Top Stories
Stories in Fiction that you’ll love, handpicked by our team.
Leave the Light On. Runner-Up in Leave the Light On Challenge. Content Warning.
“You have a visitor.” The facilitator stood in front of two heavy velvet curtains that gathered in bunches on the floor. He was almost as tall as the curtains were high, and he stood with such stillness that it appeared to the mystic that this man could have simply evaporated into the deep red abyss that hung behind him. His suit was Italian and tailored to his body with precision; something to be expected by the governing forces of this establishment. While the room these two briefly shared was intimately-sized—not uncommon in this profession—the mystic could never clearly make out the face of her facilitator. Either the lights were too low, or he was too corrupted. Probably the latter, she figured. She was never able to read the facilitators. Good enough for them.
By Kaitlin Oster7 months ago in Fiction
Fearful, sensory AI Foibles.
Somewhere Between the acceptance of AI and Myself...there hums a melody caught in neon lights, of question marks, interspersed with introspection and ambiguity. It suggests a liminal space, a blurred boundary between identity and artificiality, thought and algorithm. A conceptual direction we desperately need to explore.
By Antoni De'Leon7 months ago in Fiction
Still Life, With Peaches. Content Warning.
The house waited at the end of the gravel road, sunlit and still. Nothing stirred but dust in the wind. From the car, it might have been any summer of his boyhood. The porch slouched in the late afternoon light, the swing held its crooked smile. Ivy had taken the railings entirely.
By Oula M.J. Michaels7 months ago in Fiction
Whinberries
I still remember how he looked, hunched over the wireless, late on that Sunday morning. It's my most abiding memory of him. His shirt, the mended one with blue stripes, was open at the cuffs and rolled back to his elbows, showing his sturdy, brown forearms.
By L.C. Schäfer7 months ago in Fiction
Row, Row, Row You’re Boat
She hated Summer with a deep passion for many reasons. One of the biggest reasons, was that in Summer, besides the baking heat, it would only go dark later in the evening, which made it hard to go to sleep, and Molly needed her sleep to function.
By Elizabeth Butler7 months ago in Fiction
Not my wake
A lone Kookaburra’s raucous laugh splits the silent dawn. Soon, it’s solo performance swells to a trio, then a quartet. Birdsong rings from all sides of the stand of eucalyptus trees. Nature’s alarm clock at its best! Blinking away the last vestiges of sleep, I readily relinquish my grip on my weirdly recurring dream. Everyone had been panicking over an asteroid heading straight for earth. How bizarre! Such a random disaster to conjure up in my dreams nightmares.
By Angie the Archivist 📚🪶7 months ago in Fiction
When True North Fails. Honorable Mention in Everything Looks Better From Far Away Challenge.
1101 North Highland Street. A nice place, briefly. It was only a month before everything went wacky and began breaking. The AC failed. Pipes burst behind walls. The basement flooded. Our Internet went offline. HomeShield Insurance Company dropped us. It was as if some cosmic anomaly of evil plasma had settled onto the realty, altering the reality—of rules and commonsense observation—down to the atoms.
By Gerard DiLeo7 months ago in Fiction
Where is Daisy?
The colour of the leaves turned to burnt sienna around the edges. Some were green and strong, sporting no change. Some were sheltered and yellow. But others flew to the ground in despair as they waited for our feet to crush them, their parts caught in the crevices underneath our shoes. Turning to grains falling away as we walked. The odd ones stuck to the bottom, refusing to let go.
By Caitlin Charlton7 months ago in Fiction
The Lavender Hour
The hillside was bathed in lavender light, the kind that only appeared at the edge of summer evenings. The grass swayed gently, touched by a breeze that smelled faintly of salt and honeysuckle. In the distance, the ocean shimmered like glass, and the sky was so clear it felt painted.
By Liz Burton7 months ago in Fiction
