• English - Romance

    The Monsoon Retreat

    July 29, 2025 - By 

    Leena Iyer 1 The train slid into the Konkan station just as the sky began to gather weight. Rhea stepped down with her backpack slung across one shoulder, her camera case banging gently against her hip. The air was thick with the smell of wet earth and seaweed, as if the land itself was waiting to exhale. She hadn’t told anyone she was coming here—not her friends, not her ex, not even her editor. Gokarna was meant to be anonymous, a soft, green escape with coconut trees swaying and time ticking at its own pace. She hailed a rickshaw and…

  • English - Suspense

    The Marble Lion of Bhowanipore

    July 26, 2025 - By 

    Shyamal Roy 1 The monsoon evening wrapped Bhowanipore in a damp silence, the kind that made the air feel heavy with memory. Trisha Dutta stood alone in her grandmother’s crumbling study, the scent of old paper and camphor oil curling into her nostrils. Dust motes floated like silent watchers in the fading light as she lifted the marble lion from the bookshelf, more out of habit than intention. Its weight surprised her—denser than it looked, colder too. Beneath it, tucked neatly in a groove in the wood, was a yellowed envelope sealed with wax that had long since cracked. Her…

  • Crime - English

    Shatranj Ke Khiladi 2.0

    July 26, 2025 - By 

    Mayurakshi Sharma 1 The monsoon had painted Lucknow in sepia — wet alleys shimmering under rusted streetlights, the scent of damp earth clinging to the city’s bones. Zoya Rizvi sat on the floor of her small apartment in Hazratganj, hunched over a half-broken laptop and sipping over-steeped chai. The newsroom she once called home had shuttered six months ago; now, freelance gigs and occasional bylines were all she had to show for her stubborn honesty. She was finishing a piece on encroachment near the Gomti when her encrypted ProtonMail pinged. The subject line read simply: “1994. Truth rots slowly.” Attached…

  • English - Horror

    Whispers from Observatory Hill

    July 26, 2025 - By 

    Trisha Das 1 The toy train chugged out of Ghum station, leaving behind a curl of white smoke that quickly vanished into the thickening mist. Tiasa Sen leaned against the cold windowpane of the shared jeep, her fingers absently tracing the condensation forming along the glass. Darjeeling, shrouded in monsoon fog and quiet pine-scented air, unfolded around her like a faded photograph—half remembered, half imagined. She had been here once before as a child, but the sharp edges of memory had blurred over time. Now, as an anthropologist specializing in postcolonial folklore, she returned not as a tourist but as…

  • English - Suspense

    The Secret of Sindhudurg Fort

    July 21, 2025 - By 

    Saurabh Kulkarni Chapter 1: Arrival at the Coastal Shadows The Konkan sky was a silver sheet of clouds when Sharvani Patil stepped off the rickety ferry onto the moss-lined jetty of Sindhudurg Fort. The Arabian Sea, though unusually calm that day, still carried a scent of restless secrets. From a distance, the fort rose out of the water like a battered crown—its laterite walls darkened by centuries of salt and time, guarding stories the world had forgotten. Sharvani adjusted her backpack, narrowed her eyes against the gusts of sea spray, and turned to her assistant. “You okay, Kabir?” she asked.…

  • Crime - English

    The Midnight Caller

    July 18, 2025 - By 

    Kunal Sinha 1 It was a humid, sticky evening in Kolkata when Maya Sengupta first noticed something was amiss. The streets outside her apartment were bathed in the warm golden light of the streetlamps, but the stillness of the night felt heavy, almost suffocating. The only sounds that punctuated the silence were the occasional honk of distant cars and the rustling of the trees swaying under the breeze. Maya had just finished her work for the day and was sipping on a hot cup of tea when her phone rang. The sudden noise startled her. It was late — too…

  • English - Horror

    Chalk Outline

    July 16, 2025 - By 

    Nikita Kaul 1 The first time Tanvi Mehra heard about the chalk outline was during her third day at St. Augustine’s Residential Academy for Girls. It was whispered between two girls in the library, their voices low but their eyes flickering with unmistakable fear. The words “outline,” “disappears,” and “Ragini” caught Tanvi’s attention like hooks in water. She leaned further behind the old geography shelf, heart thudding—not from belief, but curiosity. She had transferred here from Delhi after a messy school suspension and an even messier stepfather situation. Her mother called this place a “fresh start.” Tanvi called it a…

  • Crime - English

    Blueprints for a Murder

    July 4, 2025 - By 

    Sahana Iyer 1 The rain hit Pune like it meant to peel the city apart—needles of water carving through dust and metal as if the monsoon had something personal to prove. Meghna Deshpande stood at the edge of her balcony, her coffee cooling in her hand, watching the glassy sheen on the road below reflect a fractured world. Her morning had been like any other—emails, contractor calls, a delayed tender for a flyover near Shivajinagar—until the courier arrived. No sender, no company seal. Just a brown kraft-paper envelope, damp at the corners, addressed in shaky black marker to “Meghna Deshpande,…

  • English - Horror

    The Tamarind Curse

    June 21, 2025 - By 

    Malabika Roy 1 Dr. Madhurima Sen had never heard of Adiganahalli until the envelope arrived—unmarked, yellowing, and sealed with an old wax crest that had nearly dissolved into the paper itself. Inside was a legal note handwritten in Kannada, barely decipherable, informing her that a small parcel of ancestral land and an attached cottage had been passed down to her name through her maternal grandmother’s side. Curious more than anything else, Madhurima contacted the village registrar. The man on the phone sounded both surprised and reluctant. “You can come,” he had said slowly, “but don’t expect anyone to welcome you…

  • English - Horror

    Whispers of the Dandak

    June 12, 2025 - By 

    Priyanka Banerjee 1 The newsroom was always a chaotic orchestra — ringing phones, furious typing, coffee-fueled conversations bouncing off walls lined with award certificates and framed newspaper clippings. But Aparna Banerjee thrived in this cacophony. She sat at her desk near the window, where the Kolkata rain tapped like a Morse code from the skies, sipping lukewarm black coffee and scanning through online news alerts. She had a reputation — relentless, articulate, and unafraid. Whether it was child trafficking in Murshidabad or illegal sand mining in Birbhum, Aparna dove in headfirst. Her writing had teeth, and her fearlessness was her…