Series
Endurance
The night before his wedding, Michael paced the length of his apartment, his footsteps tracing a nervous path across the hardwood floors. The Chicago skyline glittered beyond his windows, but he barely noticed it, too consumed by the knot of anxiety tightening in his chest.
By Endurance Storiesabout a year ago in Fiction
A Stranger in Every Photograph
A Stranger in Every Photograph I found the photo album on a rainy Sunday afternoon, tucked behind boxes in the attic of my late grandmother’s house. Its leather cover was cracked and worn, the pages yellowed, and the smell of old paper and faint perfume clung to it like a ghost.
By waseem khanabout a year ago in Fiction
The Day the Colors Fled
The Day the Colors Fled It started quietly, as if the city had taken a deep breath and let all color escape. I woke to gray skies and streets stripped of vibrancy. My walls, my clothes, the garden outside—everything was a shade of ash, steel, and stone. Even the sunlight seemed pallid, like paper left too long in the sun. I rubbed my eyes, convinced it was a trick of sleep. But the world outside my window confirmed my fear.
By waseem khanabout a year ago in Fiction
The Café That Served Emotions
The Café That Served Emotions The café wasn’t on any map. Not in guidebooks, not on GPS, not even on the neon-lit streets of downtown. You stumbled upon it when you weren’t looking, through a narrow alley framed by ivy and flickering lanterns. The sign read simply: “Café Émotion”, its letters curling like smoke.
By waseem khanabout a year ago in Fiction
Letters to the Future Me
Letters to the Future Me It started on a Tuesday. I was pouring cereal at my tiny kitchen table when I noticed the envelope lying beside my bowl. Brown paper, neatly folded, with my name written in cursive I didn’t recognize. I opened it with cautious curiosity.
By waseem khanabout a year ago in Fiction
Endurance
It’s the early edge of happy hour at Shelly’s Pub, which means two dozen people all talking over each other, four TV screens tuned to games no one’s really watching, and an undercurrent of beer-fueled anticipation that thickens the air. The lights have been adjusted for “golden hour” according to Shelly’s careful ritual: low enough to hide flaws, bright enough to make everyone think they’re in on something. The tap lines hiss and the lowball glasses clink and, somewhere at the end of the bar, Michael slips in with the anxiety of someone who both belongs and very much does not.
By Endurance Storiesabout a year ago in Fiction
Endurance
The next morning at Shelly's apartment, just above her pub. Morning is a joke, and Abby is the punchline. There’s a high C ringing through her skull, so sharp it could slice through drywall. She opens one eye, then the other, then immediately regrets it; even the filtered light slanting through the sheer curtains feels like a laser pointer aimed at her brainstem. Her tongue tastes like old pennies and the inside of a dead Duracell. The room, her room, is an archaeological dig: empty water bottles, bobby pins, one high heel wedged in the radiator, and glitter. So much glitter. It catches on the curve of her arm and pools in the bedsheets, the aftermath of a war fought entirely with craft supplies and bad decisions.
By Endurance Storiesabout a year ago in Fiction
Endurance. Content Warning.
Club Euphoria smells like sugar and ozone, like a birthday cake left out in the rain and then struck by lightning. The club’s double-doors open and shut like a humidifier set to maximum, belching chemical fog into River North’s damp summer air. Inside, everything is backlit by bruised purple and electric blue, a visual conspiracy of LEDs designed to convince you that time, and possibly dignity, have been suspended for the duration.
By Endurance Storiesabout a year ago in Fiction
