Classical

Andromache at Epirus
Helen rubbed her hands together swiftly, heating her palms with the friction. For a moment, her warm touch soothed Andie's aching lower leg. Then her fingers sank into the tight knot in Andie's calf muscle, eliciting a hiss of pain.
By Deanna Cassidy20 days ago in Fiction
Helena's Journey
Smoke curling through the pale orange sky over the distant hill indicated to Helena that morning was on the horizon. The fires provided warmth for the remnants of that small village whose people hunted for rats or squirrels, cooking them over crude stone pits and metal grates. Sand stretched in either direction, making supplies difficult to obtain. In the distance, Helena had become a scavenger as well, digging through the heaps of destruction that occurred when one world state clashed with the other years ago. The war yielded no winners, only broken people, pawns struggling to survive.
By Barb Dukeman21 days ago in Fiction
City of plague:A new Yorker’s pandemic chronicle
When Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered all non-essential businesses in New York State to shut down, Chinatown changed almost overnight.
By Peter21 days ago in Fiction
City of plague:A new Yorker’s pandemic chronicle
By late March of the Year of the Rat, time itself seemed to slow under the weight of the virus. Days stretched endlessly, as if the calendar had lost its urgency. Each morning looked almost identical to the one before it. The same gray sky over Manhattan. The same cautious silence on the streets below our apartment window.
By Peter21 days ago in Fiction
City of plague:A new Yorker’s pandemic chronicle
In late March, after New York Governor Andrew Cuomo issued the stay-at-home order, all workers in non-essential industries were required to remain at home. The goal was clear: protect lives, slow the rising curve of infections, and relieve the growing panic that had gripped New Yorkers.
By Peter22 days ago in Fiction
City of plague:A new Yorker’s pandemic chronicl
On March 1, the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in New York City was announced. The patient was a middle-aged lawyer working in a Midtown Manhattan law firm. His condition was already severe when he was diagnosed, and he was immediately hospitalized and placed in isolation.
By Peter22 days ago in Fiction
Mnemosyne's Anemones. Runner-Up in What the Myth Gets Wrong Challenge.
Mom was furious. She stomped into the hall, carrying a rather expensive-looking book. Which she promptly slammed onto a convenient table, sending sparkling dust into the bright corners. “Melpomene!”
By Meredith Harmon22 days ago in Fiction
An In-Depth Story Inspired by Gone Girl
An In-Depth Story Inspired by Gone Girl On the morning of their fifth wedding anniversary, Nick Dunne woke to the uneasy stillness of a house that felt like it was holding its breath.
By Ibrahim Shah 23 days ago in Fiction
Echoes of Resistance
The streets of Bristol were alive that day, though not with the usual hum of buses and chatter, but with the heavy pulse of voices that demanded to be heard. I had not intended to join the protest—I came to observe, to write, to bear witness—but once I stepped into the swell of people, the energy was impossible to ignore. The banners waved above heads, each one a story, a demand, a prayer. The scent of rain-soaked asphalt mixed with the faint tang of chalk from hastily scrawled messages, leaving the air electric.
By imtiazalam23 days ago in Fiction
With Her Final Breath, My Mother-in-Law Revealed a Secret That Changed Everything
The hospital room was quiet except for the soft beeping of machines and the faint sound of rain tapping against the window.
By imtiazalam23 days ago in Fiction
The Shape of the Law From the Man of the Mountain. Runner-Up in What the Myth Gets Wrong Challenge.
The man from the mountain did not come down shining but that was how people told it later, after years had worn the terror smooth and made a lantern of him in memory. When I first saw him descending through the dusk, he looked like someone who had been pulled through the inside of a storm and returned only in part. Dust clung to the hollows of his face. His robe was split at the shoulder. His mouth moved once before sound came out as if speech had been thinned by the height and had not yet thickened again in the air below; still the people surged toward him. They always did when fear and hope wore the same face.
By Cadma23 days ago in Fiction
Eurydice's Truth. Honorable Mention in What the Myth Gets Wrong Challenge.
The poets say he turned back. They forgot that both gods and men had already silenced me. Even now I linger in the world of the dead, millennia after my husband showed how little faith he had in me. The stories say that after his awful death he found peace, that he could walk beside me with no need to look back. But in truth, he remains lost in his songs, and I am still an afterthought, or perhaps merely an ideal for his imagination.
By J.B. Miller23 days ago in Fiction