Stream of Consciousness
Hourglass: A Tale of Anxiety Part 3. Content Warning.
“P.S. You’re not going to die. Here’s the truth: It feels like you are. It feels like a lion is chasing you. It feels like a bear has spotted you. But it’s just the anxiety. You’re safe.” — Glennon Doyle This story is one of many in 🎗A Mental Health Awareness Month initiative🎗 held by Fictionry.com Please join us: https://www.fictionry.com/events/mental-health-awareness-2026
By Rain Dayze5 months ago in Fiction
Madison Montgomery's Monologue. Content Warning.
Everything feels so boring and pointless. People probably think I’m a whore. That I’m a bitch. That I’m hateful. And… maybe they’re right. But I know the truth. I know what everyone really wants. In the end, they all desperately want to fuck me. They see me as a piece of meat with no feelings and actually believe they can have me.
By Cesar González Torres5 months ago in Fiction
Color of Divide part one. Content Warning.
This is a fictional story about Forbidden Love between two lovers. Mirabella is from Maravelle Heights, a wealthy neighborhood and Kaden is from South Lydell, the other side of the working class neighborhood. The Lydell River separates the two cities.
By Vicki Lawana Trusselli 5 months ago in Fiction
Hourglass: A Tale of Anxiety Part 2. Content Warning.
“Remember the value of slowing down; constant speed can feed anxiety and wear you down.” — Rick Hanson This story is one of many in 🎗A Mental Health Awareness Month initiative🎗 held by Fictionry.com Please join us: https://www.fictionry.com/events/mental-health-awareness-2026
By Rain Dayze5 months ago in Fiction
Hourglass: A Tale of Anxiety Part 1. Content Warning.
"Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom." — Soren KierkegaardThis story is one of many in 🎗A Mental Health Awareness Month initiative🎗 held by Fictionry.comPlease join us: https://www.fictionry.com/events/mental-health-awareness-2026
By Rain Dayze5 months ago in Fiction
The Well of Secrets
I. The Village of Mirabad The village of Mirabad had no secrets — or so the elders claimed. Nestled between two hills like a sleeping child between its parents' arms, it was the kind of place where the smell of bread from one household drifted to another, where every birth was celebrated by the whole street, and every death was mourned by every soul who could walk to the graveyard. People believed that here, under the open sky, nothing could stay tv hidden for long. But there was the well. It stood at the very center of the village square, older than anyone could remember. The stone walls were dark with age, the rope that hung over it had been replaced a hundred times, and the water that rose from its depths was the coldest, clearest water in the entire valley. Children drank from it. Women washed vegetables beside it. Old men sat on its edge and told stories that had no endings. Everyone used the well. But no one — not even the oldest elder — knew how deep it truly went. It was beside this well that the trouble began, on the last Tuesday of October, when the body of Tariq the miller was found. ⸻ ✦ ⸻ II. The Morning After Rukhsana was the one who found him. She had come before dawn, as she always did, to draw water before her mother-in-law woke and demanded tea. The lantern in her hand threw a pale circle of light onto the cobblestones — and there he was, Tariq, slumped against the base of the well, his eyes wide open, staring at nothing. She did not scream. Rukhsana had grown up in this village and she had seen death before — her father, a drought that killed their crops and then their animals, two children buried before they could learn to speak. She set down her lantern. She pressed two fingers to Tariq's neck. Cold. Long gone. Then she noticed something. His right hand was clenched tight around a piece of cloth — torn, dark blue, the kind of fabric the wealthy men of the village wore. Rukhsana stared at it for a long moment. Then she looked up, into the dark mouths of the houses surrounding the square, the shuttered windows, the closed doors. She felt the village watching her, even in its sleep. She left the cloth where it was and went to wake the headman. "In a village this small, a secret is not something you keep. It is something you bury — and pray the rains do not come." III. The Questions Begin By midmorning, the square was full. The headman, old Bismillah Khan, sat on a wooden chair that had been brought out from his house, and one by one the men of the village came to stand before him. The women watched from a distance, gathered in tight clusters, their voices low. The constable from the district town had been sent for, but the road was muddy from the night's rain and it would be hours before he arrived. In the meantime, Bismillah Khan asked the questions himself. Who had seen Tariq last? His wife, Zainab, said he had left after the evening prayer, saying he needed to check on his mill wheel. He had not returned. She had assumed he stayed there, as he sometimes did when the work ran long. She had gone to sleep. Who had been in the square after dark? No one admitted to it. And the cloth in Tariq's hand? Bismillah Khan held it up. The crowd went very quiet. It was good fabric, fine weave, the colour of deep water. Several eyes shifted — briefly, involuntarily — toward the house of Saleem the merchant, the richest man in Mirabad, whose long coat was made of exactly that kind of cloth. Saleem stood at the edge of the crowd, arms folded, his face as smooth and unreadable as river stone. ⸻ ✦ ⸻ IV. What Rukhsana Knew It was Rukhsana who held the real secret, though she had not yet decided what to do with it. Three weeks ago, she had been drawing water late at night — her mother-in-law had been feverish, and she needed water for the medicine. The square had been empty, the village asleep. But as she pulled up the bucket, she had heard voices from the alley beside the merchant's storehouse. Tariq's