Browse the archive
Topic: Mystery
-
The Stocktaker
Approx. 18 min read
A teenager’s forbidden inventory exposes the true cost of the supply room that has sustained an underground community for forty years.
-
The Apologies
Approx. 16 min read
Strangers approach Peter Haines to confess injuries he cannot remember suffering, while records begin supporting lives he never lived. One apology finally leads him to an offense whose true direction he knows.
-
Hold Still
Approx. 22 min read
A countdown appears in the sky over every person on Earth, and a night-shift street sweeper in Erie keeps working his route while the world spends two months deciding what to do with the time.
-
The Instrument
Approx. 25 min read
Alma Sorrell gets her own body Monday through Wednesday. A stranger has it Thursday through Saturday. Sunday goes to the highest bidder. From receipts, bruises, and messages she never sent, she starts working out what her tenant does with her hands.
-
The Undeliverable
Approx. 17 min read
A dead-letter office clerk begins finding mail with no postmark, addressed to people who haven't been born yet. As she quietly investigates against every regulation, she uncovers a decades-spanning exchange between two of the intended recipients and must decide what a person is supposed to do when she stumbles onto a door that shouldn't exist.
-
One More
Approx. 15 min read
A meticulous government census taker, known for never losing count, arrives in a narrow, closed-off valley to tally its residents. His two required counts refuse to agree by exactly one person. Every recount and every method reproduces the same stubborn discrepancy, and the extra person is never found in any house or any part of the valley. As he hunts for the one that shouldn't be there, the ground beneath his entire profession begins to shift.