Latest Stories
Most recently published stories in Fiction.
Propagated Cracks
She opened her eyes with a start, with a pounding headache and stinging pain from her forehead, lying prostrate in the dust.
Alex GerwePublished 3 years ago in FictionThe Other Side of a Promise
It happened on my way home from work. The day was like any other—I’d risen with the sun, prepared for the day, and left my publicly assigned dwelling right at seven to stride to the northwestern spire and arrive for my eight o’clock shift. I spent the day denying citizens’ requests for dwellings located closer to the central spire, stopping only for a half-hour lunch break and two 5-minute bathroom breaks.
Stephanie Michelle FitzhughPublished 3 years ago in FictionDoomsday Deeny
The morning was cool and damp. The heat had not taken over yet. The cities where The Elite resided were temperature controlled behind their steel walls. In the villages that sprawled out across the vast expanse of dry cracked earth that covered most of the continent, they were lucky to have one water pump in town to share.
Sara RolsenPublished 3 years ago in FictionReset
We were six clicks out from civilian compound 23 when my sensors picked up a pod. I had a split second to alert my team then I dived behind the nearest pile of rubble and pressed the heel of my hand to my locket for luck. It has yet to fail me and didn’t this time. The explosion delivered the viral payload in a tight circle around the trigger which just barely reached the base of the pile I hid behind. The second Geneva Convention outlawed the use of bio-gens in warfare but the off-worlders never signed anything did they? After all, they didn’t want to hurt the planet. They just wanted us gone. Sometimes I wondered if they were wrong.
Desolate
Dear Diary, Silence. The silence is golden. For days, the screams had echoed, tore at our eardrums. Blood had caked the ground, patches dotting flowers and tufts of grass. Red sprayed across trunks of trees and car horns blared, abandoned in their owners haste to get away. Traffic had ensued and blocked the cars. The only way out was to either wait or run.
Kristy PerkinsPublished 3 years ago in FictionThe Love She Gives
For a long time, I searched for what could fulfill me being disappointed in myself if it didn’t work out or if it just plain didn’t seem like what I thought it would seem like. But early this week I had a discovery within after doing much self-discovering especially after I was forced too in order to get over a mental illness, I had subjected to a couple of years back. I realized that someone like me searches and searches for something to fulfill us only to find an emptiness in trying to fit into the world around us. What I mean by that is we expect something to fulfill us only to find that it isn’t that something that can fulfill us but what rather what can come from within. Within, what does that even mean? I realized that for so long I was escaping myself trying to be someone else because I didn’t like who I thought I was or what I saw in the mirror. Losing myself completely in a mental illness that brought me into such a dark place I can’t even begin to describe the agony that comes with it. Then, I realized only recently that the only way I can overcome this is if I learn to find ways in which the little things, I’m able to do. I’m able to fall in love with about myself. So, I realized I was a pretty good writer when I was able to complete essay after essay in college and get good grades on it. When I was younger, a teacher told me that my ability to describe something at such a young age was remarkable and I’ll never forget that. It’s not just writing where I find myself feeling happy to express myself in a way that is presumably better then when I’m speaking but my ability to listen to someone and give them my best short affiliated advice to help them in their life. My ability to understand someone is the best part of me and that is when I find myself most fulfilled. However, it is my greatest weakness because I tend to forgive very easily sometimes in an instant I forgive. Which can cause me more hurt then justice in life. But I rather not focus on that fear. Instead I would like to tell a little story where I saved a life by understanding them. My best friend had the greatest most complicated mother and she had an impeccable physical illness where the lungs start to slowly collapse. She was so afraid of COVID-19 that she stayed couped up in her room all day. My best friend worked at amazon for a living and while he was there his mom fell and couldn’t pick herself up, so the paramedics came broke the door down and took her to a rehab. She was having trouble breathing and there or at the hospital they sent her too is where we believe she got COVID-19. She unfortunately passed away from it not too long after. Me and him where so devastated we cried for hours while he told me on the phone that she was gone, and he couldn’t believe it. It was when I understood his pain from losing my aunt years ago when I was young. That I told him, “I know this pain it’s unlike any other pain in the world”. “There is no way to fix it but the only way to get through it and allow your feelings to feel”. That was the best advice I could give him. We all experience trauma differently and while he went out with a new friend one night and drank his life away. While, swallowing pain pills and the attempt to put the push the pain away with alcohol and drugs lead to him almost dying. I went to the hospital and luckily, they let me in. I held his hand and I told him I understood why he tried to take the pain away and to please come back because I needed him. He woke up and the guilt he felt was all over his face. I told him not to feel that way we all make mistakes and ever since I’ve known him, he’s always been strong. This time it wasn’t something that he could be strong about and I understood. He recovered thankfully and now he calls me every week, or I call him, and we talk about his pain before he does something mistakenly. It has been six months since then and I have thankfully been able to get through to him on many occasions. It’s a hard task but I know pain all too well not to feel it with him.
