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Write about someone who self-publishes a story that was never meant to be read.

Posted in Short Story on Jul 4, 2025

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✍️ 49 stories

A spark in the wires

Submitted to Contest #310

Even at the age of nine, I knew there was something inexplicably different about Eugene Westcote. To all intents and purposes, he was a typical boy of our generation. Grubby knees, snotty nose, with a particular fondness for semolina pudding and lead-painted soldiers. But all that aside, a peculiar air would sometimes sweep over the boy, seemingly out of nowhere. His nature would take on a disturbing sort of other-worldliness. He would become ridiculously perpendicular, gaining inches in height, or it would appear so at least, and he would a...

29 likes 22 comments 22
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The Fold Between Pages

Submitted to Contest #310

I printed ninety-nine copies. Not because of some deep symbolism or numerology, my printer jammed on the hundredth, and I didn’t have the energy to argue with it. It was a dumb little zine. Saddle-stitched. Off-white paper that smelled like an old hymnal. Stories. All fiction, technically. Which is to say: everything I couldn’t say out loud. People asked why I didn’t publish it online. Why I dropped them off in coffee shops, bus stops, laundromats. Why I wouldn’t put my name on it. I told them I was going for “mysterious author energy,” but...

28 likes 7 comments 7
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The Pages He Couldn't Read

Submitted to Contest #310

They said Benjamin Drew couldn’t spell his own name, but the words that came out of him were faster than justice and deeper than any man in that town cared to dig. He was born slow, which was the word they used in Mercy County when they meant something softer than retarded but harder than broken. His mother had fought like hell to keep him out of the institutions, but when she died, they put him in the last place that would take him—the Golden Fields Adult Living Center, a half-converted farmhouse stuck between a gravel pit and a closed-down...

24 likes 7 comments 7
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Loophole to Heaven

Submitted to Contest #310

Loophole to Heaven I’ve often wondered about the reunion at The Pearly Gates. Are loved ones there upon your arrival to greet you, or do you have to wait around for them? Perhaps it’s like the airport where a guy is holding up a tattered sign displaying your name written with a Sharpie.What if no one shows up for you? While couples run to each other in slow motion, do you stand by and watch? You could take out your phone and idly scroll, pretending not to notice. Worse yet, what if your loved ones are actually terrible people? Are you stuck ...

23 likes 15 comments 15
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The Widow’s Guide to Moving On (Sort Of)

Submitted to Contest #310

Day 1: The Ham IncidentFrank died at 6:17 a.m. on a Tuesday. By 10:42 a.m., someone brought a ham.It was still warm.I hadn’t even brushed my teeth. I was still wearing the sweatpants I’d slept in—correction, the sweatpants I hadn’t slept in, because no one sleeps on Day 0 of becoming a widow. They just lie there, staring at the ceiling, wondering if they’re supposed to call someone or if death notifies people on its own like some grim newsletter.The ham arrived in a foil tray, courtesy of Helen McAllister, whom I haven’t spoken to since she ...

22 likes 3 comments 3
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Not Quite a Vampire Story

Submitted to Contest #310

It's hard being a vampire and an elementary school teacher. For one thing, there isn’t enough caffeinated blood in the world to push me through all the yelling, and the screeching, and the adamant refusals to “stay in your seats.” Traditionally, vampires sleep during the day but that is out of the question for me. Sleep in general is out of the question for me because vampires who are teachers seldom sleep. There is always another math worksheet for me to grade, another lesson to plan on deciduous trees, another pair of sneakers to find for ...

20 likes 8 comments 8
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Things We Didn't Say

Submitted to Contest #310

Eli didn’t mean for anyone to read it. It had been a joke — a Tuesday-night-at-2AM mistake, born out of boredom and silence. The kind that sneaks up on you when your apartment sounds like someone hit mute on life — not in a poetic way, just like someone forgot to turn you back on.Freelancing gave him the freedom to work when he wanted, wear whatever, and slowly disappear into the furniture. He hadn’t heard another human voice in days. At one point, he’d considered calling tech support just to feel something.He named the bot LOOM. Because why...

