Excerpt

The Last Letter
The train was then long gone from the station, but Ava was still standing, still holding old, yellowed envelope in her fingers. The paper was soft from being opened and folded too many times. The words inside had faded, but she didn't even need to read them anymore - she knew them by heart.
By Nusuki11 months ago in Fiction
The Price of the Aesthetic
For Elara, Dark Academia wasn’t just a style; it was a religion. She didn’t just design rooms; she curated sanctuaries for the intellectual soul. Her signature was a perfect, brooding blend of mahogany bookshelves, cracked leather armchairs, vintage globes, and the lingering scent of old paper and ambition. Her clients were wealthy professionals who wanted to look like they’d inherited a library from a 19th-century Oxford don.
By Habibullah11 months ago in Fiction
The Last Letter from Nowhere
M Mehran The letter arrived on a Thursday — the kind of day that sits quietly between the noise of the week. No sender name. No return address. Just her name: “Lena Morris.” At first, she thought it was junk mail. The paper felt rough, almost handmade, and the ink had bled slightly, as if the writer’s hands had trembled. When she opened it, a faint scent of pine and old paper drifted out. The words inside were written in neat cursive, something rare in her world of typed emails and text messages. > “Dear Lena, I know you don’t remember me, but I never forgot you. I promised I’d find you when the time was right. If you’re reading this, then I kept that promise. – Sam.” Lena froze. The name pulled something from deep inside her — a flicker of a memory, too faint to grasp. Sam. It sounded familiar, like a word she had whispered once in a dream. She searched her mind for a Sam: a classmate, an ex, a friend — nothing. Still, the letter stirred something old, like dust rising from a forgotten book. That night, she couldn’t sleep. The letter sat on her desk, the paper almost glowing in the soft lamplight. She kept reading it, again and again, until the words began to feel alive. On the back, she noticed a small symbol — a pine tree drawn in black ink. The next morning, she drove to the only place she knew with pines thick enough to make the world smell like that letter — Silver Hollow, the town she’d left sixteen years ago. --- Silver Hollow hadn’t changed much. The same faded diner sign still blinked “Open 24 Hours”, though it probably wasn’t. The streets were quiet, the air crisp. She parked outside the diner and went in. The waitress, an older woman with kind eyes, looked up. “Coffee?” she asked. Lena nodded, then pulled the letter from her bag. “Do you know anyone named Sam who used to live around here?” The waitress paused, her hand mid-air. “Sam who?” “There’s no last name,” Lena said. “Just Sam.” The woman hesitated. “You might want to ask at the post office,” she finally said. “Old George might remember.” --- At the post office, the smell of paper and dust felt oddly comforting. George was there — white hair, glasses low on his nose. When she showed him the letter, he frowned. “This looks like Sam Rivers’ handwriting,” he said slowly. “But that can’t be right.” “Why not?” He looked at her carefully. “Because Sam died… about fifteen years ago.” Lena’s heart skipped. “You’re sure?” He nodded. “He used to write letters. Beautiful ones. Always said he wanted people to remember him by his words. Poor boy had a wild imagination. Disappeared in the woods one winter. They found his coat, but not him.” She stared at the letter in her hands, suddenly cold. “Do you know where he lived?” she asked. George pointed north. “Old cabin by the lake. No one’s been there since.” --- By late afternoon, she stood at the edge of the lake. The air smelled of pine and damp earth. The cabin was small, its wood darkened by years of rain. She pushed open the door — it creaked but held. Dust hung in the sunlight like smoke. Inside, she found piles of letters tied with ribbon, hundreds of them. On the wall, drawings of trees, stars, and faces — one of them looked eerily like hers. Heart pounding, she untied one bundle and opened the top letter. > “December 3rd, 2008. Lena and I made snow angels today. She laughed when I fell. She said the sky looked close enough to touch.” She blinked. Her name — again. But she didn’t remember any of it. The next letter: > “January 5th, 2009. Lena’s family is moving away. She doesn’t want to leave. I told her I’d write to her every year until she came back.” Tears blurred her vision. She had lived here once, as a child. A memory surfaced — a boy with dark hair, holding a jar of fireflies. “Promise me you’ll never forget me,” he had said. She whispered, “Sam.” Outside, the wind rose, rattling the cabin walls. Something fluttered by her feet — another letter, fallen loose. > “If you ever find this, Lena, it means I kept my word. I never stopped writing. Not even after I was gone. Maybe you won’t remember, but I’ll remember for both of us.” The pages slipped from her hands as she began to cry — not out of fear, but recognition. She had forgotten the boy, but he had never forgotten her. --- As the sun set, the lake turned to molten gold. She stood by the water’s edge, the letter clutched to her chest. “I remember now,” she said softly. “You kept your promise.” A breeze stirred, gentle and warm. For a moment, she thought she saw him — a boy in a red scarf, standing just beyond the trees, smiling. When she blinked, he was gone. But the pine trees whispered, and somewhere deep inside her, something mended — the missing piece of her childhood found its way home. Lena tucked the last letter into her pocket and walked back toward the car. Behind her, the cabin stood silent, but not lonely anymore. That night, she started writing — not an email, not a message, but a real letter. The first line read: > “Dear Sam, I remember now. And I’ll keep writing too.”
