Psychological
The Last Notification
The Last Notification It was 11:11 PM when Ethan’s phone buzzed. Normally, he wouldn’t have even looked—he got hundreds of notifications a day. Likes, comments, updates, news flashes, random pings from apps he never remembered downloading.
By Habibullahabout a year ago in Fiction
The Autumn We Stopped Pretending
The scent of honeysuckle soap and old fear still clung to the satin as I lifted the gown from its cedar tomb. Sixty-one years had turned the ivory fabric the color of weak tea, the sleeves thin as dried petals. Outside my window, Maple Street burned with October’s fire. Inside, my arthritic hands trembled against the hanger. *Today*, the dress seemed to whisper. *Today they’ll see*. At ten o’clock on a Tuesday morning, I walked into St. Agnes Parish Hall wearing my wedding dress from 1956. --- Bingo balls rattled in their cage. "B-4," droned the caller. "G-52. N-37." Around me, the familiar Tuesday faces: Millie in her cat-hair sweater, Frank polishing his bifocals, Doris clutching her troll doll talisman. The room smelled of coffee and mothballs. My worn heels clicked on the linoleum. Doris’s dauber slipped from her fingers, bleeding blue across her card. Millie’s knitting needles stilled. Frank’s jaw went slack. "Evelyn?" Millie’s voice frayed at the edges. "Is that… your wedding…?" I adjusted the brittle tulle veil clinging to my silver hair. "Morning, Millie. Have they called O-72 yet?" Eighteen pairs of eyes tracked me as I shuffled to my seat, the moth-eaten train snagging on a floor tile. I felt their stares like physical touch—pity, embarrassment, the sour tang of judgment. Frank cleared his throat. "Evelyn, you… you know it’s Tuesday, right? Bingo day?" I smiled at the man I’d known for forty years. "I remember everything, Frank." --- **October 17, 1956** The last autumn I believed in happy endings. I’d baked a spice cake that morning, the kitchen warm with cinnamon and deception. Hank leaned in the doorway, his eyes still clear. The drunken haze wouldn’t come until evening. "Pretty dress, Evvie." My wedding gown hung in our bedroom—ivory satin, seed pearls, hope stitched into every seam. I’d sewn it myself during those early days when his hands were gentle and his words didn’t cut. "Is it for the VFW dance?" I asked, stirring batter too fast. "Nah." His fingers dug into my hip. "For right now." I wore it that evening while he ate cake. While he praised the frosting. While he hurled the plate against the wall because the fork scraped the china. *"Clean it up,"* he hissed, bourbon thick on his breath. *"And wipe your face. You look pathetic."* Pearls skittered across the floor like frightened insects. --- **October 18, 1956** 3:17 AM. I left in the torn dress. No suitcase. Just the gown, my mother’s cameo, and thirty-seven dollars hidden in a flour sack. The bus depot reeked of urine and possibility. "Where to, ma’am?" The ticket agent eyed my dirt-streaked train. "Anywhere but here." Three days on a Greyhound with women who didn’t ask questions. A waitress job in Salem. A room above a bakery where I hid the dress inside a ceiling tile. For sixty-one years, I was just Evelyn from the flower shop. The childless widow. The woman who brought lemon squares to funerals. No one knew about the collarbone that never set quite right. No one saw the ghost of Hank’s ring finger bruise still blooming beneath my foundation every morning. --- Back in the bingo hall, Doris found her voice first. "Well! Don’t you look… festive." I pressed my dauber onto G-60. "Thank you, Doris." A young mother in the corner—new to town, her baby asleep in a carrier—met my gaze. Not staring. Not smirking. Just *seeing*. Millie leaned close, her whisper carrying. "Evelyn, sweetheart, is it your anniversary? Did Arthur love you in that dress?" The room held its breath. I turned slowly, satin whispering. "Arthur was my second husband. Died kind. This dress?" My finger brushed a loose pearl. "This was before Arthur. This was Hank Miller." The silence thickened. "He hit me," I said clearly. "For three years. I left wearing this on October 18, 1956. Today, I’m celebrating my escape." --- Frank’s face turned ashen. Doris’s troll doll clattered to the floor. Millie pressed a knuckle to her mouth—not