The Unseen, The Unsettling, and The Unfinished
Within this collection, you’ll encounter a series of unfinished tales, presented as moments caught mid-action or pages excerpted from a broader, more intricate narrative. These fragments are designed to spark your imagination, inviting you to ponder the unseen forces at play and the paths yet to be forged.
This project is an experimental program combining human creativity, interdisciplinary arts, and applied artificial intelligence research. It investigates how digital tools can act as a partner in the writing process, shaping new forms of storytelling, scriptwriting, and enhancing digital literacy skills and workflows.
This particular selection, featuring Jamie F. Bell and Leaf Richards, blends Contemporary Fiction with the intriguing genres of Magical Realism and Psychological Horror, also touching upon Boys Love (BL) and Mystery. These stories explore the unsettling beauty of the inexplicable.
We encourage you to interact with these stories as a co-creator. Let your mind complete the unfinished arcs, imagine the unseen consequences, and bring your own unique resolution to these evocative narratives.
Today’s Unfinished Tales and Short Stories
A Penny for a Hollow Tune
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Poetic / Lyrical | Genre: Contemporary Fiction
The wind coming off the Red River had a damp chill to it, even in late August. It carried the smell of diesel from the tour boat and deep-fried onions from a food kiosk. Mike felt the grit of the concrete plaza through the thin soles of his boots as he tapped his foot, trying to find a rhythm that wasn’t there. His guitar, an old Yamaha with a crack running through the varnish, felt heavier than usual.
The Custard Cream Accords
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Journalistic | Genre: Boys Love (BL)
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.
The Glint on Broadway
Author: Leaf Richards | Category: Minimalist | Genre: Mystery
The wind howled a familiar, mournful song through the concrete canyons of downtown Winnipeg, a symphony of complaint against anyone foolish enough to be out in it. Snow, fresh and impossibly white, crunched under my boots, each step a dull, satisfying percussion against the city’s muted hum. It was that peculiar hour when the last vestiges of a weak winter sun bled into the first, tentative lights of the city, painting the sky in bruise-purple and fading tangerine. My breath plumed out in thick, ephemeral clouds, and my nose, despite the scarf wrapped twice around it, felt like it might snap off. The cold here wasn’t just a temperature; it was a presence, an argument against motion, against thought, against everything but the simple, desperate need for warmth. I pulled my toque lower, the rough wool scratching my forehead, trying to shut out the encroaching chill that seemed to seep into my bones, into the very corners of my mind.
The Palming of the Queen of Spades
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Domestic Thriller | Genre: Magical Realism
The rain wasn’t just falling; it was a solid, percussive thing, hammering on the flat roof of the ‘Last Chance Gas & Go’ with a fury that made the windows vibrate. Inside, the four of them were marooned in an island of fluorescent light, surrounded by a world that had dissolved into grey water. The road was gone, the car park was a lake, and the only sound besides the storm was the gentle hum of the drink cooler and the anxious tapping of Mrs. Gable’s pen against her crossword puzzle.
Static on the Ice
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Science Fiction | Genre: Psychological Horror
Outside, the wind howls, a physical wall of white against the reinforced windows of Arctic Research Station Epsilon. Inside, the silence is broken only by the hum of the recycler and the quiet click of Cassie’s keyboard as she runs diagnostics. She’s been alone for three weeks.
Storytelling and the Arts, Skills Development and Digital Transformation
AI-Assisted Storytelling and Scriptwriting: Our research explores AI’s role in innovative creative development, focusing on genres like Contemporary Fiction, Boys Love (BL) narratives, Magical Realism, Psychological Horror, and intricate Mystery plots. We investigate AI’s capacity to blend realistic settings with fantastical elements, generate suspense for psychological horror, and weave complex mystery clues, significantly aiding in storytelling and scriptwriting.
Talent Development and Training: As part of our project, we assess the emerging skill requirements for creative professionals. Crafting stories that traverse from contemporary settings to the unsettling depths of psychological horror and magical realism provides invaluable insights into the future of digital publishing and film production workflows, stressing the necessity of advanced digital literacy and skillful management of AI tools.
We’re excited to learn about these new technologies and how they can be applied to expand the boundaries of human storytelling. We encourage you to keep reading, keep imagining, and keep exploring the incredible potential that opens up when creativity meets technology.
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 interdisciplinary arts and narrative storytelling experiment. It is part of a creative arts and research program by The Arts Incubator Winnipeg and the Art Borups Corners collectives. This project focuses on two key areas: AI-Assisted Storytelling and Scriptwriting, exploring AI for generating ideas, plot structures, and alternative story arcs; and Talent Development and Training, studying the skills and training needs for creative professionals managing AI and immersive technologies to inform future training curricula. Funding and support were generously provided by the Ontario Arts Council Multi and Inter-Arts Projects program and the Government of Ontario. We thank them for supporting the arts, digital transformation, and applied Artificial Intelligence (AI) research for northern innovation in Ontario.
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