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Latest Stories

July 03, 2025
Poetry Markus J

The Days Of Future Dreams

the days of future dreams the flames once rose high thinking our lives would end up supreme thinking our future seemed a far of dream but in the end nothing is what it seems many times the winds of changed has blown this way one minute we`re lapping the cream…
July 03, 2025
General Stories L Christopher Hennessy

Bad Girl

Part 1I lost the entire manuscript when I assassinated my laptop with sauvignon blanc as I rubbed the lower back of a woman who dozed drunk on my bed, sweating. She was crazed, somewhere between screaming and lying about the orgasm. Bree was a miracle to me,…
July 03, 2025
Horror Stories Nelly Shulman

Black Is Our Colour

“I swear she could have been you. Look! This girl is your long-lost twin.” Fi nudged me, and I smiled. “Never had or wanted one.” I stood up. “Let’s go, or the bargain hunters will clear the shelves before us.” We dived into the vintage emporium across the…
July 03, 2025
Poetry Markus J

The Transformation

"I need a brake" words that twisted my heart- shattering the dream that we would never part. I asked myself 'what ever did I do wrong? sad, gloominess could`ve easily been my song. I wouldn't let the anger and misery grow or cultivate- uprising feelings I…
July 03, 2025
Flash Fiction Benoit

Jae

It was Jae’s birthday today. She turned eight. What a beautiful sunny girl! Hyo planned a surprise or two; Li, his wife, did too. Birthday cake, a puppy and … Don’t forget, they grinned just before he drove off. Traffic was intense. A long call came from…
July 03, 2025
General Stories Matias Travieso-Diaz

Fear

Leandro stood outside the Kroger, leaning forward as he shivered in the early March dawn. He hated this moment: the cold, the fatigue, the feeling of helplessness, the anticipation of another day ahead at his degrading job picking collard leaves under the…
July 03, 2025
Horror Stories Mihko Askiweno

Found You

Panic gripped her as she staggered up the steep, rocky incline, breath coming in jagged, shallow gasps. Sweat streamed down her face in torrents, her hair clinging to her forehead and cheeks in disheveled clumps. Her legs trembled with exhaustion, molten fire…
July 03, 2025
Poetry Markus J

Lost On The Path

But alas; sometimes I think we've lost our way- too many strayed opinions...one too many a survey. Walking on the road ahead, just following the herd of sheep- with a hypnotised mind, wide awake yet very fast asleep. While yelling...join the team of the…
July 03, 2025
Flash Fiction Benoit

The Brothers

Juan and Pascal were shipped to distant relatives on Delvina’s periodic hospitalisations. For smoking and breathing difficulties. She had been warned but could not stop. They did not understand the illness or the connection. Pascal stayed with cousins who…
June 04, 2025
General Stories Dylan James Harper

The Bylaws Of The Revolutionary Council

A loud clang rang through the bunker as the door slammed shut. “I really think we have a chance to win this thing!” Greg’s voice echoed throughout the cold walls. The three other inhabitants of the bunker, Jeff, Ben, and Malcolm, all sat around a table…
June 04, 2025
General Stories Michael Barlett

Resurrection

The man lay there in extremis, no longer thinking of cool abstracts like ‘catching the last train for the coast.’ He gulped great rasping breaths – holding them impossibly long – before finally exhaling in a shuttering burst of putrid air. He had been…
June 04, 2025
Flash Fiction Benoit

Time Warp

Nothing was in order, nothing optimal. Germany was awash with refugees and adventurers. Only Angie could hold it together; but then she opened the gates! Who knows why? Other politicians were dinosaurs in the museum. Integration was the solution, was it? That…

Jeff saw the lights flashing in his rear view mirror. This is it, he thought. One last chance. He knew it was risky. The last time Jeff had tried anything like this, he wound up with a fractured arm that took weeks to heal and which still occasionally hurt. But it might be years before he had another opportunity, and he might be too old by then.

The car began making its turn into the emergency lane, the steering wheel sluggish and reluctant in his hands. Jeff knew that the car didn’t want to stop, but even it was till compelled to follow the rules of the road, and that meant pulling over when the cops wanted you to. Rules were important-it allowed the car to attract less attention, and prevented him from escaping-except perhaps now.

Jeff could still remember the night he’d first seen the car in the dealer’s lot, gleaming bright and new under the lights-an Impala that had just rolled off the assembly line. He’d noticed the dealer’s nervousness over the car, but of course he hadn’t thought much about it at the time. He’d had plenty of time to think about it since.

Jeff wondered if that man was still alive. Probably not-he’d been at least twenty years older than Jeff at the time. Jeff saw his own thinning, graying hair in the mirror and remembered when he’d been younger too, and free with the promise of a new decade ahead as the year 1959 was ending.

Jeff should have known something was wrong when the car made its first wrong turn. Then the car made another, and another, taking him further away from the dealership down streets and then highways that became increasingly unfamiliar, through towns and cities that he didn’t know as landscapes flew past and the roads merged into a single line of pavement and white lines.

Of course he’d tried to escape. Even as the car drove on, never stopping for gas or allowing him to eat or go to the bathroom, which Jeff discovered he somehow didn’t need anyway, he’d pound at the windows, kick the doors and roof, trying desperately to get someone’s attention. But nobody seemed to notice or hear him, and it wasn’t until that one other time that he found out why when he saw the car’s blacked-out windows from the outside and realized that it would keep him prisoner for eternity if it wanted to, unless...

The car rolled down its window as the highway patrol officer walked over. A state trooper, judging from the uniform. “License and registration, sir?” he asked, with professional politeness.

Jeff nodded and took both out from the glove compartment. “Was I speeding?” he asked. His own voice sounded odd and unfamiliar in his ears; it had been that long since he’d actually spoken-except to the car.

“You were going a little fast,” the officer replied. He didn’t seem to look too closely at the license, but it must have been up to date-another one of the car’s tricks? “Just be more careful next time,” he said as he prepared to hand it back to him.

That was when Jeff took his chance. Without really thinking, he grabbed at the officer’s wrist, which caused him to grab the car door in response. The door hissed like a defiant animal as Jeff dove out, hitting the pavement as he allowed the cop to put handcuffs on him. The sensation of immediate freedom was disorienting, but Jeff was able to yell out “Shoot...” as the car began making a savage U-turn.

“The hell?” The officer was startled, but instinctively drew his gun.

“Aim for...the headlights...blind it...” Jeff didn’t know why he’d said that, but it seemed to work as the officer fired, the shots sounding like loud firecrackers. Its lights out, the car narrowly avoided hitting both of them before plunging off the road, almost roaring in pain as it lit up the night air in a fireball.

“What the hell just happened?” The cop helped Jeff to his feet, even though he was still technically under arrest for assaulting an officer. “Did that thing actually just try to kill us?”

“It did.” Jeff watched the already dying flames, still unsteady on his own two legs. “But it’s over...I’m free...” then he collapsed from exhaustion as the officer helped him over to his patrol vehicle. It would be one more ride, but Jeff knew that it would also be his last.

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