Literary Fiction Stories

Sofia Verlanti

As she stood in the kitchen, the late afternoon sunlight streaming through the window highlighted the dust motes dancing around her. The bread knife, its blade …

Elara Nightwood

The dust rose on the first dry Sunday in months, which meant the chapel walls had begun to exhale what they had been holding. Cantor Maren noticed it while poli…

Yuki Kazehara

At two seventeen in the morning, Kiyomi found the lacquered box beside a damp umbrella and a paper cup of cold tea. She had come into the staff locker room beca…

Marcus Veil

1. 02:14 STATION TIME. The humidity in Sector 4 exceeded the optimal threshold by 12 percent. Elias wiped the moisture from his goggles, the condensation leavin…

Cass Ferren

The kitchen is warm. Not from anything she has done. Afternoon sun through a west-facing window, the glass not particularly clean, so the light arrives softened…

Sofia Verlanti

The air conditioner rattled in the window, a steady hum that filled the apartment as Lena set a bucket of bruised white lilies beside the sink. Her wife, Rachel…

Yuki Kazehara

Ayaka found the glove between a sack of rinsed milk cartons and a broken rice cooker. She was reaching under the sorting table for a fallen label clip when her …

Luc Devereaux

The elevator shudders. A groan, then silence. The light flickers—once, twice—then dies. Merde. I press the call button. Nothing. The emergency phone is dead. Th…

Dr. H. Ashford

The bell cord moved at midnight. Mrs. Agatha Crale had not imagined it. She had been awake — as she was most nights in Thornward Manor, where the damp came in o…

Elara Nightwood

The pear trees had finished their forgetting by the time Nessa found the glove in the compost heap behind the shed, which meant the orchard had decided to remem…

Sofia Verlanti

As she stepped into the kitchen, Ava noticed the warm lease renewal on the counter, already signed by Ethan. The paper, still radiating heat from the hall radia…

Yuki Kazehara

At twelve minutes past midnight, when the sea wind had begun to worry at the loose corner of the inn’s signboard, Housekeeper Senda Fumie came down the back sta…