Adventure Game Studio

Have you heard of Jenna Levinston?

"---"

She lived just behind the graveyard, just over there.

"---"

And every day after school, she had to walk through the graveyard. There's no other way! Well, there wasn't then. Now, there's the ring road, but then.

Anyway. Jenna. She loved fossils. Petrified things, moulds, bones, all that stuff.

And she hated her classmates. Haaated them. With good reason. Probably.

They called her names, made fun of her 'cause she lived on the cemetery. That kind of stuff. But well, she was the vicar's niece and lived with the uncle, so...

Anyway, back on topic. Going home from school one day...

Okay, so, it had rained the day before. Heavy. It was heavy rain. And you know the little rivulet over by Hangman Street, just by the cemetery gate?

"---"

Yeah, that one. So, heavy rain. And the rivulet overflowed. Badly. Flushing some coffins out and bones into the open. Looked like a massacre, they said. And Jenna couldn't go to school for a few days, 'cause the path was blocked. Didn't help with the bullying one bit. She likes to bath in bones, they said. Stuff like that.

Well, in a way, they weren't wrong.

"---"

Yeah, sorry, didn't mean to be mean, but, yeah. She kinda did. See, there was that one skull that wasn't cleaned up. Found, whatever. Well, it was found, by her. By Jenna. And she liked fossils, so... A skull's just a fossil, in a way, isn't it?

Anyway, she took it home, put it on a shelf in her bedroom, talked to it.

As you do. Who doesn't talk to their pets? And without pets, you talk to stuffed animals, and sometimes other stuff. And a skull is a head, so – perfect to talk to.

So, she starts talking to this skull. Calls it Yorick, of course, just like everyone else. So fricking creative. She tells it of all her mean, mean classmates. How she is so mistreated and abused and whatnot. Yadda yadda yadda.

"---"

I'm not mean! It's just – it's important to the story, I guess. Just, Okay, well, she told it and then she went to bed and...

"---"

It'll get spooky! I'm just getting to that part. If you wouldn't interrupt me all the time-

"---"

Fine, I'll continue.

Night, skull on the shelf, had talked to it in the evening, classmates mean. So.

Well, that night, a shadow, fog, whatever, drifted from the skull over to her bed. Skeletal hands brushed the hair from her forehead and a bony mouth kissed her hand.

She had let her window open for the night and wind drifted through the gap. Achuuu. And it rattled the bones that stood in her room and a little bit of fog-

Maybe it came from the cold night or from the skull, but actually, it came from her. From her hand, Jenna's. It was sucked from her, a little bit of her life energy. Right into the skull and the skull, the skeleton, it got more of a form, of a... of a body, I guess.

And maybe it got a bit of her dreams, nightmares sucked into it too.

The next morning, it was difficult for Jenna to wake up. The skull was back on its shelf and the nightmare almost forgotten, but she did remember the skeleton standing over her bed that night. Wuahooooo.

"---"

Yes, that's spooky! Whatever, shut up and listen.

Jenna woke up, but one of her classmates did not. It wasn't that he was dead, he just didn't wake up this morning. Or by noon, or ever that day. Weird, but, oh well. It was one of the guys who had made fun of her the most.

"---"

I know that that's obvious. Still need to tell you, don't I?

So, the classmates didn't stop making fun of her, of course. I mean, she fricking told them about her stupid dream. I'd've made fun of her too for something so stupid. Whiny little bitch. She freaked out about a dream, come on!

Anyway, next night, same thing happens. Fog, skull turns into skeleton, sucks a bit of her energy, nightmares, the works. And the next morning, another of her classmates doesn't wake up.

Third night, same shit. Fourth. Fifth.

And Jenna starts to freak out real bad. As in, nearly going insane bad. It's just nightmares, but over and over again the same one. Every fricking night. And her class gets smaller and smaller. Don't know if she made the connection then, or ever, but...

"---"

What do you mean, she did? Who are you, anyway? You can't just listen in on other people telling stories, that's rude.

Yeah, fuck off!

"---"

Who? Her!

...

And she's gone. Didn't you see her?

Oh, whatever. Where was I?

"---"

Yes, so. More and more classmates go to sleep and never wake up. Now, the parents freak out, of course, call doctors and stuff, and the kids don't want to sleep any-more. I mean, duh.

