Short Story by Raconteuse

"How much is enough?" A question that clings to my thoughts like ivy on crumbling stone — persistent, quiet, but impossible to ignore. Today, that question has anchored itself deep within me. The interview didn’t go as I had hoped. Not even close. When we prepare for interviews, we expect a binary outcome — either we crash and burn or we emerge victorious. For me, I was bracing for the former. I’ve always had a tempestuous relationship with interviews. Once, I grew so anxious that I forgot foundational terms from my own profession. That memory still burns. The interviewer, expression unreadable, had said,  “Ma’am, if you do hear from us, it will be solely based on your stellar CV. The person described there and the one who sat here today are worlds apart.” Two years have passed, yet I recall every detail — especially because, in a 20-minute interview, all I managed to say was:  “I don’t know, Sir.” Not “I don’t recall,” but the raw, unfiltered, and utterly unforgivable:  ...

 The rain had started falling just as the sun dipped below the horizon, a gentle murmur of droplets against the window that seemed to echo the stillness in Raavya’s heart. She sat on the edge of the couch, her legs curled beneath her, a cup of warm tea cradled in her hands. Outside, the world was painted in soft shades of grey and silver, the streetlights casting long, quiet shadows. Inside, the room was calm, bathed in the soft glow of a lamp in the corner, the warmth of the space wrapping around her like a soft blanket. She thought of him—Dru. How could she not? In just a few months, he had become a part of her life in ways that were both surprising and inevitable. From the first moment they’d met, something inside her had known that their paths had crossed for a reason. There was a magnetic pull between them, one that neither of them had expected, but neither could deny. Raavya had always been independent, her heart wrapped in a protective shell she had built over the years. She...

Cumulonimbus. I murmur it softly to myself, the word slipping out like a secret, knowing that no one else around me on the subway would understand it. They never do. The hum of the train, the faint rhythm of tired footsteps, and the distant murmur of conversation—everything is so achingly ordinary. Yet, I am anything but ordinary. I’ve always been the quiet one, the odd duck. I suppose it’s something I’ve accepted. The people I share my subway ride with, their faces masked in exhaustion, know this as well. The train car is dense with bodies, the evening rush hour pulling us all towards the same unspoken end. My job as a stenographer doesn’t help matters. It’s mundane, lifeless—taking shorthand, typing notes at a fancy office building—nothing that demands more than my fingertips. My business degree, my graduation summa cum laude, all feel like distant echoes. I never asked for this life. But here I am, spending each day in the throes of discontent, earning the minimum wage that barely a...

In the hushed stillness of a rainy evening, as the world outside was cloaked in muted hues of grey, I sat beside the window, letting the soft, insistent drizzle obscure the sharp lines of my thoughts. The past three months had unfurled before me like an unexpected letter, one I hadn’t foreseen but could not now imagine living without. Marriage, at least the way I had envisioned it, was supposed to be tidy, like a perfectly folded letter, crisp and direct. But this—"we"—was something far more intricate, far more exquisite. I had assumed I knew what love was. After all, doesn’t everyone at some point believe they understand it? But then I found him. I found "us", and the shape of it was unlike anything I had anticipated. I recall, in passing, before we were even engaged, saying that I would not take his surname after marriage. To me, it represented a deeper autonomy I wasn’t willing to surrender. But months later, standing at the altar, the priest casually mentioned t...