Fan Fiction
The Night I Met Myself
Not the kind of Tuesday where everything goes wrong, just the kind where everything feels... off. The coffee tasted bitter even though I swore I added sugar. The train was late, but only by a few minutes. People spoke to me, but their voices passed through me like wind through an open window. I smiled. I nodded. I laughed when I was supposed to. But I wasn’t there. That night, I walked home instead of taking the usual bus. I needed air, I told myself. What I didn’t say was that I couldn’t stand the noise—the weight of other people’s lives brushing against mine, demanding interaction. I needed stillness. I needed something I couldn’t name. I passed familiar buildings I barely noticed in the daylight. Laundromats humming with fluorescent life, corner stores that never seemed to close, windows with cracked blinds and flickering TVs. The city was alive, but in a quieter, lonelier way. It wasn’t until I reached the edge of the park that I stopped. The lamplight didn’t reach beyond the entrance. It looked like a void. I hesitated—then stepped inside. There’s something sacred about a park at night. The silence is different. It doesn’t just surround you; it enters you. It asks you to be honest. I sat on a damp bench, stared into the trees, and let the quiet seep in. I didn’t expect anything. I just wanted a break from pretending. And that’s when I heard it. Not a sound, exactly. More like a presence. A shift in the air. When I turned, she was sitting on the other end of the bench. I didn’t hear her arrive. She looked like me—but not exactly. Her hair was longer, messier. Her eyes looked tired but clear. Like someone who had cried, and finally stopped. “Who are you?” I asked. She smiled, gently. “I’m you. The part you’ve been avoiding.” I laughed nervously. “Great. I’m officially losing it.” “Or maybe,” she said, “you’re finally finding it.” We sat in silence for a while. I don’t know how long. Time felt irrelevant. The trees moved slightly in the breeze, but everything else held still. “Why are you here?” I finally asked. “To remind you of what you’ve forgotten.” “Which is?” She looked at me with something like compassion. “That you’re allowed to feel things. That being strong doesn’t mean being silent. That pretending you’re okay isn’t the same as being okay.” I swallowed hard. My throat felt tight. “I don’t know how to stop pretending.” She nodded. “I know. That’s why I’m here.” We talked for what felt like hours. About the things I hadn’t said out loud. About the weight I’d been carrying for years—grief I’d never given a name, fears I buried beneath a busy schedule, dreams I called impractical just to protect myself from the sting of failure. She listened. Fully. Like no one ever had before. And then she spoke. Not in advice, but in memory. She reminded me of who I used to be—before I learned how to shrink myself to fit inside other people’s expectations. She told me about the child who wrote poems in the dark, the teenager who stared at the stars and believed she was meant for something more, the girl who cried easily but loved fiercely. “She’s still in there,” she said. “She’s just waiting for permission.” I didn’t realize I was crying until I felt the tears on my hands. They didn’t come with heaving sobs—just slow, steady release. Like the body finally exhaling after holding its breath for too long. “Will you stay?” I asked her. “I can’t,” she said. “But I’ll be here every time you choose to listen.” When I blinked, she was gone. The bench was empty. But I didn’t feel alone. I walked home in silence, but it wasn’t the kind that screamed. It was peaceful. Like I’d made space for something new. Or maybe, finally, for myself. --- That night didn’t fix everything. I still have bad days. I still forget. But sometimes, when the noise gets too loud, I find my way back to that quiet park—back to that moment where I first met myself. And I remember: healing doesn’t always come with fireworks. Sometimes, it arrives on a damp bench in the dark, wearing your face, asking you to stop hiding. That was the night I met myself. And I’ve been learning how to love her ever since.
By Muhammad Umarabout a year ago in Fiction
The Ink was Alive
Elliot Rain was a poet without a muse. He sat every day in his tiny flat above a crumbling bakery, sipping cold tea and staring at the empty pages of his notebook. Words had once poured out of him like music—but now they came in dry, broken fragments. He hadn’t written a line worth saving in nearly a year.
By Salah Uddinabout a year ago in Fiction
Thursdays Are for Ghosts
The first time I noticed her was the week after the funeral. A Thursday, to be exact. I was in the kitchen, stirring a cup of tea I hadn’t meant to make, in a house too quiet for comfort. The sugar clinked gently against the mug like footsteps on tile. I wasn’t thinking of her, not directly, not consciously. But there she was. A shape in the hallway mirror—quick, soft, and impossibly familiar.
