Short Story
My Dad George Hurst
I got my story in a magazine; it was about my dad, George Hurst. He was the best dad in the world. He loved his family and raised his children while my mum was always ill with her nerves. He cooked, cleaned, and worked down the coal mine. My dad was like me: always happy and helping others, but usually taken for granted, too.
By ♿ V+ Marie381Uk 7 months ago in Fiction
The Sound the Sky Was Making
The sky had been humming for three days. Not loudly. Not enough to interrupt conversation. Just a low, steady vibration, like an appliance left running in another room. You couldn’t hear it so much as feel it—behind the teeth, in the bones of the wrists. By the second day, everyone agreed it was probably construction. “Expansion project,” Mrs. Kline said, watering her lawn as if the grass might escape without supervision. “They’ve been meaning to update the grid.” No one asked which grid. By the third day, birds had stopped landing. They hovered above rooftops, then adjusted midair. A few tried to land and veered off sharply at the last second, as if something invisible blocked them. It looked almost polite. Like they were apologizing. “Migration pattern,” someone said at the coffee shop. “Unseasonably early.” The barista’s hands shook slightly while she poured. The foam collapsed too quickly in every cup. She apologized for that too. No one mentioned the way the windows vibrated at night. No one mentioned the way the dogs wouldn’t sleep. The sky had changed color sometime after dusk on Tuesday. Not dramatically. Just a fraction wrong. Too matte. Like a painted ceiling trying to pass as atmosphere. People squinted at it and nodded. “Wildfires somewhere,” they decided. There was no smoke. At 9:17 a.m. on Wednesday, the first crack appeared. It wasn’t thunder. It wasn’t lightning. It wasn’t an explosion. It was the sound of something enormous splitting slowly. Everyone looked up at the exact same time. Across the horizon, a hairline fracture ran from east to west. Thin. Pale. Like a scratch in glass. Then it stopped. The sky did not fall. The crack did not widen. The humming continued. Someone clapped. “I guess they fixed it.” A few people laughed. It wasn’t a good laugh, but it was serviceable. It did the job. Traffic resumed. The hum didn’t soothe. It tightened things. Conversations shortened. Patience thinned. Minor inconveniences felt deliberate. Personal. People snapped faster. Apologized less. At work, Nathan refreshed his inbox seventeen times in an hour. The fracture was visible through the office windows now, a faint white seam holding the day together. When the light hit it right, it shimmered. “Do you see that?” he asked quietly. His coworker didn’t look up from her screen. “See what?” He turned back to the window. It was still there. “Nothing,” he said. At noon, a piece of it fell. Not large. Not dramatic. A flake the size of a dinner plate detached and drifted down, slow as ash. It dissolved before touching the ground. People paused. A woman shielded her coffee. A man adjusted his tie. “Pollen,” someone said. “It’s been bad this year.” Everyone agreed. By Thursday, the fracture had multiplied. Thin lines webbed across the sky in geometric patterns. Clean angles. Too symmetrical to be weather. They looked deliberate. The humming deepened. Children began drawing it in crayon without being told. Houses. Trees. And above them, the sky stitched together with white lines. Parents took the drawings away. “That’s not what it looks like.” “Throw that away.” That night, the news addressed it. The anchor smiled. “There have been reports of atmospheric anomalies visible across several regions. Experts assure us this is a harmless optical phenomenon caused by upper-layer refraction shifts.” The graphic behind her showed a perfectly blue sky. The fracture flickered faintly across the studio lights, visible only if you weren’t looking directly at it. “Nothing to worry about,” she said. The hum rattled the microphone. On Friday morning, the grocery store ceiling began to shed dust. Not chunks. Just fine, consistent particles drifting down like snowfall. They tasted metallic. Shoppers brushed it off their shoulders. “Renovations,” the manager explained over the intercom. “We appreciate your patience.” No one asked why the ceiling lights flickered in rhythm with the sky’s vibration. At checkout, the cashier’s hands trembled. “You doing okay?” Nathan asked. She smiled too wide. “Everything’s normal.” Behind her, the sky fractured