Stream of Consciousness

One More Chance Before It All Repeats
Written by Joey Raines I didn’t see any light. But I wasn’t in the dark either. There was no pain. Still, I didn’t feel safe.
By Joey Rainesabout a year ago in Fiction
Trapped in a Room That Doesn’t exist . Content Warning.
Trapped in a Room That Doesn’t exist I don’t remember walking in. But I know I can’t leave. The walls are smooth—too smooth. Seamless. Featureless. Four of them, an almost-perfect square. White, but not sterile. There’s a faint grey mist in the corners, like the room is holding its breath. There’s no door. No window. No ceiling light. But I can see. Somehow, I can see. I’ve walked the perimeter over a hundred times. Counted my steps. Tapped every inch with my knuckles. Shouted until my throat blistered. My voice doesn’t echo. It absorbs. Like the room eats sound. Or maybe it’s listening. I woke up on the floor yesterday—or what I think was yesterday. No phone. No watch. No pockets. Just clothes that feel familiar and a numbness in my fingers that won’t go away. At first, I laughed. Thought it was a lucid dream. Maybe sleep paralysis. A stress coma. Something I’d wake up from if I just bit my tongue or screamed hard enough. But the hunger set in. Then the thirst. And now, I’m not sure what I am anymore. The room changes when I blink. At first, it was just the corners. Shifting slightly. Like the edges warped when I wasn’t watching. Now, the floor tilts. Just enough to make me nauseous. Sometimes it grows wet. Cold. Breathing. I swear the last time I blinked, there was something in the far wall. A seam. Like a vertical mouth. Gone when I blinked again. I tried sleeping. Laid flat on the warm floor and closed my eyes for what felt like hours. When I woke up, my nails were bleeding. Not bitten—peeled. One by one. Like something wanted to see if I noticed. I found the crescent scraps lined up in the corner. Like they’d been placed there. Arranged. I didn’t do that. I would remember doing that. Right? I’m not alone. There’s no one here. But I’m not alone. There’s something in the walls. I hear scratching at times. Not like mice. Too slow. Deliberate. Like nails tracing a message in a language I’m not supposed to read. Once, I screamed, “What do you want?” The scratching stopped. Then resumed. Louder. Faster. I pressed my ear to the wall and whispered, “Please.” Something whispered back. It sounded like my voice. The Room Remembers. That’s what I wrote, over and over, with the tip of my broken nail. Across the wall. Into the skin of my forearm. THE ROOM REMEMBERS. I don’t know what it means. But I believe it. --- It shows me things now. Faces in the wall. Warped. Shrieking. My mother. My old boss. A girl I loved once and never kissed. A dog I hit with my car and didn’t stop for. They float just behind the surface, mouths open, eyes bleeding. Sometimes I see myself. But taller. Confident. Wearing a clean shirt and smiling. He places his palm on the wall from his side. I press mine to it from mine. And he walks away. I tried to break the wall. I rammed it with my shoulder until I heard something snap. Not the wall—me. I headbutted it until I blacked out. When I woke, the wall had a new mark: a perfect red circle. It pulsed for hours. Like it was thinking. Like it was considering something. And then it disappeared. I don’t know how long I’ve been here. There is no time. Just heartbeat. But sometimes I feel like I’ve lived my entire life inside this box. Like everything before it was a dream. A fantasy made up to amuse myself. This is the real world. This white, breathing coffin. There was a door today. I don’t know how or when it appeared. Just a rectangle cut into the far wall. No handle. No knob. Just slightly ajar. Inside: darkness. Pure, velvet black. I crawled toward it like a starving animal. Put my hand inside. It was wet. And warm. And it gripped me back. --- I pulled away. The door vanished. I heard crying today. Not mine. A child’s voice. Somewhere above. Screaming. I clawed at the ceiling. Bled down my arms. Tore nails again. Screamed until my ears rang. The crying stopped. And laughter followed. Not a child’s laugh. Mine. I think the room is inside me now. I feel it when I breathe. When I blink. When I sleep. I close my eyes and see white. I open them and see white. I bit into my own wrist just to see a new color. It was grey. Not red. Just... grey. Like the mist in the corners. Final Thoughts (If They’re Mine) If you find this, you won’t find me. Not in the way you’re expecting. I’ve become the room. Or the room has become me. I’m the scratches in the wall. The whisper behind the silence. The figure behind your reflection that moves when you don’t. You may never find the room. But if you do… You’ll never leave it. Because it doesn’t exist. And now, neither do I. END
By E. hasanabout a year ago in Fiction
The Forgotten Door: A Story About Second Chances and Hidden Secrets
Read "The Forgotten Door," a fiction short story about second chances, hidden secrets, and forgiveness. A heartfelt tale of redemption and new beginnings perfect for fans of emotional fiction and mystery stories.
