Microfiction

Call Me Coco
Prologue My alarm shrieks. 6:43 AM. No bleary-eyed scavenging for my slippers and cozying up for a Fraiser rerun with my first chug of coffee for the day. I hit the cold floor in a familiar panic, scrolling emails and cursing the belly bloat that means I won’t be wearing trousers this week.
By Alyson Kate Longabout a year ago in Fiction
Deportations and a Pandemic
Imagine that everything you ever believed in all came to a halt – in just one day. A full twenty-four hours, and that was what the outcome of the deportation had caused. Geraldo didn’t see it coming, and neither did any of the other four men who had been carted away by angry ICE agents who didn’t seem to care whether they scraped them up all along their arms as they drug them toward their detention van. Totaling five, Geraldo still hadn’t gotten any clear answers as to why they’d been detained.
By Sai Marie Johnsonabout a year ago in Fiction
Juneteenth. Content Warning.
To me this is like Independence Day for people of color, and I do not mean to be racist. If I was around during the Civil War, I believe I would have been an abolitionist. Slavery was a bad idea, and no body should be enslaved to do others work no matter what kind of work. I know there were some White plantation owners (masters) that were good to their slaves, and they should be remembered even though slavery was an idea that they thought was right and yet wrong. Here is an acrostic that I think kind of explains 'Juneteenth'.
By Mark Grahamabout a year ago in Fiction
The Dumpling and the Titans. AI-Generated.
The fluorescent lights of the "Golden Lotus Buffet" hummed like drowsy insects. Beneath their glare, Lin Meihua, fifty years etched into her stooped shoulders and the lines around her determined eyes, plunged her hands into a sink volcano of greasy plates. Scalding water, cheap soap, the relentless ache in her back – this was her American baptism. She’d traded Fujian village gossip and the crushing weight of lost "face" for this Jersey City purgatory: anonymity, exhaustion, and the icy fear of ICE agents materializing like specters.
By zhimin wangabout a year ago in Fiction
Whispers in the Bookshop: chapter 6
That night, Mara couldn’t sleep. The journal lay on her nightstand, closed but humming in her mind like a song she couldn’t forget. Her grandmother’s words clung to her chest. Each entry had revealed a different shade of Evie—a woman who had hidden longing beneath wit, who had fallen deeply and quietly in love.
By Muhammad Sabeelabout a year ago in Fiction
Whispers in the Bookshop: chapter 5
The next morning, Mara brought the journal to the shop early, cradling it as if it might crumble under too much light. She had barely slept, her mind tangled in the beautiful, aching lines of her grandmother’s secret love story.
By Muhammad Sabeelabout a year ago in Fiction
Whispers in the Bookshop: chapter 4
The next morning, Mara came to The Inkwell earlier than usual, driven by something she couldn’t name—restlessness, maybe. Or maybe it was the pull of the unread.
By Muhammad Sabeelabout a year ago in Fiction
The Cyborg Valedictorian
This is for Mikeydred's June Prompt. What is it to be human? 🤖⚙️🧠💔📡🔧🦿💾🫀🤖⚙️🧠💔📡🔧🦿💾🫀🤖⚙️🧠💔📡🔧🦿💾🫀 June, 2045. The high school auditorium welcomed its graduating batch of students, gathered in front of the stage, eyes trained on the podium. They awaited their valedictorian to grace it with her presence.
By Michelle Liew Tsui-Linabout a year ago in Fiction
I brought you back -Now I regret it.. Content Warning.
