A radio station for stories.

Flinchd is an anthology of short fiction with one rule: every story has to earn its minutes. Nothing here is longer than a coffee. Some of it is meant for the bus. Some of it is meant to be read alone, with the lights on.

Who it is for

Anyone aged thirteen and up. A rating is a floor, not a bracket: 13+ means real stakes and real dread without gore, and plenty of those stories are written squarely for adults. 16+ goes darker in theme. Horror and science fiction are the only two things we publish.

What gets published here

A story has to do three things before it goes out. It has to turn: somewhere in the last third, something the reader has already accepted has to mean something else, with the clues planted fairly beforehand, and it has to cost the person in the story something. It has to be unlike the one before it, measured against a ledger of what the last ten stories did, because a catalogue where every story is excellent and every story is the same is a catalogue nobody finishes. And it has to be carried by people talking: at most a quarter of a story is plain narration, because a fact in somebody's mouth carries who they are and what they want from the listener, and the same fact from a narrator is just a fact.

There is a ceiling, and it does not move: nothing sexual, no graphic gore, no slurs, no method for self-harm, no cruelty to children on the page. Fear here is built from ordinary rooms and small wrong details, not from what is shown.

What we will not do

• We will not retell, adapt or borrow from anyone else's work. Every story is written for this site.
• We will not sell, share or trade your personal data. An account is optional and needs only an email address; without one, the only things stored in your browser are your preferences, your list and where you are in each story.
• We will not publish for children. Flinchd is written for readers aged 13 and over, and stories rated 16+ sit behind an age advisory.

How it stays free

Advertising, and nothing else. There is no paywall, no subscription and no charge of any kind, and everything on the site is free to read and to hear. Every advertisement is labelled as one, and we do not disguise one as part of a story. See cookies and advertising for exactly what runs and what choices you have.

Who makes it

We are open about how Flinchd is made: the stories are drafted by AI models working to a written house guide, then reviewed and edited before anything is published. The cover art and the scene illustrations are generated. The narration is synthetic speech, and no narrator imitates a real person. The three names the stories appear under are pen names of the studio, not real individuals, and each of their pages says so. The full account is on the disclaimer page, alongside the originality statement.

Say hello

Found a typo, want to license a story, or have a problem with something we published? Contact us.