tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-338441042026-06-08T15:34:15.071+03:00Writer of things that feel like hauntings. In the middle of a book. One breath from the gate.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger27125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33844104.post-46141772068530365792026-05-30T18:19:15.987+03:002026-05-30T21:27:25.559+03:00

(Spoilers ahead!)Romance in pop culture usually follows a very strict script. We get spoon-fed the myth of the predestined soulmate from childhood. Finding your exact romantic counterpart acts as the ultimate finish line. Media frames this union as a perfect sanctuary capable of curing the messy reality of simply being alive. You find the right person and you are safe forever.Netflix completely

Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33844104.post-43630490278605173322026-05-11T07:31:00.106+03:002026-05-21T06:23:38.688+03:00

The Best Thing That Ever Happened to Him (a dark domestic comedy by Marwa Ayad)Content warning: psychological horror, body horror, domestic decay.The phrase coated his tongue like cold grease: "She is the best thing that ever happened to me."He forced the line onto delivery drivers at least twice a week. Colleagues suffered through the constant repetition. Anyone holding his gaze for a single

Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33844104.post-69970105703091405662026-02-12T03:10:00.007+02:002026-03-01T03:44:38.915+02:00

When Grief Forgets the Play (Spoilers Ahead!)There are films you admire, and films that move you. They are not always the same thing.I watched Hamnet wanting to be undone. Wanting that slow, intimate devastation the book achieved so effortlessly on the page. Maggie O’Farrell writes grief the way weather writes itself into stone. Patiently. Irrevocably. Her novel is not about Shakespeare so much

Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33844104.post-10380716823079702942025-12-01T01:46:00.008+02:002026-05-28T07:57:47.834+03:00

Most women don’t realize they are living in a world designed to orbit a sun that doesn’t heat them. It is a background process: an operating system installed in childhood, shaped by a culture that treats a woman’s worth as a fluctuating currency, rising or falling based on how much she is wanted by a man.Centering men is about externalized worth orientation. It is the psychological habit of

Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33844104.post-57101811906007913692025-11-23T01:56:00.004+02:002026-04-06T23:23:04.326+02:00

Walk lightly from this dream.The past no longer holds your name between its teeth. Once, it pressed its jaw to your shoulder, and you mistook the sting for a lesson, the slow bleeding for love. What else could you do at twenty-one —or twenty-seven, or thirty-five— when a man answered your devotion with silence and called it promise?But something in you ripened. Something in you finally refused to

Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33844104.post-43131104197778690532025-11-15T23:56:00.019+02:002026-03-01T03:37:11.360+02:00

There are adaptations, and then there are exhumations.Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein doesn’t just retell the myth; it digs it up by the fingernails. It gives the story what Mary Shelley never quite dared to: a pulse.And Jacob Elordi is a revelation. I cannot picture anyone else carrying the heavy, rotting weight of the Creature now. He moves like a man newly born into chronic pain. You can see

Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33844104.post-78117156250295656442025-10-26T12:51:00.028+03:002026-03-04T02:54:24.024+02:00

The Necrosis of MythYellowjackets began as a successful infection. In 2021, it was an incubation period: girls in the brush carving a mythology out of starvation. The symbols weren’t clues; they were malignant growths. The screeching in the timber was a terminal diagnosis from a deity that didn't speak English. The horror was mythic. You didn’t ask for a spreadsheet of causes because the

Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33844104.post-89021453670678781602025-10-25T08:19:00.006+03:002026-04-06T23:02:44.392+02:00

People ask where my current novel in progress came from. I never have a clean map to give them.Stories don’t arrive in straight lines. They hit like weather: a storm built from fragments, warnings, and the things I spent years swallowing instead of saying out loud. The book is made of echoes, grief, memory, love. But it’s also built out of the art that unsettled me so badly it changed the way I

Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33844104.post-3138067617490009942025-10-17T04:43:00.040+03:002026-04-06T23:30:06.536+02:00

Ignore the shouters. You can track a stain on the pavement; you can step around a loud infection. The men who spit in the streets are easy to debride from your life. The real necrosis starts in the quiet rooms with the ones who call you "darling" or "sweetheart" while performing a slow, surgical extraction of your self-worth. They smile for the camera, a hand at the small of your back, branding

Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33844104.post-72944716331490922162025-10-15T11:25:00.019+03:002026-03-02T06:42:54.872+02:00

The Audit of a False Narrative: AtonementRain on glass. Typewriter keys like shrapnel.I keep going back to Atonement—the film, specifically. Not for the romance; that is just the bait. I go back for the cruelty hiding underneath the aesthetic. It is a clinical study in how a story, once told wrong, can ruin a life with absolute efficiency. How a story told too late is just a ghost haunting the

Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33844104.post-59708557097254330192025-10-12T01:00:00.004+03:002026-03-04T02:57:42.790+02:00

(Originally written June 18, 2010. Revisited and rewritten in 2025.)Fifteen years of wreckage. The obsession didn't scar over. I expected a clean line, a surgical closure where the island used to be. Instead: a hollow discharge. A leak that refuses to stop.I built my weeks around that debris. Six years of theory and rewinds funneling into a failure of delivery. Smoke. Literal and emotional. A

Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33844104.post-52221764694021815602025-10-11T11:18:00.012+03:002026-05-04T04:08:52.977+03:00

It starts with a ping. A notification conjured by a calendar app, rather than the warmth of an actual memory. The congratulations only trickle in after the crowd has verified your news: a safe, secondary echo.The text reads, “We are so proud,” but the words slide right off. It’s a rehearsed note, pleasant on the tongue but entirely hollow in the centre. That is the exact texture of the fake. It

Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33844104.post-71294030844698477322025-10-10T05:05:00.025+03:002026-05-10T06:34:46.876+03:00

The Mask CollectorA short story by Marwa AyadPeople say monsters hide in forests. Or crawl from graves. They don’t. They live in plain sight: in mirrors and messages and promises weighted like lead. There is a specific silence that follows after you’ve apologised for a crime you didn’t commit.I never hid. I only learned the physical shape of your needs.The trick is simple. Listen first. Watch the

Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33844104.post-74913800869637798162025-10-02T02:43:00.043+03:002026-03-02T10:10:10.462+02:00

Some shows die in fire. Some in smoke. Right now, I’m watching both.Two obsessions—Yellowjackets and Severance—felt like they could rewire a brain. Season 1 of each was strange and defiant. I told friends: you have to watch this. Now, there is an ache in the stomach. Brilliance is fading. One scattered. One stalled. Two ways to kill tension. Both work.Yellowjackets: The ScatterSeason 1 was feral

Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33844104.post-4753057744635591382025-09-25T02:24:00.001+03:002025-09-25T02:24:57.726+03:00

Apologies for the downtime.The site was briefly down—blame it on settings I was adjusting, or maybe something I unknowingly switched off. Or maybe… a ghost in the machine. Either way, it’s back.Novel in progress. Loading… stay tuned. (Some things are better hidden.) System Downtime | Marwa Ayad

Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33844104.post-31061748763464078932025-08-20T08:50:00.022+03:002026-05-07T07:06:42.716+03:00

The world keeps turning on its axis, but this room has gone perfectly still. The afternoon settles with a domestic warmth.He is upstairs. I can hear the familiar shift of paper. He marks the passages in a book that will break my heart before I even read them. Beside me, the mug is cooling against the wood. The steam has vanished, leaving only the dark, still surface. A breeze carrying a trace of

Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33844104.post-17421639880643413102025-08-17T06:51:00.006+03:002026-03-02T09:45:45.612+02:00

I don’t write horror because I like being scared. I write it because I already know what fear feels like. I am done looking away.Speculative fiction and horror are the only genres honest enough to tell the truth. Strip the jump scares. Strip the dystopian gloss. What is left is a simple audit: what you fear reveals exactly what you are desperate to protect. I am not inventing monsters. I am

Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33844104.post-23801152765552105432025-08-15T08:44:00.011+03:002026-05-10T06:37:19.970+03:00

There are men who will carry the weight of your exit like a permanent distortion in their spines.It isn’t your face they’ll miss. He’s going to be haunted by the physics of the house. He’ll miss the way the molecules in a room used to behave when you were in them; the heavy, sudden drop in pressure that made the furniture feel like it finally belonged to the floor. He will remember your voice,

Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33844104.post-68907489470478173592013-10-31T16:56:00.003+02:002026-03-17T06:27:48.394+02:00

You read my words.Observing.Silent.Wondering.Transcending the story of us.I dream of you,still.Breathless.Aching.After all these years,until the music stops.The longing for younever does.What if tomorrow is today,and all that we are,we are not?I have lost faith in many things,yet I am certain of this:I am yoursuntil the end of timeand beyond.Even if you do not know ityet.If I make no sense,pay me

Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33844104.post-79784388413532814402013-10-24T02:53:00.004+02:002025-10-03T00:51:23.792+03:00

In a world that is mostly filled with extroverts, introverts stand out and find it often hard to fit in or blend. Statistics say that introverts are about 25-30% of the population; so yes, we are a minority. Since I blogged about being an empath (by the way, intuitive empathy is quite rare at about 3% of the population and is one type of empathy), the response has been overwhelming. First,

Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33844104.post-7198353313949821302012-05-26T19:53:00.006+02:002025-10-02T00:35:17.335+03:00

I promised a friend I’d write about intimidated people: the ones who shrink or bristle when you walk into a room; so here goes.For the last few months, I’ve had to deal with a few of them. I’m not new to it, but these cases were different. Overly intimidated, almost allergic to my presence. And strangely, it was just me — not anyone else in the group. At first I thought, “Weird.” But then again,

Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33844104.post-57934054242452892792012-04-25T17:56:00.003+02:002025-10-10T02:58:59.569+03:00

باستغرب على اللي يطول دقنه عشان حرام يحلقها لكن اخلاقه مش مهم تكن مهذبة على اللي عامل فيها شيخ يوعظ الناس بالحلال و الحرام لكن لا يستحرم إنه يشوف مواقع إباحية أو يعاكس بنات أونلاين و هو متجوز على اللي بيطالب بالحق و العدل و ينصح الناس بالمعاملة الحسنة لكن عادي إنه يظلم مراته و أولاده CVعلي اللي يحلف إنه مبيكدبش و إنه هو الصدق ذاته لكن مش مشكلة لو بيكدب عشان ال تكون متزوقة أو يكدب في حاجات

Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBath, Bath and North East Somerset, UK51.375801 -2.359903951.3361545 -2.4388679 51.415447500000006 -2.2809399tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33844104.post-31991345425186576242012-02-22T01:20:00.012+02:002026-03-17T06:57:50.527+02:00

يا باغي الظلمما لا يعرفه الكثيرين أني أكتبُ باللغة العربية أحيانًا... غالبًا خواطر أو أشعار.ربما تجعلك الغربة تشتاق أكثر إلى لغتك الأصلية.كتبتُ هذه القصيدة (لو اعتبرتموها كذلك) منذ فترة طويلة، وتذكّرتها...لمن ظَلَم وافترى في يومٍ من الأيام.يا باغي الظلم، ألا تعرف الله؟ألا يعرف صدرك خشيةَ الله؟أتَبكي الرحيل، وتنوّح كالنساء؟ألم تفكّر يومًا في عقاب الله؟ألا تعرف عقابَ الظالم والسارق؟يا مَن سرقتَ

Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33844104.post-37557720209695080402012-02-16T21:12:00.014+02:002026-02-08T03:52:37.030+02:00

Have you ever been told you’re too sensitive? Do crowds overwhelm you? Do you prefer a quiet night in to a noisy room of strangers? Do you need long stretches of solitude just to feel like yourself again?Do you feel compelled to help someone in pain... even when it costs you? Known as the peacemaker, the one who hates conflict? Do you see through people’s motives and intentions so clearly that

Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33844104.post-52075329127047892242011-12-31T03:54:00.022+02:002025-10-05T08:55:39.413+03:00

Dear 2011:You've baffled me; you've impressed me; you've given me hope, and sometimes utter despair and hopelessness. You were certainly different, unexpected in many ways; and for that, you will be remembered for a very long time.Globally speaking, there were many natural disasters. I remind you again of the earthquakes in New Zealand, Turkey and Japan; the earthquake in Japan was one of the

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com