Young Adult

The ash season . Content Warning.
No one knew why he did it. The billionaire — known in whispers as Greyson — didn’t announce his games, didn’t publish invitations. One morning, a random name appeared on his list, and by nightfall, they were gone. Maya had been walking home from her apartment when a black van pulled alongside her. A polite voice offered a ride, a simple errand, nothing more. When she awoke, the city lights were gone, replaced by the dense hush of a forest she didn’t recognize. The air was cool, tinged with pine and something metallic. Somewhere above, the stars were small, indifferent. The first rule she learned: you cannot leave. The forest was enormous, too vast to map, too tangled to escape. Trails forked endlessly. Shadows moved where no light fell. Every sound — a twig snapping, the wind in the branches — became a signal of his presence. Greyson was there, always observing, never intervening directly. He didn’t need to. By the second day, Maya had discovered the first traps. A clearing littered with broken branches; a tree hollow stuffed with discarded clothes; footprints that appeared and vanished. Someone else had been here, or maybe it was a test. She didn’t know, and the uncertainty gnawed at her. The ash began to fall on the third day. It wasn’t from fire; it drifted silently from the trees, pale gray, settling on skin, clothes, and hair. It didn’t burn, but it whispered, if she leaned close. She could hear faint laughter, murmurs of instructions, half-remembered voices. The forest played tricks on her mind. Every night, she felt as though someone watched from just beyond her vision. She tried running. She tried climbing trees, screaming until her lungs ached. Nothing worked. Each path led back to the same clearing where the ash was thickest, where the air vibrated with a quiet tension, and where she realized the forest itself had been designed — every tree, every stone, every fallen branch placed with deliberate care. Greyson appeared once, or maybe she imagined him. A tall man, impeccably dressed despite the wilderness, stepping from the shadows as though he belonged to both the forest and the city. His eyes were sharp, indifferent, measuring. “You’re doing fine,” he said. His voice was calm, patient, like a teacher praising a student who’d nearly failed. “Just… keep going.” Maya didn’t know if she should run or answer. The ash settled in her hair, her eyelashes, making everything gray, muted, unreal. He turned, disappeared, and she was alone again. The days blurred. Hunger and fatigue tangled with paranoia. She began to hear voices — some distant, some inside her own head. They whispered secrets, fears she had never spoken aloud, memories she’d tried to bury. The ash listened and repeated them. She screamed, only to hear her own words echoed back at her, twisted, rearranged. Other people arrived. Some ran headlong into trees. Some cried and curled in the undergrowth. Some tried to form alliances, but the forest had a way of turning companions into threats. By the end of the first week, few remained. Greyson never touched them, never forced a hand, but his control was absolute. Each obstacle, each trap, each whispered memory was enough. The forest became a labyrinth of fear and regret. The ash fell, soft and endless, and with every flake, the participants grew smaller, quieter, more pliable. On the seventh night, the forest fell silent. Even the ash stopped drifting, as though it were waiting. Maya found herself alone in the clearing. The ground beneath her feet was gray, soft like dust. The air smelled like iron and old pine. Her lungs burned. Her eyes stung. And yet she had survived, unlike the others. A sound behind her — subtle, deliberate — made her spin. Greyson stepped out from the shadows, his presence calm, final. “You’re the last,” he said. His tone carried no triumph, no malice. Only certainty. “You understand the rules now. The forest is not the trap. You are.” Maya realized then that it wasn’t about escape. The forest had never been a prison in the conventional sense. Greyson didn’t need walls or cages. His power lay in shaping their minds, bending them with fear, memory, and isolation. The ash wasn’t ash. It was the weight of their own choices, sifted, broken down, and scattered back over them until they could no longer distinguish themselves from it. She wanted to run. She wanted to fight. But she couldn’t. Her reflection in the puddles of gray on the forest floor was not her own — it was hollowed, muted, watching. Greyson nodded. “Well done,” he said. Then he turned, leaving her among the ash, among the whispers, in the forest he had built not with fences, but with minds. The sun rose, though it did little to pierce the gray. Maya breathed in the air, tasted the ash on her tongue, and realized the truth: the forest had not ended. Neither had the game. And the ash would fall again. ---
By E. hasanabout a year ago in Fiction
Stockroom Secrets 20. Content Warning.
