Psychological
The Night the Stars Forgot Their Names. AI-Generated.
On the night the stars forgot their names, Rayan was the only person awake on the rooftop. He stood there with a mug of warm chai, expecting the usual comforting view—the stitched blanket of constellations he had admired since childhood. But tonight, the sky felt strangely empty.
By shakir hamid11 months ago in Fiction
The Door I Didn’t Mean to Open
I had only been back in my mother’s house for two days when the quiet started getting under my skin. Old houses always have sounds: settling beams, groaning pipes, the occasional thud you try to rationalize as “probably nothing.” I grew up with those sounds. I should’ve felt comforted by them. But grief changes the meaning of familiar things. Suddenly, everything feels like it’s trying to tell you something you’re not ready to hear.
By Maziku Shabani11 months ago in Fiction
To Dust
The world ended on a Wednesday. Not with fire or thunder or a sudden vanishing—just a quiet, almost polite collapse. The sun rose pale. The air tasted metallic. And the dust, fine as ash and soft as winter breath, drifted from the horizon like a slow-moving tide.
By Alexander Mind11 months ago in Fiction
The Night I Realized I Wasn’t Alone in My Own Mind
There are moments in life when reality doesn’t split cleanly down the middle—when the normal and the impossible blur together, and you’re left standing somewhere in the fog between them. That night, I didn’t just step into the fog. I drowned in it. It started quietly, the way unsettling things often do. A soft whisper of wrongness in the air. A tension I felt but couldn’t name. I had been feeling exhausted for weeks—mentally, emotionally, spiritually tired in ways I didn’t have the courage to admit out loud. So when strange thoughts began drifting through my mind, I blamed stress. When the shadows in my room seemed to lean in a little too close, I blamed lack of sleep. But that night, the excuses stopped working. I was sitting at my desk, the glow of my laptop washing the room in cold light. The house was silent—no wind, no footsteps, no hum of passing cars. The kind of silence that feels like an inhale that never releases. I was scrolling through old messages, revisiting conversations I should have let die years ago. I do that sometimes—pick at old wounds just to check if they still hurt. One message caught my eye. A simple sentence I had written months earlier: “Sometimes I feel like I’m two people living in the same skin.” I stared at it longer than I should have, letting the words sink into me like stones into deep water. And then—somewhere in that heavy quiet—someone breathed. Not me. A low, controlled exhale behind my left ear. I froze. My heart sprinted, but my body stayed locked in place. I told myself it was imagination, a trick of nerves. But then—slowly, deliberately—I heard a voice. “You don’t pick your wounds,” it said softly. “You pick at me.” My entire body went cold. I turned, but no one was there. Just the room, the walls, the stillness. But the voice hadn’t come from the outside world. It came from somewhere closer—too close. Like it had threaded itself through my thoughts without needing permission. I whispered, “Who’s there?” And the voice answered with a tired sigh. “I’ve been here longer than you.” My throat tightened. Fear wasn’t sharp—it was thick, slow, suffocating. Because the strange thing wasn’t the voice itself. The strange thing was how familiar it sounded. Not quite mine. Not quite someone else’s. Something in-between. A second presence—calm where I was anxious, steady where I was breaking. “You’ve been ignoring me,” it continued. “Every time I warned you. Every time I tried to pull you back. You called me stress. You called me fear. You called me anything but what I am.” I shook my head, tears gathering even before I understood why. “Then what are you?” For a moment, there was only silence. Then: “I’m the part of you that refuses to disappear.” A chill crawled through me. Because I suddenly knew exactly what it meant. This presence—this shadow voice—wasn’t an enemy. It wasn’t a ghost or hallucination. It wasn’t madness creeping in. It was something I had buried for years: My intuition. My truth. My unprocessed pain. My unspoken strength. The part of me I silenced every time I pretended I was fine. “I’m still here,” it said gently. “Even when you pretend I’m not. You don’t get to erase me just because I scare you.” I closed my laptop and pressed my hands to my face. I didn’t cry loudly. I cried like someone realizing they’ve been lost for longer than they knew. “I’m tired,” I whispered. “I know,” the voice replied. “That’s why I finally spoke.” We sat together in the quiet—me and the version of myself I had abandoned. And as strange as it sounds, it didn’t feel supernatural anymore. It felt like coming home to a room I had locked and forgotten. “I’m not here to hurt you,” it said. “I’m here to remind you that you don’t have to keep breaking just because you’ve gotten used to the sound.” I let its words settle inside me. For the first time in months, my breathing softened. “Will you stay?” I asked. “I never left,” it said. “You did.” A gentle calm washed over me—something warm, grounding. Not all fear is meant to be fought. Some fear is just your own truth trying to introduce itself. That night didn’t end with a scream or a jump scare. It ended with something quieter: A reunion. I realized I wasn’t alone in my own mind—not because something invaded it, but because something inside me had been calling out for far too long. And I finally listened. Since that night, I’ve stopped treating my inner voice like an enemy. I’ve stopped running from the parts of myself that hurt. I’ve stopped pretending I’m only one thing when I know I’m more. Sometimes the scariest realization in life is that you’re not alone inside your own head. But sometimes—that’s also the most healing one.
By Muhammad Reyaz11 months ago in Fiction
Knew not confinement (Vignette ). Content Warning.
The word you might use to describe me would be: lesbian, a charting author, or something in between. I was drawn by the way she was moving on her feet, yet I knew that alone did not set her apart. She pushed quick shifts like a half breath that never became steps. Her shoulders were perched high, covering her neck with a kind of guarded confidence. The candy coloured crystals held in the jewelleries, blinked a glint in the light; They finished the question her lips wouldn't speak.
By Caitlin Charlton11 months ago in Fiction
Wolves of Revolution. Content Warning.
“But you see, it’s not me. It’s not my family...” - Zombie, by the Cranberries -0- Grinding against ribs, the knife carried a drowning torrent of blood in its wake. The body of a young man fought against the inevitable. Limbs spasmed, fingers clawed impotently behind him, desperately trying to preserve themselves even as his airflow steadily choked off.
By Alexander McEvoy12 months ago in Fiction
Can I Get You Another?
“Can I get you another?” In a dimly lit bar, where the air seems to sit still, and the wood seems to carry the invisible stains of thousands of years of service, a man of 58 years, wearing a suit and tie, sits with an empty glass in front of him. He lifts the glass, curious, then sets it back down. The noise of a door opening at the front of the bar is heard, but when the man wheels around he sees the large wooden door at the entrance closed tight. A faint laughter drifts overhead. He looks behind him but finds only a line of empty booths. The stools beside him are empty as well. He tilts his head back towards the ceiling and can barely make out the light fixtures, as though they’re hidden behind a layer of fog. A wave of uneasiness flows over the lone man at the bar. But he’s not alone, is he? “Didn’t I just hear someone”, he thinks.
By Tyler Tomson12 months ago in Fiction