20 likes 2 comments 2
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The Cypress Manuscript

Submitted to Contest #310

It was the kind of story she never meant to tell—let alone publish.When Petra Barić uploaded the manuscript to Amazon KDP late one sleepless night, she assumed no one would read it. She even used a pseudonym—"Mira Dalma," a name that held just enough shadow to comfort her. The book's cover was an abstract blur of sea green and rust red, a template she'd tweaked half-heartedly. The blurb was vague, poetic, promising introspection and mystery, revealing nothing of its actual content.And that content was… raw."The Cypress Manuscript" was never ...

19 likes 9 comments 9
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Page Eighty-Four

Submitted to Contest #310

The plasticky paper cover of the magazine stuck to my damp fingertips. I couldn’t pull my eyes away. It was towards the last chunk of pages. Page eighty-four. A simple story. One about love that led to immense heart break. The names were different, Mia in place of Maya, Bill in place of Ben. The details though, those were the same. The loft we had shared in New York, our golden retriever, Buck, and our slow mornings. A story about Him and me, plastered between the pages of other writers’ words. Words that were meaningless next to His. My co...

18 likes 1 comment 1
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The Gloom

Submitted to Contest #310

Edgar Phillips had always considered his writing a form of necessary bleeding. Each story, each poem, a carefully lanced wound, letting out the dark, viscous things that simmered beneath his skin. But then there was The Gloom. It hadn't been written so much as regurgitated. A feverish, three-day blur of caffeine, nicotine, and a sense of profound, inescapable dread. He remembered little of the process, only the feeling of his fingers flying over the keys, the words spooling out like black thread from some unseen loom. When he finally emerged...

16 likes 3 comments 3
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7-Eleven Jesus

Submitted to Contest #310

Trigger Warning (Author's Note): This is not intended to offend Christians, but it might. Have faith in God's sense of humor. Jesus was chilling with the 7-Eleven attendant Marcus, teaching him how to play rummy and kicking his ass at it, when he saw the group of three setting up in front of the store. He saw them through the glass: a clean-shaven middle-aged man with a shiny, bald head, wearing a red button-up and black slacks; a younger male wearing the same, except his button down was white and he wore sneakers rather than black leather d...

16 likes 5 comments 5
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The Glass House

Submitted to Contest #310

Part I: The ActThe apartment was too clean.Not just tidy—sterile, as if Alina had scoured away every molecule of memory. White walls, muted grey furnishings, not a frame out of place. The air smelled of antiseptic lemon, a scent she’d grown to rely on more than Liam’s cologne. She had once thought it calming. Now, it buzzed faintly in her nose like a low electrical hum.She moved through the space without sound, barefoot on polished wood, her steps careful, her breathing shallow.Liam was sprawled on the couch, laptop open on his knees. “Thai ...

16 likes 5 comments 5
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Where the Dark Leaked Out

Submitted to Contest #310

Sparkle, wonder, magic, and fantasy worlds exploding with vibrant colors were the eclipse to her sorrow. Pretending she was good at it, you’d never see anyone put on such a well-executed facade, and the imagination that ignited when she closed her eyes made her money. She could fill the darkness with color as if scribbling over black with a rainbow could ever mask the night. She was an author of magic, and wrote all the things into books that she was not equipped with, and she was good at it. Published author well known for igniting child...

15 likes 5 comments 5
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The Thing About My Dad

Submitted to Contest #310

He was my father and his name was Dan, not D.B. That false moniker was just some stupid thing that a reporter got wrong at the time, but then the rest of the press repeated it over and over again until his true name didn't matter any longer. Hey, trust me, that was fine with us. We liked it that way, but they got the rest of the story mostly correct, and I can finally talk about it now. "No funny stuff or I'll do the job." Hell yeah. That was my dad. I loved him. He taught me how to live freely. How to breath right. How to make it to the nex...

14 likes 18 comments 18
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The Diary of Ellen Becker

Submitted to Contest #310

(This story contains sensitive content. It alludes to sexual violence and abuse) Acknowledgements Special Thanks to the Salt Lake City and Santa Fe police departments in the aid of the investigation of my sister Ruby Becker (Diana Maxwell). Your dedication to this case has returned her remains to her family so that she may be laid to rest in her hometown cemetery where her loved ones may mourn her. Perhaps my journal entries would have been able to help much sooner… Dedication This is for you my dear Ruby…I know Diana to many. A Collect...

13 likes 2 comments 2
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