Hugh J. O'Donnell

Adam came home when he heard that the doctor was ill, and probably dying. He approached the castle late at night, eager to avoid a confrontation with the townspeople, or worse, his father’s servants.
As he approached, he wondered what he was even doing there. The old bastard wouldn’t appreciate his presence, and even after being gone for years, he had no affection for the old man. But he looked down at his scarred and twisted hands ant thought that maybe, in the end, we are responsible for our creators.
Thus it was that The Creature returned to Castle Frankenstein.

She kept a bat as a familiar. It was goth as anything, and it intimidated rubes who didn’t know better.
The bond let her favor long, black dresses, allowed her to stay up well into the night, and granted her excellent hearing.
So of course she heard all the rumors and prejudices about her choice. She paid them no mind.
She would wait for it in the quiet hours, and as the rest of the world slept, she fed it cut strawberries while it perched on her shoulder and told her the secrets that it had heard in its flights.

“So you’re completely lifelike?” The man asked. He swayed drunkenly as she led him away from the party.
“I’m human-form identical,” she said, and gave a sweet, customer service smile that didn’t reach her optical sensors. “Although, I do have some ports, in my lower back…”
“I’d like to see that,” he said, pawing at the back of her dress. The fabric tore away, exposing her angular, metallic substructure. He backed away in horror. “You’re not a servant bot, you’re military hardware!”
She acted quickly, then opened coms.
“Ops, we have a problem. I may have killed our target.”

She wore his heart on a chain. She wore it openly, brazenly, the scarlet crystal catching the light as she smoked cigarette after cigarette in the sweltering heat of the parlor.
She made sparkling conversation, gesticulating wildly, making curtains of smoke. She held the cigarettes between slim fingers tipped in perfectly manicured nails. She smiled broadly, and her perfectly straight teeth showed not a hint of a nicotine stain.
In the backroom, he lay panting and sweating, unable to draw a full breath. He didn’t mind in the least. He’d do anything for her. She had his heart, after all.

Everybody has a story about The Ghost Train. They’ve heard the whistle of the train on a lonely set of tracks, or felt the rush of wind from a passing car. Their cousin saw it one time, in an abandoned subway station while he was geocaching.
I’ve been following the stories for years. I search for clues, and separate the reliable accounts from the urban legends. Tonight, I descend the station steps and see it waiting on the platform. Waiting for me. I approach it cautiously, and it opens its doors.
I board, overjoyed that I can finally return home.

The hero sighed. “That was enchanted thread to help me find my way out of the maze. Why did you swallow it?” The thread now blazed across the minotaurs stomach, coiling in a glowing replica of the labyrinth.
“I thought it was licorice rope,” the creature said. The hero had come to slay the him, but he found the fearsome monster had the mind and heart of a child.
“Why would you think that?” the hero asked. The minotaur shrugged. The artifact burned him, but he was happy. Now his new friend wouldn’t leave him like the all the others.

The witch discovered the intruder hanging just outside the garden shed. The body was wrapped up tight and hung between two trees. All four limbs were wrapped tightly in sticky webbing.
He was still struggling, which was good. It was always such a hassle when she found them too late. She hated paperwork.
“I’ll have you down in a bit, love,” She said. She went back inside and got her stepladder and the good saw. Contrary to popular opinion, giant spiders made excellent pets. But like most domesticated solitary predators, they had a tendency to leave ‘presents’ for their owners.

The man sat in the back of the stage coach and sighed. He was an odd one, and the other passengers gave him a wide berth. He was tall, and his clothes were neat, but somewhat strange, although none of them could say how, exactly.
He checked his big, brass pocket watch and made an impatient little noise. It was a long way to the next town.
He was going to miss his transit window, leaving him stuck in this time period for another year. He’d traveled through time, but still had to go through space the old fashioned way.