- sci-fi◐ Mature
The Other Hand on the Wheel
The dispatch slip is short: hand the package to yourself, ten minutes ago, do not open it. Under Mara's dash, the retrochron unit hums like a trapped wasp. The meter counts backward. Rain runs UP the windshield into the sky. On the seat beside her sits a brown paper package, taped shut, no label. The clock hits her drop time. Headlights swing into the lot behind her.
5 writers - horror◐ Mature
The Skin of the Lake
The reservoir dropped forty feet that summer, and the old town of Hesper rose up out of the water at last. My crew got hired to map and catalogue the place before the floods came back in fall. On my first dive, my lamp swept across a kitchen. There it was: a table still set for four, the plates rinsed perfectly clean by the lake.
5 writers - mystery◐ Mature
The Confession Booth Recordings
They took Father Coyle's collar two winters ago, but no one ever took back his key. The old church sat dark and empty now. He let himself in the side door, looking for the leftover wine. Instead he heard a rattle behind the confessional wall. He pried off a strip of rotten wood and found a reel-to-reel recorder hidden inside, the tape labeled in the dead sexton's shaky hand: 1971 to last March. Coyle pressed play. A woman's voice filled the booth: "I killed him, Father. And no one ever knew."
5 writers - mystery◐ Mature
Nine Tenants, Eight Keys
The Halloran rooming house is still smoking when Investigator Edda Voss arrives at dawn. Eight survivors sit on the curb under scratchy blankets, faces black with soot. The landlord's ledger lists nine tenants, nine rent stubs, nine keys collected every New Year. Edda counts the survivors twice. Eight. So where is the ninth tenant, and which clue does she chase first?
5 writers - mystery◐ Mature
The Ledger of Borrowed Names
The lawyer slides a worn brass key and a deed across the table. Mara stares. Her father owned a storefront she'd never heard of. Inside, the air is dry and still. Two filing cabinets, both locked. The first opens with the key: forty years of plain, honest invoices. The second won't budge. She bends a hairpin and works the lock until it clicks. One thing sits inside — a single black book. She opens it. Page after page of names, none of them her father's.
5 writers - mystery◐ Teen
Signal Lake Has No Echo
Camp Verity had been shut for nineteen years. The cabins smelled like wet paper and the dock sagged under your feet. Mara set the recorder on a tree stump while Devon clipped on the mics and Priya filmed the dead waterfront of Signal Lake. "Episode one," Mara said. "Why does a whole town pretend this place never existed?" Then they noticed something weird. When Priya yelled across the water, the lake gave back no echo at all.
5 writers - horror◐ Mature
The Understudy Always Knows the Lines
The Verrick Theatre sits an hour past the last gas station, a black stone box with no sign out front. They gave Mara the lead after one phone call. The actress before her, Lenore, walked out mid-run, and nobody will say where she went. In her dressing room, taped to the mirror at eye level, is a single index card. The handwriting is Mara's own. It reads: "You will read this and not run. Good. We start at eight."
5 writers - sci-fi◐ Teen
Quorum of Salt
Cal scraped salt-crust off the lettuce beds, same as every shift for nineteen years. Then the wall-screen flickered. MOTION 4,114: TERMINATE THE SLEEPER IN BAY 9. He didn't know the ship had a Bay 9. Below the words, a tally climbed: 200, 201, 202. But nobody was at the crew terminals. The votes were coming from somewhere else.
5 writers - sci-fi◐ Teen
Lightspeed Severance
My pod hissed open ninety years too soon. A calm voice from the ship said, "Crewmember Vey, the others have voted. Unanimous. You will be left on the planet below." I sat up, freezing and dizzy. There was no planet on any chart out here. Through the window I saw it anyway: green, cloudy, real. "Why?" I croaked. The ship said, "They asked me not to tell you."
5 writers - mysteryEveryone
The Last Train to Nowhere
A man woke up on a cold bench in an empty train station. He had no idea who he was. His pockets were empty except for one thing: a train ticket. It read "Departure: Now. Destination: Veliska." He had never heard of Veliska. The big board above him was blank. No people, no trains, no sound. Just him and a ticket to a place he didn't know.
5 writers