Om Parhad

This is the second part of a series called Mirror. If you haven't read Part One, start here . I didn't sleep that night. I lay on my futon with my eyes open and listened to the house. The wind. The pipes. The small sounds every house makes when it thinks nobody's awake. And underneath all of it — a low, humming silence. The same silence I'd heard at Shinzo's house. I kept thinking about the bell. The way it swung. The way it moved without anyone touching it. The way the air around it was warm . I told myself I imagined it. I told myself I was tired. I told myself the wind had done it. There was a wind that night. There had to be. But I didn't believe myself. Not really. I got up at some point — I don't know when. Maybe two. Maybe three. I walked to the kitchen. I drank a glass of water. I looked out the window. The shrine was visible from my window. Small. Distant. A dark shape on the hill against the sky. The bell was still swinging. I...

This is the first part of a new series called Mirror. Each story is its own thing. No connections between them except the name. Read it, and tell me what you think. This particular story has multiple parts Shinzo Haruka was the kind of boy who believed you. Not because he was stupid. Because he wanted to. He wanted the world to be the kind of place where people meant what they said. He wanted his friends to be his friends. He wanted the things he was told to be true. That's why he trusted Hanzo. That's why he trusted all of them. I knew Shinzo since we were six. We grew up in the same lane in Yamato — the old village on the edge of the valley, where the rice fields run right up to the forest and the forest runs right up to nothing. There's a shrine on the hill above the village. Nobody remembers who it's for. The old people say it was there before the village was. They say the village was built around it. Shinzo and I used to climb up there when we were k...

Mirror - The horror  This is the first post in a new series called Mirror. It's a series of standalone horror and thriller stories. Each one is its own thing. No connections between them except the name. Read it, and tell me what you think. The mirror was already there when she moved in. It hung above the bathroom sink — a small, oval thing with a tarnished brass frame. Old. Older than the apartment. Older than the building. The landlord hadn't mentioned it. The lease hadn't mentioned it. It was just there, the way the pipes were there, the way the window was there. Part of the room. She almost took it down. The first night, she stood in front of it, toothbrush in hand, and thought: I should take this down. She didn't. She didn't know why. It wasn't a nice mirror. It was cloudy in places, and the reflection it gave her was somehow dimmer than the bathroom light — as if the glass were older than glass should be, as if it had seen too much and was tire...

Hello. My name is Om, and I write horror and other stuff (Some personal notes and my other novel excerpts too) This blog is where I'll be putting things. Notes. Excerpts. Scenes that don't make it into the final draft. Thoughts on the strange business of making things up for a living. I'm currently working on my debut series, Paronia . It's a psychological horror story about a small village where overthinking becomes contagious — and fatal. It's not a monster story. It's not a ghost story. It's a story about being human, and about the way our own minds can turn against us. I'm still writing it. It's taking a long time. Some days it goes well. Most days it doesn't. But I'm writing it anyway. This blog will hold the journey. The good parts and the bad parts. The parts I'm proud of and the parts I'm not. If you're interested in horror, or writing, or the strange space between the two — welcome. Let's see where this ...