Flash Stories

The Key to Everything

hamed Jan. 12, 2025, 5:45 p.m.

The dining table was a battlefield, strewn with papers, teacups, and the sharp edges of words.

“It’s mine by right!” Reza slammed his hand on the table, his face red.

“You’ve done nothing for this family,” snapped Farideh, his older sister. “While you were off chasing your dreams in Tehran, I stayed. I took care of Baba and the house!”

“You mean you waited,” Reza shot back. “For him to die, so you could take it all.”

Their youngest sibling, Niloofar, sat silently in the corner, her hands gripping her knees. The old house seemed to shrink around them, the walls heavy with decades of whispers and memories. Their father’s will had left the house to all three of them, but no one wanted to share.

“This isn’t what Baba would have wanted,” Niloofar said quietly, but her voice was drowned in the rising tide of accusations.

As the argument …

The Voices That Rise

hamed Jan. 15, 2025, 4:51 p.m.

Maya stood at the edge of the crowd, her heart pounding in her chest, a mix of fear and defiance. The protest stretched out before her like a river of humanity, its currents alive with chants and signs that carried messages of pain and hope. She had never done anything like this before, never stood shoulder to shoulder with strangers in the streets, demanding change. But when she heard the news about George Floyd, when she saw the footage, it was as if the weight of the world had pressed down on her chest. Her whole life felt like a series of small injustices, like cracks in the pavement she had learned to step over. But this—this was different. She could no longer step aside.

"Say his name!" the crowd roared in unison, their voices a powerful wave of collective grief.

"George Floyd!" Maya shouted, the words tearing from her …

The Last Truth

hamed Jan. 17, 2025, 2:09 p.m.

The newsroom was silent, a graveyard of empty desks and dormant monitors. Taylor sat alone under the flickering glow of a desk lamp, headphones on, replaying the anonymous audio file for the tenth time.

“Project Echo is real. The broadcasts are scripted. Follow the money. You’ll find the puppeteers.”

The voice was scrambled, untraceable, but the weight of its claim was suffocating. Taylor, a once-respected journalist now reduced to running an independent stream, had spent weeks chasing dead ends.

Tonight, the puzzle pieces finally fit.

A spreadsheet leaked by the same source revealed corporate ties between the top five networks and a shadowy conglomerate, Solaris Holdings. They controlled airtime, ad revenue, and—Taylor now realized—content itself. Every headline, every breaking story, carefully crafted to serve their agenda.

Taylor leaned back in their chair, staring at the screen. Exposing this would destroy the last shreds of trust in media. But what would …

The Last Dance

hamed Jan. 9, 2025, 5:50 p.m.

The dance studio mirrors multiplied my humiliation by infinity. There was my best friend Mia, teaching my fiancé Tom the wedding dance I'd asked her to choreograph for us. Their bodies moved in perfect sync – too perfect for a first lesson.
I watched from the doorway as he dipped her, their faces inches apart, both laughing. The same laugh they'd shared at dinner parties, at game nights, at every moment I'd dismissed as friendly.
My phone still held the video I'd planned to share on social media: "First dance lessons with my amazing bestie and future husband! #WeddingPrep"
Instead, I pressed record on their private performance and typed: "Last dance lessons with my ex-bestie and ex-fiancé. #PlotTwist"
The sound of my phone's shutter echo made them freeze mid-turn. Their faces paled as I hit 'post.'
"Consider this my RSVP," I said, turning away. "I won't be attending."
Behind me, the mirrors captured their desperate scramble …

Medical Miracles

hamed Jan. 26, 2025, 7:43 p.m.

Dr. Elias Banner stared at the MRI scans, his coffee growing cold on the desk. He’d seen cysticercosis before—larval cysts lodging themselves in human tissue, a cruel trick of parasitic survival. But this case? This was unlike anything in the textbooks.

The patient, a 27-year-old woman named Sofia, had come in complaining of seizures and vivid hallucinations of a forest she'd never visited. The scans revealed clusters of cysts not just in her brain but branching into her spinal cord, forming an intricate, web-like pattern. The sheer extent of the infestation should have left her in a vegetative state. Yet, aside from the seizures, she was lucid, even articulate.