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I Didn’t Know I Needed Help Until She Offered It
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Memories Aren’t Always Real
As the dust settles around me, I'm drawn back into the memories of what had been. The memories fly past in a whirl of emotions. I can't seem to stop them as they quickly blur through my mind. All those times when I needed your love and you gladly gave it.
By Kristen Barenthalerabout a year ago in Fiction
The social butterfly. Top Story - June 2025.
I remember a time when I danced happily upon the winds of the honey which dripped from your charming lips. It now seems like such a long time ago, when happy lived for a while where hearts flutter and life sings beautiful songs. Tributes we made to those places where soul mates and forever lives. Together we both said...
By Antoni De'Leonabout a year ago in Fiction
Vette Regret
Phil and I had been texting for two days — just two — when he invited himself on a four-hour drive from Vancouver to Kamloops to meet me. Time was of the essence. He’d previously wasted a whole week messaging another woman, only to complain that her body wasn’t “appropriately proportioned” enough for him when they met.
By S.E.Linnabout a year ago in Fiction
How Jane Turned a Layoff into a Launchpad
Introduction: A Career at a Crossroads Jane Alvarez had spent a decade building a career with a Fortune 500 firm in marketing. Her strategic mind, her detail-oriented nature, and her ability to transform data into compelling campaigns made her an indispensable member of the team. But then she received an email in the spring of 2023 that would change the direction of her professional—and personal—life: her position was being cut as part of a restructuring initiative. Thirty days’ notice was given, and Jane was thrust from safe familiarity into the uncertain world of unemployment.
By Martin Williamsabout a year ago in Fiction
To love and leave the world . Content Warning.
My name cannot be pronounced in any human tongue. But for the sake of this record, call me Elion. I came from a system light years beyond what your species has glimpsed through telescopes. My purpose was singular: Observe. Documenting everything the humans do. My directive was strict: Do not intervene. For months, I wandered Earth cloaked in the flesh of your kind. My shell—engineered to mirror human physiology—allowed me to blend seamlessly. Eyes the color of a clear sky, limbs strong yet slender, a pulse mimicking your own. A heartbeat . I was born in the belly of a capsule that fell silent in your Siberian snows. At first, Earth captivated me. Not just visually—it sang. The scent of rain on dry soil, the hush of snowfall on pine, the clamor of markets, the laughter of children, even the cacophony of languages swirled into a kind of chaos that felt divine. I wept the first time I saw a cherry blossom fall in Kyoto. I danced under the rains of Mumbai, drenched and breathless, surrounded by strangers who never questioned the joy. I ate meals whose names I couldn’t pronounce: tamales, pho, biryani, panta-ilish, poutine, bibimbap. Each a symphony of heritage and invention. And the weather. I fell deeply in love with weather. It was alive. Moody. Wild. Intimate. The fog that curled around my arms on Scottish mornings, the storms that roared over the Atlantic, the sunrises in the Andes that felt like epiphanies. I thought—perhaps foolishly—that humanity was a marvel. But then, the veil began to lift. A girl, no older than eight, locked in a cellar by a stranger. I watched her scream into silence. A man in Texas who grinned as he fired upon strangers in a mall. Children forced to hold weapons in lands parched by greed. Eyes wide with trauma older than their years. Wars waged over invisible lines, doctrines, minerals buried in soil. Entire cities turned to ash. There was a boy in Chicago. He smiled at me as I passed him on the street. A friendly encounter that happened with me anywhere I went. Hours later, his body was found in an alley—eyes open, body drenched in blood, wallet gone, dreams extinguished. I remember watching the news that night. The anchor smiled between reports of bombings and award shows. “The world,” I thought, “celebrates itself while devouring its own.” I asked myself a question I wasn’t prepared to face: How can a place of such wonder nurture such monstrosities? I decided to leave. Not in hate. In sorrow. I prepared my pod in a remote forest in Canada. But I never reached it. They came in silence—agents. Tranquilizers. Steel cuffs. I remember the click of the restraints more clearly than the bullet that pierced my shoulder when I tried to run. The blood I bled was silver. They called in more trucks after that. The facility was underground, sterile, full of hums and echoes. They stripped me. Probed me. Filmed me. The term "alien" became literal again. I became specimen. Not Elion. Not even “he.” Just it. They started with simple scans. Then heat tests. Then electric pulses. They burned