Meanwhile, Jenna looked more and more like a skeleton herself. I mean, in a way, all the kids did, with too little sleep, but... Jenna, she didn't just look exhausted, thin, she looked like her skin was pulled taut over her bones, her eyes looked like they had retreated into her brain, she creaked and clattered when she walked, her teeth wobbled – she was a mess.

"---"

It just true!

Whatever, anyway.

The nightly visitor, on the other hand, looked more and more like a girl. Not like Jenna, just like some girl. Maybe the skull came from a girl, who knows?

And Jenna slowly realized what the fuck was going on.

"---"

Yeah, I guess. I guess she did make the connection, sorry.

I mean, it took her a while to draw it. From her nightmares to her ass-hat classmates, that took a while. But she started to give willingly to the skeleton and she started to direct it. That guy is an asshole, go after him next. And so on, and it worked.

"---"

No, they didn't. No one else figured it out. How could they? They had no fricking idea. There were just a lot of kids not waking up and one kid slowly wasting away and stuff. But Jenna understood it and she liked it.

Soon, the skull didn't just take her energy and her ideas and memories as its own, but it also allowed her to ride along. She drifted in and out of the rooms of her tormentors, night after night. Her bony hands slid into their chests and she sucked the life from them. But it didn't give any energy back to her.

And so, one morning, she didn't wake up again. And nobody cared. 'Cause all her classmates were already constantly sleeping and they didn't care about her anyway. And the people mourned their own kids and not her.

And the skull, or what was left of Jenna did not like that one bit. Slowly, surely, they visited the parents of her classmates, the doctors, the policemen, everyone who had anything to do with her story. Until there was no-one else to attack and they faded away.

"---"

That's not the spooky part! Come on, Nicole! I'm trying, okay?

Anyway, so... As soon as someone speaks of Jenna, close to where she was buried, as in right here, next to the old cemetery, she can still hear you. And she's a vengeful little bitch and thinks anyone who talks about her talks badly about her. And so she comes...

What was that?

"---"

That! Over there, behind the trees! Turn around!

"---"

I'm not joking!

"---"

Okay, okay. So, she watches everyone who talks about her, especially those who are mean, and she waits and then she comes out at night and-

Who is – fuck!

"---"

Look! Behind you!

"---"

Stop laughing! Dammit! I swear there's someone...

...

Wait, where have you gone? Aimée, Nicole, Samantha?

Shit, who are you?

"---"

Very funny. Why'd you dress up like a skel-

Oh, shit. Help!

...

The fire glowed like a dying sun, its fuel running low.  It was the only beacon in the blackness, orbited by six friends and a dog.  The surrounding forest was cold and dark, punctuated by the occasional lonely howl of a distant animal that made the night feel empty and dangerous all at once.  Instinctively the friends hunkered closer to the flames.

"Tell us a story, Sully."

Sully looked up, the dream in his eyes draining away.  He caught Janda yawning and Spitbug picking his nose, but the rest of his friends stared at him intently.

"Bit late," he said, trying to gauge the hour.  "Dawn cracks early out here."

Janda yawned again and Freya snuggled closer into Butcher's shoulder, but Queenie was insistent.  "Just one story before bed," she demanded, absently scratching Sniffer behind his ears.

Sully turned his eyes back to the glowing coals.  He reflected that they all had roles to play in their little group, and as the pensive one he supposed campfire tales fell to him.  Janda was the kind one, Freya the energetic one, Butcher the strong one, and Spitbug was pure comic relief.  Queenie, their leader, did not like to be disappointed, which worked out well because none of the friends liked disappointing her.

"Have you ever really looked into the fire?" Sully asked.

The friends all understood that a rhetorical question out of Sully was the tip of a thought iceberg.  They all waited patiently to see where his wandering mind might take them.

"What is fire?  It's not solid, or liquid, or gas.  You can't hold it in your hand or taste it with your tongue.  You can't put it in the fridge for later, or comb it till it stands up straight.  Fire doesn't play by the rules—did you ever wonder why that might be?"

Spitbug's jaw looked like it had fallen off its hinge.  The rest of the friends stared, the embers reflecting in their curious eyes.  Even Sniffer waited, ears erect, waiting with baited breath for Sully to continue.

"An old man once told me it's because fire is not really of this world.  That's why it is the destroyer of things.  That's why it will not be still.  That's why it holds your attention like the hypnotist's pendulum.  It is an alien substance, which makes it both mesmerizing and dangerous.

