Category: Uncategorized
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The Past Unpacked
The little house sat where the city thinned out, where streetlights grew farther apart, and the hum of traffic softened into a distant, familiar breathing. It was a modest place, all-one-level, with a narrow porch and wind-chimes that sang only when the air felt like moving. Inside lived Margaret Hale, seventy-eight years retired from urgency,…
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Retirement
After forty years of work, retirement didn’t arrive with fireworks or speeches. It came quietly, on a Tuesday morning, when the alarm clock didn’t go off—and no one rushed to silence it.He woke with the sun instead, light slipping through the curtains the way it had when he was a child on summer break. For…
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Activating Ethan
By the time Ethan reached his apartment building, the panic had dulled into something harder and more dangerous: focus. The front door clicked shut behind him, sealing out the city’s noise, and the silence inside pressed in like holding a breath. He stood there for a moment, forehead resting lightly against the wood, letting the…
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Undercover Agent Return-Next
No return address. No delivery slip. Just a plain brown box, neat and deliberate, as if it had been placed there with care rather than dropped off. His chest tightened. He scanned the corridor, then the stairwell, then the faint reflection of himself in the brushed steel elevator doors. Nothing. No footsteps retreating. No cameras…
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Picking a New Church
On Sundays, they woke without an alarm.It had started accidentally one weekend; they overslept and missed their usual service, and instead of feeling guilty, they wandered into a small brick church a few streets away. The building smelled like old hymnals and coffee, and the sermon was about patience, delivered softly, as if the pastor…
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Undercover Agent’s Return
He’d crossed borders so often that the lines between countries had blurred into something abstract, stamps in a passport, accents that changed with a street corner, currencies folded into the same worn wallet. For fifteen years, Ethan Cole had lived out of suitcases and safe houses, his identity shifting as easily as his time zones.…
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Milo’s Adventure
Milo had spent his entire life believing the world was rectangular.It fit neatly inside the windowpanes: a framed movie of fluttering birds, swaying trees, and that insolent squirrel who sat on the fence every morning and chewed acorns like he owned the place. Milo observed it all from his velvet perch on the back of…
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Another Lonely Holiday
The city had been dressed for the holidays like it was trying too hard, lights strung between buildings, wreaths taped to office doors, music spilling from stores onto the sidewalks. From the outside, it looked warm. From inside her chest, it felt hollow.She had spent the afternoon with coworkers because it was easier than going…
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Finally a Call
She had stopped jumping when her phone rang.A year ago, every unknown number sent her heart racing—hope crackling like static in her chest. Now, after twelve months of polite rejections, silence, and the soft humiliation of “we’ve decided to move forward with other candidates,” she let the phone buzz twice before answering.“Hello?”“Hi, is this Mara…
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Day in Bugs Bunny’s Life
Lisa woke up to the sound of chewing.Not the polite, distant kind of it, this was loud, confident chewing, the kind that suggested absolutely zero concern for social norms. She opened one eye and found a gray rabbit sitting on her nightstand, calmly eating a carrot and leaving orange shavings on her alarm clock.“Eh… what’s…
Saturday Afternoon 