When we left the Sexual Health Clinic I was armed with enough flyers, tip sheets and information packs to keep me reading for at least a week. I had a feeling I would soon be suffering from a case of information overload.
By Mark 'Ponyboy' Petersabout a year ago in Fiction
Stockroom Secrets 19. Content Warning.
There was another chair in the office and Mr Webster sat down and looked at me. His expression was not unlike that of a caring parent, kind and understanding, and for some reason I couldn't explain I began to feel more at ease.
By Mark 'Ponyboy' Petersabout a year ago in Fiction
The Perfume That Changed the World: Dior Sauvage and the Psychology of Scent
The Perfume That Changed the World: Dior Sauvage and the Psychology of Scent How fragrance became an invisible weapon of luxury and desire.
By waseem khanabout a year ago in Fiction
POV. Content Warning.
You're sitting up late at night, scrolling online as you wait for a message from one of your contacts... You're the daughter of the Mafia king, and a high-level operative for him. Unfortunately that means you've come into contact fairly frequently with one of the hottest guys you've ever seen, but the problem is that he's your father's enemy despite his youth.
By ThatOne_Girlabout a year ago in Fiction
Amy In Time
August 5, 1996 Tears of joy blurred the vision of Aleen Dillinger as she cradled her newborn baby boy in her arms for the first time. Their eyes locked and the infant who was crying calmed down realizing that he was in safe hands.
By David E. Perryabout a year ago in Fiction
The Last Mixtape
With a loud sound, the shovel bit into the damp earth with force, as if my heart had been crushed to its core. Ten years. The time capsule we had hidden beneath was covered in the bravery of eighteen-year-olds a decade ago. Me, Leo, and Sarah. This was the day we made an oath to open it all together. While Leo was designing buildings that etched the clouds in Tokyo, Sarah disappeared without him. We buried our dreams two years prior in a waterproof ammo box, but then the accident happened.
By Daniel Blakeabout a year ago in Fiction
Rust Beneath the Skin. Content Warning.
The year was 1899, and the sea pressed itself endlessly against the coast of Whitcombe, a village where salt clung to the air and iron settled deep into every man’s bones. Fishermen cursed the waves even as they depended on them. Wives scrubbed clothes raw on the stones, while children hauled baskets of coal to homes already blackened with soot. And among them moved Clara Whitcombe, daughter of the late foundry master, who wore gloves even in the height of summer. No one questioned her once, when she was small and pale and quiet. But as she grew, her habit became the subject of whispers. Those who had glimpsed beneath the gloves did not forget what they saw: veins darkened like corroded copper, skin flaking faintly as though touched by rust. Clara had not always been thus. Years ago, a fever gripped her so fiercely that her father summoned doctors from three towns. When she recovered, it was with arms scarred by strange metallic veins that gleamed faintly in the light. Her father never spoke of it. Within a year, he was dead—crushed, they said, when the old foundry’s roof gave way. But villagers muttered that he had dug where no man should, dredging ores from the seabed that carried curses in their shine. The rust did not stop with Clara’s hands. Each year it crept further, spidering up her arms, tracing across her collarbone. She hid it, yes, but she could not hide the faint metallic tang that followed her through the lanes. Dogs snarled when she passed. Infants cried at the sight of her. And in the still hours of night, Clara woke to the sound of chains dragging and doors groaning, as though something vast stirred in the dark beneath the earth. When the first body washed ashore, no one thought of Clara. A fisherman, swollen with brine, his face half eaten by crabs. But when the second arrived—his chest marred with strange, reddish stains—the village grew uneasy. By the third, a boy of fifteen, his flesh splitting like brittle iron, suspicion sharpened. Their eyes turned toward Clara, who grew more withdrawn each day. Unable to bear their stares, she climbed the cliffs to the ruin of her father’s foundry. The building crouched over the sea like a beast gnawing the waves, windows shattered, its furnace long cold. Rust coated every girder and beam, yet the scent of iron was stronger here than anywhere. Clara pressed her gloved hands to the great doors and felt a pulse answer her touch. Inside, amidst beams and rubble, she found a ledger, its pages warped with damp. Her