Literary Fiction Stories

Yuki Kazehara

By seven twenty, Senda Aoi had already decided that the combs were wrong. She stood in front of Case Four with her satchel still on her shoulder and the morning…

Elara Nightwood

The river had stopped accepting the dead three hours before dawn, which meant someone had broken the covenant that kept the black glass flowing. Kael felt it in…

Sofia Verlanti

As she stepped into the house, the weight of her hospital shift still clinging to her like a damp shroud, she was met with an unexpected sight: her ex-husband, …

Yuki Kazehara

By half past four, the rain had found the gap above the municipal archive window and was dripping, with steady civic patience, into a chipped umbrella stand no …

Sofia Verlanti

As she stepped into the apartment, the humid evening air clung to her like a damp shroud, heavy with the scent of blooming flowers and fresh earth. The familiar…

Elara Nightwood

The roads had begun appearing three weeks after Catriona stopped drawing them, which meant the world was remembering something she had tried very hard to forget…

Luc Devereaux

The rain stops at 5:17 a.m. I know because the neon sign above the pharmacy flickers off the same second, like someone pulled the plug on the sky. I shake water…

Cass Ferren

The freezer door is open three inches. She can tell from the hallway because the light is wrong — that particular underwater blue leaking across the linoleum, f…

Yuki Kazehara

By eight ten, Kuroda Mei had already unlocked the side entrance, signed the damp security book, and regretted agreeing to come in early. Rain had followed her u…

Sofia Verlanti

Mara stood at the kitchen counter, her fingers tracing the edge of the last two boxes from their old life. The air was thick with the smell of stale air and for…

Elara Nightwood

The cloak arrived three months after your brother drowned, which was long enough that you had stopped checking the post for impossible deliveries. You found it …

Yuki Kazehara

At two-thirteen in the morning, Hara Emi reached behind the front desk to rescue the electric kettle before it boiled itself dry and found, instead, a child’s r…