Everyday Lives and Looming Shadows
This collection features unfinished tales, presented as snapshots from larger, incomplete works. Each entry offers a moment captured mid-scene, a partial view designed to spark curiosity and invite deeper engagement. Readers are encouraged to imagine the context that precedes each excerpt and the events that would follow, making them co-authors of the unseen.
This project functions as an experiment at the intersection of human creativity and artificial intelligence. It explores how digital tools can act as a partner in the writing process, shaping new forms of storytelling and enhancing digital literacy. The aim is to illustrate the potential for technology to support and expand artistic expression.
Today’s selection covers the intimate observations of Slice-of-Life Drama, the transformative journeys of Coming-of-Age, the gentle puzzles of Cozy Mystery, the stark realities of Dystopian settings, and the tension of Domestic Thriller. These varied stories are crafted by Jamie F. Bell and Tony Eetak, who explore distinct human experiences.
We invite you to step into these worlds and complete their narratives within your own imagination. These unfinished tales are a direct invitation to become an active participant, weaving your own conclusions into their unfolding moments.
Today’s Unfinished Tales and Short Stories
Engage with intricate Slice-of-Life Drama, Coming-of-Age tales, Cozy Mystery, Dystopian, and Domestic Thriller narratives, alongside genres like Western Style BL, Psychological Drama, Mystery, and Literary Fiction. These short stories are central to our mission of advancing digital literacy and innovating publishing methods through creative technology, envisioning the future of AI-assisted narrative and digital publishing.
Glacial Bloom and Shifting Lights
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Domestic Thriller | Genre: Slice-of-Life Drama
The first true bite of December had arrived, a cold that seeped into the very bone, carrying with it the faint, tinny scent of distant exhaust and, incongruously, pine. Snow, fine as confectioners’ sugar, dusted the streetlights, blurring their yellow halos into soft, imprecise smudges against a sky the colour of unwashed slate. Winnipeg, a city often stoic in its northern resilience, had begun its annual, hesitant bloom of festive lights, a fragile luminescence against the deepening, almost oppressive, grey.
The Weight of a Single Glass Seed
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Western Style BL | Genre: Coming-of-Age
The aroma of cedar smoke, damp earth, and linseed oil clung to the air in Simon’s small, cluttered workshop. Outside, the last stubborn maple leaves clung to branches, a defiant blaze against the greying November sky. Inside, dust motes, caught in the low autumn sun filtering through the single, grimy window, danced above a workbench littered with polished wood, gleaming glass shards, and half-finished carvings. A thermos of cooling tea sat beside a collection of intricate tools, some ancient, some modern, all bearing the subtle sheen of constant use. The rhythmic rasp of a file on wood, punctuated by occasional, sharp clinks of glass, filled the air.
The July Frost
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Psychological Drama | Genre: Cozy Mystery
Bernie struggles to keep her vintage shop warm during a bizarre summer freeze while dealing with a distressed customer.
Aetheric Drift
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Mystery | Genre: Dystopian
The city of Veridia hunched under a sky the colour of tarnished pewter, the kind of perpetual twilight that felt less like evening and more like a permanent state of atmospheric failure. A crisp, damp chill, redolent with the smell of wet concrete and burning refuse, clung to everything. Leaves, brittle and rust-brown, skittered across the pavement like panicked insects, driven by a wind that promised nothing but further entropy.
In the Beam
Author: Tony Eetak | Category: Literary Fiction | Genre: Domestic Thriller
The humid summer air hung heavy in the main hall of the Serpent River First Nation community centre, carrying the faint, lingering scent of last night’s bingo and the pervasive aroma of lemon disinfectant. Dust motes, forbidden from explicit mention yet undeniably present in the diffuse light, danced with a languid indifference as the very infrastructure of the future arts programme seemed determined to unravel itself. The projector, an obstinate, beige behemoth of forgotten technology, offered only a stuttering, lacklustre rectangle of grey, mocking Devon’s increasingly frantic attempts to bring it to life.
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.
