Psychological
YNs–Shoulder to Shoulder. Content Warning.
2018 In early December, the Troopers of the state convened together, especially those of New Castle County. All of them wore their pressed blue and gold uniforms and shiny boots. They called the coffee irked water. It flowed like so many brown monsoons in mugs and cups as the other officers huddled around Superintendent Namina Norrey. Some of them armed themselves with pencils, others with styluses to show their ability to take notes. Others just looked on with a keen sense of expectation. Sleeves rolled up on blue uniforms bearing arms of might attached to bodies of brawn and busy minds.
By Skyler Saunders6 months ago in Fiction
YNs–Life Right. Content Warning.
2016 Sun drenched the Wilmington, Delaware streets. It wheeled downward as the darkness seemed to creep as dust settles in water. Clientele for the pushers leaned over and stayed in positions like poor sculptures. Their bodies, feet on the ground, seemed to be frozen in the summer heat. This July saw Superintendent Namina Norrey walk the streets of Southbridge. No gun, just her impeccable uniform with its blue shirt and blue tie and gold colonel eagles stuck out amongst the shadowy alleyways. Most people didn’t even take note or look her way. The hustlers saw her and turned around like hawks guarding their nest.
By Skyler Saunders6 months ago in Fiction
YNs– Block Games. Content Warning.
1988 Balloons lifted towards the sky in full glory. The happiness of the event which grew thousands of athletes to perform at the zenith of their talents enlivened the world. The opening of the Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea pushed capo Hines Dawson, 34, to pick up the phone and dial. On the other line, capo Wayson Goss, 36, picked up the phone. Hines lived on the West Side and Goss resided on the East Side.
By Skyler Saunders6 months ago in Fiction
YNs– Braids. Content Warning.
2003 On Fifth Street in Wilmington, Delaware’s West Side, the unusual warmth from the October day prompted the girls on the corner to chew Herr’s Sour Cream and Onion chips. The boys played basketball with a crate nailed against a post.
By Skyler Saunders6 months ago in Fiction
YNs– Grafitti. Content Warning.
2011 “Hey, this your boy Boss Man Tremaine. And I’m here to let you know about the dangers that lurk in your neighborhood. If something doesn’t seem right, make sure you tell an adult or call the police. If you are an adult, shield your children and others from terrors in your community,” Boss Man Tremaine declared in the PSA. “There I said it,” he announced to the director of the spot.
By Skyler Saunders6 months ago in Fiction
When the Houses Listen
The county sent me to Mercy with a clipboard, a tape measure, and the kind of confidence people carry when nothing truly strange has ever survived their explanation. I was there because the river had shifted again. That was the official sentence. The river had shifted. Like water made decisions. Like mud got restless. Like land woke up one morning and decided it no longer wanted to hold the houses built on top of it. Six homes on the eastern edge of Mercy had been flagged for assessment after three weeks of rain ate away the bank beneath them. The county wanted measurements. Reports. Photographs. Signatures. Numbers they could discuss under fluorescent lights without ever having to stand in front of a living room that was halfway to becoming river. I was twenty-nine, tired in a way I thought made me mature, and arrogant in the quiet way educated people get when they mistake vocabulary for armor. Mercy was small enough to feel accidental. One road in. One road out. A general store. A chapel. A row of houses pressed too close together, like they were afraid of what might happen if they gave each other space. The man who drove me in was named Lowell. He worked odd county jobs since public transit stopped pretending towns like Mercy deserved routes. He chewed sunflower seeds and drove with both hands on the wheel, though the road was straight enough to confess on. He dropped me in front of the general store at four-thirty and kept the engine running. “You’re staying with Vera Hollen,” he said. “I thought there was an inn.” “There was.” I waited for more. He gave me nothing. “What happened to it?” Lowell looked at the sky. Not up. At. Like the sky had said something once and he was still deciding whether to forgive it. “You’ll want to be inside before dark.” I laughed. Not because it was funny. Because laughing is what people do when fear shows up wearing work boots and they don’t want to recognize it yet. Lowell didn’t laugh back. He handed me my bag, spat a seed shell into an empty cup, and said, “Don’t make the town curious.” Then he drove away. The general store smelled like dust, coffee, old sugar, and rain that had been tracked in by generations of boots. There were three people inside. Two women near the canned goods. A man in coveralls sitting at the counter. A little boy in a red raincoat perched on a sack of feed with his hands folded in his lap. Too still. Kids are never that still unless someone has taught them stillness is safer than being noticed. The second I stepped through the door, the store