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Mystery-Fantasy | 2025

Between

Between is a mystery-fantasy story about an ordinary morning that slowly begins to slip

out of place. A mailbox facing the wrong direction, an unidentified envelope, frozen

time, and a mysterious message lead the main character to question both memory and

reality.

The story explores how small, unsettling changes can transform something familiar into

something strange, focusing on the main character’s growing uncertainty and fear of no

longer being able to trust their own memories.

Selected Excerpt

“The mailbox was facing the left side of my house.

I froze.

That couldn’t be right. I had lived here for years. The mailbox had always faced the

right—hadn’t it?

A chill crept up my spine. The longer I stared at it, the less certain I became. Had it

always been like this? Or had something changed—something that should not have

been able to change?

My reality started shifting as if someone had rewritten a sentence of my story.

I stepped outside. No cars passed. No neighbours called to one another. Even the trees

were perfectly still. The red of the mailbox looked brighter than I remembered, almost

too red, as though it were trying to distract me from everything else that was wrong.

Inside it was a crisp white envelope, sealed with a dark red stamp.

I reached for it, but my fingers stopped just above the paper. I could not explain why, but

I knew the envelope was important. I needed to open it. I needed to discover what it

contained.

Still, I hesitated.

Then my phone lit up.

A message from an unknown number appeared on the screen. The number looked

strangely familiar, although I could not remember where I had seen it before. My hands

began to shake.

The message read:

“It’s not today. You’re stuck between.”

I read it again.

Then I looked up.

The clouds had stopped moving. There was no wind. The branches of the trees were

frozen in place, and the birds had vanished. Not flown away—vanished.

The whole world appeared to have stopped around me.”