"A million years ago people understood this better.  Like the rest of the animals, they feared the otherworldly flame, and rightly so. Maybe it was our larger brains or our grasping hands, made idle when hominids left the trees, but somehow in the past we became fascinated with fire.  We craved its heat and envied its power and yearned to harness it to our own purposes.  People and fire have since become as inseparable as two sides of the same coin, and it has changed us.  Like fire we are now destructive, like fire we are now restless.  It will be our undoing.

"Now, I know what you are thinking.  Fire wrecks its environment by consuming everything in its path, and the trajectory of our own civilization does not bode well.  These are things to keep you up at night, that's for sure.  But this old man told me of a deeper threat, an older one, the source of the one true original nightmare that has echoed down the aeons in the subconsciousness of all living creatures.  Tonight that is what I will share with you, if you dare to listen further."

A long, sad note peeled in the distance, as if a feral animal lamented their decision to open Pandora's box.

"This old man was an uncle of mine, through marriage. My Aunt Dierdre was never very stable—her four marriages are testament to that—but this guy made her look like the Rock of Gibraltar. He was one of those weird guys who shared conspiracy theories over ham radio so that the government couldn't track his thoughts.  He once got arrested for dumping all the milk in every grocery store in town because he believed it was really insect secretions meant to enslave the minds of children to the corporate Leviathan.

"You might dismiss what I'm about to tell you as yet another crankpot notion, but that would be a mistake.  My ex-uncle was as nutty as a jar of peanut butter, yes, but there is a kind of liberty of thought that comes with forsaking conventional paradigms.  Every once in a while, these folks stumble upon a kernel of truth that could literally turn the world upside down. 

"See, my ex-uncle came to believe that fire was not plasmic energy as the science text books might have you believe, its heat not the release of chemical energy stored latent in all molecular bonds.  No, he stumbled upon an idea that poisoned his mind with a horrible, horrible truth.  Fire is actually the result of a tear in our reality.

"So how can all the scientists have got it wrong, you ask?  Well, turn that question on its head.  Why was it only in the 1920s that scientists discovered antibiotics?  Why was it a non-scientist that invented powered flight?  Why is it that scientists still cannot manipulate the force of gravity?  Or explain what happens after you die?  It is because, smart as they are, scientists are locked into their world views just like you and me. They do not see what truly is, let alone what could be.  They simply explain fire away in a way that fits with their way of thinking, no better than plague doctors prescribing herbs to the infected.

"But how is it that these tears have not revealed themselves to any but the kookiest truthers? My ex-uncle told me it is because they are typically shallow and short.  They are healed by our universe's tendency towards stability. It is only in certain circumstances, like when the moon and the sun pull at the Earth from opposite sides, that the tears can become deeper. Folklore accepts this implicitly—that is why ghoulish tales of witches and werewolves take place when the moon is full.  A thousand generations of storytellers understood instinctively that this is when the horrors of the other side can slip through the tears to stalk our reality.

"My ex-uncle knew this, and told it to me before they took him away.  Oh, he's not in some jail or asylum, although he probably deserves to be.  No, he tested his theory, on a night like tonight—yes, the moon is full somewhere above those clouds.  He stared too long into the glowing embers, and he saw through to the other side.  And that was when something came through the tear and snatched him away!"

Sully threw a handful of flour onto the fire and a large flame suddenly erupted, causing shrieks from the girls.  Sniffer barked in fright, and poor Spitbug fell backwards right off his log.

"That was horrible!" Queenie squealed.  "I loved it!"

"Speak for yourself!" Freya shuddered.

"I don't think I'm going to sleep tonight," Janda complained, eyes now wide and alert.

"But Sully was right, it's an early morning tomorrow," Butcher countered.  "Come on everyone, it's long past bedtime."

"Good night, guys."

"Night."

"Sweet dreams!"

Sully stared into the embers a moment longer, and then tore his eyes away.  "You gonna douse the flames when you're done, Spitbug?"

"Uh-huh."

The clouds parted, flooding the little clearing in the cold half-light of the moon.  Sully left Spitbug staring into the glowing abyss. 

That was the last time he was ever seen.

This is an interesting concept: Fire as something so alien that it transcends worlds. It's fascinating and I'm sure one could do a whole lot with this concept. And I wish you had. As it is presented here in this story, it is just this concept and a description of it.
It's interesting that we both basically went for the same ending for our stories: The storyteller ends up a victim of what they spoke about. Which is, admittadly, a fairly standard ending for horror stories - but I think especially for campfire stories, because they often derive their strongest horror element from that <It could happen to you!> feeling.
Overall, I enjoyed your story.

