Flash Stories

The Manuscript's Echo

hamed Jan. 18, 2025, 6:31 p.m.

Eliot sat cross-legged in the dimly lit restoration lab, the smell of old paper and ink filling the air. The manuscript before him, a delicate, centuries-old text, had become his obsession for the past month. Each stroke of his brush, every gentle touch of the scalpel, was an act of reverence to the scribe who had painstakingly written it so long ago. The ink had faded, the parchment was fragile, but the words—those had stood the test of time.

Today, though, Eliot wasn’t just restoring the manuscript. He was meditating, trying to connect with the spirit of the work, to understand the intention behind the faded words. He closed his eyes, letting the steady rhythm of his breath guide him deeper into the calm of his mind.

As he exhaled, something shifted. The edges of the room began to blur, the hum of fluorescent lights fading into an ethereal silence. …

The Night of Yalda

hamed Jan. 18, 2025, 7:02 p.m.

The air was thick with the warmth of spices, the crackling of the fireplace, and the soft glow of candles as the family gathered around the old Persian carpet in the dimly lit room. The night was long—Yalda, the longest night of the year—and the tradition was always the same: a night of stories. Her grandmother, a woman whose silver hair shimmered like moonlight, settled into her favorite armchair and pulled her granddaughter, Leila, close.

"Tonight, my dear," she began, her voice deep and soothing, "I will tell you the story of the Simorgh."

Leila loved these nights, loved how her grandmother’s stories felt like threads tying her to a world older than the stars, a world of magic and mystery. She nestled into the warmth of the rug, the smell of pomegranates and rosewater swirling in the air, and waited for the tale to unfold.

But as her grandmother …

The Clockmaker’s Daughter

hamed Jan. 18, 2025, 4:39 p.m.

The first time Lila stopped time, it was an accident.

She had been running late for work, her keys nowhere to be found. In a fit of frustration, she shouted, “Just give me a minute!” And then everything froze. The dripping faucet halted mid-drop, the traffic noise outside silenced, and the clock on her wall stood still.

It took her several minutes—her minutes—to understand what had happened. When she clapped her hands and the world resumed, she almost convinced herself it was a hallucination. But it wasn’t.

Over the next few weeks, she experimented in secret, learning to bend seconds, stretch minutes, and pause hours. Time, she realized, wasn’t a straight line—it was clay in her hands.

But with power came temptation.

The first change was small. At a café, she paused time and caught the coffee cup before it spilled on her white blouse. No harm done. The second …

The Hidden Voter

hamed Jan. 18, 2025, 6:16 p.m.

Elena stared at the screen, the edges of her vision blurred from hours of reviewing flagged posts. Election season was a minefield. The guidelines were clear—remove misinformation, allow healthy debate—but reality wasn’t so simple.

She hovered over a post: “The election is rigged. Don’t even bother voting.” It was a lie, but not quite explicit enough to violate policy. She marked it for review. The system wouldn’t thank her for hesitating.

Her phone buzzed on the desk. A text from her brother, Adrian: “You’re coming to Mom’s for dinner, right?”

She sighed, fingers hovering over her response. Family dinners had become battlegrounds lately. Adrian was all in for one candidate; their father was rabidly for the other. Last time, their argument nearly ended with a broken plate.

Another post popped up on her queue, this one from a fake account spewing hate speech disguised as satire. It wasn’t hard to …

The Silent Elevator

hamed Jan. 18, 2025, 6:39 p.m.

The lights flickered and then died, plunging the elevator into darkness. A sudden, collective intake of breath echoed in the small space. The hum of the machinery, once a soft background noise, had gone silent. The faint glow from the emergency button cast eerie shadows on the walls, but nothing else moved.

For a moment, there was only the sound of everyone’s breathing, unsure whether to panic or remain still. Then, a voice broke the silence.

“Well,” a woman’s voice said, steady despite the situation. “This is certainly not how I planned to spend my afternoon.”

She chuckled lightly, and after a beat, a few others joined in. Slowly, the tension began to lift, replaced by the quiet, lingering discomfort of being stuck with strangers.

“Do you think they’ll fix it soon?” another voice asked, a young man with a tired tone.

“Maybe it’s a power outage,” the woman replied. …

A New Beginning

hamed Jan. 18, 2025, 5:19 p.m.

