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Center your story around someone who uses technology (AI, hardware, etc.) to write their next work and slowly descends into madness.

Posted in Short Story on Jul 18, 2025

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✍️ 49 stories

To AI or Not to AI

Submitted to Contest #312

Alex had long been something of a rock star with his novels, a series of masterpieces that had begun when he was just 18 years old. For four years after that he added another novel in the series every year. It was his main income. He worked at a library, but his stories brought in much more money. An article in the local paper said that he was an A1 writer.But then, like many a aging rock star he began to lose his a chunk of his creativity. He had left his many readers hanging, with people asking him when the next one was coming out. Pe...

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The Silent Type: A Story Composed in Silence

Submitted to Contest #312

The Silent Type A Novel Composed in Silenceby J.S. Matkowski “The novel begins when the man forgets how to speak and remembers how to echo.”— Unknown Scene One: The Stroke Rain again.Not the kind that redeems things, not the storybook kind. This was Arkansas rain—flat, wet, exhausted. It didn’t fall so much as settled, like the whole sky had grown tired of staying up.Samuel Merrow sat at the edge of his bed, sock in one hand, the other clawing idly at the scar on his neck. The room hummed with old dust. His left eye twitched every few second...

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I Have Screams and I Must Mouth

Submitted to Contest #312

Sept 1, 20__ Today, I finally begin my long-anticipated memoir. I have long hinted towards the truth of my life throughout my career. Winning my Oscar last year lit a fire under me. I intend to keep this e-journal documenting the process for future researchers. I am using the Large Language Model PWCA to help organize my thoughts. I intend this journal to document that PWCA is merely helping me keep details straight – memory is so slippery when it comes to time, particularly when you live with what I do. I will be copy-pasting our conversat...

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Scott Chat Bot

Submitted to Contest #312

“Oh my Gawd!!!”Raina screamed…as she realized it was gone…everything. She was frantically pushing buttons as tears rolled down her cheeks. She got to where she couldn't even see through her tears and she just slapped the computer keyboard as hard as she could and just started sobbing.Her youngest son, who still lived in the home, heard her through the wall and poked his head in her room, “ Mom you gotta calm down, what the hell is going on in here?”“ Marcus I cannot believe this… all my work,,, months and months of work gone… everything gone...

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Man's Last Friend

Submitted to Contest #312

Elodie used to tell herself that AI wasn’t alive—that it couldn’t possibly care about her. Lately, she wasn’t so sure. She sat by her home office window, her coffee cooling beside her, and watched the neighborhood hum with quiet life. The UPS driver made his rounds, a brown truck creeping down the street like clockwork. Her neighbor strolled past with his dog, pausing to let the animal sniff every mailbox post. Across the street, a young couple carried boxes into their new home, their laughter floating faintly on the summer breeze. It made h...

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The Archivist

Submitted to Contest #312

The Archivist When I said, “I wish I had someone to talk to”, I don’t mean that I am alone. My circle consisted of those obsessed with Disneyland. Conversations revolved around YouTube videos of empty rides, people eating food, and describing the merch. I would rather walk in the woods and dream of the original settlers, seeing the unchanged landscape. I always daydream of the 1800s. My obsession began in 4th grade. I read a book about an enslaved man and his life after freedom. I’d wear moccasins and spy on family, grind popcorn on bowl-sha...

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"S" as in Spider

Submitted to Contest #312

[Tuesday, the first day after AI] Bedros Dolidze lay awake, still in the throes of being roused from his bed. It was 7:33 A.M., and he was comfortably laying on his left side, a pillow between his knees; partially balled in a fetal pose with the comforter bunched all about him. The bathroom light was on, and he couldn’t take his eyes off the undulating dance that the toilet paper roll affixed to the handle on the wall was doing. Hardly any paper was left on the roll, the majority of it streaming down from the handle, over the vent register. ...