By Muhammad Mehran11 months ago in Fiction
Coffee, Leaves, and Wagging Tails
Most mornings, he grabbed his cup of coffee and disappeared into his office for another morning of clacking away while listening to the podcast fitting the moment.
By Matthew J. Fromm11 months ago in Fiction
The Clockmaker’s Gift
In Ravelle, time had a slower pace. The streets between the stone houses were meandering like the ribbon streets and every evening, in the air, the smell of bread from the old bakery and the faint scent of rain. At the very center of the town was to be found a little shop with a faded sign reading: Emil's Timepieces - Repairs, Restorations, and Small Miracles. Sitting in his wooden bench surrounded by hundreds of clocks, inside was Emil. Some were tall and proud; others were quite small and could fit in a pocket. They all ticked in different ways, soft, loud, hurried, lazy, but the rhythm that they made together, the softness of one and the loudness of another, the hurriedness of another and the laziness of yet another, they all worked in harmony to fill the room with life. Emil was an old man now. His hands were withered and trembled slightly when he picked up a gear. Behind round glasses, like miniature moons, his eyes were hidden. He had been repairing clocks for over a half century and every clock that went out of his shop did so with a little bit of his soul. But there was one clock that he could not repair. It lay by the window, dusty - a beautiful silver pocket watch with "To Emil, from Clara" engraved on it. Clara had been the love of his life, a painter, wild curly-haired, with a laugh that could make winter into spring. It was at the town square, when his cloth blew from his easel and landed on his face. She had laughed and he had blushed and somehow that accident became a lifetime of mornings and whispered dreams together. For years, they kept to themselves, above the shop. She painted while he worked and every evening they heard the ticking clocks together, as if outside the world did not exist. But in one winter, the coughing began. It started small - only a shiver in her chest. And it got deeper and more heavy, stealing her breath day by day. Emil did everything: medicine, prayers, sleepless nights keeping an eye over her. But time, the very thing that he spent his life fixing, had turned against him. When she died he stopped all the clocks in the shop. For an entire day, Ravelle was quiet. Then when he wound them up again, the silver watch she had given him would no longer tick again. He never repaired it. He couldn’t. Years passed. Emil grew slower, lonelier. Still they were brought and he still wound them with his quiet care, but every evening his eyes would turn towards the silver watch by the window. One rainy afternoon a young girl came into the shop. She was probably twelve, in a red coat, carrying a small broken alarm clock. "Shyly and shakily she asked, 'Are you the clockmaker?'" the speaker at the European Polymer Society's annual meeting in Florence, Italy, concluded. Emil smiled faintly. “I suppose I still am.” And she put the clock on his bench. “It was my mother’s. It doesn’t ring anymore.” He nodded, taking it gently. Everything comes to a halt, at some point. But sometimes with patience, it can begin again. As he worked, the girl explored the shop with wide eyes taking in the music of ticking watches around her. "Why, there are so many clocks" she asked. Emil chuckled. "To help keep in my mind how precious time is." The girl tilted her head. “You can’t forget time. It’s always there.” He looked at her then - really looked - and for a moment he caught a shadow of Clara's eyes in her curious gaze. "Ah," said he low, "but it's a deceptive torrent to lose when you're not looking at it." When he gave the fixed clock back he smiled in such a bright way, that for a heartbeat the room again was alive. She thanked him and ran out into the rain laughing, her voice trailing behind her down the street. Emil sat by the window watching the rain that fell that night. Reflections of the world outside - streetlamps in puddles, silver slabs of cobble. His eyes again glanced at Clara's watch. There was a movement inside him. Maybe it