Zara stood on her toes, her eyes wide with wonder as she peered through the crowd. The cold January air nipped at her cheeks, but she barely noticed. Around her, the murmurs of a thousand voices filled the air, their excitement palpable, their energy crackling like electricity. She gripped her mother’s hand tightly, feeling the warmth of it even in the chilly breeze.

It was January 20, 2009—the day the world seemed to change.

Zara was only eight years old, but she understood this moment in her bones. Her mother had explained it to her over and over again: Barack Obama was about to become the first Black president of the United States. It was more than a ceremony. It was a declaration. A new chapter in history. And Zara could feel the weight of it, heavy but hopeful.

The crowd erupted into applause as the moment finally arrived. Barack …

Payload

hamed Jan. 18, 2025, 6:12 p.m.

Jules adjusted their cap and swiped the screen of their controller, directing the drone to its next drop-off. It was a normal Tuesday in the city, the skyline humming with autonomous machines zipping between rooftops. Jules didn’t think much about the contents of the boxes they delivered—most were tech gadgets, groceries, or overpriced sneakers.

But this package was different.

The first clue was the weight. It felt heavier than its size suggested, the kind of weight that didn’t match coffee beans or wireless earbuds. The second was the delivery coordinates: an unmarked building in a quiet corner of the financial district. And when the drone reached the drop point, the receiving bay opened not to a human but to a robotic arm that snatched the package and disappeared without so much as a confirmation ping.

Weird, but not unheard of. Automation was everywhere.

Jules shrugged it off until the next …

The Last Terminal

hamed Jan. 18, 2025, 4:48 p.m.

The basement smelled of mildew and secrecy. Dim candlelight flickered against the concrete walls as the group huddled around a single relic: a dusty, decades-old laptop, its casing cracked but functional. To them, it was a miracle—a forbidden window into the past.

Eva’s fingers trembled as she booted it up. The machine whirred faintly, its fan struggling like a relic waking from a deep sleep. She glanced at the others, their faces tense and expectant.

“Are you sure it’s safe?” whispered Malik, his voice barely audible over the hum of the laptop.

“It’s never safe,” Eva replied, her eyes fixed on the glowing screen as it flickered to life. “But if we don’t do this, we stay blind.”

In their world, technology was a crime. After the Blackout Laws were passed, anything more complex than a mechanical tool was destroyed. The government claimed it was for humanity’s survival—that technology had …

A Curtain Divides the World - Prologue

dehongi Jan. 17, 2025, 6:36 p.m.

In Arash's world, everything came in pairs but was never allowed to mix. There were two entrances to every building: one for men, marked with bold, no-nonsense letters, and another for women, adorned with a flower motif that no one questioned. There were two sections in restaurants, separated by a curtain so thick it could muffle a scream, and even two lines at the bakery, as though bread had a gender preference.
But it was school where the divide felt the strongest. Arash’s all-boys school was a loud, chaotic world of roughhousing, competitive shouting, and an unspoken rule that everything, from pencils to playground arguments, must involve some form of combat. Across the street was the girls' school, a fortress of pastel walls and floral murals that seemed to hum with a serene, mysterious energy. For years, Arash and his classmates had speculated wildly about what went on behind its gates.
“Do …

A Curtain Divides the World - Chapter 1: "Boys, Boys, Boys"

dehongi Jan. 17, 2025, 6:37 p.m.

At Arash’s school, life was a testosterone-fueled symphony of chaos. Every day began with a thundering stampede as boys flooded the hallways, racing each other to class as if punctuality were a sport. Backpacks swung like pendulums, shoes screeched against the tiled floors, and someone, somewhere, was always yelling, “Last one to the classroom is a chicken!”
Arash usually wasn’t in the front of the pack—running wasn’t his thing—but he also refused to be the metaphorical chicken, so he always managed to come in somewhere in the middle. His classroom, Room 14, was a microcosm of every stereotype about boys you could imagine. There was Hamid, the self-proclaimed athlete, who carried a soccer ball everywhere like it was his firstborn child. Majid, the class clown, could turn even the dullest math lecture into a comedy sketch. And then there was Kian, Arash’s best friend, whose life goal seemed to be proving …