A curated collection of mystery short stories to read.
By Jamie F. Bell
On a old, splintered fishing dock overlooking a vast Northwestern Ontario lake at twilight, two friends, Jamie and Cole, have a deeply emotional and revealing conversation about their past, their diverging futures, and the unspoken feelings between them, circling around a shared, unresolved memory of a mysterious journal.
By Eva Suluk
The wind was a blunt instrument, pummeling the vast, open fields surrounding the frozen lake. It whipped the loose snow into a frenzy, sculpting phantom dunes that shifted with every passing gust. Under a stark, indifferent moon, the landscape stretched, unbroken save for the skeletal trees huddled at the distant forest's edge. It was the kind of cold that stole the breath right out of your lungs, leaving an ache behind your teeth. This was not a night for wandering, yet here they were.
By Tony Eetak
The station hummed, a low, mechanical thrum that was more a part of the cold than any sound. Outside, the blizzard howled, a ceaseless, predatory song against the reinforced walls. Inside, the air tasted of burning copper and stale coffee, a metallic tang that never quite left the tongue. This was the world of Station Cerberus, a frozen speck at the edge of the habitable zone, and the only thing colder than the air was the growing dread in the silence between the clicks and whirs of the instruments.
By Tony Eetak
The ravine chewed at the last vestiges of daylight, its icy teeth gleaming. Snow lay heavy, a thick shroud over the forgotten things. Every breath was a small, ragged cloud, a testament to the brutal, unyielding cold that had seeped into the very bone of the land. Here, silence was not peaceful, but a waiting thing, a held breath before something broke.
By Leaf Richards
The aroma of cinnamon and stale coffee hung thick in 'The Daily Grind,' a small café nestled on the main street of Willowbrook Falls. Outside, the early spring sun, watery and pale, was just beginning to coax reluctant green from the dormant branches of maples lining the pavement. Inside, Agnes Winter, a woman whose spectacles often sat askew on her nose, was meticulously dissecting a custard tart with a tiny fork, her attention only partially on the pastry. Her friend, Betty Davids, across from her, was in full flow, detailing the latest local scandal.
By Jamie F. Bell
The thing that didn't belong was a button. Not a pioneer's bone button or a soldier's brass one, but a small, pearlescent disc from a girl's coat. It sat dead centre in the taxidermied beaver's left eye socket, a clean, bright circle against the dusty brown glass of the right. No one was supposed to be in the Fur Trade room after closing, but the lock on the back door had been jimmied with a pop can tab for years. The air in here always smelled the same: mothballs, cracked leather, and the faint, sweet odour of decay that clung to the stuffed animals.
By Jamie F. Bell
The arena air hung heavy, a metallic tang of sweat and chilled ice, a familiar ghost in Owen's lungs. Outside, a true Winnipeg winter raged, coating the city in a fresh, unforgiving layer of hoarfrost. Inside, the lights glared down on the white expanse, reflecting off the dull sheen of his helmet. Another evening of relentless practice, another grinding hour where the ice felt less like a canvas for speed and more like an adversary, stubbornly clinging to his skates, mocking the dwindling quickness he once commanded with such effortless grace.
By Jamie F. Bell
Under a bruised Winnipeg sky, a teenage boy stands vigil on a street corner, the city's ceaseless rhythm amplifying the quiet anxiety building within him as he awaits a meeting that promises either mending or irreversible fracture.
By Jamie F. Bell
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.