again. By Saturday, the first scream happened. It wasn’t about the sky. It was about a parking space. Two drivers exited their cars simultaneously, one mid-sentence on a cell phone. The anger redirected mid-word. The argument shifted targets without pause, pivoting from the person on the line to the stranger in front of him in seconds. The other was already swinging. Striking the man without hesitation. The fracture widened enough to show darkness behind it. Not night. Not clouds. Just absence. The darkness pulsed once. Neither driver looked up. Security was called. Security laughed and left. Sunday morning, the church roof split. A clean line down the center aisle. Sunlight poured through, filtered through the fractured sky above. It made the dust glow. The pastor did not pause the sermon. “We are tested in uncertain times,” he said calmly, stepping around a fallen beam. “Faith is the discipline of staying steady.” Dust drifted down like snow. A piece of ceiling landed three pews back. No one moved. Children stared upward, mouths open. Parents forced their children’s faces downward, like a deadbolt sliding into place. “Eyes forward.” On Monday, the crack reached the sun. It split cleanly through it, dividing the light into two mismatched halves. The temperature dropped sharply. People put on sweaters. Weather apps updated automatically. “Unexpected cold front.” Nathan stood outside during his lunch break and watched the split light cast double shadows. Every object had two outlines now. He held up his hand. Two hands looked back. The hum intensified, vibrating behind his eyes. He felt the hum inside his ribs, syncing with his pulse. The fracture shuddered. A flake drifted down and didn’t dissolve this time. It landed in his palm. Cold. Smooth. Artificial. He waited for it to dissolve. It didn’t. A woman next to him scrolled her phone, thumbs moving quickly. “Do you see this?” he asked her. She glanced at his hand, at the fragment, then at the sky, her jaw tightening. “See what?” she said through gritted teeth, already turning away. No one was reacting. The hum intensified. The fracture overhead shuddered, and for a split second the entire sky peeled back—like wallpaper torn from a wall—revealing black infrastructure behind it. Latticed beams. Mechanical movement. Something vast and constructed. Then it snapped shut. Seamless. Blue. Perfect. People gasped softly. Then: “Glitch.” “Satellites.” “Government testing.” “Nothing unusual.” A man laughed too loudly. Nathan closed his hand around the fragment. It cut into his skin. It was real. He waited. For someone to break. For someone to say it. For someone to look up and refuse. Instead, traffic lights changed. A dog barked at nothing. A bus drove past with an advertisement that read: STAY CALM. STAY CONNECTED. The hum reached a frequency that made his vision blur. Another flake fell. And another. They stayed. They gathered on rooftops— on cars, on shoulders, in hair. Fragments accumulated like winter had arrived early. They fell on people. Landing in open mouths. Dissolving slowly on the tongue. Metallic. Bitter. People coughed and cleared their throats with an irritation like a splinter under a fingernail or a mosquito buzzing in a dark room. “Must be seasonal," someone muttered. Animosity crystallized in midair. Nathan felt something inside him split. Not fear. Not panic. Recognition. The wrongness wasn’t the fracture. Not the hum. Not the machinery behind the sky. It was the agreement. The quiet, practiced choreography of not naming it. The collective refusal to disturb the surface. A child across the street locked eyes with Nathan later that afternoon. She pointed upward. Her mother gripped her wrist, seizing it too tightly. “Don’t look at that,” she scolded. As if the sky might notice being noticed. “Don't stare," she snapped. The hum grew louder. The sun flickered. The fracture widened. And the entire city continued as if everything were exactly as it had always been. Nathan opened his mouth. He felt the word forming. Something simple. Obvious. Dangerous. He swallowed it. It burned going down. Above him, the sky split again. And something on the other side leaned closer. Temperaments flared without clear provocation. Doors slammed harder. Eye contact shortened. The hum settled deeper into the city. White fragments continued to fall. People brushed them away irritably. And yet no one said anything. By Tuesday, the sky was perfectly blue. He no longer saw the fracture. Or maybe he had stopped looking.
