Short Story
Summer of Chaos
It was the hottest year yet. Every day there was a swelter this summer. The air conditioning was the only thing saving Grace and Brian, who sat in their home, avoiding the outside. It was a brutal heat that never seemed to leave, with little relief between the rains. Both sat on the couch, scrolling through videos on their phones, escaping the problems of their worlds. Their older home still needed a lot of work, but the busy days of work and chores kept them from any real productivity. The quiet time was welcome as their fledgling marriage seemed to be going well. Grace put down her phone and gently messaged Brian's arm as he lifted his head. Both just looked at each other and headed to bed before another long day at work.
By Sarah Danaherabout a year ago in Fiction
Goldfish
Another visitor. All the time. All day. Knock Knock Knocking. Hello? Hello can you hear me in there? Sir? Are you okay? Usually women. Bloody women. Nag nag nag. This one's not a woman. He's a boy. A man. Young though. Dunno who he is. Nice looking. Not like that. I'm not one of them queers. He calls me Da. Daft boy. I'm not his Da. I'd know my own son... Wouldn't I? If I had one. Do l have one? I'm sure I'd know. Maybe not though. Heh heh.
By L.C. Schäferabout a year ago in Fiction
Something Old
I've been here for the longest time. Nobody comes, nobody touches me. I cannot remember the sun, or music, laughter or tears. Life changed, stopped, even. Things moved on, and they placed me here, in the dark forever. I have no idea where I am. All I have now are memories of the women I have loved and sadly left behind. But it hadn't always been like this.
By J M Hunterabout a year ago in Fiction
A Gift from the Grave
It was a warm Saturday. Sandalwood incense burned on the counter. The dryer whined loudly, releasing subtle bursts of Snuggle into the air. I had just finished cleaning the house and was sitting down for lunch when the radio suddenly turned on.
By Baby Josieabout a year ago in Fiction
A Lost Summer, A Found Soul. Content Warning. AI-Generated.
The summer of 2020 was supposed to be perfect. Rachel Matthews had just turned seventeen, the world was wide open, and her plans were tightly packed — a road trip across California with her best friends, her first concert in Los Angeles, and late-night bonfires on the beach. But fate, with its silent hands, had other ideas.
By The Professionalabout a year ago in Fiction
A Soothsayers Curse
There’s an old, familiar silence as I lose myself in thought. The darkness creeping across the sky feels far away as stars begin to pierce the heavens. A barn owl calls somewhere above. I look out over the moonlit lake.I don’t know where I am. I don’t know where I’ll go.All I know is—I ran.They used to call me Soothsayer. Interpreter of what is to come. They came from far and wide to hear my visions. And in the process, they forgot how to live. I couldn’t stop their self-destruction. The gift turned out to be a curse.They came in droves. Believers with trembling prayers. Skeptics too hollow to hope. I could only give them what I saw. It was never enough.A war waged in my mind. A flood rose in my heart. And then—He stepped out from the chaos.Not to ask what the future held, but to tell me what had already come to pass. He spoke of his life and the dangers he’d faced. He asked me what my life was like. And I realized—I didn’t have an answer.He told me that if I stayed, I’d only ever watch the people I wanted to help die.He told me to run.I didn’t. Not at first.The next day, a man stood up from the crowd. He claimed I had given him false hope. That even with my visions, he still lost his wife. The crowd turned on me, drinking in his grief like wine.Hate grows when it’s fed.I had never seen that man before in my life.My voice drowned in their fury. Words became venom in their mouths, and it soaked the earth.They threatened to hang me.And then he was there—the man from before—pulling me from the crowd.We ran.He lifted me onto a snow-white horse.“Ride,” he shouted over the screams. “Ride—and don’t you dare look back.”He struck the horse’s flank and I was gone.We rode for what felt like days, though it could’ve been only hours. The horse led me to a meadow, deep in the forest. At its center sat a well.An old man perched on the stone rim. His coat was black as burnt paper, his hair silver as starlight. One eye was missing.“A gift?” he said, his voice smooth as velvet. “No. That’s no gift.”He pointed to my forehead.“That’s a curse.”I stared at him—and saw nothing. My sight, my visions—they didn’t work on him.“It’s time you started living,” he said.“I’ve been living,” I whispered.He smiled, slow and sad.“No, little one. You’ve been surviving. Have you ever stood at the peak of a mountain? Watched the sky reach back?”“No.”“Have you ever searched for hope for yourself?”“How?”“Hope is strange. Some people carry it like a torch. Others lock it away, thinking it’ll be safer in the dark. But let me tell you something—”He leaned closer.“It wasn’t hope that was left in Pandora’s box.”He handed me his cloak.“Now run. Run until your legs forget how.”I ran. I ran until I collapsed on the shores of this lake.I looked down at my shaking hands and wondered how much more of this life I could take. If this was life, why did people choose it? Why did I feel safer in the center of a crowd that hated me, than out here in the quiet?I looked up—and saw a dock.A small boat waited, swaying gently.I walked to the end of the dock and lay there for a while, listening to the lapping water.And I remembered.I remembered the ones I couldn’t save. But then—I remembered the ones I did. I remembered how love could bring someone to their knees. I remembered strangers giving the last of what they had to someone who needed it more.I remembered moments that felt like fairytales.And for the first time, I felt alive.I stepped into the boat. Untied it from the dock.I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t even know where I’ll begin.But I hope.For the first time—I hope I’ll take shore on safer ground.
