The rain started before dawn and never bothered to stop. It just hangs there on the window like the sky forgot what it was supposed to do next. I sit at the table with my coffee going cold, watching the drops slide down the glass, each one taking its own crooked path. Funny how water never falls straight, no matter how much gravity insists.
Most mornings begin like this now. Quiet. Heavy. Waiting. Waiting for her to wake up. Waiting to see which day it will be.
I never thought this would be my life. Not like this. Not at my age, when the body already starts making its own complaints. Not when the hands ache before the work even begins.
My aunt sleeps in the next room. Eighty-seven years old, bones like dry sticks, mind like a house with the lights left on in only one room. The doctor called it dementia, like the word itself could explain what it feels like to watch someone disappear a little more every week.
I am her sole caregiver now. Not because I wanted to be. Because there wasn’t anyone else left who would.
People say things like, “You’re a good person for doing this.” They don’t see the kitchen at midnight. They don’t see the laundry piled higher than the sink. They don’t see the way your back locks up after lifting a grown woman who can’t remember how to stand.
They don’t see the days you forget to eat because you’re too busy making sure someone else does.
This morning she wakes up calling for her sister. My mother. Dead ten years now.
“Alice?” she says from the bedroom. Her voice small, frightened, like a child lost in a grocery store.
I close my eyes before I answer. Just one second. Just enough to get my face right.
“I’m here,” I tell her.
When I walk in, she looks at me like she’s trying to place a stranger she met once a long time ago. Sometimes she knows me. Sometimes she doesn’t. Today she studies my face like she’s searching through old photographs in her head.
“You look tired, Alice,” she says.
For a moment, I almost correct her. Almost tell her who I am.
But I don’t.
Because on the days she thinks I’m her sister, she feels safe. And lately, safe is the only thing I can give her.
Caregiving sounds like a soft word. Like something warm. Like soup and blankets and patience.
Nobody tells you about the lifting. The way her weight goes dead in your arms when she forgets how to move her legs. Nobody tells you about cleaning things you never imagined you’d have to clean. Nobody tells you how cooking becomes less about food and more about survival.
Eggs. Toast. Soup again because it’s easy to swallow.
You start measuring time in meals and pills and naps.
And somewhere in the middle of all that, your own body starts to give up ground.
My knees hurt when I stand. My hands shake when I hold the kettle too long. Some nights I lie down and my heart beats so hard I wonder if it’s trying to get out.
I went to the doctor once. He said stress. Said I needed rest.
I laughed at him.
Rest from what? From being the only one left?
The hardest days aren’t the ones where she forgets everything.
It’s the days she remembers just enough to know something is wrong.
She looks at me with those cloudy eyes and says, “I’m not right, am I?”
And I tell her no. I tell her she’s fine. I lie because the truth would break her.
Other days she calls me Mother.
“Don’t leave me,” she says, holding my sleeve like I’m the last thing in the world that makes sense.
And I sit there beside her bed, rubbing her hand, feeling the bones under the skin, thinking about how this is all first-hand, no stories, no training, no book that tells you how to do this without losing pieces of yourself.
You learn as you go. You break as you go. You keep going anyway.
Sometimes I sit by the window after she falls asleep, like I am now, watching the rain crawl down the glass.
I try to remember what my life felt like before this.
Before the pills. Before the lifting. Before the nights she wakes up screaming because she thinks the house belongs to someone else.
I try to remember who I was when my only responsibility was my own breathing.
It feels like a different person lived that life.
A stranger.
Funny thing about aging. You don’t notice it all at once.
It happens in pieces. In small trades.
You trade your time. Then your strength. Then your sleep. Then your health.
And one day you look in the mirror and realize you’re not just taking care of someone who’s disappearing.
You’re disappearing too.
She calls from the bedroom again.
“Mother?”
My hands hurt when I push myself up from the table.
“I’m coming,” I say.
And I go.
Because that’s what you do when you’re the only one left.
First day on the dock, they stuck me with the two oldest guys in the place.
Nobody told me their ages, but you could tell by the way they moved. Not slow exactly. Just careful, like every joint had a memory attached to it.
Socrates ran the pallet jack like it owed him money. Issac stacked crates with the kind of precision you don’t learn in training videos. Nobody talked unless they had to.
I figured I should say something. Probational workers are supposed to be friendly. Show initiative. All that crap.
We were unloading a truck full of boxed fittings, metal edges biting through cheap gloves, the smell of oil and dust hanging in the air.
I cleared my throat.
“So… uh… my name’s Greg. Gregory Allen Parker.”
Neither of them looked up.
Socrates slid a pallet into place and muttered, “That so.”
I kept going anyway.
“Allen’s my middle name. Named after my grandfather.”
Issac grunted. Could’ve meant anything.
We worked another minute in silence. Forklift whining somewhere behind us. A chain clanked against the dock wall.
I tried again.
“What about you guys? You got middle names?”
That got a reaction.
Socrates stopped pushing the jack and turned his head just enough to look at me over his shoulder. Not angry. Worse. Tired.
“You asking for conversation,” he said, “or you taking a census?”
“Just talking,” I said. “Trying to get to know people.”
He stared at me another second like he was deciding whether I was worth the effort.
Then he sighed.
“Socrates Eugene Carter.”
I blinked.
“Socrates? Like… the philosopher?”
He went back to moving the pallet.
“My mama liked books,” he said. “Didn’t mean I got to read ’em.”
Issac snorted.
I looked at him.
“And you?”
He kept stacking, slow and steady.
“Issac Thomas Reed.”
“Thomas got a meaning?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“Means my daddy had a brother named Thomas who owed him twenty dollars.”
I laughed before I could stop myself.
Neither of them did.
We worked another few minutes. My arms already burning, sweat running down my back, shirt sticking to me like I’d worn it three days straight.
I didn’t know why, but the silence felt heavier now, like I’d stepped into something I didn’t understand.
Still… I opened my mouth again.
“So what about middle names… you think they matter?”
That did it.
Socrates stopped the pallet jack and leaned on the handle, looking straight at me for the first time.
Up close, his face looked like old leather left in the sun too long.
“You on probation, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Then listen close, Greg Allen.”
He tapped the crate with one knuckle.
“Out here, nobody’s counting middle names. Nobody’s counting stories. Nobody’s counting what you were supposed to be.”
Issac set down the box he was holding and wiped his hands on his pants.
“What matters,” he said, “is what they call you when the work’s done.”
I frowned.
“What do they call you?”
Issac gave a crooked half-smile.
“Still here.”
Socrates nodded once.
“That’s the only name that means anything.”
They went back to work.
I stood there a second, then grabbed the next crate and started stacking.
Didn’t feel like talking anymore. Out here, nobody’s counting.
Daily writing prompt
What is your middle name? Does it carry any special meaning/significance?
The buzzing streetlight outside my window had been flickering for weeks. Nobody fixed it. Nobody ever did. The moths kept circling the glass like the light meant something, hitting it over and over until they dropped out of the air.
Down the block a dog barked, then another. Someone shouted for them to shut up, and the sound rolled through the neighborhood before dying off the way it always did. One by one the lights in the houses went dark, people turning in for the night, closing their doors on whatever they didn’t want to deal with until morning.
Maybe somewhere that meant peace.
It never did here.
I pressed my palms against the brick beneath the window and pushed, the chair fighting me the way it always did before finally giving in. Took a second to get my balance right, another to catch my breath. The world looks different when you have to work this hard just to see it.
I locked the brakes and leaned forward.
Only then could I look down.
You notice things at night when you don’t have anywhere else to go. When the only traveling you do is from the bed to the window and back again. After a while it stops feeling like being stuck and starts feeling like routine. Not better. Just familiar.
More goes on in the dark than most people ever see.
A waitress behind the diner, coat thrown over her shoulders, smoking like the cold didn’t bother her. Three pats on the pocket, checking the tips before she went back inside. Light bill due, rent late, same story different night.
Inside, a truck driver sat alone at the counter, staring at a candle stuck in the middle of a blueberry muffin like it was trying to tell him something. Forty-five years gone in a blink. Coffee in one hand, road waiting outside, another shift already breathing down his neck.
In the apartments across the street, people stood in their windows holding drinks they didn’t really want, looking out at a world they didn’t feel part of anymore. Lights on, lights off, shadows moving behind curtains. People doing the math in their heads, trying to figure out when things stopped feeling like a choice.
Somewhere a woman cried where nobody could hear her. Somewhere a man sat in the dark staring at a stack of bills like if he looked long enough the numbers might change.
Lives turn on small things. One bad night. One wrong turn. One decision you swear you won’t make again.
I know that better than most.
I was drunk. High. Angry in that hot, useless way that makes you think moving fast will fix something already broken. I had just walked in on my woman with another man. No hiding it. No shame. Just the truth sitting there under bad light like it belonged.
When I said something, she didn’t apologize. She explained. Told me if I’d been different she wouldn’t have needed anyone else. That was what I hated most about her. Not what she did. The way she never carried any of it herself.
So I carried it.
The family never saw me coming. A mother, a father, a kid in the backseat. I remember the sound more than anything else. Metal folding wrong. Glass breaking like it didn’t want to. After that everything got quiet in the kind of way that doesn’t ever really end.
You don’t get past something like that. You just get used to carrying it.
I leaned forward in the chair, careful not to shift too far, and looked down toward the corner. Took me a long time to learn how to sit still without tipping. From this angle I could see the sidewalk clear enough.
Trixie and Zoe were working their stretch of pavement again.
Trixie caught the movement first. She always did. She gave me that slow wave she’d been giving me for months, all practiced charm and tired grace. We both knew the rules. A smile, a chuckle, nothing more. She liked knowing someone was watching who wasn’t looking to buy.
She hadn’t always been out there. You could tell by the way she held herself, like she still expected better from the world even when the world stopped expecting anything from her. Once she told me she used to hate winter because it meant shoveling the driveway before the kids woke up for school. She laughed when she said it, like she wasn’t sure the memory belonged to her anymore.
Zoe stood a few feet behind her, lighting a cigarette with hands that never stopped moving. The flame pushed back the shadows long enough to show her face, then the dark took it again. Zoe didn’t talk much about where she came from. What little I knew came in pieces. Foster homes. Running away. Owing the wrong people money. The rest you could figure out without asking.
Out here nobody asks too many questions.
Not because they don’t care.
Because they already know enough.
Zoe looked up toward my window, the ember of her cigarette glowing bright for a second. Trixie followed her eyes and grinned when she saw me.
I lifted my hand from the armrest and motioned toward the building.
Nights get long when you’re alone with your own head. Sometimes it’s easier with other people in the room, even if nobody talks about why.
Trixie nudged Zoe and nodded up at the window. Zoe shrugged like she expected it, then both of them started toward the door without hurrying, like this was just another stop along the way.
It usually was.
I backed the chair away from the window and turned toward the table. The pizza box sat where I left it, heat still coming through the cardboard. Smelled better than it tasted. Always did.
I don’t invite them up because I feel sorry for them.
I invite them up because the night feels shorter when somebody else is in it.
The elevator buzzed a minute later, the old motor grinding its way up the shaft like it wasn’t sure it wanted to make the trip. I waited, listening to the building settle around me, the same sounds every night, the same routine, the same quiet.
The gate rattled open down the hall.
Slow footsteps.
Three short knocks.
Same as always.
I rolled forward and opened the door.
Trixie walked in first, dropping her purse on the couch like she owned the place. Zoe came in behind her, already looking around for the ashtray.
Nobody said anything for a minute.
I set the pizza on the table and opened the box. The smell filled the room, mixing with the smoke that never really left no matter how many times I opened the window.
Trixie grabbed a slice, blew on it, and laughed.
“Smells better than it tastes,” she said.
“Yeah,” I told her.
“It always does.”
We ate anyway.
Outside, the streetlight buzzed, the moths kept hitting the glass, and somewhere down the block a dog started barking again like nothing in the world had changed.
Up here, nobody asked about the past.
Down there, nobody asked about mine.
After a while you learn that’s about as close to peace as most people ever get.
Not one of those sleek machines with a touchscreen and a personality disorder. I’m talking about the old-school kind. Metal pot. Glass knob on top. Makes a sound like it’s arguing with the water.
You don’t rush a percolator. It sits there on the stove, bubbling away like an old man muttering about the state of the world.
Blip. Blip. Blip.
The smell of coffee fills the room, slow and steady, the way mornings used to work before everything needed an app and a firmware update.
Eventually someone pours a cup, takes a sip, and their shoulders drop about an inch.
Crisis postponed.
Not glamorous work.
But if I have to be something in the kitchen, I might as well be the reason people don’t start yelling at each other before 8 a.m.
What’s your favorite type of sandwich?
A Reuben.
Corned beef piled high, sauerkraut with attitude, Swiss cheese melting into the mess, and rye bread doing its best to hold the whole operation together.
It’s not a polite sandwich.
There’s no dignified way to eat a Reuben. By the third bite you’re leaning over the plate like a mechanic under a car, hoping gravity shows you a little mercy.
Sauerkraut falls out. Dressing drips. The rye is hanging on by sheer determination.
And let’s be clear about something.
A Reuben is not one of those fancy “variations.” No turkey Reuben. No vegan Reuben. No artisanal reinterpretation where someone replaces half the ingredients and calls it innovation.
That’s not creativity.
That’s blasphemy.
A real Reuben knows exactly what it is—messy, stubborn, and absolutely worth the trouble.
What do you think your last words will be?
I’d like to believe my last words will be something wise. Something profound. The kind of sentence people quote later while nodding thoughtfully.
But if my life so far is any indication, it’ll probably be something far less dignified.
Rain slid down the café window in thin silver lines.
Inside, the lights were low and patient. Bottles stood behind the bar like quiet sentries. A cup of coffee cooled beside an untouched plate, the room carrying the faint smell of roasted beans, wet coats, and something fried hours ago.
Klaire stood near the glass holding the long wooden board used for slicing bread and meat. The worn wood rested against her hip like it belonged there. Thin knife lines crossed its surface, years of quiet work pressed deep into the grain.
Outside, the streetlights flickered.
The intermittent buzz from their tired wiring drifted through the rain. Moths circled the glowing globe of the nearest lamp, occasionally striking it as if they simply didn’t care what happened next.
Someone’s dogs barked in the distance.
Homes went dark one by one. Somewhere out there people were settling into beds, finishing conversations, turning off televisions.
I suppose it is like that somewhere in some town in the world.
It just doesn’t describe mine.
“The city never sleeps.”
Klaire had heard that phrase all her life. She never knew who said it first, but she knew it was true.
More happens in the night than anyone ever admits.
Young love blooming in the back seat of a borrowed car. A waitress stepping outside for a cigarette, three pats and a wink away from paying her light bill. A delivery truck driver staring at a flickering candle stuck into a blueberry muffin while wondering how forty-five years managed to pass him by.
Klaire had seen them all.
Not by name.
By posture.
You learn things when you work nights.
You learn who counts coins before ordering.
You learn who sits too long over a single cup of coffee.
You learn the shape loneliness makes in a person’s shoulders before they ever say a word.
Klaire had seen a woman cry quietly over a plate of eggs once, the tears slipping into the yolk before the fork ever touched it.
A man in a pressed suit once sat where the window light fell hardest, staring into his coffee like it owed him answers his expensive apartment never gave him.
And there was the father who came in every Thursday night, always ten days late on the rent, pretending the slice of pie was for someone waiting at home.
The night carried all of them.
Smoke-filled bars. Back alleys. Neon signs humming over people searching for relief from something they couldn’t quite name.
But pain is patient.
It waits.
And the night always knows where to find it.
Klaire shifted the board in her hands. Tonight it felt heavier than usual, as if the wood had absorbed the quiet massof every story that had passed across the counter.
Her reflection watched her through the rain.
The glass turned her into two women.
One standing inside.
One trapped in the weather.
For a moment Klaire wondered which one was real.
Maybe the one in the glass was the version who had left this city years ago. The one who found a mate, moved somewhere warm, and forgot what neon light looked like through falling rain.
But life rarely follows the road we draw for it.
Klaire wiped the inside of the glass with her sleeve, though it made no difference. The rain outside didn’t care what she could see.
Somewhere down the street a siren wailed and faded into the dark.
Inside, the clock ticked.
Klaire stood there quietly, still holding the board meant for bread and meat, while the quiet mass of the city pressed against the glass.
The first lie history ever told about me was a quiet one. It wore an apron.
My granddaughter sat across from me, morning light slipping through lace curtains and flashing against her spoon. The flare caught my eyes the way an arc once did — sharp and merciless.
“During the war,” she said, careful as porcelain, “you stayed home, right? Took care of everyone?”
She meant no harm. She was repeating what she’d been handed.
Women kept things warm. Men kept things standing.
“They told it that way,” I said.
I folded my hands in my lap. Thick knuckles. Slightly twisted fingers. Skin ridged like cooled metal.
“These didn’t come from folding sheets.”
The kitchen stilled.
“I was a welder.”
She blinked.
“There weren’t women welders.”
“There weren’t supposed to be.”
I was nineteen when I walked through the gates before sunrise. The yard smelled of oil and iron. Machines coughed awake. Boots struck concrete. Men didn’t soften their voices.
“They didn’t want us,” I said. “They needed us.”
By ’43 nearly a third of the industrial workforce was women. Six million. The radio swelled with pride when it said it.
Pride didn’t make your pay equal. Pride didn’t quiet the laughter.
They hung posters of a smiling girl in a red bandana. Rosie.
We laughed at Rosie.
Rosie didn’t taste grit at the back of her throat. Rosie didn’t feel slag burn through cotton. Rosie didn’t know what arc light could do.
Lift your shield too soon and it felt like sand and fire poured into your eyes. I saw a man stagger blind for days after catching flash. The light didn’t care who you were.
My first week, I botched a weld.
The seam split under pressure. The foreman told me to grind it down. The others watched.
“Back to the kitchen,” someone said.
