Shailaza's Blog

Tag: #ShortStory

  • What We Don’t Say

    There’s something about the hills that silences people.

    Not the noisy kind of silence — the one that follows fights or betrayal — but a deeper, quieter one. The kind that settles into your bones when grief goes too long without being named.

    I know that silence.
    I’ve lived with it.
    I’ve built a life around pretending it wasn’t there.

    This story — The Gift in the Hills — didn’t come out of ambition or a publishing dream. It came out of that silence. It came from years of loving people who don’t know how to say sorry.
    From being the kind of woman who remembers everything — every pause, every birthday no one celebrated, every meal eaten alone, every night spent convincing herself she was strong enough not to need anyone.

    It’s not a love story in the usual way.
    It’s about the kind of love that returns after fifteen years — not to ask for forgiveness, but to give it.

    It’s about a man who never stopped remembering her.
    And a woman who stopped remembering herself.

    We all have people like that — ghosts of the living, strangers we once loved, versions of ourselves we buried just to survive.

    The Gift in the Hills is for every woman who left — and wonders if she mattered.
    It’s for every man who realized too late that she wasn’t difficult, she was in pain.
    It’s for everyone who’s ever driven back into memory and wished they could rewrite one moment. Just one.

    I don’t know who you are, reading this.
    But if your chest feels heavy right now — if something aches and you don’t know why — maybe this story is for you.

    Maybe this is your sign.

    Here’s the link.
    Take it like a letter you forgot to send.

     Read The Gift in the Hills – Free on Kindle till October 14

    If you’ve ever loved and lost without closure…
    If you’ve ever been the strong one for too long…
    Come sit with this story.
    It won’t fix everything. But it might make you feel seen.

  • NEW SHORT STORY: THE DOOR SHE OPENED

    She had lived in the house for twenty years, but last night, she discovered a door she had never seen before.

    It shouldn’t have been there.

    The wood was older than the house itself, its surface worn, its handle cold to the touch. A relic from a time she didn’t remember.

    She hesitated, then pushed it open. The door groaned—a sigh of something long-forgotten waking up.

    Inside, the room smelled of dust and damp earth. In the dim light, she saw small figures curled up on beds of discarded paper and broken quills. Their faces were smudged with ink, their eyes hollow, their breaths shallow.

    She shivered. “Who… are you?”

    One of the girls sat up, her voice quiet but achingly familiar.

    “We are the stories you left behind.”

    The others stirred, their whispers like rustling pages.

    “We are the ideas you ignored, the possibilities you abandoned, the words you were too busy to write.”

    She felt her knees go weak.

    The girl reached for her hand, her fingers ice-cold, yet pulsing with something alive.

    “Will you leave us again?”

    The door behind her creaked, as if waiting for her answer.

    Sherry exhaled, looking up from the page. “That story… it felt real.”

    Arin, sitting across from her, smiled knowingly. “Maybe because it is.”

    “You mean we really do leave stories behind when we ignore them?”

    “Haven’t you felt them?” Arin leaned closer. “The ideas tugging at your mind before sleep, the whispers of inspiration when you’re too busy to write them down? The abandoned stories don’t vanish, Sherry. They wait.”

    She shivered, her fingers tightening around her notebook. “So… what happens if I don’t return to them?”

    “The same thing that happens when you ignore any calling.” Arin’s voice softened. “They fade.”

    She looked down at the story again, the words alive beneath her fingertips. “Not this time.”

  • THE TIME KEEPER’S POEM

    THE TIME KEEPER’S POEM

    A New Online Novel by Shailaza Singh

    PROLOGUE

    The world Arin Verma came from had long abandoned the chaos of human emotions. Efficiency, logic, and precision ruled, governed by the Time Keepers—an elite order that monitored and adjusted the flow of time across civilizations. They were the silent architects of history, ensuring that the past remained undisturbed, the future untainted. In their world, there was no space for love, passion, or art—these things were seen as relics of a primitive age, distractions that clouded judgment and disrupted progress.

    Arin had always been the perfect Time Keeper. He had trained since childhood, mastering the delicate balance of time manipulation, able to navigate its endless currents with precision. His duty was to archive and preserve significant moments of history, ensuring that time remained untouched by interference. Yet, despite his success, a quiet hollowness had always lingered within him, a sensation he was never able to name.

    Then he found the poem.

    It had been buried deep within the archives of a dying Earth civilization, an unremarkable entry amid countless historical texts. He should have overlooked it, dismissed it as another meaningless fragment from a world that had long since faded. But something made him pause.

    The words were simple, yet they struck him like a wave crashing against stone:

    What we yearn to find, does it yearn for us?
    What we dream of, does it dream of us?
    What I seek, is it my seeker too?
    If that is true, will I ever meet you?

    The moment he read it, something inside him cracked open. The words pulled at something deep within, something long buried by the rules of his world. It was as though the poet had reached across time itself and touched the very core of his being. For the first time in his existence, Arin felt moved—a sensation foreign to him, yet impossible to ignore.

    Who had written these words? Did they understand the ache that now burned within him? He had to know. A search through the archives led him to a name: Astha Mehra. A writer from Jaipur. A poet. A woman from Earth’s past, from an era long before his own. She had lived, breathed, and written those words, never knowing they would find their way to him. The realization struck him like lightning—he had spent his existence preserving the past, but never had he stepped into it for personal reasons.

    Until now.

    His hands hovered over the time coordinates. The elders would never approve of such a mission, but they had no reason to suspect him. He was one of their best.

    For the first time, Arin Verma was about to break the very rules he had sworn to uphold.

    And he had no idea what awaited him on the other side.

    …To be continued in the next post

    This online novel with all its chapters is an original copyrighted work of the author Shailaza Singh. All rights reserved.