Fiction
The Blue Hour
When I inherited my grandmother’s house, I took the train south with a single suitcase, as if leaving room in my luggage would make space for her to climb in, too. The house waited two blocks from the river, square-shouldered and white, its porch swallowing shadows. The grass had gone to seed, and the hydrangeas ached under the weight of their own blue heads. The key my mother mailed to me was wrapped in wax paper and labeled—her tidy teacher letters still so precise it made something inside me flinch—HUSH.
By Lawrence Lease3 months ago in Chapters
Football Friday Night. Content Warning.
It was one of those magical southern nights in October, and all of the teenagers in town were drunk on autumn and youth. There would be a party after the football game, and youthful concupiscence would be satisfied before the moon set in the morning sky. In anticipation of this, the boys were dousing themselves in Polo and Drakkar Noir while the girls teased their bangs into ski slopes and lacquered them above their heavily mascaraed eyes lined with kohl and painted hot pink stripes on their cheekbones. Def Leppard and Whitesnake blasted from boomboxes perched on dressers and lingerie chests. Pliers were used to zip jeans, and Marlboro Lights were smuggled out of sock drawers and into handbags while condoms pressed their circular imprint into dollar bills in wallets in back pockets.
By Harper Lewis3 months ago in Chapters
Businesswoman Chapter 301
Roars and screams and the sound of metal rattling against metal filled Entrepreneur Paul’s ears. He walked in a gray t-shirt and blue jeans and boots. Next to him strolled park owner Ken Kingslover. He wore a dress shirt unbuttoned at the top and khaki trousers and loafers.
By Skyler Saunders3 months ago in Chapters
Who's the real Monsters?
Feeling myself being pulled out of my body I was brought back into that dark foggy place again. Carefully listening I stayed quiet while the feeling of being watched like a bug under a telescope filled me with anxiety. Steadying my voice I said with my chest, "Show yourself." Red eyes looked down on me in a the span of a millisecond. It's body appeared to be made entirely of shadows and darkness. My heart hammered against my ribs as I froze under It's gaze.
By Lucy Torralba3 months ago in Chapters
The Sparta Chronicles. AI-Generated.
The very air of Tartarus clung to them, a suffocating shroud that choked the breath from their lungs. Each inhale was a desperate struggle, a testament to the crushing weight of this forsaken realm. Ahead, the Styx oozed, its black, viscous current sluggish and foreboding, catching the faint, ghostly shimmers of a light that promised no warmth. And there, a figure etched from the very shadows, stood Hades, his obsidian robes a seamless extension of the Stygian gloom. Beside him, a sentinel of darkness, a hooded shape remained unnervingly still.
By Carolyn Patton3 months ago in Chapters
The Sparta Chronicles. AI-Generated.
The suffocating silence of the night pressed in as Sparta, the philosopher-king of Corgis, and his shadow, Jackson, the unwavering sentinel of a blue heeler, materialized from the swirling vortex of temporal displacement. Their ceaseless pilgrimage through the shattered tapestry of epochs, stitching reality with their very beings, had etched a weary rhythm into their souls. Yet, this return, this return to the sanctuary of their shared existence, clawed at Sparta's very core with a primal dread. The moment their paws touched the familiar threshold of the small, unassuming dwelling they shared with Pandora, their anchor in the tempest of time, a suffocating unease seized him, a visceral premonition that chilled him to the bone.
By Carolyn Patton3 months ago in Chapters
The Sparta Chronicles. AI-Generated.
Within the suffocating embrace of the mist-choked Carpathians, shadows bled across the brutalized earth, each elongated stripe a phantom limb of forgotten ages, their whispers a litany of the lost. Sparta, Jackson, and Pandora stood before a monolithic beast of a castle. Its obsidian spires, like sharpened bone, ripped into the bruised and unforgiving sky, the very wind a dirge, a mournful keening for tales that had withered into dust. Pandora, a soul adrift on the storm of her grief for Perseus, felt an unholy magnetism pulling her, a siren's call from this accursed edifice.
By Carolyn Patton3 months ago in Chapters
The Sparta Chronicles. AI-Generated.
The air itself crackled, not with the bite of wind, but with the raw, untamed essence of the divine. Perseus, a tempest in his own right, dragged Pandora upward, his grip a fierce promise against the treacherous, obsidian shards of the path. Each labored breath clawed at their lungs, yet the very thinness of the atmosphere vibrated with an intoxicating, alien power. Then, it loomed – Olympus. Not merely a mountain, but a celestial forge, where gold dripped like molten sun and clouds, woven from pure, luminous ivory, swirled in an eternal, blinding ballet.
By Carolyn Patton3 months ago in Chapters