By Jawad Khanabout a year ago in Fiction
The Clockmaker's Garden
There was a village at the edge of the world where time stood still—not metaphorically, but truly. The sun always hovered in the same place. The shadows never grew longer. The leaves on the trees were forever green, and not a single wrinkle ever touched the faces of the people who lived there. Some called it a paradise. But not Mira. Mira had lived her entire life in this frozen place, where no one aged and nothing ever changed. The village was clean and calm, the people kind and quiet, but it all felt... trapped. Like living inside a snow globe where someone forgot to shake the magic. You see, the village had once been ruled by time like anywhere else. Until the day the Clockmaker came. No one remembered where he came from, or how he had arrived. But he built a tower at the village center—a tall, spiraling thing made of stone and bronze, topped with a golden clock that ticked louder than the wind. Then, one day, he stopped the clock. And when the clock stopped, so did time. People were amazed. No one got older. No one died. Food never spoiled. Days were always sunny. And for a while, it truly was a paradise. But after years, something changed—not outside, but inside the people. They stopped dreaming of new things. They stopped planting new trees. They stopped falling in love. They stopped asking, "What if?" Mira was different. Even as a child, she asked questions no one liked answering. “Why don’t we celebrate birthdays?” “What happens if the clock breaks?” “What’s beyond the hills?” The villagers would smile politely and say, “Don’t worry, dear. Everything is exactly as it should be.” But Mira wasn’t convinced. Especially not after the day she found the seed. It was buried beneath the soil behind her grandmother’s cottage, wrapped in cloth and tied with red thread. The cloth was old—older than the village’s stillness. On it, written in fading ink, were five words: "Plant me when time aches." Mira didn’t know what it meant, but she kept the seed. Years passed—or they should have—and Mira grew older in her heart, even if her body never changed. She read every book the village had. She asked questions the elders refused to answer. She even climbed the clocktower once, but found the door bolted shut with a glowing blue lock she couldn’t break. Until one night, something happened that had never happened before. She saw a petal fall. A single pink petal, drifting down from a tree in the village square. It didn’t make sense. Nothing changed here. Nothing moved unless someone moved it. But that petal had fallen on its own. As if the tree had breathed. That night, she went to her grandmother’s garden with a lantern and trembling hands. She dug a small hole in the earth and placed the old seed in it. As soon as the dirt touched the seed, the ground shivered—just a little. Not enough for anyone else to notice. But Mira did. She watered it with tears. Not because she was sad, but because she suddenly felt something for the first time in a long, long while: hope. The next morning, a small green shoot had emerged. And the day after that, a bud. And a few days later, a flower bloomed—vibrant and golden, with petals that shimmered like sunlight. People began to whisper. Nothing had grown in the village since time stopped. No new flower had bloomed in decades. But there it was, glowing softly like a candle in the fog. When the elders saw it, they panicked. They tore it from the ground. They warned Mira not to interfere again. They told her she was risking everything. That peace must be protected. That the Clockmaker would not approve. But Mira didn’t stop. She remembered what the cloth had said. “Plant me when time aches.” And time was aching. The people were stuck. Their laughter was thin. Their eyes were dull. Peace without change had become a prison with invisible walls. So Mira planted more seeds—some from old apples, some from forgotten flower pots, some even stolen from the locked archives beneath the school. And each time, something bloomed. Small things at first: daisies, dandelions, bluebells. Then vines. Then fruit. Then trees with golden bark that hummed when the wind passed through. And slowly… people changed. Some cried without knowing why. Some remembered dreams they’d buried. Some started writing poems again. Children drew things they’d never seen—skies full of color, mountains beyond the village, oceans they only imagined. And then the unthinkable happened. The clock in the tower ticked. Just once. But loud enough that everyone heard it. That night, Mira returned to the tower. The door that had once been sealed was cracked open. Inside, the gears groaned, stiff from stillness. Dust floated in the beams of moonlight. At the top of the stairs stood the Clockmaker. But he wasn’t what she expected. He looked like an old man made of wood and brass, with eyes like candle flames. His hands were tools. His spine was a coil. And on his chest was a key, long since wound down. “You have brought time back,” he said, his voice the sound of creaking floorboards. “Why did you stop it?” Mira asked. “Because the world was full of pain,” he replied. “And I thought stillness would bring peace. But peace without change… is silence.” She stepped forward. “And silence without growth... is death.” The Clockmaker nodded. “Then finish what you’ve started.” He handed her the key from his chest. She placed it in the clock. And turned it. The clock roared to life. The gears spun. The bell rang. Time surged through the village like a warm wind. The sun moved for the first time in a hundred years. Shadows danced. Trees swayed. Children grew. Laughter returned—not the polite kind, but the wild, uncontrollable kind. People wept and hugged and aged. And in the middle of the village stood Mira, now older, a little grayer, but glowing with life. She never became queen. She didn’t want to. Instead, she planted more gardens. One for every lost year. One for every forgotten dream. And people joined her. Because now… time moved. But so did hope. The End.
By Lucien Hollow about a year ago in Fiction
The English of Old Pathan Women
By Ikhtisham Hayat In the remote hills of Swat Valley, where stone houses cling to green slopes and honor is heavier than gold, lived an old Pathan woman named Gul Bibi. Her hair was silver, her eyes sharp like a hawk, and her tongue—though weathered—was unafraid. She had never seen the inside of a school, never held a pen, and yet she carried a fire in her chest that could outshine scholars.
By Ikhtisham Hayatabout a year ago in Fiction
"The Scar That Never Heals"
so, it was a cold day of December and it was raining. I rush to park my bike in university's parking and run towards the main building and thought to take a quiet warm breath in library because there was still time to my class. From that day I never felt the same until...
By Ibrahim khanabout a year ago in Fiction
king of thieves
The hall was filled with people. Today, a grand exhibition of diamonds was being held in this hall. Many precious diamonds were on display. Most of the people were outside, busy admiring the diamonds. I too had come to the exhibition when suddenly, a man approached me. He grabbed my hand and led me aside. In his other hand, he held a glass of cold drink, which he placed on the windowsill.
By Bilal Ahmadabout a year ago in Fiction
The Second First Time
The Second First Time People love to talk about firsts. Your first kiss. Your first heartbreak. The first job you landed, the first apartment you called yours, the first time you left home and realized the world didn’t pause to miss you.
By Kine Willimesabout a year ago in Fiction
