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Latest Stories

September 27, 2025
Flash Fiction Syed Hassan Askari

Half an Hour to Fourteen

Last night she lay on her bed with a curly-haired doll close to her chest. She was looking at the clock hanging over the door. Only half an hour was left —her life’s digit would turn from thirteen to fourteen, a change that felt like a heavy blow to the…
September 27, 2025
Romance Stories Nelly Shulman

Till We Meet Again

“Would you like more coffee?”The server in the orange apron lowered the pot, but Cath muttered, “No, thank you.”Her voice trembled, and the server busied herself with the next table. Outside the window, fog enveloped Waterloo Bridge. The morning was quiet,…
September 23, 2025
Flash Fiction Leroy B. Vaughn

Another Farewell To Arms Reunion

We were sitting in a little café in Wickenburg Arizona eating lunch when my wife looked at me and said, “I can’t believe you’re actually going to this reunion after you told all of your buddies that there was not a chance in hell that you would go.” “I know…
September 23, 2025
General Stories William Kitcher

A Political Solution

The Rt. Honorable Leader/Head of Council/First Governor/Chief Minister/Premier/President/Chancellor/First Minister/Party Secretary-General entered his office, and looked out the open window. It was a beautiful sunny cool day, and the cherry blossoms shone in…
September 23, 2025
Fantasy Stories M.D. Smith IV

Boat Of The Dead

A double-edged knife thrown at my head by a drunk in a tavern where we tried to restore order, sliced my ear, and stuck in the wall behind me. A near miss. We took them all to the dungeon. I’d had my fill of this kind of work. Still a young man in 1111, a…
September 23, 2025
General Stories Jo Gatenby

Better Safe Than Sorry

After watching his parents’ marriage slowly implode, Matthew decided love was not for him. Theirs had lasted long enough to ensure his birth, but thereafter it seemed to diminish in direct proportion to the number of years they spent together. The frown…
September 23, 2025
Flash Fiction K. Imdad

Abbey And The Resistance

The year is 2088 Following the catastrophic world war that left humanity on the brink of extinction, the last remnants of humanity rebuilt, survivors established communities amidst the devastated terrain. The city lies in ruins towering skyscrapers now…
September 23, 2025
Horror Stories Brittany Anne Szekely

The Stuff Of Nightmares

When she woke up there were seventeen voice messages from a stranger. The first was breathing. Wet, laboured, like someone trying to inhale through a mouthful of blood. The second was a whisper: You left the window open. By the fifth, her hands were shaking.…
September 23, 2025
Poetry Markus J

More Than A Soft Toy

There once was a child from Adelaide, who had a teddy called Marmalade. taking each other by the hand, they roamed imaginations land: there, they never turned scared or afraid. this world they only had each other, no mother, father or big brother. on a tandem…
September 10, 2025
Horror Stories Brittany Anne Szekely

The Taste Of Long Pig

The wardrobe was small, but it smelled like cedar and old coats, and that made it okay. Mum had lined the bottom with a blanket and tucked my stuffed bear beside me. She called it quiet time, and sometimes it lasted until the moon came out. “ Be good, my…
September 10, 2025
General Stories Matias Travieso-Diaz

The Red Oak

An oak tree is an oak tree. That is all it has to do.If an oak tree is less than an oak tree, then we are all in trouble.Nhat Hanh A majestic red oak (Quercus rubra) stood alone atop a hillock. It was almost a hundred feet tall and had a trunk four feet in…
September 10, 2025
Flash Fiction Brittany Anne Szekely

Some Women Are Made Of Neon Bones

The house had been abandoned for years, but it stood like it remembered being loved. The walls were cracked, its windows shattered, and the front porch sagged like it had been holding its breath too long, but beneath the decay something pulsed, like neon…