father’s handwriting filled the margins: sketches of veins branching into metallic roots, notes about a strange ore hauled from the seabed—an ore that never dulled, no matter the salt. A living metal, he had written. Resists decay. Hungers for vessels. Her hands trembled as she turned the pages. The fever that nearly killed her had not been illness at all. Her father had bound the ore to her blood. She was not cured; she was claimed. The dragging she heard in her dreams was no figment. It was the call of the source, still lying beneath the waves, patient and endless. As weeks passed, Clara’s condition worsened. The rust spread visibly across her neck and face, cracking her lips until they bled faintly orange. When she scratched her arms, flakes of reddish dust clung to her gloves. She tried to scrub herself clean, but the water in the basin shimmered with metallic film. The villagers grew bolder. Children hurled stones at her window. Men muttered that she had brought a curse upon them. Even the priest, who once blessed her, stepped aside when she walked by. One evening, storm clouds rolled over the coast, and Clara, restless, wandered the shoreline. She thought of her father—his eyes fevered with ambition, his ledger filled with dreams of immortality at a terrible cost. She thought of the bodies that had washed ashore, their flesh splitting like corroded armor. She thought, above all, of the weight beneath her own skin, as though something vast and heavy pressed against her veins. The tide surged higher than she had ever seen. Waves crashed against the rocks with the roar of iron chains breaking free. Clara felt her knees weaken. Beneath her skin, something moved—grinding, gnashing, like gears turning in the marrow of her bones. She fell to the sand, clutching her arms, and when she pulled away her gloves, she saw her hands were no longer hands at all. The flesh had hardened into ridged, metallic plates, cracked and bleeding orange dust where skin had split. The sea answered with hollow thunder, and she knew then: the ore was no mineral. It was a parasite wearing the mask of metal, seeking host after host until it consumed everything it touched. Clara rose. She could not go back to the village. Already she imagined their faces twisting with horror, their fear spilling into violence. She was a vessel, yes—but she would not be their curse. As lightning split the sky, Clara walked into the waves. The water surged around her, bitter and freezing, but she did not falter. With each step, her body grew heavier, her joints grinding with unnatural force. The storm swallowed her cries. By morning, the tide had receded. The beach lay scattered with driftwood and seaweed. Clara was gone. In the weeks that followed, no more bodies washed ashore. The villagers whispered of deliverance, some calling it a miracle, others a bargain struck. Yet fishermen sometimes pulled strange fragments from the sea: shards of metal twisted like bone, scales that gleamed faintly red. And when they spoke Clara’s name, they swore they tasted iron on their tongues. And on storm nights, when the tide battered the cliffs, the crash of waves carried a hollow echo, as though iron rang against stone in the depths below.
By E. hasanabout a year ago in Fiction
Silent Sister
Clara never spoke after her twin drowned. She only stared with her eyes black, and lips sealed tight. At night, whispers filled the house, but her lips never moved.
By Shai Andersonabout a year ago in Fiction
Imran Khan: The Lion Who Never Gave Up
In the bustling city of Lahore, in a family of scholars and strong traditions, a boy named Imran Khan was born in 1952. Unlike most children of his time, who dreamed of stable professions in medicine, law, or business, Imran carried a different vision. His heart belonged to cricket. From the narrow streets of Lahore to the manicured grounds of Aitchison College and later Oxford University, his bat and ball became his closest companions.
By Princess Ladlyabout a year ago in Fiction
Stockroom Secrets 17. Content Warning.
I wasn't too sure exactly what would be waiting for me when I made it home, so it was with some trepidation that I pulled my car in beside the carport at our house a couple of hours later then quietly entered via the back door.
By Mark 'Ponyboy' Petersabout a year ago in Fiction
Stockroom Secrets 18. Content Warning.
As I sat down on the chair opposite Mrs Mack's desk, she closed the door and then turned to me. 'How are you doing today, Grayson? I take it you've heard from Rafael what happened yesterday?' she asked, before sitting down behind her desk.
By Mark 'Ponyboy' Petersabout a year ago in Fiction