The boy had moved around his entire life. When he was younger, that man often came home reeking of smoke, his face red and swollen from one too many, hounding the boy’s mom for money. He pleaded, cajoled, and promised he would start anew. He never did, of course. Before long, the boy would see his mom putting things in weird places: beneath the shabby sofa, inside broken vases, under stacked bowls, like she was playing hide and seek with valuables. The man then started to look to the boy for clues. He was just trying to scrounge up enough to buy “a creature” to cure his mom’s cancer, he said, and, not understanding the situation, the boy would point. He later discovered that that man had gambled away nearly all the family’s inheritance. When dinner conversations grew louder and plates began to shatter, his mom packed, swiftly, in secret, and took the boy with her. From then on, they were constantly on the move in order to accommodate the mom’s job as a history teacher. The boy soon grew numb from having no one other than his mom, and his eyes dried up like a reservoir in a drought.
Anfeng Xie
September 19, 2025
Ring ring ring ring ring ring. 3:29 AM. The orange smears against the darkness and seeps under his eyelids. He squeezes his eyes shut. The thin cotton sheet clings to his skin as he stretches his arms and legs. After seven minutes of ringing, he finally sits up and turns off the alarm. He wonders if he woke his wife asleep downstairs, though truthfully he does not care.His pale, knobbly hands practically glow in the dark as he throws off the rumpled sheet to find the cold edge of the chair jammed between the bed and the worn wall. He crawls onto the chair and takes his position. Exhales a long, shuddering breath. With the reverence of a priest crowning a monarch, he picks up his virtual reality headset and slides it over his eyes and ears, sealing himself in. The radio on the table connects with the headset… like stepping right into another world. You’re not just seeing. An advertisement for the newly released EchoLens X. The radio is always on and connected to any activated listening device nowadays.
Anfeng Xie
September 19, 2025
Midnight’s violet secrets lingered on the swirling enigmatic mist—an emblematic acquaintance of Dublin—that obscured the crispness of the early summer air. Drizzle, another frequent visitor of the city, came along with the mist as always. Desmond pulled his coat tight against the cold. “He looked so real,” he murmured, turning to Fia, trying his best to maintain a calm expression. The freezing temperature of the night was making it difficult, and Fia’s warm smile wasn’t helping—at all. His vision drifted to her dark eyes—they were as dark as midnight. “Was he real?”
Buxuan Wang
September 23, 2024
It’s been exactly a decade since I had my first nightmare at the tender age of three. At the start of everything, I was in my room on the 14th floor of the apartment building where I spent my early years. I lay on my bed, unaware of the intrusion of a “dream”. My mind was telling me to go back to sleep, or else my mom would come in and admonish me as she often did when I didn’t follow her instructions. In a flash, I teleported myself to the living room—the same one where I grew up in before I moved. The room’s table, adorned with a world map pattern, is surrounded by chestnut-colored sofas draped with gold fabric that casually rested on the tips of the sofa legs. My memory of what happened that night is hazy, unable to explain how I teleported. But I know I did. What I saw was more like a picture that I stood apart from instead of an event that happened to me.
Phoebe Fan
June 06, 2024
During our three-week stay at Belgrade, my friends and I lived in an apartment building that our parents rented out for us to relax and play tennis. Every morning we would head out early to the tennis court to train for the day and on that very court, we would gaze up into the hazy air and talk about our dreams and plans of the future.
Youjia Deng
September 18, 2023
A hundred miles off the Eastern coast of the New Republic, a pre-Disaster helicopter was about to land on a desolate island. From the air, the whole island seemed tilted to its side, with shallow waters on its western shore and vertical cliffs hanging from the east. Greenery covered most of the land; a few wooden huts and tents clustered around the center. Armed guards were stationed at every post on the perimeter of the island; electric fences enclosed the inhabited areas.
Alex Huang
April 24, 2023
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