Explore Cailynn's Works
Dark fiction, haunted characters, and tales that linger in the bones.
Explore every story I’ve written — and the ones still murmuring in the dark.
The Girl Who KnewThe Medicine
When her voice is stolen, the medicine will speak.
When Akahlulwa wins a scholarship to an elite Cape Town school, she carries with her a voice meant for choirs and a bracelet from her Imbeleko ceremony - a thread to her ancestors. But the uniformed halls of Edenridge hide a cruelty that speaks in whispers, laughter, and phone screens.
As the taunts grow sharper and her voice slips away, her Gogo reminds her: Muti is not evil - it is nature, and nature follows the hand that shapes it. Guided by ancient knowledge, Akahlulwa calls on a torn-eared black cat and a ritual older than the city itself.
What begins as a warning may become something far more powerful - and far harder to control.
Popcorn
Employee Appreciation Day just got sinister.
At the corporate offices of KhulaCorp, a bag of popcorn is handed out to every employee as a token of gratitude. But when workers start eating the snack, something changes. Their eyes glaze over. Their smiles stretch too wide. Their productivity soars.
And they never complain again.
When one employee refuses to take a bite, she begins to see the truth behind the company's manufactured cheer-and the horrifying cost of being a "valued team player."
In a workplace where happiness is mandatory and gratitude is weaponised, what happens when you're the only one who's still human?
A short story of corporate horror, toxic positivity, and the creeping dread of compliance.
Madness in Bloom
​In the quiet town of Greystone, Donna Prescott has spent years tending to her family's nursery, carefully cultivating beauty and order in her world of plants. But beneath the surface of her calm exterior, something sinister is growing.
It's been a year since her mother, Isabella Moretti Prescott, passed away, yet Donna can't escape her ghost. Haunted by memories of her mother's abuse, Donna's carefully controlled life begins to unravel when a strange vine starts to take over her private garden. No matter how much she cuts it back, the wisteria returns-thicker, darker, and more menacing.
When Donna's carefree younger brother, Marco, unexpectedly arrives for Mother's Day, he brings with him old tensions and unresolved grief. He doesn't understand Donna's pain, or the ghost that still haunts her. But as the vine in Donna's garden grows, so does her mother's influence, tightening its grip on her life and driving her to the brink of madness.
In a chilling blend of psychological horror and supernatural dread, "Madness in Bloom" explores the inescapable ties of family, the weight of unresolved trauma, and the dark roots of a mother's love that continue to grow-long after death.
