Microfiction

Allergic to Copper
I don't like coppers. I'm allergic. They always put me on edge. But for this, I made an exception. I watched the uniforms from the parked car. The air hummed with anticipation. I'd hoped they would arrive like a SWAT team, bust down the door off the storage unit. That would have been satisfying somehow. Instead, the anorak was there, dipping his head to the pigs and twisting his hands together nervously. Every inch the bewildered citizen, helping the police with their inquiries. Fumbling in his pockets. Fiddling with the key. Go ahead, dork, stall for time. It won't make any difference. It looked like the police reassured him, can you believe that? One patted his arm. One said, sorry about this. They addressed him as Mr. Two of them, there were. In those beastly uniforms. I imagined their faces when they found it. The case. The toe. I waited and waited for the trio to re-emerge, him trusted and poutimg; the uniforms looking fierce. They didn't pin him to the ground yowling or snivelling. They didn't frogmarch him away and accidentally on purpose clout his head as they were getting him in the car. They didn't until years of that yellow tape and leak the whole story to journalists. They didn't cuff him. Didn't even arrest him. Their mouths framed words that looked like, sorry to have bothered you, and thank you for your time. He stammered a bit, acted embarrassed. I use it for storage... bit of a hoarder... More reassuring patting. The wind went right out of my sails. The urge to sprint across there and grab that little turd by the lapels was insane. It bubbled under my skin. I thought I might boil over with it., or go mad from keeping it in. How did he do it? How did he hide it? Did I get it wrong? I'd been so sure.
By L.C. Schäferabout a year ago in Fiction
Death makes me rub my finger
'Death is easier.' She says to me. *finger-rub* 'Sorry?' I ask. Sure I heard her wrong. 'When someone dies, they die.' Duh. I think to myself.
By Sarah O'Gradyabout a year ago in Fiction
She Smiled Before Jumping
The first snow of winter had just begun to dust the old iron bridge when Lila Carter climbed onto the railing, smiled, and let go.
By Shehzad Ahmadabout a year ago in Fiction
You were never asleep . Content Warning.
The clock in the hallway ticked like a nervous heartbeat, always one second too late. Rhea stared at it from the couch, arms coiled around her knees, swaddled in her boyfriend’s hoodie. It still smelled like him. But he hadn’t come home. Not since the night she watched him sleep — and he opened his eyes without a blink. “You were never asleep,” she whispered to the walls. Her voice echoed too many times for a small apartment. She had filmed it. Three nights ago, unable to shake the sense of wrongness in him — the way he watched her when he thought she wasn’t looking. She waited until he was in bed, then propped her phone on the dresser, camera aimed at him. The footage was worse than she’d imagined. For six hours, he lay stiffly on his side, facing her, unblinking. Smiling. Never once closing his eyes. When she confronted him in the morning, he’d laughed. “I’m a light sleeper,” he said. “You're being paranoid, babe.” But she knew that wasn’t sleep. She knew that wasn’t him. The next night, he disappeared. --- She hadn’t left the apartment in seventy hours. Every knock made her flinch. Every creak in the walls felt rehearsed, as if the apartment itself was playing a script written just for her. Someone — or something — had replaced him. Had worn his voice, his walk, the shape of his hands. But they forgot the little things. He blinked too little. He knew things she hadn’t told him. He hummed songs she dreamed about. Her therapist said the mind could fracture under stress, that trauma claws into the subconscious and creates shadows that look like people. But the shadow in her home wasn’t a hallucination. It left footprints in flour she spilled on the floor. It moved her mirrors. It scratched a message on the bathroom wall, carved into steam: “You were never asleep." --- Rhea sat on the edge of the bed, the phone trembling in her hand. Her messages remained unread. No one picked up her calls. She no longer trusted her own voice. Sometimes, it didn’t sound like hers. A static hum began filling her ears each time she tried to remember how the night started — the one where she filmed him. Time stuttered, glitched, reversed. In one memory, she was filming him. In another, he was filming her. Which came first? Was it her idea to record him, or did he suggest it? She scrubbed through the video again, frame by frame. There. One blink. She froze. Rewound. It wasn’t him blinking. It was her. A faint reflection caught in the mirror across the room — eyes wide and twitching in her sleep, mouth silently repeating something over and over. Zoom. Enhance. Her