Latest Stories
Most recently published stories in Fiction.
Chili, like in Italy
A fly whirs its wings and flies away from a flickering bulb in the corner of a hospital corridor. The pistachio-green paint smells of newness and sterile freshness. The metal that connects lined-up chairs, obediently in a row of five along the walls opposite the consulting room doors, matches the green. It’s 8 p.m., so only one is still open. Emergency care must be accessible at any time. You never know when something might happen to you.
By George Roast2 days ago in Fiction
An Apple Orchard's Gems
The summer was hot, and every day the sun blazed. Some evenings it cooled by 15 degrees, which gave a bit of relief. Then there were the ongoing roasting weeks of no rain, no shade, no clouds. Even the insects were quiet and grounded, no buzzing. The birds hid in the scattered trees' leaves or flew off to the forests. Everything slowed down to survive the unusual heat in a climate usually comfortable.
By Andrea Corwin 2 days ago in Fiction
A Badge in the Smoke !
Dear Diary, 👋 Bye Bye David! Those were the last words Lena wrote before sliding the diary across the counter to the officials. She’d pressed the pen hard on that final line, then shut the book as if closing a door. She’d met David in the Hyatt Regency lobby during his medical conference. She was wiping the marble floor, eyes down, feeling the familiar ache of being alone in a place full of travelers. He’d asked for directions to the elevator, lingered, asked her name. Over the next three days they met in quiet corners — near the potted palms, at the service elevator — talking in low voices. He was polite, careful, always checking his watch. She felt seen, and also like she was living in the space between his words. When he left, he promised to write. They did, for a while, but the letters thinned out. Then ICE came to the hotel. Lena — whose real name was Christina Perraira — was taken across the border to Mexico. Rumors followed her: she’d escaped, she’d been taken by a cartel, a gang leader had offered her protection in exchange for favors, and she’d ended up in a trafficking case. No one could say which was true. Years passed. Christina lived under a new name, Ms. Alt, raising a child on her own. She never sent David an address. She kept the diary as proof that she had told him not to come. She never said the rule out loud, but everyone around her acted as if they knew it: *if you care for someone, you don’t chase them once they’ve asked you to stay away.* The hotel staff never gave David her forwarding information. The official who took her diary didn’t forward it. Even her sister, when David called from abroad, simply said, “She asked not to be found.” No one explained the rule; they just honored it. David never came. *Twenty-three years later, a different envelope arrived at Christina’s door.* Inside was not a letter, but a photocopy of David’s conference badge from 2003. On the back, in his handwriting: “Lena: if you ever read this, know I never stopped looking. I didn’t come because I wasn’t free to.” Below that, a second line in a different pen: “My wife died two winters ago.” Christina stared at the badge. No return address, no signature. Just the badge, the two lines, and the faint imprint of a hotel key card tucked beneath it. She never said the rule out loud, but everyone who knew Lena—later Christina, later Ms. Alt—acted as if they understood it: *if you care for someone, you don’t chase them once they’ve asked you to stay away.* The hotel staff never gave David her forwarding information. The official who took her diary didn’t forward it. Even her sister, when David called from abroad, simply said, “She asked not to be found.” No one explained it; they just honored it. Christina settled in a small town across the border, working as a caregiver at St. Clare’s senior home. Her final abode was a modest room above the kitchen, with a window that looked onto the courtyard and a thin mattress she’d learned to make quickly between shifts. She kept Lena’s diary tucked under the mattress, the last page still reading “👋 bye bye David!” One rainy Thursday a new resident was admitted for terminal care: David. The name caught her breath, but she didn’t say anything. His file listed no family, only a contact number that went to voicemail. She was assigned to his floor. He was frail, his voice softer than she remembered, and he wore the same habit of checking his watch even though time meant little now. She bathed him, brought him tea, sat with him when the pain spiked. He never asked her name; she never offered it. On his third night, he slipped a folded paper into her palm while she adjusted his blanket. It was a photocopy of his old conference badge from 2003. On the back, in his handwriting: _“Lena — if you ever read this, know I never stopped looking. I didn’t come because I wasn’t free to.”Below that, in a different pen: “My wife died two winters ago.” She recognized the handwriting instantly. The paper also had a hotel key card tucked inside. She stayed with him. He opened his eyes, looked at her face, and whispered, “Lena?” She nodded, tears slipping down. He reached for her hand; she held it. A few hours later, a kettle she’d left on the small kitchenette boiled dry, the coil overheated, and a small fire started. The smoke alarm wailed. Staff rushed in, got David out, but Christina went back for the diary under her mattress. The room filled with smoke before she could get out. They died the same night—David in the hallway on a gurney, Christina in her room above the kitchen. The diary was found charred at the edges, the final page still legible. The staff filed the incident, placed the diary in the home’s lost-and-found, and followed the rule without ever naming it: they didn’t try to trace who David had been to Lena/Christina. © conceptual right , March 30th, 2026 ✍️By Madhu Goteti P.S: A rose is a rose is a rose like a rule is a rule is a rule!
By Madhu Goteti 2 days ago in Fiction
Foiled by a low-dose aspirin
Liam Peters always thought he knew better than his wife, Cherie. He loved her, but she got on his nerves, always telling him what to do as if he were a child. Sure, she had been accurate when he had to pee a lot, and she said it was diabetes, but since then, she would not let up.
By Cheryl E Preston2 days ago in Fiction
THE CORNER HOUSE
The mail carrier never walked up the path. She'd pause at the edge of the sidewalk, toes aligned with the crack where concrete met grass, and slip the envelopes through the slot with a practiced flick of her wrist. Sometimes they caught. Sometimes they fluttered to the welcome mat, which had faded from red to something closer to rust. She never went to retrieve them.
By Edward Smith2 days ago in Fiction
The Shanghai Cipher. AI-Generated.
The manuscript had been missing for four hundred years before anyone thought to look for it in Shanghai. This was, Dr. Nora Ashworth reflected, either a stroke of genuine insight or the kind of desperate reasoning that passed for insight when you had been chasing something long enough that the chase itself had become the point. She stood on the Bund in the October rain of 1924, her coat doing its inadequate best against a wind coming off the Huangpu that smelled of diesel and river mud and the particular industrial ambition of a city that had decided to become the future before the future had finished deciding what it was, and looked at the address written in her notebook.
By Alpha Cortex2 days ago in Fiction
Sinking ghosts come out to play
Timelines that cross boundaries between the past and the present often fuck me up in the most random ways. I know that I’ve been here before, like this church, but I don’t quite remember how. I remember someone I used to resent that was supposed to be my friend, but he was somehow different.
By Melissa Ingoldsby2 days ago in Fiction
The City That Outlawed Sound. AI-Generated.
The law had been in effect for nine years, four months, and eleven days. Elias Vorne knew this not because he tracked legislation — he had no particular interest in legislation, which had never once in his experience produced anything worth listening to — but because nine years, four months, and eleven days ago was the last time he had heard another human being sing. A woman, somewhere below his window, walking home in the early dark, carrying a melody he didn't recognize in a voice that was slightly flat on the upper notes and completely, heartbreakingly alive. He had stood at his window and listened until she turned a corner and the city swallowed the sound, and three days later the Silence Ordinance had passed the Municipal Assembly by a margin of forty-one votes to three, and the woman below his window had never sung again.
By Alpha Cortex2 days ago in Fiction
