[Complete. Wattys 2023 Winner] The Redding takes you if it knows your name. That's the rule that's kept Meg alive --- or awake, rather --- since the night the world went to hell. Nobody knows where the red stuff came from, but it acts like water, it's in the water, and it falls as rain every night. The people it captures drop like puppets with their strings cut. They're asleep, not dead, and they can be reawoken. But then they just try to kill you. Meg and the other survivors she's befriended think they've found a stable equilibrium, six weeks after the catastrophe began. In an empty town, there's not much to do except innovate new survival methods. Meg's crush is the one to discover that Morse Code, like writing, is a safe means of communication. That's all fine and good until the nightly rain begins. Raindrops, as it turns out, can make dots and dashes, too. The Redding can talk. And it's telling her to run. ❖❖❖ Complete. Wattys 2023 Winner. Featured on: @Wattpad - Embrace the Fear: Horror Stories @WattpadExplorer - Embrace the Fear: Scary Stories @Creators - Scary Stories to Read in the Dark @Wattpad Explorer - From Our Creators @dystopianapocalypse - Featured D&A Stories @Wattpad Explorer - Why Not Buy Some Flowers @Fright - Featured Stories Comments and critiques are both welcome and appreciated. I write characters from many different backgrounds, with many different experiences. If you share those traits and find that I have misrepresented anything, please let me know! I am feedback-friendly and here to learn :)

Desdemona ''Des'' Winchester wants nothing to do with Melliford Academy. In fact, she's pretty sure her parents shipped her off to boarding school just to get her out of their hair. It's a move they'll come to regret if she has any say in the matter. Nothing humiliates posh folk like having a daughter sent home from the country's most esteemed educational institution. Just flunking class isn't dramatic enough, though. Des plans to get booted in the most spectacular manner possible, just to make sure her parents' social circle will never let them live it down. Her scheming, unfortunately, encounters three roadblocks within the first week of class. The first: Exie Quinnell, teacher's pet, whip-smart, and unreasonably attractive. Neither girl intended to end up on a project together, but their teacher deemed Des in need of a little... remediation. The second: There are things about Melliford Academy that none of the teachers will talk about, even when pressed. Things that should be easy answers. The third: The first student found dead with a folded paper dove perched on their chest. ❖❖❖ Complete and fully edited. Comments and critiques are both welcome and appreciated. I write characters from many different backgrounds, with many different experiences. If you share those traits and find that I have misrepresented anything, please let me know! I am feedback-friendly and here to learn :)

Caught short by a unrelenting storm, Heloise seeks shelter in the last place she should be - the manor of the beast in the west. A sapphic short story. 18+