voice and another — hushed, urgent, arguing. She had caught only fragments. "You promised. The land was to be mine—" "Keep your voice down. Things have changed." "I have the papers. I have proof of what you did." Then silence, and footsteps fading, and she had gone home and told herself it was none of her business. Village men argued about land constantly. It meant nothing. Now Tariq was dead and Rukhsana stood in the crowd with the weight of those words pressing against her ribs like a stone. She looked at Saleem. He was already looking at her. Their eyes met for just a second — and in that second, something passed between them. An acknowledgment. A warning. Rukhsana looked away first. ⸻ ✦ ⸻ V. The Well Gives Nothing Back That afternoon, one of the boys threw a stone into the well to measure its depth. They waited for the sound. And waited. And waited. There was no splash. The boys went pale and ran home and told their mothers, who told their husbands, and by evening everyone in Mirabad was talking about the well — about how deep it truly was, what was really at the bottom, whether it had always been so silent or whether something had changed. The constable arrived at dusk, a tired young man with mud on his boots and no patience for village superstitions. He examined Tariq's body, took the cloth as evidence, wrote in his notebook, and told Bismillah Khan that the cause of death appeared to be a blow to the back of the head. Murder. He would return in three days with an investigator from the city. Three days. The village settled into an uneasy silence. That night, Rukhsana lay awake listening to her mother-in-law snore. She thought about Tariq's wife, Zainab, who had wept all afternoon with a grief that looked genuine. She thought about the papers Tariq had mentioned — proof of what Saleem had done. Where were those papers now? Had Saleem found them? Had he been searching Tariq's mill, even now, in the dark? She rose before her husband could stir, wrapped her shawl around her shoulders, and slipped out into the night. ⸻ ✦ ⸻ VI. The Mill The mill sat at the edge of the village where the stream ran fast over smooth rocks. The door was ajar. Rukhsana pushed it open and stepped inside. A figure was already there, crouched by the far wall, holding a lantern. He stood when he heard her — and the light fell on his face. It was not Saleem. It was Zainab. Tariq's wife looked at Rukhsana with red, swollen eyes and clutched something to her chest — a folded bundle of papers, tied with string. "I knew he kept them here," Zainab said. Her voice was very calm, in the way that voices go calm when all the fear has already passed through them. "He told me once, when he was drunk. He said: if anything ever happens to me, go to the loose stone behind the millstone. He knew this day might come." Rukhsana stepped forward. "Are those—" "Land records. Forged signatures. Saleem has been stealing land from the families of this village for fifteen years. Tariq found out six months ago. He was going to give these to the investigator from the city." Zainab's jaw tightened. "He waited too long." Outside, the stream rushed over its stones. Somewhere in the village, a dog barked twice and went quiet. "What will you do?" Rukhsana asked. Zainab looked down at the papers. Then she looked up, and in her eyes was something that Rukhsana recognized — the look of a woman who has nothing left to lose and has therefore become the most dangerous kind of person in the world. "I will not wait," Zainab said. ⸻ ✦ ⸻ Epilogue When the investigator arrived from the city three days later, Zainab was waiting for him at the entrance to Mirabad, the papers in her hands. Saleem the merchant was arrested before the afternoon prayer. The stolen land was the subject of a case that would take two years to resolve but would, in the end, return what had been taken. No one ever determined exactly how deep the old well was. But the morning after Saleem was taken away, the boys threw another stone into it — and this time, faint and far below, there was a sound. Small. Distant. Real. A splash. The village of Mirabad breathed again. — The End —
By Ikram Ullah5 months ago in Fiction
The Ballerina
Masks made of shards of glass: each reflecting different facets of this façade. I am masquerading through this parade, keeping my costume secure and in place. I have long since lost hope that anyone could continue to love the show if the mask should slip. My dance carries on, each stop carefully chosen and precise. Each move, down to the last thrust of glitter in the air artfully and skillfully chosen like a surgeon with a deadly scalpel. They cheer on, encouraging different angles of my mask of glass: the sides they like best. I used to sing in this dance on parade, but the tone and inflection through my voice was too hard to keep: too much of the mask slipped with the movement of my mouth. Now my jaw, like everything else, remains tightly sealed. At least behind my reflective cover, no one sees the scars underneath or the tears that refuse to stop shedding from my darkened eyes. No one is looking closely enough to tell the difference between cuts of glass and cuts in flesh; to tell the difference between light glittering off of glass and light sparkling off of acid tears.
By Leah Suzanne Dewey5 months ago in Fiction
VOID. Content Warning.
What if everything you know exists inside a boundary you cannot see? Not a wall. Not a limit you can touch. But a condition. An invisible frame that defines what is real, what is possible, and what is allowed to be understood.What if?
By Kelly Munala Brookes5 months ago in Fiction
The Sanctuary of Whispered Names
What to do when you crave more than romance. When you want dark, undying acts of devotion, unequal, unmatched. This prefaces the letter John Thomas wrote his love Mary Wickham in the Spring of 1886. The unspoken vows, promises, prayers.
By K.H. Obergfoll5 months ago in Fiction
