Microfiction

Another Christmas Carol story
Last week I wrote and published a Christmas carol story on the religious Christmas carols. Now I am going to try the same idea on the fun Christmas carols.
By Mark Graham11 months ago in Fiction
When One Flame Spreads
A single spark can light a thousand hearts. 🕯 In a silent corner of a snow-caked street was a lone candle -sentient, it seemed to have a watchful eye.
By Michelle Liew Tsui-Lin11 months ago in Fiction
The Gospel of Gumption
The assignment from her editor was a footnote, a punishment for having annoyed a major advertiser. “Go to Gumption, Vermont,” the email read. “Cover their ‘Fall Furnival.’ Yes, with a ‘U.’ File 500 words on the quirky local color. Try not to poison the well.”
By Habibullah11 months ago in Fiction
Roots and branches
My roots formed in uncelebrated places — In kitchens heavy with silence, In prayers said without witnesses, In hands that learned endurance Before they ever learned rest. They grew quietly, gripping soil That knew both hunger and hope, Teaching me early that survival Is a kind of wisdom. My roots remember names I never met, Lives that bent so mine could stand. They carry stories braided with sacrifice, With laughter softened by struggle, With courage disguised as routine. These roots do not shout. They hold. They steady me when the world Mistakes noise for progress And speed for purpose. When I forget myself, My roots pull me back — To values shaped by necessity, To faith learned through waiting, To the understanding that growth Must honor what sustains it. They remind me that I come from depth, Not convenience. Yet roots alone cannot fulfill a life. From that depth, my branches rise. They reach beyond familiarity, Stretching toward questions My beginnings never had the luxury to ask. They test the air for possibility, Learning the courage of exposure, The risk of being seen, The art of bending without breaking. Each branch is an act of trust — That light exists beyond the known. My branches carry ambition, Not as rebellion, but as continuation. They seek expansion, not escape. They grow toward a future Where survival evolves into choice, Where endurance gives way to intention. I stand in the space between — Anchored by roots that refuse to let me forget, Lifted by branches that refuse to let me stay. Grounded in legacy, Guided by vision, I grow not in opposition to where
By Awa Nyassi11 months ago in Fiction
The White Cliff and the Swift Dove
June 1942 · London The air-raid sirens tore through the London dawn. James Miller was in the vaulted basement of the British Museum, gently wiping the lens of a damaged theodolite. Three months into the Blitz, he had grown accustomed to the distant thunder; the steadiness of his hands had become a quiet form of defiance.
By Léo Young11 months ago in Fiction
The New Puppet Master
“How…how do you even know about your powers?” Elon stuttered. “I know myself very well. Call it a benefit of the ‘woke virus.’” Vivian smirked. “You have two choices: do as I say or die.”
By Stephanie Hoogstad11 months ago in Fiction
The Way Out
They said I could go, everything was done, and it would all be fine. They showed me the door and let me out. The door slammed, and in front of me was a stone spiral staircase, going down to an exit.
By Mike Singleton 💜 Mikeydred - EBA11 months ago in Fiction
Where the Human Heart Still Speaks
Prologue Today marks the day of the Geminoids Meter Shower Peak and the 12/12 portal - associated with transformation and reflection.
By Michelle Liew Tsui-Lin11 months ago in Fiction
The Lighthouse . Content Warning.