Everything started at the beginning.
In a very confused moment I was informed that I had been born.
This happened, years ago, on a small isle with an unpronounceable name: Ghawdex, in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and even if everybody attending to the event asserts I was there, too, I must admit I cannot remember it.
I was baptized and they say that in that precise moment all the water in the font evaporated, but I guess it is an overstatement.
I tore down my childhood petal through petal, building reality as an infinite pieces multidimensional puzzle unfolded over the eternal hills of the natal hamlet.
Puberty and adolescence assaulted me without warning, preying on my inexperience and youth. I repaired my rent inner tissues dealing the distressed moments of my treble voice with those of off-key baritone with the charm of a diplodocus and a horsefly trying to dance the black swans 'pas de deux'  together.
Finally time put me the adult costume but my entrails did not know it, adulthood is a chronology, not an ontological condition. My face came in my help: I looked adult.
During some years I tried to save the world but then I realized that my arrival was late... Way too late!
Astride on time I let it carry me ahead, the sad voice of the Mistral and the icy breath of the Cierzo followed my memories after leaving the cosy world of the 'Mare Nostrum' and the universe opened up to my amazed childish eyes of toddler who looked like an adult.
That very innocence and ignorance were my deliverance, nobody could believe that I could be so imbecile! (perfection does not exist except for especial cases as mine) and that belief made them, (people around me) to cook up stories of conspiracies where I abet stronger and darker forces or that I was that darker force myself with wicked, hidden, and unspeakable purposes. This same stories awaken trepidation and fear and took them to show an esteem toward me that they do not feel really, but served well to preserve me from greater evils.
So I flew over human miseries, mine and others, filling my empty days with arias and readings that as guardian angels wrapped my soul and let me be happy even in the middle of cruel vicissitudes.
Then again, the meddlesome time stated that I was an old man and to my chagrin my body agreed: each time I told to my body: "Let's run to that bush and jump over it"!, my body answered: "Who, me ?!!
And it happened that the inner child found himself alone: older people thought him crazy, and younger fellows, not understanding his predicament, thought him a lunatic.
Again, innocence and ignorance came to help me, looking around I found that my experience in languages acquired in years of traveling our rickety planet could be used to balance different cultures from language to language.
Unscrupulously and with the freedom that only youth can use I started to be a translator and Luck, who as a good female she is, loves naiveté and babies rewarded me letting me feel my intention accomplished, which is all you need to feel successful... Years went by and one day, adding to my already very confused nature I was informed that I was not any more part of those that warm their bones in the fire of Life.
With my usual soft resignation to the inevitable, I tied up my little baggage with the few belongings I had: some blurred memories of warm and kind hands which owners I couldn't remember and with a feeling of light-heartedness started my journey toward the unknown.
After a trip on a parallel line to time I found myself on a beautiful meadow almost alive in timing with a breeze that made the stems of shining dandelions move as a lively sea.
Colours danced between earth and sky leaving hue wakes that filled the eye with new scents and Immensity coiled in the hollow of my hand as if infinity wrapped around my fingers tried to comfort that daily solitude that clothed me in life.
I quickly removed my footwear and began to walk on the soft grass that carpeted the ground. The contact of the gramma and soil with my feet revealed a new secret:
This was home... No, Home!
I started to run and jump over low shrubs, now my body followed me in happy conjunction.
I felt the urgency to lie down over the grass as long as I were and I must be very long since I could not see my feet. I looked up to the sky, the clouds were so beautiful that I wanted to sing and tell the world my feelings so humankind could be with me in this extravagant experience.
Then I knew it! I had to sing it!, I had to write it! And I remembered a sentence read many years ago, I do not recall where from: "unless you change and become like little children..."
That had been, that IS my Gift: "to change and become like a little child", all my life was like that, full and filled by grace. I understood it then and I wanted to convert that gift in my legacy.
I took a thin dandelion spike and moistening it in some dew drops I started to write this tragicomic story of mine and the secret message so, if there are people who still ask themselves what are they doing in the world, could find a small compass showing that deep in our heart always there is a reason to live.
And then again, my innocence and ignorance make me believe that I have thread for a yarn and as a writer this words will reach the heart of my readers...

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