Short story: The Echo of Screens The night he decided to try the app was one of those unpromising nights: fine rain against the windows, the city shrunk into yellow lights, and he sitting in the kitchen with a cup of lukewarm coffee that no longer warmed him. He had heard about the app on a forum: random video calls, anonymous, a chance that opened doors to faces from around the world. He wasn't looking for entertainment; he wanted to understand something he couldn't name.…
Top 5 musical - September, 2025 We are back once again with our musical count of each month, in which we will be showing the 5 most listened artists. And, this month has stood out for being a purely rocker month, with bands that (some of them) have appeared previously in this section, and others that appear for the first time. However, it should be remembered that this list is part of my profile on LastFM, a social network that has my statistics on music plays, and which, in…
Short story: Mara: The New Actress In the heart of Los Angeles, where buildings hold memories of premieres and the streets wake to giant billboards, there was a studio that never knew night. Its corridors were lit by neon, its offices smelled of reheated coffee, and the dressing rooms kept, among hangers and mirrors, the history of hundreds of shoots. It was there that, almost as an experiment both technical and artistic, Mara was born: not an actress of flesh and blood, but…
Short story: The Discount Scam A new store opened in the shopping mall promising to bring fashion closer to those seeking quality at a good price. A large, imposing sign with golden letters and the name of a well-known brand advertised clothing and footwear at 50% off with convenient credit payment options. The opening was staged as an event: balloons, music and promoters handing out flyers that assured “authenticity guaranteed.” On the morning of the grand opening, the…
Short story: Beacon of Salt and Shadows Night fell like an iron lid over the Caribbean. The lighthouse, a needle of salt-stiff stone, spat its beam every twelve seconds: a small sentence nobody had asked for but everyone had to read. Mateo, the lighthouse keeper, rested his palms on the railing and breathed the sea: he knew the secrets the foam brought and those it carried away. "Listen," Joaquín said beside him, his voice between his teeth. "They're moving again. Three…
Short story: Shadows over the Republic The Republic was crumbling beneath an ash-gray sky. Instability in France caused by its rulers’ resignation left an administrative and moral vacuum that rumor filled with the voracious speed of drought tearing the soil. That gap was felt in every postponed decision, in every public service that faltered, in hospital corridors and in the empty chambers where resolutions were once made. Institutions, disoriented, lost their capacity to…
Short story: Intervention of Steel and Smoke The day the Federal Government decided to intervene, Chicago woke as a city unfamiliar to itself. The sky, thick and low, pressed against the brick facades until they were silenced; the rain, which had begun as a nighttime whisper, left damp traces on the sidewalks and on the faces of those who stepped outside to look. Helicopters circled like metallic birds, casting fleeting shadows over parks and avenues; flashing lights painted…
Short story: Reborn from the Ashes Luis Herrera was born and raised in a village whose name barely appears on maps: a place of low houses, dusty streets, and squares where time seemed measured in fallows and harvests. His childhood smelled of freshly cut wood and the murmur of tools: his father had been a carpenter and taught him to read the grain of wood as others learn to read faces. As a teenager he learned to repair chairs, straighten springs, and temper nails; skill…
Short story: Echoes of Paper The night stretched over the neighborhood like a heavy hand that covered everything. In the apartment with yellowed walls, the light was a trembling lamp casting long shadows over worn furniture. María carefully slid a cereal box among the belongings as if every movement could betray her; she knew the hiding places by memory: a bill folded beneath a pile of rags, a medical card tucked between cookbooks, the envelope with names and dates wrapped…
Short story: The Prize of Renunciation On a clear night in Oslo, the city seemed to hold its breath. Flags fluttered beneath a cold, starry sky, and the main hall of the auditorium brimmed with dignitaries, activists, scholars, and journalists from around the world. The peace prize ceremony, traditionally a stage for symbolic gestures and measured speeches, carried a special tension this time: a diplomatic turn in the Middle East had produced an agreement between Israel and…