By Tifani Power 7 months ago in Fiction
The Forest That Waits
She frowned at the ground around her. Surely there had been a trail just seconds ago; she had been following something to be this deep in the Forest. But now only sparse patches of dirt showed between thick tangles of weed and bracken, and she could neither find the path nor entirely remember if there had ever been one. A slow unease crept through her. She had come here for a reason. Hadn’t she? Everyone knew entering the Forest was a terrible idea. She was certain she had believed that once. Or had she? There had been a Before. She felt it faintly — lines carved into the ground, walls made of trees but not of trees, voices carried on wind instead of leaves. Something important hovered just out of reach. She gasped. “Ezra!” The name struck like lightning. She ran. Branches scraped her arms as she pushed forward, heart pounding, breath tearing from her chest. No need for a trail now. She remembered the child running — small footsteps disappearing into green shadow, laughter turning to silence. “Ezra!” The word burned in her throat. Not the first time she had shouted it. Her aching legs told her she had run for miles. Her drifting thoughts suggested she had been running longer than a day. The Forest did not answer. A clearing opened before her, sudden and perfect. She stumbled into it and fell to her knees, gasping. The air felt different here — too still, too calm. She sat where she had fallen, trying to gather fragments of memory. A town. A home. Raised voices. The child running. Running into the Forest. She squeezed her eyes shut. In stories, clearings brought answers. She wanted very badly to leave this one. When she opened her eyes again, the space felt almost rehearsed. The clearing was perfectly round. Sunlight fell in deliberate shafts through the canopy above, illuminating jewel-bright birds darting after insects. Wildflowers spread in careful arcs, drawing butterflies in flashes of impossible colour. Everything was beautiful. Everything was wrong. Sweat beaded on her skin despite the gentle breeze. Ezra was not there. But a narrow trail broke through the bushes at the far edge of the clearing. Hope surged through her — sharp and painful. She moved toward it. Then she saw the light. Off to one side, beyond the trees, a brightness shone — harsher than the clearing’s glow, like early morning breaking through fog. The edge of the Forest. Her breath caught. If she stepped toward it, she could leave. She felt it — freedom waiting just beyond the trees. Had Ezra already escaped? Was the child waiting there, safe? Or had Ezra gone deeper instead? The clearing held its silence. The same birdcall rang out — clear, identical, as if repeating a note long practiced. She hesitated. If she left now, she might never return. But if Ezra waited beyond the trees… She bit her lip, gazing toward the light. Then she turned back toward the trail. A few steps beyond the clearing she stopped again. Footprints marked the mud. She crouched. They overlapped each other — worn deep into the earth, not one path but many, layered together as if walked again and again. Her breath faltered. Slowly, she placed her foot into one of the prints. It fit perfectly. They were hers. And they were old. A cold understanding brushed against her mind — something vast and terrible and almost clear — but it slipped away before she could grasp it. The trail stretched ahead, waiting. She swallowed and stepped forward. The trees closed behind her with quiet patience. Moments later she paused again, uncertain. She frowned at the ground around her. Surely there had been a trail just seconds ago… Somewhere deeper in the Forest, the same birdcall echoed once more — unchanged, unhurried. And the Forest waited.
By Mina Carey7 months ago in Fiction
Tomorrow: February 17, 2026: Ring of Fire Solar Eclipse
Tomorrow: February 17, 2026: Ring of Fire Solar Eclipse On this date, the Moon will be at apogee—its farthest point from Earth—making it appear slightly smaller than the Sun. Because of this, it won’t completely block the Sun, leaving a brilliant ring of light glowing around the Moon for several unforgettable minutes.
By ♿ V+ Marie381Uk 7 months ago in Fiction
The Honk That Nobody Heard
The sky began humming on a Tuesday. Not loudly. Not urgently. Just a soft, mechanical vibration that settled over the town like background music no one had selected. It buzzed faintly in teeth and window glass. You could feel it in your ribs if you stood still.
By The Kind Quill7 months ago in Fiction