went quiet. Not silent. Quiet. There’s a difference. Silence is empty. Quiet is full of things holding their breath. “I’m looking for Vera Hollen,” I said. The boy pointed through the window before anyone else moved. Across the road. Two houses down. Yellow siding. Crooked porch. Curtains already drawn. “Thank you,” I said. He didn’t blink. One of the women finally spoke. “You’re the county girl.” “I’m the appraiser.” She nodded like I had corrected the grammar on my own obituary. “Same thing.” The man in coveralls stood up, left two dollars beside his mug, and walked out without finishing his coffee. The other woman checked the wall clock. Then I noticed the windows. Every one of them had wooden shutters hooked from the inside. Not for storms. Not exactly. They looked like eyelids. Vera Hollen’s house smelled like rosemary, old paper, and a kind of cleanliness that felt less like comfort and more like control. She was narrow and gray-haired, with a spine that refused to bargain with age. “You’re late,” she said. “I’m actually early.” “No,” Vera said, taking my bag. “You’re late enough.” She led me to a guest room with floral curtains, a brass bed, and a lamp already burning on the nightstand. “You leave that on after sunset.” “I can’t sleep with lights on.” “You can’t sleep without them here.” I looked at her. She kept going. “You do not open the window. You do not look through the front glass if you hear knocking. You do not answer your name from outside after dark.” I smiled the way people smile when they think the other person is harmlessly insane. That smile still comes back to me sometimes. Small. Stupid. Wearing all my teeth like it had won something. “What happens if I look?” Vera set my bag on the bed. For a second, she looked almost kind. “It sees where you are.” Mercy was worse in daylight. That’s the part I hate admitting. Night was obvious. Night at least had the decency to look guilty. But daylight in Mercy felt like a room after an argument where everyone has agreed not to mention the broken glass. The town functioned, technically. People swept porches. Men carried lumber. Women hung laundry. Children walked in pairs and never ran. No one asked where I was from. No one asked if I was married, which small towns usually do with the subtlety of a crowbar. No one asked anything normal. They asked: “Did they send you alone?” “Who knows you’re here?” “You planning to sleep more than one night?” “You got anybody expecting you back?” Every question had a hook under it. I spent the afternoon on the eastern edge, measuring foundations and photographing damage. The six flagged houses leaned toward the river like they were listening to something underneath the bank. At the third house, a woman named Edith opened the door before I knocked and handed me a plate with two sugar cookies on it. “For the room,” she said. “I’m sorry?” “Don’t apologize. Just set them somewhere flat.” “I don’t need—” Her face changed. Not much. Just enough for me to understand that refusing would be foolish in a way I did not yet have the language for. So I took the cookies. At the fourth house, an old man refused to sign the preliminary assessment until I answered one question. “Do you hear it yet?” “Hear what?” He stared at me for so long I felt something in me start to step backward. Then he signed. By late afternoon, the whole town began closing. Not businesses. Bodies. Voices lowered. Children disappeared. Porches emptied. Dogs were called inside. Curtains dropped across windows one house at a time, like Mercy was shutting all its eyes before something walked through. At Vera’s, dinner was soup and bread in a kitchen too dim for comfort. The windows were covered with heavy curtains. The back door had three locks. Above the sink, a row of small bells hung from a piece of twine. None of them moved. I kept looking at them anyway. “So everyone here just obeys these little rules?” I asked. Vera ate without looking up. “Rules are what you call them before you understand why they exist.” “And after?” “After, you call them mercy.” I almost laughed again. Almost. But the house creaked then. Just once. Not old wood settling. More like something shifting its weight in another room. Vera’s spoon stopped halfway to her mouth. We both listened. Nothing happened. Which somehow made it worse. After dinner, I went to the guest room and tried to call my supervisor. No service. No texts going through. No email. The little signal bars had vanished as if the phone had forgotten the rest of the world existed. I sat on the bed and wrote notes by hand. House One: moderate erosion. House Two: foundation fracture visible on north-facing wall. House Three: occupant anxious, possible refusal to evacuate. That one made me pause. Possible refusal to evacuate. God. How official language loves to stand far away from the bleeding thing and point. Sometime after nine, the knocking started. Three slow knocks at the front door. Not desperate. Not violent. Polite. That was the worst part. Whatever stood outside did not sound like it was trying to get in. It sounded like it had been expected. The whole house went still. Then a voice came through the door. My mother’s voice. “Lena?” The pen fell out of my