Popular stories

  • In The Wet Of The Grass

    We pressed our bodies into the wet morning grass. We had spent the night walking around the neighborhood talking about nothing in particular, but now we had fallen in tune with the quiet of the rising sun.

    "I adore you," I said, breaking the silence. "Yo…

    Posted 6 years ago
  • There is No Outlet through Arbor Grove

    Calloused feet, like sandpaper, were no match from the hot, midday sidewalk. She had considered the grass, but thought better of it. She was an outsider, and it wouldn't be polite to walk through a stranger's grass.

    The houses lining the streets were al…

    Posted 8 years ago
  • House of Caged Birds

    Birds, hundreds of them, squawked and chirped in a frenzied cacophony. Bigger ones used their wings to violently bat against their cages. I'd never seen so many in one place, much less in doors. All manner of birds in cages lined the cavernous hallways fo…

    Posted 6 years ago
  • Sound of Death

    The knife cut through her throat like it was butter and her blood spilled all over my hands. It had a certain beauty really. I knew I couldn't stay long though, so I let the body drop and walked away.

    I crawled back into my bed and fell asleep, knowing …

    Posted 7 years ago
  • Curvature

    "Explain what I'm looking at."

    "Timestream 8496775816-AQZ-25.13.4. We pulled it from yesterday's archives when it was flagged anomolous."

    "Meaning?"

    "Look here. Grid 117, Segment 16, Node 135. See that curvature?"

    "Yes. Explain its significance."

    "Ti…

    Posted 5 years ago
  • Shake Those Spears

    To be or not to be?

    A consciousness of stream

    The weight of human ignorance

    Annihilates the dream

    An agony of intellect

    A crisis of the soul

    Wherefore art thou now

    O common human goal?

    To sleep, perchance to steal

    As violence touches all

    Our modern take…

    Posted 6 years ago
  • Second Phone Call

    Ring "Hello."

    "Hey, what's up?"

    "Glad you called. sigh Nothing much."

    "You sound like something is up."

    pause

    "I wanna say I'm sorry if I was too overbearing."

    "Overbearing?"

    "If anything I texted or emailed left room for misinterpretation. S…

    Posted 6 years ago
  • Fractal Realities: Exposure Therapy

    Roger had been in the cradle of the Marula tree's branches for three days. Muscles ached unevenly across the map of his back, and in knotty pockets in his thighs and arms. Below, the thick savanna grass moved in waves as if strings in a grand harp played …

    Posted 4 years ago
  • Death in the family

    He eased himself onto the plastic seat in the waiting room – seemingly every hospital on the planet used the same, uniquely uncomfortable seating – and cradled her in his lap. It took a long time before she stopped crying and longer still before the shive…

    Posted 8 years ago
  • What is awesome?

    In the days of the league of awesomeness when we had over 9000 members, we followed some simple guidelines. These were kind of the standards for awesomeness.

    1. You should have four times as many comments as stories. Even though some people, like the fame…

    Posted 6 years ago
  • A Grim New Fairy-tale

    Story is marked as mature

    Posted 7 years ago
  • Identity

    The self of past was turbulent, confused

    The self of present is less than enthused

    The self of future may not give a damn

    But always myself wonders who I am

    Posted 6 years ago
  • Spark of Healing

    The Archangel of Sparks.

    Malika had heard of this, but she had never actually witnessed it. She had never been a devout follower of the Church, and her local vicar had never, to her knowledge, before summoned an aspect of any of the three Archangels. He …

    Posted 3 years ago
  • Curiouser and Curiouser

    Dear Colin,

    Help. I can't seem to escape from stories.

    I swam through ours last night, poring over emails and journal entries. It felt a little like passing a car crash and being unable to look away. I finally closed my dry eyes at 3 a.m. So, this morni…

    Posted 6 years ago
  • Here lies complacency.

    "I knew I'd find you here."He said with a cunning grin as she sashayed by with purpose dressed in an ensemble that had not seen a morsel of neon light in quite some time. As if his sureness didn't scathe her in the least. In her quiet shock, she headed to…

    Posted 6 years ago
  • Bringing You Up to Speed

    This isn't so much a story as it is a bit of a reference point for the Next Breed of Thief series, a cyberpunk tale started by ElshaHawk, on Ficlatté.

    The final installment on Ficly was "The Drive for Freedom", located here: http://ficly.com/stories/34…

    Posted 8 years ago
  • Bricked

    I bet this never happens to Tony Stark.

    It should have been a routine update. Nothing unusual at all beyond a quick data import of the latest Crimestat data they've compiled from the previous week. Happens every Monday like clockwork and almost always b…

    Posted 7 years ago
  • Tuesday

    "...Hello?"

    "Where are you right now?"

    "In my car. I'm driving home from work."

    "Are you alone?"

    "I'm talking to you. You're in my car, so I'm not alone. Where have you been? I haven't heard from you in days."

    "Hmpf. Well, maybe that's because I'm ma…

    Posted 6 years ago
  • Complicated (1/22)

    How did I reach this point? My life has become complicated in the last few months.

    Wow. Understatement of epic proportions.

    And I have no one to talk to about it. I could probably go to a psychiatrist about it, but that would mean admitting that I'm... …

    Posted 5 years ago
  • Pondering

    Felicity paced in the sand slowly, eyeing the tide wash up and run away. Bones of small animals seeped up through the sand, separating her toes.

    "What to do, what to do..."

    Her sisters, triplets, all fit in to the family like pegs in a board. Veronica, Ve…

    Posted 8 years ago
  • Burden's Release

    "Who be you," Malika whispered once more, her head leaning still against the stranger's chest. "Orthael you may be. Paladin you may be. But you be not like the others who would have come before, the others who would have seen me yet not seen me. They be c…

    Posted 3 years ago
  • Monster

    Nine-year-old Timothy Lane sits on the edge of his bed trying not to look at his closet. The room is dark, but that yawning portal is darker and more terrifying to Timothy than anything else. He twists his hands in his lap, trying to find the courage to w…

    Posted 3 years ago
  • Emotional Abuse

    I think I've been bullied.

    Maybe it's just that the person who complains about the speck in my eye needs to remove the plank from theirs.

    I need to stop wanting to please them.

    When they say something in a subversive manner, hint that this new way is …

    Posted 7 years ago
  • Five Hours Later, Five Miles East

    Ryan Gonçalves stared into his drink at an airport bar. The bar was disgustingly new and trendy, with its former Starbucks-esque earth tones phased out in favour of post-Starbucks decor, all garishly bright contrast. The drink was something lime-green and…

    Posted 8 years ago
  • Emmyful is Back in Town

    Adulthood is a series of ups and downs, or so I've been told. But what I wasn't told is how difficult the transition into this new stage of life can be. Dealing with the pressures of a full time job, a full graduate school schedule, and a sick parent ha…

    Posted 7 years ago