The alphabet that forgot how to end

 

Experimental Short Story Series #22
Title: "The Alphabet That Forgot How to End"
By Faraz Parvez (Pen name of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal, former faculty member, Umm Al Qura University, Makkah, KSA)

Introduction: When Language Begins to Fracture

What happens when a story forgets how to finish its own sentences? When the shapes of words twist in on themselves, letters vanish like breath in winter, and the mind of the narrator cannot hold on to closure? Welcome to experimental fiction, where form is not just a vehicle of story—but the story itself.

Today’s entry in our 60-part experimental short story series explores an extraordinary narrative breakdown—a typographical twilight zone—where perception itself becomes unreliable. This is a story where language becomes liquid and reality, blurred.

Short Story: The Alphabet That Forgot How to End

My name is Alder. I used to design alphabets.

I lived in a world where every serif mattered, where the curl of a letter's tail could sway the meaning of a headline or whisper secrets in the margins of a poster. Language was a body, and I — I dressed it in precision.

Then one morning, I noticed that the “g” at the end of “feeling” had disappeared from my sketchpad. Just gone. No smudge, no error. The ink obeyed every line—except for the last letter. I wrote it again: feelin.

It wasn’t a typo. I could hear myself say it—feelin—like someone dropped off mid-conversation.

By afternoon, “memory” became “memor.”
“Nothing” became “nothin.”
“End”—well, it had no

My doctor blamed fatigue. Perhaps stress. “The brain is a trickster,” he said. I smiled at that. “Trickste,” I wrote in my journal.

A week later, it wasn’t just words. It was entire thoughts. I’d begin a sentence—I remember the summer Dad taught me to—and then my mind would walk away, mid-sentence, as if the ending had turned to vapor.

People began to notice. My emails read like Morse code from a sunken ship. My sentences, skeletal. My calls, stuttered symphonies. Even my dreams forgot how to

Desperate, I redesigned the alphabet. Added endings to each letter. Gave “r” a tail that curled into a loop. Let “s” finish in a high arc like a comet. I thought if I made the letters more complete, the words would feel more
But they didn't.

I stopped designing. Stopped typing. I began to speak in drawings, trying to communicate through shapes and spirals. When even that failed, I fell silent.

Now I sit here in a room full of blank books. Pages white as bone.

And I begin again:

My name is Alde

Reflection: Language in Disintegration

This story plays with the fear and poetry of loss—of words, of cognition, of control. It is an ode to dyslexia, aphasia, anxiety, and creative burnout—all wrapped in a typographer’s quiet breakdown. In doing so, it breaks convention and builds its own.

In experimental fiction, disobedience is a virtue. Fragmentation is not a flaw—it is a deliberate brushstroke in the art of storytelling. “The Alphabet That Forgot How to End” uses unfinished sentences to place the reader in the mind of a narrator whose world is slowly dissolving into silence.

Closing: A Journey Through Experimental Realms

This is the 22nd installment in our grand 60-story experimental series. Every day, we explore narratives that challenge the boundaries of the conventional. These stories will eventually form part of an eBook and printed collection, celebrating literary innovation.

Join us again tomorrow for Experimental Short Story #23—a tale that may bend time, fracture narration, or turn punctuation into plot. You never know what form storytelling will take next.

Bookmark our blog: farazparvez1.blogspot.com


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