Top Stories
Stories in Fiction that you’ll love, handpicked by our team.
The Silence That Follows. Content Warning.
“Silence is not the absence of something but the presence of everything . . . It is the presence of time, undisturbed. It can be felt within the chest. Silence nurtures our nature, our human nature, and lets us know who we are. Left with a more receptive mind and a more attuned ear, we become better listeners not only to nature but to each other. Silence can be carried like embers from a fire. Silence can be found, and silence can find you. Silence can be lost and also recovered. But silence cannot be imagined, although most people think so. To experience the soul-swelling wonder of silence, you must hear it.”― Gordon Hempton
By Paul Stewart2 years ago in Fiction
When Powers of Sun Magnified. Runner-up in Summer Solstice Challenge.
After childhood years spent listening to these stories at the feet of Nana Belle, great aunts and great uncles, this part (my part) became both easy and hard. Easy when you grow up to become a writer. Hard knowing the oral traditions steeped in a history vast enough to eclipse the oldest mariner’s voyage are in danger of being lost simply because no one sits still to listen anymore.
By The Dani Writer2 years ago in Fiction
The Solstice in Bad Gumption
‘How do we go about it?’ The group of three men and one boy shifted from foot to foot around a bonfire spluttering sparks in the bone chilling drizzle, a few hefty stones sitting amid the flames. They were thinking about all the time it took to get it going in this weather. Someone sniffed, someone coughed. They all felt cold and uneasy standing at the edge of the fields sprawling in front of them in the dusk, with their backs to the dripping birches surrounding the cemetery.
By Katarzyna Popiel2 years ago in Fiction
The Harvest
Koyi wobbled to her shabby wood and straw kaz, holding her machete and an old burlap bag with some yams. Someone had laid another basket in front of the patched up door—rose apples today. They were a bright reddish pink, looking waxy and crisp, just the way she liked them. The culprit knew her very well. Those would be crunchy, juicy and sweet—she could tell—but she gathered all the will she could muster and pushed the basket aside to enter her home. She had already said no repeatedly and would not be taking bribes.
By Lily Séjor2 years ago in Fiction
Timothy. Content Warning.
My fingers inch closer to the keyboard, itching to obliterate a day's worth of work. It's some of my best writing I've done to date, but at what cost? The words seem to bleed, dripping onto my desk. For a millisecond, I'm sitting in front of a crime scene, looking at dead, begging eyes. Why? Why me?
By Alexandria Stanwyck2 years ago in Fiction
The Spring
The sun was high when Lance pulled off the road and into the dusty lot of the service station. The sign back at the hairpin--the first sign in a long time--said they just rolled into Hatter’s Creek, Population 63. It was small enough it didn’t appear on the handmap in Shelby’s lap, yet here it stood, the first backwater township on the fringes of the National Park. The plan was to gas up, restock the snack bag, and press on into the wilderness.
By Zack Graham2 years ago in Fiction
The Waiting Room
They had already completed their nightly travels and tasks. Now it was simply a matter of waiting for the time to transition. Sandra stood at the back of the room, leaning against a back wall where she could watch the others. A consummate people-watcher, Sandra always found it interesting to imagine who the others were and what they had been doing all night. It was rare for her to encounter someone she knew in the Waiting Room, though she often stumbled upon friends or family members in the execution of her own nightly adventures. Now, though, as she passed her eyes over the room, she felt there was someone she knew somewhere nearby.
By Suzy Jacobson Cherry2 years ago in Fiction
181 Keeping Watch
Each day she watched through her window. Watched? Perhaps an exaggeration: a monochromatic nuclear aftermath remaining of the world, blurring into a blindness--loss of contrast and depth of field. Achromatic aberrations displayed a waste-scape stratified in grays.
By Gerard DiLeo2 years ago in Fiction
Take Me With You
I've been here, my love. Watching, waiting. I've wanted to come to you, but I can't seem to break free of these wrought iron bars. You must have looked upon my face at least a hundred times these last few months, yet your face never once lit up for me. Not the way I know mine does for you. It's like you didn't recognize me anymore.
By Kenny Penn2 years ago in Fiction
