Mystery
The Room That Remembered Me
The Room That Remembered Me The house had been silent for so long that even my footsteps felt wrong, like I was waking something that had been asleep for years. Dust curled around my ankles as I walked the narrow hallway, past doors that opened easily, past rooms that had learned to live without attention. One door—that door—waited at the end, holding its breath the same way I had for two decades.
By ♿ V+ Marie381Uk 11 months ago in Fiction
The Breathing Room
The key felt wrong in Maya’s hand — too light, too small to protect seventeen years of silence. She was in front of the door at the dead end of the third-floor hall, the one her grandmother had locked a week after Grandfather died. Maya had been seven then, old enough to remember the sound of the lock clicking, the way Nana pocketed the key decisively, the way she said, “Some rooms are meant to rest.”
By Neli Ivanova11 months ago in Fiction
The Lantern’s Last Light
The night shift at the old Mariner’s Station was never meant to be dramatic. The building sat on the edge of town, where the shore met a stretch of forgotten rail tracks, and most nights passed in the soft hum of solitude. That was exactly why Laurent took the job. After a long year of losing more than he had learned how to speak about, silence felt like the only companion that didn’t demand anything from him. Most nights followed a routine. Check the grounds. Record the weather. Walk the perimeter with a flashlight that flickered more often than it glowed. But on the night the storm rolled in—a restless, low-rumbling thing—Laurent found something wedged behind an old wooden cabinet in the storage room. A lantern. Not the modern kind, but a metal one, dented and cold, with glass panels fogged like old breath. It shouldn’t have been there. No one remembered using lanterns at the station in decades. When he lifted it, a small warmth pressed into his palm, like a fading heartbeat. He paused. The room around him hummed, and the storm outside cracked open the sky. Something about the lantern urged him to step into the hallway and dim the station lights. When the last fluorescent bulb on the ceiling went out, he raised the lantern and gently turned its wick. Light bloomed. Not bright. Not sharp. It came alive like memory itself—soft, trembling, gold at the edges. And as the glow filled the hallway, Laurent saw a figure appear beside the vending machine across from him. A woman. Laughing. But not at him—at someone beside her, a man holding a paper cup of coffee as if it were the most important conversation of his life. The pair weren’t transparent, but they were slightly faded, like an old film. And though their mouths moved, Laurent couldn’t hear a sound. He took a step back, breath caught in his chest. The lantern flickered. And then, as quickly as they appeared, the couple dissolved into the dim air. Laurent stood alone again. He turned off the lantern. Darkness swallowed the hallway. For a long moment he didn’t move. Then, slowly—curiosity outweighing fear—he lit it again. Another glow. Another memory. This time a young boy in rain boots ran down the hall, dragging a fishing rod behind him. He was soaked, smiling, alive with the kind of joy that adults forget how to hold. Behind him came his father, laughing, shaking his head. The boy ran straight past Laurent, even through him, before vanishing at the far door. The father followed, fading into light. Laurent pressed a hand to his chest. His heart felt like it was stumbling through time. The lantern didn’t show ghosts. It showed moments—echoes of strangers who had once passed through this station. People who had waited here during storms, who had shared small jokes, who carried secrets they never knew the walls remembered. Over the next hour, he moved through the station slowly, lantern in hand. By the old bench near the window, he saw an elderly man pressing a letter to his lips before mailing it. By the supply closet, a nurse sat with her head in her hands, exhausted yet fighting sleep. Near the entrance, a teenage girl practiced a confession she would probably never say out loud. They appeared. They flickered. They vanished. Each memory was small, almost ordinary, but the lantern made them feel sacred. Like proof that even quiet places held stories that mattered. Eventually he reached the end of the hallway, where a window overlooked the dark, churning ocean. Thunder rolled far in the distance. He held the lantern up, expecting more strangers. Instead, he saw himself. A younger Laurent, sitting on the floor with his knees pulled to his chest, head lowered, a grief-heavy shadow settling around him.
By LUNA EDITH11 months ago in Fiction
The Christmas Angel
The Christmas Angel Every year the town waits for Christmas, but for me it has always been something more than lights or gifts. It is the quiet that falls over the evening streets, the way the snow makes the world feel soft and patient, and the feeling that someone is watching over us. That someone has a name I cannot speak aloud, yet every Christmas I feel their presence. I call it the Christmas angel.
By ♿ V+ Marie381Uk 11 months ago in Fiction
Day 3: Gossip in the Religious Routine. Content Warning.
I can only compare the 02:19 wake-up call to a boot camp built right into your childhood treehouse. Having a tank's echo was the real blistering fire finger poker to my headache. Bunked near Ron, I followed him toward the howling echo octaves bolstering of a dying bat squeal out of the bellend that rang deeper and lower the closer you were by the inch. Their solution to this explains the why on the journaling exercise, demented spirits or not, it’s smarter to have pen and paper in this damp, hovering humidity cesspit of body odors before the raid.
By Willem Indigo11 months ago in Fiction
What Will Happen To Our Earth
What Will Happen To Our Earth I often sit by the window and wonder what this world will look like when I am old. The sky never feels the same anymore. Some days it has a tired colour, as if it has been awake for too many years without a proper rest. I watch the clouds move and they seem slower than they used to be. It is strange how the earth can feel alive and unwell at the same time. I think we feel it too. Maybe we always have.
By ♿ V+ Marie381Uk 11 months ago in Fiction
Echoes of a Ghost
An aspiring and reclusive physicist, following in his late father's footsteps, Ringo was delving deep into his latest creation. He hadn't realised quite how long he'd not seen the sun, or breathed fresh air, this experiment of his had been messing with his interpretation of time.
By Liam Storm11 months ago in Fiction
The Clockmaker’s Daughter
When the first scream of a newborn echoed through the small town of Verden, every clock stopped. Grandfather clocks stopped in the middle of ticking. Wristwatches halted. Even the tower clock, famous for never stopping, not even during storms, went quiet. Its hands hung in the air, as if they were holding their breath.
By Ajan Lori A. 11 months ago in Fiction
Letters to My 15-Year-Old Self
I never imagined I’d write a letter to someone I used to be, not the kind of letter that just says, “Hey, you’ll be okay.” No, this was meant to reach a version of me who barely understood the world, who carried fears like heavy stones in her chest. And yet, as I sat at the edge of the old wooden desk, pen trembling in my hand, the words poured out as if they were always waiting to be written.
By Wahdat Rauf11 months ago in Fiction
The Return of Covid in the UK
The Return of Covid in the UK I could feel it before anyone said a word. That quiet shift in the country, the same uneasy breath people took years ago when Covid first arrived. And now it is circling again in the UK, rising in numbers, slipping back into headlines, making its way through towns the way cold air moves through open doors.
By ♿ V+ Marie381Uk 11 months ago in Fiction