hand. My mother had been dead seven years. Stroke. Hospital bed. Half her face gone slack. Her hand in mine. Machines speaking for the body after the person had already left the room. “Lena, honey,” the voice said. “Can you help me?” My throat closed. Grief is not holy. People keep trying to dress it up, put candles around it, make it look meaningful from a distance. But grief is a thief. Grief will wear your dead mother’s voice and ask you to open the door. I stood up. I didn’t decide to. My body heard her and betrayed me before thought could get its shoes on. “Lena,” she said again. “I’m cold.” My hand touched the bedroom door. Down the hall, Vera whispered, “Let it finish.” Not loud. Not even urgent. Just exhausted. Like she had watched people lose themselves to tenderness before. The knocking came again. Three taps. Slower. I stepped back from the door, shaking so hard my knees felt borrowed. I told myself it was a prank. A speaker. A town full of sick people with too much time and too much folklore. But my mother’s voice knew the small break in my name. Not Lee-na. Len-a. Like she was smoothing the word with her thumb. I crossed to the window. Just a crack, I thought. Just enough to prove the world still had rules. I pulled the curtain back. The porch was empty. The yard was empty. The road was gone. In its place was a hallway. Long. Narrow. Impossible. Wallpaper stretched where the night should have been. Doorframes lined both sides. Lamps glowed along the ditch. At the far end, a woman stood in my mother’s blue robe with her back to me. She lifted one hand. Knocked on nothing. Three slow taps. Then her head turned too far. Not all the way. Too far. Enough for me to see the edge of her mouth. Smiling. I dropped the curtain and fell backward. Vera appeared in the doorway. “You looked,” she said. I could barely speak. “What is this place?” She looked past me toward the covered window. “Hungry.” I didn’t sleep that night. I lay with the lamp on and the sugar cookies on the windowsill because Vera came in at two in the morning, moved them there herself, and left without explanation. Outside, something moved around the house. Not footsteps. Shifts. Like rooms rearranging themselves in the dark. Once, something tapped lightly beneath the floorboards. Once, something laughed in my mother’s voice and then coughed in my father’s. Once, very close to the glass, a child whispered, “She’s new.” At dawn, I packed. No goodbye. No report. No courage. Just animal clarity. The road out should have taken twenty minutes. I drove it for two hours. Every time I reached the town limit, the road bent without turning and delivered me back to the general store. Same porch. Same feed sacks. Same boy in the red raincoat sitting outside with his hands folded in his lap. Watching me fail like he’d been waiting all morning. On the fourth return, Vera stood beside the gas pump. I got out of the car so fast I left the door open. “What did you people do to me?” Vera didn’t flinch. “That’s an outsider question.” “What does that mean?” “It means you still think this place needs people to help it be cruel.” I wanted to hit her. I wanted to cry. I wanted my mother. Not the thing in her robe. My mother. The real one. The one who would have told me I looked tired and meant it like love, not weakness. “How do I leave?” I asked. Vera looked toward the eastern edge of town, where the river moved behind the houses like a tongue behind teeth. “At dusk, walk Marrow Road to the boundary stone. Don’t drive. Don’t run. If you hear your name, don’t answer. If you see a house you recognize, don’t enter. If someone asks for help, keep walking.” “That’s insane.” “Yes,” she said. “But it’s accurate.” “And if I mess up?” Her face went softer in the cruelest way. “Then Mercy keeps the version of you that answered.” Dusk arrived red and low, like the sky had been struck. Marrow Road ran behind the last houses and into a line of black trees. I started walking with my bag over one shoulder and Vera’s words repeating in my skull. Don’t answer. Don’t enter. Keep walking. For the first few minutes, nothing happened. Then my phone rang. No signal, but it rang. The screen said MOM. I kept walking. Then I heard my father cough from the trees. Then my supervisor’s voice calling, “Lena, we need you to come back and finish the report.” Then a child crying somewhere ahead. Not fake crying. Not dramatic. The small, hiccuping kind. The kind that makes something ancient inside you turn around. I kept walking. The trees thinned. And there it was. My childhood house. White siding. Cracked driveway. Porch swing hanging crooked. Kitchen light on. I stopped so hard my shoes skidded in the dirt. My mother stood behind the screen door in her blue robe. Whole. Alive. Not hospital-thin. Not slack-faced. Not gone. She looked like the last good year before everything started leaving. “Lena,” she said gently. “Come home.” My body leaned toward her. That’s the part I hate. After everything, after knowing better, after seeing the hallway where the road should have been— I still leaned. Because knowing better does not always save you. Sometimes it just makes you ashamed while you reach for the knife. My mother smiled. “Baby, I’m