That night I scrubbed my hands until the skin thinned. I went back anyway.
The first clean weld I ran after that — I still hear it. A steady hiss. The bead smooth. When I struck it and it held, something inside me steadied too.
I must have looked like an enigmato them — apron girl holding a torch — something that didn’t fit the pattern they had memorized.
The burns came.
Slag slips without warning. You smell cotton scorch before you feel it.
You don’t stop mid-line.
My granddaughter traced the scar at my thumb.
“What’s this?”
“Spark in the glove.”
“More?”
I stood and lifted my blouse just enough to show the pale scar low on my stomach.
“Slag.”
Her breath caught.
“You kept working?”
“You don’t stop mid-line.”
Then the war ended.
Pamphlets appeared.
Thank you. Now step aside.
Your grandfather came back thinner. Quieter. The war lived behind his eyes.
I loved that man.
He gave me your father.
One evening he said gently, “You don’t need to go back. I’ve got it.”
He meant protection.
He wasn’t cruel. Just certain.
Enough, he said.
He never asked what I wanted.
The default had already been chosen for me, the way defaults always are — quiet, assumed, unquestioned.
Love and resentment can share a roof.
Months later he fought with a broken plow in the yard. I stepped forward.
“Let me.”
When the weld cooled, I struck it hard. It held.
He looked at me differently after that.
The repair shop was his idea.
“You’ve got the hands,” he said. “We’ve got the shed.”
So we built it.
I went back to the yard — not for a shift, but for people.
Mary Lou. Paid less because she was Black and that was “just how it worked.”
Elena. Steady hands.
Rose. Told she’d never belong anywhere long.
We weren’t interested in where you came from.
We were interested in whether your seam held.
Customers drove away.
Suppliers misplaced orders.
A banker suggested we reconsider our “arrangement.”
We nearly lost the land that first winter.
Then one night someone answered us with fire.
Not welding fire.
Wild fire.
By the time we reached the shed, the roof was folding inward. Sparks climbed into the dark like bitter stars.
Two of ours didn’t make it out.
I can still hear the screams.
The words leave me slower now.
Your grandmother’s teacup rattled against the saucer before I realized my hands were shaking. My cheeks warmed, then dampened. My face flushed the way it had in that heat so many years ago.
I don’t cry easily.
But some memories refuse to cool.
We couldn’t get to them.
The heat was wrong — not the steady, obedient heat of a torch. This was wild. It shoved us back when we tried to move forward.
I had to breathe before I could go on.
I do not describe that night.
Later, quietly, it was verifiedwhat most of us already knew.
It wasn’t an accident.
For years afterward, I could not strike a match without seeing that roof fall.
We rebuilt.
Years of borrowed barns. Cold mornings. Starting over with tools that weren’t ours.
We rebuilt because quitting had already been measured.
And we knew its cost.
Mary Lou bought her first house with money from her own hands.
Elena sent her brother to school.
We fed our families.
We kept building.
My granddaughter sat very still.
“It almost ended?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you quit?”
“Because I’d already learned what quitting costs.”
The clock ticked.
“Grandma… Dad wants me to come into the business,” she said. “He says it’s steady.”
She swallowed.
“But I want to be an engineer.”
“Structural,” she added. “Bridges. Big things.”
I studied her hands. Soft still. Steady.
“I don’t want to abandon what you built,” she said. “But I don’t want to shrink.”
“You won’t shrink.”
“I’ll be the only woman in half my classes.”
“Yes.”
“We built that shop because the world told us we were temporary,” I said. “But the point was never the shop.”
She looked up.
“The point was that we could build.”
The kettle began to whisper.
“If you want to design bridges, design them,” I said. “You won’t be leaving the fire. You’ll be shaping it differently.”
“And the business?”
“If it’s strong, it will stand.”
“What if I fail?”
“You might.”
“And if I hate it?”
“Then you come back and weld.”
She laughed softly.
I leaned forward.
“You don’t owe us repetition,” I said. “You owe us courage.”
The kettle shrieked. I turned off the flame.
The blue vanished, but the burner glowed faint red beneath the grate.
Heat lingering after fire.
She reached for my hand.
Firm. Steady.
“I won’t be small,” she said.
This time, when the light caught her spoon, she didn’t flinch.
The kind where you wake up naturally, refreshed, haloed in soft golden light like a saint in a Renaissance painting.
And the kind where you are assaulted by a damp, sandpaper tongue wielded by a ten-pound tyrant with whiskers.
It is 06:38 AM.
I know this because the digital clock on my nightstand glows with a judgmental neon precision that feels personal. 06:38. Not 06:39. Not “around 6:30.” Exactly 06:38. The universe wants me to understand that this is deliberate.
I am asleep. I am dreaming about something dignified. Possibly a beach. Possibly a Nobel Prize. It’s unclear. What is clear is the sudden sensation of moisture being aggressively applied to my left eyelid.
I flinch.
The moisture returns.
Longer this time.
Warmer.
I attempt to burrow into my pillow like a reasonable adult. The pillow is cool and forgiving. The pillow has never betrayed me. The pillow does not have a tongue.
The tongue returns.
“Guppy,” I mutter, eyes still closed, clinging to the last shreds of REM like a man clinging to a cliff edge. “This is not a democracy.”
Guppy does not believe in democracy.
She believes in results.
Her small striped body shifts. I feel paws press into my chest. She spreads her stance like she’s bracing against hurricane winds and leans in again. Direct contact. Full facial coverage. She is committed to excellence.
I try reasoning. “It’s Saturday.”
More licking.
“I pay the mortgage.”
A firmer lick.
“I have opposable thumbs.”
She pauses. Considers this. Then resumes, apparently unimpressed by evolutionary advantages.
The lamp beside the bed glows warmly, betraying me with its cozy civility. The open paperback on my chest lies face-down, mid-sentence, like it too gave up during the night. The skylight above lets in beams of early light that slice through floating dust particles, turning this domestic assault into something cinematic.
Somewhere in the back of my mind I recognize the beauty of the scene. Golden light. Fine dust in the air. The quiet hum of morning.
And my face being exfoliated against my will.
I crack one eye open.
Guppy freezes.
We lock eyes.
Her expression is serene. Peaceful. Almost spiritual.
Her tongue is still extended.
“Why,” I whisper.
She blinks slowly. Which, in cat culture, means affection.
In human culture, it means you are being owned.
The clock continues its silent countdown. 06:38 becomes 06:39. Time advances. I do not.
Guppy shifts tactics. Instead of licking, she presses her forehead into mine. A headbutt. Soft. Intentional.
It is the feline equivalent of, Get up, old man. The world awaits.
Or perhaps more accurately: The food bowl is tragically empty and this is your fault.
I sigh the sigh of a man who has lost but accepts the terms of surrender. I sit up slowly.
Guppy remains balanced on my chest as if we rehearsed this choreography.
“You win,” I say.
She purrs.
The sound is low and smug.
As I swing my legs over the side of the bed, she hops down with the efficiency of someone who has already achieved her objective. The mission was never affection. The affection was merely a tactic.
I shuffle toward the kitchen.
Behind me, Guppy saunters.
Victorious.
06:40 AM.
And somewhere in the quiet glow of morning, I understand a simple truth:
Coffee stains map the surface like old territories. Ink smudges bloom where my wrist drags across unfinished thoughts. Notebooks lie open, pages filled with fragments of something — dialogue without context, a line about hunger that may or may not belong in Famished, a sentence about a shotgun in winter light that may or may not survive Where the Blackbird Sings.
There’s artwork half completed, graphite fading where I lost interest or nerve. A face without eyes. A sky without depth. I move from page to page like I’m checking on patients I never fully treated.
And somewhere in this mess is my lead holder.
I had it this morning.
Now it’s gone.
That shouldn’t matter. It’s just a tool. But losing it feels like the desk pushing back. Like the clutter finally saying, You don’t get to move forward until you sort us out.
Every now and then, I get this feeling that I’m not quite good enough to finish what I start. That maybe I need to learn something new first — master another technique, refine another approach — before I’m allowed to complete the thing in front of me.
It sounds responsible. It sounds disciplined. It sounds like growth.
But there’s another voice in the room, quieter and far less dramatic.
It says: You’re good enough. Finish it.
Then I hear my editor’s voice in the distance: Where are my damn words?
I’ve been feeding the visual side hard this quarter. Building images. Refining style. Layering light and shadow until they hum. That work matters. It sharpens the eye. It strengthens the hand. Images speak in ways words never will.
But words do something images can’t.
They press. They interrogate. They refuse to let me hide behind composition.
Two different languages. Same hunger.
If I don’t clear this space — physically, mentally — the long work suffers. The slow-burn pieces require air. They require quiet. They require a desk that isn’t arguing with me.
Maybe the desk isn’t cluttered because I lack skill.
Maybe it’s cluttered because I hesitate at the moment something demands commitment. Because finishing means standing behind it. Because completion invites judgment in a way drafts never do.
So, this weekend, I’m not making a grand declaration. I’m not announcing a return. I’m just clearing surface space. Wiping the coffee rings. Closing the notebooks that aren’t ready.
Picking one piece and staying with it long enough to see it through.
And finding the damn lead holder.
Sometimes progress isn’t forward motion.
Sometimes it’s choosing to believe you’re already capable — and finishing what’s been waiting on your desk all along.
Stories in Monochrome Episode: The Quiet Between Storms
The rain didn’t knock. It pressed itself against the window like it had a right to be there.
She sat in the chair beside the glass, lace sleeves drinking in what little light the afternoon had left. The room was narrow, wood-paneled, holding the smell of old dust and colder days. Outside, the sky had folded in on itself—low, heavy, undecided. Inside, she folded her hands the same way.
There are people who perform their sadness.
She was not one of them.
Her grief was private, disciplined. Almost forensic. She examined it the way some people study fingerprints—turning it under the light, tracing its ridges, asking where it began and who it belonged to. She had once believed that love lived in the body like a pulse. Now she knew better. Love lives in the core. It survives there long after pride burns off and explanations dry up.
The rain sketched restless patterns on the glass. If you watched long enough, it looked like language. A secret code only the sky understood.
She wondered when she had become fluent in silence.
There had been a time—before the hospital corridors, before the unanswered calls—when she believed everything could be repaired with honesty. Say the right words. Hold the right hand. Pull the right emotional cord and the machinery of two hearts would start again.
But some wires don’t reconnect.
Some silences aren’t pauses. They are verdicts.
She shifted in the chair, lace tightening at her elbows. The skin at her wrist was pale where a bracelet used to sit. The absence felt louder than the metal ever had. Objects leave ghosts. So do people.
She wasn’t angry. That would have been easier.
Anger has movement. It gives you something to throw.
This was something else.
This was the long, slow realization that love can end without drama. No slammed doors. No shattered glass. Just a gradual thinning. A quieting. Two people drifting like separate drops of rain, sliding down the same pane, never quite touching again.
Her reflection hovered faintly in the window—half face, half shadow. She studied it the way she once studied him, searching for clues. Was there something she missed? A tremor in his voice? A look that lingered too long somewhere else? Or had the unraveling been mutual—two hands loosening their grip at the same time?
Outside, a car passed. Its tires hissed across wet pavement. The sound felt like a reminder: the world continues. Even when you want it to stall. Even when you sit perfectly still.
She closed her eyes.
There, beneath the ache, beneath the analysis and the restraint, something steady remained. Not hope exactly. Not bitterness either.
Just awareness.
She could survive this.
The rain softened. The sky lightened by a shade no one would notice unless they were watching carefully. She had become good at watching carefully.
Careful is what heartbreak teaches you.
She stood at last and placed her palm against the cool glass. For a moment, the chill startled her. Then it steadied her.
Not everything that breaks you is meant to destroy you.
Some things strip you back to your coreso you can see what still beats.
Moist air clung to her skin like a second pulse. The scent of wet bark and crushed fern pressed deep into her lungs. Every step stirred the soft rot of leaves beneath her feet—cool, decomposing, fragrant with endings that fed beginnings. Moss brushed her calves. A thin vine trailed behind her like an unfinished thought.
She was not naked.
She was clothed in what the forest allowed her to keep.
Ivy braided across her ribs. Pale blossoms trembled at her collarbone. Fine thorns traced her thighs like handwriting no one else could read. They tugged when she moved, gentle but present—reminding her that nothing beautiful grows without defense.
Fireflies drifted around her in erratic patterns, their glow warm against the heavy dark. One landed on her shoulder. She felt the faint vibration of its wings before it lifted away. Even the smallest things left impressions.
He had always been observant.
Not casually attentive. Not the sort who admired surface and moved on. He cataloged the world. He noticed breath patterns. The tension in a jaw before a lie. The way her vines tightened when she was unsettled. When he looked at her, she felt studied—not consumed, not worshiped—but understood in layers she hadn’t offered willingly.
That both steadied and frightened her.
The first time he touched her wrist, he had paused at the vine wrapped there.
“It tightens when you’re anxious,” he’d said.
She had laughed too quickly.
Now the forest felt thicker. The air colder against the hollow beneath her throat. Somewhere behind her, a branch shifted. Not broken—just acknowledged. The night insects hummed in low, persistent rhythm, like a pulse beneath the earth.
She felt him before she saw him.
A disturbance in the air. A subtle shift in pressure. Her body reacted first—the vines along her stomach drawing taut, blossoms trembling faintly.
He stepped into the clearing.
The last of the evening light caught along his jaw and dissolved. His face carried that familiar, serious expression—measured, grounded, almost judicial. He was a man who believed emotion should be examined before expressed. He carried silence like a disciplined habit.
She studied him in return.
He was finite. Warm where she was seasonal. His breath fogged faintly in the cooling air. She could hear it—steady, controlled. She could smell the iron edge of his skin, the faint earth he had disturbed walking toward her.
He approached her with a kind of forensic patience, as though reconstructing a fragile scene. Love, to him, was not a declaration but a collection of evidence. The way her shoulders lowered when he stood near. The way her pulse slowed when he didn’t rush. The way her vines relaxed when he chose not to claim.
She stopped a few feet from him.
Her heart beat deep and slow—sap and blood moving beneath skin threaded with green. The blossoms at her collarbone quivered.
She wanted to tell him how much she loved him, but….
The word felt insufficient. Too neat. Too small for what rooted inside her.
Love, for her, was not sentiment. It was infiltration. It was growth that cracked stone and shifted foundations. It was surrender to something that did not ask permission. If she spoke it aloud, she feared it would manifest physically—vines erupting from her mouth, binding him in a promise he might one day resent.
She had been admired before.
Desired. Approached like something rare and luminous.
But when her need for permanence revealed itself—when she grew toward them instead of decorating their lives—they recoiled. Men liked her wildness as long as it did not demand return.
He stepped closer anyway.
“You’re trembling,” he said quietly.
The sound of his voice moved through her like wind through tall grass. She felt it in her sternum.
“I’m trying not to,” she answered.
He reached for her wrist.
The vine tightened instinctively. A thorn grazed his thumb. She saw the skin split before he reacted. A bead of blood surfaced, dark against his warmth.
The metallic scent reached her first.
Her body stilled.
He inhaled sharply—but he did not withdraw.
His breathing steadied. His gaze stayed fixed on hers—not accusing, not startled. Present.
The forest shifted around them. A low wind moved through the canopy, carrying pine and damp earth. Fireflies drifted closer, their glow brighter, warmer.
Perhaps love was not the thing that trapped.
Perhaps it was the thing that stayed after the thorn.
She let her hand turn in his.
Where his blood touched her skin, something ancient recognized something equal. The vine at her wrist loosened—not in surrender, but in consent.
She did not speak the words.
Instead, a single white flower opened over his heart—slowly, deliberately—petals unfurling in the rhythm of his pulse.
The forest exhaled.
And this time, it did not take him back.
Author’s Note
This piece was inspired by the steady rhythm of community prompts that continue to push the work deeper than comfort allows.
Thank you to Fandango for both FOWC and FSS #235, for the nudge toward language that lingers longer than it should.
Gratitude as well to RDP and theWord of the Day, whose simple offerings often become the smallest sparks that ignite something larger and far more rooted than expected.
Sometimes a single word is all it takes to draw blood from a thorn.
It was late—late enough that the street outside my apartment had given up pretending to be alive. The only sound was the dull hum of traffic somewhere far off, like a river that had forgotten its name. I was working at the old wooden table, the one scarred with knife marks and cigarette burns from a life I never lived but inherited anyway.
I knocked the bottle over without ceremony.
Blue ink bled across the paper I had been meaning to use for something important. A letter. A resignation. A confession. I can’t remember which now. The liquid pooled, then gathered itself like it had somewhere better to be. It rolled, curved, stretched into streets and shadows. I should have grabbed a rag. Instead, I watched.
The river formed first.
It cut across the page in a confident sweep, widening near the center as if it had known for centuries where it belonged. Bridges rose from the dark—arched and patient. Trees leaned in with the quiet posture of witnesses. And then the dome appeared, pale and stubborn against the gold of an imagined sunset.
Rome.
I’ve never been.
But there it was, blooming out of my clumsiness. The ink bottle lay on its side like a drunk god, label peeling, mouth still weeping blue. What spilled was not waste. It was architecture. It was history I hadn’t earned.
I leaned back and let the chair creak. On the edge of the table sat a plane ticket I’d bought three weeks ago in a fit of defiance. One-way. No return. No explanation to anyone. I told myself it was courage.
Truth is, I didn’t know if I’d use it.
The city on the page shimmered in the lamplight. Boats drifted in the inked river. Tiny wakes cut through the dark blue like whispered promises. I could almost hear the murmur of evening voices, the slow saunter of footsteps along stone streets warmed by centuries of confession.
That’s the thing about cities—you don’t walk through them. You let them walk through you.
I reached out and touched the edge of the river. My finger came back stained. It looked like a bruise.
Maybe that’s what travel really is. Not escape. Not reinvention. Just pressing your wound against another landscape and seeing which one bleeds more honestly.
