Stream of Consciousness
The Siren of Vanavara
The shack stood out among the snowy forest. Its rotting wooden panels and chipped roof tiles gave way to its dilapidated state. My boots crunched in the thick white powder around me as I drew closer to the door. The windows have been long since boarded up and are caked with dirt. There is no seeing through them to what lies inside. Many people have speculated to the horrors that were locked within those four leaning walls. My mind kept to the idea that it was simply an old shack meant to serve as some sort of a halfway house during travel, or even a temporary lodge for a hunter.
By Gunnar Anderson3 months ago in Fiction
The Night I Realized Love Wasn’t Meant To Save Me
I used to believe love was supposed to be the thing that rescued us. The thing that filled every empty space inside a person. The thing that fixed the parts of life that felt broken. I believed that love was the answer to loneliness, to fear, to the type of quiet sadness that sits in your chest like permanent weight.
By Umar Farooq3 months ago in Fiction
Patch Notes for a Life
It started with a glance through a keyhole that wasn’t a keyhole at all, just a smart panel mounted inside a maintenance closet no one was supposed to open. The door had been left a finger’s width ajar—a cracked mouth in a corridor of quiet—and I was on my night rounds, a janitor-security hybrid with a ring of keys heavy enough to anchor a small boat. The new building had new protocols; the new protocols had new passwords. But the oldest security is human laziness, and someone had propped the closet with a mop to “air it out” and then forgot the mop.
By The Kind Quill3 months ago in Fiction
Avoided Spaces
The reasons you choose to shy away and seal those doors, my dear, only need make sense to you For only you can open the door and welcome the healing. Only you know when to cleanse the heartache and repair the wounds But, be careful not to let those things fester too long, there’s a monster lurking inside of that room. And he wants to press harder, that thorn in your side, so it will slow you down and seal your doom. Stirring dissension and keeping you chained from the freedoms that forgiveness offers, keeping you trapped, all alone and wounded, inside that room ***
By Kelli Sheckler-Amsden3 months ago in Fiction
The Recluse
I sit in the closet with the skeletons. It’s dark here. Grayscale. A single candle lights the room—a flame that I’ve been trying to snuff out for years, but it keeps coming back, like a trick candle on a birthday cake, its only purpose to remind me that I’ve spent another year smothering my dreams. Each time I blow it out, it takes longer and longer to return.
By Aura Starling3 months ago in Fiction
The Market of Beauty — A Woman, A Society, and an Unforgiving Truth
In every era, literature has held up a mirror to its time. Some stories don’t simply entertain; they expose the soul of a society. Among them stands “Bazaar-e-Husn” (The Market of Beauty), a masterpiece by Munshi Premchand — one of the greatest voices in Urdu and Hindi literature.
By hamad khan3 months ago in Fiction
