Top Stories
Stories in Fiction that you’ll love, handpicked by our team.
The Unsaid Good-Bye. First Place in SFS 8: Pear Tree Challenge.
Nic sat on the toilet in her great-grandmother’s house, staring at the shower wall mural that had creeped her out as a child, feeling very creeped out. She hated using the bathroom here, because there was nothing to do but sit and look at those creepy, sculpted people with their white, almond-shaped eyes and oversized hands, positioned around the trunk of a vast Yggdrasil of a pear tree, branches spread wide above the length of the tub and oval leaves ending in sharp barbs like wasp stingers drooped in silent menace. If a bathroom could be threatening, her great-grandmother had cornered the market.
By R. E. Dyer5 years ago in Fiction
Reading and Righting
Reading and Righting Ricky Pardue buried his Ma by his Pa up in the Boot Hill Cemetery as close to the old pear tree as he could get them. His Pa died of accumulated ills and despondency associated with his time fighting for the Confederacy's failed secession, and his Ma died not long afterwards of consumption, according to old Doc Gibbons. His Pa never was right after he came home from the war, and his Ma just seemed to have wasted away.
By Cleve Taylor 5 years ago in Fiction
To Drown a Pear
Circe Elton was only twenty-two years old when she began working for The Facility. It was quite an honor to be sought out for a project of this caliber, especially given her youth, or so she had been told in one of the fifteen or so interviews that she ran through with her usual ease. Other people liked to tell her how proud of herself she ought to be at any given time-- an unconscious desire of inferior minds to assert some emotional control over a person they could not comprehend in the slightest. Other people did not know what to do when confronted by sheer, unadulterated genius. It made them doubt themselves, destabilized their over-inflated egos. But Circe did not care. In fact, she did not care about anyone at all.
By Katie Alafdal5 years ago in Fiction
A Moment Ahead
If people actually knew Esther Ringell, she would have been the topic of every conversation had when there’s nothing else to talk about. Really, it was quite a talent to be someone so odd as Esther yet still avoid being the focus of others’ tongues. When Esther ever pondered this, she would always conclude that her extravagance was such that it was noticed in the moment but forgotten afterwards – especially once she had returned to the safety of her habitual demeanour that had the basic outward appearance of a blank wall. The excuse she loved most when some noticed this stark difference and asked her about it was that she had reserved so much energy (and face muscles) from appearing like a zombie that she could be ‘wild’ and ‘crazy’ with no effort or second thought.
By Caitlin Swan5 years ago in Fiction
The Diary of the Last Teenage Girl on Earth:
Thursday, October 27, 2022 I am writing in a diary on paper, with a pen – how primitive - something I wouldn’t have thought I would ever do, with my Mac Note Book. But, it is all I have now, and I have to organize my thoughts, and writing always helped me think clearer, as if that it possible now in this crazy world.
By Brittany Smith5 years ago in Fiction
Flash of Light
Alice stared off into space while she waited. Her first day back to work had been harrowing to say the least. Had she actually said, just days prior, that she missed work and couldn’t wait to get back to it? What had she been thinking? And now, when she just wanted to be back home, it seemed like she was going to be stuck at the crosswalk. It couldn’t take this long for the pedestrian walk light to change to green, even though she had just missed the last one. What was taking so long? Why did the universe seemingly not want her to get home? What was the hol- It’s green!
By V J Wiatrowski5 years ago in Fiction
10,000 Pounds
Abuse can be so incredibly difficult to recognise at times. Especially when it’s so close and personal that it’s impossible to step back and see the big picture for what it really is. Maggie knew her boyfriend was a sadistic, controlling sociopath, but a part of her had always been in denial about it. So she let his passive aggressive comments burn into her skin, day after day, as pieces of her were chipped and chiselled away.
By J. R. Lowe5 years ago in Fiction