lips moved: “Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.” --- She destroyed the phone with a hammer. --- The apartment no longer obeyed her. She turned off lights only to find them glowing minutes later. Music played without a source. Her own voice whispered from the kitchen at night. When she looked into the mirror now, her reflection blinked out of sync. Her boyfriend was still gone. But his toothbrush was wet each morning. She tried to leave. The elevator doors never opened. The stairwell led only to the hallway outside her door. The neighbor — an old woman with cataract eyes — offered her stale cookies and said, “You poor dear. They never let the dreaming ones go.” Rhea vomited in the sink. --- She found the truth in the lining of the couch. A torn seam. A folded paper. Handwriting she didn’t recognize, yet somehow did. “You were never asleep. Stop looking for him. You’re wearing him now.” --- She clawed at her skin that night, frantically searching for seams, for zippers, for proof. Nothing. But in the mirror, she saw his shoulders. His walk. His smile. His way of tilting his head when confused. It wasn’t a shadow wearing him. It was her. Or the part of her that wanted to be loved, no matter what she had to erase to have it. --- There had been a fight. She remembered, suddenly. Screaming. Shouting. A candle knocked over. A mirror cracked. She remembered killing him. But not in hate. Not in rage. In fear. Because he kept saying the same sentence every time she tried to leave: “You were never asleep. You were never asleep. You were never asleep.” --- She buried him in the walls. She painted over his eyes. She slept inside his clothes. Then, one morning, she woke up and didn’t remember doing any of it. Because the part of her that screamed, that mourned, that shattered — she put that to sleep. And someone else — something quieter, something that loved more neatly — took her place. --- Tonight, she sat at the edge of the bed again. The door creaked open behind her. She didn’t look. She didn’t need to. She knew he had returned. Or maybe he’d never left. A voice, just behind her ear, whispering: “I forgive you.” She wept. Quietly. Because the voice was warm, kind — and exactly like hers. She turned around and saw herself. Not in a mirror. But standing there. Watching. Smiling. And then the other her whispered: “You were never asleep. I was.” --- Rhea — the Rhea who still remembered pain — closed her eyes. The other one sat beside her. Took her hand. And slowly, gently, pulled the grief out of her chest like a tangled vine, feeding it to the cracks in the walls. For the first time in weeks, Rhea slept. Really slept. And in the silence, the new Rhea stayed awake. To keep the memory buried. To keep the love alive. To never, ever blink again. --- A little note for the curious ~ This story explores the fractured horror of self-erasure — the things we kill within ourselves to be loved, and the versions of us that stay behind to survive. If this spoke to you, share it. Comment. Subscribe. And remember: sometimes, what you forget... remembers you.
By E. hasanabout a year ago in Fiction
Metamorphosis. Content Warning.
You murdered me with your axe, and then you slowly skinned me and started to cut up my body into the thinnest of possible slices. You gave me no warning, and I saw the less precious parts of my anatomy smouldering on your open fire.That hurt a lot, but you were not finished. you then got out your tools and started to decorate my skin slivers with the blackest of your inks.Then you sewed the bits back together, bound them, and that's what I am now to the world.I was a tree. Now I am your book.
By Mike Singleton 💜 Mikeydred about a year ago in Fiction
The Library of Lost Voices
No one ever noticed the little girl with the braid undone, sitting at the back of the classroom, her eyes following words she could not speak. Mira hadn’t spoken a word since the river took her brother last winter. Doctors called it “selective mutism.” Teachers called it “a challenge.” Her mother just called it grief.
By Asim Aliabout a year ago in Fiction
"What If You Woke Up in a Parallel Universe?"
I’ve never believed in alternate realities. Time loops, multiverse theories, Mandela effects—it was all just science fiction for me. Until the morning I woke up and realized I wasn’t in my world anymore.
By Hamad Haiderabout a year ago in Fiction
The Man Who Sat at Table Seven
There’s a quiet little café on East 41st Street, nestled unceremoniously between a secondhand bookstore and a flower shop that always smells of jasmine and damp stems. Blink, and you might miss it. No neon signs. No whimsical chalkboard menus boasting fancy lattes or turmeric infusions. The awning just reads “Mira’s Café” in fading gold letters. Inside, it smells like toasted bread, warm milk, and stories too old to tell.
