Many people have a phobia – an unnatural fear they can’t control, but Stephanie’s phobia bordered on the fringe of madness. She would go into hysteria even at the sight of a small field mouse. Perhaps she had a right to be afraid, after what happened one night the year before.
It was evening when Stephanie left the small office where she worked, a real-estate agency in a small town. The city was visible in the distance, a big busy gathering of skyscrapers, factories and cars, but the small town was desolate. Because it was a warm evening, she decided to walk home and cut through the town park on the edge of a small lake nearby. Her apartment was on the other side.
She headed down a path surrounded by leafy trees. It was surprisingly dark on the path, dark enough for some deranged criminal to jump out or a stray dog to attack. Stephanie began to go faster, wanting to get to her apartment as soon as possible. She had heard stories about things, unpleasant things that happened to people in the park at night.
Then, coming out of the shaded path into an open area, she saw that the sky was still light. She decided to walk a little slower, but she still couldn’t forget the stories she knew about the park. She rushed through the park past a deserted playground and an empty swimming pool and towards the lake in the middle. Soon, another path loomed ahead, surrounded again by thick trees. Stephanie glanced down the path. Nobody seemed to be on it. She quickly turned around, checking to see if anybody was behind her, then she hurried down. There was no point in turning back.
Once on the path, she could hear nothing but the rustle of leaves. The sounds of the city in the distance had been drowned out by the rippling of the lake water as the warm wind gusted past her. Stephanie was almost at the end of the cold cement path when she heard a noise, a noise not coming from the city, or the wind or the water. She told herself it wasn’t real, that it was just her overactive imagination from the awful stories she knew about the park, but it was as real as everything around her…
It was the sound of heavy footsteps behind her.
She rushed down the path, her shoes thudding on the cement, but she gasped when she realized that the heavy footsteps were quickening as well, chasing her. She got to the end of the path, turned, and jumped behind a group of small rose bushes near the lake. Just a few feet away was the shadow of a man, ominous in the fading sunlight. The man went and sat on a bench a few feet away, his face hidden in darkness so Stephanie couldn’t see it.
“What if he’s waiting for me to come out? What if he never leaves?” Stephanie realized in fear, her wide eyes, looking from the man to the lake. All of a sudden, she nearly screamed. An ugly gray rat, it’s scraggly whiskers twitching and its teeth clicking dangerously, was crawling up to the man, stopping at his feet. A few seconds later, three more of the revolting little creatures joined from the darkness, letting out high unnatural squeals, their beady little eyes flashing creepily in the light.
“What if one comes up to me? What do I do? I hate rats!” Stephanie thought, starting to panic. She had always hated rats; from the second one crawled across her bed one night when she was six. She had to bite down on her hand to keep from screaming as a white rat with red eyes that glinted like rubies joined the four others at the man’s feet. Before she could even think, the man pointed his long sharp-nailed finger at the bushes where she was hiding, and the four rats began to scurry towards her.
Stephanie wanted to scream, to run, to be back in her apartment where it was safe, but she was frozen in terror as the rats crawled up to her feet, their noses moving weirdly as they sniffed the air. Stephanie couldn’t take it any longer. She stood up, backed away from the rats, and suddenly felt her foot sinking.
She had stepped in a rat’s nest behind her.
Dozens of baby rats scurried from the hole, squealing and squeaking in terror. Stephanie pulled her foot from the hole and shrieked as she looked down. Without even realizing, she had stepped on one of the baby rats.
Terrified, she began to run, bumping straight into the man who had scared her in the first place. She could see his face, but that only made her fear increase as he looked down at her. He wasn’t a man. He was a white rat with a narrow nose and ruby red glinting eyes, dressed in a black suit, white shirt and black tie. He held out his clawed hand, beckoning for her, his tail twitching.