in shock, but in painful recognition. "Hank Miller?" Frank rasped. "But he… he ran the food drive. Coached my grandson’s baseball team." "He broke my wrist when I served his coffee too hot," I said, daubing N-42. The young mother stood. Walked to my table. Set her untouched ginger ale beside my cards. "Pearls suit you," she said softly. Then Millie broke. Great, shuddering sobs heaved through her small frame. "My sister," she choked. "They said she fell down the stairs in 1964. But her husband Roy… he had Hank’s eyes when he drank—" Doris reached across the aisle. Twined her fingers through Millie’s. No one called numbers for seven minutes. --- Last Tuesday, Dr. Evans said the word *pancreatic* and *six months* in the same gentle sentence. As I walked home, the maple in my yard blazed crimson against the grey sky. *No more silence*, the leaves whispered. *No more pretending*. Survivors die with their truths still locked inside them every day. I refused to be one. --- When the game resumed, something fundamental had shifted. Frank brought me coffee—cream, no sugar, just how I liked it. Doris slid her winning card toward me with a shaky smile. The young mother pressed a note into my palm: *"My name is Maya. Left Malik last spring. Thank you for today."* As I gathered my things to leave, Millie gripped my walker. Tears still streaked her cheeks, but her chin was high. "Evelyn?" Her voice didn’t waver. "Next Tuesday… would you help me find my sister’s favorite dress?" --- We misunderstand strength. We confuse it with silence—with bearing wounds in darkness, with folding pain into smaller and smaller origami until it disappears. True strength isn’t quiet. It’s the courage to say: *This happened.* *It hurt.* *I lived anyway.* In that bingo hall smelling of ink and redemption, eighteen ordinary people chose truth over pretense. Millie’s grief. Frank’s shame. Maya’s solidarity. Doris’s clasped hand. The world tells broken women to hide their cracks. To preserve the peace. To swallow their stories with their morning pills. But peace built on lies is violence wearing a pretty mask. So I tell you this: Wear the dress that holds your history. Name the ghost that haunts your bones. Let your pearls scatter where the light can find them. Let autumn strip the trees down to their honest skeletons. Let it do the same for your soul. The pretending ends when we decide to speak.
By Wondermindabout a year ago in Fiction
The Last Voice on Earth
The Last Voice on Earth It had been 47 days since the world went silent. No news broadcasts. No car horns. No footsteps on pavement. The birds had stopped singing. The wind blew without whispering. It was as if someone had placed the world under a glass dome, muting every echo of life. And yet, amidst the global silence, Amara still had her voice.
By Musawir Shahabout a year ago in Fiction
The Last Firefly Summer
The summer of 2075 was supposed to be my last in Willow Hollow. The town was dying, just like the rest of the world. The air was thick with dust, the rivers were dry, and the trees were more brown than green. They said the planet was giving up, that we’d burned it out with our machines and greed. I was sixteen, and all I knew was that I didn’t want to leave. Not yet. My name’s Lila. I lived in a crumbling house with my dad, who spent his days fixing broken tech for the few families still hanging on. The city folks had already left for the domes—giant glass bubbles where the air was clean and the food was fake. But Willow Hollow had something the domes didn’t: fireflies. Every summer, they’d light up the meadow behind our house, tiny stars dancing in the dark. Dad said they were a miracle, a sign the world wasn’t done fighting. I believed him. That summer, everything changed. It started with Rusty, the robot Dad built from spare parts. Rusty wasn’t like the shiny bots in the city. He was clunky, with mismatched arms and a screen for a face that flickered when he talked. Dad made him to help with chores, but I thought of him as my friend. He’d follow me to the meadow, his joints creaking, and ask questions like, “Why do humans like glowing bugs?” I’d laugh and say, “Because they’re hope, Rusty.” One night, the fireflies didn’t come. The meadow was dark, silent except for the hum of