Fantasy Stories

The Midnight Garden

Where flowers bloom in darkness

When Lily inherits her grandmother's house, she discovers a garden that only exists at midnight, filled with flowers that glow with their own light and a legacy she never expected.

Library of Lost Objects

In the quiet wing, shelves hold mismatched gloves, vanished pens, orphaned socks. Each item sits in a book jacket. If you check out your missing object, you must return something else you are not read...

The Last Cat Video

One day, every platform freezes on a single clip: a cat batting at sunlight. Streaming stops, news halts, traffic quiets. The world watches the loop until boredom becomes meditation. Cats glare from w...

Rain That Remembers

The forecast says drizzle, but the rain arrives humming melodies. Each drop carries a different forgotten song. People step outside with open mouths, tasting refrains of lullabies and first dances. Th...

Substitute Moon

The moon goes on strike over unpaid light. The neighborhood hangs a paper lantern as a replacement. It glows bravely, held up by fishing line from rooftop to rooftop. Tides forget what to do, puddles...

Streetlight Pact

Streetlights agree to guide one late walker home. As she turns corners, bulbs blink on ahead and dim behind, making a breadcrumb trail of light. Cars slow, confused by the choreography. She wonders wh...

Paper Airplane Diplomacy

Two apartment towers face each other, their residents feuding over late-night noise. A kid folds a note into a plane: "Can we have quiet after ten?" It glides across, landing in a potted plant. A repl...

Gravity Holiday

The town council declares a gravity holiday. For twenty-four hours, weight takes a break. People tether themselves with scarves. Parks become floating picnics. Someone loses grip on a lawn chair and w...

Wishful Recycling

The city installs a second recycling bin labeled "Wishes." Residents toss in pennies, eyelash wishes, and birthday candle smoke. Sanitation workers collect the dreams, rerouting them to those who need...

Missing Shadow

One morning, a shadow refuses to rise with its owner. It leaves a note on the bed: "Taking a day off. Back by dusk." The owner walks through town sunlit and exposed. Without the shadow, there is nowhe...

The Forgetting Bakery

The bakery sells pastries that remove one regret per bite. A muffin erases the memory of a bad haircut. A croissant dissolves a cruel remark. People queue around the block, leaving lighter than they a...

Invisible Umbrella

Sold in a late-night infomercial, the invisible umbrella promises protection from bad moods. Skeptics scoff until they step beneath it and feel lighter. Arguments slide off the canopy. Cynicism drips...

Lost and Found Gravity

Objects in town begin to float when their owners forget about them. A lost glove hovers near the bus stop until someone claims it. A bicycle drifts above a garage. The local news reports a cloud of fo...

Origami Passport

At a travel kiosk, a sign reads: "Fold yourself anywhere." Paper sheets printed with visas sit in neat stacks. Travelers follow diagrams, creasing themselves into cranes, boats, and foxes. Each shape...

Pocket Rainforest

He keeps a terrarium in his coat pocket. Inside, tiny trees sway, and a miniature river flows. On stressful days, the terrarium leaks mist, cooling the air. Friends think the humidity is a quirk. He k...

Birdsong Translator

An inventor builds a device that translates birdsong. The first phrases are mundane: "Seed here," "Warm branch." Then sparrows begin reviewing the neighborhood. "That cat is sloppy," "The new bakery s...

The Proxy Hug Service

For a subscription, a service mails warm packages. Inside is a jacket that hugs back when worn. Lonely people unwrap embraces in living rooms and cubicles. One customer forgets to renew and receives a...

The Secondhand Star

A pawnshop advertises a secondhand star, slightly dim, no box. Curious customers peer into a glass case where a faint glow hums. The price is negotiable. One buyer worries about maintenance; another a...

Gravity Black Market

In alleys behind dance studios and construction sites, dealers sell pockets of lesser gravity sealed in vacuum jars. Dancers buy them to float longer during leaps. Thieves use them to lift safes. Malik, a courier, moves jars at night. He never opens...

Memory Foreclosure

Lena works at Solvent Bank's most controversial division: Memory Recovery and Repossession. Clients who default on dream-backed loans sign away their most valuable memories. Lena's job is to retrieve them using a headset that lets her walk through so...

The Unsent Letter Festival

Every autumn, the town of Alder hosts the Unsent Letter Festival. Residents deliver all letters they never sent—drafts, apologies, confessions—to the post office. Volunteers hang them on strings across the square. People wander, reading fragments of...

Factory of Borrowed Voices

The factory sits on the edge of town, smokestacks replaced with speakers. Inside, voices are bottled, rented, and returned. Customers borrow a booming baritone for a presentation or a lilting tenor for lullabies. The slogan: "Sound like your best sel...

Library of Forgotten Smells

In the basement of the city library, past genealogy and microfiche, lies the Olfactory Archive. Glass vials line shelves, each containing a preserved scent. Labels read like poetry: "First Snow on Concrete," "Grandmother's Spice Drawer," "Bus Seat in...

The Courier of Last Words

Jem works for a service that delivers last words from the dying to the living. Clients record messages, set conditions, pay fees. Jem travels with a battered satchel of envelopes and encrypted drives. She prefers handwritten notes; they feel honest....

Artificial Comet

Tech mogul Arman builds a comet for a marriage proposal. He hires engineers to launch a payload of ice and reflective dust, guided by thrusters, timed to streak over the city spelling "Marry Me" in radiant debris. Environmentalists protest; astronome...