Stephanie pushed past him, knocking him to the ground. She didn’t want to look back, but she turned her head and saw millions of rats rushing out from the suit on the ground, the rat man gone. Stephanie never reported what she had seen. She never told the police or her friends from work or her family. She never even mentioned it. She never saw another rat as scary as the ones she had seen that day again… except for the rat man. He was always around somewhere… in her mind.

Jackie hated her grandmother’s clear glass poodle ornament. It had two real emeralds for eyes that glinted in the light, and a ruby for a nose and a diamond collar. According to her grandmother, it was one of a kind, an antique and very valuable, but Jackie avoided it whenever she came to visit.
Her grandmother lived in Nova Scotia, Canada. Jackie’s parents forced her to go visit every summer, to the crumbling shack at the edge of the sea. There was a television, but no cable, no satellite and no DVD or VHS players. The windows were cracked and dust had collected on the windowsill. The kitchen smelled bad and Jackie’s guest room was musty, with cobwebs on the ceiling. She used to have nightmares as a kid about zombies crawling in through the hole in the wall right beside her bed, next to her pillow, and it still creeped her out just to think about it.
“Jackie dear, let me tell you about my glass dog.” Her grandmother beckoned. Rolling her eyes and groaning, Jackie turned off her music player and sat on the musty couch next to her grandmother to hear the same story again.
“When I was a teenager, your age, I went to New York City. It was 1950. The sky was clear and blue, and the sun was shining over the skyscrapers. Oh, how beautiful it looked at night, the city lights flashing, making the smoke from factory smokestacks turn random colors. It was fantastic. Anyway, just before we left, I saw the glass poodle in the window of a jewelry store, and my mother bought it for me. She told me always to keep it. Then on the way home, she just died, for no reason. Ever since then, I could feel her spirit was with me in the dog.” Her grandmother sighed.
“Well, thanks for telling me the story, granny. I’m going to go call my friend, Vinnie.” Jackie muttered, trying to get away.
“Wait, Jackie. I want you to keep it.” Her grandmother exclaimed, holding up the glass dog. “No thanks, granny.” Jackie replied, trying to get out of it, but the look on her grandmother’s face was weird looking, as if Jackie’s life depended on the glass poodle.
“Have it Jackie, because it’s very important. Pass it on when it’s your turn.” Her grandmother commanded.
“What do you mean, granny?” Jackie asked, carefully taking the glass dog and putting it in her pocket. “Granny?”
Her grandmother had died.
The next day, Jackie got off the airplane that went from Nova Scotia to San Francisco, California. She had called the police, and they contacted her parents. Her grandmother had been taken away, and the house was going to be given to her when she grew up. She still had the glass dog in her pocket.
“Mom, Dad, thank God you’re back! It was so creepy, and I had to sleep at the police station all night! The fat homicide detective who worked there fell asleep too, and he snored.” Jackie moaned, shuddering at just the memory of it. “Granny gave me this, it’s the weird glass poodle she had.”
Jackie held up the dog, letting the sunlight shine on it. The emerald eyes were radiant, positively glowing. Her mother and father stood there crying, mourning the loss of the grandmother.
Her grandmother’s story echoed in her mind, about New York City and the jewelry store. It was a big surprise that anybody would want a thing like that, but if it was her grandmother’s last wish, Jackie would keep it.
Then she saw it, something so horrible and terrifying, it made her scream…
Her grandmother’s reflection was in the glass dog, her face like a wrinkled prune. Jackie dropped the dog, and it thudded to the ground, cracking in half. A horrible moaning noise escaped it, making everyone in the airport cover their ears and squeal. The ghost of her grandmother drifted out of it, and up into the air, vanishing, while screaming, “I told you to keep it!”
Finally the noise stopped. Jackie stood there, afraid to move, staring down at the dog. One of the little emeralds had fallen out, leaving the dog one-eyed, and the ruby had a scratch on the surface now.
Before she could even scream, the airplane tipped over, as if some huge invisible force had pulled it down, on top of Jackie. As everyone began to scream and cry and run away, the dog vanished into thin air, leaving behind just the single emerald eye in the middle of the airplane runway.