I inherited the lighthouse the day my father vanished. No note, no explanation—just an empty house perched on jagged cliffs where the sea screamed endlessly into the night. People in town said the place was cursed, said the last keeper went mad. I didn’t care. I wanted solitude, a place to escape the chaos of my life. I got more than I bargained for. The first night, the light turned on by itself. I hadn’t even climbed the stairs. Its beam swept over the waves, cutting through the fog with unnatural precision, as though it knew where to look. I told myself it was a trick of memory, exhaustion—but the smell followed: salt, yes, but metallic, like blood soaking into the wood. Then I began to see it. At first, just a flicker in the shadows of the cliffs, something crouched too tall, too thin, watching. It moved in the spaces my eyes shouldn’t reach. I would wake screaming, drenched in sweat, and yet somehow it felt familiar, as if it had always been there, waiting. Sleep became a stranger. I dreamt of the lighthouse’s spiral stairs stretching endlessly into the void, the walls melting into black water that whispered my name. My father’s voice came through the fog, soft and pleading. I would reach for him, only to fall into nothingness, the abyss opening its mouth wide enough to swallow the world. By the third week, I stopped seeing the shape only at night. I caught glimpses of it in mirrors, in the dark corners of the lighthouse, even in the glass of my coffee cup in the morning. It was always just at the edge of perception: tall, impossible, its form twisting, as though geometry itself feared it. One stormy night, the wind carrying the smell of rust and decay, I climbed the lighthouse. The light beam sliced through the fog, revealing the ocean below. But the sea was wrong. Darker than night, it churned like liquid shadow, moving in impossible angles. And rising from it was a city—not made of stone, not made of wood—but of shapes that made my skull ache just to see. Spires that bent sideways, buildings stacked like impossible puzzles, streets that looped into themselves. And atop it all, a figure: tall, thin, impossibly patient. Waiting. I understood then. It had always been here. Watching. Waiting. Every lighthouse, every beacon, every human soul—it had been waiting for me. For us. The floor of the lighthouse groaned. I looked down. The stairs behind me had vanished. There was no escape. The walls bent around me, swallowing the light. I felt my mind splintering, fracturing into shards that each screamed a different truth. And in the center of the storm, I understood the enormity of it: a consciousness older than the stars, patient enough to wait for all of humanity to notice it, yet indifferent to our screams. I screamed. I clawed at the walls. I tried to flee. But the lighthouse was no longer mine. It never had been. It was a vessel, a doorway, a mouth opening into something vast and eternal. The figure from the sea reached for me, its limbs bending impossibly, dissolving into fog and shadows. I woke on the cliffs at dawn. The lighthouse stood silent, its light extinguished. The town was quiet, oblivious. But I could feel it in the corners of my vision, in the air around me, in the beat of my heart: it was still waiting, patient, eternal. I had seen it, and it had seen me. And I knew, without question, that it would return. The wind carries whispers now, even in the calm. My father’s voice is gone. But another waits in its place. Patient. Unending. I cannot look at the sea without seeing the city beneath, and I cannot look at the lighthouse without seeing the figure on the cliffs, stretching, waiting, hungry for the next soul foolish enough to climb its stairs. I will not go back. Not tonight, not ever. But I know it is watching, and in some dark, infinite corner, it is laughing. Because it knows: I will never stop looking.
By E. hasan11 months ago in Fiction
THE LAST SANCTUARY OF NEON SKY
No one alive remembered the real color of the sky. Official history, as recorded by the Ministry of Perspective, stated that Earth’s atmosphere had always shimmered in neon hues—pulsing blues, electric greens, and streaks of violent pink that twisted like serpents across the heavens. Anyone who questioned it was, by definition, “Factually Distorted,” and removed for “Cognitive Rehabilitation.”
By Alisher Jumayev11 months ago in Fiction
THE LAST LIGHT IN WILLOW CREEK
When I returned to Willow Creek after twelve years away, the town looked almost exactly as I’d left it—small, neat, peaceful—like someone had pressed “pause” on time. The wooden houses stood in rows like storybook cottages, the old bakery still filled the street with the smell of cinnamon buns, and the creek ran lazily beside the main road, singing its familiar whispering song.
By Alisher Jumayev11 months ago in Fiction
Christmas Carols
Sitting around the fireplace on a Christmas Eve for now it's Storytime. Hope you like it. We Three Kings of Orient Are traveling along to that O little town of Bethlehem following a star that will lead us to a King somewhere away in a manger for we are hearing a carol of bells proclaiming what child is this. We see on our travels some decking of the halls with the hanging of the greens and hear some jingle bells for those bells are ringing hark the herald angels singing glory to the newborn King. Now we hear the phrase King of kings and Lord of lords has been born. Oh, come all ye faithful and come adore him and see the greatest gift of all that is love as the little drummer boy finds out. Happy Christmas to all!
By Mark Graham11 months ago in Fiction