Top Stories
New stories you'll love, handpicked for you by our team and updated daily.
Watching Death's Door. Top Story - October 2026.
Darkened mind, disheartened find. Streaming tears, flowing fears. Sunken dreams, drunken screams. I am spiraling down this rabbit hole as I sit here waiting for death's door to open. There is no light at that door; it’s dark, a cave with no end. My eyes are bruised with nightmares—no sleep day or night. The outbursts are lonely, hurtful, and degrading. I feel forgotten, left behind.
By Rick Henry Christopher 7 days ago in Poets
You Are Here Challenge Winners
For You Are Here , we asked writers to put readers somewhere they weren't supposed to be. What really stood out in the stories that placed was how often that line wasn't so clear. Sometimes you knew you were pushing your luck, sometimes you had every right to be there, and sometimes you didn't get much of a choice. Writing in second person made those situations feel a lot harder to watch from the sidelines.
By Vocal Curation Team7 days ago in Resources
Reckoning Tree, Remembering Tree. Top Story - October 2026.
It was the first nip of the season. Hal reached into his closet--the one with the two-tiered horizontal poles holding different seasons’ coats. He only needed to reach along the bottom rung to the coats and jackets used for light winter and rain. There was no need for the ladder yet to move down the ones for the severe winter temperatures to come and the snow.
By Gerard DiLeo9 days ago in Humans
Killing Flies with Honey. Top Story - October 2026.
It was a beautiful summer evening. The sun—though it had been scorching all afternoon—now sank toward the horizon, letting the air cool slowly and steadily. Even so, it was definitely too hot to go for a run in anything more than a pair of anti-chafe leggings and a supportive sports bra. Delilah couldn’t resist her preferred basic black and hoped the temperature under the forest canopy would compensate for her fashion choice.
By Ophelia Keane Braeden8 days ago in Horror
Don't Call Me... Ever. Top Story - October 2026.
I’ve occasionally played around with the idea of writing a story in dialogue only. Recently, I became aware of a situation that, as wrong as it was, felt right to tell in dialogue format. This is the fictionalized version of that story.
By Liz Montano11 days ago in Futurism
The Hidden Problem With Patient Empowerment. Top Story - October 2026.
For years I searched for a doctor who would listen... I mean, really, actively listen. Fruitlessly searching, for a doctor who would believe what had happened to me, from way back in 1972...
By Jonathan Townend12 days ago in Psyche
Honoring Black Inventors everywhere.. Top Story - October 2026.
Honoring Black Inventors I am just as surprised as some readers may be at discovering the myriad of everyday inventions we take for granted, never knowing how they came to be. I am sharing some of these ideas by amazing people we never hear about. Let's begin with some of these smart Black women.
By Novel Allen10 days ago in Writers
The Bridge into Eternity. Top Story - October 2026.
Midnight opened over the crossing like a book forbidden to the living. He entered, carrying the last remnants of a life he had mistaken for his own. The phantoms waited in the distance, each one a chapter death had declined to read. Their garments stirred in the dark, and the years gathered around them like mourners at an unmarked grave. He turned toward the world he knew. The road had vanished. Only the endless passage remained, stretching through a darkness that seemed to have existed before creation. He walked. One phantom bore the sorrow of a lost love. Another held the face of his forgotten youth. A third offered the terrible sum of every hour surrendered to fear, every tenderness abandoned, every life he had been too frightened to live. The dead required no confession. Their presence alone was judgment. Farther along, a final figure waited, dressed in the blackness of the grave. He knew that figure, knew the terrible recognition of a life approaching its conclusion. It was himself, released from every illusion that had sustained him. He crossed the final stretch and waited for the world to end. The bridge continued into darkness. From the opposite distance, another traveler appeared, walking toward the phantoms with the solemn certainty of a man who had mistaken the beginning of his journey for its end.
By Tim Carmichael10 days ago in Poets
Ashes. Top Story - October 2026.
