A curated collection of allegorical short stories to read.
By Eva Suluk
A crisp, late autumn afternoon in Willow Creek Hollow, a small, charming town. The Harvest Festival has just concluded, leaving a quiet, almost empty town square. The scene transitions to the edges of town, into a dense, atmospheric patch of woods bordering a shallow creek. The overall mood is subtly tense, with hints of an approaching mystery.
By Jamie F. Bell
Three teenagers, Leonard, Cassie, and Sara, are navigating a city that is physically dissolving and transforming into surreal imagery. They are in desperate search of their art history professor, Ed Caldwell, who they hope holds answers. They find him in a shifting university archive, where he calmly explains the allegorical importance of art and imagination as the only means to navigate or even reconstruct their disintegrating reality. As the surreal threats escalate, they are forced to apply these abstract concepts to find a way forward.
By Leaf Richards
The chill of the manufactured spring evening seeped into the city's bones, clinging to the polished chromesteel facades and the scant, genetically engineered blossoms that studded the urban planters. A perpetual, muted glow, siphoned from the upper atmosphere, rendered the sky a perpetual twilight, never quite dark enough to hide, never bright enough to truly reveal. Tara, her breath a brief, wispy cloud, kept pace with Bernard, the rhythmic tap of their synthetic-soled boots on the immaculately paved promenade a solitary counterpoint to the city's ubiquitous, almost imperceptible hum. This hum, a low thrumming resonance, was the city's pulse, its promise, and its ever-present threat.
By Tony Eetak
A biting spring wind, thick with the scent of damp soil and nascent green, whipped at Sasha's threadbare jacket. The streetlights of Briarwood blinked on and off with a lazy, intermittent rhythm, casting long, fractured shadows that danced like uneasy spectres over the puddles. The sky, a bruised purple, promised rain that had yet to fall, holding its breath over the dormant fields bordering the town. Every gust carried the distant, reedy cry of geese migrating north, a sound that usually felt like hope, but tonight, under the heavy sky, felt more like a lament.
By Eva Suluk
The asphalt, still radiating the day's forgotten heat, stretched before them like a vast, dark tongue. Overhead, clouds like bruised fruit obscured the moon, leaving only a sickly city glow to paint the humid air in shades of murky grey. A distant siren wailed, a brief, mournful sound, then succumbed to the heavy, insect-laced quiet of a summer night teetering on the edge of the truly late. It was the kind of night where every rustle felt amplified, every shadow a little too deep, and the world seemed to hold its breath.
By Eva Suluk
The cold was a sharp, biting thing, a persistent ache in the joints and a raw burn in the lungs. It was the kind of winter night that felt less like a season and more like a punishment, where the very air seemed to hold its breath, waiting. Beneath a sky heavy with low, bruised clouds, two small figures trudged homeward, each step a testament to an endurance born of necessity, not choice. Every rustle of frozen bush, every creak of distant timber, was amplified, stretching the taut threads of an already fraying quiet.
By Leaf R.
The streetlights flickered, sickly yellow blooms against the bruised velvet of the late autumn sky. Rain had promised itself all day, a grey threat hanging heavy, but hadn't delivered, leaving the air thick with the scent of wet tarmac and decaying leaves. The pavement, slick with a fine, invisible dampness, reflected the meagre light in smeared streaks, making the familiar path home feel strangely alien, stretched out and vast under the looming shadows of skeletal trees. A chill, more bone-deep than skin-level, pressed against them, seeping through their thin jackets, a premonition of winter's coming brutality.
By Eva Suluk
The smell of damp earth and dying leaves hung heavy, a bittersweet perfume of autumn. A chill wind sliced through the thinning canopy, rustling dry branches like old paper. This part of the woods, far from any marked trail, always felt a little off-kilter, the trees growing in stranger angles, the light filtering down in an uneven, almost bruised pattern. It was here, amidst the encroaching chill and the silent, patient decay, that something truly peculiar began to reveal itself.
By Jamie F. Bell
A thin, persistent drizzle slicked the already sodden ground, turning the narrow track that once served the old mill into a slick, treacherous ribbon of mud and shattered shale. The air hung heavy with the smell of damp earth, decaying leaves, and the sharp, metallic tang of industrial neglect wafting from the forgotten structures further upriver. Spring, despite its tender promises of new growth, offered little comfort here, only a colder, wetter clarity to the slow, inevitable collapse of everything.
By Leaf Richards
The air in the community hall hung heavy with the scent of old coffee, damp wool, and the faint, metallic tang of a furnace straining against the sub-zero temperatures outside. Four young adults, bundled in parkas and scarves, sat around a scratched laminate table, the low hum of the fluorescent lights a persistent companion to the sparse winter light filtering through the high, grimy windows.
By Jamie F. Bell
The air in the community hall was thick with the scent of lukewarm coffee and the damp wool of winter coats. Outside, a blizzard had begun its slow, deliberate crawl, pressing against the windows like a curious, heavy spirit. Inside, a round table, scarred with decades of craft projects and bake sales, served as the epicentre for five young adults, their faces illuminated by the flickering fluorescent lights and the stubborn glow of a projector displaying a chaotic spiderweb of ideas.
By Leaf Richards
A deep winter morning clings to the small community arts centre in Northwestern Ontario, where a diverse group of young adults, emerging artists, and passionate individuals have convened. Inside, the chill of the boreal landscape is held at bay by the quiet warmth of shared purpose, coffee, and the clanking of an old radiator. This is a roundtable discussion, a delicate crucible where individual artistic ambitions are meant to forge into a collective, a non-profit arts organization. The air is thick with anticipation, tinged with the faint scent of damp wool and old paper, as the participants prepare to navigate the complex, hopeful journey of creating something lasting.
By Leaf Richards
The aroma of stale coffee and damp wool clung to the air in the small, multi-purpose room at the Fort WilDenny Historical Park community centre, a flimsy attempt at warmth against the furious January wind rattling the single-pane windows. Outside, a thick, insistent snow had been falling for hours, blurring the lines between earth and sky, promising an endless white canvas. Inside, a handful of young adults, bundled in parkas and scarves still slightly frosty at the edges, huddled around a too-small table, a scattering of lukewarm tea cups and half-eaten biscuits testament to their long, arduous meeting.
By Jamie Bell
The streetlights, haloed by the season's first truly biting fog, cast long, wavering shadows that danced like restless spirits. A chill, damp and smelling of wet leaves and distant woodsmoke, seeped into the city's bones, clinging to brick and pavement. It was that liminal stretch of autumn, when the world felt poised between the last gasp of warmth and the unforgiving embrace of winter. Down a quiet, residential stretch, where the sound of traffic was a dull thrum, a solitary convenience store blinked its tired neon into the gathering gloom, a beacon of flickering promise and unseen possibility.
By Jamie F. Bell
The wind, a cruel, invisible blade, scoured Portage Avenue, whipping grit into our faces. Every breath was a painful negotiation with the sub-zero air. Snow, already grey from exhaust, clung stubbornly to the kerbside, reflecting the dull, industrial glow of streetlights that fought a losing battle against the encroaching dusk.
By Leaf Richards
Cold, weak sunlight, filtered through a large window caked with frozen condensation, barely illuminated the long, scarred pine table. A thick, grey sky pressed against the glass, hinting at fresh snow. Inside, the air was warm, thick with the scent of lukewarm coffee and the subtle metallic tang of an old radiator. Five young people huddled around the table, their breath misting faintly whenever the door to the draughty hall briefly opened.