Fable

Amo Te Semper
The cobweb stretches across the door like it alone holds the room closed, a testament to how long it has succeeded. Yet, a web is nothing more than an illusion of time. It could be a century old, or only a day. I know precisely how long it has been since anyone last crossed this threshold.
By Luna Vani2 months ago in Fiction
The Way Out
They said I could go, everything was done, and it would all be fine. They showed me the door and let me out. The door slammed, and in front of me was a stone spiral staircase, going down to an exit.
By Mike Singleton 💜 Mikeydred - EBA2 months ago in Fiction
Rise of the Machines
I am sitting in the dirt inside a cave on the hiking trail up the street from my old house. I look next to me to see my dog and my little brother still sleeping peacefully. It’s easier to forget how horrific real life is when we are asleep. I am glad they have an escape. I sigh and roll my eyes now to think about everything that’s happened and how it all started. It is so cliché, but in the end, the machines turned against us. The creations we made out of arrogance for convenience grew to overpower us. Though I think the first mistake was thinking we could control them in the first place. Once we gave them intelligence, we should have known better. Pretending like we could give life to these machines and they wouldn’t eventually realize we were using and abusing them. I mean, we had countless movies explaining why that was a bad idea before we even had the technology for AI, but the pompousness of humans of science and “progress” is wondrous and endless.
By Leah Suzanne Dewey2 months ago in Fiction
Sea Changes
In our world, there’s really no such thing as a pair of people who are exactly alike. Even identical twins, formed from the same snarl of cells and genetically identical at their origins, have small differences between them. They possess different fingerprints. They can come to be unlike one another in many ways given the chance to grow in differing directions. They are their own people — individuals in every way that truly matters.
By Shannon Hilson2 months ago in Fiction
The Color of Venus
They say it’s always dark at the end, but the same can almost always be said of beginnings. Starts and finishes are, after all, like mismatched twins that don’t quite get along and hate hearing how similar they are to one another. But hating something never makes it any less true, no matter how much we may wish otherwise.
By Shannon Hilson2 months ago in Fiction
The House at the End of the World
The sound the ocean makes as it cascades over the edge of the actual world into nothingness is impossible to fathom — simultaneously too loud because of the ocean’s immeasurable volume and not loud enough, as there’s nowhere for the water to land below. If you’ve been to the house at the end of the world, then you know what that sounds like. You also know that it’s impossible to describe to another living soul with any accuracy.
By Shannon Hilson2 months ago in Fiction
Fire Season
Something was very wrong with the fields in Drift City, but no one could say exactly what the problem was. What was once a fertile valley where just about every crop you could think of grew as abundantly as can be was now barren and empty. One year everything was as it always had been and the next, it was as if the fields had been heavily salted. Or as if they’d been cursed.
By Shannon Hilson2 months ago in Fiction
Satellites and Violets
Gina was old now by nearly anyone’s standards. Her face was wrinkled and her joints creaked when she moved, especially first thing in the morning or when rain was on the way. The young people she passed in the streets on the way to buy bread and vegetables from the market saw someone else’s grandmother in a tattered grey cardigan and a faded, flowered skirt — a stranger they didn’t know and couldn’t relate to.
By Shannon Hilson2 months ago in Fiction
When We Found the Sky Again
The first day the sun returned to Crestfall Valley was the day Aiden met Liora. For ninety-three days, the valley had been swallowed by winter fog — a thick, silver curtain that dimmed every morning and turned every night into a blur of shadows. The people of Crestfall called it the Long Haze, the kind of phenomenon that only happened once every few decades. Crops froze, windows stayed closed, and most folks kept their heads down, counting the days until the sky reappeared.
By Zidane2 months ago in Fiction
THE STARLESS MARK
Kade Thornwild never believed in destiny. Not the kind that chose people, at least. In his experience, destiny only chose the loud, the brave, or the ones foolish enough to run toward danger instead of away from it.
By Alisher Jumayev2 months ago in Fiction
En Passant. Content Warning.
1st Edition: Originally Published on Vocal Media in 2021 2nd Edition: December 9th, 2025 - The refrigerator door hung open, expunging the cold air from the chillboxed realm of the keeper of the sustenance. Leftover rancidity wafted into flared, masculine nostrils—nostrils erupting with bushels of hair. It had been an Ocean Quahog’s age since the man had eaten anything. The light in the fridge had broken, and deluminated food had an unappetizing zeal. However, The Man knew if he had bothered to fix the problem, he would see that in the illuminated age, nothing was worth eating in the first place.
By Scott A. Vancil2 months ago in Fiction
The Nutcracker's Curse
Emma Ross had always loved antique shopping, drawn to the allure of forgotten stories hidden within old trinkets. So when she stumbled upon the estate sale of the late Dr. Caldwell, a reclusive collector, she couldn’t resist. Among the dusty furniture and faded heirlooms, a peculiar nutcracker caught her eye.
By V-Ink Stories2 months ago in Fiction