Latest Stories
Most recently published stories in Fiction.
Testing Times
It’s going to be another boring day. They’re always boring these days. Waking up again to the sounds of my brothers fighting. It sounds like Ben had eaten Frank’s chocolate again last night. I don’t really care who is right and who is wrong. Chocolate is a luxury and I can’t remember the last time I had any. Frank keeps squandering the little money he earns. Relies too much on the rest of us. I need to get up. I hate my job. My stupid auto assigned job. I fail one test in 17 years and this means I’m stuck to a mundane life of warehouse work.
By Melanie Baker 3 years ago in Fiction
The Facility
I cry out, but as usual they are implacable. I struggle against the restraints, but as usual it does no good. The drugs are too strong. They are too strong. They say something to each other in their language, and one of them speaks to me in her heavily accented attempt at English:
By Scott Blackmer3 years ago in Fiction
A diary that will never be read
A diary that will never be read Is there to be life after life? I am writing this down more in hope than expectation. The chance that anyone left alive will even bother to look for my records are so very remote. Today, the first day of my diary, is 16 June in the year 2091. I am now alone, my companions have left their physical bodies here and gone in search of a better place. They have no knowledge that such a place exists but they think anywhere has to be better than here.
By Peter Rose3 years ago in Fiction
Vas Forterai
Vas Forterai sat in a restaurant in the center of town, in the corner seat farthest from the entrance. Marjory’s. She’d been here a number of times before, but this time she wasn’t here to eat. Instead, her eyes were laser-focused on a greasy-looking mountain of a man that was about to begin enjoying his first meal outside of prison. He picked up his chopsticks and held them gingerly in his large hands, as if he was afraid that someone would take them away.
By Rietz Kanning3 years ago in Fiction
A Single Moment in History
Harriet ducked into her room silently. She crawled through the shadows until she reached her bed. She jumped from her knees and landed on top of it, sending a cloud of dust and dirt into the air. She coughed as the dust entered her lungs. She placed a hand over her mouth in a desperate attempt to silence it. Her breathing settled and she froze, watching and listening for any sign of movement. Was she noticed? Did they know that she was there? She hoped not.
By Jade Stephens3 years ago in Fiction
The World Must Be Peopled
Overhead – a falcon; kestrel? No, a buzzard. Two: One each. In her delirium (she was still drunk with that arid fatigue which the permanently dehydrated subsist in) she pitched her foot against a rock and gave a yelp of pain. The buzzards took no notice of the blood which oozed like water from a stone struck in anger.
By Tristan Stone3 years ago in Fiction
Locket
I pulled the grate closed behind me. I knew id be safe if I moved further in to the tunnels, but it is unfamiliar territory. Id never even thought about coming down here, not before, not during, and certainly not now... After the war, all crime is punishable by death. I still had to move.
By Colin Bryant3 years ago in Fiction
The lonely drifter
20.03.2032 Another boring Saturday. Today is cold. Colder than before. It has been a while since I last wrote I couldn’t find a pen that would work. I don’t know why I bother really. If I had just gave up when I was kicked out, life would have been easier. No one warns you that living on the streets is so… cold. In all ways. People stopped looking at me, instead they look through me. I used to have things. Not just somewhere to live, but interests, hobbies, things. Now it’s just me, my change of clothes, whatever change I find for food and this damn diary.
By Leigh Williams3 years ago in Fiction