Mystery

Even in Dreams. Runner-Up in The Shape of the Thing Challenge.
Despite living so close to an airport, we never stopped and truly appreciated the sight of the different passenger flights soaring into the sky. I remember vividly lying one day beside you, recently, watching the vapour trails as another steel bird left for adventures in faraway places.
By Paul Stewartabout a year ago in Fiction
The App That Knows Too Much
A Modern Obsession Jordan considered himself a tech enthusiast. He always wanted the newest gadget, the most cutting-edge apps, the fastest upgrades. His apartment buzzed with smart devices: a thermostat that adjusted itself, lights that dimmed with his voice, even a refrigerator that texted him when milk ran low.
By Hassan Janabout a year ago in Fiction
The Cursed Tattoo Novel (1)
The room had been closed for decades. The smell of mold filled the heavy air, and dust fell with every step I took across the worn wooden floor.
By ABDOabout a year ago in Fiction
The Cog-Boy of Aethel. AI-Generated.
The Alchemical Academy rose from Aethel's academic district like a Gothic cathedral made of metal and glass. Spires twisted skyward, crowned with aether-collectors that fed the building's vast experimental laboratories. Students in brass-buttoned coats hurried across courtyards where fountains danced with liquid mercury and crystalline trees grew in perfect geometric spirals.
By Shane D. Spearabout a year ago in Fiction
The Last Radio Signal
Amara's nights never stopped until dawn. While the rest of her classmates at the university slumbered through the night in dormitories, she sat in the observatory, headphones stretched tight, eyes on the rows of data inching across her screens. She wasn't scanning for meteors, or for the faint glow of distant galaxies. Amara was listening.
By Leyvel Writesabout a year ago in Fiction
The Shadow Painter
The Shadow Painter The first time Elara discovered her gift, she was only nine years old. She had been sitting cross-legged in her grandmother’s attic, where dust floated in beams of late-afternoon light and the smell of turpentine lingered. Her grandmother, once a painter of modest renown, had left behind dozens of cracked canvases and jars of half-dried paint. Most children would have found the place eerie, but to Elara, it was a sanctuary.
By Numan writesabout a year ago in Fiction
The Clockmaker’s Apprentice
The first time Elias pushed open the door to the shop, he thought he had wandered into a cathedral disguised as a clockmaker’s. Dust motes floated in shafts of golden light like incense, and hundreds of ticking hearts whispered from every shelf. Some clocks stood taller than him, their carved wooden cases glowering with brass-rimmed eyes. Others were small enough to vanish in his palm, delicate as bird bones. But every one of them ticked. Together, they sang a shifting, uneven hymn. Behind the counter sat a man whose face seemed carved from oak. His beard was a braided river of white, and a monocle gleamed in one eye like the lens of a telescope. Without looking up from the pocket watch he dissected, he said, “You’re late.” Elias blinked. “I—late for what?” “For your apprenticeship.” The man snapped the watch shut, its lid engraved with a constellation Elias didn’t recognize. “You’ve been listening for weeks. Standing outside. Telling yourself you’ll step in tomorrow. Well, tomorrow has finally caught you.” Elias stammered something, but the man rose, extending a thin hand. “Master Rooke. Clockmaker.” His handshake was firm, as if he were winding Elias into place. --- The apprenticeship was not like anything Elias imagined. He expected to learn gears, springs, cogs, oiling and polishing. And he did, but only in passing. Rooke’s true lessons circled stranger subjects. “Time isn’t kept,” Rooke said once, placing a delicate movement into Elias’s palm. “It’s persuaded.” Another day, while teaching him to reset the pendulum on a battered grandfather clock, Rooke muttered, “Each clock is a cage, and each cage holds a different bird. You must feed them differently.” The strangest task of all was the one Rooke gave at nightfall. “Listen,” he would say. And Elias would stand among the hundreds of ticking throats, closing his eyes until their dissonant chatter aligned into patterns—sometimes urgent, sometimes soothing, sometimes sounding like words just beyond hearing. He began to dream in ticks and tocks. --- One evening, weeks into his apprenticeship, Elias lingered after Rooke extinguished the lamps. The shop glowed faintly from the phosphorescent paint on a few dials. The chorus of clocks was softer now, as if they knew it was night. He wandered to a far corner where an object stood beneath a heavy velvet cloth. The air around it felt colder, and when he brushed the fabric aside, he revealed a clock unlike any other. It was a tall case, carved from black wood veined with silver. Its face bore no numbers, only twelve empty circles. The hands were motionless. When Elias touched it, a sound filled his head—not ticking, but a deep heartbeat, slow and inexorable. He stumbled back. “Not that one,” Rooke said quietly from the shadows. “Never that one.” Elias swallowed. “What is it?” “A promise,” Rooke said. Then he turned away, as if the subject were closed. --- Curiosity gnawed at Elias until one storm-soaked night, he could not resist. Rooke had left the shop, muttering about needing herbs from the apothecary. Alone, Elias approached the forbidden clock again. The black wood seemed to absorb the lightning flashes from outside. He laid a trembling hand on the cold brass pendulum. The heartbeat filled him once more. But this time, it carried words, slow and deliberate. Your time. Or