Burrst is a site for sharing short pieces of fiction - 'bursts' of 1,250 words or less (both written & spoken).

Susannah stumbled over a particularly large piece of broken stone and would have fallen flat on her face if she hadn't collided into the nearest wall. She span away from the curved wall of the tunnel and continued running, doing her best to ignore the grating sound from her shoulder and the jolting pain in her arm.
She...

451 words by T Hogarth

15 Comments
38 Likes

Published 10 years ago

When Freddie said he'd found a portal to another dimension, I laughed.

When he appeared a week later with Parallel Me, it wasn't so funny. Freddie warned us not to touch. Right away I knew I wasn't going to get along with my counterpart. He was taller and stronger and brighter than me.

He lived on Second Earth...

220 words by S Golden

19 Comments
34 Likes

Published 10 years ago

On Sunday, August 7th, the sun didn't rise.

All the people on Alice's street rose with their alarm clocks. They woke without the glint of sunlight peering through their curtains and the panic of their neighbors as they looked outside. The stars were gone and the moon had long slipped away. They stood on their tiny...

396 words by J Sepple

14 Comments
27 Likes

Published 10 years ago

SLAUGHTER

They buried the babies first. As each small body was lowered into the ground, they wept.

The mission to evacuate women and children had failed. Their unit had arrived too late and the slaying was over.

Not a living soul remained. Every woman and every child had been a victim of this atrocity.

The...

130 words by R Smith-Nazilli

13 Comments
25 Likes

Published 10 years ago

Darren Cunningham watched the water burst into bits of white foam against the rocks at the base of the cliff. The setting sun lit them up into a stunning, blood-colored haze. Something about the sight of it made him uneasy.

He traced his index finger along the fragile spine of the manila folder in his hands. It was...

516 words by M Nelson

8 Comments
18 Likes

Published 10 years ago

Mori sat cross legged to one side of her bedroom door listening intently. The door was slightly ajar and downstairs the feast was in full swing, loud conversations overlapped one another, fiddlers and drummers played songs for dancing, and laughter filled the great hall and every stairway and corridor leading from it. She...

377 words by A Blackshaw

5 Comments
17 Likes

Published 10 years ago

His eyes don’t blink. From eleven to midnight every night, he stands and stares at me. Right at me. His skin has an ethereal glow in the milky moonlight. His clothes cling to him and his hair sags like he's all wet. Though his face is inches away from the window, his breath doesn't fog the glass. When he's there, my room...

265 words by J Cambrook

17 Comments
16 Likes

Published 10 years ago

Ode to Billie Joe

I keep telling myself I shouldn’t oughta come up here, but somehow all the roads in this town just end up here anyhow.
The water that flows under the bridge is new every day. It don’t come back to the same old place – not like me.
Never the same since the old bridge broke up. Always looked kinda...

254 words by N Johns

9 Comments
14 Likes

Published 10 years ago

Winner of the Untold Tales Competition

Red had to stop. There was no way she could go on like this indefinitely. Her muscles ached and her lungs burned, breath coming in short gasps.

Behind her, the road. Ahead, a broad field stretching out into the distance. Crouched low beside the hedge for a moment, she scanned the horizon. Nothing was moving other than...

345 words by R Tarran

7 Comments
14 Likes

Published 10 years ago

Your lips turned blue a while ago now. I couldn’t check the exact time, because the clock lies smashed at your feet. The face is shattered, caved in; the slivers of glass already embedding themselves deep into the cream carpet which is now slowly being dyed a deep maroon, your blood providing an instant redecoration. It...

361 words by R Hesketh

6 Comments
13 Likes

Published 10 years ago

We were gods. We took the unwanted humans, leeching from the rest of us, and forced them underground, away from civilization. We had no choice, in the beginning.

At first we gave them food and water, but when it rained their tiny underground village flooded and some died by getting trapped in crevices and tiny caves...

316 words by J Cambrook

12 Comments
11 Likes

Published 10 years ago

It is ugly. Horrific. Worse than anything I've seen in horror films or in graphic horror comics. I was just walking home from my boyfr... ex-boyfriend's house. He decided we were 'too close' and that 'we needed some space' because I'd 'changed beyond recognition'. I hadn't realised that 'too close' was even possible in a...

545 words by J Cambrook

14 Comments
11 Likes

Published 10 years ago

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