Shadows in the City: Where the Mundane Meets the Macabre
This collection presents short stories in an uncommon form: incomplete narrative fragments, moments captured mid-scene, or pages torn from a larger book. Each piece offers a glimpse into a world, inviting readers to engage their own imagination to consider what came before and what might follow.
This project is an experimental program at the intersection of human creativity, interdisciplinary arts, and applied artificial intelligence research. It explores 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.
Today’s selection delves into the chilling depths of Horror and the magical undercurrents of Urban Fantasy, alongside Slice of Life moments and touches of Dark Comedy. Eva Suluk and Jamie F. Bell present their works in this collection.
We invite you to explore these tales not just as a reader, but as a co-creator, completing the narratives within your own mind and shaping their ultimate meaning.
Today’s Unfinished Tales and Short Stories
The Root of the Rot
Author: Eva Suluk | Category: Psychological Thriller | Genre: Horror
The air hung heavy, thick with the scent of wet earth and something sharp, almost like burning copper, that clung to the back of Ethan’s throat. Below the skeletal branches of oaks, where new, sickly-bright green buds fought through the grey, the ground dissolved into a sucking mire. His boots, heavy with accumulated muck, protested with each withdrawal, making a sound like a wet kiss breaking. A cold drizzle, fine as mist, settled on his face, mingling with sweat that wasn’t from exertion alone.
Reasonable Accommodations for Hissing
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Psychological Drama | Genre: Urban Fantasy
I was halfway through redacting a witness statement with a black marker that smelled of dying chemicals when the screaming started. Not the usual ‘the printer is jammed again’ screaming, but a genuine, terrified, ‘there is a woman with snakes for hair in reception’ scream. This was followed by a loud crash and the distinct sound of our ficus plant, Bartholomew, shattering into a thousand ceramic pieces. My stomach dropped. It was Tuesday. Gorgon day.
The Loom and the Algorithm
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Slice of Life | Genre: Slice of Life
The air in Seminar Room 3.2 was thick with the scent of lukewarm coffee and the subtle, metallic tang of an old radiator struggling against the late autumn chill. Outside, a light, insistent rain streaked the windowpanes, blurring the already grey cityscape into an Impressionistic wash. Inside, the hum of the fluorescent lights competed with the low murmur of anticipation, a prelude to the usual intellectual sparring.
The Glazed Horizon
Author: Eva Suluk | Category: Mystery | Genre: Dark Comedy
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.
The Scrimshaw of October
Author: Jamie F. Bell | Category: Epistolary | Genre: Slice of Life
The air already held that crisp, almost brittle edge of late October, hinting at the frost that would soon cling to everything. Outside the coffee shop, a solitary red maple clung to its last, most defiant leaves, each one a stark, almost violent splash of colour against the dulling grey sky. Inside, the scent of stale coffee grounds and cinnamon hung heavy, mingling with the low murmur of conversations and the incessant hum of the pastry display fridge. The window, streaked with condensation, offered a distorted view of the street, where puddles reflected the bruised evening light, and the first few streetlights blinked on, casting long, wavering shadows.
Storytelling and the Arts, Skills Development and Digital Transformation
AI-Assisted Storytelling and Scriptwriting: As part of our AI research in creative arts, we investigate its application across varied story genres. For Slice of Life, AI can generate authentic everyday scenarios and character interactions, while for Dark Comedy, it assists in crafting witty dialogue and ironic situations. In Horror, AI helps build suspense and develop terrifying concepts, and for Urban Fantasy, it aids in constructing rich magical worlds within contemporary settings, addressing genre-specific challenges like tone consistency, mood creation, and imaginative world-building to elevate storytelling and scriptwriting.
Talent Development and Training: Our project examines the evolving demands on creative professionals as AI becomes more prevalent. The process of generating these diverse story chapters, from introspective Slice of Life to immersive Urban Fantasy, provides valuable case studies for future digital publishing and film production workflows. This underlines the critical importance of digital literacy and the ability to effectively manage AI tools, empowering creators to leverage AI for idea generation, narrative structuring, and efficient content creation in a rapidly changing industry.
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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