Short Story

By Matthew Schmidt When I was seven years old, I watched my grandfather kill himself. It was not the first time I had  witnessed a suicide, and it did not startle me, for they occur frequently in my region. My Grandmother  herself had already taken her life before I was born. The wives always seemed to go before the husbands.  I was not the only one present when my grandfather breathed his last. The whole village had  gathered to watch as the weight of his body tightened the

By Matthew Schmidt In the Fields of Blood, the grandest grave is not that of a king, lord, or soldier. Instead, it is the  resting place of a lowly woman that brightens the decrepit and crumbling headstones which surround it.  Her grave shows no sign of decay, though the headstone is hidden, preventing a thorough assessment of  its condition. The sea of colourful flowers that had once barely protruded over the shortest blades of grass  now towers over the headstone and surrou

By Dave Hite Eyes closed . Deep breath . Exhale . Repeat . The calming repetition of the routine usually casts a drowsy film over its eyes; utter nothingness latching on to its existence. Tonight brought cracks with the growing darkness, though. The now muddled heap could no longer ignore the pressing emotions that threatened to overtake it. They couldn’t cry. There was no release since it was not human; couldn’t feel the ease tears would bring to its damaged soul. An argumen

By Melissa M. Sharp The angel statues wept sharp stones and blunt rocks onto their delicate palms, for liquids cannot flow from marble. Hands crafted by an architect long dead covered such grotesque faces, cleverly painted to hide the truth they refused to face. Pointed teeth, carved intricately, escaped from scowling mouths, often piercing lips torn away just from the simple act of speaking. Or perhaps, only moaning and whining in such irredeemable devastation was all they c

By Melissa M. Sharp If someone told me that humans were not the fastest animal in this world, I would heartily laugh and thank them for a joke I believe was meant to feign ignorance. How am I to know better? Especially when I saw the fastest human—this distorted whirlwind—chasing something incomprehensible.  The muscles in their calves were the first thing that caught my attention. These bulges of power seemed to burst through the seams of the fabric that encased them. This g

By Mudita Pawar It was pouring outside, and Park Aera was still in the office, working late into the night. Her phone rings – 11:45 PM, Seoul “Darling, wish you a very happiest birthday...” her mother’s cheerful voice came through the speaker. Aera chuckled softly. “Mom....it’s 11:45 right now. It’s still 15 minutes to my birthday. Why don’t you and Dad sleep and wish me tomorrow morning?” Mrs. Park gasped in mock offense. “No way! We’re not letting our daughter start her bir

By Mudita Pawar “Yeeaaahhh! Life is so good!” Kim Yuhan shouted over the thumping music, his voice slurred with alcohol and laughter. He threw back his twentieth shot like it was water.  Every Saturday night was the same—music, flashing lights, and the illusion that he was untouchable. Eunwoo grinned and handed him another glass. “Bro, this one’s on you!” Yuhan downed it in one gulp, the liquid fire burning his throat. The crowd around them cheered, but before he could reach

By Nolan Corbett Cindy yelped, kicking back from the grasping hands. Pinning her hands to either side of the shadowed red tunnel, and bracing the soles of her shiny pink boots to either side, she clambered backwards barely keeping out of reach of the flailing limbs. Cindy’s arms trembled as the tunnel’s path grew steeper, slowing her accent. A tiny pink hand slammed down between her splayed legs and slowly began to trail towards her booted foot. She was caught.  The loud crun

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 Mallika Badwal The dream is always the same. A woman standing in a dark room; her hands covered in blood, dripping onto the floor. She just smiled, “I did it for you, Theodore.” I’d try to speak, but when I did, I would wake up, gasping for air. I sat up in bed, covered in cold sweat, trying to calm down. The dream felt too real this time; it burned into my mind like a scar. I ran a hand through my damp hair, trying to shake the feeling of her hands, her bloody, calm hands

By Mallika Badwal Some days, I wake up, and the world feels smaller than I remember. I think about my life in fragments, pieces of the past that never quite fit together neatly. Memory is a strange thing; it stretches and bends, leaving some moments impossibly striking and others buried in the back of my mind that I can never fully grasp.   There is a peculiar ache in remembering, not because it saddens me, but the kind of ache from remembering things that can never be recove

By Peter Ellis Evaristus sat in the corner of his new home’s local cafe; its inner walls were lined with oak wood and the windows stretched from the floor to the ceiling. There were a few people dotted around the chairs and tables, a few young parents, and some older folk reuniting based on their slightly elevated volume of conversation. Apparently, cafes were quite popular in “modern times”. Hades had informed them that these “modern times” were several thousand years beyond

By Pierakis Pieri February 24, 2025 Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc, Antibes “Me and you. Just us two. Play the game.” Fifty thousand thoughts a day, I hear. Forty-eight per minute. And these are the ones that rise to the surface, bobbing up through the decades like persistent debris. I bite my lip, the memory of those words still acid-sharp. I sit perfectly composed in my tailored pantsuit, only my hands betraying tension as they rest on my lap. The journalist from Le Jeu sits across

By Pierakis Pieri "What weighs more: an instrument that won't play or the song it remembers?" —Question posed at the threshold I. The Prodigal The road to Epidaurus had not changed. Pine and limestone, dust and cicadas, the same narrow curve where tourist buses struggled each summer. Aias walked it in October light, the bouzouki case hitting his spine with each step. Twenty years since music died. Ten since he'd fled this place. The pilgrims had been gathering for weeks—he co

By Mohamed Kashwani In place of the three kingdoms that now live in peace was once the Dawn Dynasty, an  empire that stretched across the lands for as far as the eyes could see. Many have heard this tale  yet they refuse to believe it. Some ask the question: how could an empire so majestic fall so  quickly? Others ask how people were so quick to forget it if it was so mighty and had such an  impact on the world.  The Dawn Dynasty existed for a century and a half, was founded

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 Marisol Aguilar “Child, don't stay out too late, for the farmer who has cattle will take you.”  “Whatever, Grandma.”  The little boy ran out of the house all the way to a hill. He reached the top and saw the view of the town. He sat down and pulled out a book. It contained everything he's interested in. In the distance, he noticed some sheep. He squinted to get a closer look. There was a man near the cattle pen.  The farmer seemed to notice the boy, for a giant smile appea

By Ashley Mason The first cut is always the deepest. The woman took the knife in hand. The sharpened edge of the short blade dug into the pine tree with a precise and deft hand, carving its way through as the delicate peel of softwood fell away. The woman defined rough shapes into the wood, the curled shavings piling up at her bare feet like petals in the worship of her creation. A nose, its bridge crooked, once broken; a brow that carried no woes of the world; sunken sockets

By Ashley Mason Forma /frumô They knew naught where it came from, only that one day it was there. Derkaz / Deorcnes The man could feel the curved stones of the well pressing upon him. His legs ached with an uncomfortable numbness, cramped in the oppressive space, arms laid limp by his sides as if weighed down by an unseen presence. The ground beneath him sodden, with the strong stench of putrid waters that hung in the damp air. He winced to the blinding bloom as he peered sky

By Rebekah Booth The night was warm when Monty climbed out of his bedroom window, hitting the dusty ground with a muffled thump , his heavy satchel bumping his thigh. The house remained silent. He imagined his father snoring away under thin covers, sweating in the stale air, unaware of what his son was up to under the cover of darkness. With a wild grin, Monty raced off in the direction of the church.  It wasn’t long until the dirty old steeple came into view, half-lit by the