Literary Fiction Stories

Sofia Verlanti

As she pushed open the creaky kitchen door, the fluorescent light above the sink flickered to life, illuminating the space with a warm, gentle glow. The woman, …

Dr. H. Ashford

The house appeared first as a smear of yellow light through the coach window, and Miss Evelyn Marsh — thirty-one years old, recently widowed by a man she had mo…

Cass Ferren

The freezer hums. She stands in the doorway with a roll of garbage bags and a coat she doesn't need. April. The apartment has no heat but the sun is doing somet…

Yuki Kazehara

At ten past two, Maki Shinohara turned the corner into the conservatory and stopped so quickly that the tea in her paper cup struck the lid and burned her thumb…

Elara Nightwood

The button arrived first, carried against the current on a morning so still the reeds forgot to whisper. Maren saw it catch on the ferry's bow rope at dawn—silv…

Sofia Verlanti

As she pushed open the window, the first cool breeze of September swept into her apartment, carrying the scent of rain on hot pavement. It was a smell that alwa…

Elara Nightwood

The silver thread had been still for four hundred years, which meant something had changed in the world beyond the archive's walls. Maren noticed it first in th…

Dr. H. Ashford

The summons came at half past ten, which Dr. Ashford considered an unconscionable hour for any communication that was not, strictly speaking, a matter of life a…

Luc Devereaux

The leather sticks to my thigh. Not sweat—something older, like the bag itself is bleeding dye. I shift on the toilet seat, knees pressed against the stall door…

Sofia Verlanti

As she stood in the narrow kitchen, the rain ticking against the window like a metronome, Emma found herself reheating the coffee for what felt like the hundred…

Marcus Veil

1. 08:14 STATION TIME. The cooling unit behind Panel 44-B rattled with the metallic cadence of a dying heart. Kael pulled her wrench from the magnetic belt, her…

Elara Nightwood

The tide had turned three times since the ink began moving, which meant the chart was either remembering or learning to lie. Isla discovered it on the fourth mo…