Top Stories
New stories you'll love, handpicked for you by our team and updated daily.
Destruction of a Windy Day. Top Story - October 2024.
Far off in the distance, behind the cliff where wind perched, the mountains settled into rolling plains. Across the horizon, a wall began forming, dark and ominous. Made of an entirely different type of cloud then those that rain played in above the ocean or the fluffy ones in whose folds the sun snoozed. Wind knew that hail hid in the dark folds of these vapors and electricity sizzled, waiting to be set free. Storm had come out to play and wind eagerly raced from the cliffside to join in.
By A. J. Schoenfeld2 years ago in Fiction
Slight Opening. Top Story - October 2024. Content Warning.
“There was only one rule: don’t open the door.” I would say this to myself several times a day. Mam would not like it! “Don’t open the door, you little brat!” A slap would soon follow. A punch or maybe more names. I would try to be invisible. As though I did not exist. Yet I still caused her discomfort.
By C. H. Richard2 years ago in Horror
The Sound of Laughter. Top Story - October 2024.
There was only one rule: Don’t open the door. Randy was never one for following rules. From the time he was a child, he did things his way. He never thought about consequences or the personal wellbeing or property of others; he just laughed it off. Every time he got suspended; he laughed. When he got in trouble at home, he laughed. His parents were only too happy to kiss him goodbye when he moved out on his 18th birthday.
By Cathy holmes2 years ago in Horror
The Swallowed One and the Goblin Tree. Top Story - October 2024. Content Warning.
There was only one rule: "Don't open the door." Or so read the warning above the little bronze door at the foot of a fire blackened oak. It was written in a script so perverse that when moonlight set it aglow, even the Gods averted their eyes and the damned shivered and kept clear.
By Call Me Lesabout a year ago in Horror
A Crown in Shadows. Top Story - October 2024.
The river ran backwards on the day the Queen vanished, and it would continue to do so, until her Majesty’s funeral had concluded. The funeral hadn’t yet begun, in fact, the rivers in the Queendom of Lubel running backwards was the first sign to her people that Her Majesty had passed. Members of royalty don’t just vanish in Lubel, it is the first of the three stages of a Monarch’s death.
By Liam Storm2 years ago in Fiction
Word Steak. Top Story - October 2024.
There was only one rule: don’t open the door. “We know we can’t touch it,” Leeson Noble announced. “Why, Dad? We’ve tried everything else. the window’s clamped shut. There’s only one way to escape this library. That’s through the door,” Gaston Noble replied. Leeson grabbed his son’s arm, prohibiting his advance.
By Skyler Saunders2 years ago in Horror
In the Closet with Monsters . Runner-up in Spooky Micro Challenge. Top Story - October 2024.
There was only one rule: don’t open the door. It’s a rule I made up, but Biter never wants to listen. He pushes me out of the way and jiggles the doorknob with his filthy devil’s claws just to hear the moans of fear from the other side. Even though it used to be my room on the other side of the door, Biter says little boys like me can’t make rules for things like him.
By J. Otis Haas2 years ago in Horror
Succession Crisis. Top Story - October 2024.
The river ran backwards on the day the Queen vanished. The Speakers claimed it to be a sign from their three faced God, a divine message calling for a return to the Ecclesiarchy. But few listened, and those that did died in droves.
By Alexander McEvoy2 years ago in Fiction
The Game. Top Story - October 2024. Content Warning.
My head throbs. As my senses begin to return, I realize I'm intensely cold - and I smell something burning. Not wood; more like – yes, like meat. A shudder overtakes me and I realize I'm naked, and somehow suspended, hanging by bound wrists, but my feet are flat on something. What the fuck?
By Dana Crandell2 years ago in Horror
The Thief of magical stories. Top Story - October 2024.
'The river ran backwards on the day the Queen vanished.' Queen Justia of the very successful "Ye Olde Quaint Story Emporium", a city of magical story writers, was nowhere to be found. Someone must have snatched her sometime between "Storytide and Midnighthush", when the authors finally relinquished their pens, closed their eyes and slumbered, while dreaming of sugar plum stories and storks bearing babies made entirely of thousand dollar bills.
By Antoni De'Leon2 years ago in Fiction
We Never Did. Top Story - October 2024.
There was one rule: don't open the door. That one rule overshadowed our lives since we had moved into our makeshift annexe of a home—not that our lives were much at all. Pariahs, outcasts, we were designed for destruction and existed for experimentation and extermination. Though we lived in fear of our sorry mortal coils being unwound, we tried to live positively.
By Paul Stewart2 years ago in Horror
The Voice. Top Story - October 2024.
There was only one rule: don’t open the door. “Honey? Dinner’s ready.” Maggie had huddled herself in the furthest corner of her room, palms against her ears to muffle her mother’s voice. Tears had been streaming down her cheeks, choking back every sob threatening to shred her throat.
By Nicole Fenn2 years ago in Horror
Sensational II Challenge Winners
‘We wore that summer as perfume’ runs the final line of Ava Mack’s winning poem for our Sensational II Challenge, ‘Fifteen’. One of the toughest aspects of any kind of writing is ‘sticking the landing’, to borrow a term from gymnastics, and Mack’s lovely little poem does just that, keeping to our rubric but adding the flourish of a perfect closing image.
By Vocal Curation Team2 years ago in Resources