not mad.” That almost broke me. Not I love you. Not I miss you. That. Because guilt has its own language, and Mercy spoke it fluently. I took one step toward the porch. The screen door opened. Behind her, the kitchen floor was covered in river mud. Not tile. Mud. Thick and black and breathing in slow little bubbles. My mother’s bare feet sank into it. She didn’t notice. Or she wanted me to think she didn’t. I stepped back. Her smile twitched. “Lena.” I kept walking. The voice changed. Not all at once. First it lost warmth. Then it lost shape. Then it became something underneath language, something that had learned my mother the way a hunter learns a deer trail. The porch light burst. The house went dark. I did not look back. At the boundary stone, the pressure lifted. No thunder. No scream. No cinematic salvation. Just air. Plain, ugly, blessed air. The kind you never appreciate until something else has been breathing for you. I stepped over the stone and the world became the world again. Gravel. Crickets. Distant highway. A mosquito whining near my ear. I almost sobbed with gratitude over the mosquito. Lowell found me an hour later walking along the shoulder, muddy to the knees, bleeding from where I had bitten the inside of my cheek hard enough to split it. He slowed beside me. Didn’t ask what happened. People who live near Mercy know better than to make a story repeat itself before it’s ready. The county called it exhaustion. Stress. Possible dehydration. They assigned another appraiser the next week. I told them not to. They did anyway. Her name was Carla Bell. She was forty-two. Two kids. Divorced. Allergic to shellfish. I know because I read the article after she disappeared, searching for details like facts could become forgiveness if I collected enough of them. They found her car outside the general store. Keys still in it. Clipboard on the passenger seat. On the top page, under notes, she had written one sentence over and over until the paper tore. The houses keep asking who I miss. I live two counties over now. Third-floor apartment. No porch. No yard. No road long enough outside my window to become anything else. I sleep with the lamp on. I don’t answer unexpected knocks. I don’t say my dead out loud after dark. And last night, just after midnight, something knocked three times from inside my bedroom closet. Measured. Patient. Polite. Then my mother’s voice whispered through the door. “Lena, honey.” A pause. Soft as a hand finding the old bruise. “You forgot your cookies.”
By Tifani Power 6 months ago in Fiction
If You Go Into the Woods Today. Honorable Mention in They Shouldn’t Have Come Here Challenge.
Calvin looked at the remnants of the campfire and took one final bite of his cold s’more. The wind started to bite with cold and he leaned forward to douse the glowing embers from a bucket.
By Amos Glade6 months ago in Fiction
The Night the Beds Learned to Fly
The Night the Beds Learned to Fly A Secret Above the Clouds That No One Was Meant to Discover In the town of Hollow Pines, beds were never considered interesting. People bought them for comfort, complained when they creaked, replaced them when they sagged, and slept without giving them another thought. Beds stayed where beds belonged—on floors, against walls, under windows, carrying dreams like quiet containers. At least, that was the rule. Until the night the beds disappeared. It began with a sound. Not thunder. Not wind. A soft humming. At first, only Mrs. Bell thought she heard it. She woke in the middle of the night and sat upright. Her bedroom felt strangely empty. Her bed was vibrating. “Impossible,” she whispered. Then the humming grew louder. The bed lifted. Slowly. The legs left the floor. Mrs. Bell stared. Her blanket slid toward her feet. Her heart climbed into her throat. And before she could scream— the bed floated upward and drifted through the open window. Mrs. Bell grabbed the headboard. The bed did not stop. Outside, moonlight painted the streets silver. One by one, windows opened. Beds rose into the air. Mattresses glided. Wooden frames turned gently like ships catching invisible currents. Across Hollow Pines, beds began taking flight. Nobody understood why. Nobody knew where they were going. Except one boy. Eli Warren. Eli had never slept much. He stayed awake late reading stories about impossible places and inventing explanations for things other people ignored. So when his own bed began humming at midnight— he was already watching. His eyes widened. His first thought was: Finally. His second thought was: Don’t let this be a dream. Eli leapt onto the mattress before it left the floor. The bed rose. His stomach dropped. His house shrank. His neighborhood became a pattern of rooftops. The air rushed around him. His bed moved higher. Higher. Above chimneys. Above clouds. Above everything familiar. Eli laughed. Then immediately regretted laughing because flying beds did not appear to come with instructions. “Where are we going?” he shouted. The bed answered. Not with words. But with a turn. Then another. Then a sudden acceleration. They joined a river of hundreds of glowing beds heading toward the horizon. Some carried sleeping adults. Some carried children. Some were