Short Story
The Flame of Sunlight
The day the sun cracked, I was hanging laundry on the roof. Not a poetic “sunset” crack, either. It was a sound, a real sound, like ice giving way on a frozen river. The sky went white, then thin, then wrong—colors leaking through where blue used to be.
By abualyaanart7 months ago in Fiction
INTERVIEW WITH A HOOKER (3)
“Honey, I wasn’t thinking of ending our conversation; I’m really enjoying it. However, every time I make the slightest move, the bartender has to pick his tongue up off the counter and I can just imagine, from the expressions on the men’s faces behind me that I see in the mirror, what’s going through their little minds. I like you; you’re somewhat like Cool Hands—not your looks—the way you come across—I feel I can trust you. Since the night is still young, if you don’t mind, I thought we could go someplace more private.
By Len Sherman7 months ago in Fiction
Did The Tarot Cards Predict Love?
Did The Tarot Cards Predict Love? In a quiet village, where the moonlight draped softly over cobblestone paths, there lived a woman named Clara. She found peace in a small garden, surrounded by fragrant blooms, a sanctuary where she could listen to the whispers of her heart.
By ♿ V+ Marie381Uk 7 months ago in Fiction
Before the Sun Arrived
The first morning it happened, Mara thought it was a trick of the streetlamp. She woke before her alarm, before the garbage trucks, before the first commuter train dragged its metallic sigh across the edge of town. The sky outside her bedroom window was still a dark, uncommitted blue. The kind of blue that hasn’t decided whether to become morning.
By Flower InBloom7 months ago in Fiction
The Sirens Didn’t Kill Them
People still tell it like it was simple. “They stopped their ears with wax,” the storytellers say, as if wax is a thing you find lying around on the shore like driftwood. As if it does not come from mouths and bodies and seasons. As if it does not have a smell that clings to your hands for days. As if it does not remember the warmth that made it soft.
By Flower InBloom7 months ago in Fiction
The Cairn Beside the Lake. Top Story - February 2026.
And so it came to pass that King Ertharion, Tenth King of Lombaia, stood beside the still lake below unrelenting and unassailable cliffs with the remainder of his harried host. In what was the tenth year of his reign and his forty-fourth upon this great green earth, Menigo the Betrayer, cousin of King Ertharion, pressed home his false claim.
By Matthew J. Fromm7 months ago in Fiction
The Baby in the Break Room
At 9:00 a.m., the siren sang its polite two notes—ding, ding—and the building returned its practiced silence. Mara set her mug on the corner of her desk where the ring stain had been carefully outlined with a thin strip of tape. She’d done it on her first day, back when she thought it mattered.
By Flower InBloom7 months ago in Fiction
Two cycles of the same direction
October 1, 1941Majdanek concentration camp was nestled on the outskirts of the city of Lublin. It was an eyesore but it seemed as though there was nothing out of the ordinary.“They are criminals, they should not be here anyway. Are they even true citizens? They must go back to wherever they belong. Criminals can go there to work. Make themselves useful,” Marta, a mother of three, says to a reporter. She sniffled into her handkerchief, patting a young boy shining shoes near the city’s barbershop. “I have my own household to run. I can’t really afford to worry about these… people. They aren’t my family.”The sullen reporter, scorned for their less than indifferent attitude toward the Jews, goes about the entire city looking for the common man’s opinion of the new opening of the concentration camp near their city. To the local community leaders, like the local police, school administrators and local authorities, they saw the trains passing through with the camp workers being processed into the camp as a matter of law and order.Mothers took care of the crying babies with a hand over their eye and a scarf over their faces. The young cried as well as the old. The old got carted off as the young. The trains ran full steam ahead with more passengers that got checked in but not ever checked out. Not that anyone ever asked about the return tickets.“I have just focused on my family at this point and our survival. I assume after their work is completed they take the same train to their original home. Or whatever country is willing to take them on. I don’t think about it much, I’m busy with work,” a man that worked for the local government office stated when asked about German occupation of Poland. “They have those ghettos for the Jews, I believe they will leave one way or another. I don’t like the look of that in my city.”After days of research and talking to people around the city, the sullen atmosphere of the reporter became clear. Everyone was acting normally as though nothing had changed. The horror of what was happening next door still didn’t hit home. The reporter went home, sat down and cried. 78,000 people were killed in that camp, so close to a city that had more or less acted like nothing was happening other than their daily, boring, normal lives.July 3, 2025The South Florida Detention Facility, nicknamed Alligator Alcatraz, has officially opened today.Trump said, "We have a lot of bad criminals that came into the country. ... It was an unforced error."A reporter that was living in that part of Florida went to visit the new detention facility. He heard Trump say that we will ‘teach them to run away from alligators’.If someone got hurt or injured by an alligator or wildlife, how long would it take to find them? These questions were swallowed by the traffic of moving buses, trucks and the working class that had no interest whatsoever in answering anything beyond what was for dinner that night.“They shouldn’t be here. They are all criminals. They need to go back to a prison, another country or to where they were born. We don’t need them or want them,” a man that worked in the local government offices (sanitation) had said.“It’s not my place to tell the authorities what to do. It’s not my place to worry about it. This administration knows how to handle it. I believe in this country and my government,” a young woman named Martha said, taking her kids to school with a hurried expression.The buses, trains and cars all carried on. The reporter cried alone in private protest.
By Melissa Ingoldsby7 months ago in Fiction
Red Lights. Content Warning.
The winter storm came on fast and hard. Luckily it was almost closing time, and it was a slow enough day that I could get the end-of-day cleanup done before locking the gate and heading out. Within the hour, you could barely see across the parking lot of the mall to the road beyond.
By Alicia Anspaugh7 months ago in Fiction
