Fantasy

Perfectly Ripe. Top Story - September 2026. Content Warning.
Dust is dancing in the cracks of dawn light from the drawn curtains. Fine, cornflour dust. Airy and mischievous, and seeming to spread on every breath of air like spores. Spider dust that spins, and smears, and chokes, and stains. Endless dust, cruel as age. Dust mocking. Dust on every memory. Dust in my fingernail beds and in my eyes, dust in my throat. Dust down to my lungs.
By Lauren Everdellabout a month ago in Fiction
Cinematic Lie
I thought fear was something that happened in movies. Something heroes fought against. Something villains created. It was a narrative device, a plot point, a special effect that faded when the credits rolled and the lights came up. In those stories, fear had a clear origin: the dark wizard, the alien invader, the corrupt king. And it had a clear resolution: the sword strike, the explosion, the triumphant speech. Fear was external. It was conquerable. It was fiction .
By Mark Lim about a month ago in Fiction
Invisible Geometry of Fear
I didn’t understand what fear looked like. To a five-year-old, fear has a specific, cartoonish shape. It is loud. It is the shriek of a siren, the crash of thunder, the monster under the bed with glowing eyes. It is visible, tangible, and immediate. It is something you run from . But my father’s fear was none of those things. It was quiet. It was still. It was the absence of noise, the freezing of motion, the sudden drop in temperature when he entered a room. It wasn’t something you ran from; it was something you stood very, very still within, hoping it wouldn’t notice you. I mistook that stillness for peace. I mistook the silence for safety.
By Mark Lim about a month ago in Fiction
Shadow of the Titan
I was five years old when I learned that my father was a man people feared. It wasn’t a lesson taught in words. He never sat me down to explain the dynamics of power, or the weight of his reputation, or the way his silence could suck the air out of a room. It was a lesson taught in the flinches of strangers. In the way waiters hurried with trembling hands. In the way neighbors lowered their eyes when he walked by, as if looking directly at the sun might burn them.
By Mark Lim 2 months ago in Fiction
The Carousel Opened in February
The carousel should have been asleep. Everyone in Bellweather knew that. From October until Easter, the amusement pier belonged to wind, salt, and gulls. The ticket booths were boarded shut. The arcade machines stood unplugged behind metal shutters. The roller coaster collected rain in its empty seats. Even the painted horses on the old carousel were wrapped in gray canvas, their bright mouths hidden from winter.
By Alain SUPPINI2 months ago in Fiction
Kent and Edie
Kent and I unplugged them all. Everything. We were done with the craziness. Calm descended in the building and neighborhood; in our beings.
By Andrea Corwin 2 months ago in Fiction
blood feud
I know you're here. I could hear your heartbeat coming from a mile away. Literally. Does it surprise you that I can speak directly into your mind. Undeath is a path to many unusual talents.
By Tyler Clark2 months ago in Fiction
Shield That Faced the Wrong Way
And then there was Kounter Stryke. If Blaze was the fire that charged forward, Frost the stillness that held things steady, Singa the strength that bore the weight, and Nightveil the shadow that slipped through the dark, Kounter Stryke was the shield. Literally. Wherever he stood, nothing could pass. He could stop incoming blasts mid-air, deflect falling debris with nothing but a raised hand, and create an impenetrable barrier around anyone within his reach. He didn’t attack. He didn’t chase. He stood his ground, and nothing got past him. That was his whole purpose: to be the wall between harm and the helpless.
By Mark Lim 2 months ago in Fiction
Metal That Did Not Bend
Singa Steel was the one I admired the most after Blaze. A man whose body could become metal. It was the most incredible thing I had ever seen. When danger struck, his skin would shift, hardening, gleaming, turning from warm flesh to polished, unyielding steel. Not a suit of armour he put on, but him. His bones, his muscles, his very skin, becoming something that nothing could break. Bullets would bounce off him like pebbles. Falling concrete would shatter against his shoulder and leave no mark. He could walk straight through fire without flinching, stand in the path of a landslide, and not move an inch. To a child, that wasn’t just power it was proof. Proof that you could be unbreakable. That there was something that could stand between you and every terrible thing in the world.
By Mark Lim 2 months ago in Fiction
Economy of Mercy
Mercy was a luxury. I used to think it was a right. A basic human expectation. If you were good, if you were useful, if you were small enough and quiet enough, the world would owe you kindness. It would owe you a second chance. It would owe you the benefit of the doubt. I believed that if I followed the rules if I kept my head down, if I did my job, if I didn’t make waves mercy would be dispensed to me like a ration. It was part of the social contract I had signed in silence: I will be invisible, and you will be safe.
By Mark Lim 2 months ago in Fiction
Geometry gone mad!?
I went to math class, which is Geometry. I walked into class and everything and one was for the most part normal. About 10 minutes into the lesson on lines everyone in class seemed to become a line or two and being perpendicular to each other showing their shared relationship.
By Mark Graham2 months ago in Fiction
The Myth of the Worthy Victim
But heroes were the ones who taught me that the world only cared about the people worth saving. It was the cruelest curriculum I ever absorbed. Not from a textbook, but from the flickering blue light of a television screen in a lonely childhood living room. The heroes always made a choice. They saved the innocent child over the corrupt politician. They saved the brilliant scientist over the anonymous bystander. They saved the beautiful maiden over the plain one. The narrative was clear, consistent, and devastating: rescue is not a universal right. It is a prize awarded to those who possess sufficient value.
By Mark Lim 2 months ago in Fiction