A collection of journalistic English short stories to read.
By Jamie F. Bell
A humid summer evening descends upon Northwestern Ontario, drawing a young filmmaker, Sidney, along a dusty gravel path toward a familiar community centre. The air is thick with the scent of pine and lake water, but an unsettlingly perfect sound hints at a new, technological presence even in the quiet wilderness.
By Jamie F. Bell
The air in the old community hall, usually thick with the scent of pine cleaner and lukewarm coffee, now carried a faint, acrid tang, like static electricity after a storm. It was late autumn, the windows beaded with a fine, cold mist, blurring the last defiant oranges of the sugar maples outside. Inside, however, the temperature was rising, not from the ancient radiators clanking in the corners, but from the earnest, sometimes strained, conversation at the large, scarred meeting table. My stomach fluttered with a nervous energy that wasn't entirely mine, a collective unease that had settled over us like the first layer of frost on the ground.
By Jamie F. Bell
The fluorescent lights hummed a low, persistent note above the scuffed linoleum floor of the community hall. Outside, the early spring wind rattled a loose pane, hinting at the damp chill that still clung to the air despite the promise of green. Inside, the room was a jumble of mismatched chairs and tables, a half-empty coffee urn steaming forgotten in a corner. The air felt charged, thick with the scent of stale coffee and the sharper tang of an argument about to boil over.
By Jamie F. Bell
The air in the small meeting room hung heavy, thick with the scent of old coffee, sun-baked wood, and the faint, metallic tang of new electronics. Outside, a humid summer day pressed against the windows, the lake beyond them a shimmering, indifferent blue. Inside, three figures huddled around a laptop, the bright screen a stark contrast to the quiet tension that had slowly, imperceptibly, built between them.
By Jamie F. Bell
The old community hall in Silver Harbour hummed with a low, expectant energy, the scent of fresh coffee mingling with the faint, comforting aroma of damp wool and old wood. Outside, the last vestiges of late autumn clung to the skeletal branches of maples, their russet leaves mostly surrendered to the crisp Lake Superior winds that rattled the windowpanes. Inside, however, the air was warm, thick with the particular kind of focused tension that precedes a serious conversation. Chairs scraped on the polished floorboards, voices overlapped then subsided, and the small cluster of people gathered around a large, scarred pine table seemed to brace themselves, not for conflict, but for the intricate dance of ideas about to unfold.
By Leaf Richards
The Chevrolet Bel Air, a tank of rust and ambition, chewed up the kilometres, its exhaust pipe rattling a rhythm against the endless prairie. Heat shimmered off the asphalt in waves, distorting the horizon into a watery mirage. Inside, the stale air conditioner groaned, barely winning against the August sun beating down on the cracked vinyl seats. The radio crackled, half-tuned to a distant rock station, the tinny guitar solos barely audible over the wind noise. Every surface felt sticky. This was freedom, or at least the sweaty, slightly uncomfortable prelude to it, and it was stretching out, flat and boundless, towards something they couldn't quite see.
By Jamie F. Bell
The air, thick with the damp, earthy scent of a recently roused forest, clung to everything. Bare branches of birch, still grey and skeletal, scratched against the pale spring sky, while below, a determined green fuzz pushed through last year's decomposing leaves. Mud, rich and dark, sucked at boot soles along the single track leading deeper into the valley. A low mist, smelling faintly of pine and cold soil, threaded through the trees, obscuring the upper reaches of what promised to be a pristine, if chilly, landscape. The only sound, initially, was the drip of water from melting ice, a ceaseless, monotonous rhythm, broken only by the distant, incongruous thrum of something large and mechanical.
By Jamie F. Bell
The oppressive summer air, thick with the scent of pine and something vaguely chemical, hung heavy over the Arcadian Enclave. Beyond the hand-carved, intricately locked gates that boasted 'Sanctuary for the Seekers,' the world outside felt like a fading rumour. Here, a perverse kind of peace reigned, woven from forced smiles and the constant, low thrum of self-congratulatory purpose. Cassidy, perched precariously on a rough-hewn bench in the 'Communal Harmony Pavilion,' felt her shirt stick to her back, the polyester chafing against her skin. The humidity was a constant, almost physical presence, pressing down, making every breath a conscious effort. It was a place designed to soothe, yet it humled with an underlying current of frantic energy, a manufactured serenity that felt dangerously close to snapping.
