Stories tagged: dreams
7 stories with this tag
The Sleepwalk Detective
Detective Arun Singh didnāt sleep like other people. He slept like a case fileāopen, active, restless. Doctors called it parasomnia. Therapists called it unresolved trauma. Arun called it inconvenient until he learned to use it. In dreams, he wandered places he had never been yet recognized from blu...
The Choir of Abandoned Alarms
In the junkyard behind the old electronics store, abandoned alarm clocks piled like metallic hedgehogs. Some still ticked, most were silent. Kids dared each other to sleep among them, claiming you could hear whispers. One summer night, Mina, a sound engineer with insomniac curiosity, camped beside t...
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 Shelter for Retired Superstitions
On Elm Street, between a bookstore and a nail salon, stood a narrow building with a peeling sign: āHome for Retired Superstitions.ā Most people passed without noticing. Those who entered often did so on a dare or because they saw the black cat in the window and felt oddly welcomed. Inside, the air s...
The Seamstress of Constellations
Mei sewed in the dark. By day, she mended clothes at a tiny shop between a pharmacy and a bar. By night, she climbed to her rooftop with needle and thread spun from meteor dust and spider silk. There she stitched the sky. It started when a meteor shower tore a small gap in Orionās belt. Mei felt a t...
The Librarian of First Sentences
The Library of Beginnings occupied a single, long room lined with narrow drawers. Each drawer contained cards, each card bearing a first sentence from a story, novel, speech, or diary that had never been finished or had gone missing. The librarian, Ana, guarded them. People visited when they were st...
The City that Dreamed of Forests
Heron City woke to saplings sprouting from concrete. Blueprints on plannersā desks were covered in leaf prints. Architects blamed vandals; poets blamed the city itself. Imani, a poet and urban gardener, proposed listening. She organized a sleep-in at the plaza. Hundreds lay on pavement, dreaming. Th...