The faint glow of the moon glisten through the drapes over his tanned skin, daring me to awaken all the forbidden desires I kept buried in my thoughts. "Use me," He whimpers as my knees stoop to the floor, ❝... I am rightfully and solely yours, Aaliyah. ❞ ☼ ☼ ☼ Aaliyah Moor is a lot of things, but she isn't stupid. She knew her sister better than anyone and couldn't grasp her sister committing suicide. Aaliyah felt it in her half-broken soul that Ardon Prep would reveal all the silent secrets. All the things Valerie couldn't tell her, not even a whisper, of what happened in that damned school. She made it her mission to figure out what happened to her sister, her moon. Aaliyah didn't care who would get burned in her crossfire or swooned to her deceit; it is all worth it in the justice of Val. What she didn't know was that some webbed lies and laced secrets are meant to be kept away; and if not, death would be the lesser evil.

The aliens kill every human they catch, or in rare cases, put trackers on them to discover their hidden villages. When Natalie is caught in an ambush, she is unexpectedly released. But there is no tracker. The Saursunes have an entirely different motive this time. *** Run. Don't look back. When Natalie is trapped in an alien ambush, she is unexpectedly released. The first human to ever be let go. The Saursunes invaded centuries ago, and everyone knows that getting caught is certain death. Natalie is confused but grateful to be alive. As a porter, one of the few humans with the rare ability to teleport between special crystal formations, she must leave the safety of her desert village every day to help gather food. When other villages increase their raids on the Saursunes' farms, the aliens retaliate by hunting down every human they can find - except Natalie's group. Instead of trying to kill her and those helping her, they bring them food instead. Is it a trap? Or something else? Natalie isn't sure, but one thing is certain: the Saursunes aren't done with her yet.

|WATTYS 2022 WINNER - HORROR| Shawn, a convicted criminal, never thought she'd see the sun again, let alone call another star system her home. When she's offered an out from her prison sentence, she embarks on a dangerous interstellar expedition along with 18 of Earth's most intelligent criminals. Their task is to set up a base on a supposedly habitable planet and prepare it for colonization. Although the planet has liquid water and a breathable atmosphere, it is believed to host only microbial life. However, upon arriving, Shawn and the rest of the colonists learn that assumption was grossly incorrect. In a brutal attack from rampaging wildlife, everyone but Shawn and four other colonists are killed. The five survivors retreat to the cavernous network beneath the ground seeking safety, but they soon come to a terrible discovery. These caves aren't ordinary caves, and they are no safer down under than they were on the surface. [][][] This was originally my entry for the 2021 Open Novella Contest, and it received an honorable mention! It has now been expanded into a full length novel. I used prompt number 53: "When wildlife starts rampaging, all the humans are forced underground. However, they come to a terrible discovery that being underground is no safer than being on the surface."

After escaping a stalled elevator into a zombie apocalypse, Emily must learn how to trust people again or risk losing everything in this terrifying world. ***** For Emily, every day of the last two years have been a blur. She keeps her head down, takes her college courses online, and only goes out to work at her mandatory internship. But all that changes on the day the office elevator breaks down, leaving her trapped when the screams begin. And when the doors finally open, revealing a dystopian world ruined by bloody teeth and disease, Emily is launched into a terrifying run for her life, caught between the strangers she's not sure she can trust and the man-eating monsters that hunger for her flesh. Now she must learn not only how to survive in this new and dangerous world, but also how to overcome her own inner demons before they cost her something more precious than her life. [[Wattys' Shortlist]] [[Promoted by AMC]] Content and/or Trigger Warning: The story contains some gore, violence, strong language, and dark themes. [[word count: 100,000-150,000 words]]