I used to think the dead stayed dead. Until I brought her back. I was twenty-six when Evelyn died. One moment she was smiling over dinner — red wine staining her lips, laughter in her throat — and the next, her car was wrapped around a telephone pole, her face blank in the coroner's photos. Everyone called it a tragedy. I called it unfinished. Grief hollows you out. It doesn’t just take love — it takes logic. In the weeks that followed, I began to read things I shouldn't have. Old texts. Forums in corners of the internet with black backgrounds and flickering sigils. I met a man in a subway bathroom who spoke Latin backwards and sold me a book bound in something that felt like skin. He told me: If you bring her back, she will come. But she won’t come alone. I thought it was metaphor. The ritual was simple. Dirt from her grave, a piece of her hair from the brush she’d left in my apartment, a circle of salt, candles — black, always black. The book had instructions etched in something rust-colored and flaking. It worked. I know how that sounds. But I swear to you — she opened her eyes on the cold floor of my apartment, breath shuddering back into her lungs like someone drowning in reverse. Her skin was cold at first. Her lips trembled when she spoke. “mark?” God help me, I smiled. Cried. Held her until her skin turned warm again. I whispered, “I brought you back.” For a time, she was Evelyn. She laughed again, made coffee in the mornings, danced barefoot across the kitchen tiles. She didn’t remember the crash — just waking in my arms, alive. But then, the shadows began to move. It started small. The cat — Evelyn’s favorite — refused to come near her. Lights flickered when she entered a room. I thought it was just bad wiring. Then she stopped sleeping. Not out of insomnia — she simply didn’t need to. I’d find her standing in the hallway at 3 a.m., eyes fixed on the wall, whispering to something I couldn’t see. One night, I caught her watching me as I slept. Her head tilted too far, her smile stretched too wide. I asked what she was doing. “Listening,” she said. “They don’t like the silence.” I asked who. She didn’t answer. From then on, the smell started. Like damp soil, like rotting flowers. She began bringing things home — dead birds, teeth she swore she found on the sidewalk, small bones she strung on a necklace. She said they were offerings. When I asked to whom, she laughed. “To what came back with me.” The air in the apartment changed. Cold, always. Mirrors warped. My reflection would linger a second too long. I heard scratching inside the walls. I thought I was losing my mind — until I checked the baby monitor app I'd once used as a security cam. It picked up voices. Whispers, dozens layered over each other, speaking in a language I couldn't place. Sometimes they laughed. Sometimes they screamed. Then came the knocking. Always at 3:33 a.m., from inside the walls. Three knocks. Then silence. I tore open the drywall once. Found nothing but darkness — and a smell like burnt copper. I confronted Evelyn. I demanded to know what she was. She cried. She said she didn’t know anymore. “I remember dying,” she said. “It was like falling. Forever. But then something caught me. They pulled me out when you called. I didn’t come back alone.” I asked what they were. She said, “They call themselves the Hollow Choir.” She said they wanted to live. That they used her as a door. I packed a bag that night. But as I reached for the doorknob, it turned hot — blistering — and my shadow twisted on the floor behind me, reaching out like it wanted to pull me back. Evelyn stood at the end of the hallway, her eyes dark hollows. “You can’t leave,” she whispered. “They won’t let you.” That night, I dreamed of a place beneath the earth, made of bone and ash, where voices screamed in song. I saw Evelyn in the center, her body dissolving into smoke, her mouth open wide as they poured through her. When I woke, I couldn’t move for hours. Sleep paralysis, they’d call it. But I know what I saw. I tried to reverse the ritual. I burned the book. I drew circles of salt. I prayed — to God. But they were already inside. I brought her back — and I opened a door. Now, Evelyn sits in the living room for hours. She doesn’t speak anymore. Her eyes bleed sometimes. The TV turns on by itself, showing static that whispers my name. And every night, at 3:33 a.m., I hear the choir singing in the walls. The last time I tried to run, I blacked out. Woke up with soil in my mouth. My fingernails torn like I’d been trying to claw out of a coffin. The worst part? I still love her. Whatever wears her face, whatever watches me sleep and leaves claw marks on my skin — some part of her is still inside. Trapped. Screaming. Begging me to end it. I see her in moments. The real Evelyn. When the light hits just right. When the voices stop. When she cries blood and begs me to kill her. I keep the knife under my pillow now. But I haven’t used it. Not yet. I don't think I can.
By E. hasanabout a year ago in Fiction
Grave Concern
I recommend this one first - it's very short! +++++++ When I emerged, blinking in the watery sunshine, my old partner was on the pavement waiting for me. He looked older than he had the night before. Maybe the shitty lighting in my office was more flattering than I thought. It had rained the night before. The sound was what finally lulled me to sleep in my office chair. The ground was wet with it, and my feet were getting damp. This, plus the kink in my back, made me crankier than he deserved. "Thought you said you weren't available," I said. "I'm not. I've... errr... Let's just say I've got somewhere to be. I'm just here to give you some advice." "Oh? And what's that?" I started walking and he fell into place beside me. "Two things, really. First of all, don't mention to Gail that this was my idea, okay? She... Let's say she won't be happy about it." "Okay... And the other thing?" "She's going through a tough time. Treat her with kid gloves. And tell her you're sorry for her loss." Shit.
By L.C. Schäferabout a year ago in Fiction
She Was Everything I Thought the Lady in Red Could Be
I consider myself a pretty logical person most of the time, I trust reason, facts, and the kind of clarity that can only come from stepping back and assessing a situation from every angle. But recently, I found myself in a position where logic could ruin something… something beautiful. And that’s a terrifying thought. Because logic, for all its comfort and certainty, can’t always see the bigger picture.
By Ruth Girma about a year ago in Fiction
Pizza Experience
Mick still had the bleeding beef from last night in his head. After he and retired nurse, Barbara walked out of the potato and chicken restaurant, they settled upon a place called Pizza Vatican. After all, what could go wrong with pizza.
By Chloe Gilholyabout a year ago in Fiction