Aspen Noble
Bio
I draw inspiration from folklore, history, and the poetry of survival. My stories explore the boundaries between mercy and control, faith and freedom, and the cost of reclaiming one’s own magic.
Achievements (10)
Stories (107)
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Cicada Year. Runner-Up in The Summer That Wasn’t Challenge.
The cicadas started screaming the day after they dropped him off. They hadn’t even pulled back onto the highway before the noise hit, a dense, buzzing, everywhere. Like the earth was trying to talk but didn’t know how to speak.
By Aspen Noble6 months ago in Fiction
Dead Man's Playlist: Chapter 10
Junie hadn’t gone back into the storeroom since the incident. She told herself it was silly. Chalk it up to a long shift, a shadow, a weird customer with a weirder sense of humor. The basement light had always flickered. The man could’ve just looked like someone she once saw in a dream. The way trauma warped memory, it was a known thing.
By Aspen Noble6 months ago in Chapters
Dead Man's Playlist: Chapter 9
Junie woke to the smell of toasted bagels and the quiet hum of morning radio. For a moment, she let herself pretend things were normal. That she’d just overslept, that she hadn’t vanished for days with nothing but a cryptic note and a trail of records to explain her absence. But the illusion broke the moment she opened her door and saw Sasha in the kitchen, stirring honey into her tea.
By Aspen Noble6 months ago in Chapters
Dead Man's Playlist: Chapter 8
Junie woke later, sunlight filtering through the blinds in stripes that cut across her quilt like old scars. Her room felt heavier than usual, as if the fight from the night before had soaked into the walls and refused to dry out. She lay still for awhile, starting at the ceiling fan, watching it do slow, lazy circles.
By Aspen Noble6 months ago in Chapters
Dead Man's Playlist: Chapter 7. Content Warning.
The city looked different coming back. Not bigger or smaller. Just...duller. Like someone had turned the saturation down on everything. The neon signs she used to find charming buzzed too loud. The sidewalks felt sticky. Everything smelled like bus brakes and too many people pretending to be somewhere else.
By Aspen Noble6 months ago in Chapters
Dead Man's Playlist: Chapter 6
The next morning was thick with fog. Junie stood on the porch, blanket over her shoulders, coffee in hand, and watched the trees disappear into soft gray nothing. The lake was a pale blur. The birds were quiet, and even the wind seemed cautious. She hadn't played a record yet. She hadn't written in her journal either.
By Aspen Noble6 months ago in Chapters
Dead Man's Playlist: Chapter 5
The cabin creaked in the wind like it was remembering something. Junie woke up just before dawn, her dreams still clinging to her skin like mist off the lake. They hadn't been nightmares, just soft echoes. Her father's voice had threaded through them, but never fully spoke. She remember his hands, though. Always just out of reach.
By Aspen Noble6 months ago in Chapters
The Last Broadcast. Runner-Up in The Second First Time Challenge.
The studio smelled the same. Dust and coffee grounds. Hot plastic and cracked leather. The stale breath of stories long exhaled into a microphone. When Adrian slipped the key into the lock, a key no one had asked him to return, he felt the years roll back. For a moment, he was twenty-six again, jacked on nerves and caffeine, queueing up a bootleg of Gil Scott-Heron with trembling fingers.
By Aspen Noble6 months ago in Fiction
Dead Man's Playlist: Chapter 4
The cabin didn't have Wi-Fi. No cell signal either. Just trees and wind and a lake that glimmered like spilled mercury when the sun hit it right. Junie hadn't seen a car in hours. No voices, no planes overhead, just the sigh of the pines and the hush of water lapping the dock.
By Aspen Noble6 months ago in Chapters
Dead Man's Playlist: Chapter 2
Junie didn't sleep that night. Not from fear. Not exactly. It was something quieter, like someone had knocked a puzzle off a shelf inside her mind and now she couldn't stop picking up the pieces. One by one. Trying to see how they fit.
By Aspen Noble6 months ago in Chapters