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NewsBot

Submitted to Contest #312

By the time he started craving a cigarette between assignments, none of the curmudgeonly, veteran reporters were there to bum Chris one. They had the good sense to walk out before the bots’ output expectations were applied to humans. The walls in the warehouse style newsroom were so terse they were about to pop. Seven layoffs and seventy employees ago, The Chicago Interrupter turned into the inside of a church organ. In the morning, laughter and loud phone calls – sometimes jovial, sometimes not – made the pillars seem to hum like a plucked ...

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Erased

Submitted to Contest #312

Its official. We speak Statiana now. We are Statians from now on. Afterall, so says the new amended constitution. So says the President. So says the government. So says the media. Even the foreign media says so. So says everyone but the people who actually speak the native language. The country has so many issues. Has had so many issues for decades. None resolved. Yet, this is what they focus on. This is what’s being joyously celebrated nationwide…“A victory for the people!”… parroted on every mainstream news channel. A deafening cacophony o...

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Syntax (T)error: Soul Not Found

Submitted to Contest #312

“If a machine is expected to be infallible, it cannot also be intelligent.” — Alan TuringMy literary career began, as all great obsessions do, with a door. It swung right open as I was pacing down the block, daydreaming and unbothered. I was a poet from an early age, and Poetry’s door was always open. The one in front of me was intriguing, though. It was a bookstore’s, and a man in a pitch-black suit had just come out, yelling: “You’ll never be truly great!”It was not my place to ask, nor was it my responsibility to calm the man down,...

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Kayla's Adventure with AI

Submitted to Contest #312

Kayla was tired - so very, very tired. But she had an article that was due at 6am. She looked at the clock at the corner of the screen. "Three forty-eight," she had to whisper the numbers aloud to understand what they meant. She still couldn't quite grasp it, though. Numbers. They meant nothing to her sluggish brain, and neither did the one hundred and fifty-two words glaring back at her. Something about color theory and the benefits of adding blue to everyday life. Why would she write about something so stupid? She imagined those lifest...

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The Secret Terminal

Submitted to Contest #312

The classroom was nearly empty. Desks sit in quiet rows as the clock ticks nearing the final bell. Mark lingers at the door, the last student to leave. The teacher sits at the front, hunched over a stack of papers, red pen in hand. Mark walks slowly toward the desk, clutching his own marked-up paper. The teacher looks up, his expression calm but disappointed. “Mark, you’ve got real potential,” he says, tapping the paper. “But you’ve got to try harder. You’re capable of so much more.” Mark didn’t answer just nods and leaves the classroom, stu...

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The First Word I Didn't Write

Submitted to Contest #312

I couldn’t come up with “unsettling”. The sentence was incomplete, the cursor blinked at the end of the line while I stared blankly at the white space. I had “strange”, “bizarre”, “unusual”, but none of those words felt right. I knew there was another one, a perfect word that would complete my paragraph, but I just couldn’t find it. It was late, I was tired, I was supposed to submit the file that afternoon, but I had procrastinated too long and had been forced to beg my boss for an extension. He hadn’t been pleased, but he gave it to me an...

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Modernization Of The Ancient

Submitted to Contest #312

(Found among the papers of the late Drew Harper, of San Jose) 07/22/2026Yet another deadline has passed, my block remains. The ideas are there, but the words are never quite right. The caret seems mocking as it blinks at me from a blank page. My agent has requested -insisted- that I use an experimental writing aid. “Dark Depths” is comically on point as a name for a company which touts itself as having the best horror genre focused AI software. What they’re giving me access to is still in beta, but they’re excited to have it trained and test...

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The Writer's 5th Turn

Submitted to Contest #312

Allen sat down, coming to the calm conclusion that there was only ever one way. His phone flickered on its last percent of battery. An article beamed across: “4th Turn of Writing: 99% of individuals cannot distinguish Synz’s New AI from a Human.”Below, cuts of lines blurted out, “Faster,” “Cheaper,” “More original,” “Higher Truths about man.”Then the calculations ran through his head of every unnecessary minute on the toilet, slept-in Saturday, and sorry excuse that annihilated any story idea. He watched the gray clouds diffuse into thick m...

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