Short Story
Burner
It’s been quite a week. I keep saying that, every week. I suppose I should say, it's been quite a month. Four police visits. Four! It's enough to give anyone a heart attack, never mind someone who... Never mind. Suffice to say, if they do catch up with Nona, I might not come out of all this looking too clean. Ian says I should think positively. That this way, we know more about what's going on. We can be prepared. That's a good thing. He's right, I suppose. Countless sleepless nights for me, I don't mind telling you. I've somehow come into posession of a burner phone, of all things. Despite his calm exterior, and his reminders to stay positive, Ian is not coping well. I think he's worried. He keeps buffering mid-sentence like he’s waiting for a software patch. It's a bit annoying, actually. Let me back up a bit, and tell you from... Well. Not from the beginning, exactly. It started with the assault. I should say, "alleged assault", because I don't believe it ever happened. Nona is not a violent person. I never saw her act that way towards Jac. I told the police as much, when they showed up here, knocking on the door. Asking about Nona. Her movements, her moods, whether she’d ever raised her voice. Did they argue a lot? That sort of thing. I said no, obviously. I mean, yes, Nona could be intense, sure. She liked things just so. But she wasn't violent. Never. Then they mentioned the knife. Her husband. The head wound. I said I didn’t know anything about that. Which was true, really. I didn’t see it. Then came the second visit. Different officers. This time about the mutilated man in her house. They didn’t say his name, but I knew it was Sean from Number 4. I brought him there. I thought I was helping. I didn’t know what she’d do to him. She'd said she just wanted the neighborhood to rally round and support him after his girlfriend walked out on him. I thought we being neighbourly, officer. After that, silence. Dust settled. Nothing happened for days. Neighbours stopped whispering. I dared to think it all might be over.... Then Jac moved back in with the girls. Just walked in like nothing had happened. Mikki next door said they’d been granted occupancy. l don't know about that, but something seemed off to me. Here's the thing: it's not Jac. It took me a while to realise, because he looks almost exactly like him, but he scowls sometimes. He can be rude. He's blanked me in the street recently. Jac wouldn't do those things. He just wasn't built that way.
By L.C. Schäferabout a year ago in Fiction
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I’ve never been able to explain why the old house at the end of our street kept pulling me back every summer. Its chipped shutters, wild garden, and crooked steps seemed to know me — like they had been waiting for me all along. Sometimes, when the wind blew just right, I could almost hear whispers slipping through the broken windows, soft and fleeting, like the house was trying to talk to me.
By Rachael E Shieldsabout a year ago in Fiction
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“The room would keep her secrets, but the words would travel with me.” I did not come to Amherst only to see a house. I came because my mother is gone, and poetry is the only way I still hear her voice. Emily Dickinson’s lines were her language of comfort, the words she sent to steady me in my struggles, the playful refrains she spoke when I felt unseen. Two years have passed since she left this world, yet when I read Dickinson, it is my mother who answers. So I came here, to the Homestead, to step into the silence where her voice and Emily’s still meet.
By Rebecca A Hyde Gonzalesabout a year ago in Fiction
Petal Power
YouTube Audio Version Throughout history, there have been numerous transformative and significant uprisings. The Marigold Uprising, led by Joseph Flowers, was not one of them. Joseph, or the Marigold Man, as he would become to be known, wanted to replace the rose as the national flower with the marigold.
By Steve Lanceabout a year ago in Fiction
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The world hummed in perfect G-sharp. Elara had checked. The transport pods, the auto-servers in the food hall, even the gentle hiss of the climate control in her sterile, white living cube—all were tuned to the Global Standard Note, a frequency scientifically proven to promote calm and productivity. It was a world perfected, polished, and utterly predictable. And Elara, a Level 3 Archivist at the Global Sound Archive, was beginning to hate it.
By Pir Ashfaq Ahmadabout a year ago in Fiction
The Silence of Oris – Part 1
Eric had always found the ocean comforting—until the night it answered back. He was thirty-two, a marine acoustic technician stationed at the remote research facility of Blackwater Bay. His work involved mapping sonar disturbances, tracking whales, and documenting the sounds rising from the dark Atlantic shelf. It was quiet, lonely work, but after the death of his sister two years ago, loneliness had become a tolerable companion.
By Shehzad Anjumabout a year ago in Fiction
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I was back at my desk in the research lab when someone I vaguely recognized from upper management burst in through the door. Her starched shirt was pristine and high-heeled pumps shone like beacons of opulence, but her expression was stricken. I looked up instinctively at the intrusion and she was upon my desk in a flash, as I was the unfortunate soul who sat closest to the door.
By Leigh Victoria Phan, MS, MFAabout a year ago in Fiction
Fiction Exercise
Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter — What if? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers prompts — The Exercise — Write a two-person scene in which one character tries to break through another character’s barrier of denial. Make the issue both specific and dramatic. Do this mainly in dialogue, but anchor it in a particular time and place. The Objective — To train yourself to be aware of the unconscious forces in everyday life. People are rarely what they seem; motives are cloudy at best and often almost entirely hidden. Fictional characters, like real ones, ought to incorporate this psychic complexity. Remember that occasionally no does mean yes and vice versa.
By Denise E Lindquistabout a year ago in Fiction
Three knocks for sorrow.
The Alderman family were preparing for bed as winter roared outside. It was a chilled and freezing night, but the house was warm and cozy, the heat cranked up to maximum. Outside the wind moaned and the shutters groaned. The limbs on the trees made loud swishing noises, while the weeping willow mournfully swayed, as if tonight, it was expecting somber news. But then, willow was like that, except when the wind rested and a rare silence embraced the night...then the tree just drooped woefully.
By Novel Allenabout a year ago in Fiction