By Jamie F. Bell
The thermal undersuit was scratchy. Not the gentle, woolly kind of scratchy her gran knitted, but a stiff, synthetic irritation that felt like a thousand tiny needles against her skin. It was, according to Mr. Sterling, ‘state-of-the-art moisture-wicking technology designed for peak human performance,’ but to Poppy, age nine, it was just a bad jumper you couldn't take off.
By Jamie F. Bell
The prairie spring, usually a vibrant resurgence, felt like a dying gasp this year. Mud clung to everything, a thick, persistent ooze beneath boots. Above, the sky bled a bruised orange, not the gentle blush of a healthy evening, but a permanent, sickly hue that choked the light and painted the city in shades of perpetual twilight.
By Jamie F. Bell
The smell of new particleboard and industrial glue filled their empty living room. A sprawling diagram, looking more like the schematics for a nuclear reactor than a wardrobe, lay on the floor between Alex and Caleb. Surrounding it were piles of identical-looking screws, wooden dowels, and pale, laminated planks. It was the first piece of furniture for their first apartment together. It was meant to be a symbol of their new beginning. At present, it was a symbol of impending doom.
By Jamie F. Bell
The only sounds in the library's third-floor stacks were the hum of the fluorescent lights and the frantic scratching of Sameer's pen. It was 2 a.m. His brain felt like a sponge, oversaturated with tort law and unable to absorb another drop. Across the tiny study carrel, Ben yawned, a huge, jaw-cracking affair that seemed to suck all the remaining oxygen out of their shared space. And between them, on a pile of books, sat the prize: the last custard cream.
By Jamie F. Bell
The fog wasn't just fog; it was a presence. A cold, damp entity that swallowed sound and shrunk the vastness of the Highlands down to a fifty-metre bubble of visibility. Inside this bubble were Ewan, Rhys, and a disagreement. The air, already heavy with moisture, was now thick with the tension of two competing navigational philosophies.
By Jamie F. Bell
The air backstage smelled of sawdust, old velvet, and the acrid tang of fresh paint. Julian surveyed the prop table under the unforgiving glare of a single work light. His shoulders were so tight they felt like they were trying to merge with his ears. The play opened in three days, the set was a catastrophe, and Noah, the universe's punishment for Julian's hubris, had decided to 'help'.
By Jamie F. Bell
The smell of stale cinnamon and pine-scented air freshener hung thick, then was abruptly replaced by the sharp tang of fear and something metallic grinding. One moment, the escalator was dutifully carrying its human cargo upwards, a slow, gentle procession towards the electronics department. The next, with a shudder that vibrated through George's very molars, it violently lurched, then began to unwind, hurtling its bewildered passengers downwards against their will, a sudden, chaotic reverse of fortune.
By Jamie F. Bell
The oppressive summer heat hung heavy over Maple Creek, a shimmering haze distorting the edges of the main street. Sylvie's battered old Civic coughed fumes into the still air, its air conditioning having given up the ghost somewhere around kilometer forty-five. Dust, fine as confectioner's sugar, coated everything, clinging to the wilting petunias in front of the municipal building and settling like a second skin on the peeling paint of the storefronts. The town square, usually a sleepy patch of manicured grass, buzzed with a peculiar energy, a bizarre tableau forming under the relentless sun.
By Jamie F. Bell
In the oppressive grip of a midsummer heatwave, a young reporter finds himself at the launch of a city-backed housing initiative, surrounded by the artificial cheer of PR and the stifling glow of plastic promises, where something feels inherently wrong.
By Jamie F. Bell
Anna Breadley, clad in layers that still felt inadequate, wrestled with a stiff zipper on her parka, the metal teeth resisting the frigid air with stubborn defiance. Around her, Ponderosa Creek lay suffocated under an impossible depth of snow, each drift a testament to the colossal failure of the very project she was sent to investigate. The cold bit, sharp and uncompromising, smelling of frozen earth and something metallic, a faint, almost imperceptible thrum that seemed to vibrate in the very air itself.