I stared at the ticket again. Departure in two days. Non-refundable. I had told myself Rome would fix something. That distance was a solvent. That if I stood beneath that dome and let the weight of marble and memory press down on me, whatever inside me felt cracked would finally align.
But the city was already here.
It had spilled itself onto my table without permission. It had refused to wait for customs or currency exchange. It existed whether I boarded the plane or not.
Outside, a car passed. The hum faded.
I imagined myself there—hands in pockets, moving with a deliberate saunter along the Tiber, not rushing, not chasing absolution. Just walking. Letting the stones judge me if they must.
The ink was drying now. The river settling. The dome fixed in place.
Maybe I don’t need to go to Rome.
Or maybe Rome has already come to collect.
I picked up the bottle and set it upright. The label read simply: Blue.
But nothing about this felt simple.
I left the spill untouched. Some things aren’t accidents. Some things are invitations.
The ticketremained on the table, catching the lamplight.
The light around her isn’t falling—it’s hovering. A pale, almost surgical glow that refuses to cast a proper shadow. It blurs the edges of her shoulders, dissolves the line between skin and air. You can’t tell where she ends and the morning begins. Maybe that’s the point.
Her eyes are the only sharp thing in the room.
Blue—not the loud kind that demands attention—but the washed, winter kind. The blue of ice beneath snow. The blue of something preserved. They don’t accuse. They don’t invite. They hold.
There’s a stillness to her mouth, slightly parted as if she almost said something and then decided against it. That’s where the story lives. In restraint. In the words swallowed before they could turn to smoke.
Her hair moves like it remembers wind, even if there isn’t any. Loose strands hover near her cheek, soft as unfinished thoughts. Nothing in this frame feels aggressive. Nothing reaches. Nothing shouts.
But don’t confuse quiet with fragile.
The softness is deliberate. The absence of hard contrast feels like armor—camouflage through gentleness. The world sharpens its knives; she answers with diffusion. The world screams; she replies with silence so steady it unsettles.
You get the sense she has been looked at before.
Studied.
Projected onto.
The kind of face people assign stories to because it feels easier than asking. Angel. Ghost. Muse. The labels stick like fingerprints on glass.
But look closer.
There’s fatigue in the way her gaze settles. Not exhaustion—fatigue. The subtle weight of being interpreted too often. Of being mistaken for something lighter than she is. The air around her may look like mercy, but mercy is expensive. It costs something to remain this composed.
She does not smile for you.
She does not pose for rescue.
If anything, she seems to be waiting—not for someone, but for the noise to pass. For the world to stop narrating her existence long enough that she can reclaim it. The light, in that sense, becomes less heavenly and more isolating. A white room with no doors. A clean silence that threatens to erase texture.
And yet, she remains.
Unflinching.
The gentleness doesn’t crack. It holds.
Maybe that’s the defiance.
Not fire. Not fury. Not spectacle.
But a refusal to harden.
In a culture that sharpens itself on cynicism, she stays soft and does not apologize for it. That kind of steadiness is rarer than anger. It’s harder to perform. Harder to monetize. Harder to weaponize.
The alley was narrow enough to hold a secret and long enough to bury one. Rain had passed through an hour ago, left the bricks sweating and the pavement slick like old oil. Streetlamp overhead flickered—weak pulse, tired heart. It painted my shadow tall and crooked against the wall.
She was halfway down the corridor of dark by then.
Didn’t look back.
Heels tapping soft. Measured. Like she’d rehearsed it.
I could’ve called her name. Could’ve let it echo off the brick, let it beg a little. Pride’s a funny thing—it talks loud when you’re alone and goes mute when it’s time to prove itself. I felt it rise in my throat anyway. Bitter. Hot.
I swallowed.
But not that.
There’s a difference between swallowing words and swallowing dirt. Words heal. Dirt settles in your lungs.
I’ve watched men eat it before. Watched them nod and grin while somebody else pressed their face into the ground. They tell themselves it’s strategy. Survival. Temporary.
But dirt multiplies.
You take one mouthful, and before long you’re chewing gravel every morning just to get out of bed. You forget what clean air tastes like.
I’ve done things I don’t talk about. Stood in rooms where the air felt heavy enough to bruise. Bent just enough to keep breathing. But I never knelt long enough for it to stick.
Tonight was close.
The man she chose—he’s got money, reach, hands that don’t shake. He wanted me to step aside quiet. Smile while he erased me. Shake his hand like we were gentlemen and not wolves circling the same scrap of warmth.
All it would’ve taken was one nod.
One concession.
One mouthful.
The light cut across my face and showed me what I’d look like if I agreed.
Smaller.
She slowed near the mouth of the alley. Maybe waiting. Maybe hoping I’d run. That I’d make it messy. Give her something dramatic to carry home.
I stayed where I was.
The city doesn’t reward dignity. It doesn’t hand out medals for restraint. It just keeps moving. Drains fill. Neon hums. Taxis slide past like nothing happened.
But I knew.
Better to go home alone, pride cracked but breathing, than let another man decide how deep you kneel.
She turned the corner.
Gone.
The alley felt wider after that. Or maybe emptier. Hard to tell the difference some nights.
I adjusted my hat. Smoothed the front of my coat. Let the rain-cool air settle into my chest. It stung. That was fine. Pain’s clean compared to shame.
You don’t eat another man’s dirt.
Not for love.
Not for leverage.
Not to stay in a story that isn’t yours anymore.
I stepped out of the alley and into the streetlight like a man who’d lost something.
He never is. He prefers thresholds—doorframes, corners where light pools and exits remain in sight. He likes angles, positions that grant leverage without advertising it. Tonight, though, he sits dead center at the table, sleeves rolled back with surgical exactness, navy jacket folded across the chair. His palms rest flat on the dark wood, fingers relaxed, as if he’s carved himself a nest of stillness.
He looks settled.
Ward does not settle.
The restaurant smells of polished citruswood and something smoky—charred lemon zest, maybe, drifting up from the grill. A muted sax hums beneath the hum of conversation, a bassline you feel in your chest if you lean in. Overhead lights are dimmed just enough to conceal sharp shadows, no glare to interrogate. Everything here is built for discretion.
Balanced.
Controlled.
Ward thrives on imbalance.
“You’re early,” I say, sliding into the chair opposite him.
Opposite is honest. Beside is collusion.
“I had a window,” he says, voice even, warm enough to suggest ease. He watches my shoulders, the taut line of my jaw, not my eyes. He’s checking for tension.
He doesn’t need to.
I’m taut all the way through.
“You look tired,” he observes.
That’s the first crack.
Ward doesn’t remark on fatigue. He remarks on preparedness. Exposure. Risk. He would tell you you’re compromised, not worn-out.
“I’m fine.” The lie tastes metallic, like blood on the tongue.
He nods once.
That’s the second crack.
Ward never nods unless he’s sealing something—quietly, irreversibly. That nod isn’t assent. It’s containment.
I trace the grain of the table with my gaze. His hands are steady. No white at the knuckles, no tremor. His breath is deep, diaphragm-driven, not the shallow rise of someone caught off-guard.
He’s already worked through this.
Which means I’m tardy to the real conversation.
“You read the update,” he states.
Not a question.
The words hover between us. I haven’t seen any urgent alert that needed routing through me. I would’ve known—I monitor shifts in system language the way others watch tide charts.
“I read several things today,” I reply. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
He curves the hint of a smile—controlled. Intimate without granting access. I’ve seen it in rooms where people didn’t realize they were being guided.
“The reclassification.”
There it is. The term feels antiseptic, too neat. Reclassification is erasure served on a porcelain platter.
He just referenced something I was supposed to uncover.
I don’t blink. I let silence stretch three seconds longer than manners allow.
Silence bears weight. Visibility is vulnerability.
“I saw a draft,” I say. Technically true: a placeholder line buried in an internal queue, unsigned, untraceable without deep excavation.
He leans back—not defensive, not relaxed. Anchored.
“It’s procedural,” he says. “Nothing changes.”
Nothing changes.
Ward doesn’t believe in stasis. His operating principle is constant motion. Containment is simply controlled movement.
Everything changes.
That’s how he survives.
The air feels thinner now. Or maybe it’s just my breath.
“Procedural shifts usually presage strategic ones,” I say, measured. “Eventually.”
“Not this time.”
Too swift. He answers before I can weigh the risk of pressing.
He’s not responding. He’s directing.
And I realize—no rush of adrenaline, no sharp break—just a cool rebalancing under my ribs. He came prepared to steer this talk, shape what I know, and reassure me.
Protection and positioning wear the same mask.
I fold my hands on the table, mirroring his pose. Measured. Balanced. Symmetrical. If he’s managing the field, I’ll flatten it.
“Of course,” I say.
He holds my gaze—steady, familiar. The same eyes that once stood between me and something I could never undo. The same eyes that map exits while people admire the view.
I know his rhythms. The pause before he lies. The inhale before he withholds. The softness he deploys when he thinks I need shielding.
Tonight, he’s ahead of me.
And that unsettles me more than if he were improvising. Improvisation is honest. Preparation means I was expected.
I’ve worked beside Ward long enough to know his idea of protection. It isn’t tenderness or confession. It’s distance weighed precisely. It’s withholding information until the cost curve flattens. It’s shouldering burdens alone to isolate impact before it spreads.
He has always isolated early.
I remember a night months ago when an operation veered midstream. I saw it first in the language—directives softened, accountability shifted. I was ready to escalate.
He wouldn’t let me.
He rerouted the exposure through himself, cleanly, quietly, without asking. I was furious afterward—not because he was wrong, but because he decided I didn’t deserve the burden.
He’s done it his whole life.
Which means whatever I’m sensing tonight might be the same impulse—containment masquerading as care. A man convinced love is the art of absorbing every cost alone.
Love. The word trembles in negative space. It lives in the way I track his heartbeat before my own. In how I manage risk differently around him than around anyone else.
We’ve never said it.
Never needed to.
Yet here I am, appraising him like a variable.
The thought stings.
Maybe I’m tired. Maybe suspicion is my fallback. When you live inside shifts long enough, every act of kindness smells like manipulation.
But Ward has never betrayed me. He’s withheld. He’s rerouted. He’s lied by omission. Betrayal implies intent to harm. Ward harms himself first.
“You’re reading too much into it,” he says quietly, as though he’s been sifting through my silence.
That unsettles me more than anything.
“I didn’t say anything,” I reply.
“You didn’t have to.”
For a moment, I almost let it go. Tell myself this reclassification is another buffer before it hits me.
Almost.
But systems don’t shift without intent. Nor does he. If he’s containing something, it’s not small. If it’s not small, it’s leverage.
“Ward,” I say softly.
He waits.
“How long does she have you?”
Ward remains motionless.
“She doesn’t have me,” he says.
Not an answer.
“She has proximity,” he adds. “That’s different.”
“How long?”
“She’s been positioning for months.”
Months.
“Against you?”
“Against variables.”
“I’m a variable.”
“You’re the constant.”
“She approached you.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“A while ago.”
“How long is ‘a while’?”
“Long enough to understand her objectives.”
“And those are?”
“Stability.”
“For whom?”
“For the architecture.”
“And you?” I ask quietly. “Where do you fit in her architecture?”
A pause.
“Useful.”
“And she thinks you’ll align?”
“She thinks I’ll choose the least destructive path.”
“That’s not the same.”
“No. It isn’t.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you would have reacted.”
“I’m reacting now.”
“Now you have context.”
“That’s generous.”
He leans in slightly.
“I didn’t want you visible in it.”
“You don’t get to decide that.”
“I already did.”
“How long does she think she has you?”
“I haven’t given her a timeline.”
“And how long before she decides you don’t get one?”
“Long enough.”
I reach for the iced tea without thinking. The glass sweats against my palm. I don’t usually take sugar.
I only take sugar when I’m grading my nerves.
One packet. Sometimes two. The ritual steadies me—the tear of paper, the fall of crystals, the illusion of control as something dissolves into something else.
I rip the packet too sharply.
Granules scatter across the table.
Ward’s eyes flick down, then back up. Not alarmed. Just noting.
I tip the sugar in and stir.
The spoon strikes the glass once—too loud. My hand isn’t shaking.
The glass slips anyway.
It tips against my knuckles and rolls. Ice and tea spill across the table in a thin amber sheet, racing toward the edge.
Ward moves immediately. Napkin. Pressure. Containment before it reaches the seam in the wood.
Efficient.
Clean.
“Careful,” he says quietly.
I watch the stain darken the grain before it’s blotted away.
Containment always leaves a mark.
“I’m fine,” I repeat.
The sugar swirls at the bottom of the glass, pale grains drifting through amber. I watch them sink. Dissolve. Disappear into something that was never meant to hold sweetness.
I lift the glass too soon.
The first sip is wrong. Bitter. The sugar hasn’t settled.
The cold stiffens things. Numbs the soft tissue. Makes it easier to pack her away into that special box we build for the things that make us uncomfortable. Regret. Longing. Questions with no return address.
In the summer everything breathes too loud. In the winter, silence feels honest.
I sit here with damp cheeks.
The voices arrive like they always do.
“What kind of man are you? Pull yourself together.”
They mean well. Or they think they do. There’s always a script for men. Be steady. Be solid. Don’t leak.
It would be easier if I had done something obvious. Something unforgivable. Something I could circle in red ink and confess to. At least then the ending would have structure. A cause. A clean narrative.
But ambiguity lingers like breath in cold air.
For weeks I told myself she never really saw me. That I stood there open and she looked past me. It preserved something in me to believe that. Made the ache cleaner.
I move through the world now like a man slightly out of phase. Smiling when required. Laughing on cue. Telling jokes that land just well enough to pass inspection. I even went on a few dates, just to see if the machinery still worked.
“There are plenty of fish in the sea.”
“What you need is someone for the night.”
Advice dispensed like loose change.
Do people even believe the things that come out of their mouths? Or do they just speak because silence makes them nervous?
This isn’t about replacement. It’s about recognition.
I could sit here and say she never saw me.
Perhaps I never saw her.
If I’m honest — for once — it’s probably both.
There were moments I mistook her quiet for contentment. Moments she mistook my restraint for indifference. We were standing inches apart, translating each other poorly.
I thought love meant stability. She might have needed expansion. I thought silence meant peace. She might have heard distance.
No one storms out when this happens.
Things just cool.
An empty room doesn’t echo because someone smashed it. It echoes because no one is speaking inside it anymore.
Winter makes it easier to pretend that’s natural.
But maybe the slow burn was always there — not fire consuming us, but warmth fading a degree at a time until we were both shivering, pretending not to notice.
I don’t tell people this, because it sounds like a lie when you say it out loud—but the work goes better if I chew while I draw.
Not gum. Never gum. Gum is too clean, too polite. It doesn’t fight back.
I sit at the table long after the street forgets my name. Coffee cooling to something bitter and honest. Paper spread out like a confession I haven’t decided to make yet. The pencil knows my hand better than most people ever did. It hesitates when I hesitate. It presses harder when I pretend I’m fine.
There’s a thin red thread hanging from the corner of my mouth. I don’t think about it. That’s the point. It keeps time. Keeps me anchored. Something to do with the jaw while the rest of me disappears into the lines.
The cat watches.
She always does.
Perched there like a courtroom judge who never bangs the gavel. Yellow eyes. No sympathy. No condemnation either. Just the steady understanding that whatever I’m doing, I’m not done yet. She has a way of watching that feels older than language—like she’s seen this before and knows better than interrupt it.
I draw faces mostly. Not portraits. Faces that look like they’ve survived something and didn’t bother to tell anyone. The kind of faces that would never answer a question straight if you asked them. Sometimes I think I’m drawing myself from a few decades ahead. Sometimes from behind.
People like to talk about money as if it explains everything. As if the numbers can be lined up and the story will behave. But money doesn’t understand why a man stays at a table too long, or why he keeps red licorice within reach like a tool instead of a treat. It doesn’t know what it costs to sit with a blank page until it stops resisting you.
The red thread shortens. I bite. Pull. Chew again. It’s muscle memory now. Same as sharpening the pencil. Same as breathing through the hard parts. Same as not stopping when the lines start to say things I wasn’t planning on admitting.
Each mark seems to multiply the silence. Not louder—deeper. The kind of quiet that stacks on itself until you can hear your own thinking echo back wrong. That’s when I lean in closer. That’s when I don’t look away.
The world outside tries to interrupt. Bills. Noise. Expectations. All of it begging for commentary. I don’t argue with it anymore. I just mute it the only way I know how—by staying with the work until the noise forgets I exist.
There’s a quiet rebellion in it, I think. Not the loud kind. Nothing anyone would clap for. Just a man refusing to be efficient. Refusing to be optimized. Refusing to turn the process into something clean enough to sell without residue.
She shifts on the table. Her tail flicks once—not impatience, not approval, just acknowledgment. She stays.
I finish the sketch when the coffee is gone and the red is almost gone too. The paper looks back at me like it recognizes something I haven’t named yet. That’s how I know it’s done—not perfect, not resolved, just honest enough to let me sleep.
I wipe my hands on my jeans. Push the chair back. She jumps down, satisfied, as if her presence alone was the supervision required.
If someone asked me later what I like best—what I reach for without thinking—I wouldn’t make a speech about it. I wouldn’t dress it up.
Isaiah Booker learned early that stillness could be a kind of resistance.
The cold pressed up from the pavement and settled into his bones, sharp and patient. It crept through the thin leather of his shoes, climbed his ankles, and lingered there like a question he wasn’t ready to answer. The suit on his back held the chill too, wool stiff with age and discipline, carrying the faint scent of old cologne and ironed mornings. It belonged to another life once. Isaiah wore it anyway. Hand-me-downs had a way of teaching you how to adapt without complaint.
He stood on the sidewalk with his hat in his hand, fingers tracing the worn edge of the brim. The felt was smooth in places, rough in others, softened by years of use. Touch grounded him. The street smelled of damp concrete, exhaust, and something metallic—like rain that never quite arrived. A bus groaned somewhere down the block, brakes sighing as if the city itself were tired of stopping.