patches of skin off to see how fast I healed. They forced tubes down my throat to extract fluids. They broke my bones to measure recovery. I heard one doctor murmur, “It’s fascinating. He’s crying. It knows pain.” One night, they dissected me conscious. I was strapped down, throat gagged, eyelids clamped open. Scalpel. Incision. I felt every layer split. They carved into my abdomen, searching for organs, even though I screamed into their machines with mental frequencies they couldn’t hear: STOP. I AM ALIVE. I AM SENTIENT. They never listened. They called it “learning.” I called it mutilation. For weeks—maybe months—I was drained. Vivisected. Reassembled. Stripped of dignity, of voice, of hope. Then came Mira. She was a junior assistant. Barely noticed. Her badge hung crookedly. Her eyes were kind. She started leaving small things near my chamber: a folded blanket. A thermos of water. A photograph of the sea. Then, one night, she opened the door. “You don’t deserve this,” she whispered, her hands shaking. “I read your notes. You loved us.” I didn’t trust her. But I followed. We slipped through tunnels while alarms echoed in my mind. She led me through an old maintenance hatch. I collapsed outside beneath a storm. The rain hit my skin and I screamed—not in pain, but in relief. It welcomed me home. Mira disappeared after that. I don’t know if she survived. Now, I hide in the mountains. I am weak. My body has begun to fail. But before I return to the stars—if I can—I must leave this behind. This is my journal. To the stars that sent me: Earth is both cradle and crucible. It is a place of poems and poisons. Humans are capable of creating beauty so profound it defies logic—and horror so complete it erases souls. I loved them. I still love them. But love does not blind one to truth. In your archives, this entry may read as a cautionary tale. But do not see Earth as merely dangerous. See it as raw. Unfinished. A species still birthing itself. To any who follow, I offer this: observe not only what they build—but what they destroy, and what they choose to rebuild again. Do not come expecting perfection. Come with open eyes—and armor. With grief, with hope, Elion Observer 627b — Earth Departure Pending
By E. hasanabout a year ago in Fiction
Where Did My Summers Go? In Six Drabbles
When I was six, I got six weeks' summer holiday to do whatever I wanted (and many things I didn't want like chores), but that was one week for every year of my life.
By Mike Singleton 💜 Mikeydred about a year ago in Fiction
James” by Percival Everett: A Bold Reclamation of the American Canon
In James, Percival Everett does what few living authors dare—he takes a towering classic of American literature and flips it inside out. The result is nothing short of electrifying. A radical reimagining of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Everett centers the story not on Huck, the mischievous boy narrator, but on Jim, the enslaved man whose humanity Twain only hinted at.
By Hamad Haiderabout a year ago in Fiction
This Is The Day
“You know what? I quit.” No, of course, no one could hear me. I was alone in my office – shared, but pretty much my own – and it was only 9:46 in the morning, so we would have a meeting in less than fifteen minutes and I did not really want to see Mr. Roleiman’s face again on a Monday morning before I had my first cup of coffee and he told the staff all about how so-and-so did such a great job with sales (clap clap clap) and then the other person got a dozen clients to sign on for things that they could not afford (clap clap clap clap) and then he would look at the rest of us and not say a word about all the things we did because we were such a big disappointment to the company and he wanted us to know it without telling it (show without telling; he should have been a writer). So, I was done and I just had to wait for Allan to come back from the office bathroom on the third floor – the best one – and he would have to handle the new account on his own because I was fed up and it was a Monday after one of the best weekends I’d ever had after I found that secondhand shop with that rare science-fiction section that had titles I had never seen before and I made friends with the owner and he told me that there was a sale coming up in two weeks, but he would make me a deal right now if I took three copies off his hands. A little pricey, but they were worth it and I wondered what I was doing with myself in this place when no one really cares about what I give the office only what they can take and take and take and I studied literature just as a lark and wanted to work in publishing not business anyway. Why did I stop there, anyway? I was out going to the local farmer’s market to get those oranges that you could taste test from the small trays they had out for customers and things were in season like the mango that I was not too sure about after seeing flies land on it and people still sampling them without a care in their minds.
By Kendall Defoe about a year ago in Fiction