The first time the rhyme appeared, it was buried in a police incident report. Not in the narrative. Not in the summary of damages. In the margin, where an officer would normally sketch a broken window or note a bloodstain pattern, someone had written, in hard block capitals: MARY, MARY, QUITE CONTRARY Beneath it sat a timestamp. Four minutes ahead of the official dispatch.

The jobs I do are not what you’d consider kosher by any stretch of the imagination. I’m hired by people who don’t use their real names, who speak carefully and only when necessary, who understand that anonymity is worth more than honesty. I work in a shadow economy where discretion is the only credential that matters, and silence is currency.

The first time the rhyme appeared, it was in a police incident report. The call itself was minor. It was a domestic disturbance that resolved before officers arrived. However, the paperwork unsettled the clerk who logged it. Not the injuries. Not the language. The repetition within the margins. Residents interviewed on the scene kept repeating the same phrase. Not chanting. Not joking.

The desk was already warm when Shawna sat down. Not from the lights. From use. She paused before lowering herself into the chair, aware of the faint resistance in its hydraulics, as if it recognized her as a replacement rather than an arrival. The vinyl seat yielded slowly, reluctant to forget the weight it had held hours earlier. The monitor was already awake.

I have always trusted machines more than people. Machines obey systems. Even when they fail, they fail predictably, while people invent meaning to disguise chaos. They lie to themselves first, and then to everyone else. That fact-based realization drove me to the archive. I live alone above it. My room is narrow with no windows. The walls hum faintly with the building’s age.

The hospital breathed around Dr. Emma Lewis—machines chirping, carts rattling, voices rising and falling in practiced urgency. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead as she moved through the corridor, white coat snapping at her heels. This was her world: loud, fast, precise. Predictable. Technology kept it that way. Emma’s phone held her schedule, her patients, her priorities. Her watch tracked her vitals. LifeLink—integrated into every system she touched—flagged anomalies, suggested actions, optimized outcomes.

Daniel was in his office when his phone vibrated. The vibration moved across the desk and into his wrists. It rattled his coffee mug. The lamp trembled. The light flickered. The glow of the screen bloomed in the dim room like something alive, pulling his attention away from the sentence he had been shaping for the past ten minutes. His editor’s name filled the display.

I wake up at 6:17 a.m. The radio clicks on by itself three seconds later. The same station. The same song. A soft acoustic thing that sounds like it was written for people who never had to bury anyone...

I wake up at 6:17 a.m. The radio clicks on by itself three seconds later. The same station. The same song. A soft acoustic thing that sounds like it was written for people who never had to bury anyone. I don’t look at the clock anymore. I don’t need to. My body knows when the day begins. It always begins the same way.

Eli sat in bed with his knees pulled tight to his chest, the thin blanket wrapped around his waist. Above him, the ceiling fan clicked softly, its shadow chopping the dark into restless pieces that never quite settled. He bounced his rubber ball once against the mattress and caught it, holding it still as if motion itself might summon something. The floor creaked.

David’s car fishtailed on the gravel road leading toward Blackwood Reach. Snow hissed beneath the tires, thin and treacherous, barely masking the ruts carved by years of neglect. The GPS had gone dark miles ago, its calm digital certainty abandoned to static. What guided him now was memory—Eleanor’s frantic emails, her obsessive hand-drawn maps, her looping instructions written in the margins like prayers.

Lisa noticed the snow long before she reached the house. It wasn’t the soft December kind she knew from childhood. It fell in dense sheets, pushed sideways by wind, as if the whole sky were trying to warn her away. She should’ve been comforted by the thought of home. Her parents were the type to celebrate anything, even bad news. When she was six and broke her arm, they decorated the sling with glitter stars.

David’s car fishtailed on the gravel path leading toward Blackwood Reach. The GPS had given up miles ago, but the memory of Melanie’s frantic, obsessive mapping guided him. He gripped the steering wheel until his palms bled. Every time he called, he felt the distance between him and his son growing—not just in miles, but in reality. Melanie had always had a "flair for the dramatic," as her mother called it.

Kenny had stopped pretending his life was something worth holding onto. Most mornings he woke with the same dull ache in his chest, a heaviness that settled into his bones before he even swung his…

Kenny had stopped pretending his life was something worth holding onto. Most mornings he woke with the same dull ache in his chest, a heaviness that settled into his bones before he even swung his legs over the side of the bed. The world moved around him—cars humming, neighbors laughing, clocks ticking—but none of it seemed to belong to him anymore.

Latest posts: Midnight Murmurs -Short Stories By Kevin Enners…

Mara arrived at the Crandall House a little before sunset, just as a violet bruise spread across the sky. The air thickened the moment she stepped out of her car. It clung to her skin. Denser, heavier, almost viscous compared to the clean sharpness of her suburban home. Country air was supposed to be fresh. But something told her it wasn’t air.

No one remembers who first saw him that winter, but everyone remembers the hat. It was a deep crimson fedora, almost glowing against the dirty snow. Some said the man wearing it drifted through the fairgrounds during the annual Frost Light Carnival, silent among the noise. He didn’t buy tickets or food. He didn’t speak. He just watched — head tilted low, the brim shadowing his face — until someone noticed him, and then he’d vanish like a skipped frame in a reel of film.

On Birch Street, no one dares knock on the Corman house. But when a girl hears her dead brother’s voice on Halloween night, the last trick begins.

Birch Street slept under a blanket of fog. Pumpkins flickered like dying eyes, and the air had that October bite — cold, sharp, a little cruel. Every Halloween, the kids owned the street. They darted between porch lights, laughing too loud, sugar-high and fearless. But no one — no one — went near number 47. The Corman house. It slumped at the dead end like something abandoned by time.

A man inherits his aunt’s decaying Vermont mansion—only to uncover a chilling secret buried within its walls in this modern Gothic horror short story.

Kevin Enners: Screenwriter and author in Marietta, Georgia. Stage 32 creative profile. Learn more about Kevin Enners * music industry networking events * social network sites for actors

The fog thickened more than the forecast predicted. It rolled across the sea in silent sheets, swallowing the last orange line of daylight. Nora adjusted her camera harness, squinting toward the horiz...

The fog thickened more than the forecast predicted. It rolled across the sea in silent sheets, swallowing the last orange line of daylight. Nora adjusted her camera harness, squinting toward the horiz...