Cerina GalvanPublished 3 years ago in FictionThe Girl with the Last Strain
The valley around the girl is a stage with no actors. She stands alone, dressed in a ratty, moth-eaten sundress and a hood the color of flint over it. Her hair is long and matted with grease, but still, she ties it up in a bun to stop it from webbing across her face.
Briar EsterlinePublished 3 years ago in FictionYou Guys Are Out Of Here!
I ran like crazy to escape the wall of flames. My fellow firefighters had long ago become blackened corpses. There was a cave in the canyon wall ahead, I squeezed out a superhuman burst of adrenaline and barely made it, diving into the entrance and landing on my belly before the air filled with white hot flames and orange sparks. As I lay face down on the slimy floor, I thought of the billionaires with their private bunkers deep in earth’s bowels. What did they do down there?
Heart-shaped Hopelessness
Heart-shaped Hopelessness Nothing but ash. Can’t breathe. Can’t see. What was once a beautiful, thriving city, is now a barren wasteland. It’s been two years, 121 days, and this morning. How we’ve survived, I’ll never know. Lying on this cold concrete deep inside the inner-city water drainage system is the only place to call home. Hearing the soft breathing and whimsical, dream-filled whispers of Aaron and Joan lulls me into deep thought about what the day holds. So much to do and not much time to get everything accomplished. I am by no means “mom material”, but since the warheads hit, my youth had been stripped away; now my primary focus were my younger brother and sister’s future. The sun is just now breaking dawn and I must make a food and supply run while the ash-filled smog is at its thinnest.
Katie FosterPublished 3 years ago in FictionThe Botton of the Ocean
Floating. I am floating. The water soaks my clothes and I am lighter than air, bobbing around in the darkness behind my closed eyelids. I hear my name being called and submerge myself, feeling the cold envelop my body. My throat burns and my lungs scream for air but I stay as long as I can. The voice is gone when I resurface, and I float once more.
SS Inglefield
He couldn’t remember the first time he’d ever seen his mother’s necklace. He couldn’t remember if it was in the before or the after, but why did that matter? It was his favourite thing about his mother, however unfair that was. Her necklace was simple, a heart-shaped locket, with intricate swirling patterns traced finely into the metal. He could stare at it for hours, holding it gently between grubby fingers, afraid of his own filth contaminating the jewellery. His mother would always come back to get it, running long fingers through his ebony hair, sighing at his fascination. She didn’t quite understand.
Glaedreon
A mother's tears are shed from the heart. When the extension of the astral plane bore nothing but emptiness, cold and dark, it brought a somber weight on her heart. The translucent tears that fell from her cheeks, sparkled and glittered like a thousand diamonds. Each drop fell to her feet, sprinkling along the plane like a million budding flowers. The darkness is really so lonely, so desolate. But to the mother's surprise, a cry above her own reverberated through the darkness. From her tears, life was born.
Danica BodleyPublished 3 years ago in Fiction