Stale Croissants and Sharp Claws
The croissants collapsed.
Playful and teasing nonhuman stories
Stories in NonHuman tagged playful and teasing, ranked by how many readers finish them. Reads run 18 to 25 minutes. Writers to know: Topaz Fiction, Sable Motive and The Rose Phrase. Readers usually start with “Stale Croissants and Sharp Claws” and “The Last Spin”. Some are free to read in full; the rest open with a free preview.
Playful and teasing nonhuman stories, ranked by readers
01 02 The Last Spin
The laundromat smelled like old dryer sheets and dust, and Marion stood in front of the change machine for the third time, patting her…
03 The Lifeguard's Last Con
Jenny sat on the floor of her apartment, surrounded by boxes she had not finished packing.
04 The Morning After the End
Evangeline woke up to an arm across her ribs and a ceiling she didn't recognize.
05 The Eighth Switchback
Rain on the tent fly sounds like somebody dumping gravel on a drum.
06 Letting Go on the Lift
The suitcase problem started before we even got out of the car.
07 Spark and Scale
Farah sits at the corner table by the window of the lakefront bar and counts what she has left.
08 The Best Man's Wolf
Monica Samuels, forty-four years old and twenty-two years on the job, pulled her rented Corolla into the gravel drive of the lakeside…
09 The Last Lap
I'm twenty-eight years old and I drive a black Cadillac Escalade for a living.
10 The Feed Store Reunion
The feed store lot was mostly empty at a quarter to six, just the dusty spots where the fair trucks had parked all week and two flatbeds…
11 The Pepper Incident
Lila pulled her van into the dusty lot at the edge of the market and sat there for a minute with both hands on the wheel.
12 Key to the Vault
Isabel pulled her van through the gates at five minutes to six on a Thursday evening in October, right as the light was going from gold to…
13 Sound Check at the Lumberyard
Scarlett Lincoln was forty-three years old and she still got lost in towns she'd never been to.