family

WWIII
I don’t know if this is the beginning of something or if the beginning has already passed us by without ceremony. Maybe it started quietly, somewhere between a morning commute and a late-night headline no one fully read. Maybe it didn’t feel like a beginning at all—just another day where gas prices crept higher, where another company shut its doors, where another young person signed a contract they barely understood.
By Dagmar Goeschick6 months ago in Fiction
Beneath the Blood-Red Sky
Dearest Count, I am afraid to tell you that I will not be able to fulfil my duties. I had thought I would kneel at your feet as you darkened the bright city lights of London with your terror, feasting upon the crimson sustenance so readily offered by wench and gentleman alike.
By Paul Stewart6 months ago in Fiction
That Day, I Became Someone Else. AI-Generated.
I didn’t plan to change my life that day. If anything, I was trying to hold it together. It was a gray Thursday in late October—the kind of day when the sky feels low, like it’s pressing down on the city. I remember standing on the train platform, hands in my coat pockets, watching the same crowd I had watched for years.
By Peter6 months ago in Fiction
Do we sacrifice everything for our children.
Alice spent every waking moment caring for her only child---she worried when he was born, she worried when as a toddler he skinned his knee, she worried when he cried too long. And though no one ever said anything aloud, everyone in town behaved as though her worry was a kind of weather: something you adjusted to, something you didn’t disturb.
By Novel Allen6 months ago in Fiction
Fast Fashion
“Gidday.” “Hi, Dad.” “Stevie’s camping at Uluru…” “Nice.” “Yep. He got a new wardrobe…” “Really? Out there?” “Overnight, he strung his clean washing on a clothesline, from the back of his car. Next day, fifty clicks down the track, he spotted a lone sock flying behind him.”
By Angie the Archivist 📚🪶6 months ago in Fiction
Waiting. Runner-Up in Something Is Beginning, I Think Challenge. Top Story - March 2026.
It could have been the perfect summer day. The hot July sun warmed the water in the backyard pool just enough to be comfortable and refreshing. The laughter of the five little girls echoed against the splashing water as they chased each other in a classic game of Marco Polo. The game distracted them enough that they failed to notice the dipping sun nearing the horizon. Their fingers and toes had long ago turned wrinkly like raisins, but none wondered why they had been left to play so long today.
By A. J. Schoenfeld6 months ago in Fiction
"I Can't Catch My Voice"
It did not begin with a clear diagnosis. It began with a sweet memory of her. Her mental illness arrived slowly enough that, at first, it seemed like ordinary aging. She misplaced things. She repeated a question she had asked only minutes before. We laughed sometimes with kind intent, the usual way families do when something petty goes obviously wrong. It was comfortable then to believe that nothing serious had begun.
By Lori Armstrong6 months ago in Fiction
A scintilla of hope
I felt the frigid shards sear into my flesh the second I opened the door. The cold was vicious, the wind bitter. Snow was still falling, its intensity somewhat abated since the morning's fall.
By Marie McGrath6 months ago in Fiction
Fear Controlled Me for Years — Until That Day. AI-Generated.
I didn’t know when fear first moved in. It didn’t arrive like a storm. There was no dramatic entrance, no single moment I could point to and say, that’s when it began. It came quietly—like a draft through a window you forgot to close.
By Peter6 months ago in Fiction
I Stopped Waiting for Opportunity — I Started Creating It. AI-Generated.
I used to believe in timing. Not in the mystical, poetic way people write about in books, but in the practical, almost superstitious way that keeps you still. I believed the right moment would come, like a train pulling into a station—predictable, inevitable, meant for me.
By Peter6 months ago in Fiction
Circles
She thumbed through the yearbook until she found his face. Circling it with a red sharpie, she remembered a time she’d do the same to her friends, her crushes. Harmless pre-summer fun.
By Matthew J. Fromm6 months ago in Fiction
The House With One Lamp On
A literary fiction short story about estrangement, memory, and returning to the edge of a beginning without resolution. By the time Mara turned onto Bishop Road, the rain had thinned to a silver mist, the kind that did not so much fall as hover, as though the sky had forgotten whether it meant to finish what it started.
By Flower InBloom6 months ago in Fiction