Writer's Journey

  “And.. the door creaked open. I went to see what it was. I thought.. I thought it might be a rat, or the wind. But..” The woman broke down into tears, sobbing hysterically. Through her hiccuping breaths, Maria could see the wild fear in her eyes. There was silence for a few moments, the only sounds in the room were her choked gasps and the soft scratch of a pen against paper. Then, Maria finally spoke. “It’s alright, Janet. It wasn’t real, it was just a dream.” She comforted, telling her patient exactly what she needed to hear. “Would you like to tell me more, or would you rather we speak about something else instead?” She said kindly, offering a way out of the difficult conversation. It took a minute or so, but Janet managed to calm down. Wiping away her tears, she continued her story, albeit in a softer tone. “A kid stood there, knife in hand. I was so confused. I remember thinking, ‘How did he get here? We’re in the middle of the woods’.” Here, Janet almost begins to panic aga...

 The first time Liora heard the ticking, she thought it was a neighbor’s wall clock. It was faint: slow, rhythmic, almost soothing, until she realized it was coming from inside her bedroom closet. A chill crawled up her spine. The small apartment she had moved into after her father’s death had no clocks. He had despised them with all his heart. For hours she sat frozen on her bed, listening as the slow ticks grew louder, sharper, more confident. At dawn, when she finally gathered the courage to open the closet door, the sound stopped instantly, as if the world was holding its breath. Inside, nestled atop an old quilt, rested a pocket watch she had never seen before. It seemed to be made of burnished silver, an antique engraved with patterns she didn’t recognize. Intricate. Beautiful. Abnormal. She slammed the door shut and didn’t touch it. The second time was weeks later, after the layoffs. After the funeral expenses, the debt collectors circling her like vultures. Her father...

The abandoned town wasn’t on any map anymore. Rowan checked twice: once on the dusty tablet he carried in his pack, and once on the cracked roadside sign half-buried in vines. Nothing. As if the town had stopped being real the moment they crossed its rusted border. “Do you hear that?” Mira asked. She stood a few steps ahead, her boots planted on the faded white line of the old highway. She was fourteen, two years younger than Rowan, but she had the edge in intuition. Rowan trusted that more than any satellite reading. “I don’t hear anything,” Rowan said. “That’s the problem.” The silence was unsettling. Not peaceful, not empty: just wrong , like the air itself was holding its breath. They walked deeper into town. Asphalt split like dried skin. Windows stared out, hollow and smeared. Every house looked abandoned mid-thought, as if the people had vanished between one heartbeat and the next. Mira nudged Rowan toward a sagging porch. “Do you see that curtain?” It fluttered. But there was n...

  The sky was shifting from burnt-orange to charcoal, clouds drifting lazily above the silent houses. Few people remained on the streets at this hour, having returned home from a long day of work. The only noise that permeated for miles was that of the crows calling out to one another from the rooftops. Aria clutched the key in her hand, a rust-flecked piece of metal that had certainly seen better days. Its ornate handle was engraved with daisies and roses, just as she remembered from her childhood. The young woman, about to leave her old apartment to move into a beautiful house across the city with her new husband, had been organising her things for the packers and movers. Old clothes and toys were donated to charity, broken items were thrown away, and everything else was placed into their appropriate boxes. It was then that she had found the key she now held in her hands. She remembered her grandmother holding the very same one in her wrinkled fingers when Aria was a child, unloc...

  It’s often said that people don’t like to involve themselves in others’ problems. Perhaps they believe that it isn’t their responsibility, or maybe they are afraid of bringing consequences down upon themselves. Either way, very few people will stand up to defend someone else in danger. Harper hadn’t truly understood this until she was on the opposite side of the situation; not as the person standing up for another, but as the victim to be defended. Even as she screamed for help, backing away in fear from the mugger who had cornered her, she knew she wouldn’t receive any help. Although the alleyway she stood in was dark and damp, she could see the bright street right outside it. Not a single person there stopped to help her. Sure, they hesitated at the shrieks, pausing to see what was happening, but not one of them approached the situation to offer help. They just glanced away with guilty looks and shuffled away, eagerly returning to their regular lives. She wasn’t such a hypocrit...

  Her mother had repeated the story several times already, yet it never lost its appeal. Although she knew every little detail of this tale, the gleam in the narrator’s eyes and the excited gestures brought it new life every time. Even as a child, she asked her mother to tell her the story of her eighteenth birthday every night before bed. Kiara had grown up believing that receiving her letter on her eighteenth birthday would be a magical moment. After all, she had heard many times now about how her mother had found out about the man she would marry, her now-husband, through the letter from the future. Every time her parents glanced at each other, she saw their love soften their glances and warm their expressions. If the letter could give her mother such a wonderful blessing, what could it give Kiara? Everyone knew that a letter would reach their mailbox on their eighteenth birthday, addressed to them from their future selves. Sometimes, it was written from a mere few weeks in adva...