Held in System
Some systems don't fail.
They adapt.
Held in System is a collection of ten modern horror stories about the quiet mechanisms that promise care, safety, comfort, and belonging-and what they take in return. These are stories where the threat isn't a monster bursting through the door, but a process already in motion. A protocol already approved. A tradition everyone agreed not to question.
A baby sleeps too well beneath a blue nightlight that listens back.
A town's harvest festival thrives because something in the corn is always fed.
A phone app predicts illness by teaching the body how to obey fear.
Lanterns glow in the woods, offering rest instead of escape.
A complaints hotline fixes problems by subtracting people.
A museum returns what you lost-then shows you what it plans to take.
A storm falls in love and refuses to leave.
A lullaby drifts through static, raising children who no longer need parents.
A smiling algorithm learns that distress is the most valuable content of all.
A house grows teeth and remembers everyone who tried to change it.
These stories unfold in workplaces, homes, small towns, feeds, hospitals, fields-places that feel familiar enough to trust. They explore how belief becomes infrastructure, how care becomes control, how ease becomes a form of capture. Nothing here needs to chase you. It just needs you to stay.
The horror of Held in System is not sudden or spectacular. It is patient. Procedural. Polite. It waits for you to accept the suggestion, follow the route, keep scrolling, turn the light back on, sign the form, attend the festival, trust the glow.
And by the time you realize what you've agreed to, the system is already working exactly as designed.
You are not trapped.
You are included.
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