By The Omnichromiterabout a year ago in Fiction
Malena
Part 1: The Boy Who Watched In the summer of 1940, Castellammare del Golfo was a furnace of sun and whispers. Renato, thirteen and all elbows, pedaled his creaking bicycle through the town’s narrow streets, the Mediterranean’s salt clinging to his skin. Life was predictable—his mother’s scolding, his father’s newspaper rustling, the endless boasts of his friends about girls they’d never spoken to. But then came Malèna, and the world tilted.
By Shakespeare Jrabout a year ago in Fiction
The Summer That Changed Everything
I looked at the ring on my finger. It was small, but that didn't matter to me. It was hot outside, but the sun was shining and the birds were singing despite the storm I felt in my heart. He had postponed the wedding...again. This time it was because he didn't like the venue we had picked out. He said that it felt more like my mother had picked out the venue. It was true that my mother had helped with quite a bit concerning the wedding. After all, I'm only 19 years old, and she knows more about weddings and social gatherings than I do, but this feels like a sign to me. I mean, how many times can one have something come up with planning a wedding and it not be a sign? The first time, it was the pastor who canceled. Then, my fiancé postponed it because he thought we didn't have enough money in the bank, and now this. I know we're young, but I love him with all my heart, and we've been together almost 5 years already. I want to be married, have children, and be settled. After all, that is what I've been taught and raised to do my entire life. When you are a girl and you live in the Deep South, you're expected to grow up, get married, and have babies right out of high school. I felt so uncertain now and sick to my stomach, so I turned out the lights and tried to get some sleep. It was a restless sleep; I tossed and turned all night. What did I want to do with my life right now if not marry the love of my life? I could go to college. I was planning on doing that anyway, as I want to be a teacher. However, if I weren't getting married, I could live the full college experience. That would please my mother and my stepfather. I could travel, maybe. I could go wherever I want to, and then I wouldn't have to face all these people asking me why I'm not married yet. The questions and assumptions are relentless in a small town. I could stay here with my grandma for a while longer and try to figure things out. Yes, that sounds like a good idea. Before I knew it, a couple of weeks had passed, a couple of boring weeks. I worked at my uncle's grocery store, where I had to answer questions about why my June wedding hadn't happened yet, and it was almost July. Why did this wedding keep getting postponed? I kept getting comments about how I didn't need to be married anyway because I was too young, or the opposite end of the spectrum, that I better hurry and get married before that boy runs off. I had spent most of my life with a controlling mother who nothing was ever good enough for and then this small town life where you had to live up to these impossible standards. I just wanted to find my way, be myself in this world instead of having someone tell me who I was supposed to be. I wanted to make my own decisions, and I was mad because I wanted my fiancé to be the first decision. He was supposed to be my "suck it" to everyone. This summer was not turning out the way it should have. My fiancé and I were still together, but I am starting to realize that he's not going to be my "suck it" to everyone. He's not going to be my "I'm going to do what I want and you can't stop me." And after some thought, maybe that's okay because after all, maybe that's not such a good reason to get married after all. I mean, I do love him, too, of course, but mostly, I wanted to get married this young to prove to everyone that we could make it. Then, one day, a recruiter from the Army Reserves came into my Uncle's grocery store. Sure, I'd seen several in my senior year of high school, but this one was different. This was a woman, and she looked like a badass in her uniform. She was in her dress uniform, which she called her "dress greens," and I was struck by the way she carried herself and the hard lines on her face that gave way to softness as she handed a child back his candy he had dropped while she waited in line. I felt like living with my mother growing up; I had already been through a war of sorts, and it struck me that this would be another way to stick it to people and do something that women usually didn't do. Also, a way to find myself, perhaps? I helped her to her car with her groceries, even though she didn't need it, and I talked her ear off with questions for the next 15 minutes. She was in her early 30s, as it turned out, and had been to Iraq. She caught some shrapnel from an IED and had to be put on a light-duty job, so she was a recruiter. She explained to me how I could get my college degree while serving in the military, and the military would pay for it. She handed me her card and told me if I had any questions to call her. When I spoke to my fiancé that night, he told me how he had thought about joining the military too. He didn't know if it'd be the right move for him, though. After some coaxing, I convinced him, and the next day we went to the recruiter's office together. The same recruiter that I'd seen the day before was there. She was honest about the hardships she'd seen, how hard it was to carry all the equipment on your back through the heat, then she shared how much the Army had given her a sense of purpose and a way to find herself outside of her family. As she put it, when you aren't allowed to have anything and you're left to start anew with just your military comrades, you learn not only your strength but what you're made of inside. When you are in certain situations and you respond, you learn a new thing about yourself every time. Whether good or bad, you learn. I didn't need to hear anymore. I signed the papers, and my fiancé followed suit. We walked out of that recruiter's office with a brand new future in our sights. On the way back home, riding in the passenger seat, I looked at my engagement ring once more. I didn't know when or if we would still be getting married, but somehow that didn't matter so much anymore. I was about to put myself to the test in ways I had never imagined before, and I would always love him no matter what.
By Lindsey Altomabout a year ago in Fiction
