Fantasy

The Gulliver Effect
The world seemed to shrink around me as my body transformed. The car that had carried me only moments ago now looked smaller, almost like a toy beneath me.
By Mark Lim 2 months ago in Fiction
The Breath of the Beast
Muscles expanded. It wasn’t a flex. It wasn’t a show of strength for an audience that wasn’t there. It was an inflation. A reclamation. A biological revolt against two decades of compression.
By Mark Lim 2 months ago in Fiction
The Anatomy of Surrender
Bones shifted. It wasn’t a sound this time. It was a sensation. Deep. Internal. Visceral. It started in my shoulders, those twin fortresses I had built to hold up the weight of the world’s expectations. For years, they had been locked in a permanent shrug, raised toward my ears in a defensive hunch that said, I am small. I am safe. I am ready for the blow. But now, as I drove away from the broken branch and the silent woods, they dropped. Inch by painful inch. The muscles screamed as they lengthened, releasing tension that had been knotted there since I was eight years old.
By Mark Lim 2 months ago in Fiction
The Burden of Potential
The kid who thought having powers meant having a purpose. He didn’t have laser eyes or super strength. He didn’t have a radioactive spider bite or a billionaire’s inheritance. His "powers" were quieter, sharper, and far more isolating.
By Mark Lim 2 months ago in Fiction
The Myth of the Rescue
The kid who watched superheroes on television and believed strength meant saving people. He sat cross-legged on the worn carpet, eyes wide, reflecting the flickering blue light of the CRT screen. In those grainy, pixelated images, the world was simple. There were bad men in dark alleys. There were victims trapped in burning buildings or dangling from crumbling bridges. And then, there was Him . The Hero.
By Mark Lim 2 months ago in Fiction
The Sound of Breaking
A cracking sound echoed through the woods. It was sharp. Dry. Violent. Like a bone snapping under pressure. Like a branch giving up its ghost. Like the world itself splitting open to let something out.
By Mark Lim 2 months ago in Fiction
The Gravity of the Savior
Sometimes they were the reason someone fell. It was a truth too sharp to hold, too heavy to carry, but there it was, sitting in the passenger seat next to the hard drive, gleaming in the morning light.
By Mark Lim 2 months ago in Fiction
The Cape Made of Curtains
The kid who wanted to be a hero. He was eight years old, maybe nine. He lived in a world that felt too big, too loud, and too sharp. A world where teachers’ voices could cut like glass and classmates’ laughter could bruise like fists. A world where his own mind felt like a radio tuned to a station no one else could hear, static and noise and overwhelming detail.
By Mark Lim 2 months ago in Fiction
The Burden of the Badge
Heroes needed symbols. They needed the cape that snapped in the wind, the crest on the chest, the mask that hid the human face to reveal the ideal. Symbols were shortcuts. They told the frightened masses, Look here. Look up. We are safe. They condensed complex, messy morality into a single, recognizable shape. A bat. A spider. A star.
By Mark Lim 2 months ago in Fiction
The Blank Canvas
No shining emblem to tell the world who I was. For years, I had craved one. A badge. A title. A label. Something that could be pinned to my chest or printed on a business card that would explain me to the world without me having to open my mouth. Coordinator. Trader. Survivor. Victim. Genius. Monster.
By Mark Lim 2 months ago in Fiction
Follow the White Rabbit
Author's Note: This is a story from my in-progress short story collection, which I'm tentatively calling Fairy Tales Unhinged . Let me know what you think!
By Stephanie Hoogstad2 months ago in Fiction
Greetings at Midnight
I said prayers at dinner, still firmly believing that if I didn’t, my food might poison me or God would hate me. I sit on my bed now and pray with my sister. I stare at her marine aura swirling with whiffs of iris. She is speaking the words out loud while I repeatedly ask God, in my head, to take away the visions of ghosts and monsters. He never answers me, though.
By Leah Suzanne Dewey2 months ago in Fiction