Short story: Shadows in the Feed The city breathed with the quickened rhythm of digital times: at night it lit up with screens and fed on fast consumption. Malls sat beside small shops that still resisted, plazas held broken benches, and parks the rain turned into puddles because of badly done works. In that setting a generation grew up that sought the instant beat—the like—before the patience of a process. Some derisively called them "the dumb generation"; others, with…
Short story: The Pencil Lighthouse The rain had left a sheen on the asphalt that turned the city into a moving constellation. Kaito closed his bedroom window and returned to the screen; the monitor's light washed his face and made the shadows look like other characters watching his work. Outside, the suburb murmured in lights, but inside everything was silence and cold tea. He had spent months turning YouTube nights into small victories: a tag that learned to breathe, a…
Short story: The Deluge of Lost Days The rain did not warn. It arrived without prior signs, like a radical interruption in a calendar the city believed secure. It fell with the violence of a broken vow, and over the course of seven days it turned avenues into rivers, plazas into dark mirrors, and schedules into useless memories. What began as a downpour became a constant presence, a force that unraveled routines and tested the patience and endurance of those who lived…
Short story: Martyrdom and Resistance The rain over Caracas had a rhythm that knew the city by heart: a steady cadence that struck tiles, cardboard, and tin, seeming to wash the place without ever truly cleaning it. From the room she shared with her brother, Mariana listened to that distant drum like a metronome marking the measures of a life fraying at the edges. She was twenty years old, her hair tied back with a pencil, and she kept a worn sketchbook filled with drawings…
Short story: The Shadow's Leap The rain hammered the glass with a mechanical rhythm, as if the city were trying to erase itself. Neon lights frayed in puddles and shop windows; patrol cars painted blue streaks across the hotel's facade. On the seventh-floor corridor, the agents' boots echoed with the precision of a metronome. Inside room 712, the streetlight silhouette of a man stood by the window: his tie undone, his jacket hanging off one shoulder, his hands trembling…
Short story: Night of Smoke and Tides The wind brought the smell of salt and rumors. In the port of San Remo, the lighthouses blinked like tired eyes; barges arrived and departed under the complicit silence of the night. The wet tarpaulins smelled of gasoline and fish, and the men who worked on the docks spoke in low voices because the city had quickly learned to distrust noise. In the shadowed presidential office, Esteban Morales leaned over a map spread across the table…
Short story: The Tree That Kept the Night The rain had begun as a whisper and within an hour had turned the city into a map of reflections. The streetlights cast trembling light over Avenue 12 at 8th Street, in the Los Olivos neighborhood, and the asphalt answered with puddles that held inverted fragments of windows and faces. The tree on the sidewalk, an old ahuehuete whose branches stretched like tired fingers, stood out against the overcast sky. That night its figure…
Short story: The Night of the Charger Viviana had spent twenty-eight years moving through the city with a mix of steadiness and disorder that made her endearing to those who knew her: she arrived late to gatherings, forgot appointments, but always brought a smile and an encouraging message for anyone who needed one. She lived in a mid-rise apartment in a neighborhood that breathed the life of cafés and small shops; her home was a modest refuge, with books piled on shelves, a…
Short story: Seven Minutes in the Dark The night over the Seine held the cruel sheen of a broken promise: streetlamps vomiting their yellow light onto the wet pavement, reflections slipping across the cobblestones like small traitors. The Louvre rose up dark and monumental, a colossus of stone that guarded centuries and silences. Three shadows walked down Rue de Rivoli with the calculated indifference of those who have learned to measure their own heartbeat. They spoke only…
Short story: ArenaIQ: The Coffee Cup, the Bots, and the Bitcoin Bitcoin trades above USD 110,700, recovering from last week’s drop when it reached USD 103,000. The headline popped up on the screen like someone making an awkward joke at a dinner party: nobody was sure whether to laugh, applaud, or run. On the café terrace, among iron tables and a breeze promising rain, Elena and Marco exchanged a look with the conspiratorial complicity of two people who believe any world…
Short story: The Rope and the Tea Sanae Takaichi was born in a humble neighborhood of Kashihara, where houses smelled of wood and winter and public conversations took place on the thresholds of temples. As a child, disputes with neighbors about taxes, street lighting, and heritage conservation seemed to her more than petty fights: they were civic exercises, rehearsals of what it meant to care for a place. Those rehearsals turned into a vocation that, over the years, pulled…
