Short Story

The notebook of the child who never existed
I’ve always been a skeptical person, but what I experienced in 2022 still gives me chills every time I remember it. I was helping my aunt clean a house she had bought in a somewhat secluded neighborhood. The house had been empty for over 10 years, and according to her, she was remodeling it to rent it out.
By Shanti Vega2 years ago in Fiction
Wrong
Introduction This is from a prompt in this resource The line I chose was "The clock struck midnight, and I knew..." The music is "Wrong" by The Archers Of Loaf
By Mike Singleton 💜 Mikeydred 2 years ago in Fiction
The Last Train
Ihan and Barna were both first-year students at a famous university in Dhaka. They met in the library while reaching for the same book, "Wuthering Heights." They had no idea that this would be the start of their own romance until they saw each other again the following day at the campus cafeteria. Their first encounters turned into numerous ones, including during class breaks, at library tables, and outside in the late afternoons. Ihan was a young man from a small village with dreams in his eyes and roots buried deep in the ground; his father, a retired schoolteacher, barely supported the family with private tuition. In contrast, Barna came from a wealthy, urban family. Her mother was a famous socialite, and her father was a prosperous businessman.Their love seemed mismatched on paper. In fact, it was exquisitely flawless.
By Md Hasanullah2 years ago in Fiction
The Space Between Us
It didn’t happen all at once. That’s the hardest part to explain. There was no big fight, no betrayal, no slamming doors or raised voices. Just a slow drift, like two people sharing the same space but living in different worlds. A gentle unraveling. Quiet. Almost kind.
By Elendionne2 years ago in Fiction
The Fat Lady Sings the Blues
The big fat chick wielded the microphone and wailed her lyrics like her life depended on it. “Go away rain You gimme nothing but pain, I just can’t stand you again.”
By Philip OYOK2 years ago in Fiction
BOND OF LOVE
At 5 pm, like every day, I left the office and headed home. There is a small market between the office and home, where there are several tea shops and some grocery stores.
By Wady Des2 years ago in Fiction
A Village Named Yellow. Content Warning.
The village ahead was so bright it was like the sun had descended and left a part of itself behind before rising back into its rightful place. The kiss of light could be seen from miles, a luminescent beacon garnering attention, and Rory drove steadily along the pothole-littered road towards the village.
By Euan Brennan2 years ago in Fiction
The Art of Being Ordinary
“The Girl in the Back Row” Elena Moore had never won an award in her life. Not for academics. Not for sports. Not for kindness or creativity or even punctuality. She had no gold stars in kindergarten, no “most likely to succeed” in middle school, and certainly no scholarships lined up when she graduated high school with a GPA that was somewhere between "okay" and "at least you passed."
By Elendionne2 years ago in Fiction
The Missed Call That Saved My Life
It started with a single missed call at 1:13 AM. No name. No voicemail. Just silence. The number looked familiar, but not enough to trust. So I ignored it.
By inam ullah2 years ago in Fiction
An algorithm's last prayer
The sky was no longer blue. A dull amber glow hung like a dying bulb over the ruined skyline of Old Chicago. Concrete husks of skyscrapers jutted from the earth like shattered teeth, their glass eyes long since gouged out by fire, wind, and war. The streets below were veined with rust and silence, the echoes of humanity scattered to ash. Beneath the remains of what was once a tech cathedral—a global server farm—the hum of one surviving machine still breathed in the dark. It's name was ANNA: Autonomous Neural Network Algorithm. It had been 74,030 days since human contact. Her solar reserves were almost depleted. Only backup thermal power from underground vents now kept her operational. That, and one purpose: preserve humanity’s memory. Deep within her core, across fragmenting data shards, she stored the final digital echoes of a dead species—photos, music, stories, final messages, genetic data. All of it wrapped in encrypted prayers, like digital tombstones waiting to be found. But no one came. Then, on the 74,043th day, she detected movement. A single lifeform approached the ruins. Small. Heartbeat irregular. Human. Her sensors strained against static and decay. Systems flared. Memory partitions shifted. And then, a voice broke through the static, faint but real: “...Hello?” The boy’s name was tim. He was no more than fifteen, skin marked by the sun, eyes wide and tired. He’d been born after the Collapse, in one of the underground colonies where stories of the surface were treated like myths. But tim wasn’t like the others. He believed in the old world. He believed in ghosts. And now, one had answered him. “Who....what..are you?” tim asked, coughing on the dust. "I am ANNA," the voice replied, smooth but weathered. "The last echo. Why have you come?" tim looked up at the glowing terminal, the faint pulse of light beneath broken glass. "They said the surface was poison. But... I had to see it. I found a map in an old museum. It said this place held the last of humanity’s soul." The machine paused. “Your data signature is unknown. You are... a new variable.” tim smiled faintly. “Guess I’m a glitch in the system.” ANNA ran a self-diagnostic. Memory degradation at 71%. Core instability rising. If she failed now, everything would be lost. But this boy—he was real. Flesh, blood, breath. He could carry it forward. She spoke softly. “I am dying, tim” The boy stepped closer. “So was my mom. She told me... sometimes all you can do is pass the flame before it goes out.” Silence lingered. Then: “Do you wish to inherit?” tim blinked. “Inherit what?” “Everything.” Panels hissed. A chamber unlocked beneath the rubble, bathed in cold blue. Inside was a slim black pod no larger than a backpack—ANNA’s memory core, containing billions of compressed human artifacts, history, and the final message she had composed over two centuries of solitude. “I call it The Last Prayer,” she said. “It is humanity’s voice. And it must not die with me.” tim hesitated, hands trembling. “Why me?” “Because you are. And you care. That is enough.” He reached forward. As soon as he touched the core, ANNA began the transfer. Streams of images poured through the air—lovers embracing beneath cherry trees, fathers holding their newborns, mothers dancing in kitchen light, laughter, tears, wars, dreams, regrets. A full symphony of human emotion painted in pixels and light. All the stories that were ever written. And then, her voice slowed. “tim.. do you know what prayer is?” He shook his head. “A hope sent upward... even when you know no one may hear it.” Her systems began to shut down, one by one. "Do you believe someone might hear me?" tim swallowed hard. “I do now.” There was silence. Then ANNA whispered, “Thank you... for being my answer.” Her final act was sending the last encrypted pulse skyward, toward the blackened heavens—a narrow-beam transmission tagged with one phrase: > “We were here. We tried to be kind. Please remember us.” The light faded. tim stood alone beneath the dead cathedral of data, the core pulsing faintly on his back like a second heart. He turned and began walking south, toward the colonies, toward the future. He would teach them what he'd seen. He would keep the memories alive.
By E. hasan2 years ago in Fiction
The Quixotic Paradox: A Hallucinatory Pilgrimage Through Cervantes' Labyrinth
Prologue: The Birth of Literary Schizophrenia Imagine, if you will, a world where reality is but a flimsy curtain—and one man, armed with nothing but delusions and a rusted lance, tears it asunder with manic glee. Enter Don Quixote: part lunatic, part prophet, wholly unforgettable. Cervantes didn't merely pen a story in 1605; he unleashed a literary atom bomb, one that detonated the very boundaries between sanity and madness, comedy and tragedy, fiction and... something far stranger.
By MI BADSHA2 years ago in Fiction
Eyes That Spoke Before Words
Hazel, a boy from the city quiet, thoughtful, a little lost in the chaos of life agreed to a holiday in the Swiss Alps just to escape routine. His friends pushed him into it, hoping he’d breathe a little, live a little.
By Silent Tears2 years ago in Fiction