was the laughter of the girl or maybe it was the sudden feeling of gentleness that time had acquired. He picked up the old watch and his trembling fingers touched on the engraving. “To Emil, from Clara.” He opened it. The hands had been frozen at the moment she'd taken her last breath. He sighed. "One more try, just that," he whispered. He worked all through the night Polishing gears, changing springs, giving life to the tiny machine His hands went shaky, his sight became blurred, but he did not stop. The clock was against him, at every turn, stubborn and silent. Until finally — click. The second hand moved. Tick. Tick. Tick. Emil froze, eyes wide. He held the watch against his ear. It was soft but rhythmic - like a heartbeat. He smiled, blurring the ticking world with tears. The light outside came through the window, staining the room with gold. Emil sat back in his chair and continued to hold the watch. His eyes closed. There were a thousand heartbeats singing in unison around him, ticking on the clocks. When the shopkeeper next door went in to check on him that morning, Emil was sitting there, calm, a smile on his face. There was the ticking of the silver watch in his palm. And for the first time in years the shop was warm again -- as if time itself had finally forgiven him.
By Nusuki11 months ago in Fiction
The Last Dream Seller
In a town where night had lost its magic and the streets were silent, a peculiar shop stood between an old bakery and a shuttered bookstore. Its windows were misted with silver dust, and the faded sign read: Dreams for Sale. Most of the townsfolk passed by without a second glance, thinking it abandoned. But inside, under the dim glow of lanterns, a man worked quietly, arranging tiny glass bottles filled with sparkling mist.
By Muhammad Kashif 11 months ago in Fiction
The Last Love Letter
In the attic of a small, creaky house, tucked away in a forgotten corner of the world, lay a trunk filled with old letters. The letters were tied with a faded ribbon, the once-vibrant pink now dulled to a soft blush. The address on the top envelope read: "For My Beloved, Forever and Always".
By Muhammad Kashif 11 months ago in Fiction
Glass Danse Macabre
The stillness. The steely stillness that stole my breath was ever present. For so long, it had claimed my heart and devotion, and felt alive. Now it felt empty.
By Paul Stewart11 months ago in Fiction
“The Photographer Who Could Only Capture Moments That Would Be Regretted Later”
The Photographer Who Could Only Capture Moments That Would Be Regretted Later No one believed Elias Hart when he first explained his problem — mostly because he never explained it fully. He only said the same sentence every time people asked why he rarely shared his photography:
By SHAYAN11 months ago in Fiction
The Call of the Minaret
The early sun had just started to rise from behind the house tops of Medina when Bilal woke up. The air was still cool and heavy with the smell of sand and date palms. For a moment, he listened to the faint sounds of the city waking -- the distant bleating of goats, the clatter of water pots and the quiet hum of life returning after the silence of the night.
By Nusuki11 months ago in Fiction
The Light of the Desert
And the wind sang along the dunes, and Malik took a brush against his shabby cloak, and the desert sand was like tiny sparks on his face. This was hours of walking on part of him, in pursuit of the horizon that kept on pushing away. The sun was now setting, and coloured the sky with fire and gold.
By Nusuki11 months ago in Fiction
The Siren of Vanavara
The shack stood out among the snowy forest. Its rotting wooden panels and chipped roof tiles gave way to its dilapidated state. My boots crunched in the thick white powder around me as I drew closer to the door. The windows have been long since boarded up and are caked with dirt. There is no seeing through them to what lies inside. Many people have speculated to the horrors that were locked within those four leaning walls. My mind kept to the idea that it was simply an old shack meant to serve as some sort of a halfway house during travel, or even a temporary lodge for a hunter.
By Gunnar Anderson11 months ago in Fiction