Speculative Stories

The dead hand of history still grips the throat of the present. Three centuries after a meteor shower struck Earth, humanity is divided between the powered and the originals. One group changed. One did not. In the years that followed, a virus killed billions, twisted the natural world into something monstrous, and gave fear a shape to blame. The powered have carried that blame ever since. Collared, controlled, and sent beyond the city walls, they are forced to fight the mutations that roam the wilds. Ezra, a doctor, refuses to accept the world's clean divisions. He treats anyone who needs him, believing every life has value, even in a city built on deciding otherwise. When one act of mercy toward a stranger pulls him into a hidden war, Ezra begins to uncover the truth buried beneath generations of fear. Tension between originals and powered reach a breaking point, and Ezra faces a choice that could alter the course of humanity. One where the line between saving and destroying becomes increasingly blurred.

A Scifi Anthology for The Flabbergasting Flash-Fic Smackdown Prompt Challenge. Cynthian Ludo stands among four men, recruits chosen for a retrieval mission to a long abandoned earth. The target. Five Luminous beings that looked like they had been woven of star-mesh. But these light beings were more than just translucent frames of star dust. They contained the last data logs of a peace delegation that went wrong many years earlier. And the recruits are not merely retrievers; they are grave-robbers sent to salvage the last witnesses of humanity's ruin. Cynthian was chosen by an algorithm that identified her as being an 'empathetic resonant,' but Corporal Neith believes otherwise. ━━━━━━━━━━━ A Scifi Anthology created for The Flabbergasting Flash-Fic Smackdown.

A collection of short fiction for the 2026 Smackdown.

Urla's people live on the edge between forest and valley. They hide among the trees, living a mostly peaceful existence. They only fear traveling to the outside villages. They have very little to trade with the outside world, surviving for years on the work of their hands. Urla's father is a weaver and a tailor. His work is a wonder and a trick to the eye as the fabric dances before those who see it. He makes traveling clothes for those who risk the outside world. The trick is to be noticed and unseen. Yet, Urla lives a carefree life. If only Frederick would leave her be, then life would be perfect.

She is the Empire's last defense. And its most dangerous weapon. At seventeen, Viviann Marie Evans called a council of generals fools to their faces - and saved thousands with nothing but her wits. By twenty, she was the youngest spymaster in history. Feared. Brilliant. Utterly irreplaceable. But when the King she serves falls dangerously in love with her, and a young man with grey eyes and a hidden past steps out of the shadows, Viviann faces the one enemy she cannot outwit: her own heart. Dark SpecFi. Slow-burn romance. Absolutely morally grey heroine.

The Earth is finally dying. Humans have been doing wrong time and time again, failing to understand their mistakes. Eventually, history closes in on itself. Now selfish and arrogant, humans fail to understand the importance of history and nature. Benji is a walking contradiction. He empathizes, but embodies selfish behavior. One day, his entire life changes with a selfless, yet simple action. Little does he know, this could give him just what he needed all along. Maybe with his story, humans can also understand the wrongdoings of their actions. Maybe we can learn how to heal ourselves and the world. _________________________________________________________________________________ Now fully completed

If you had a second chance, what would you change? Logan never believed in karma. But as his already shit life starts to fall apart, he starts to change his mind. The final blow comes when he finds out the kid he used to bully, Dakota, committed suicide. In an act of dispair, Logan jumps from the same bridge Dakota did. But instead of dying, he wakes up ten years earlier. 𝐓𝐚𝐠𝐬: 𝐄𝐧𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐋𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬, 𝐒𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐝 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞, 𝐁𝐮𝐥𝐥𝐲/𝐕𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐦, 𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐥

