The photograph had always hung in the hallway. Right between the bedroom and the bathroom.A narrow place no one lingered long. It was from their wedding day. Not the posed one with everyone smiling and…
No one remembered exactly when the ring stopped shining. Elena thought it happened after their third anniversary dinner — the one where they argued in the car on the way home and then didn’t talk…
The letter didn’t come in the mail. There was no stamp.No return address.No courier van stopping outside the house. It simply appeared on the kitchen table one quiet Tuesday morning, between two untouched mugs of…
No one knew where he came from. One week, the corner by the old train station was empty except for pigeons and a trash bin with a broken wheel. The next week, he was there.…
The staircase shouldn’t have fit in the building. That was the first thing people said once they finally noticed it. The apartment complex on Reed Avenue wasn’t tall. Four floors. Thirty-two units. Brown brick that…
The first time the doorbell rang, Amira thought it was broken. Not because it made a strange sound — it didn’t.It sounded perfectly normal. Clear. Soft. A gentle, almost polite chime. What was strange was…
No one noticed the boarded-up building at the edge of Marrow Street until it un-boarded itself. It had sat there for years — a husk of brick and dust and old posters curling at the…
The grocery store was not supposed to be there. That’s the first thing Marisol noticed. She had lived on the corner of Juniper and 8th for four years. She knew every broken tile of that…
By the time Elias found the bench, he had run out of ways to outrun himself. It was late afternoon in the kind of small city park you forget exists until you need somewhere to…
And Francis paid it willingly. He’d lived a long, beautiful life. He didn’t fear fading, so long as the world brightened in his place. But then something happened that changed everything. A girl approached him…
