beats In Double Time
      • A Day in the Flight
      • Carved By Venus
      • Lifeline
      • Everest
      • Education
      • How Much of Reality Can Be Observed
      • What is a Spork
      • What is the difference between love and in love
      • What would you have wanted? me to say
      • Planet Caravan
      • The Journey of a Minute
      • The Circus of Scars
      • Mosaic
      • Color
      • Love and Acceptance
    • Colors I Never Knew Existed (2020) >
      • Editors' Note (2020)
      • Two Weeks' Notice
      • A Curious Man
      • An Eternity Swathed in Cobwebs
      • Hidden Memories: A Villanelle
      • A Better Place
      • Conscription
      • Just Breathe
      • Akko
      • The Hungry Dark
      • And Then Something Shuffled
      • Deodorants are a Girl's Best Friend
      • The Old House
      • Willow
      • Perfection
      • She Will Be Queen
      • Nothing But Space
      • a wicked thing
      • Anthony
      • Cheesecake
      • Za
      • Coco
      • Coexist
      • der böse Mann
      • Feeding
      • Catharsis
      • I HAD TO RENAME THIS POEM DUE TO COPYRIGHT ISSUES
      • For All The Kids Who Were Told They'd Never Make It... and Believed This
      • i Will Always Love You
      • Our 4
      • Rainy Day
      • Space
      • The Ocean Cares Nothing of Man
      • Sickly Sweet Love
      • I call the eating disorder hotline
      • Bright and Sunny Day
      • Grandma in the Moon
      • Interminable Education in Seventeen Syllables
      • Macrocosmic Creation
      • Middle Class Psyche
      • My Sister
      • From a Park Bench
      • Rain
      • A Recollection of Our Memories
      • Sadie Got Me in My Feelings
      • Uranium Rose
      • When I Grow Up - Paige Rhoads
      • Who am I?
      • 49-53
    • Words Become Reality (2019) >
      • Editors' Note (2019)
      • Bear Down: A Sestina
      • Kidnapped & Killed
      • Lemonade
      • Rise
      • Someone Who always Pays
      • A Simple Story
      • The King's Battle
      • Aftermath
      • Aging Population
      • Can we still be friends?
      • Carpe Diem
      • Coffee
      • Day to Day
      • Do Not Hold me Closer, Let me Go
      • Gift of Time
      • Love Everlasting
      • A Message to the Youth
      • Peach
      • Waiting for the Bell
      • Randy
      • The River & The Earth
      • The Show Goes On
      • Summer Love
      • Sundae
      • West Coast Wishing
    • Watch Every Second (2018) >
      • Editors' Note (2018)
      • White
      • eleven eleven
      • Growing Up
      • Claustrophobia
      • The Cage
      • The Soldier's Return
      • Spacing Out
      • Depression
      • Mona Lisa
      • Childhood Cancer
      • Puberty
      • Languish
      • A Magical Ending
      • Life
      • Barter
      • Descent into Space
      • Red Water
      • The Short Film
      • Starting Line
      • And I Am From?
      • Such a Foreign Concept
      • You Say
      • My Creator
      • The Most Common Illness
      • Reflection in Time
      • Ode to My Mirror
      • Time
      • See Me
      • Consequences
      • Where I'm From
      • Unstoppable
    • Her Voice Remains (2017) >
      • Editors' Note (2017)
      • Alone in the Halls
      • Ideal Love
      • Cliff at Dusk
      • I Will Never Forget You
      • Lost
      • OCD
      • Cannibal Animal
      • A Poem for Grandpa 2
      • Solvent
      • Risky
      • Shannen and Graces’ Long Road
      • Dear Bubbles
      • A Tree in the Air
      • Losing Myself
      • ABC's Poem
      • My Glorious Flight
      • Birth Giver
      • Flat Line
      • Eternal Beauty
  • Submit
  • Contact

The Hungry Dark
​By: ​Henry Rohling

Picture

Short Fiction

      My eyes shot open, but I wished they'd stayed closed. I wished that I was back home, in my own comfy bed, with him next to me. Get up, Mia, or it’ll get you, just like it got to him. I slid out of bed and began to walk forward, my heart pounding as I walked down the hall of an imitation of my home.
 