Isaiah’s breath fogged faintly in the air. He watched it disappear and thought about how easy it was for things to vanish. Words. Chances. People. He had learned that silence could be safer than speaking, that listening often revealed more than asking. Adults said things when they thought children weren’t paying attention. Isaiah always was. Tone mattered more than words. So did what wasn’t said at all.
His mother used to tell him he carried himself like someone older. She said it gently, brushing his collar straight, smoothing the lapel as if she could iron the weight out of him. Isaiah felt it anyway—the pull of responsibility, the unspoken expectation to be steady, to not make things harder than they already were. He didn’t resent it. Resentment took energy. He saved his for observing, for remembering.
The buildings around him rose in quiet judgment, brick and stone stacked with indifference. Windows reflected him back in fragments: a sleeve here, a shoulder there. He studied those reflections, piecing himself together the way he’d learned to do with everything else. He stood straight because slouching made you smaller. He kept his gaze level because looking down invited erasure. These weren’t lessons taught out loud. They were absorbed, the way cold seeps in when you’re not paying attention.
A sudden laugh cut through the air—a boy running past, shoes slapping the pavement, joy unburdened and fast. Isaiah felt it in his chest, not as longing but as acknowledgment. Childhood hadn’t left him yet. It had just stepped back, hands in its pockets, watching to see what he’d do next.
Isaiah Booker didn’t know where the day would lead. He only knew this moment mattered. The way the hat rested in his hand. The way the street waited. The way he occupied space without asking permission. He stood there, breathing in the weight of the world and breathing out resolve, understanding that some lives begin not with movement, but with the decision to remain visible.
She sat angled into the couch like it was a confession booth, guitar balanced against her ribs, the room listening harder than anyone ever had.
Light slid in sideways through the thin curtains, pale and deliberate, catching the curve of the guitar’s body and the soft rise of her shoulders. It didn’t warm the room so much as engulf it in honesty—no flattering shadows, no mercy. Dust drifted in slow suspension, each particle briefly illuminated before sinking back into anonymity. The couch sighed beneath her weight, a low exhale she felt through the cushions, like the furniture acknowledging her without demanding anything back.
The guitar pressed its familiar curve into her thigh. Steel strings. Always steel. Nylon felt polite to her—rounded, forgiving, too eager to smooth over the truth. Steel told on you. Steel demanded accuracy. It bit back if you got careless. She trusted that.
She didn’t play loudly. Never had. Volume felt like a lie, like trying to convince the room of something it hadn’t earned. Her right hand moved in small, deliberate motions, thumb brushing the strings with the care reserved for things that could wound if mishandled. The steel answered her with a low, ringing tension that traveled up her arm and settled behind her sternum, a vibration more felt than heard. Her left hand shaped the neck without thinking. Muscle memory stepped in where thought would only interfere.
She wasn’t playing a song so much as circling one.
She hadn’t learned what the guitar demanded from advice. She learned it by listening.
By hearing Bob Dylan before the amps—raw, nasal, unprotected—then after he went electric, when the songs got louder and sharper and somehow more distant. The electricity gave him reach, but it took something with it. Not better or worse. Just different. Buffered.
She heard it again in John Lee Hooker. Electric Hooker could shake a room, command it, bend it to his will. Power lived there. But those early recordings—just voice, foot, wire—those felt like someone standing in the doorway of the song instead of behind it. No insulation. No escape.
That difference lodged in her.
Days of the New confirmed it. Acoustic and heavy without distortion. Dark without hiding. Proof that weight didn’t require volume. Proof that if the bones were strong enough, the sound would carry on its own.
That’s when it clicked.
An acoustic guitar didn’t amplify you—it exposed you. No pedals. No distortion. No place to disappear. It took whatever you brought into the room and handed it back untouched. Honest. Unforgiving.
That was the line, as far as she was concerned. Between someone who played the guitar and a guitarist.
The sound moved outward slowly, filling the room in layers—wood, wire, breath. It didn’t rush. It settled. It leaned into corners, climbed the walls, slipped beneath furniture. The room didn’t echo so much as listen, holding the sound until it learned what to do with it.
That was why this piece was so hard.
On a cello, a note could live. You drew the bow and the sound stayed with you, breathing as long as your arm allowed. On an acoustic guitar, the note was already dying the moment it was born. Steel rang, then fell away. Every phrase came with an expiration date.
Her fingers had to compensate.
Placement mattered in a way it didn’t for easier songs. A fraction too far from the fret and the note dulled. Too close and it choked. Pressure had to be exact—enough to speak clearly, never enough to bruise the sound. Each finger arrived alone and left alone, accountable for what it contributed.
You couldn’t hold a note on a guitar. You had to suggest it.
Sustain became a matter of motion—rolling from string to string, letting tones overlap just long enough for the ear to believe they were continuous. Silence stepped in where the string failed, finishing thoughts the wood could not. Timing became architecture. Hesitation wasn’t weakness; it was structure.
She leaned forward slightly, curls slipping loose from the knot at the back of her head, eyes half-lidded, listening for the place where the sound caught. There. A hesitation between chords. A tiny resistance. That was it. That was where the truth lived.
Her life had been full of those pauses.
She remembered the first guitar—too big for her hands, borrowed and never returned. A gift disguised as obligation. She remembered sitting on the floor late at night, because beds creaked and creaks invited questions. She learned early how to make herself small without disappearing. How to exist quietly enough to be overlooked but not erased.
The room she occupied now was better. Cleaner. Temporary in the way all safe places are. The walls bore the faint ghosts of other lives—nail holes patched badly, shadows where frames had once hung. She liked that. It meant the room had already learned how to let go. It didn’t expect permanence from her.
She shifted, the oversized shirt slipping open at the collar, fabric softened by time and repetition. It wasn’t meant to be seen by anyone. That distinction mattered. There was a line between intimacy and performance, and she guarded it fiercely. What she was doing here wasn’t for display. It was to scratch an itch she couldn’t name any other way—the low, persistent ache of carrying something unspoken for too long.
The guitar answered, deeper now, as if recognizing her intent.
She closed her eyes.
In her head, a voice hovered—not singing, not yet—but waiting. The words lingered just beyond reach, cautious, observant. She didn’t chase them. Chasing made them brittle. She’d learned that after years of trying to trap feeling in neat verses, only to end up with something technically sound and emotionally dead.
She let a chord ring longer than necessary, allowing it to decay on its own terms. Silence filled the room, not empty but attentive. Silence wasn’t the absence of sound; it was part of the arrangement, the breath between thoughts.
Outside, a car passed. Somewhere nearby, laughter broke loose and faded. The world continued without consulting her.
Good, she thought. Let it.
Her fingers drifted into a progression she hadn’t touched in years. It startled her—how easily it returned, how it carried the weight of a former self she’d assumed was gone for good. Back then, she believed that if you played something true enough, someone would hear it and stay. That belief had cracked under the slow pressure of experience.
The music, at least, hadn’t lied to her. People had.
She pressed the strings harder this time. The sound roughened, gained texture. There was grit in it now, a small spark buried beneath the tenderness. She welcomed that. Beauty without resistance bored her. Beauty that hadn’t survived something never held.
For a moment, she considered recording it—capturing the sound before it slipped away. The thought dissolved as quickly as it came. Some things weren’t meant to be archived. Some moments existed only to prove you were still capable of having them.
When the final chord faded, she stayed where she was, forehead resting lightly against the guitar’s upper bout. The wood was cool. Solid. She breathed slowly, letting the echo settle into the room like dust after a collapse. The silence lingered, respectful, as if it understood what it had just witnessed.
She wasn’t healed. She wasn’t broken either. She existed in the narrow space between—tuned, but still tightening the strings.
When she lifted her head, the light had shifted again. Afternoon had arrived without ceremony, insistent and indifferent. She allowed herself a small smile—not for anyone else, not even fully conscious—just enough to acknowledge that something real had passed through her hands.
She stood, set the guitar carefully back in its stand, and left the room as quietly as she’d entered.
The sound remained behind, clinging to the walls.
And somewhere inside her, unfinished and honest, the song kept playing.
Author’s Note: This piece was shaped in conversation with the quiet invitations of FOWC, RDP, and SoCS. Thank you for the continued prompts to slow down, pay attention, and return to the work—not once, but again and again.
It woke with her, already awake, already settled, a low animal coil at the base of her spine. Not sharp anymore. Sharp meant new. This was older than that—dull, insistent, patient. It let her brush her teeth, button her shirt, load the dishwasher. It waited until she bent the wrong way, until she forgot herself for half a second, then reminded her who was in charge.
By afternoon it behaved like a debt. Quiet. Compounding. She could feel it accruing interest while she stood at the sink, while she folded laundry, while she answered emails that asked nothing of her body. The pain never rushed. It knew she would come back to it.
The pills weren’t relief anymore. Relief had been warmth. Relief had been a softening, a loosening. What they gave her now was narrower than that. Function. Maintenance. The ability to move through the day without drawing attention to herself.
The difference mattered. Relief was indulgence. Maintenance was responsibility.
She kept the bottle in the kitchen cabinet, behind the flour and sugar. White on white. Sensible. Somewhere a mother would put it. Somewhere that didn’t announce itself.
Her phone buzzed while she was wiping down the counter.
Refill day.
The notification sat there longer than it should have. She stared at it until the words lost their shape. Then she checked the bottle anyway. Seven pills. Enough if she was careful. Careful had become a skill. Careful meant halves. Careful meant swallowing against the burn in her throat and breathing through the spike until it dulled. Careful meant not flinching when her daughter hugged her too hard.
Careful meant not letting anyone see the arithmetic.
The pharmacy sat between the grocery store and the dry cleaners. She had driven past it a thousand times without thinking. Now her hands tightened on the steering wheel as she pulled in, like the place itself could sense her attention.
She stayed in the car a moment, letting the engine idle, letting the ache settle into something manageable. The building looked the same. Same automatic doors sighing open and closed. Same posters about flu shots and smiling seniors who looked like they’d never been asked to beg for anything.
Inside, the air smelled faintly of disinfectant and plastic. The floors shone too much.
He was behind the counter.
He smiled when he saw her. The same smile he’d used on the sidelines years ago, shouting encouragement to a cluster of muddy girls who believed him when he said they were strong. He still asked about her daughters by name. Still remembered birthdays. Still led prayer once a month at church.
“Hey, Ava,” he said. “How’s the back?”
“Some days,” she said, and meant all of them.
He nodded, already turning to the computer, already frowning at the screen.
“Huh,” he said. “Looks like we’ve got a problem.”
The word landed heavier than it used to. Problem. It had learned to mean delay. Scrutiny. A look that lingered a second too long.
He leaned closer. Lowered his voice.
“I can help,” he said. “But it’s complicated.”
She felt it before she understood it. The way the space around her narrowed. The way the air shifted. The way the conversation stepped sideways into somewhere she hadn’t agreed to go.
She didn’t argue. Didn’t ask questions that would force him to clarify. She didn’t say no, not because she didn’t want to, but because the shape of no had already been eroded. The words slid past each other, meaning less than the understanding underneath them.
Later, she wouldn’t remember the exact phrasing. Only the moment where resistance stopped feeling available. Where the decision arrived already formed, like something she’d simply failed to notice sooner.
When she walked back to her car, the bottle was warm in her hand.
She sat in the parking lot with the engine off, staring at the label. Her name printed cleanly in black ink. Dosage. Instructions. Everything orderly. Official. As if nothing about this had gone wrong.
Disgust rose, sharp and unexpected. Not for him—not yet—but for herself. For how far she’d gone. For how quietly the line had moved. For how she’d confused familiarity with safety.
She tipped a pill into her palm. Bit it in half. The chalky taste bloomed on her tongue. Her hands shook. The other half slipped from her fingers and fell into the cup holder with a soft, final sound.
She stared at it. The smallness of it. The way it looked exactly like what it was: something she’d negotiated herself down to.
Her phone rang.
“Hi, Mom,” her daughter said. “Where are you? Can we order a pizza tonight?”
Ava closed her eyes. Just long enough to feel the weight of the lie forming.
“I’m on my way,” she said. “Of course we can.”
Her voice sounded normal. That frightened her more than anything else.
She swallowed the half pill dry and started the car.
By the time she turned onto her street, the world had softened around the edges. Not relief. Distance. Like watching herself through a pane of glass that someone else was responsible for cleaning. She pulled into the driveway and sat there longer than she meant to, hands resting uselessly in her lap.
The keys slipped from her fingers. Clinked once against the concrete.
She didn’t feel herself fall.
Light came back without asking permission. Flat. White. Too close.
Her mouth was dry. Her body felt heavy, like it had been filled with wet sand. Something warm pressed against her hand.
“Ava?”
She turned her head slowly.
Her daughter sat beside the bed, fingers laced through hers. Awake. Steady. Watching her in a way that said she already knew something was wrong but wasn’t going to name it yet.
The truck took to the highway like it belonged there. A battered blue ’52 F-1, rebuilt just enough to trust, carrying the quiet weight of hands that had held the wheel long before mine. The engine was new to me, but I still heard the old sounds—ghost notes left behind by worn gaskets, replaced valves, memories of breakdowns fused into the machine’s voice. I listened for what didn’t want to be heard yet.
Rain pressed down hard, flattening the world beyond the hood into streaks of light and shadow. The wipers kept time, slicing the water into manageable fragments. Everything else faded.
Cassandra sat in the passenger seat, knees angled toward the glove compartment, hands folded loosely in her lap. She leaned her head against the window, breath fogging the glass. The instrument panel lit her face from below, softening the sharp lines, catching the pale scar along her jaw she never talked about. Her eyes kept moving, tracking the dark beyond the windshield even when she seemed still.
Night driving narrowed the road into a tunnel. White lines. Reflectors. Distance measured in seconds. I passed one exit without slowing. Then another.
“You hungry?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Later.”
The next exit came up fast—bright, easy, promising gas and food. I eased past it without comment. The rain thickened, drumming harder on the roof.
“You missed it,” she said.
“Did I?”
She watched the road again. “I like the drive through the countryside. The winding parts. Helps after a mission.”
“I know.”
That was why I stayed off the interstate, even when the GPS chirped and recalculated. The darker roads asked for attention. They gave something back.
We drove on. Old barns hunched along the roadside like broken hands. A peeling billboard advertised a water park that had closed before either of us was born. The silence between us grew dense, filled by the truck’s low voice rising and falling, always on the edge of saying too much.
“When are you going to start the GPS?” Cassandra asked.
I powered it on and set it between us. The screen flared bright, immediately suggesting a faster route. She smiled faintly.
“It isn’t a cardinal sin to use GPS.”
I turned the brightness down until it was barely there. “Habit.”
She accepted that. Didn’t push. Just watched.
The rain shifted, coming sideways now. Visibility collapsed to reflectors and the faint suggestion of road. Then the engine coughed.
Once. Then again.
I eased off the gas, listening, feeling the vibration travel up through the wheel. Cassandra’s hand tightened briefly on the door handle.
“There’s a place up ahead,” I said. “We’ll stop. Let this pass.”
She nodded.
The diner announced itself with a hand-painted sign nailed to a pole: BESSIE’S—OPEN LATE. We pulled under the tin awning as the engine ticked itself quiet.
Inside, the air was thick with coffee and old grease. Red vinyl booths. A checkered floor worn smooth by years of boots. A handful of people who didn’t look up.
We took a booth by the window. I sat with my back to the wall.
“Coffee?” the waitress asked.
“Black,” Cassandra said.
“Same.”
Steam rose between us.
“You always pick places like this,” Cassandra said.
“Like what?”
“Where nobody asks.”
“People care,” I said. “Just not about us.”
She watched me over the rim of her mug.
“Ward.”
The name landed heavier than it should have.
Ward Dane
The one that fit the paperwork. The one that opened doors without asking what came next.
Not the name I was born with.
That one stayed buried where it belonged.
The bell over the door rang.
“Jericho?”
The sound cut clean through the room.
I looked up.
She stood just inside, rain-dark hair pulled back, eyes fixed on me like she’d never lost track.
“That’s not my name,” I said.
She smiled, already turning away. “My mistake.”
Her gaze flicked once to Cassandra, then back to me.
“Have a good evening,” she said. “On your honeymoon.”
And she was gone.
The bell fell silent.
Cassandra stirred her coffee slowly.
“Honeymoon,” she said.
“People make assumptions.”
“Some do.”
The rain eased. I paid at the counter. Cash. No receipt.
Outside, the truck started on the first turn, idled rough, then settled. We pulled back onto the road without looking back.
I remember the smell first. Rain coming in low and metallic, like the sky was holding a secret it didn’t trust the ground with yet. It hovered more than it fell, daring me to move too fast. I stood outside the terminal with my hands in my jacket pockets, watching the clouds bruise darker by the minute.
She was late.
Not late in the way that makes you angry—late in the way that tightens something behind the ribs. Late in the way that invites thoughts you shouldn’t entertain. The kind of waiting where every rational explanation starts to feel hysterical if you let it linger too long.
I leaned against the truck and checked the arrivals board again. Delayed. Still delayed. The Army never seemed interested in giving anything back cleanly.
I kept my eyes on the doors instead of the board. Doors don’t lie the same way screens do.
Funny thing was, I never meant to meet her at all.
A friend introduced us. Said he needed a favor. Said his girlfriend wouldn’t leave him alone about her friend. And when a guy says that, you already know—you’re about to take one for the team. Ugly or crazy. Sometimes both. With my luck, probably both.
She wasn’t.
Unless you count the fact that she joined the military at twenty-two.
Eighteen, I get. Eighteen is impulse. Twenty-two is decision. That told me more about her than anything she said that night.
The Ford sat beside me, patient as an old dog. A ’52 F-1. Steel the color of something that had survived worse weather than this. I rested my hand on the hood, grounding myself. I’d promised I wouldn’t restore it until she was home for good. I broke that promise while she was gone. Fixing things is easier than sitting with what can’t be fixed.
