Top Stories
New stories you’ll love, handpicked for you by our team and updated daily.
Still Life, With Peaches. Content Warning.
The house waited at the end of the gravel road, sunlit and still. Nothing stirred but dust in the wind. From the car, Stephen could almost believe it hadn’t changed. The porch slouched gently in the late afternoon light, the swing held its crooked smile. Ivy climbed the railings as if time had simply paused to let it grow.
By Oula M.J. Michaels6 months ago in Fiction
SWS: Things You Can’t Say Out Loud Challenge Winners
Welcome back to the Summer Writing Series, and to a challenge that asked you to cross a line most of us avoid. For Things You Can’t Say Out Loud, we invited you to give voice to the things that usually stay tucked away. The quiet fears, the buried truths, the words that sting a little too much to say aloud. From quiet reckonings and family tensions to grief, shame, and raw defiance, these poems didn’t hold back, and neither did you.
By Vocal Curation Team6 months ago in Resources
Whinberries
I still remember how he looked, hunched over the wireless, late on that Sunday morning. It's my most abiding memory of him. His shirt, the mended one with blue stripes, was open at the cuffs and rolled back to his elbows, showing his sturdy, brown forearms.
By L.C. Schäfer6 months ago in Fiction
Book Review: "The Complete Ghost Stories" by M.R James
M.R James is perhaps one of my favourite short story writers purely for the fact that many of them are pretty bloody terrifying and have scared the pants off me in the past. There are certain stories in here where I have said to myself that I would never read again because when I read them the first time in my teens, I was really quite frightened. However, I have read them since then and I can confirm: still frightened. I'm actually working on a list of the scariest stuff I've ever read and if it has come out already by the time this review is released then I've done well there. If it hasn't, well then you might have to wait a bit longer for it.
By Annie Kapur6 months ago in Geeks
Row, Row, Row You’re Boat
She hated Summer with a deep passion for many reasons. One of the biggest reasons, was that in Summer, besides the baking heat, it would only go dark later in the evening, which made it hard to go to sleep, and Molly needed her sleep to function.
By Elizabeth Butler6 months ago in Fiction
Cat Daddy
So it’s early 2025 and my mental health is in a bad place because of a year’s worth of life baggage coupled with a history of trauma. While beginning a quest to heal myself internally I was made aware of the common notion that cats make for good companions that aid in the improvement of mental health. Eventually I started discussing this with my closest friend who actually has multiple cats, one of which was pregnant at the time and we had an idea that it might be good for me to adopt one of her soon to be newborn kittens to help with my spiraling mental health. The outcome? I have now become a cat dad to a kitten named Bagheera S’mores.
By Joe Patterson6 months ago in Petlife
I Love Rock and Roll
“We Will Rock You” is a song that was recorded by the British rock band Queen. It is featured on their 1977 album News of the World. The song was written by band member and guitarist Brian May. Rolling Stone magazine ranks it at number 330 on the list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In 2009 the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
By Rasma Raisters6 months ago in Beat
The Masterful Lie We Tell Ourselves That Prevents Us From Reaching Our Potential
As Humans, We are Incredibly Good at Lying to Ourselves. When you look at the Psychophysiology of it, you'll discover that it is a Fascinating Magic Trick that We Play on Our Brain.
By Dr. Cody Dakota Wooten, DFM, DHM, DAS (hc)6 months ago in Psyche
How can we trust AI when it can't read
I like to write as a hobby. It's my form of therapy. I post some of my content on Medium and Vocal. For the past few months I have been using AI to help catch grammar issues before I hit publish. I don't take all the suggestions but I feel it works for the big things that I may overlook. I find proofing my own work much more difficult than proofing someone else's work, probably because I read it too fast since I know what I wrote.
By G. A. Botero6 months ago in 01
Not my wake
A lone Kookaburra’s raucous laugh splits the silent dawn. Soon, it’s solo performance swells to a trio, then a quartet. Birdsong rings from all sides of the stand of eucalyptus trees. Nature’s alarm clock at its best! Blinking away the last vestiges of sleep, I readily relinquish my grip on my weirdly recurring dream. Everyone had been panicking over an asteroid heading straight for earth. How bizarre! Such a random disaster to conjure up in my dreams nightmares.
By Angie the Archivist 📚🪶6 months ago in Fiction
