Latest Stories

Most recently published stories in Fiction.

The Sun Always Follows the Storm
Traffic was steady on I-75 North. It was a brisk spring day in northern Michigan. Naomi was about thirty minutes from the Mackinaw bridge. This would be the entry way for her new life. The doorway open to be able find herself again, while the other shutting out the suffering of her past. Her hands were gripping the steering wheel so tight, her knuckles started to swell. She couldn’t help thinking if she was making the right decision. Naomi was pandering the same thought the whole entire eight-hour trip. Is it worth to drop everything to start over again? And there it was, the bridge. As soon as she laid eyes on it, she knew it was her only hope for an escape.
By Taylor Isler5 years ago in Fiction
Promised
He heard a faint snap off to his left. Stopping, he tilted his ear to listen further, lifting the brim of his darkened boonie hat slightly with his finger. His other hand slowly moved to his hip, coming to rest on the top of the kydex holster that housed his sidearm. The silence weighed heavy around him, and his lack of motion contributed to the eerie peace he had found himself in. Calculations zipped through his mind, a reflex at this point.
By Robert Plante5 years ago in Fiction
Without A View
Missing the days when the soot was thick throughout the air. Time seemed to inch by as slowly as the black particles laced through the atmosphere hung about. Those days, there was really no sunshine and one would choke to breathe without an apparatus - the constant coldness from lack of solar heat was the new normal and those remaining on earth had grown to accept it. To think back on those days, it was manageable because we could still go outside. Supplements, gas masks, warm clothes moving about - we even learned to grow food and filter water with strictly limited sunlight. We all waited for the days of the black ash to finally clear, however we never knew what waited for us on the other side of that clearing. Little did anyone know, not even those left behind who were The Experts, who had helped humanity move from the months of nonstop nuclear bombing and destruction of our planet to almost evisceration and then to sooty blackness, knew.
By Jill5 years ago in Fiction
Why there's a Pomegranate in My Face
This’ll be my last entry here. Due to recent, obvious circumstances, I won’t be filling this out again, It won’t be of much use anyway. Just a buildup of mediocre observations, all leading up to what the title says. Speaking of the title, you’ve probably read and thought, “He doesn’t mean that literally, right? I do. I literally have a pomegranate rooted in my face. No, I don’t know why it got there, it just appeared after waking up from a long day. Whether science or magic, it doesn’t matter now. Removing it by cutting it out, just makes another one grow in its place. Doesn’t hurt, and I can't feel it either. So, now that I’ve clarified all that, let’s go over the question I can answer: How did we get here? Let’s tell that story.
By Nnamdi5 years ago in Fiction
Doomsday Diary
We run into the house. My mother immediately yells at me to get down into the basement. I look out the window. The sky is dark, but it looks like an average day in the middle of nowhere. “Violet,” my mother pushes me, “go downstairs.” I climb down the old, green, carpeted stairs. The basement looks exactly the same. We have only been here twice since we inherited this cabin from my grandfather ten years ago, but it still smells like him, like ivory soap and cigars.
By Allison Claye Williams5 years ago in Fiction
The Sweet Smell of Success
The Sweet Smell of Success Even before the Migration, the folks of Hays hated the stench of the B & G processing plant with a passion. Day or night, whenever the brisk winds of the rough Kansas prairie shifted to the north, the air would push the putrid stench down the hill and into the unsuspecting noses of decent folk. The entire community was constantly complaining about it, of course. Every month or so the crowds would press the city fathers to do something. Anything. Hell, on some days, the smell could literally bring tears to your eyes, even burn your nostrils if you inhaled it deeply enough. Most folks could hardly stand it.
By James McMechan5 years ago in Fiction
JACKBOOT
The night was cold and oppressive, with a light drizzle falling between the dark and broken building s surrounding the trash strewn alley way. The moon was hidden, the street lights barely illumining the main road through the misting rain. Inquisitor Jacob Wellman snuggled in deeper to his light grey trench coat, eyes fixated on the apartment building across the street. A bum laid out near him next to a festering dumpster snoring softly. Under his coat the heat of his body was trapped by his black tactical gear while the cold rain slid down his back. A light submachine gun was strapped across his chest, hidden in the folds of his coat. A cigarette burned softly, the light haze of smoke drifting away into the night.
By Timothy Williams5 years ago in Fiction
The Other Side Of Paradise.
April 15, 2020: News broadcaster - “CDC and government officials have declared this a global pandemic and urge everyone to remain in lockdown. Mask are required along with a social distance of six feet when around others. Stay tuned at 11:00 for further coverage on the COVID-19 pandemic.”
By Yovin Chevere5 years ago in Fiction
The Warden
Mina walked slowly with deliberate steps, careful not to leave her charge behind. Deliberately separating her hands, she used one to gesture to an archway to the right. “This wing consists mostly of artifacts from The World That Was.” She watched carefully as the young girl’s bright green eyes widened and her skin fell just a shade paler behind her freckles. Girl, Mina thought to herself, just because she is in her twenties and you are well past them.
By Lyssa Maher-Felton5 years ago in Fiction
Unholy Ground
We gather by the city’s dead eye. ‘It used to be a ride before it fell,’ says the salesman, cigarette smoke curling from between his lips, ‘before everything crumbled. An amusement. People used to come and go up into the sky and look down at it all.’
By TDH Evans5 years ago in Fiction
Gold on all sides
After swallowing it he continued to squint at her pixelated neckline, looking for blemishes and wondering if he would outlast the old laptop. Wasn’t there something almost cunning to her curation—the pictures all felt deeply serendipitous even though he knew none of them were. The strangest thing hadn’t been the realization itself, that any ritual of closure should reflect not the heights but the median of his spent time, his daydreamed scrolling, but the clarity with which he’d remembered the laptop and hard drive that morning, and known only then precisely what he would be doing during this period of twenty minutes approximately.
By S. J. R.5 years ago in Fiction
Contamination
The city is desolate. Ruined. I stand on a hill overlooking it, my hand straying up to shade my eyes. The Contamination has wiped out all large bodies of civilization, leaving few survivors scrounging in the wilderness. The huge cityscapes are abandoned and emptied, with piles of deserted or contaminated belongings strewn through the streets.
By Bella Kuckel5 years ago in Fiction