Short Story

By Roshan Tara “You’ve never written me a love letter,” she teased, eyes bright. “Like in old movies. Handwritten. Just once—for my birthday.” He promised. But fate was faster than his pen. She never reached twenty. So he wrote it anyway—poured his heart into paper, tears staining ink—and left it at her grave. Each year, another letter. Another flame inside him. He tells her how the world moves without her, how he doesn’t. Ink keeps flowing. Embers keep glowing. The grave nev

By Hemasri Nithya Chodagiri “I don’t know how I got myself here”. “I'm an ordinary orphan and my name is Henry”. “My dad raised me until I was 10 but after that my dad died in a museum fire and my mom died while giving birth to me”. “Because I had no money to pay rent for the apartment I ended up on the streets. When I was on the streets I found a  small abandoned shed that I could live in.” “While I was living in the shed I spotted a small furniture shop nearby and asked its

By Gaayathri Arasakumar “ Senapathi , move forward, come what may! Let no Deva  or man stop us!” I bellowed over the chaos of the battlefield. Perhaps, Mallan had not heard my cry over the maddening trumpeting of the elephants that were running amok across the vast iciness that had spanned for miles. From metres away, I realised that he stood rooted to the snow that had numbed my feet. The fury that I had stored within me expanded at this sight. How dare he stay still despite

By Harold Kelvin Melchezidek Jensen Today, I think Wendle Collingwood loves me. What makes me think this isn’t by some ‘great revelation’ but by a gradual piecing together, kind of like a puzzle in my head. Now if a stranger were to be asked to identify the piecing of the puzzle, I’m sure they would always get it wrong from Wendle’s treatment and attitude toward me, which always seem like he hates me. He really is a kind individual who cares a lot for other people, like how h

By Emily Blanco The air was cold and heavy with silence so complete it felt intentional, as though the world was holding its breath for him in anticipation. Their lessons carved deep and fading, the stones stood before him like Silent scholars who offered more patience and comfort than the living ever had. He’d written hundreds of pages on human virtue and morality as it seemed, yet none on forgiveness of the soul, convinced himself that morality could be measured in words. N

By Nolan Corbett She will die. I will pull, tear, break, split, and chew until she is pulp. I will bury her whilst she still wriggles, and delight as my roots caress her final shudders. For her gift of endless, amber orange, every second, day, hour, and YEAR I’ve rotten in this crystalline coffin, I will gift her naught but red.  Now, finally, I hear a voice. A voice not of mine but of them, of her. A muffled muttering, indecipherable but unmistakable. Finally I will be relea

By Penny Gurner The street art paints a raven, I know that, but I can’t see it from here – just a blast of colour broken up by rusting autumn leaves. A stranger once told me Ravens represent the past, present, and future colliding in the moment you’re experiencing; the hologram unfolding. I look at the colours through tears as another relationship faces a reckoning.  He caught my eye, just as “the Old Fairy” had with her snake-green eyes, “Pork Chop” the sex worker, and Cleop

By Tia Cox The living room stirred with excitement and happiness; it's the holidays after all. Family was chatting, friends were humming along with the music, everyone was just having a good time. The house smelt of festive foods, and Christmas decorations littered the halls, filling each room with the Christmas cheer. Anna hadn't really been in the mood for all this celebration, so she had hidden herself away in the corner of the room with a book. Mikhail, on the other hand,

By Foo Yee Ching (Althea Reese) Chapter 1 Graduation  Singapore, July 2012 Since young, her parents had ingrained in Sarah Tang the significance of a good education. It is a passport to a bright future, they say.  Like several others in her cohort, Sarah had undergone the necessary rite of passage; a year in nursery, two years in kindergarten, six years in primary school, four years in secondary school. She also enrolled in a junior college for two years, and undergraduate st