empty. Some had pillows bouncing behind them. Above the clouds, something impossible appeared. A city. Not made of stone. Not made of metal. Made entirely of beds. There were towers stacked from wooden frames. Bridges woven from headboards. Roads made of blankets stretched tight. Windows glowing from lamps inside enormous mattresses. Beds moved through the sky like living creatures. Eli’s jaw dropped. A voice came from beside him. “New arrival.” He turned. A girl sat cross-legged on a floating bed. Her hair moved upward slightly in the wind. She looked about his age. She smiled. “You’re staying upright. Impressive.” Eli blinked. “You knew this existed?” She nodded. “My family’s been coming here for generations.” Eli stared harder. “…Why?” The girl shrugged. “People forget beds aren’t only for sleeping.” Her bed drifted beside his. “I’m Mira.” “Eli.” Mira pointed ahead. At the center of the city stood the largest bed ever built. So enormous it touched the underside of the clouds. Golden sheets shimmered around it. Thousands of smaller beds circled it. “What is that?” Mira’s expression changed. Nobody laughed. Nobody spoke loudly. “That’s the Dreamframe.” Eli frowned. “The what?” Mira lowered her voice. “It keeps flight possible.” Eli looked around. Beds everywhere. Floating. Moving. Alive. He laughed nervously. “This can’t be real.” Mira smiled. “That’s what everyone says.” They landed near a wide staircase made from polished bed slats. A crowd gathered. An elderly figure stepped forward. His coat looked stitched from old quilts. His eyes were bright. He looked at Eli. Then smiled. “First flight?” Eli nodded. The old man bowed slightly. “Welcome.” Eli pointed around. “What is this place?” The old man looked upward. For a long moment. Then said— “Every bed remembers.” Eli blinked. The old man continued. “People think beds only collect sleep.” He touched the wooden railing. “They collect stories.” Dreams. Secrets. Late-night thoughts. Hope. Fear. Regret. Longing. Wonder. Everything people carry before they close their eyes. And long ago— someone discovered enough of those memories could become wings. Eli looked at the city. The idea sounded impossible. But everything here already was. The old man turned. “Come.” They entered a chamber beneath the Dreamframe. Inside— walls pulsed softly. Thousands of tiny lights moved through wooden beams. Floating images appeared. Children laughing. Families reunited. People whispering impossible wishes into pillows. Someone writing letters they never sent. Someone deciding not to give up. Eli stared. The old man said quietly— “Beds remember who people were when nobody watched.” Eli felt strangely quiet. Then asked: “So why don’t beds fly all the time?” The old man’s expression darkened. Because not every dream rises. Some become too heavy. Some become forgotten. Some become fear. The Dreamframe had rules. Only beds with enough wonder could remain airborne. Otherwise— they returned. And Hollow Pines had been selected for a rare migration. Eli looked around. “So people don’t know?” The old man smiled sadly. “No.” Mira nudged him. “Come on. There’s one more thing.” She led him to the edge of the city. Far below— clouds parted. The world stretched endlessly. Thousands of flying beds moved outward. Like stars drifting across the sky. Mira looked at him. “You know the strange thing?” Eli waited. She smiled. “People think dreams happen inside beds.” Her bed floated slightly. “But sometimes…” She pointed upward. “…dreams become the reason beds move.” Eli looked at the horizon. For the first time in years— he didn’t want answers. He wanted to fly. He stepped onto Mira’s bed. She grinned. The city behind them glowed. The wind opened. And together— they soared into the night. Not toward adventure. Not toward treasure. Not toward escape. Just upward. Where beds carried forgotten stories. Where pillows became sails. Where impossible things happened quietly above sleeping towns. And somewhere far below— people slept without knowing that above their roofs— their beds were learning how to dream. By sunrise, every bed returned. No scratches. No missing blankets. No one believed the stories. Except Eli. Because when he opened his bedroom door— his bed was exactly where he left it. But there was something different. A single pillow rested at an odd angle. And carved faintly into the wooden frame— almost impossible to see— were three words: NEXT FLIGHT SOON.
By Samson E. Gifted6 months ago in Fiction
A Man For All Seasons
''By Robert Bolt'' Early Childhood Robert Bolt was born in 1924 in Manchester. He was the son of a small shopkeeper; his father kept a furniture shop. He had one elder brother. He was brought up as a Methodist. He says that he still has a rather Puritan outlook on enjoyment, needing a moral reason for it to obtain peace of mind.
By M Uzair Khan (UK)6 months ago in Fiction
I smiled...But I Was Dying Inside
I smiled like everything was ok. Like the weight on my chest didn't exist. Like the nights weren’t getting heavier and the silence wasn’t getting louder. People saw my smile and believed it. Maybe because it was easier for them… or maybe because I had perfected the art of pretending.
By Fazalullah 6 months ago in Fiction