At Westbridge Academy, everyone knows Mae Bennett and Jace Hayes belong together-except the version of Jace who keeps using love like a leash. Mae has spent years apologizing first, enduring public slights, and telling herself that history is enough to hold a relationship together. But when a cruel dare, a humiliating breakup, and one too many betrayals finally crack that illusion, Mae is forced to face a truth she has been avoiding for far too long: loving Jace has been costing her pieces of herself. Then Adrian Sterling steps in. Cold, brilliant, and impossible to ignore, Adrian is Westbridge's top transfer student-the kind of boy people watch from a distance. He offers Mae something Jace never did: steadiness. A plan. Respect. As the pressure of final exams tightens, school gossip turns vicious, and Jace's new attachment to glamorous transfer Chloe Morgan becomes impossible to ignore, Mae finds herself pulled into Adrian's orbit instead. But Westbridge is built on rankings, rumors, and public humiliation, and walking away from Jace is not as simple as ending a relationship. To reclaim her future, Mae will have to survive sabotage, outscore the people who underestimated her, and learn the difference between being chosen and being cherished. With sharp emotional tension, a vindicating comeback arc, and a light speculative twist in the form of mysterious bullet comments only Mae can see, this is a campus romance about self-respect, revenge, and the kind of love that never asks her to shrink.

#1 collectionofhorrorstories #2 shorthorrorstories #3 Anthology #6 creepystories 8/31/26-9/1/26 #7 weird 9/8 (10 of 17 stories are published. I will be releasing one per week just in time for Halloween!) Step into the Darker Side of Dusk! Seventeen supernatural short stories of sinister suspense. Ordinary men and women. Familiar streets and workplaces. Yet lurking within every shadow, something strange awaits. Ghosts. Demons. Creatures unnamed, and things unexplainable. Forces that warp the perceptions of reality and bend the edges of sanity while penetrating through the cracks of our world. Inside this collection, you will encounter a parent's worst nightmare while playing tea time, a deserted roadway along the railroad hiding something far worse than abandoned cars. A painting with a cursed history, a police officer's career unraveling amongst impossible screams, sudden rain, and fallen ash. A mysterious tattooed woman's subtle smile, a stalking statue. A strange, flickering, panic inducing glow along the shore, each becomes a threshold to the uncanny and paranormal. Each story twists from the known to the unimaginable, revealing endings that leave you questioning the reality and experience of the characters and the events. The sun is setting. The time is now. The world as you know it fades. Dare to cross into the Darker Side of Dusk.

In a world where the sky is a vast, living ocean, Elara Quinn has always felt the creatures above were more than just shadows in the light. When people in her town begin vanishing after being watched from above, she sets out to uncover the truth. Guided by the reluctant Kairo Venn and pursued by the mysterious Glass Diver, Elara's search takes her to hidden laboratories, forbidden archives, and finally - into the ocean itself. What she discovers will shatter her understanding of life, death, and freedom... and force her to decide whether humanity truly belongs on the ground, or in the endless waters above.

The adventures of Kai Gilling continue. Kai has finally hit his stride. He's found stability in his new ever-moving home by joining the R&R--an organization dedicated to saving those in need. All he has to do is complete training and make nice with a new eclectic group of teammates. But will old promises prevent him from living the new life he's made for himself?

Welcome to the latest annual Best Of collection! Brand-new stories from some of your favourite mothertroopers!

Time doesn't always pass. Sometimes it slips. Sometimes it stalls. And sometimes... it asks for a favour. On an ordinary Tuesday, a writer in his favourite café notices an old man watching him. Odd clothes. Odd presence. Odd stillness. When the stranger approaches and calmly asks to borrow an hour of his life, the world around them fractures - steam freezes, coins hang in mid‑air, and shadows begin to wander. To save everyone trapped in the moment, he must give up something he can't quite name. But time never returns quite the same way it left. And neither does he.

| 𝐅𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐄𝐃 𝐨𝐧 𝐖𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐩𝐚𝐝𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 | The Dark is dangerous. The Dark is deception. And the Dark is the only thing she wants. What would you do if the only beautiful thing in the world was the one thing you couldn't touch? --- A collection of stories to entice your mind, enthrall your senses, and ensnare your memory. Dare to dive in. ~*AWARDS*~ 1st in Science Fiction - The Sunflower Awards 2.0 1st in Short Story/One Shot - The Life Elements Awards 1st in Drama - Rising Gem Award 2nd in One-Shot - The Next Gen Awards 2nd in Miscellaneous - Everything's Canceled Awards 1st in The Monthly Gemstones Awards for: 'A Way to the Stars' 'More of Salt' 'The Base Naught File' 'Android' 2nd in The Monthly Gemstones Awards for: 'This Mockery of Light' 'Immortalized' 3rd in The Monthly Gemstone Awards for 'The Thirteenth Month' ___________________ Cover ©2020 Avadel Ink

Society loves a blueprint. If you fit the mold, doors open; if you don't, your fundamental rights-even your right to exist-are up for debate. Meet a protagonist whose uniqueness defies every category you know. Your subconscious bias will try to build an avatar. But until you strip away every label you've ever been handed, you will never truly see the human inside.