This feels a bit like an evil twin story. Not only is Jen the one who is responsible for the fire, but she also seems to be happy, or at least content with Jo suffering, maybe even dying from it. Normally, at some point, when the situation gets dire enough, people put survival over grievances. Granted, we don't know how old the twins are, (and a tantrum usually makes one think of toddlers, though adults can have tantrums too, of course) but Jen does come across as extremely evil. This story tells a lot with very few words, well done.

Six word stories - to be honest, I don't like them, or the concept of very short stories in general. They try to be deeper than they have any right to be. You could speculate a whole lot how meaningful it is that there are no more campfires on earth: Has humanity learned not to burn wood anymore (because it leads to wildfires)? Has humanity died out? What was the last campfire? Who ignited it? Does campfire maybe mean something else, is it an euphemism for the whole world burning? --- The problem is, that all this is in the reader's head, not in the story itself. And the story doesn't even properly provide a jumping-off point for these ideas - they need to be in the reader's thoughts already to come to mind.

The Flame That Burns - Baron --- 2 Points
Burnt Marshmallows - Mandle --- 1 point

I really liked the narrating voice in this one. It gave the idea of an oral story told in front of a campfire, including digressions and interruptions.
The "---" replies felt unsettling in an understated way.
The ending was kind of expected, but that's not a negative and it works well.
Good story!

The short length of the story makes it very creepy. It gives you enough information to tell a story, but lets your mind fill the rest. Great example how only a few sentences can give you a whole picture.
Good stuff!

A very enjoyable story, it captures well the feeling of being in front of a campfire listening to ghost tales. The idea and descriptions of fire were very interesting and the ending was expected (again, that's not a bad thing in this case!), but good.
A very fun read!

I find your other story to be more interesting. You can interpret this one in many ways, but I guess I'm too lazy for that :D I think the format is just not for me, but it's still interesting.

Flawlessly written and simply great. The wealth of ideas touched on in the tale reminded me of some of the tangential ideas mentioned but never fully explored (except in Animatrix to some degree) in the later Matrix films: that supernatural elements all had a common basis. Loved the ending. It brought chills as the best campfire stories should (also why summer is the time for ghost stories here in Japan)

I absolutely loved the unique monster you came up with for your story, and would certainly read a much longer piece involving this monster, and hopefully a few more wildly original ones like it. The ending was what was expected, but felt a bit rushed, and I realize that probably comes down to your conceit of the reader only hearing the speaker and being left to imagine the responses of the listeners, which was a device I did enjoy. Great work!

2 points for The Flame That Burns
1 point for Jenna Levinston

Jenna Livinston - 2 votes
Burnt Marshmallows - 1 vote

I liked the unreliable narrator and the childish interruptions to the narrative.  The idea of energy vampires was pretty cool, but the dynamic of Jenna being able to suck life out of children but not restore herself like the skull was a bit confusing. I liked that everyone fell into eternal slumber instead of death - it kind of gives the story a Sleeping Beauty kind of vibe, although I suppose as energy and life are sucked away the children become ever less beautiful as time goes on. The ending was as predictable as it was campfiresque, so good work cleaving to the theme.

For an extremely short story there's a lot to unpack, which is a good thing.  I can imagine Mandle labouring for hours trying to pick the perfect words to populate all five sentences. The idea of the evil twin finally hatching her scheme to be rid of her sister was as ghoulish as it was terrifying - there's just something about evil children that just sends shivers down my spine.  A little more background and character development would juice this story up even more.

Story burns out before it starts.

The sequence of events is suitably chilling. The ending is expected but provides fuel for nightmares.

It's short, but each new sentence puts a dramatic twist to the previous one. Good job.

A more restrained but effective way to convey horror. Classic ending.

make a haiku, not a story.

The Flame That Burns - 2
Jenna Levinston - 1

I liked the setup with the narrator interrupted by the unknown audience and the story was a nice, classical ghost story. The ending felt stereotypical and cheap.

This one didn't do anything for me. Not exactly sure why.

The story was nicely written but just way too far fetched. Millions of people have looked into fire during full moon and nothing has happened.

I loved that one. Just so many options what this could mean.