Microfiction

The Black Cat
Walking down the street one night I came across a black cat crossing the street. You know that old saying about black cats 'don't let them cross your path' or something like that, so I tried to walk faster so that wouldn't happen, but to no avail that cat would not seem to let me get ahead of him or her on this midnight walk. What could this 'cat' want or need from me? I wondered about this and thought maybe this cat just wants the company and then all of the sudden in a flash it ran at me.
By Mark Grahamabout a year ago in Fiction
Stars Behind My Eyelids
I held my breath for what seemed like an eternity. As I clamped my eyelids shut, stars started to form in the darkness — kaleidoscopic and mesmerising. Everything slowed to a dreamlike drift, and my heartbeat’s rapidly escalating pace threatened to fling the swollen organ across the dancefloor.
By Paul Stewartabout a year ago in Fiction
The Last Chrononaut
The detective’s client? A sentient AI trapped in a pocket watch. The only clue? A single bullet stamped with the victim’s own fingerprints.
By C. Wenabout a year ago in Fiction
Librarian of the Unwritten
The silence in the Citadel of Recall was a physical presence, a dense cotton wool that absorbed the ghost of every footstep and the whisper of every turning page. It was a silence Elara cultivated, a necessary void for the work at hand. Her world was not one of paper and ink, but of silver filament and captured light. The "books" were crystalline spindles, each one a compressed lifetime of sensory data: the taste of a first kiss, the sting of a childhood betrayal, the crushing weight of a parent's funeral rain.
By C. Wenabout a year ago in Fiction
The Map That Drew Itself Part 3
Some maps don't like being drawn--they prefer to hold the pen. 🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭 The arrow shifted forward each time Elias blinked.
By Michelle Liew Tsui-Linabout a year ago in Fiction
The Rupture
My children... The Dark Lord himself has let the morbid believers of the Up-Above fool his followers into thinking that they would be taken up, and we have all had a nice laugh with all of their most pitiful miscalculations and threats to the rest of us...heathens. We know that we will be taken down at the end of this month as the demons and spirits rise up and finally make their promise real with our corporeal forms now dismissed as we all dance, celebrate and laugh with his true light-giver.
By Kendall Defoe about a year ago in Fiction
The Raven King's Revenge
Introduction I saw this painting and believed there was a story there. The image was shared by Spectral Imsmnia here It is available on Etsy here
By Mike Singleton 💜 Mikeydred about a year ago in Fiction
The Map That Drew Itself Part 2
Some maps don't like being drawn--they prefer to hold the pen. 🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭🧭 Elias tried to get on his feet, but Historian's curiosity got the better of the young man.
By Michelle Liew Tsui-Linabout a year ago in Fiction
The Last Rain in Bulawayo. AI-Generated.
Bulawayo, 1998 — a city of sunburned streets and restless winds, where the scent of dust and diesel hung heavy in the air. In the township of Mzilikazi, two brothers grew up chasing the same dream but running from different ghosts.
By shakir hamidabout a year ago in Fiction
The Last Human
The coffee maker still worked. That was something. Lorna stood in the kitchen of a house that wasn't hers—hadn't been anyone's for three years now—and watched the dark liquid drip into a chipped mug. Outside, vines crawled up the sides of skyscrapers. A deer grazed in what used to be Times Square. The planet was healing, they would have said, back when there was a "they."
By Parsley Rose about a year ago in Fiction
Fate. Top Story - October 2025.
Despite seeing nearly five hundred years on its dusty dais, the meticulously crafted copy of Allgerion’s Catechism—the prophecy within foretelling that the first and only child of the seventh son of Avangarde and the third daughter of Mah’reel would usher forth the salvation of their world—was in a remarkable state of preservation.
By Matthew J. Frommabout a year ago in Fiction
Lived Once, Buried Twice
It is a terrible thing, to wake up in a coffin. The weight of the world is upon you, and death presses in from all sides. Terror chokes you and you know death truly, intimately. You have slumbered in his beachamber and felt his breath. It's yours. It sticks in your throat like soil. The fever was a rushing tide, crashing through me, washing me away. I had never felt so ill, and I lay in my bed knowing I might not rise from it. Too weak even to muster any fear on that account. Wishing feebly for respite from the heat that plagued me, from my eyeballs to me tips of my toes. If I'd had an ounce of strength for thinking about such things, I'd have believed in the Devil anew, as never before. Surely this must be his work. Then nothing... Not even dreams. I was gone. Snuffed out like a candle. In a sleep so deep they could no longer rouse me. They said I died. When I woke, I thought I had. The coffin was tight, the air thick and heavy. I drew in breath after laboured breath, each an almighty effort. Each, so I thought, my very last. None spare for screaming. Nor any space to move, and still weak from the fever that had done me so ill. I came within a kiss of madness, I think. I thought perhaps I was truly dying, and in my dying, having a fantastic dream of rescue. It was so real! I could hear voices above me, muffled by wood and dirt. Voices of men. Better, even, there was the scrape of blessed shovels, and sounds of earth scattering. Is that how it sounded when the priest intoned his words over me? That must have been a deader sound, deeper, and more hollow. The noises were louder, and surely it shouldn't be so not if I were dying at last. Instead, the wood buckled and splintered, and a great blade blundered into my awful burrow, and bit into my hand. I shrieked, finally, in pain and alarm, and my rescuers fled. Leaving me to heave myself out of the earth, gasping, and choking and look! I bleed! I pushed against the lid with hands red and slick, and prayed for deliverance. The pine gave way. Dirt poured in, heavy and wet, and oh! To drown in mud after all! From the belly and bowels of the earth, I clawed my way out, ever sure the Devil himself were chuckling and nipping at my heels. Up I went, I thought, I hoped, oh, oh, up, up..., Scrabbling like a mole, and just as blind... until my fingers grasped only air. The dead know only one thing: to return is forbidden. How did I, then? I staggered free of my grave, and gulped enormous lungfuls of Heaven. Unsteady on my feet, l walked home through the dark. Perhaps, that night, the safest woman abroad. What a sight I must have looked! Barefoot, bleeding, a terrible wild fear clinging to me and shining in my eyes. I must have looked half-crazed. My husband shrieked when he saw me, and collapsed. For a moment, I thought him dead of shock and fright. What a twist of Fate that would have been, what a cruel trick!
By L.C. Schäferabout a year ago in Fiction