      “What are you doing up this late, babe?” came a voice, his voice. I wanted to scream at it, but I knew that I couldn’t, or I would end up like the voice’s original master. I stopped, and attempted to mimic a drowsy yet upbeat tone, like the one I had the first night we stayed in that same room.
 
      “Can’t sleep. Thought I’d go eat some of the leftovers from dinner the other night.”
 
      “Oh, I’m sorry, sweetie. I had that for lunch today.” Of course you did.
 
      “Then I’ll find something else. I’ll be back in a minute, I promise.” I began walking again, careful not to let my actions mimic what I felt on the inside. All you have to do is get downstairs to the car and get out of here.
 
      “Hey sweetheart?” This time, the voice was closer, not to mention more vibrant. “I was thinking about inviting Harry and Eliza with us for date night tomorrow. Would you be ok with that?”
 
      Aww. But I wanted it to be just you and me,” I said in mock disappointment, trying to hide the quiver in my voice.
 
      “Anything for you, my queen.” It was much closer now. I could feel its breathing down my neck, begging for me to lose its little game, and the way it called me queen. Only he could do that. It was his thing. Calm down, Mia. Don’t let it get to you. I took a deep breath and continued.
 
      “I mean, if you want to invite them, I’d be ok with it.”
 
      “You’re perfect, you know that?” It backed up before continuing, “Well don’t take too long, after all,” the voice hitched slightly, his voice replaced with a deep, unearthly sound, “That’s what killed Frank.”
 
      I continued my pace from before, my heart attempting to break out of my chest. Time for the second phase, Mia. Don’t let it break you.
 
      “Do you wish to learn of his last moments? How he begged for his life?” My vision began to blur slightly as it spoke. “Or what about all the wrongs he had done, pleading for forgiveness?”
 
      I tried to appear brave, with my head held high, but his words were like daggers cutting into my heart.
 
      “What about how your name, along with calls for your help, were the last things to leave him?”
 
      Now the tears were falling freely, my head lowered, but my pace continued.
 
      “What about how I ripped him to pieces through all of it? How much pain he was in as he was butchered? Or of how delicious his bones were as I licked them clean?”
 
      I could just make out the car’s outline in the distance, begging me to run to it and leave this place.
 
      “What about the details of what I’ll do to you?”
 
      I began to run, the thing letting out a loud, guttural howl as I did. I could hear thumping behind me, getting louder and louder as it got closer and closer. The car was right there, no less than a few feet ahead of me. I pulled out my keys and hit a button, the car letting out two high-pitched beeps. I stuck my other hand out, reaching for the handle. I grasped it tightly and yanked the door open; then a large hand with claw-like fingers exploded through my body as I was raised off the ground.
 
      “Not this time, Mia.”
 
      I sprung up in bed and screamed. My breathing was ragged as I placed my hand over my chest and found no claw nor any mark. It’s been years since all that happened. Doctors say I was in a bear attack which claimed Frank’s life, though they never found his body. They also said my mind came up with something less horrifying than a bear mauling Frank, but I knew what I saw, and what I continue to see when night falls. The only thing that didn’t happen in that dream was the fact that I escaped. I’m alive. I’m safe.
 
      “You’ll never escape, Mia, your fear is just so… divinely scrumptious to feed from.”
​      I turned to my left and saw it. The thing sitting next to me. it’s rotting, scarred flesh accompanied by those same, piercing amber eyes, before its visage faded.
 
      ​“Until next time, my queen.”
 
      I sat in silence, then cried as the sun began to rise.


"I wanted to write a horror story where the main character was more relatable to the reader, and I hope that readers would come to understand that the character is more than the typical 'final girl' in a horror movie" --Henry Rohling from STEM School Highlands Ranch

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