his. Elias snatched his hand back. The pendulum twitched, though no weight had touched it. The shop door banged open, and Rooke stood there, rain streaming from his cloak. His eyes narrowed. “You heard it, didn’t you?” Elias couldn’t speak. Rooke sighed and locked the door. “Every clock in this shop holds a fragment of time—an hour, a day, sometimes a lifetime—gifted, traded, or stolen. But that one…” He nodded toward the black clock. “That one is bound to me. It counts down the last promise I made. A master must give his apprentice a choice: inherit the shop, or walk away unchanged. But inheritance comes at a price.” Elias whispered, “What price?” “Mine.” Rooke’s expression was weary. “To take my place, you must take my years. The clock will choose how many.” The storm outside rumbled like distant gears grinding. --- Days passed in uneasy silence. Elias returned to polishing, repairing, listening—but everything seemed sharper now. He noticed how Rooke’s hands trembled when holding the tiniest screws. How shadows deepened beneath his eyes. The old man was winding down, like a clock at the end of its spring. And Elias began to understand: every apprentice before him must have faced the same choice. Rooke had survived this long not by refusing it, but because none had taken his place. Was that cruelty? Or mercy? The question plagued Elias. One morning, Rooke collapsed. The watch he had been repairing clattered to the floor, still ticking. Elias caught his master’s shoulders, panic surging. “I’ll do it,” he said hoarsely. “I’ll take your place.” Rooke’s lips curled in a faint smile. “Then go to the clock.” --- The velvet cloth was gone. The black clock loomed, its empty circles glowing faintly. The pendulum hung motionless, waiting. Elias stepped close, his reflection pale in the polished brass. He touched it. The heartbeat thundered, stronger now. The twelve circles flared one by one, filling with light. Elias felt something tearing inside him, as though years were being unspooled like thread. He gasped, his childhood flashing behind his eyes, then his youth, then his uncertain present. At the same time, strength surged into Rooke—he stood straighter, his hands firm, his eyes brightening like freshly wound lanterns. The pendulum swung once, twice, then stilled. Only six circles remained lit. Elias staggered, clutching the counter. He was not old, not yet—but he felt decades older than when he entered the shop that morning. Rooke placed a steadying hand on his shoulder. The lines in his face were softened, his body renewed. “It chose fairly,” Rooke said softly. “It left you years enough to live—and to keep the clocks.” Elias could not answer. His throat ached with unshed words. --- From that day forward, Rooke was no longer the master, but a man released. He left the shop one dawn without farewell, stepping into the city streets with a spring in his stride. Elias never saw him again. The shop, however, remained. Its hundreds of clocks continued their strange music. And Elias, gray already at his temples, listened with new ears. He began to understand their language—their subtle bargains, their whispered requests. Some customers came seeking repairs, but others arrived with hushed questions: could time be borrowed? Could grief be shortened, joy prolonged? Elias learned to answer with careful honesty. Every night, before extinguishing the lamps, he walked to the black clock. Its pendulum was still. Six circles still glowed. They were his now, his own promise ticking silently in the dark. And sometimes, when the shop was quietest, Elias thought he heard a faint voice within the heartbeat. Not Rooke’s, but his own, older and wiser, whispering to the next apprentice yet to come: Tomorrow has finally caught you.
By Misbah about a year ago in Fiction
The Sparrow’s Feather
My grandmother’s magic was a quiet thing. It lived on the highest shelf in her kitchen, in a simple glass jar filled with feathers. A brilliant blue jay feather for calming a child’s night terror. A stark black crow feather for helping a man forgive himself. A downy white owl feather for granting clarity to a confused heart.
By Habibullahabout a year ago in Fiction
Guardians And Angels | Chapter Five | Part 20
One My father stood at my bedroom door buzzing Hard as Fuck. That Friday night, when he decided to walk into my bedroom, I was still at the dance with mirror ball lights spinning across my freckles not knowing back home the robot cicadas from the fucking Jungle were screaming at him again.
By Christopher Dubbsabout a year ago in Fiction
The Hidden Library
The Hidden Library Max had always loved books. His room was stacked from floor to ceiling with novels, short stories, and dusty encyclopedias he’d inherited from his grandparents. But nothing in his collection compared to the thrill of the local library—the scent of old pages, the quiet hum of readers, and the promise that somewhere, in the middle of those shelves, a story might reach out and grab him.
By Numan writesabout a year ago in Fiction
The Invisible Friend
The Invisible Friend Emma was seven when she first heard the whisper. It was soft, almost like a sigh drifting through her room on a winter evening, when the house creaked and the shadows stretched long and thin.
By Numan writesabout a year ago in Fiction
The Mirror That Remembers
The Mirror That Remembers The bell above the thrift store door jingled softly as Lena stepped inside. Dust motes swirled in the golden light from the afternoon sun, and the air smelled faintly of old paper, cedar wood, and forgotten time. She wasn’t looking for anything in particular—just a distraction from the silence of her empty apartment.
By Numan writesabout a year ago in Fiction