We spent that first night talking. Not flirting. Talking. Crappy movies we loved anyway. Music so bad it circled back around to genius. We didn’t stop until she had to leave to report for her next assignment. No dramatic goodbye. Just a look that said this isn’t over yet.
We traded letters after that. Real ones. Paper. Ink. No emails. No texts. No late-night calls. Just envelopes crossing distance like a quiet agreement. About a year ago, the phone rang and her voice was on the other end. That surprised me. I never gave her my phone number. When I asked how she got it, she laughed and said some things were easier to find than people think.
There are things we don’t ask each other.
I can never tell her what I do for a living. She can never find out. I’ve done my best keeping my world and hers separate. It’s easy, in a way—her job teaches silence. She has her secrets about work, and I let them stay where they belong. Mine just happen to follow me home.
The sliding doors hissed open behind me, releasing small crowds in uneven waves. Families. Lovers. A kid dragging a duffel almost as big as him. Every face felt like a rehearsal for something that might go wrong.
Then she stepped through.
She didn’t rush. She never does. Her eyes swept the space before her feet committed to it. The uniform sat on her shoulders like it knew her weight. She looked sharper than I remembered. Leaner. Like something had been filed down and left harder underneath.
I caught her looking before she saw me.
That moment—right there—when her eyes were still searching. Measuring. Cataloging exits. Old habits don’t turn off just because you cross a threshold.
Then she found me.
She stopped walking.
Just for half a second. Long enough that anyone else might’ve missed it. Her gaze stayed on me a beat too long. Not suspicion. Not fear. Recognition, mixed with something else. Something she didn’t have a name for yet.
I didn’t move.
We’ve learned each other that way—through stillness. Through long looks that say more than questions ever could.
She crossed the distance and set her bag down at her feet. We stood there, rain misting between us, airport noise falling away until it sounded like it was happening underwater.
She studied my face.
Not the way lovers do when they’re memorizing. The way soldiers do when they’re checking for damage.
“You okay?” she asked.
I nodded. Too quickly.
Her eyes narrowed just a fraction. Not distrust. Instinct. She leaned in, resting her forehead against mine. Close enough that I could feel her breath slow, feel the way she grounded herself before she let go.
She pulled back slightly, still holding my arms. Her gaze flicked over my shoulder to the truck, then back to my face.
“You finish the restoration,” she said.
It wasn’t a question.
I shrugged. “Kept busy.”
She watched me another second too long. Not accusing. Curious. Like she’d felt a draft but couldn’t find the open door.
Then she smiled. Small. Careful.
“I’m home,” she said.
I pulled her into me before whatever she was about to ask had a chance to form.
The rain finally made up its mind and started to fall.
Author’s Note: My thanks to FOWC, RDP, and Word of the Day for the prompts and challenge words that helped shape Things We Don’t Ask. Sometimes constraints don’t limit a story—they reveal where the silence lives.
She doesn’t rise from the water. That’s the lie people keep telling.
The Lady of the Lake doesn’t emerge—she waits. She waits in the way cold waits for breath, in the way memory waits behind the eyes when you think you’ve forgotten. The lake holds her the way a confession holds a mouth shut. Half-light. Half-truth. Her face stitched into the surface, her eyes nailed open by reflection.
The trees know her better than we do. They lean in, bare and patient, their branches scratching the sky like men who have run out of prayers. They’ve watched centuries of hands reach down—kings, fools, lovers, the desperate—all of them believing the water would give something back without taking a name in return.
She remembers every one of them.
Her eyes are not cruel. That’s the other mistake. Cruelty requires urgency. She has none. Time slides across her face like ripples, distorting her just enough to remind you that what you see is never the whole of it. She watches swords lowered into the dark, watches promises sink, watches men kneel at the edge of the world and swear they will be different tomorrow.
Tomorrow never shows.
The lake glows faintly where grief settles deepest—small embers of light trapped under the skin of the water, like regrets that refuse to die quietly. That glow isn’t magic. It’s memory. It’s every word spoken too late, every love returned damaged, every truth submerged because it was easier than holding it in daylight.
She doesn’t speak unless the water is still. And even then, what she offers is not instruction but reckoning. A mirror, tilted just enough to hurt. Look long enough and you’ll see what you came to lose.
A man comes to the edge at dusk, boots sinking into the soft ground, breath loud enough to offend the air. He has decided she owes him something. Proof, maybe. An answer. A miracle with edges.
“Show yourself.”
The word show hits the water first—splits, ripples, dissolves. The lake doesn’t flinch. It never has. Sound travels poorly here. Demands even worse.
He waits. Long enough for embarrassment to curdle into anger.
Her eyes do not change. They don’t widen or harden. They simply continue—holding the surface together. What he sees is not her rising, but himself multiplied: his face broken by light, his mouth warped into something smaller than it felt when it shouted.
This is the bargain he didn’t know he was making.
She does not appear because she is already present. In the reflection. In the silence that follows a voice with nothing left to say. The lake offers him exactly what he asked for—visibility—and nothing he wanted.
When he finally turns away, the water closes behind him without ceremony.
She remembers his voice.
Not because it mattered.
But because it tried to command what only listens.
Some say she guards a blade. Others say she is the blade—cold, patient, inevitable. What she really guards is the moment before surrender, when you still believe you’re choosing freely. When your hand trembles above the surface and you realize the lake has already learned your weight.
Her gaze never blinks.
Not because she is watching you.
But because she is watching what you’re about to become.
She always waited until the coffee stopped steaming before she took the first sip. Not because it was too hot—she liked the burn—but because steam carried expectations. It rose too quickly, too eager, like the day already leaning in with questions. Once it thinned and vanished, the moment felt earned. Once it faded, the moment belonged to her.
The kitchen held a quiet that had weight to it, the kind only old rooms manage. Not emptiness—history. The faint smell of last night’s soap clung to the sink, mixing with the darker, grounding scent of coffee. Morning light filtered through the thin curtain by the window, a washed-out white that softened the edges of everything it touched. It made the room feel provisional, as if it could still change its mind.
Outside, a shutter slammed against the neighbor’s house, sharp enough to make her flinch. She wondered, briefly and without heat, why they never fixed the damn thing. She tightened her grip on the mug. The warmth settled into her palm, easing the dull ache there. She flexed her hand out of habit, careful. Memory surfaced uninvited—the crack of a breaking branch, the split second where she’d chosen to move instead of freeze. She’d gotten clear, but not clean. Some things never healed the way you expected.
Out there, the world was already awake and asking for things. In here, it hadn’t found her yet. That felt important, though she couldn’t have said why without breaking the spell.
She wrapped both hands around the mug again, feeling its weight, its edges. Some mornings she needed that reminder—that she still occupied space. That she wasn’t just a series of obligations moving from one room to the next, a shape filling time.
The table beneath her forearms was scarred in small, honest ways: a shallow nick from a dropped plate, a dark ring where a hot mug had once been set down without thinking. She’d considered sanding it smooth years ago. Never did. It felt wrong to erase proof that life had passed through here and left evidence behind.
Her hair was braided over one shoulder, more practical than pretty. The braid had started as a solution and hardened into ritual. There was a time when someone else used to reach for her hair without asking, when she’d worn it loose because she thought that was what a good wife did—made herself easy to touch, easy to claim. She knew better now. Loose ends—literal and otherwise—had proven dangerous.
Control wasn’t safety; she understood that now. But it kept the noise down. Kept her from drifting out of jive with the world in ways she couldn’t afford.
She lifted her gaze toward the window, then stopped. Something in the glass held her there. She leaned forward just enough to take another look—not at the street, not at the weather, but at the faint double of herself layered over the morning. Her reflection was incomplete, softened by light and dust.
She remembered him—the one who had once seemed to mean everything. The one she’d let define her without realizing when it happened.
Her chin rested in her palm as her attention drifted outward. Children’s laughter carried in from somewhere nearby, sharp and bright, pulling her back only for a moment.
Her father’s voice surfaced instead, steady as ever.
Never let a man define you. You are your own person.
He’d said it once while making pancakes, wrist loose, skillet hot. He’s son-in-law and the kids had been outside, noise spilling in through the open door. He hadn’t looked at her at first.
The moment you forget that, he’d added, flipping the pancake without effort, you walk away.
She’d watched him then—really watched him.
I didn’t raise a follower, he said, finally meeting her eyes, his gaze firm in that familiar, unyielding way. I raised a leader.
The pancake landed clean in the pan.
Her father had been a wizard of understatement. He’d drop a line the way other men cast spells—quiet, precise, impossible to shake once they landed. He couldn’t fix this for her. Not the way she’d wanted.
It took years to understand that he’d fixed it anyway. No grand gestures. No proclamations. Just showing up—coffee already poured, chair already pulled out—when it mattered most.
She brought the mug to her lips and took her first sip.
The coffee was strong and a little bitter, the taste blooming across her tongue before settling into something darker and steady. Honest. No disguises. It reminded her that not everything needed sweetening to be worth consuming.
Her father was gone now. The husband, too—if not in body, then in attention. The children moved through the house fast, already half-elsewhere, pausing only long enough to ask, Mom, you good?
The idea of flight lingered. Not escape. Just stepping away long enough to remember herself. To feel like something other than a function. To hear her own name without it being followed by need.
Two years, she thought. That’s all. Two years and the house would empty.
The thought made her smile—small, private.
The women from her book club—really just wine and talking in circles—always spoke about that moment. About leaving. About becoming again. None of them ever had.
She wondered, not for the first time, if she had the courage to be the one who broke the pattern.
She reached into the drawer and pulled out a notebook. On the first clean page, she wrote a single word:
Tahiti.
She smiled at it. Just long enough.
Her father’s voice surfaced again, uninvited and familiar. I’m retiring in Tahiti, he used to say, already settling back into his favorite chair. Where the women don’t wear tops.
He’d grin, eyes closed, the idea doing more work than any plan ever had.
She closed the notebook without crossing the word out and set it beside her cup.
The coffee had gone lukewarm.
She didn’t move to reheat it.
Author’s Note: This piece was shaped in response to a series of prompts and challenges that continue to push my work into quieter, more honest territory. My thanks to FOWC, RDP, Word of the Day, 3TC, and SoCS for the sparks, constraints, and provocations that helped bring Take Another Look into focus.
The café was nearly empty, the way it always was at that hour, when the city seemed to hold its breath between one intention and the next. A single bulb hung low over the table, casting a tired halo that didn’t quite reach the corners of the room. He sat beneath it with his shoulders rounded, as if the light itself carried weight, the familiar ache between his shoulder blades reminding him how many mornings had begun this way.
Steam lifted from the cup in front of him, thin and persistent, carrying the faint scent of something burnt at the edges. He didn’t drink it right away. He rarely did. Coffee, like memory, was better approached slowly. The notebook lay open, its spine softened by decades of use, pages crowded with a handwriting that had grown tighter over the years—as though space itself had become something to ration.
He had started the book long before he understood why. Since his father’s death, maybe longer. Names filled the early pages. Dates. Places half-remembered, half-invented. A census line here. A marriage record there. Ordinary things, assembled carefully, as if order alone might explain what had always felt misaligned. The ink had faded in places, smudged where a younger hand had dragged across still-wet letters. He traced a finger over his father’s birth date and wondered, not for the first time, if he had ever truly known his family at all.
Outside, a bus hissed to a stop. Inside, the café remained still.
He paused, pen hovering above the page. A name appeared twice in the records—his grandfather’s—attached to two different women in two towns separated by less than thirty miles. The dates overlapped by three years. He ran his thumb across the indentation in the paper, feeling something settle behind his ribs. It wasn’t proof. It was something worse—suggestion.
They say everyone who looks into their family history will find a secret sooner or later.
The thought didn’t arrive like revelation. It settled. Heavy. Familiar. He lifted the cup and drank, the bitterness grounding him. The past, he had learned, rarely announced itself. It preferred patience.
He turned the page.
What followed wasn’t violent or scandalous. It was quieter. A pattern of omissions. A child listed as “lodger.” A death without cause. A man who moved on easily while others slipped out of the record altogether. There was something almost methodical about it, something faintly sinister in its restraint, like footprints carefully wiped away, leaving only the suggestion of passage.
He closed the notebook and wrapped both hands around the cup. The warmth spread into his fingers, steady and real. Whatever he had uncovered didn’t change who he was—but it explained the silence he’d grown up inside, the way truth had always been treated like something fragile, dangerous, best kept out of reach.
Outside, the bus pulled away. The café’s clock ticked on.
He paid, nodded to no one, and slipped the notebook into his coat, feeling its weight settle against his side. Some secrets didn’t ask to be exposed. They only asked to be acknowledged, carried forward with care.
He stepped back into the cold, the door closing softly behind him. The notebook pressed against him with each step, a quiet reminder that he was just another link in a long chain of silences—and that the light and steam and unanswered questions would follow him home, patient as family ghosts.
Author’s Note
This piece was written in response to the quiet pull of two prompts that lingered longer than expected. My thanks to Fandango for hosting FSS#229, and to Di for MM309. Both offered just enough space to let the story find its own footing. Sometimes the right prompt doesn’t demand an answer—it waits, patient, until the words are ready to catch up.
Not the gentle kind—the kind that slips in like forgiveness—but the gray, flooded dawn that arrives already tired of you. The kind that stains the sky a murky color that refuses to decide whether it’s night or morning, as if time itself has begun to disapprove of forward motion.
I noticed it when the ticking failed to meet me halfway.
For years, that sound had been my anchor. A soft, mechanical breath in the hollow of my chest pocket. Tick. Pause. Tick. A reminder that something, somewhere, still obeyed order. Still moved forward in increments small enough to survive.
Now there was only water.
The glass face of the pocket watch had cracked sometime during the night, a hairline fracture running from two o’clock to nowhere. Inside, the city floated—half-submerged streets, collapsed facades, moss choking the bones of once-important buildings. Windows gaped like mouths that had finally given up trying to warn anyone. At the center, a domed cathedral rose from the flood like an accusation that refused to sink.
It was still captivating, in the way ruins sometimes are. Beauty sharpened by consequence. Grandeur stripped of purpose.
Beneath the waterline, the gears burned.
Gold teeth turned against blackened brass, grinding despite the damage, throwing sparks like dying stars. The machinery didn’t care that the watch had failed. It kept working out of habit. Out of loyalty to a purpose that no longer mattered.
I understood that better than I wanted to.
I stood at the edge of the canal that used to be a boulevard, boots half-submerged, coat heavy with the smell of damp wool and old decisions. The city had been abandoned for years, but it still whispered at night—stones settling, water licking the edges of memory, echoes that sounded uncomfortably like names I never said out loud.
I remembered a morning before the flood. Before the watch felt heavy.
We sat at a narrow table near the window, steam curling from chipped cups of tea, the kind brewed too long because neither of us wanted to be the first to speak. She stirred hers slowly, counting rotations like they meant something, then slid a coin across the table.
“A tuppence for your thoughts,” she said.
She didn’t smile.
I should have laughed. Should have told her the truth. Instead, I pocketed the coin like a coward’s joke and said nothing worth keeping.
I promised her I’d leave before the waters rose.
I always said that part softly, as if volume could erase delay.
“You have time,” I told her. I believed it. Or worse—I needed to.
The watch had been hers first. A gift from her father, salvaged from a world that still believed time could be trusted. She gave it to me the night I chose to stay. Pressed it into my palm like a pardon I hadn’t earned.
“So you don’t forget,” she said.
I didn’t forget.
That was the cruel part.
The floods came fast after that. Streets drowned, then buildings, then names. People scattered or vanished. Promises calcified into artifacts. I stayed long enough to become part of the ruin—another figure haunting the edges of what refused to die.
When the betrayal finally surfaced, it wasn’t loud.
It never is.
It arrived as understanding.
The realization that the city hadn’t fallen because of the water, but because of what I didn’t say when it mattered. Because of every moment I stood still while she carried the weight of forward motion. Because love deferred long enough begins to rot, and rot attracts floods.
I had thrown silence where honesty should have been. Thrown comfort at a wound that needed truth. Thrown time away as if it were renewable.
I opened the watch fully, prying the glass away with numb fingers. Water spilled out, carrying reflections with it—her face once, briefly, before dissolving into ripples. Beneath it all, the gears slowed.
Tick. Pause. Nothing.
For the first time, the city inside the watch went quiet.
No sparks. No movement. Just submerged streets and a cathedral that had finally learned how to bow.
I closed the watch and let it sink into the canal.
The water swallowed it without ceremony.
I stood there long after the ripples faded, hands empty, pockets lighter, time finally finished with me. The city remained—not as punishment, not as mercy—but as evidence.
Some things don’t break when you betray them.
They simply stop keeping time for you.
Author’s Note
This piece was shaped in conversation with constraint, and I’m grateful for it. Thank you to Di for hosting 3TC, and to Ragtag Daily Prompt for consistently offering challenge words that don’t feel ornamental, but invitational—words that ask to be earned on the page.
These prompts didn’t dictate the story; they pressured it, forcing choices, memory, and consequence to surface where they might otherwise have stayed submerged. Sometimes that tension is exactly what a piece needs to tell the truth it’s been circling.
I appreciate the space to wrestle with language rather than decorate it.
I sat hunched over the bar near my gate, a single malt sweating in my hand, cold beads pooling onto a yellowed napkin. The whiskey was unnecessary—a holding pattern. The bar’s wood was too polished, reflecting clusters of strangers stalled between departures and arrivals. The air smelled like disinfectant, old cigarettes, and quiet panic. A television above the bottles played the news without sound. None of it touched me.
I was waiting for the woman I loved.
We met online, in a late-night radio forum—an accident disguised as trivia. She replied to my post with a sharp joke, and I laughed out loud in the dark. Two years followed: messages, calls, pixelated faces, a fragile unity built across time zones and bad connections. Some days the odds felt impossible. Other days I forgot there were odds at all.