Short story: The City That Breathed Smoke When the first ray of sunlight tried to pierce the dimness, New Delhi was already awake out of obligation: the day after Diwali allows no rest. The city, even as it attempted to recombine itself in clumsy steps, seemed wrapped in a heavy gray sheet that clung to façades, antennas, and people's temples. A metallic smell—part gunpowder, part burnt oil—hung in the corners; tiny bright specks stuck to clothing like ash from a memory…
Short story: The Silent Game: Intrigue in the Halls of Rome Five months after the election of Leo XIV, the City of the Vatican breathed a tense silence, the kind that precedes a storm. The bells of St. Peter’s still marked the hours with the same immutable cadence, but in the corridors of the papal palaces—in offices with frescoed ceilings and in rooms where yellowed files were kept—shadows moved that no longer trusted eternal certainties. —Have you seen the envelope on the…
Short story: Shadows in La Esperanza La Esperanza was one of those towns seemingly born to keep secrets. Its streets curled around a central square where the municipal clock kept time with the slowness of someone who had seen too many seasons. Yellow streetlamps, flaking walls and the smell of strong coffee completed the scene. On the hill that watched over the town stood the San Marcelo chapel: a cracked stucco façade, cloudy stained glass and a bell whose voice had grown…
Short story: Neo‑San Isidro In the dusk of Neo‑San Isidro, neon bled color across sticky sidewalks and puddles that reflected advertisements. Holographic billboards repeated promises with the cadence of a mantra: You will see again. You will read again. No one believed slogans anymore, but the signs brought comfort and commerce, and the clinic testing the implant was a living organism of concrete and wiring—more servers than walls, more promises than ethics. A tiny wireless…
Short story: Mirrors of Ink The photo appeared on my screen with the naturalness of something we had all accepted as routine: a measured smile, warm light sculpting cheekbones, an angle chosen to emphasize the jaw. The caption was brief and calculated — “Good morning ☀️” — like a coin tossed to check whether there were still hands willing to applaud. I didn’t think to open it; I had known that ritual for a long time. What I didn’t know was how far those images could open…
Short story: The Seam of Fire The street smelled of rubber and molten steel when the orange glow appeared in the gloom. Monteluz Avenue had, for a moment, become a throat that exhaled flame; the vehicle gave a long whine and surrendered in silence. Álvaro stood a few steps away, his shirt clinging to his skin, his hands trembling, watching his car burn. He had arrived when the first flames licked the dashboard; he had time—one second, maybe two—to push the door, grip the…
Short story: Cherry Blossoms and Cinderella's Castle In the small rented room where Kofu kept his sketches and his slightly out-of-tune guitar, afternoon shadows stretched like ink across paper. The cramped space smelled of paper, ink, and cheap detergent; folders with mediocre projects sat beside vinyl records and a small plastic samurai figurine on a crowded shelf. At twenty-three, Kofu had the look of someone who has chosen to live near the margins: a mixture of…
Short story: The Gray Pack The fog did more than descend; it seeped like an old thought, like a letter never sent, filling the gaps where voices and footsteps once lived. In the exclusion zone time had stretched until it became tangible: broken windows, trees growing through sidewalks, signs still bearing names no one spoke. There, in that paused landscape, the dogs had learned to measure the world with the slowness of those who know waiting is a way of existing. Vera…
Short story: The Snow Lynx The Jaén mountains wore a contained mood that October morning, as if the peaks themselves had grown cautious. The air smelled of dry rosemary and fallen leaves, and the first light of day raked the tops of the pines with golden fingers. Ángel Hidalgo walked slowly along a scarcely marked trail, his camera hanging from his neck and a backpack with gear snug against his back. He was twenty-nine, had been passionate about photography since his teens,…
Short story: The Night the Hall Heard the Scream The scream arrived like a fissure in the dark: not just a voice, but an urgency that tore through the building’s silence and slipped through the cracks of doors, climbed the stairwell, and struck the fogged windowpanes. "Help, someone help me! This woman wants to kill me!" The words echoed, reproducing against every wall until they became a rumor that demanded a response. The old woman, whose name was Carmen, felt the blast in…
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