Where the Story Breaks Off
Reading these works offers a different experience than a traditional novel. These are unfinished tales, presented as moments captured mid-scene or pages torn from a larger book. Without a defined beginning or a resolved conclusion, they evoke a sense of mystery, inviting your imagination to construct the missing context and decide where the characters go next.
This collection represents an experimental program situated at the intersection of human creativity, interdisciplinary arts, and applied artificial intelligence research. The goal is to explore how digital tools can act as partners in the writing process, helping to shape new forms of storytelling and scriptwriting while enhancing essential digital literacy skills and workflows.
Today’s selection features a diverse range of styles, moving from high-stakes Thriller and Domestic Thriller beats to the lighter tones of Romance and Comedy, grounded by Coming-of-Age elements. The authors featured in this post are Jamie F. Bell and Tony Eetak, who provide the creative foundation for these pieces.
We invite you to engage with these texts not merely as a reader, but as a participant. Take these open-ended scenes and allow your own mind to fill in the silence, effectively becoming a co-creator of the unwritten ending.
Today’s Unfinished Tales and Short Stories
This collection spans the intense emotions of domestic thrillers and coming-of-age journeys while touching on cinematic cosmic horror. By investigating these ornate and dystopian narratives through short stories, our project aims to redefine digital literacy. We are committed to evolving the landscape of publishing by leveraging creative technology to explore the intersection of AI-assisted narrative and the future of storytelling.
A Crack in the Foundations
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Cosmic Horror | Genre: Thriller
The air in the recreation hall basement hung thick with the ghosts of forgotten potlucks and decades of damp, an aroma somewhere between stale coffee and slow decay. Outside, the spring thaw had turned the rutted road to a muddy slur, but down here, beneath the creaking floorboards of community aspirations, the cold still bit with the tenacity of a northern winter. Dust motes, thick as tiny galaxies, danced in the anemic light struggling through the single grimy window well, illuminating a landscape of piled junk and the hopeful but weary faces of the town’s most committed volunteers.
The Payphone at Sal’s
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Cinematic | Genre: Coming-of-Age
A dusty, forgotten Italian restaurant on a rainy autumn afternoon, where two aging industry professionals attempt to ignore a persistent intrusion.
The Ochre Blur
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Ornate / Baroque | Genre: Domestic Thriller
A persistent, bone-deep chill has settled over Winnipeg, painting the city in shades of grey and ochre. Inside, the quiet hum of an old refrigerator is a monotonous counterpoint to the incessant drizzle tapping against windowpanes, blurring the lines between the stark reality of autumn and the persistent, vivid pull of another world.
The Cold Embrace of Disquiet
Author: Tony Eetak | Category: Dystopian | Genre: Romance
The air bites, sharp and unyielding, a visceral reminder of the world outside the glowing screens. Along the river’s edge, broken ice clinks like distant chimes against grey, slushy banks. A lone figure navigates the treacherous path, her breath pluming white against the stark, skeletal trees of a dystopian winter.
A Tenor in Aisle Three
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Domestic Thriller | Genre: Comedy
The ‘Stop & Shop’ hummed. It was a low, constant thrum from the rows of refrigerators lining the walls, a sound that Chloe insisted was ‘masking the residual spirit energy.’ Raj, crouched over his laptop on top of a stack of unsold newspapers, called it ‘the sound of electricity doing its job.’ Brenda, who was methodically checking the expiry dates on a family-sized bag of pork scratchings, didn’t call it anything. She just wanted to be sure their stakeout snacks were fresh.
About the Project
By design, these stories have no beginning and no end. Many stories are fictional, but many others are not. They are snapshots from worlds that never fully exist, inviting you to imagine what comes before and what happens next. We had fun exploring this project, and hope you will too.
The Unfinished Tales and Short Stories collection is part of an experimental, creative arts and research program by The Arts Incubator Winnipeg and the Art Borups Corners collectives. Each chapter is an interdisciplinary arts and narrative storytelling experiment focused on two key areas: AI-Assisted Scriptwriting, where researchers explore using AI to generate story ideas, plot structures, and alternative story arcs to enhance creative development; and Talent Development and Training, where the project studies the necessary skills for creative professionals to manage AI and immersive technologies in production, helping to inform future training curricula. The project was made possible with funding and support from the Ontario Arts Council Multi and Inter-Arts Projects program and the Government of Ontario. We thank them for supporting the arts, digital transformation research and innovation in Ontario.
About the Author
