[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 :)

Whitney Lowe is too comfortable. Nothing has changed from fifteen to twenty-five. Her boyfriend will never propose. The promotion she wants will never come. She doesn't know how she got here. So when her brother breaks his leg and offers her his non-refundable plane ticket and the apartment he already rented in Italy for a month, she blows up her life - only to have Alden Miller, her brother's best friend, blow up her vacation. Alden has always been a little out of reach for Whitney. He's two years older, a huge flirt, and lives life like a nomad. So there really isn't anyone better than him to show her how to find herself again.

Leaving behind everything she's ever known, Emilee enters a world of high glamour and even higher stakes. The new freedom that comes with being a part of the Famoux is intoxicating, but behind the perfect image lies an ugly truth - being popular is a matter of life or death. ***** Out of the wreckage of environmental collapse, the country of Delicatum emerged. Its most popular celebrities are the Famoux, uniquely beautiful stars of a reality TV show called the Fishbowl. In a world still recovering from catastrophe, they provide a 24/7 distraction. Sixteen-year-old Emilee Laurence is obsessed with the Famoux - they provide a refuge from her troubled home life and the bullies at school. When she receives an unimaginable offer to become a member herself, she takes it. But soon she realizes that fame can be deadly... Content and trigger warning: This story depicts mental health issues and contains scenes of violence. [[word count: 350,000-400,000 words]]