The Ink That Refuses to Dry

Writer Sam buys a rare fountain pen from an estate sale. The ink flows smooth but refuses to dry on the page. Words smear, sentences slide. Frustrated, Sam leaves a draft overnight. In the morning, the words have rearranged into a story Sam never int...

The Painter of Laws

In the republic of Varo, laws cannot take effect until the Painter renders them on canvas. Tradition began to ensure laws were visual and comprehensible. The current Painter, Alis, has grown weary of painting endless tax codes. When a new law arrives...

The Tide Accountant

Every evening, the tide accountant sits on the pier with a ledger, recording grains of sand taken by the sea and returned. A ritual inherited from her mother, and her mother before. People think it quaint. One night, the ledger numbers do not balance...

Orchestra of One Second

Composer Aya writes symphonies from single seconds captured throughout history: a monk's chant, a rocket launch, a child's laugh, a subway screech. She strings them into movements, time-traveling with sound. Audiences listen with headphones, experien...

Rental Conscience

A start-up offers consciences for rent. Need to fire someone without guilt? Rent a conscience that will nag you into kindness. Prices vary: deluxe models include moral philosophy references. Jin, a mid-level manager, rents a conscience for a week to...

The Pilot Light of the World

Deep beneath the old city, past tunnels forgotten by maps and rats, there was a flame no one tended yet never went out. Legend said it had been lit when the city was founded, a pilot light that kept the world from going cold. Plumbers joked about it during breaks. Historians rolled their eyes. Lina,...

The Cart Return Pact

Marcus started at the grocery store because it was close to home and paid just enough. His title was “Cart Associate,” but he preferred “Shepherd.” He chased stray carts, nudged them into lines, and kept the parking lot from becoming an obstacle course. He suspected most shoppers thought carts found...

The Island of Misdelivered Packages

Cargo ships avoid Parcel Reef. GPS glitches, compasses spin, and any package routed within a dozen nautical miles goes missing. Conspiracy forums buzz: pirates, sea monsters, corporate cover-up. The truth is stranger. The reef is an island made entirely of misdelivered packages, glued by salt and su...

The Substitute Constellation

When the North Star dimmed unexpectedly, navigators panicked. Satellite guidance faltered; old sailors shook their heads. Astronomers blamed cosmic dust. Mythmakers blamed neglect. The Global Astronomy Network convened. Dr. Sabine Ko, known for mapping minor constellations no one else cared about, p...

The Greenhouse at the End of the Internet

The greenhouse sat at the last IP address anyone could trace. Not a physical location, at first glance—just a server endpoint that returned packet loss and a single ASCII vine when pinged. Hackers bragged about finding it; netsec folks shrugged it off as art. Jan, a network archaeologist, dug deeper...

The Proxy Wedding

In a seaside town bound by old laws, marriages required two witnesses, a blessing from the tide, and, bizarrely, consent from the ancestral registry. The registry was a ledger kept by a council of elders who believed lineage mattered more than love. When Aiko and Rafi eloped without approval, the re...

The Paper Bridge Treaty

Two towns, Eastwell and Westwell, were divided by a river and centuries of grudges. Their bridges had burned in wars, storms, and accidents. Each rebuild became a battle: whose engineers, whose materials, whose name. Trade suffered. People swam across at night, risking currents and fines. Children s...

The Atlas of Regrets

Naomi’s atlas wasn’t bound in leather or stored on a shelf. It lived on her kitchen table, pages spread, coffee-stained, annotated with pencil and tears. Each map charted a regret: cities she never moved to, careers she declined, people she let go. She drew them like transit maps, lines of possibili...

The Lifeguard of Drowned Dreams

Jules worked at the pool at dawn, before the swim team and the retirees. He was a lifeguard for bodies and, unofficially, for dreams that sank. The pool was old, tiled in fading blue mosaics. Swimmers whispered that the deep end held echoes. Jules heard them when he closed his eyes: muffled cries of...

The Auction of Quiet

The first auction was held in a converted church. Bidders sat on pews, paddles in hand. Onstage, nothing stood but a microphone and a glass jar. The auctioneer cleared his throat. “Lot one: thirty seconds of pure quiet, recorded in a cave in Norway. Bidding starts at $100.” Paddles shot up. The pric...

The Bureau of Second Chances

The Bureau occupied a beige office building downtown, between a donut shop and a law firm. Its sign was small: “Bureau of Second Chances—By Appointment.” Most people assumed it was parole services. In reality, it issued official second attempts at anything: a test, a date, a career. You filled out a...

The Posthumous Travel Agency

Horizon Beyond Travel had a niche: vacations for the deceased. It catered to families who wanted loved ones’ ashes scattered in meaningful places, to wills that specified posthumous road trips, to cultures that believed spirits appreciated a good itinerary. Their brochures were tasteful: sunsets, mo...

The Daylight Heist

A crew of thieves planned the impossible: steal an afternoon. They hacked calendars, hijacked city clocks, and launched reflective balloons to confuse sundials. At 2 p.m. on a Tuesday, time hiccupped. Watches showed 2 p.m. again. An extra hour appeared, untethered. The crew aimed to sell it—one hour...

The Statue that Listened

In the town square stood a bronze statue of a woman holding a book. Legend said if you whispered a wish into her ear, she might grant it once. Most treated it as folklore. One winter, a child named Eli whispered, “I wish my brother would talk again.” The next day, his brother spoke his first words i...