Stories don’t always arrive polished or patient. Sometimes they tear through the walls of your head like broken glass, leaving fragments scattered across the floor. That’s what Splinters is—shards of fiction, jagged little pieces from the regions of my mind.
These aren’t epic arcs or tidy narratives. They’re flashes. Moments. Half-formed ghosts that demanded ink before they slipped away. Some are sharp enough to cut, others dissolve before you can hold them, but each one carries a piece of the madness.
Here you’ll find the quick burns—the short fiction that doesn’t fit neatly anywhere else. Think of them as the slivers you step on barefoot: unexpected, inconvenient, impossible to ignore.
Welcome to Splinters. Try not to bleed too much.
Pandora’s Return
Today was her first day at her new job and she thought she was prepared. They had given her instructions. Rituals. Words that felt like passwords more than prayers. But no one told her about the chest. No one warned her it would breathe. It rose from the stone floor like a relic of a…
Red, White, and Boom (Also Vomit)
FLASH FICTION – FRIDAY FAITHFULS “Grandpa, I need a real story for my history project. Something about America, or the Fourth of July, or whatever.” The old man scratched his chin, leaned back in the squeaky recliner, and smirked. “Alright, kid. Lemme tell you how your grandma and I met. It was the Fourth of…
The Feathered Ones
FLASH FICTION – FOWC & RDP Every morning, she wrote to keep the birds at bay. They came with the light—first as shadows dragging themselves across the windows, then as a rustle, low and persistent, like wind thinking too hard. Doves mostly, though wrong somehow. Their eyes were too still, their feathers too quiet. Occasionally,…
Laced with Lies
FLASH FICTION – OMIMM They called it The Chuck Stop—a hidden clubhouse inside a size 11 Converse, where miniature musicians jammed and cobblers tinkered. By night, it buzzed with chords, caffeine, and secrets. Last Thursday, the music stopped. Jazzman Jordan, the harmonica king, was found lifeless in the toe box, crushed beneath a sewing needle.…
Threadbare Hearts
I’m unravelling.The separate pieces of my mind no longer whisper—they scream, each one tugging in a different direction.I ask the mirror for answers it never had the decency to learn.A note—creased and crumple-worn—falls from my jacket pocket like a ghost too tired to haunt.I run my thumb across the ink, smudged but still cruel in…
Entangled Contradictions
FICTION – REENA CHALLENGE #385 by Julia Drake (and someone else entirely) Dr. Eugene Irving Krane did not believe in metaphor, which was why he used it constantly in his head. Standing before a lecture hall of half-conscious undergrads, chalk raised like a scalpel, he dissected equations with clinical precision. “Symmetry,” he said, “is not…
The Twist
FLASH FICTION – FOWC/RDP/FSS #204 Carla sprinted from the archaeological site, clutching an artifact that could either save or destroy the world. The desert wind tore at her coat, slicing her cheeks with grit and heat. Behind her, the canyon bellowed—low, deep, the sound of stone waking from sleep. She didn’t look back. The artifact…
Closet Quest: A Steampunk Sock Saga
FLASH FICTION – FOWC & RDP In the heart of a creaky old workshop, Reginald the Raccoon, steampunk engineer extraordinaire, adjusted his brass goggles and stared at his latest invention: the Interdimensional Sock Locator 3000. His mission was clear and absurd — recover The Sock. Not just any sock. The one embroidered with tiny mechanical…
Shred for Me, Pretty Lady
FLASH FICTION – FOWC & RDP He heard her riff from the other side of the park — sharp, ragged, alive — and it hooked him deep. She wore ripped jeans, grease-smeared at the thighs, and a black tank clinging like second skin. Her wedge sandals cracked against the pavement, loud in the dead night…
Coffee, Heels, Ramen, Commutes, and the End of the World
FICTION – FOWC & RDP For most people, the holidays are a time for joy, togetherness, family, and other concepts pushed by commercials and overpriced airline tickets. Me? I got a new city, a new job, a new apartment, and not a single damn soul to split a drink with. A festive little cocktail of…
Random Fiction – 02112025
FICTION – START OF SOMETHING “You can never trust the things you hear. Blowhards running around spreading rumors like it’s the national pastime – right up there with baseball and avoiding jury duty,” grunted Detective Maclan as he wrestled with an ancient copper kettle that had seen better days, probably during the Roosevelt administration. The…
Random Fiction – 02022025
FICTION – HUMOR When it comes to love, I discovered it arrives in varying shades of peculiar. Initially, I assumed my lady cherished me for the conventional checklist – you know, the usual suspects: ruggedly handsome (if you squint just right), that winning smile (courtesy of years of orthodontic torture), or that ever-reliable “he’s so…
Random Fiction – 01182025
FICTION-THIRD PERSON He sat staring at a blank page, its pristine surface mocking his creative paralysis. The page looked back at him with the same vacant stare, a mirror to his emptiness, reflecting frustration and the void between inspiration and expression. Perhaps it was their shared moment of creative purgatory, each waiting for the other…
6th Avenue Heartbreak
SHORT FICTION Manu Jenkins and Maury Lawrance faced off back in the 1950s. This face-off changed how things were at The Paradise drive-in. Manu Jenkins, “Jinxy” people called him, and Maury weren’t gang members, just guys who couldn’t back down. Only to find themselves in a situation that lasted a lifetime. This face-off leads to…
Shaking of the Rust
FICTION – RANDOM STORY Daylight slipped into the darkness. The streets have begun to empty. People have started to enter the safety of their homes. A mother is sipping a cup of tea after a hard day’s work. A father making dinner for his children and a sister reading a story to her brother before…
Memoirs of Madness 