A/N: This is going to contain a bunch of dark short stories and poetry; rather than put them all in separate places, they'll all be here in a collection. Sorry the first one is so short—I had to right it for a school English project: write a story in the style of Edgar Allan Poe. See if you can spot the allusions to some of his stuff. I hope you enjoy!

CrypticIdentity

The Mausoleum

It was raining.

I had been working deep into the night on a story—a novel, one that I had hoped to begin my career with. It was horror, a mystery in which the victim left cryptic messages to the detective on the case, unable to give a straight answer to the many questions that had arisen in his mind for fear of being killed by her captor. I was reaching the climax, in which the detective discovered that the victim was being held in a mausoleum at the nearby cemetery. The detective was soon going to discover that not everything in the graveyard was lifeless.

I stopped. I had grown very weary from working for hours on end, and I felt I should rest for a moment. The pendulum of the grandfather clock in my room swung with a loud click every second. I left my many-paged manuscript on my desk and went to my bed. There was a crack of lightning, and the lamp on the desk went out. I lied down with a sigh, knowing that I wouldn't be able to write anymore tonight.

However, just as I was about to fall a sleep, I was struck with inspiration. I stood up and moved quickly to the desk, groping around in the darkness for the chair sitting in front of it. I found it quickly and sat down and felt around for my pencil. Grabbing it, I tried to force my eyes to adjust to the darkness and be able to read the paper in front of me.

My desk sat right in front of a window, so I prayed for a momentary strike of lightning, to illuminate the paper for me. There was a loud crack, and I got my wish.

I stared at the paper in horror.

It was blank.

I flipped the pages, looking hard through the darkness. Nothing.

Every page.

Empty.

My story.

Gone.

I opened up the drawers of my desk. I must have misplaced it. I did not find my book anywhere in them.

My jaw had dropped into an expression of pure terror. Where had it gone? Where was the story I had labored over for so long? What cruel joke was Loki playing on me?

I half-stumbled away from the desk. This had to be a nightmare; a sick nightmare I would wake up from in the morning. I walked slowly back to my bed, trying to convince myself it was all a dream.

"Ah!" I cried out. Something had grabbed my ankle! I looked down and saw a skeletal hand wrapped around my ankle. For a moment, I didn't see the floor of my bedroom—I saw dirt and grass, recently overturned by the hand. But the image quickly returned to that of my bedroom, and the hand was gone.

What was happening?! I stood there half a moment, shocked. This seemed familiar somehow…

A crack of lightning, and—gravestones!

All around me, crosses and statuettes of various sizes!

And creatures climbing out of the ground in front of them.

I stumbled back, frightened by the sight—and nearly knocked over a tall lamp behind me. I was back in my room once again.

I knew now what the horrid scenes reminded me of. My story.

I returned to my desk, determined to discover how the strange occurrences had been caused. I flipped through the pages of what had once been my beloved novel, searching for something—anything—that might explain.

There was another strike of lightning. I looked up through the window in front of my desk, startled for a moment as if shocked by a galvanic battery. But what I saw in my reflection was much more horrifying then a simple change in lighting.

I saw the face of Death.

Many call Death the Grim Reaper, or say it is a he. Other say it is a sad woman, seductive yet terrible. But believe me when I say that Death is genderless, or, if it has a gender, there is no reason why it would be man or woman. Death is also often described as being a simple skull, but this also is wrong. The face of Death is so fearsome it cannot be put into words.

I staggered backwards, unable to tear my eyes away from the sight. I put my hand on the chair behind me to steady myself. At that moment, there was a loud sound that seemed the most ominous of all the things that had occurred.

The grandfather clock struck twelve.

I stared at it, eyes wide. Was it only striking for the time, or was it for something else?

Was I the one for whom the bell tolled?

That was when I realized that the hand I had used to steady myself was no longer touching the chair in my room. It was touching a tombstone.

And there, in front of me, was the mausoleum I had created in my mind.

Skeletons lay behind me, all destroyed by me apparently.

Yes. Just like the story.

All that needed to be finished was the ending.

I stole myself and swung open the door of the mausoleum, ready for any danger that awaited me in its depths.