Series
The hotel laundry has been running itself after midnight
I work laundry for a mid-range chain hotel — the kind with fake marble floors, “continental breakfast,” and carpets that smell faintly like wet dog no matter how often they’re shampooed. My shift’s usually 4 p.m. to 1 a.m., but I’m often the last one here. Nobody wants to be the person closing down the laundry room at night.
By V-Ink Stories3 months ago in Fiction
[UPDATE] I was the only one working the night shift… so who checked in Room 409?
Hey everyone, I didn’t expect my last post to blow up the way it did. I just needed to vent about something weird that happened at work, but apparently, it freaked a lot of people out.
By V-Ink Stories3 months ago in Fiction
I was the only one working the night shift… so who checked in Room 409?
I’ve been working night shifts at a small roadside hotel for about two years now. It’s one of those places off the interstate that looks like it’s been “under renovation” since the ‘90s — faded carpets, buzzing neon vacancy sign, vending machines that still take quarters. It’s quiet most nights, which is exactly how I like it.
By V-Ink Stories3 months ago in Fiction
The Sound of Rain. AI-Generated.
It had been raining for three days straight in Lusaka, and the sound had become a kind of background music to Naomi’s thoughts. She sat by the window of her late father’s house, watching water run down the glass, tracing the same paths over and over again — like memories replaying themselves.
By shakir hamid3 months ago in Fiction
His Freckle Too, Stayed Until Morning
I did not notice it before. That small freckle just beneath his left eye, the one the light always seems to find before I do. How many times have I seen his face and never really seen it? The mark itself is nothing special, really, a speck, a shadow of pigment the sun decided to keep for itself, yet tonight it feels like a secret I have finally been allowed to see.
By Peter Thwing - Host of the FST Podcast3 months ago in Fiction
Megara: The Mechanism of Madness
On the Mechanism Cebes and Atlas are enjoying themselves at their favorite coffee shop after a prodigious session of alcohol consumption. They are coming down from their drunken state but Altas is in a cheerful mood for more, while Cebes is in a melancholy mood questioning his thoughts and emotional state.
By G.A. Sebastián3 months ago in Fiction
The Girl by the Sea – Part 3. AI-Generated.
The days in Havenbrook began to blend into one another, stitched together by the rhythm of waves and the quiet companionship that neither Ethan nor Amelia fully understood. He would find her by the shore each morning, sketching in silence while the gulls cried above. She never asked him why he returned, and he never explained. Sometimes, he brought her seashells without meaning to, setting them beside her like apologies left unspoken. Other times, he simply stood behind her, watching the sea breathe and break. To anyone else, it was nothing—but to them, it was everything. A wordless understanding, fragile but real. Ethan had promised himself he wouldn’t stay, yet with every sunrise, his absence became harder to imagine. Amelia, too, began to feel the quiet tether between them tighten, though she pretended not to notice. Love, she realized, often begins in silence—growing roots beneath the things we never say.
By Yaseen khan3 months ago in Fiction
The Girl by the Sea – Part 2. AI-Generated.
Ethan Cole thought he had mastered the art of vanishing—slipping through places without leaving a trace, never allowing roots to form. But ever since the morning he crossed paths with Amelia Hart, something within him had shifted, quietly and unwillingly. He found himself wandering back to the shoreline where she often sat, her presence lingering in the salt-stained air like a question he refused to answer. He told himself he didn’t care, that she was only a momentary distraction, yet his feet betrayed him, guiding him back to the very place he swore he would not return. Amelia stood once again at the water’s edge, sketchbook resting against her palm, her gaze drifting across the ocean with the softness of someone who believed in things he no longer did—hope, healing, the possibility of gentle endings. When he approached, she didn’t turn to him, yet she felt him, as one feels the first drop of rain before the storm. “You came back,” she said quietly. Ethan’s silence was not agreement, but it was not denial either. He looked at her drawing—the horizon, stretching farther than any man could run. “I don’t stay,” he murmured, almost to himself. “I don’t belong anywhere.”
By Yaseen khan3 months ago in Fiction
