Psychological
Everything
My name is Bryce Varden. I say it slowly, even when I’m not speaking it out loud. There’s a shape to the sound that feels important to get right, like saying it too quickly might cause something to slip past unnoticed. When I hear it spoken by other people, it doesn’t echo the way I expect it to. The sound arrives and stops, like it hits a surface instead of continuing through the air.
By Bryce Varden6 days ago in Fiction
The Last Message You Never Sent
At 11:47 p.m., my phone buzzed. I remember the time because I was staring at the clock when it happened, lying on my bed with the lights off, listening to the quiet hum of the ceiling fan. The room smelled faintly of rain drifting in through the open window.
By Ihsanullah7 days ago in Fiction
We Sat in Silence Until the Truth Finally Arrived. AI-Generated.
The café was quieter than usual that afternoon. Outside, a thin October rain slid slowly down the windows, blurring the city into soft gray shapes. Cars passed like distant whispers. The smell of roasted coffee beans hung warmly in the air, mixing with the faint sweetness of cinnamon pastries cooling behind the counter.
By Ihsanullah7 days ago in Fiction
There’s a Cow in the Room
Brian was attending the wake of his work colleague, Barry Rajacostellino. He never really liked the guy that much, although he had sat next to him at work for the last four years. Four years of putting up with garlic breath and his constant snorts instead of just blowing his nose.
By Calvin London7 days ago in Fiction
As the World Turns...and turns
I take up my pen and go back to the time, only a year or so ago...when the world felt almost peaceful - except for the regions and corners of life where people insisted on wars. But somehow, they then seemed like another whole world away from me.
By Novel Allen8 days ago in Fiction
The Silk and the Shrapnel
History is a lazy and superficial artist. It loves straight lines, clear-cut motives, and people who fit neatly into the boxes someone else marked with a thick Sharpie a long time ago. In those boxes, a warrior is a stone-carved archetype: someone who smells of cheap tobacco, wears a low-slung baseball cap, and hasn't taken off a faded camo jacket in the decades since the last howitzers went silent in the distance. There is this unspoken, almost religious dictate that trauma must be visible, abrasive, and unkempt. If you don’t look broken on the outside, the world doesn’t believe you’ve ever seen the abyss on the inside. Society demands that your sacrifice be displayed like an exhibit in a museum of defeat, rather than your triumph in the form of elegance.
By Feliks Karić8 days ago in Fiction
The Substance
I stepped out on my porch, the rays of the sun beating against the window beckoning me to come outside. The warmth from the morning sun felt comforting but there was something off about the air. Like a storm approaching. I looked up. The sky had a strange hue to it. An odd shade of pink and grey coming together to make a color that's hard to describe. A color you didn't think could exist.
By Jasmine Aguilar8 days ago in Fiction
When Silence Was Whole
Flower InBloom writes at the threshold where myth meets nervous system and spirit meets structure. This piece is not a cosmology to believe in, but a remembering to feel into. If something in you softened while reading, that is the field recognizing itself.
By Flower InBloom8 days ago in Fiction
