Not on the Menu

Write about something memorable you ate that you'd never find on a restaurant menu.

My First Internet

Write a nonfiction story about a memorable experience from your early days online and what it meant to you.

In Lieu of Gifts

Write a fiction story about someone who asks their family for one unusual favor instead of holiday gifts.

Timothy A Rowland

Silver Daux

S. A. Crawford

Kendall Defoe 

Marielle Sabbag

John Cox

Tim Carmichael

KA Stefana 

Pixel Floyd

Erin Latham Shea

Harper Lewis 

Raphael Fontenelle

Community Alert: Spam Comments

Overnight from November 14 into the morning of November 15, a spam message was posted more than 800,000 times across Vocal, claiming that accounts had been flagged for suspicious activity and asking creators to verify their accounts through a link.



Vocal

📢 Raise Your Voice Thread: 11/12/2026

Our “Raise Your Voice Threads” are hosted most alternating Thursdays at 12PM ET to offer creators more avenues to uncover exceptional stories on Vocal. As we are continuously searching for fresh creators and inspiring stories, this thread provides an opportunity to exchange and discuss the stories that have moved and motivated us on Vocal.



Vocal Bonus Leaderboard: 11/11/2026

Welcome to our weekly Leaderboard update! We're delighted to highlight Vocal's most popular stories. Join us as we recognize this week's standout contributors and their remarkable achievements.



Scroll No More Challenge Winners

For  Scroll No More , we switched off every smartphone in the world and left the aftermath to you. The results gave us plenty to laugh about, worry about, and occasionally even feel hopeful about along the way.   Thanks again to  Lightning Bolt ⚡ Bill   for recommending this prompt!!



Vocal Bonus Leaderboard: 11/04/2026

Dead Air Challenge Winners

Dead Air  brought out some incredibly creative and strange ideas, and we had a lot of fun seeing where everyone took the prompt. From creepy toys and mysterious phone calls to sinister supermarket intercoms and a full-blown musical nightmare, there was no shortage of unique ways to make us think twice about what we're hearing.



i want to know

I want to know (want to know)

When did you stop writing songs

When did you stop letting every emotion twist you and swallow you



Poets

Triple Trouble

“Down! Daisy,  SIT !”  Sebastian snaps impatiently at the exuberant puppy. Undeterred — with an energetic flap of golden, fluffy ears — Daisy tosses her paws onto Sean’s more welcoming lap.



Writers

Dayshrink

Hey there winter Sun

I’m asking where did you go?

You used to be around

Now you’re hiding your glow

I know you know I wrote a letter to the Moon



"I'm scared"

I'm scared.

Honestly scared.

Indeginious communities

are under an

Intellectual attack.

I'm scared

Honestly scared

that our history



The Delivery

Thunder rumbled distantly and Atlin Hanford hunched his shoulders deeper. Wiping the nib of his pen and closing the ink bottle, he found his place in the old book again. The wealth of knowledge now at his fingertips far surpassed the pittance he was obligated to spend for admittance.



The Most Dangerous Game

The wolf eats the lamb. The fox raids the henhouse. Man picks up a gun and stalks his brother across one, many battlefields; both figuratively, and literally, as well. It's all kill, kill, kill, every day, all day.



Horror

All the Novembers

I can feel the crystals of starlit dreams disappear from her,

But thus far not fire.

Emerald and tangerine to crimson murmurs permeate the place,



Miracles, Great and Small

I was mighty proud of this story, but it didn't amount to much of anything, so I reinvented it as a poem. Here's the original:



Frontal Shell Development

You eat a slice of cake for breakfast  and list out   what is going in:              milk             flour             sugar             salt             at least 3 strawberries             half an egg  You catch a shell, still not partial to the taste  of eggs  of the smell when boiled or when the linings fall out  of you in clumps.  You are not partial to what happens when some eggs grow up.              Are you even partial to yourself?  You shake your head  out of a fever again. 25 years since  you were an egg. 1 second since  you grew a brain worth more than half a shell.   You head out  onto the open road to escape  or get groceries. Maybe  if you step through the empty  egg carton shelves, you'd find  a portal, a past, or future, a place  that is not present but different  enough.   Maybe, you'd let the winter bite you half  to death, then thaw out, grow up into a whole egg ready to be cracked all over again and yet   you don't.   You are four again. In bed, blanket heavy,  your mother knocks and floats in.  She says many things, she flutters kisses  all over your face. She is never going  anywhere and there are eggs for breakfast.   You are twenty-five. You can go  anywhere. You can go  so far away that your mother  will be nowhere and not know  about all this cake  you eat for breakfast.  You wake up with tangled hair  and childhood blankets. You smell  the rawness of the yolk that you burst from.  Post-fever haste, you tear away  and find that not all roots have come with you.  You're a piece of ginger, a freshly dug-up carrot  delicate tendrils at your feet. Your toes are gone and you watch the wind blow  all that was sowed  years ago. You left too many things  in the desert soil.   “I’m coming home” you type and then delete.  Your roots twist on vinyl floors. Your knees dig  into rental counters and cabinets. You wonder  where home is without your toes. You cannot stand  the idea of walking  for this long and not burying  all your deaths. You are half-shelled  and fading. You are full of hunger and eat  the fibrous parts of sour oranges and drool grief into your hands, lap love  from the corners of your mouth. You wonder  what is permanence and what is  yours. You wonder, in a world this vast,  if it was ever worth it.  To amount  to anything except a slice of cake  on a breakfast nook for two.   You picture it  ending  as quickly as falling  flakes in a snowglobe. But in blistering  winds you hold tight, walk without toes  hands wrapped and packaged in his pocket  while you trip and sew your words. You find  your mother everywhere yet not in  your hand. You fret  if you have ever done  enough.   You chew  your lips of all its dryness wait for new skin to stretch over and eat yourself sick again.  You starve.  You gorge.  You eat cake for breakfast  and find an eggshell against your tongue.  You cut another slice  to search for the rest.



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