Short Story
The Tower
There's a tall, wobbly tower at the far end of the main football field. You can see it from any of the classrooms on this side of the building. From here, my tutor room, it looks neat and white. The ivy climbing up and around it like a dragon looks pretty. Like a decoration on a cake. When you actually walk up to it, you see how crumbly the stonework is, and how, in a lot of places it's grubby enough to be more of a pale grey. Up close, you can see how tough the ivy is. The little clinging worms that dig into the bricks are more like teeth. Sometimes, when I'm in B3 getting tortured with quadratic equations, or triangles... I can see a shape in the window. It must be her. On Thursday afternoons, I'm in the next corridor along, ignoring Mr Thompson. He's usually going on about, oh, I don't know, Shakespeare, or Edgar Allen Poe, or someone like that. Some other stuffy dead person who uses really long sentences instead of having a personality. I can get a really good view of the window from where I sit. You can't look too long, or Mr Thompson will pick on you to answer a question. We know she's in there. When we are doing PE, all the boys try to get closer to it, until the teacher bawls and makes everyone change direction. When he's got the year eleven boys out there, he takes up his part near it's base, as if he can physically stop them getting closer to her. Everyone says it's his daughter up there. They say he locked her away because she is just too beautiful to be allowed. They say she might be cursed. Some of them, the ones who think they are very clever, say that the beauty is the curse. It got her locked away in the tower, didn't it? It must be a bad thing. There are three brothers at school who everyone thinks will get to her first. The oldest one, Callum, tried to climb it last year. He got halfway up before he lost his footing and fell. They screened off the area and he was bustled away in the back of an ambulance.
By L.C. Schäfer12 months ago in Fiction
Through the Keyhole
The story begins, as all treacherously good disasters do, with procrastination. The challenge prompt is open on one screen: Write a story that begins with someone peering through a keyhole or modern equivalent. I've been staring at the prompt long enough that the words have utterly lost meaning. Keyhole. Key. Hole. Holey key. Holey moly. ... My brain is stuck in a buffering loop.
By Autumn Stew12 months ago in Fiction
The Room That Waited
“A forgotten room, a family’s unfinished inheritance, and a door that never truly lets you leave.” The lane to the manor narrowed until hedgerows brushed the car on both sides, hawthorn needling the paint like a warning. Mist clung to the ditch water and lifted in torn veils whenever a wind found its courage. By the time I reached the final bend, the sky had shed its color, and the house stood in a patient gray, high-shouldered and watchful, its windows reflecting nothing of the world that faced them.
By Rebecca A Hyde Gonzales12 months ago in Fiction
Dancing With The Dead
Ta-tum, ta-tum, rat-a-tat-tat, ta-tum; I will never forget the sound, that particular sound on a certain October morning. It was one week following the Autumn Equinox. Just another neighborhood drumming moment- normal in my community, but on this day, the beat to dancing feet synchronized something most surreal, forever altering my vision of the deceased.
By Marilyn Glover12 months ago in Fiction
Desperation. Content Warning.
His messages came just before midnight, when my apartment was a nest of blue light, and the kettle hissed in soft bursts like it could hear me think. I scrolled through his photos. He had two of the same photo in a row, one slightly more cropped than the other: a man half-wedged against his truck, with a smile that wanted to be easy. His bio seemed like it had been created in a haphazard plume of a joint. We messaged for a while. He said the right things quickly, and the wrong things even faster. I stared at the screen until the screen was staring back into me.
By Autumn Stew12 months ago in Fiction
Carbon Soul
The first thing Lyra noticed was the silence. Not an absence of sound, but an absence of feeling. The gentle hum of blood in her ears was gone. The soft, reassuring thud of her own heart was a ghost in a machine that no longer needed it. She was lying on a bio-plinth in the Chrysalis Chamber, and the procedure was complete.
By Habibullah12 months ago in Fiction
Ritualistic
I turn, watching the sleek skirts swish smoothly about my legs. “It’s beautiful.” I whisper. “It suits you.” My soon-to-be mother-in-law says, coming up behind me with a flower wreath in her hands. She settles it into my hair, smoothing the streamers along my back. I fidget with my sleeves.
By Phoenixica2412 months ago in Fiction
The Library That Only Opened at Midnight
**The Strange Rumor** In the small, sleepy town of Ravensbrook, everyone went to bed early — except for **Elara**, a 19-year-old girl who loved stories more than sleep. She had read every book in the town library, but still, something inside her always whispered, *“There’s more.”*
By Kashif Wazir12 months ago in Fiction
The Stamp That Should Have Been
History is shared, not owned. 📮📫✉️📩📪📬📭📯📮📫✉️📩📪📬📭📯📮📫✉️📩📪📬📭📯 Young Singapore boasted 60 years in the making--the island nation's 60th birthday dawned on August the 8th with customary flypasts, parades, military gun salutes, and heartland fanfare.
By Michelle Liew Tsui-Lin12 months ago in Fiction
