Top Stories
New stories you'll love, handpicked for you by our team and updated daily.
FPS: Haunted Echoes Challenge Winners
🎃 Happy Halloween and welcome back to our Fall Poetry Series! For this round, we asked writers to distill fear or mystery into just three lines. No cheap jump scares or horror clichés, just the lingering unease that creeps in when the lights go out.
By Vocal Curation Team11 months ago in Resources
100-Word Scary Movie Reviews. Top Story - October 2025.
Down a Dark Hall (2018), Director: Rodrigo Cortes If somebody asks me what this movie is about, I just say, “I have no idea.” I try to look past a low IMDB score because maybe it’s wrong. Down a Dark Hall is a scattered story that makes no sense. The main reason why I watched this film was for its cast. AnnaSophia Robb, Uma Thurman, and Isabelle Fuhrman are all talented actresses. They do their best with a confusing script that was in the dark from when it first began. Rodrigo Cortes had a promising direction and a good story at heart, but not much effort was enforced.
By Marielle Sabbag11 months ago in Horror
Stop Harassing Women who Smoke. Top Story - October 2025.
I could have smoked three cigarettes for how long it took me to find the right image to put with this article. I'm sure the AI generators don't struggle like I do trying to force an image into the pixel spot wanting a specific mood/look but not getting the number of pixels correct. Ugh. Ok, now that I've vented, what was I wanting to talk about today? Oh yeah, women who smoke. I did not light a cigarette while I wrote this venting prelude paragraph. I just wanted you to know that because as I move on to the next paragraph, I'm going to refill my coffee cup and then light a cigarette.
By Shanon Angermeyer Norman11 months ago in Viva
INVISIBLE IN OUR OWN COUNTRY. Top Story - October 2025.
Today, I would like to talk about an issue that concerns us all, even though we too often overlook it: homelessness. In recent weeks, a statement by Chancellor Friedrich Merz has caused quite a stir, when he said that “we still have this problem in the cityscape” – clearly referring to migrants. A remark that not only divides people but also distracts in a fatal way. For while we debate the outward appearance of our cities, about people who supposedly “change” the cityscape, we overlook what is truly shocking: that more and more people have no home at all. That the real problem is not what people look like, but their invisibility – their disappearance from the safety of ordinary life, from the heart of our society.
By Christian Bass11 months ago in Humans
Black Cats. Top Story - October 2025.
He hated walking past the vacant lot. He walked to work every evening - he worked the night shift - and the lot was in between his apartment and his new job. He couldn’t avoid it without going a long ways out of his way, but he hated walking past it. It wasn’t the lot, so much. It was the cats.
By Laura DePace11 months ago in Fiction
Plainclothes (2025). Top Story - October 2025.
Plainclothes is my kind of film. I take along my 1940s imaginary screenwriter persona, and she complains about not being able to smoke in cinemas. But I reassure her, reviews have been mostly positive, and it won an award at the Sundance Film Festival. I knew I wanted to see it from the trailer. It is a small budget, independent film, with a small cast, telling a story that could easily be overlooked or dismissed. My kind of film.
By Rachel Robbins11 months ago in Geeks
818. Honorable Mention in Parallel Lives Challenge. Top Story - October 2025. Content Warning.
The one thing that really fucking sucked was that she missed her children, and it defeated the purpose of getting an actual break. Though this break was warranted and needed. She had begun to slip into a deep dark hole. She was losing herself, slowly becoming an emotionless robot that was on autopilot for her kids and husband.
By Esmoore Shurpit11 months ago in Fiction
Review of 'A House of Dynamite'. Top Story - October 2025.
I grew up in a world in which Dr. Strangelove was a plausible movie, a world in which we lived with the Soviet Union, armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons, as were we, and our best chance that we wouldn't blow up the Earth, if not to smithereens, to an uninhabitable planet, was MAD -- the mutually assured destruction that a nuclear war would engender, which would stop we human beings from ever starting such a no-win war.
By Paul Levinson11 months ago in The Swamp
Happiness and Light Unofficial Challenge. Top Story - October 2025.
INTERJECTION INTERRUPTION UPDATE - Added all the entries we've received so far, and just wanted to bump this up to remind people it's still open. You still have time to enter a piece for either or both parts of the challenge - we have only received pieces for the first part of the challenge so far. - Paul Stewart, a writer. One half of the temporary twosome of John and Paul, but not Ringo and George.
By Paul Stewart10 months ago in Writers
Parallel Lives Challenge Winners
One small moment, two lives unfolding. In Parallel Lives, writers stepped into the in-between, the crossroads where a single decision can redraw everything. Some followed their characters into dreamlike symmetry, others into chaos, but each story revealed the haunting beauty of what might have been.
By Vocal Curation Team11 months ago in Resources
