Realities Intertwined with Imagination
This selection of short stories offers an intimate look into narratives caught in media res. Each piece is an unfinished story, a single snapshot or a few pivotal pages from a larger, undefined work. They demand active engagement, inviting you to speculate on the events that led to these moments and to imagine the trajectories that will follow, making you a part of their ongoing creation.
This project is an exploration into the partnership between human creativity and artificial intelligence. It demonstrates how digital tools can function as a creative collaborator, fostering new ways of conceiving and presenting stories while simultaneously enhancing digital literacy in the literary sphere. The focus is on expanding the boundaries of traditional writing.
Today’s featured genres include the subtle magic of Grounded Fantasy, the intricate relationships of Family Saga, the urgent stakes of Medical Drama, and the futuristic grit of Cyberpunk. Authors Jamie F. Bell and Eva Suluk have contributed their distinct voices to this compelling group of unfinished tales.
We encourage you to immerse yourself in these narratives. Consider the implications of each scene, the unspoken histories, and the potential futures. Your mind completes these stories, transforming them from fragments into whole, personal experiences.
Today’s Unfinished Tales and Short Stories
Discover unique short stories encompassing Grounded Fantasy, Cyberpunk, and Young Adult Contemporary, alongside Poetic / Lyrical and Supernatural Mystery styles. Our commitment to digital literacy involves pioneering AI-assisted narrative, exploring creative technology’s impact on publishing and the exciting future of digital content.
To Keep the Sun in a Jar
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Poetic / Lyrical | Genre: Grounded Fantasy
The ‘No Trespassing’ sign was more rust than paint, its warning bleached by a decade of August suns. Chloe pushed past it without a glance, her worn boots sinking into the soft pine needles that carpeted the path. Maya followed, the empty jam jar clinking against the trowel in her bag. The air under the trees was already cooler, thick with the smell of damp earth and decay—the first hint that autumn was winning.
Northern Spark, Dusty Corners
Author: Eva Suluk | Category: Noir | Genre: Family Saga
Parker pressed his forehead against the cold windowpane of the community hall, leaving a damp smear. Outside, the world was still waking up from winter, hesitant and muddy. Grey puddles shimmered like spilled mercury on the gravel, reflecting the equally grey sky. A lone robin, plump and confused, pecked at a patch of brown grass that stubbornly refused to turn green. It was supposed to be spring, Aunt Donna had declared, but the air still carried a bite, a damp, earthy smell that seeped right into his bones, reminding him of old boots left out in the rain.
The Old Wing’s Grip
Category: Supernatural Mystery | Genre: Medical Drama
Late at night, in a hospital residents’ lounge in Northwestern Ontario, two medical residents, Lindsay and Sam, sift through black and white photographs meant for a local art exhibit, but their discussion quickly turns to a disturbing pattern of unexplained patient deaths and unsettling anomalies captured in their images from the hospital’s old wing.
Green Rust
Category: Slice of Life | Genre: Cyberpunk
A precarious maintenance ledge on the side of a mega-tower, hidden behind a malfunctioning HVAC unit, where a secret garden struggles against the toxic rain.
A Bitter Brew in the Cold
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Minimalist | Genre: Young Adult Contemporary
The snow fell, not in gentle flakes, but in a thick, relentless curtain, blurring the world into shades of grey and white. Tamara pushed through the drifts, her boots sinking deep, each step a struggle against the suffocating silence. The cold bit at her exposed skin, a constant, nagging ache that had long surpassed numbness. It was an impossible landscape, a canvas painted over, erasing all familiar markers, all sense of direction. Then, through the swirling white, something solid materialised – the dark, skeletal outline of a small cabin, hunched and forgotten, an unlikely anchor in the storm’s vast, indifferent expanse. A sliver of light, almost imperceptible, flickered within, a tiny, unsettling pulse in the heart of the wild.
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 an experimental, creative research project by The Arts Incubator Winnipeg and the Art Borups Corners Storytelling clubs. Each chapter is a unique interdisciplinary arts and narrative storytelling experiment, born from a collaboration between artists and applied AI researchers, designed to explore the boundaries of creative writing, automation, and storytelling. 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.