By Arshad khanabout a year ago in Fiction
The Echoes of the Yellow Scarf
When Mira stepped off the subway at 14th Street, the crowd swept around her like waves. It was the same platform, same train, same morning routine—but today, something was different. Clutched in her hand was a yellow scarf. Not hers. She had found it on the park bench she always sat on before heading to work. It was soft, handmade, and slightly frayed at the edges, with initials stitched in the corner: S.H. She hesitated before picking it up earlier that morning. Normally, she'd ignore lost items, let someone else deal with them. But something about this scarf felt… personal. Like it was meant for her to find. By the time she reached her office on the 22nd floor of a glass-paneled building, she couldn’t stop thinking about the initials. Who was S.H.? Why did it feel like more than just a lost scarf? She Googled the initials with “yellow scarf” and “New York”—of course, nothing. A thousand meaningless results. But then came the dreams. That night, Mira dreamt of a girl in a yellow scarf standing under a streetlamp, eyes full of sorrow. She said nothing. Just stood. Watching. Silent. The next night, she returned. This time, Mira spoke. “Who are you?” The girl looked up. “Help me find home.” Mira jolted awake. The scarf was on the chair beside her bed—right where she’d left it. But it looked newer. Less worn. As if time had reversed. In the days that followed, the dreams grew more vivid. The girl—always in that yellow scarf—stood by a bench, her back to Mira, facing a lake Mira had never seen before. And every time, she'd whisper, “Almost there.” Mira started drawing the scenes. She was no artist, but the urge was uncontrollable. She filled pages with images of the girl, the lake, the scarf fluttering like a whisper caught in wind. Her friends thought she was spiraling. “You need sleep,” they said. “You’re obsessing over nothing.” But she couldn't stop. One rainy Sunday, Mira walked aimlessly through Central Park, the scarf wrapped around her neck, the dreams echoing in her thoughts. And then—she saw it. The bench. Not just any bench. The bench. The one from her dreams. It faced a small, quiet lake. Willow trees bowed along the edges. A streetlamp flickered nearby. It was all real. She sat. A soft breeze passed. Leaves rustled. The scarf lifted slightly. And then, across the lake, stood the girl. Real. Flesh and bone. Same yellow scarf. Same solemn eyes. Mira stood. “Who are you?” The girl smiled faintly. “You found me.” Mira stepped forward, breath caught in her throat. But before she could speak again, the girl turned and walked toward the trees—fading like mist in morning light. Gone. Mira looked down. The scarf had vanished. In its place, on the bench, was a note. “Thank you. I’m home now. – S.H.” That was three years ago. Since then, Mira walks the park every Sunday. She never saw the girl again, but sometimes, when the breeze picks up just right, she feels a soft warmth on her neck—as if a scarf, unseen, still lingers. She doesn’t tell many people the story. Who would believe her? But if you ever find a yellow scarf where it shouldn't be… Hold on to it. Someone might be waiting.
By Arshad khanabout a year ago in Fiction
A House with No Locks
It sat at the edge of a quiet town, half swallowed by trees and half forgotten by time — a house with no locks. Its windows blinked open every morning to the light, and its door never made a sound. No key had ever turned in its frame. There were no alarms, no barriers, no secrets.
By Abuzar khanabout a year ago in Fiction
The Gift. Content Warning.
Followed my nose to it in a nest of socks at the bottom. It smelled. Not strong. Not bad. Not really. Just metallic and salty. Guess it's the smell you smell when rot hasn’t happened. Yet. The toe was male. Big. Blunt. Nail trimmed short, but not carefully. The other cut was jagged as well. Not surgical. Panic? Manic? I pocketed it. Sat on the bus, rolling it between my fingers. When I got back, he was out. Somewhere. I double bagged my little treat, and tucked it at the back of my freezer drawer. Behind the peas. In my room, I sniff my fingers. The way he probably does after a date.
By L.C. Schäferabout a year ago in Fiction
The Silence Protocol
In the year 2096, Nexara City stretched like a steel serpent under the haze of perpetual rain and neon light. Once a model of innovation, it now thrived under the silent watch of VIREX, an artificial intelligence designed to protect humanity from itself. It ran the hospitals, transit, security, even emotional counseling pods. In Nexara, crime was rare. Poverty, abolished. Efficiency, flawless.
By Kipplerabout a year ago in Fiction