Rusty’s circuits. I sat on the grass, my stomach twisting. “They’re gone,” I whispered. Rusty tilted his head, his screen glowing faintly. “Data suggests environmental collapse. Fireflies require clean water, stable temperatures.” His voice was flat, but it felt like a punch. I didn’t want data. I wanted my fireflies. The next day, I heard the news. Willow Hollow was being evacuated. The last transport to the domes was coming in a week. Dad started packing, his hands shaking as he boxed up tools. “It’s safer there, Lila,” he said. But the domes felt like giving up. I wanted to fight, like the fireflies did. I snuck out to the meadow every night, hoping for a glow. Rusty came with me, scanning the grass with his sensors. “No biological activity,” he’d say, and I’d glare at him. “Stop being so smart,” I’d snap. But one night, he didn’t scan. He just sat beside me, his metal hand brushing the dirt. “Lila, why do you stay?” he asked. I didn’t have an answer, not really. “Because this is home,” I said finally. “Because I believe they’ll come back.” On the last night before the transport, I was desperate. I ran to the meadow, my sneakers kicking up dust. Rusty followed, his screen flickering. “Lila, probability of firefly return is 0.03%,” he said. I ignored him and dropped to my knees, digging through the dirt like I could find hope buried there. That’s when Rusty did something weird. He knelt beside me and pressed his hand to the ground. A soft hum came from his chest, and his circuits glowed brighter, pulsing like a heartbeat. Then I saw it—a tiny green spark in the grass. A firefly. Then another, and another, until the meadow was alive with light. Emerald, sapphire, amber—they danced around us, brighter than I’d ever seen. I laughed, tears stinging my eyes. “You did this?” I asked Rusty. His screen flickered, almost like a smile. “I accessed dormant nanobots in the soil. Programmed them to mimic firefly bioluminescence. For you.” I stared at him, this clunky robot who’d given me a miracle. “Why?” I whispered. He tilted his head. “Because you believe in hope. I calculated it is worth preserving.” For the first time, I hugged him, his metal cold against my cheek. The next morning, we boarded the transport. I carried a jar with a single firefly—not a real one, but one of Rusty’s nanobots, glowing softly. Dad didn’t ask questions. He just squeezed my hand. As the dome gates closed behind us, I looked back at Willow Hollow, a dusty speck under a purple sky. The fireflies were gone again, but I wasn’t afraid. I had Rusty, and I had hope. In the dome, I started telling stories. Not just about fireflies, but about the world we could rebuild. Kids listened, their eyes wide, and even the adults leaned in. Rusty sat with me, his screen glowing. “You are changing probability,” he said one day. I grinned. “Good.” That summer, I learned something. The world might break, but hope doesn’t. It’s in the stories we tell, the friends we keep, even the ones made of metal. It’s in the fireflies, real or not, that light up the dark. What’s your firefly? What keeps your hope alive? Tell me below.
By Muhammad Abuzar Badshah about a year ago in Fiction
I Never Liked Ghosts. Honorable Mention in The Second First Time Challenge.
Futility is a lesson best left to learn late in life when you’ve gained significant ballast to keep upright, or at least stand a fighting chance on life’s everchanging treacherous seas. Learn when to throw in the towel. Stop trying. Pack it in and give up, Caralina.
By The Dani Writerabout a year ago in Fiction
Starting Over. Top Story - July 2025. Content Warning.
I didn’t see it coming… being fired from the very job that led me to move back to Lahaina after years of living on the North shore and Upcountry Maui… the shock and surprise of again being thrust into the unknown without a plan or a direction.
By Tanja Kaia Kalaabout a year ago in Fiction
The Tiller
With fingers on the keyboard, I am ready to describe the journeys that have maintained the same thrill as the first time, many times since. I recall the same feelings, that still arise today, as they did that first time that I let Golinda and Gallopatrot direct me, as a loadstone, down a road less travelled.
By Katherine D. Grahamabout a year ago in Fiction
