Browsing Contemporary Stories

Two friends with a unique Italian connection meet in Rome to uncover a time capsule from 1975, with surprising results.

Over the course of a late afternoon stretching into late in the evening, a first time traveler in Rome becomes enraptured not only with the beauty, culture and romance the ancient city offers, but two female tourists he keeps encountering on his adventures.

The Vagabunda: Journeys Without Borders is an ongoing memoir that invites readers into the adventurous life of a traveller, archaeologist, and doctor of medicine candidate. In this vibrant series, Elyssa Vagabunda shares her explorations across continents, offering a deeply personal window into the cultures, histories, and landscapes she has encountered.

Nicolo Romano isn’t known for kindness, yet he seems to favor Lili Orlando, the maid from the Accardi family. Her seriousness, cool rejection of him, and unflinching gaze has him begging for more. Yet he is suspicious of the reason she is here.

A Cajun shrimper is forced to come to grips with faith and so is the priest who counsels him.

We found a time capsule dated 1975, but the items inside were from 2025. Pictures of furry art, and italian brainrot (just so you know im cultured so i knew it was tralalero tralala and tung tung tung tung tung sahred), WOW! Who knew that the past was as cultured as us right now? (btw im 5'10, male i like to talk to e kittens and i ship dream x george)

In "How to Stay Awake Forever," the narrator navigates the relentless grip of insomnia, caught between the suffocating stillness of the mind and the maddening desire for rest. 

It begins quietly, almost imperceptibly, on a forgotten Monday morning in 2001. A man named Julien Lambert arrives at a psychiatric clinic in a town coated in perpetual grey, its streets narrowing into shadows that seem never to recede. The clinic, an oppressive building with narrow hallways and pale, peeling walls, is one of those places where time seems neither to pass nor to linger. Julien's hands tremble as he clutches an object—a rusted tin capsule with the year 1975 etched jaggedly across its lid.

In the heart of the ancient forest of Eldergrove, where crumbling ruins stand as silent sentinels to forgotten tales, an ethereal figure wandered beneath the watchful gaze of the moon. Lysander Blackwood, with his alabaster skin and raven tresses that danced like ink in the night breeze, cut a striking silhouette against the silvery backdrop. His golden eyes, flecked with emerald, held untold depths of melancholy—for he was a creature of the shadows, a solitary soul who had witnessed centuries pass like fleeting seasons. 

A long and fevered existence upends itself in metaphor.