People streamed past behind me—wheels clicking, heels striking linoleum, a child whining. I checked my phone again. At passport control. See you soon, promise. I imagined her somewhere nearby, tired, rehearsing the same fears I was: of disappointment, of misrecognition, of how unlike a voice sounds when it finally shares air.
When she appeared, the room shifted.
She stood near the bar beneath the blue glow of the departures board. Her hair was pulled tight except for one loose strand drifting across her cheek. She looked like her photos and not at all—smaller, maybe, worn thin by travel. She ordered a vodka tonic, extra lime. The bartender—an upstart with a waxed mustache and too much confidence—glanced at me, then back at her, and filled the glass.
She turned. We smiled at the same time.
For a moment, neither of us moved. Then she crossed the space quickly, set her bag down, and hugged me—too tight, ungraceful, her face pressed into my neck like she was afraid the moment might slip away. She trembled. I smelled citrus shampoo and airplane air.
I almost joked about how different she looked in real life, the words lining up in my throat before I swallowed them hard.
When she pulled back, her eyes were wet. She laughed and wiped them with her knuckles. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to be a mess.”
I kissed her forehead, then her mouth. We bumped teeth. She grinned and apologized again.
We sat together at the bar, trading small stories—the flight, the customs line, a stranger who snored. She hated how every airport looked the same. I showed her the duty-free shortbread I’d nearly finished myself. She took the last piece and laughed, and something in my chest loosened.
At the gate, we sat with our knees touching. Silence came easily. I watched her study my face like she was committing it to memory. She laced her fingers through mine and held tight.
When our flight was called, she stood first and pulled me after her.
We took our first-class seats—an indulgence neither of us questioned. She kicked off her shoes and curled inward, already at ease. We declined champagne. We leaned together, whispered through the taxi, joked about the safety video.
At takeoff, she gripped my arm and didn’t let go until the plane smoothed out above the clouds.
Author’s Note: My thanks to Di for hosting the 3TC challenge. This piece grew out of the quiet constraint of that framework—the kind that asks you to listen harder to what’s left unsaid. I’m grateful for the space to let a moment hold without resolving it. Sometimes, those are the places where the best stories live—in the places left unsaid.
Will already knew what to expect before he reached the door: the faint sting of disinfectant undercut by burnt coffee; fluorescent light glaring off scuffed linoleum; a woman at the front ready to talk about choices, consequences, and tomorrow. He smelled disappointment and something that pretended to be hope.
He lingered in the hallway, boots scraping the edge of a faded carpet runner. The voices inside blended together—low, tired, familiar. He thought of them as bots, people who leaned on slogans because slogans never asked questions.
A sharp laugh cut through the murmur.
“Are you going to stand out there eavesdropping like a kid,” a woman called, tone flat and amused, “or are you coming in?”
Will squared his shoulders, drew a breath that tasted like bleach and regret, and pushed the door open.
The smell hit first—old sweat, anxious adrenaline, the faint copper tang of fear. Folding chairs filled the room, every one occupied by a version of damage he recognized without wanting to: a man with a fading bruise behind his ear, another tapping his foot like he was waiting for bad news, a woman gripping a sweater so hard her knuckles had gone white.
At the front sat Emma St. John. Legs crossed. Pen tapping once against a yellow legal pad. Her eyes didn’t soften when they found him. They weighed him. Measured him. Moved on.
“Well, look at that,” she said. “We got ourselves a statue.”
A few people snorted.
“Everyone,” she added, “let’s welcome the statue.”
“Hey, Statue.”
Will’s jaw tightened. He scanned the room for sympathy and found none. This was supposed to be part of his punishment—tough love, no coddling. He sat, anger curdling in his gut.
“I’m Will,” he said, voice low. “I’m an addict.”
Emma leaned back slightly, pen hovering. “Look at that. The statue talks. Larry, tap him and see if he says something else.”
Larry, broad-shouldered and sweating through his T-shirt, hesitated just long enough to make it real. Then he drove a fist into Will’s ribs.
The air left Will in a sharp, hollow burst. Pain flared hot and immediate. He folded forward, a sound tearing out of him before he could stop it.
“Well,” Emma said, nodding like she was checking a box, “he screams with conviction.”
She tilted her head. “That’s enough.”
The room exhaled.
Will straightened slowly, hand pressed to his side. Something in him had gone still, alert. Larry stepped back, grinning.
“Seems like he’s not a statue after all.”
Will met Emma’s gaze. “Who the hell are you?”
She didn’t blink. “Who are you, and why are you really here?”
“I told you,” he snapped. “I’m an addict.”
Her mouth curved, but there was no warmth in it. “That one sounded like you meant it.”
The group murmured.
Will sat, shoulders tight. This wasn’t landing the way he’d planned.
Emma waited, then said, “Stand up again. Tell us the truth.”
“Straight?” Will asked.
“Hells yes,” she said. “Or get out and stop wasting our time.”
Will stood because sitting felt like hiding.
“I’m hooked on stupid things,” he said. “Online games that don’t matter. Noise. Anything that keeps my head from getting too quiet.”
A few people nodded. Recognition, not sympathy.
“And when that doesn’t work,” he went on, faster now, like momentum might carry him through, “I look for distractions that don’t ask questions. People who don’t care who I am when the lights come on. Transactions. No names. No expectations.”
The room shifted. No laughter this time.
“I drink,” Will said. “Because it’s easier than remembering what I’m avoiding.”
He sat back down hard, chest tight, like he’d admitted to something worse than addiction.
Emma studied him, pen still.
“That’s a lot of effort,” she said, “for a man who claims he just wants to numb out.”
Her voice dropped.
“Nobody works that hard to disappear unless they’re running from something specific.”
Silence pressed in from all sides.
Will stared at his shoes.
“Meeting’s over,” Emma said. “You—statue—grab a coffee with me.”
The diner down the street smelled like scorched bread and old grease. Will slid into a cracked vinyl booth across from Emma, a mug of black coffee steaming between them like a truce he didn’t trust. His hands clenched around the rim until his knuckles went pale.
She waited.
Ally’s name came out first.
Then the rest followed—halting, uneven. The floor screaming under weight. Steel giving way. Sirens. Joseph fighting for breath on the gurney. Surgery. The quiet, cruel fact of Joseph dying anyway.
Will tore napkins from the dispenser, wiped his face, balled them up like they could hold the mess. He pulled out a cigarette pack, crushed it in his fist, smoothed it, crushed it again.
“I should’ve been there,” he said. “He was supposed to come home. Watch them fall in love. Walk his daughter down the aisle. See his boy make it to the pros. We both knew that kid had it.”
Emma said nothing.
“If someone had to die,” Will said, voice breaking despite him, “it should’ve been me.”
She let the silence stretch until it hurt.
Then she said, quietly, “Joseph knew what was at stake. He suited up every day. He died doing what he believed in.” She looked at him. “Why are you trying to take that from him?”
Will stared at the stained tabletop. His shoulders sagged, something finally giving way.
Outside, rain misted the street, turning the light soft and smeared. Will lit a cigarette, the ember flaring between his fingers. Emma reached for it after his first drag, took one herself, and handed it back.
They stood there in the drizzle, jackets darkening, the city breathing around them.
The road didn’t begin anywhere I could remember. It just opened beneath my boots, a thin yellow line cutting through snow like a promise someone else once made and never intended to keep. Each step came with a dry, brittle crunch, the sound of something breaking politely. The cold worked its way through the soles of my boots, climbed my ankles, and settled behind my knees like it planned to stay awhile. Abandoned trucks sat half-buried on either side, their doors ajar, rust blooming along their seams. They looked like they’d tried to leave once, stalled mid-decision, and surrendered to weather and time. I understood them more than I wanted to.
I kept walking anyway. Forward motion has a way of pretending it’s purpose.
There should probably be a disclaimer here—something about whiteout conditions, emotional exposure, the way memory lies when the temperature drops—but no one reads those when they’re already committed to being alone. Besides, I’d ignored better warnings before.
I replayed the conversation in real-time, every word arriving with the same dull thud it had the first time. I never knew what it took to make you stay. All I ever had were the wrong sentences, delivered too late or too flat, like apologies left on voicemail. I mistook restraint for dignity, silence for strength. I thought playing it cool might make me look unafraid. Instead, it just made me unreachable as you turned and walked away, your outline thinning against the horizon until even regret lost track of you.
The snow did what mirrors always do—it told the truth without mercy. It reflected not my face but your absence, stretched long and pale across the road. You leaving. Again. Always again. The wind carried the smell of old oil and wet iron from the trucks, and somewhere deep in my chest, something tightened, the way it does when grief realizes it’s not done with you yet.
So far away.
I kept climbing hurdles that existed only because I needed resistance—what-ifs, if-onlys, almosts stacked one after another. My breath burned going in, scraped coming out. Effort felt holy for a while, like punishment might substitute for change. It didn’t. The road stayed long. The sky stayed heavy. I began to feel assembled rather than whole—a jalopy of a man, parts borrowed from better versions of myself, held together by habit and rust, still moving but no longer convinced of the destination.
I was the narrow space between pain and heartbreak, where neither one fully commits. I was the argument between love and sadness that never resolves. I was the darkness that shows up after the tears have dried, when there’s no audience left and no reason to perform resilience.
You were the one thing that made the cold feel survivable. You are the one thing I couldn’t hold onto.
The trucks watched me pass, their empty windshields clouded, patient. They knew how this ended. They’d lived it. I didn’t stop. I didn’t turn back. Some days don’t offer redemption or clarity—only distance, widening with every step.
So far away.
And still, I walked.
Author’s Note
This piece was written for a convergence of daily creative challenges—FOWC, RDP, and Word of the Day—each acting less as a constraint and more as a pressure point. The image set the weather. The prompts supplied the friction. What followed was written in one pass, close to real-time, without smoothing the edges or rescuing the speaker from the walk he’d already committed to.
These challenges aren’t about polish; they’re about showing up, even on disappointing days, and letting the work reveal what’s still unfinished. This one did exactly that.
She waited in the hollow that followed the steam’s labor, when the pipes fell silent and the breathless mist drained away into a damp, almost reverent hush. The air still carried a faint eucalyptus tang, sharp and medicinal, the kind of scent meant to suggest renewal while quietly admitting it could never deliver it. In that moment, the chamber shed its antiseptic splendor—its tub and basins, once proud emblems of ritual washing—and became something closer to a holding cell. Not a place of punishment, exactly, but containment. The marble walls felt less like luxury than enforcement: white stone veined like ancestral riverbeds, cold by design, reminding her that comfort was always leased, never owned—and that someone, somewhere, had already paid in blood or debt or silence.
She imagined herself as a figure trapped in a painting no one bothered to finish. The robe slipped from her shoulder, neither invitation nor accident, just gravity doing what it always does in the end—pulling everything downward, stripping illusion inch by inch until there was nothing left to negotiate with.
The mirror offered no mercy. It didn’t flatter or distort; it audited. Its reflection carried the sterile precision of an accountant’s ledger, recording losses without commentary. Fine lines fanned from the corners of her mouth. A furrow had claimed permanent residence between her brows. At her throat, the skin no longer insisted—it yielded. Each mark indicated she spent late nights standing still while decisions were made elsewhere, started mornings already tired, and rationed intimacy, mislabeling it as compromise. She met her own gaze and did not look away, not out of bravery—out of fatigue. Anyone could assemble a mask. Few could bear the weight of seeing what remained when the mask finally cracked.
She had learned to spot performance everywhere. Confidence sold by the inch, tailored and pressed, then paraded as authenticity. Desire shrink-wrapped, reheated, passed hand to hand until it lost all heat and meaning. Intimacy reduced to choreography—glances practiced, sounds cued, exits planned. She had participated. More than once, she’d worn her own counterfeit self like armor: a smile that cost nothing, a nod that promised compliance without surrender, a silence that said this will not follow me home. Those tactics worked—until they didn’t. Until the stage lights dimmed and she realized she’d mistaken endurance for strength.
A bead of water slipped free from her hairline and traced a slow, deliberate path down her temple. It curved along her jaw, lingered at the hollow of her collarbone, then detached and struck the marble bench below with a soft, obscene plop. The sound landed heavier than it should have, echoing in the room like punctuation—final, unavoidable. It startled her. Not because it was loud, but because it was real. Something had fallen, and nothing rushed in to explain it away.
She let her hands rest where they landed—one against her knee, the other flat on the bench, skin cooling fast against stone. There was a quiet defiance in not arranging herself, in refusing the reflex to pose or brace or correct. Her body softened. Her thoughts did not. Instead, they began to close ranks. Regret, curiosity, bitterness, the faint residue of want—things she usually scattered to survive the day—had gathered without her consent. Not neatly. Not kindly. Just enough to demand acknowledgment.
This was the moment most people missed. Not the spectacle, not the collapse, but the narrow interval afterward—the space where there was no audience left to please and no script to hide behind. A reckoning without witnesses. A pause where the scaffolding of roles—lover, professional, survivor—stood exposed long enough to reveal how temporary it all was. She had avoided this space for years, filling it with noise, motion, ambition. Now it held her still.
Soon she would leave this marble mausoleum, wrap herself in fabric chosen for its discretion, and step back into the corridor of borrowed lives and borrowed confidence. She would speak when expected, laugh on cue, disappear politely when required. But she would carry this with her: the unguarded second when nothing was staged, when nothing asked her to perform. The cost of admission had been simple and brutal—you had to see yourself whole.
And you had to stay.
Author’s Note
My thanks to the hosts and community behind FOWC, RDP, and Word of the Day for creating spaces that reward risk, restraint, and the quiet work between spectacle and truth. Challenges like these aren’t just prompts—they’re pressure points, asking writers to stay present long enough to see what remains when the easy choices fall away.
Dawn came early, the way it always did—no warning, no mercy. The sun didn’t rise so much as shove its way in through the slit where the blackout curtain had given up, and the landlord’s plastic rod had bowed to gravity. Even with my eyes shut, the light burned red behind my lids, hot and insistent, like it had something personal to settle.
I reached for the clock on the milk crate beside the mattress and knocked over the chipped mug I’d forgotten to finish. The smell of stale coffee lifted into the room, bitter and faintly sour. Three hours. Maybe three and a half if I lied to myself. The numbers glowed an accusing green.
Sleep used to feel like rest. Somewhere along the way, it turned into a negotiation. Too much, and I woke up slow, waterlogged. Too little, and every sound cut straight through me. Either way, the house won. It always did. I’d learned to live with that, the way you live with a low-grade ache—by pretending it wasn’t there until it suddenly was.
I sat up carefully, joints popping like they were keeping score, and I was losing. Five years in this apartment, and my body never lets me forget what it cost to stay. For too much rent, I got one bedroom, a kitchen that doubled as a hallway, and a bathroom floor that sloped in three directions, none of them toward the drain. To knock a few hundred off the rent, I’d agreed to be the building’s super—a title that came with keys, complaints, and the quiet understanding that nothing was ever really under control.
I didn’t mind the work. There was a grim satisfaction in fixing things with vise-grips and duct tape, in persuading broken parts to cooperate. The tenants left me alone until something failed. Then it was always my fault: the pipes, the heat, the smells that crept up from the basement like unfinished conversations. I kept a toolbox in the hall and a can of WD-40 on every windowsill. Some days, that was enough to feel useful.
For a long time, the building held a fragile peace. People suffered privately. Doors stayed closed. Even the plumbing knew better than to complain too loudly. Then, six months ago, something shifted.
The guy in 4B decided the rest of the world no longer mattered.
It took four months to learn his rhythm. Another two to accept that there was no beating it. If he was awake, the building was awake. Television blaring. Speakerphone arguments with creditors and voices I never heard respond. Footsteps that shook dust loose from the ceiling. Noise as occupation.
Right on schedule, the first sound tore through the pipes—a wet, animal bellow that rattled the radiators. I lay there counting the beats that followed. I knew the order. I always did. The grunts. The crash of something heavy. The metallic clatter of breakfast was like a punishment.
You could set your watch by it, if you didn’t mind waking up disappointed.
I swung my legs off the mattress and crossed to the sink, splashing my face with water that couldn’t decide what temperature it wanted to be. My hands shook slightly as I braced against the porcelain. In the cracked mirror, I barely recognized the man looking back—thinning hair, bruised eyes, a face that had learned how to endure by going blank.
Behind me, the apartment listened. The fan sighed. The fridge ticked. A cockroach darted from behind the toaster and froze. We’d reached an understanding, the bugs and me. I didn’t hunt them, and they kept their distance. I flicked the crumb tray. The roach vanished.
From down the hall came the roar of a daytime talk show and a voice shouting back at it, furious and certain. The sound slid under my skin, settled somewhere I hadn’t named yet.
I stood there longer than I meant to.
Then I crossed the hall.
I didn’t knock.
With one kick, the door gave way.
The sound of splitting wood cracked the morning open. The towel jammed beneath the door skidded free and the smell rushed out—burnt oil, old sweat, something sour that had stopped pretending it was food. It hit me all at once, thick enough to taste.
The television kept screaming.
He stood frozen in the middle of the room, frying pan dangling from his hand, eyes wide with the kind of surprise men wear when the world finally refuses to accommodate them. For a second, neither of us moved. I could feel my heart hammering against my ribs, each beat sharp and electric, like my body was bracing for something it hadn’t agreed to yet.
I hadn’t planned anything past the kick. No speech. No threat. Just the quiet that rushed in behind it, heavy and unfamiliar.
“Turn it off,” I said.
My voice didn’t sound like mine. It was low, even. That seemed to scare him more than the door ever could. If I’m honest, it scared me a bit as well. He looked at the television, then back at me, like he was weighing his options for the first time in a long while.
I took one step inside.
The frying pan hit the floor. The volume dipped, then cut out entirely. The silence that followed felt exposed, like skin after a bandage is pulled away. Thin walls. Held breath. A building pretending not to watch.
