Short Story
''Silent Honeymoon''
by [khan] The ocean whispered secrets to the shore, but no one was there to listen. Not anymore. Three days had passed since anyone last saw Olivia and Marcus Dale — newlyweds who checked into the Cliffside Resort for their honeymoon and vanished before sunrise. The staff remembered their arrival clearly. Olivia, radiant in a linen sundress, had laughed at something Marcus whispered. They held hands tightly, as if afraid the world might pry them apart. Room 207, ocean view. No room service. No disturbances. A “Do Not Disturb” sign hung on their door for two days. Then silence. Housekeeping knocked. No answer. After the third attempt, the manager unlocked the door. Inside: untouched sheets, two half-drunk glasses of champagne on the balcony, a suitcase half-unpacked. No sign of the couple. Detective Lena Moore had seen disappearances before, but something about this one gnawed at her. The room wasn't staged like the others she’d worked — no signs of struggle, no mess, no blood. Just... absence. Like they had evaporated. She stared at the folded brochure left on the nightstand. "The Silent Shores: Find Peace Where the World Disappears." A cheesy resort slogan, but suddenly unsettling. “I need the guest log,” she told the front desk clerk. “And security footage.” The footage showed Marcus and Olivia walking along the beach just after midnight on their second night. No other guests nearby. They strolled barefoot, stopping near the rocks where the waves hit hardest. They never came back. Locals whispered about the cliffside — how the tide changed shape there, how voices sometimes echoed without a source. Lena didn’t believe in ghost stories, but she believed in people doing desperate things. Suicide? Maybe. But they looked happy. She rewatched the video: Olivia paused, turned to Marcus, and kissed him hard — like someone who wanted more time, not less. Why vanish? Lena visited the rocky stretch herself. The sea was louder here, almost roaring. Seagulls circled above like restless witnesses. She climbed down to the tidepools, where she found something glinting between the rocks. A gold bracelet. Olivia’s initials. She bagged it and looked around. No footprints remained. The tide had wiped them clean. Back at the station, she dug into the couple’s past. No red flags. Marcus was a photographer; Olivia, a librarian. Quiet lives. Clean records. But one thing stood out: six months ago, Olivia’s younger sister had drowned off a private beach. Case closed as an accident. But Olivia had contested the ruling. Filed complaints. Accused the resort’s parent company of negligence. And now she was gone — from a resort owned by the same corporation. The dots connected like a bruise forming. What if the honeymoon wasn’t just a celebration? What if it was a plan? Lena called the Coast Guard, demanded a wider search. Nothing. Then, late one evening, she received an anonymous package. Inside: a USB drive. A video file. She clicked play. The screen flickered, showing Olivia and Marcus in a small wooden boat, miles offshore. Olivia spoke directly to the camera. “If you’re watching this, we’re already gone. But not in the way they’ll tell you. We disappeared for a reason.” “They tried to silence my sister’s case. Bury it. We wanted to make sure no one forgets.” “We’re going dark — completely. Somewhere they can’t find us. No phones. No credit cards. No trails.” “Don’t look for us. Just listen to what we left behind.” The screen cut to black. Lena leaned back in her chair, heart pounding. They hadn’t vanished. They had erased themselves — on purpose. To make noise by becoming silence. The resort released a statement. “We are cooperating fully with authorities. Our hearts go out to the family.” A lie in a press release. But Lena didn’t file the video as evidence. She stored it in a sealed folder and wrote one sentence in her final report: “Case unresolved. Possibility of voluntary disappearance.” She stood one last time on the rocks by the ocean, watching the tide breathe in and out. Somewhere, far from the headlines and lies, two lovers had chosen vanishing over fighting a system that never listened. And in their silence, they’d finally been heard.
By Israr khanabout a year ago in Fiction
Cash Back
It began at the local variety store. Overnight, someone or some company installed a portable ATM on the front stoop of Michael’s Convenience Store. Old Man Michael, who only opened the store on weekdays, did not see what happened on the previous weekend. He did not remember placing a call to have it put there, and he knew that there was still a local bank that had their machines “well up and robbing us” (as he said to any of the familiar customers who asked about it). There was no phone or serial number on it (he looked around it twice), but he could see that it was connected to the main power grid – not taking power from his store and raising his bills, he thought – and he left it there, untouched and he was unimpressed. Let them charge whatever they want if people are that dumb. He opened his store and waited to see if he would have to explain what was going on outside.
By Kendall Defoe about a year ago in Fiction
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Jan and Zack sat facing the ocean, huddled close, as the cool breeze blew on their back. The dog days of summer were ending. It had been everything that a summer could be. They had purchased their new home and moved in and still had another week to settle in before they would have to go back to work.
By Katherine D. Grahamabout a year ago in Fiction
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By Prompted Beautyabout a year ago in Fiction
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By Julie Lacksonenabout a year ago in Fiction
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By Mike Singleton 💜 Mikeydred about a year ago in Fiction
Reconstruction #9. Content Warning.
Morning fills the warehouse studio much like clay packs beneath fingernails. Skylights allow in a cold, steady light that rests on unfinished heads. Zora moves through them with the calm precision of a carpenter, wire clippers held in her palm, her black smock marked with gray. Each frame stands upright on a metal spine, vertebrae fused the previous day. She adjusts the alignment, shifts a jaw, angles a cheekbone slightly to the left. The faces around her show no sign of life, but she handles each part as if breath already stirs beneath the surface. She listens to the tension of plaster pressed to steel, to the faint creak of a collarbone when she adds weight. A radio murmurs from the loft above the office.
By Fatal Serendipityabout a year ago in Fiction
Midnight Affairs
"Let me tell you about my day," you type in the subject line. You woke up before Dan, as you always do. You moved quietly, taking great care not to stir him. It’s as if your presence is a nuisance. You make coffee and sip it alone while drafting an email to Midnight. Dan wouldn’t understand, and you’re not sure he’d even care at this point.
By Fatal Serendipityabout a year ago in Fiction
