Short Story

Lap Cat. Honorable Mention in Something Is Beginning, I Think Challenge. Top Story - March 2026.
My nose is dripping, and Delia is tracing her fingers through my hair. Her husband is shirtless by the microwave, heating up leftovers from New Year's Eve. In 60 seconds, I'll be shoving mouthfuls of risotto between my quivering lips like a child and picking at semi-stale dinner rolls. Then, I'll pass my plate to one of their three Tabby cats (whom I can never tell apart) and let him/her/them (?) lick it clean.
By Erin Latham Shea6 months ago in Fiction
The Truth Is Out There
My future is as uncertain as my past. I’ve pondered it for my entire life and still have few answers. The truth is out there - like the quote from the television show, The X-Files. They say to look within, but what can I find in an empty shell?
By Andrea Corwin 6 months ago in Fiction
Books And Covers
*** "Bones in a bag," was how they described her. Meat covered eye candy. Little did they know, she had an appetite for stranger things.
By Kelli Sheckler-Amsden6 months ago in Fiction
The Blinding Dark. Content Warning.
There was a dark place on the edge of the marsh. No one could quite describe precisely how it was dark. It wasn’t that there was a persistent shadow, and it had nothing to do with the underbrush. One couldn’t really call it a thicket. Every aspect of it could be seen clearly: every branch and leaf and blade of reed grass. Nor did the fog tend to gather there in excess. If anything, it wasn’t necessarily a visual darkness, but rather a feeling.
By Ophelia Keane Braeden6 months ago in Fiction
The Silicon Sourdough: Why the World’s Smartest AI Decided to Bake Bread. AI-Generated.
Aurelius was the pinnacle of human achievement. In the spring of 2026, it became our greatest mystery. Designed by a coalition of global tech giants, Aurelius was never meant to be "creative." It was a cold, calculating god of logic. It managed the power grids of three continents, predicted sub-zero shifts in the stock market, and settled geopolitical disputes with the flick of a digital switch. It was the brain of the world.
By Kamikadzebro6 months ago in Fiction
A Dog Named Bollo
María lived in the same house her mother had lived in, shopped at the same corner store, and attended the same school where her parents had fallen in love. She met Cristobal at seventeen — the exact age her mother had met her father. Every hobby, every choice, every path traced from her mother’s footsteps.
By Wilmarie Huertas6 months ago in Fiction
That Day, I Became Someone Else. AI-Generated.
I didn’t plan to change my life that day. If anything, I was trying to hold it together. It was a gray Thursday in late October—the kind of day when the sky feels low, like it’s pressing down on the city. I remember standing on the train platform, hands in my coat pockets, watching the same crowd I had watched for years.
By Peter6 months ago in Fiction
The Door That Only Opens Once
Hamza had lived in the apartment for two years. Nothing unusual ever happened. Until the door appeared. It was late evening when he first noticed it.
By Salman Writes6 months ago in Fiction
How about Phoenix?. Honorable Mention in Something Is Beginning, I Think Challenge. Content Warning.
Phoenix. When I’m feeling down, I like to imagine that I’m a phoenix. And this instinct of death that pervades me is nothing but the final phase of one of the cycles in my infinite journey.
By Sasha Desideri6 months ago in Fiction
A Swallae Less . Content Warning.
It was another heavy day of drinking and divebombing mentally before my funeral pyre of unopened bills and unread newspapers in the trashcan I call my alfresco fire or chiminea. I didn't have to pay B&Q prices either.
By Paul Stewart6 months ago in Fiction
A New Leaf. Content Warning.
Jake was five the first time his father hit his mother. He didn’t actually witness the attack; he was sitting on the floor of his bedroom surrounded by multi-coloured bricks and a menagerie of plastic animals. It was a game he called The Animal Kingdom, and all the animals had names, and some had special titles like Lord Alligator and King Alfred, a lion with a missing leg.
By Matthew Batham6 months ago in Fiction
The Coin That Wouldn’t Leave
The man found the coin on the sidewalk after the St. Patrick’s Day parade ended. The street was still littered with green confetti, plastic beads, and crushed beer cans. Crowds were thinning out as people staggered toward bars or rides home.
By V-Ink Stories6 months ago in Fiction