Finished Application
Author: Ukari
To say here is far, and to call yonder nearby. Stories on the edge of the every day, strange tales you may or may not be moved by. Strange, curious, fantastic stories told by me, you, him and her. There are many stories but they’re all concluded within a single page, each story around 200 to 1200 characters in length, a short story collection you can easily read. Please enjoy them. Updated every Saturday at 6pm.
***
I went outside after work to clean up. I swept the road around the store, and when I reached the garbage area out the back, I found several bundled magazines had been left there.
‘Really?’ I thought as I picked them up. Having to split all our garbage up was so annoying. It wasn’t like the magazines were dirty or anything, so rather than throwing them out, I decided to put them in with the old newspapers instead.
I went back inside the store and when I looked at the covers under the light, I saw they were horror magazines for children. Huh, they still sell magazines like this? I used to find them terrifying as a kid myself, and found nostalgia kicking up within me, so I flicked through the pages.
I stopped on the prize page. The gift for this particular issue was a “cursed doll.” Its catchphrase was “I’ll destroy whoever you think of that you don’t like!” How disturbing. Were they even allowed to give away something like this? Wouldn’t people these days get upset about something like that?
I frowned and then noticed something. The application for the doll was torn out. A bad feeling washed over me. I grabbed the next magazine and tried to push it out of my mind. It was the same issue of the same magazine. So was the next, and the one after that. They were all the same.
And all the application tickets had been torn out.