I stood there longer than I should have. Long enough to notice that the quiet felt good. Long enough to realize how easily I could get used to it. That was the part that stayed with me.
I left before it could harden into something else.
Back in the hall, my leg started to shake. Not fear—release. The kind that comes after you cross a line you didn’t know you were standing near. I leaned my palm against the wall until it passed, the paint cool and gritty, grounding me in a way nothing else had all morning.
The building stayed quiet.
It wouldn’t last. I knew that. Letters, calls, consequences—those were already lining up. But none of that mattered right then.
What mattered was this: for the first time in months, the noise had stopped because of me.
And that knowledge sat heavier than the sound ever had.
Author’s Note
My thanks to Fandango for hostingFSS #230and for continuing to make space for writers to test edges, take risks, and let stories breathe a little rough. Flash work like this thrives on constraint and invitation in equal measure, and it’s always a pleasure to step into a prompt that encourages both tension and honesty. I appreciate the time, attention, and community that go into keeping these sessions alive—and for giving this piece a place to land.
The city leaned toward midnight, its spine bent by years of weather and worse decisions. They moved with it, two figures descending an alley that felt designed for secrecy. The stones underfoot were slick, dusted with rain and soot, each step stirring a faint echo that refused to settle. From somewhere above, a tired streetlamp cast a thin beam of light—weak, jaundiced, unable to decide what deserved illumination.
She walked to his left, he to her right, the arrangement deliberate and old. Once, it had been instinct. Now it was habit, the kind that survives after meaning has burned off. The space between them was exact, calibrated, a distance duplicated so many nights it no longer felt accidental. Anyone watching from a window might have mistaken them for a pair, but the city knew better. The city always did.
The alley’s walls were dark, their bricks breathing out the memory of arguments and bargains struck too cheaply. The air smelled of wet iron and neglect. Each shuttered window felt reminiscent of something neither wanted to name—other walks, other endings postponed by cowardice or hope.
Near the top of the incline, he remembered the night he’d told her she was the only thing in the world worth keeping. He’d believed it then. That was what made remembering dangerous. A promise, once cherished, doesn’t fade quietly—it sharpens.
She stopped without warning. He took two more steps before the absence registered, before the silence took shape and weight. It felt ceremonial. Final.
“This is where I turn,” she said. No tremor. No plea.
He nodded. Anything more would have been an insult—to what they’d been, or to the truth they’d finally stopped dodging.
She turned away, footsteps receding until they dissolved into the city’s indifferent breathing. He stayed where he was, letting the streetlamp buzz overhead, letting the cold settle in his bones. Then he turned back the way they’d come, alone now, the alley already closing ranks behind him as if he’d never been there at all.
She waited on the platform where the light gave up trying to decide what she was. Not shadow, not brightness—just a woman standing in the gap, coat buttoned tight like a lie she’d practiced until it stopped sounding like one. The fabric was bruise-black, the kind that never quite turns yellow, only learns how to pass for healed. Rain worked her hair into a damp argument she didn’t bother to win.
The glass beside her held a version she didn’t trust. That woman looked finished—eyes steady, mouth neutral, the expression of someone who had crossed a line and discovered there was no lightning waiting on the other side. No voice of God. Just silence, clean and disappointing. This place was outside her remitnow, but she came anyway. Old habits cling harder when they know they’re about to be abandoned.
She balanced one heel near the yellow edge, close enough to feel the threat without committing. Leaving was an art. The trick wasn’t escape—it was delay. Linger long enough and running starts to resemble waiting. Cowardice, rebranded as coincidence.
The commuters slid past her in fragments: headphones, wet collars, eyes trained on floors and phones. A man in a suit brushed by, close enough to smell his soap, and didn’t see her. Another looked once, then flinched away, as if her presence required an accounting he didn’t have time for. Good. She had no interest in being inventoried.
The lights overhead were merciless—fluorescent, flattening, turning every choice into a verdict. Stay or go. Be or disappear. She belonged to neither. She lived in the half-second before impact, the space where outcomes hadn’t hardened yet. There was something alluring about that suspension—possibility clenched tight, regret still out of breath.
Her phone buzzed inside her pocket. Twice. Then nothing. She didn’t check it. Whatever waited there had already failed its audition. She’d learned the shape of absence well enough to recognize when it fit.
When the train came, it did so without ceremony. No warning, no forgiveness. Just metal and wind and the sound of time keeping its appointments. Doors opened. She stepped inside and stood, refusing the comfort of a seat, watching the platform slide away. The city folded back on itself in reverse, erasing her inch by inch, reflection first.
Dispatches from the Splinters of my Mind – Entry 13
I can’t say when the corridor first materialized. There’s no memory of a door ajar, no misstep that explains it. No hinge, no threshold. It simply arrived—complete, unquestioned—as if I had been born inside its walls rather than wandered into them.
That absence troubles me more than the corridor itself. Things are supposed to begin somewhere. Even disasters announce themselves. Here, there was nothing—no sound, no light, no before. Just the corridor, already waiting.
The stone underfoot is smooth in places, chipped in others. Scarred. Once, it might have gleamed. Now it absorbs everything—light, heat, attention. When I stand too long, the cold works its way up through my soles, into my calves, settling deeper than I expect. The air tastes of damp mineral and old stillness. My breath sounds too loud. Like I’ve violated a rule I didn’t know existed.
Columns line the hall, evenly spaced, grey, worn at the edges. Order, at first glance. I try counting them. I always lose track. The numbers slip away before I can hold them. The spacing stays perfect anyway, as if my failure doesn’t matter.
They enclose me like ribs. Protective, maybe. Or something else.
Between the columns stand figures.
Tall. Draped in dark cloth that hangs without argument. No faces turned toward me. No movement. Still, the silence feels occupied. Crowded. I get the sense—not strong enough to prove, not weak enough to ignore—that I am being observed without being acknowledged.
Measured. Not judged. That’s worse.
I tell myself they’re statues. Stone doesn’t remember. Stone doesn’t notice what you’d rather stay buried. I repeat this until it almost settles.
Almost.
Because stone doesn’t breathe. Stone doesn’t shift its weight. And once—just once—I’m sure I see the faintest disturbance near a mouth that isn’t there.
I count again. One. Two. Three. Ten arrives too quickly. The first column feels impossibly far behind me. The corridor refuses to resolve. No vanishing point. No end.
I step forward.
Nothing responds.
No echo. No change in air. Even movement feels unregistered here, like a suggestion the corridor doesn’t bother acknowledging. I take another step, slower. Careful. As if the place might punish urgency.
Still nothing.
It occurs to me—not as panic, not as revelation—but the way one notes an administrative error, that I may have been walking for far longer than I realize.
The figures are closer now. I can see details in the cloth. A frayed hem. A discoloration near the shoulder. Small failures. Human ones.
I stop in front of one.
The head tilts slightly, as if listening for instructions that never arrived. The face is unfinished. Not erased. Abandoned. Close enough.
The posture unsettles me.
Not because I recognize it—but because my body does.
I move on.
The corridor offers no resistance.
Further in, the repetition presses harder. My mind starts supplying differences where none announce themselves. That one looks tired. That one resigned.
That one—
I stop.
The resemblance isn’t in features. It’s in stance. The way the weight settles. The way the shoulders give up without collapsing. Endurance. Learned, not chosen.
I don’t touch it. I don’t need to.
For a moment—longer than I’m comfortable admitting—the idea takes hold that I belong here. There’s space. There’s always space. The corridor doesn’t move people through. It keeps them.
Wrapped in the same dark cloth. Standing. Waiting. Time thinning out until questions lose their edges. It would be quiet. Predictable. Safe in the way anesthesia is safe.
The ease of the thought terrifies me.
I turn and walk on.
The floor changes. Cracks spread across the stone—raised, uneven, pressing up from below. I step around them without thinking. Tripping feels… wrong. Like a violation.
The figures thin. The columns pull back. The silence changes. No longer expectant. Watchful.
Ahead, the corridor narrows.
This should feel like progress. It doesn’t.
I realize I haven’t looked back. The idea of turning around tightens something in my chest. Not because of what I might see—but because of what might not be there. Some confirmations feel irreversible.
The corridor begins repeating itself. The same broken stones. The same chips in the same places. The same figures I’m certain I’ve already passed.
This isn’t familiarity. It’s procedure.
I stop. I listen.
Nothing speaks. Nothing directs. The corridor continues without needing me.
That’s when it becomes clear—not all at once, not cleanly—that this place doesn’t lead anywhere. It keeps records. It preserves versions. It holds what arrives long enough for movement to feel unnecessary.
Time stretches. Thought dulls. The invitation is subtle. Reasonable.
I consider standing still.
The thought lingers longer than it should.
Then I step forward.
Not because I believe there’s an exit. Not because progress feels real.
But because standing still feels too much like agreement.
It knew the sound his knees made when he stood, the way his weight shifted before he sat, the exact board that dipped because he always landed there. It had taken years, but the wood had adjusted. That seemed fair. He was still working on it.
Ford claimed the left side. Chevy took the rail when it was warm, the chair when it wasn’t. The cooler stayed between them, neutral territory. No one argued about it anymore.
The pills were still in his pocket. He didn’t take them right away now. Not rebellion—delay. He liked the small window where his body still belonged to him before chemistry took over negotiations. The doctor called itwellness. He called it maintenance.
Earlier that day, at the pharmacy, the girl—no, the woman—had touched his hand.
Not accidentally. Not lingering. Just a soft, practiced thing as she explained what the pills did, how often, what to avoid. Younger, but not embarrassingly so. Age-appropriate, like that mattered.
The sensation moved through him fast and clean. A shockwave. Lovely. Immediate.
A smile crept onto his face before he could stop it.
She returned it. Let his hand go, then thanked him with a look that stayed a moment longer than necessary. A woman hadn’t looked at him like that in years. Maybe they had and he hadn’t noticed. Or maybe he hadn’t been ready to be seen—to feel anything other than the familiar ache of grief.
It felt like cheating on Olma Jean.
One of the last things OJ said—voice already thinning, eyes still sharp—was that he should live his life without her. Find someone. Share it. He’d called it hogwash at the time. Still did.
But he hadn’t pulled his hand away.
Because her touch proved something. That he still existed. That he was alive and visible, even if only for a moment.
It was nice to be seen.
He gathered his things quickly. Too quickly. He needed distance—from the counter, from the light, from what the moment threatened to become. Outside, he sat in his pickup with the bag of meds on the seat beside him and a fresh supply of treats for Ford and Chevy rattling in the cup holder.
Inside, the house still smelled faintly like citrus if the light hit it right. The juicer sat on the counter, dust settled into its seams. He hadn’t cleaned it. Couldn’t bring himself to. Everything turns permanent if you don’t argue back.
He sat down on the porch again, pills still in his pocket, the echo of that touch lingering longer than it had any right to.
He said the words out loud, just to hear them land.
He was still here.
The porch did not respond. It didn’t need to.
But for the first time in a long while, he didn’t sit because he was tired.
Dawn in Millhaven Cove never comes in fresh. It oozes through the horizon like sour milk spilled on an oil-slicked counter—thin, cold, already unwanted. The sky hangs bruised and jaundiced, more purplish bruise than golden promise. Morning stumbles in with a limp. The air tastes of scorched coffee grounds, stale cigarette ash, and the weary indifference of a town that looks right through you once it’s marked you as invisible.
I spent nights wedged behind a shuttered bakery by the harbor, my back pressed to crumbling brick, concrete scraping my shirt. I slept on yesterday’s newspaper, drinking in the damp sea breeze when I dared. Dawn cut me out of sleep and pushed me toward Maple and Third—the bleakest corner in town—where I’d squat on the curb, shoulders drawn in, while traffic lights blinked urgent and useless, as if blinking hard enough might change something. Politeness was a luxury here. Vulnerability was currency: if you whispered, no one listened; if you trembled, they stared at the pavement.
That’s Millhaven Cove’s quiet contract: the more you need, the more you disappear.
My fall wasn’t dramatic. No sirens. No headline moment. It was a slow rust—one small compromise piling on the next until the floor finally splintered under me. Once, I punched time cards at the pencil factory on East Main—where we turned graphite and paint into elemental optimism for schoolkids. Blue pencils for hope. Yellow for caution. Green for keep going. I believed in the alchemy of small things. I believed that mattered.
I dated a woman who clipped horoscopes from magazines and wrapped my sandwiches with love notes. She said my Taurus stubbornness grounded her. She left when my stubbornness calcified into inertia.
When the factory shuttered—another silent casualty of digital “progress”—rent notices multiplied like mold. Groceries became cheap beer from the corner store; my bed became a park bench. My apartment vanished first thing in fine print, a tidy legal erasure of everything I’d built. I held on to one relic: a stub of an optimism pencil, worn down to the metal ferrule, the eraser chewed into a jagged ulcer of hope. I stuck it in my pocket like proof that I’d once had a reason to believe.
The final push came in my sister’s handwriting. She’s a social worker, so her we love you was perfectly folded—professional compassion. Then, in cramped smaller letters that cut deeper: Don’t come home unless you mean it. No one tells you how it guts you when the last person you could count on decides to stop rescuing you.
I read that line over and over until it carved itself behind my eyes.
Addiction, I learned, isn’t about the drink or the pill—it’s about boundaries bleeding away. You almost forget they were ever there. First it’s never before noon. Then never except on Tuesdays. Then only when it rains. Until one morning you wake on a Thursday with rain soaking your face and realize you’ve broken every last promise you swore would save you. And you’ve become the very person you swore you’d never be. My universe shrank to three stained blocks—the bus station restroom, the liquor store with its plastic mini-bottle display, and the blinking OPEN 24 HRS sign that lied as much as I did. The letters R and S in HOURS had rusted off. I figured they’d given up too.
Salvation didn’t rock up with trumpets. It slapped me in the knee—literally—with a flapping flyer on a February wind: MILLHAVEN COVE RENEWAL CENTER—HOPE STARTS HERE. I laughed. Hope was a billboard lie for people who had backup plans. Still, the ink ran into my thumb and something in my chest stirred. Reflex or longing, I tore off the address tab and tucked it beside the pencil stub.
That night, under a sputtering streetlamp, I counted coins and did the math I’d done a thousand times before: another night numb or a reckless bet on this “renewal.” I split the difference—bought a stale muffin, saved the bus fare, vowed to step inside for just one day.
The center’s lobby was too bright, too clean—like it expected me to behave. A receptionist with kind, tired eyes asked my name and didn’t flinch at Just Jake. She handed me forms and a cup of coffee from a silver carafe so polished I almost didn’t recognize my hollow face in its curve. Then group therapy: folding chairs in a circle, voices trembling over past wreckage—some confessing like defusing landmines, others brandishing their losses as badges. We worshiped at the altar of worst of all. I found myself nodding along to the litany of broken promises.
Detox was brutal. No poetry there—just nights that shook me raw, bones aching as if life itself had been wrung out. Dreams clawed their way back through the surface. I cursed every well-meaning soul who’d ever said, Take it one day at a time. But the mornings came anyway. Hot showers scoured the residue of last night’s shame; accidental laughter cracked through the tension like sunlight.
I relapsed once. Hard. My sister’s voice on my cell phone, begging me not to die, cut straight through the stupor. Guilt came roaring back—who begs a grown man not to kill himself? She talks like my darkness can be fixed by daylight rules. Like I don’t remember her own sleigh rides, the ones she labeled letting off steam. I’ve heard that story before. I’ve told it myself. Just take the edge off. I could throw a rock and hit five people with that same excuse in any direction. She’s sober now, settled into the role, preaching the familiar sermons with the confidence of someone who made it out. I know she’s disappointed in me. But what gutted me more was realizing how deeply disappointed I was in myself. Everything I’d clawed back slipped away in a haze. Still, this time, I limped right back to the same folding chair. Learned—again—that humility isn’t erasure.
Recovery taught me to treasure tiny victories: brushing my teeth, making my bed. No banner-waving moments—just head-down work. I wrote apology letters I wasn’t sure anyone deserved. They felt clichéd, hollow gestures—a whisper of regret in a storm of consequences. But I mailed them anyway. My sister wrote back: I’m proud of you. I read that line until the paper thinned in my hands.
And then—no grand finale, just quiet change. I started volunteering. I found work sweeping floors at the very bakery I’d slept behind. I stopped conflating survival with absolution. I showed up.
They love the I got better ending. But they never ask what recovery cost. Sobriety didn’t hand me clarity so much as it stripped away the fog that used to soften every edge. Now I see the damage—mine and everyone else’s. I see how close the drop-off still is. How easily survival can become a performance.
Sometimes I still roll that chewed-down pencil stub between my fingers, feeling the metal edge where hope’s eraser used to be. It reminds me that hope isn’t a color someone hands you. It’s something you sharpen, again and again, knowing it might splinter at any moment.
Millhaven Cove remains bruised at dawn. The streets still turn their faces from those who need too much. But some mornings, when the light slices through the haze just right, I can stand in it without flinching.
That’s not a miracle. It’s a chair I keep coming back to— and a morning that, once in a while, doesn’t limp quite so badly.
I kept thinking I needed something new to say. What I really needed was to sit still long enough to hear the words that were already here, humming beneath my skin.
The room smells of dust and old paper, touched by the faint metallic cold that creeps in when winter presses its cheek against the glass. The windows vibrate in their sills, a thin argument with the wind.
I push the front door open and let the cold in. It slices across my face, biting cheeks and knuckles with clean precision. The air passes me as if I’m furniture—no more consequential than an empty chair. When I close the door, the room exhales. The smell settles into something familiar. Something that knows my weight.
On the porch, the boards groan underfoot. The world reduces itself: wind through bare branches, a distant car, the patience of winter waiting for nothing. I linger between inside and out, as if crossing back requires permission I haven’t earned, as if I need to traverse something unseen before I’m allowed to return.