One childhood wish. Two lives forever intertwined. ​Seven-year-old Park Jeong-min lives in the high-pressure shadow of Busan, while across the world, Kimya survives the rising violence of war in Congo DRC. Through a pen-pal exchange involving a pair of sneakers and a wax bracelet, the two form a unique bond and share a secret: they periodically swap bodies. As the years pass, they navigate each other's worldsㅡone a sanctuary of safety but suffocating expectations, the other breathtaking but scarred by relentless violence. At fifteen, a spiritual intervention severs their psychic link, trapping one in isolation, the other in constant peril. Years later, still haunted by Kimya's fate, Jeong-min becomes a doctor and volunteers in the DRC, risking his life to find her. Meanwhile, Kimya, now alone in a foreign country, battles unfamiliar customs as she searches for him in Korea. ​No longer children dreaming of escape, they are survivors seeking the only person who truly knows their souls.

This book is meant to be a speculative fiction piece based on the internet phenomenon: Skibidi Toilet. The story revolves around a fictional war between the Alliance, a shaky unification between former national enemies, and the Skibidi's, a strange force of technologically advanced singing heads inside moving toilets. The events of the war are told through the records of journalist Hank Mung, who interviews of the men and women who fought tooth and nail for a chance to see another day. Skibidi Toilet is by DaFuqBoom https://www.youtube.com/@DaFuqBoom

(BETA version) In a near-future America where Axiom has taught the government to treat neurological data as truth, veteran homicide detective Jonah Mercer investigates the death of a disabled woman whose final refusal has already been classified as "voluntary." When Jonah challenges the verdict, he is confined for a thirty-nine-day Cognitive Integrity Assessment and placed before the Mirror-a device capable of detecting contradiction, but incapable of distinguishing guilt from trauma, faith, or truth. As the murder investigation becomes a trial of his own mind, Jonah must uncover the human choices concealed beneath Axiom's compassionate language while confronting the lies he has used to escape responsibility in his own life. The real horror is not that humanity created a machine capable of controlling the truth, but that people built it to carry their consciences for them and then called themselves innocent.

In one night, a nameless man wakes in a world with no sun - the Archive of the Deep, a ruin between life and death where lost souls are tested, broken, or reborn. He is the Seeker. He has no memory of his old life, only a hollow ache and a promise he made to a girl he can no longer picture. His only guide is the Navigator - a hooded figure who has walked this darkness for a thousand years, the last of a dying lineage powerful enough to shake the heavens, yet bound by laws he cannot break even to save the one thing he wants most. Six tests stand between the Seeker and his way home: Ego. Space. Courage. Reality. Soul. Will. Each one strips away another piece of who he was - and reveals what he's willing to become. But something older than the Archive is stirring beyond its walls. A hunger born of leaking, forbidden power. Cracks are spreading through the boundaries between Heaven, Hell, and the world of men - and the war that follows may not spare the Seeker at all. To go home, he must survive the dark. To save her, he must become something the dark has never seen. ⚔️ A story of grief, sacrifice, and the price of a second chance - for readers of dark fantasy, cosmic mythology, and slow-burn mentor bonds.

What if the fourth dimension isn't time? We're taught to think of reality as three-dimensional space, with time woven into it as the fourth dimension. But what if we've been looking at it the wrong way? What if the fourth dimension is consciousness? This speculative philosophical essay explores an idea that sits somewhere between physics, philosophy, and the strange nature of human experience. If consciousness is more than a byproduct of the brain-if it exists on a plane beyond the physical world-then what does that mean for our understanding of reality? Through tesseracts, spacetime, dreams, memories, energy, and the mysterious experience of déjà rêvé, this essay asks a simple question: What if consciousness isn't something we have, but somewhere we exist? Hear me out.