By Foo Yee Ching (Althea Reese) Chapter 1 Father Losing Consciousness Singapore, August 2021 For approximately a fortnight, Tang Ruiyan kept a watchful eye on her father with apprehension. His gait had become unsteady, his steps uncertain as he moved around in his home, a five-room flat on the third floor of a block in Serangoon, the north east region of Singapore. It was as if the floor beneath him had subtly shifted, and he might lose his balance at any time. She discerned

By Althea Reese Chapter 1 A Storm Brewing Beneath the Scalp Singapore, 2004 On a Saturday evening, Fang Zhiyi, 24, eagerly awaited at the void deck of her Tampines block for her friend, Edwina Neo, 24, to pick her up. Zhiyi could hardly contain her excitement. They were heading to Pasir Ris beach.  A fair-complexioned woman with contemplative eyes, a sharp nose, a long fringe, shoulder-length hair about 1.56 metres tall, Zhiyi has loved beaches since she was young.  Zhiyi don

By Maggie Jones You should know by the name of this tale that it will be one of woe, so when I tell you the name of the town we will be staying in for the duration, do not get your hopes up. The town of Fairview was established in the early 1900s by a Nazi War Criminal who escaped Europe in the early 1940s before the fall of the Third Reich. This man had no sense of stability or structure, no sense of business, and the people who came in after him did naught to improve the to

By Melisande Corlett They tell me the pen is stronger than the sword, so here I am writing in pursuit of justice, with expectations of change. But as my hands grow weak from expressing the constant thoughts that transfer from my mind I seem to be running out of things to say. The ink in my pen is filled with the black blood of those tragically slain by pale faces and the ink in my pen is down to its last drop. Please don’t misinterpret my previous statement, it's just that we

By Gazi Spandon Orin By Gazi Spandon Orin

By Nayana Patel  iNTRODUCTION It all started with a war… a war that resulted in unweeding garden that grows on seed…both the Shadow Zenades and the Khazians who were once the golden sword that guarded the heavens, the moon that was the ligature that used to bind hearts together, the two different clans that were as though they were a single body. But perhaps they were not meant to be together. They say hate that comes from love is worse than what u think it could be. Oh the m

By Garima Joshi The alarm rang at 6 a.m. Janvi stepped out of her single-room paying guest accommodation into a morning thick with fog and a chilly wind that ripped straight through the door. “Bloody hell,” she groaned, zipping up her hoodie. Delhi winters had always been harsh. It was just that a year ago, she could rejoice in these misty mornings, walking in the lush green lawns of North Campus without much worry. So much has changed since. As she bent to pick up The Hindu

By Riya Yadav The clocks had stopped the day her father died. Elara stood in the dim shop, surrounded by hundreds of silent pendulums and glass domes, their brass hearts stilled mid-tick. The smell of oil and dust lingered — like time had paused to mourn. On the wall, above the counter where her father once smiled without really smiling, a single clock ticked backward. Tick… tock. Tock… tick. At first, she thought it was broken. But every night at midnight, the hands reversed

By Mahathi Vinodkrishna In a land far away, from which I have escaped and found solace, there is wreckage. Human skeletons lie scattered across the floors, and across the unblemished musical instruments, blood is smeared. For a land of music, it was awfully tranquil. Back when I was inhabited in this graveyard, it was serene, the land of our dreams. Yet, it turned into our nightmare; you may call it a battleground. I was a young musician, driven by nothing but nature and simp

By Kalpana Kumari I was nine when Fiza released. My mother took my sister and me to a theatre in Nehru Place, Delhi, along with my Masi and her kids. I was the youngest. Before that day, I would often try to understand films that spoke of things beyond my world, about people, politics, or pain, but the meanings always escaped me. My mother would smile and say that some films were meant to be understood only when we were older. But Fiza was different. It was the first movie of

By Parthavi The bustling town and the calm village collided at the lane; the village ended there, and the town began. Standing at this border on a foggy, quiet morning was the old widow. The town gave her bread, the village gave her shelter. She was known for her little tricks — some called them ‘magic’. Carrying two pots in her hands, she waited for people to convene. Many puzzled faces paused there; she kept the pots in the center of the lane. One was marked with “For women