Whenever I come back here, I want to be sixteen again. Or is it just a natural craving to want to feel those reckless burns beneath the soles of my feet? The desire of wanting to be young again entangled with the wrath of all of my deepest memories. Being in this house, after over a decade, has the acid in my belly turning. The bitter taste of resentment slides up my throat, my mouth filling with saliva, no where to spit except onto the old wooden floor. The last time my insides hit this floor was after a couple shots of Kettle and a joint. He made me smoke that night. He made me do a lot of things I didn’t want to back then. Even after all this time, I still know exactly which steps on his staircase creak, and which ones will get me to the top without his mother ever knowing he was sneaking me into her lovely, quiet, little home.
By tatiana vitas10 days ago in Writers
The House October Built. Top Story - October 2026.
I'm writing from your favorite place- can you guess where I am? The trip here was lined with all the homes I've ever lived in, and as I walked past, the lights in each one came on. The night was crisp and unquenchable, acorns grown soft underfoot, the smell of ozone from rain in the air mingling with the char of woodsmoke. The beauty of it disguised the truth- this all is a waiting room for loss, a lane lit with endless nostalgia like that last, peaceful dream before the final sleep. voices echo more here, the days winding ever shorter, coming to an inevitable conclusion like the last time you breathed out and failed to breathe in. Inside this house not quite a home, warm bedside light shines out of the crack beneath each door, down an endless hall. In the peaks of the trees, the crows ha and call (when the boughs rock, the cradle will fall). Here, you can count the minutes of dwindling light accumulating in the shadow that trails longer behind you; the day it breaks away, it leaves you with a feeling without a name. We're in that limbic time where the heat hasn't kicked on yet, and I wander through the drafty pre-dawn mornings like the very last ghost in an empty machine. the clock, which hasn't yet sprung back, creeps ever forward. My hands are steady when there's no one to watch me drink, to tip the tablespoons of shining gold liquid into my cup until it runneth over. the full moon outside? they call that a hunter's moon. it hunts me through the windowpanes as I hunt the vestiges of you. This house has many rooms and each time I leave one, the memory dissipates, slides into the cracks of my brain, burns on the pavement below. Here is where I sleep in different quilted beds and dream choose-your-own-adventure dreams only to wake in hallways, candle burnt down to my scarred fist. Everything is a parody of my everyday aesthetic, as if to say, I know you and you're a joke . Every time I bend to look under a door, to follow the thin knife of light, items I didn't know I was carrying fall from my hands, scatter like the feet of mechanical creatures. I am not lost here but I am certainly not found. I feel increasingly like a dream someone else can't stop having. The slight breeze from the last seventy-degree day ripples the surface of my heart. Soon will be the time of dying, the time of calls you never hoped to receive and hospital rooms, crumpled leaves and bare trees. This is only the deep wardrobe leading up to it - lined with treasure, warmth and nostalgia like the tunnel to Narnia except Narnia is just a replay of that one brother's betrayal, over and over, a multi-stabbing from a sugared blade. 31. There are 31 rooms. I think I'm fading, even as my reflection inside the mirror grows brighter. It’s time to lift it off the wall and see what’s behind.
By Raistlin Allen12 days ago in Poets
The Final Words. Top Story - October 2026.
My time has come. After 114 years on this mortal coil, I can feel it deep down in my bones. I’m bedridden and unable to move. My eyesight is slipping as is my hearing. I’ve been in this bed for so long that I welcome this eternal transition that’s about to happen to me.
By Dean Traylor12 days ago in Fiction
Between Bands. Top Story - October 2026.
There’s a reason the radio station frequencies only end in odd numbers on FM and zero on AM. The technical reasons – the reasons they give on paper and publish “officially” – claim it’s to avoid interference from other radio stations and to give each broadcaster enough space to send all of their message. It makes sense, for each person, company, or transmission to have their own dedicated “band” just for themselves. Everything in its place, and a place for everything.
By Taylor Inman10 days ago in Horror
