The Thinning Novels & Stories

Like we were both afraid of stepping on thin ice and hearing it crack. I turned off my light but sleep didn’t come easy. The season was just beginning, and already it felt like we were playing two different games on the same rink.

"Alright. Why don’t both parties take some time to cool off? The hearing is tomorrow, and the judge will make a ruling." After I got home, I exported all the videos from my phone, then I edited them and added captions. At midnight: The sound of drilling from Unit 601. Footage of Carl stuffing toothpicks into my lock. Mason dumping trash outside my door and hanging the dead rat. At the end, I added a photo of my mother’s shattered urn beside my diagnosis report. I captioned it: "Residents of Unit 601, the Carvers have been harassing and bullying me because I bought my apartment $30,000 below market. They destroyed my late mother’s ashes and attempted to extort $230,000 from me."

she replied. For a brief moment, the room felt smaller. Just the three of us—mother, father, daughter. A family bound not just by blood, but by fire. And something told me that whatever came next would test that bond more than ever. I stood in the war chamber again by midday. Maps had been spread out wider now, borders expanded with red markers and hastily drawn arrows. Hollowpine wasn’t just an isolated loss—it was the opening move. Mother’s finger tapped the table slowly. “There are whispers now. From the northern outposts—cold trails, abandoned watch posts. Someone’s moving in the dark.”

The morning after the shipyard was not a dawn; it was a cold, mechanical reboott. Silas Thorne stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror in his dressing suite, adjusting his tie with the precision of a diamond cutter. His movements were fluid, devoid of the jagged tremors that had plagued him in the ruins of the Crèche. His eyes, once clouded by the smoke of a thirty-year-old fire, were now as clear and piercing as glacial ice.

He smiled. The house was exactly like the one I described to him. Within a week we moved out of the apartment and into the house. I officially joined Thorn cider and helped Nick with running a branch of the company. My admin skills came in handy and my new skills I learned from my promotions came in handy with promoting one of their new lines along with handling the business meetings to secure new contracts. I was also given an opportunity to design a new label for their new launch. Life could not be going any better.

“Thank you so much,” Just a short time later a Nurse Anette comes in except she doesn’t adjust my air conditioner unit she scans my head with a thermometer. “Now I know why you think sixty-five degrees is too hot for you. You have a fever of a hundred and two. We are going to have to take some more blood to see what's wrong,” She

I don't feel real, alive, or me. I lock the bathroom door and open the lid to the toilet. My reflection shines in the toilet water. I hate myself. I purge my entire meal. The donuts, muffins, and watermelon fall out of me. The sensation is terrifying, hideous, and makes me dizzy. I feel the stomach acid burning my throat. I flush it all down and use mouth wash to cover up my vomit breath. I feel like I'm near death. Anorexia is death-a death sentence I have forced on myself.

The week after the message reached Ashford, Brynn began to feel herself going thin. That was the only word she had for it. Not weak, exactly. Not broken. Thin. Like she was wearing her own life lighter than she used to, like a wolf could see through her now if they looked at the right angle. Days passed and she did not feel them landing. She did the work. She ate when she could. She lay down in her corner at night. And somewhere underneath all of it, the wolf who had once felt all of it was getting quieter.

Jeffery's POV The biting cold from the wooden bench bit right through my thick team trousers, making me pull my legs in close to stop shivering. I pulled the heavy team jacket tighter around my shoulders, tucking my hands deep into my pockets. The air inside the arena was freezing, sharp enough to hurt my throat every time I took a breath. All around me on the rink, heavy rubber skates cut through the ice, echoing off the high ceiling with the loud thud of pucks hitting the boards.

And the way he looked at me, not angry, not threatened, just bored. Like I was some kid who had wandered into the wrong room and hadn't figured it out yet. I turned and put my fist through the drywall. The crash snapped through my knuckles and the sting was clean and quick, the kind of pain that cuts through noise. I pulled my hand back and stared at the split skin across my knuckles, breathing hard, and felt exactly none of the relief I was looking for. Mable Thorne. She had sat in the Dean's office and I had let them strip her scholarship down to a "under review" like she was a line item that needed adjusting.