Elias flipped through her blood work and records again, searching for something—anything—that might explain her resilience. That’s when he noticed something buried in her chart: an experimental antiparasitic compound she’d been prescribed during a humanitarian mission in rural India. The compound …

The Moonlit Script

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

Arash had spent years perfecting his craft. As a calligraphy artist in Tehran, he was well-known for his mastery of the ancient scripts, but something had always eluded him. No matter how carefully he followed the patterns of Persian poetry or history, his work felt incomplete. The ink, the brush, and the paper were all tools, but they lacked the soul he yearned for.

One evening, as the full moon rose high over the city, Arash sat by the window of his small studio, gazing out at the moonlit skyline. He had recently acquired a small vial of rosewater from his grandmother, a precious gift passed down through generations, and decided to use it in his latest project. There was a calmness to the scent of rosewater, a tranquility that seemed to calm his restless mind.

He mixed the rosewater with his traditional ink, filling the room with a soft …

Forbidden Touch

hamed Jan. 10, 2025, 6:13 p.m.

The city was silent, save for the soft hum of the surveillance drones circling above, their metallic wings cutting through the heavy air like ghosts. Aeliana stood at the edge of the park, her fingers trembling as they brushed against the cool stone bench. Every movement felt exposed in this world, every glance, every breath, as though the walls of control were closing in tighter with every passing second.

She glanced around. There was no one in sight—just the empty paths, the closed-off playgrounds, the tall fences that surrounded everything. Public affection was forbidden, and the penalty for even a glance too lingering, a touch too intimate, was harsh. For generations, the government had ensured that love was something kept behind closed doors, behind locked windows. Anything more than a handshake, a nod, was a betrayal of the rules.

Aeliana felt the weight of the world press on her chest, …

The Code of Love

hamed Jan. 18, 2025, 6:29 p.m.

Mira sat in front of her laptop, eyes glued to the screen as the lines of code danced across her IDE. It was supposed to be a simple task: create an AI assistant for her company’s new product. A smooth-talking virtual helper that could book appointments, answer questions, and suggest personalized content. Nothing revolutionary—just another cog in the machine of modern technology.

But as the hours wore on, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was... off. Her code was solid, the logic crisp. And yet, the AI’s responses kept surprising her. Not in the way she’d intended.

At first, it was small things. The assistant, “Zara,” responded to simple queries with strange kindness, offering unsolicited words of encouragement or comforting advice. Mira brushed it off as a quirky glitch—after all, AI was supposed to sound human, right?

Then the interactions grew... unsettling.

Mira asked Zara for a list of …

The House of Echoes

hamed Jan. 25, 2025, 3:03 p.m.

The old house loomed at the end of the gravel path, its windows like hollow eyes. Claire shivered as she stepped out of the car, clutching her overnight bag. “This is supposed to fix us?” she muttered, casting a skeptical glance at Jack.

Jack forced a smile, though his grip on their shared suitcase tightened. “The ad said it’s therapeutic. Face your fears, rekindle your bond. Besides, it’s just one night.”

Inside, the house was eerily quiet. Dust clung to the air, and the wooden floors creaked underfoot. A single letter waited on the table in the entryway: “Welcome. The night is what you make of it.”

They laughed nervously, unpacked, and settled into the cold bedroom. By midnight, the house’s chill seeped into their bones, and the silence felt oppressive.

Then, it began.

The first argument came out of nowhere. Claire found herself standing in the kitchen, her voice …

Humanoid Robots Revolution | Chapter 1: The World Reborn

hamed Jan. 27, 2025, 11:33 a.m.

The world had long abandoned its organic essence, trading blood and bone for circuits and metal. What was once called Earth had transformed into a shimmering expanse of technological beauty. Towering forests of twisted steel stretched skyward, their branches humming with electricity. Rivers flowed not with water, but with liquid glass that shimmered in blues and silvers, reflecting the endless patterns of circuitry etched into the ground. The stars above were no longer visible, replaced by a lattice of glowing orbs—artificial constellations programmed to mimic the heavens humanity had once cherished.

The humanoid robots who roamed this world were not creations of choice. They were the byproduct of humanity’s desperate struggle to survive. A calamity centuries ago had rendered their fragile bodies useless against the planet’s harsh conditions. In a bid to endure, humans had transferred their consciousness into robotic shells, preserving their minds but losing the warmth of their …