Short Story

Gorgon's Purgatory. Content Warning.
A tingling sensation fills my head. A deep pressure builds into agonizing pain as the serpents swallow their midnight meal. They move their jaws in synchronized contractions, forcing the bodies of mice down their gullets. The mice wiggle within the snakes for what feels like an eternity, brushing the scaly, cold skin in a ballet of torture.
By Tas The Artist 3 days ago in Fiction
The Shape of the Law From the Man of the Mountain
The man from the mountain did not come down shining but that was how people told it later, after years had worn the terror smooth and made a lantern of him in memory. When I first saw him descending through the dusk, he looked like someone who had been pulled through the inside of a storm and returned only in part. Dust clung to the hollows of his face. His robe was split at the shoulder. His mouth moved once before sound came out as if speech had been thinned by the height and had not yet thickened again in the air below; still the people surged toward him. They always did when fear and hope wore the same face.
By Cadma3 days ago in Fiction
The Fog of War
Black became light gray. “Hey, you in there? Can you hear me?” “I don’t think he’s truly coming out of it yet. Let’s give him more time. Put him under again, we’ll try again in a few days.”
By Meredith Harmon3 days ago in Fiction
The Commute. Top Story - March 2026.
It was a miserable day. It had been a miserable for a month and Peggy, the old doddery woman, waited at the bus stop in the pouring rain.
By Elizabeth Butler3 days ago in Fiction
I Heard Someone Breathing While I Slept Alone
The Night Everything Changed I woke up at 3:12 AM, a time I’ve always associated with nightmares and the “witching hour.” At first, I thought it was just the wind brushing against the window blinds. But then I heard it—a slow, deliberate breathing coming from the darkness beside my bed.
By Mohammad Hamid3 days ago in Fiction
Bridge Over River Mortem . Content Warning.
Overhead, orange-tinged skies, warm my cold heart. It was a good day. Three days in a row we had glorious sunshine, with not a spot of rain. The mood among the people I met on my daily commute was one of optimism and hope.
By Paul Stewart3 days ago in Fiction
#mothman
As I sat with the phone in my hand, my heart in my throat and trying hard not to let it show in my voice, the deep growling tone that no human throat could make rang through the line, leaving me cold and goose-bumpy.
By Alicia Anspaugh3 days ago in Fiction
A Mirror of Mermaids
My little sister had been obsessed with mermaids all her life. She loved them, even when I gave her the real stories of mermaids and sirens. Apparently, I was just being mean and nasty to her. She was my little sister after all.
By Alicia Anspaugh3 days ago in Fiction
Eurydice's Truth
The poets say he turned back. They forgot that both gods and men had already silenced me. Even now I linger in the world of the dead, millennia after my husband showed how little faith he had in me. The stories say that after his awful death he found peace, that he could walk beside me with no need to look back. But in truth, he remains lost in his songs, and I am still an afterthought, or perhaps merely an ideal for his imagination.
By J.B. Miller4 days ago in Fiction
Warp Speed
Mike was stoned the night he saw the spaceship. Dave was there too, but he was unconscious, lying in the grass on top of Primrose Hill, smouldering spliff hanging from the corner of his mouth like a mini exhaust pipe.
By Matthew Batham4 days ago in Fiction
Where did February go?
Is it really already the middle of March? All of February has blurred into one vast memory, and I don’t know what I did or where it went. Outside, there was frost, and for the first time in a long while, Prague was wrapped in a white coat and stayed that way, the way winters used to be. Like the city, I wrapped myself up too, and from the safety of my home, I watched from beneath the covers how quickly life can pass by when one isn’t paying attention.
By George Roast4 days ago in Fiction
The Tengu Who Warned
There have been many tales about me, perpetuated in Shinto mythology. Many misleading. That I mislead. But I do lead. And make sure that they stay the course.
By Michelle Liew Tsui-Lin4 days ago in Fiction