I’ve been hunched at the desk for hours. Or days. My legs ache like rusted hinges; my spine stiffens when I shift. Time has stopped offering its verdict, and I don’t ask for one. Some distances aren’t measured in miles or minutes, but in how long you can endure your own thoughts without reaching for escape.
The notebook lies open before me. Blank. Not accusing—just patient. The page holds a quiet gravity, waiting for something that won’t wilt under light. I’ve tried to force pages like this before. Paper never yields to pressure. Only to attention.
I used to think silence meant absence. I know better now. Silence is crowded—filled with abandoned sentences, thoughts I promised I’d return to when I was steadier, braver, less tired. They linger whether they’re too heavy to lift or too plain to hide behind craft.
Seamus offers a single, unimpressed meow and resumes washing her paw. Judgment delivered.
The clock ticks, stubborn and slow. Outside, children’s laughter cuts the air, then disappears. Branches scrape as squirrels tear through the trees, reckless with energy I no longer spend freely. Somewhere just beyond my vision, something waits. I don’t turn. I don’t speak.
The radiator clicks once and settles. A car passes, tires whispering over wet pavement, already forgetting where it’s been.
The pen shifts between my fingers. I hadn’t noticed how tightly I was holding it. Ink meets paper—soft, inevitable. One word forms. Careful. Measured. Not a beginning. A catalyst.
Dispatches from the Splinters of my Mind – Entry 12
I didn’t expect to find anyone out here.
This stretch of land was where people came to lose things, not recover them. Ruined garden, dead roses, night thick enough to bruise your lungs. The kind of place you walk through only if something heavier is pushing you from behind.
But she was there—hooded, veiled, blindfolded—kneeling in a field of collapsed petals. Her stillness wasn’t passive. It was deliberate, like someone waiting for a verdict they suspected they wouldn’t survive.
A faint ember glowed at the heart of one dying rose beside her knee. Gold, quiet, defiant. That single bloom didn’t belong here any more than I did.
She didn’t turn when I approached. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t reach for a blade. The air around her was the kind people enter only by accident.
“You alone out here?” I asked, though the answer was obvious.
Her head angled toward my voice. “Still deciding.”
“On what?”
“Whether solitude is a wound or a home.”
I stopped a few paces away. Not out of fear—more out of respect. Some people carry storms so dense you don’t step too close unless invited.
“Why the blindfold?” I asked.
“So the world can’t trick me into believing it’s changed.”
I let that sit a moment. The roses whispered in the wind, petals shifting like softened ash.
“You waiting for something?” I asked.
“A sign,” she said. “A memory. A reason.” A pause. “Maybe an ending.”
Her fingers sank into the roses, searching for something beneath them. Not clutching. Feeling. Testing the borders of whatever she still believed in.
“You think endings come find you?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “But grief does. And it never knocks first.”
I moved closer, lowering myself into a crouch. Up close, the blindfold looked like something she tied herself—not a binding, but a boundary. A way of saying: I see enough without seeing anything at all.
Her breathing was slow but not steady. The kind of rhythm people get when they’re fighting tears without wanting to admit it.
“You come out here to die?” I asked.
“To choose,” she said.
“What’s the choice?”
She lifted the faintly glowing rose, its ember casting a soft outline across the cloth over her eyes.
“Whether to see things as they are,” she said, “or as I feel them.”
I reached instinctively toward the blindfold. Not forceful. Just curious. But her hand rose and pressed gently against my wrist.
“Don’t.”
Her voice wasn’t sharp. It wasn’t even afraid. It was… resolved, in a tremor-laced way only people who’ve hurt enough to recognize the shape of their own boundaries can manage.
“You don’t want to see the world around you?” I asked.
“I already do,” she said softly. “Just not with my eyes.”
I lowered my hand. “Most people would call that denial.”
“Most people,” she said, “confuse vision with understanding.”
She tilted her face toward the faint warmth of the rose. “When I look at things, I start filling in the story. Adding meanings that aren’t there. Projecting old wounds onto new shadows. I see too much. And none of it’s true.”
Her fingers trembled once, barely noticeable.
“With this on,” she continued, touching the blindfold, “I feel the world instead of interpreting it. I hear it. I sense it. I don’t get lost in what I think things are.”
I let her words settle. She wasn’t fragile. She wasn’t defeated. She was… calibrating. Choosing her method of survival.
“There’s a path east,” I said. “Ruined, but navigable.”
“I know,” she whispered. “I stood at the fork earlier.”
“And?”
“And I couldn’t choose.”
“Because you couldn’t see it?”
“No,” she said. “Because I could.”
The ember pulsed in the rose like a small, stubborn heartbeat.
“When you’ve been hurt often enough,” she said, “every familiar road feels like a trap. Every new road feels like a lie. You stand there waiting for some sign—some clarity—to tell you where to go. You wait so long the waiting becomes its own kind of grave.”
“And the blindfold?”
“It’s not to hide,” she said. “It’s to quiet the noise.”
Her face—what I could see of it beneath the veil—softened. “I don’t want to see the world tonight,” she said. “I want to feel what’s left of me inside it.”
I understood that in a way I wished I didn’t.
“You’re not lost,” I told her.
“No,” she said. “I’m unlearning the version of myself that got me killed the first time.”
Wind swept through the roses, their petals rattling like brittle memories. The ember in her hand brightened, painting the lower half of her face in gold.
I offered my hand—not to lift the blindfold, not to drag her toward sight, but because no one should sit in a field of dead flowers alone.
She didn’t take it at first. Her fingers hovered millimeters from mine, trembling like she wasn’t sure whether to trust the impulse.
“You don’t need your eyes for this,” I said quietly. “Just the part of you that knows exactly what you want and is terrified to admit it.”
“And what do you think that is?” she whispered.
“To stop standing at the fork.”
Her breath hitched. Not loudly. Just enough to notice if you were close.
“The path east…” she said. “It felt like the one I should have chosen before everything went wrong.”
“Then why didn’t you?” I asked.
“Because someone convinced me I wasn’t the kind of person who deserved to walk it.”
Her hand finally—finally—closed around mine. Cold fingers warming slowly in the cradle of my palm.
“I can’t see it,” she said.
“You don’t need to.”
“How do you know?”
“Because sight’s never been the problem,” I said. “Belief has.”
She swallowed hard. There were tears beneath the blindfold; I could hear the thickness in her breathing.
“Lead me,” she said, steady even through the shake. “Down the path I should have chosen. Not the one I kept returning to out of fear.”
I rose, pulling her gently with me. Her footing was careful but sure, her other hand cupped around the glowing rose so its small ember wouldn’t die.
“You realize,” I said, “leaving the blindfold on means you won’t see what’s ahead.”
“I don’t want to,” she replied. “If I see it, I’ll try to predict it. Control it. Ruin it before it begins.” A breath. “Let me walk without knowing.”
I nodded, though she couldn’t see it. Some people need eyes. Some need maps. She needed silence—her own, for once, not the world’s.
We stepped through the dead roses. Their petals brushed her legs like faint apologies.
“Tell me something,” she said softly.
“What?”
“Does the night look as heavy as it feels?”
“Worse,” I admitted.
She smiled faintly. “Good. I’d hate to be the only one carrying weight.”
Another few steps. Her grip tightened when the ground shifted, then eased again.
“You’re not afraid,” I said.
“No,” she replied. “I’m aware. Fear is when you run from things. Awareness is when you walk toward them knowing they might break you.”
“And you think this path will break you?”
“Everything breaks me,” she said. “That’s not new. The question is whether it teaches me something afterward.”
“And what do you want it to teach you?”
“That surrender isn’t defeat,” she said. “Just a kind of honesty.”
We walked farther. The night didn’t lighten, but something inside her did—a straightening of the spine, a deepening of breath, a quiet resolve she must have forgotten she owned.
She stopped suddenly.
“What is it?” I asked.
She held the glowing rose out toward the dark.
“When hope survives in a place like this,” she said, “it isn’t a promise. It’s a warning.”
“Of what?”
“That the world isn’t done with me yet.”
She lowered the rose to her chest. The ember brightened once—brave or foolish—and then stilled, warm against her heart.
“Tell me,” she whispered. “Are we still walking east?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
She tightened her grip around my hand, the blindfold still firm across her eyes.
“Then don’t let me stop,” she said. “Not even when I want to.”
We stepped forward together, and the night shifted around us—not lighter, not kinder, just… open.
Behind us, the dead roses rustled in the dark. Ahead, the path waited without expectation.
And she—blindfolded, trembling, resolute—walked toward it not because she saw it but because she finally understood what bloomed after the darkness surrendered was not the world. It was her.
Some days, I feel like the unofficial understudy for Marlon Perkins from Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom—minus the khaki shorts and the camera crew. No judgement here, khaki’s are so comfortable. Wildlife keeps showing up in my life like it’s angling for a recurring role.
A few years back, it was Louie and Smiley—two raccoons who treated my house like a spiritual retreat with free snacks. I returned from visiting my folks to find Louie perched in my office chair reading the Douay-Rheims Bible with the focus of a man reconsidering his sins. Smiley wandered out of the kitchen with a loaf of bread and a pack of cheese like he was prepping for a midnight sermon.
Panic. Scramble. Silence. I expected the Bible to be covered in raccoon glyphs, but it was clean. The kitchen was another story entirely. The kitchen looked like a flour bomb had gone off. And the little bastards were munching on my Cheez-its. Looking back I can’t blame them because Cheez-It’s are righteous. And it’s been over a year since I’ve seen either of them. Strange to admit, but I miss those idiots. You don’t realize how lonely you’ve gotten until you start missing thieves with tails.
These days, everything seems to drift toward “normal”—if that word still means anything. Maybe it’s really just slipping back into the routine that makes sense to you, even if it looks ridiculous to anyone else. My routine involves trying (and failing) to quit smoking while watching the neighborhood wildlife walk around like they pay rent.
Groundhogs strolling like retirees. Squirrels hustling like Wall Street interns. Feral cats acting like landlords.
They don’t hide; they don’t wait for the coast to clear. They move like the world belongs to them.
Some mornings, the line between wild and human feels paper-thin.
Lately I’ve been paying attention in a way I never used to—maybe that’s why the animals have gotten bolder.
Because then came the possums.
A pair waddled down my sidewalk one evening, paused, and stared at me like I was the one intruding. As if they were wondering if I was going to hurt them or let them be. I supposed they had decided because one of them lifted a tiny paw and waved.
Then she stood up and said, “Mangus, don’t act like you don’t see us! Ralph, would you look at this—humans can be so rude.”
Ralph gave the possum equivalent of a shrug.
I figured that was strange enough for the week, but winter has a way of dragging even stranger things to your doorstep.
There’s something about a cold morning—the chill bites you like you walked into the wrong yard. A reminder of the no-no’s of life.
A few mornings later, frost was clinging to everything like regret. I stepped out with a cigarette—a filthy habit, so I’m told. But I’ve lived long enough to see people celebrate worse sins, so I take the judgment with a grain of salt.
That’s when I saw him.
A raccoon was sitting on my stoop, smoking one of my cigarettes, staring into the frost as if it had whispered a prophecy. He jumped when he finally noticed me. His eyes went wide, then settled. If I meant him harm, I’d have done it already.
I lit my own cigarette. You hear the snow crunching beneath someone’s footsteps. I turned.
“Don’t worry,” the raccoon said without looking back. “That’s just Smoke wondering if you put anything out to eat. You’ve been slipping on that, by the way.”
Smoke—another raccoon—raised a paw in greeting, then kept moving toward the trash can like we were roommates who barely tolerated each other.
I took my first drag. Ah, the sweet relief of the little lies we tell ourselves. “Best thing ever.” Not really—but the small fibs get us through the day.
Cold mornings always pry open old memories. Suddenly, I was thinking about a chocolate cake—dangerously good-looking, baked by someone capable of getting a diabetic canonized or killed. I told myself I’d be a “good diabetic” that day. Truth was, it simply wasn’t the weekend.
I’m not diabetic on the weekends. A doctor once told me that’s not how it works. My response: “Watch me, partner.” Gave him my patented fuck off look. He didn’t know that expression at the time, but he learned fast.
Later, a young woman offering the cake stood beside me—closer than she needed to be. She smelled nice. Held out a plate.
“Yes, you have diabetes,” she whispered. “But you still have to live.”
Best cake ever.
Back on the stoop, the raccoon finally spoke.
“I’m Stu. Stuart Bigelow. That’s what a little girl across town used to call me. Cancer took her. Cancer’s an evil SOB—it comes for us all.”
“I’m Mangus,” I said. “And I have one question.”
“What’s that?”
“Who in the hell told you you could smoke my cigarettes?”
Stu coughed mid-drag, a little smoke curling out like he was half-laughing. “Well, I figured since you left them outside, it was a party pack.”
Stu’s whiskers twitched after each exhale as if the smoke was burning his nose.
I snorted, then coughed, then burst into laughter. “So not a party pack, Stu.”
I’m sitting at the table, drinking coffee, smoking a cigarette, waiting for the liquor distributors to show up. The invoices are spread out like old confessions. Ursula drops into the booth beside me, scooting against the wall, legs propped up on the bench like she’s claiming territory. She looks like she’s been rode hard and put away wet.
“You look like hammered dogshit,” I say.
“Thanks,” she sighs. “It’s a wonder women aren’t fighting in the parking lot for a chance to talk to you.”
I grunt and go back to the receipts. It was a good night. A bunch of weekenders dropped in just because they heard Willie and Ernie were here. Then somehow someone whispered that Josephine Baker might show. It was over after that. Word of mouth is gasoline in a place like this.
We’re in between both worlds—nobody really knows the size of the joint. The place shifts. Expands. Contracts. Accommodates. Like memory. Like guilt.
The door opens, blasting light from the heat tab—too bright, too sharp. Just a silhouette. I shield my eyes.
Bass Reeves walks in.
Not dressed like legend, not like myth—just a man who’s walked through dust and didn’t bother wiping it off. I don’t call him over. He comes anyway. Doesn’t sit. Just stands long enough to confirm he’s real, and not just folklore wearing boots.
He takes the seat across from me—no words exchanged. Doesn’t need any.
The door opens again, except this time, it doesn’t make a sound.
Poe steps through.
He enters like he’s always belonged indoors, even when he hasn’t eaten in days. Coat longer than necessary. Shoes too clean for a man with his kind of imagination. He doesn’t look at us. He looks at the rafters, checking for ravens. Bass nods. Poe nods back, like grief recognizing authority.
Ursula doesn’t greet them. She knows better than to greet ghosts.
I start to say something, but I stop—because someone is standing at the edge of the table.
No one saw her come in.
No coat. No apology. No explanation.
Just there.
Mata Hari.
She’s not posing. Not seductive. Not shimmering. Just still.
Present.
Composed like someone who’s tired of being looked at and never actually seen.
Reeves rises—not out of courtesy, not because she’s a woman—but because someone has entered his perimeter.
Poe stands, too, but slower. Not startled. Just… intrigued. Like he’s been trying to write her for years.
She doesn’t look at either of them.
Her gaze drops to my receipts.
My records.
“You keep records,” she says softly. “That makes you accountable.”
She doesn’t sit. She doesn’t need to. The room begins adjusting around her—like furniture shifting to make space for gravity.
Before I can recover, the door opens—with noise this time.
Ursula walks back in, not with plates, not with style. But with familiarity.
She leans down and kisses the newcomer on the cheek.
“Hey, Rudy.”
Rudolph Fisher blushes and shrugs like a schoolboy caught passing notes.
I light another cigarette. My hand is not steady.
“Remember my first kiss,” I mutter. “Lime green woman.”
“Lime green chick, huh?” Yuri calls from across the room—thick Russian, thick boots, thicker folklore.
“You eat the worm again?” Roscoe asks. He’s polishing the same glass he’s been polishing since Truman was president.
I shake my head.
The fellas glance at each other—slowly, like the air just changed language.
Oscar breaks the silence.
“It was two worms.”
Everyone nods like that explains everything.
Ursula guides Rudolph to the table. He doesn’t posture. Doesn’t rush. He sits like a man whose pace belongs to him—not to the room.
“Now we’ve got rhythm,” he says, tapping the table twice. The table… agrees.
“You guys hungry?” Ursula asks—already heading to the kitchen before anyone answers.
She won’t cook it—God forbid—but she’ll deliver it. Gifted waitress. Terrible woman for boiling water.
Roscoe and Oscar drift toward the bar, part-time employees who never leave and never clock in. I once told them I’m not paying extra.
They nodded like monks agreeing poverty was noble.
Ursula returns with plates she definitely did not make.
Bass studies his meal like it’s giving testimony.
Poe inhales the steam like he’s trying to decode its loneliness.
Fisher smiles without tasting anything.
Mata Hari watches butter knives like they hold state secrets.
No one speaks.
Not because we’re eating.
Because something is coming.
The door opens a third time.
Not dramatic.
Just right.
Gwendolyn Brooks walks in.
Not like royalty.
Like someone royalty once stood for.
And everyone—Poe, Reeves, Fisher, Yuri, Roscoe, Oscar, Mata Hari—stands.
Not out of politeness.
Out of alignment.
She doesn’t require attention. The room composes itself around her presence.
She does not take the head of the table.
She takes the center.
Because that is where gravity sits.
She sets down her satchel. Folds her napkin.
And without looking up:
“Tell me,” she says, “why you write.”
No one answers.
Because royalty does not ask questions.
She issues invitations.
And then—
There are eight cups on the table.
And only seven of us sitting.
The eighth cup is warm.
I turn—
And Toni Morrison is already there.
Not having entered.
Not having appeared.
Just present—hands folded, elbows resting, as if she had always been here.
Brooks doesn’t turn to greet her.
She only says:
“You took your time.”
Morrison smiles—small, devastating.
“No,” she says. “I took my place.”
Then she looks at me.
Not through me.
Into me.
Not asking a question—
Delivering one.
“What promises have you made… that your writing is afraid to keep?”
Track: “November Trees and Rain” – Marie Dresselhuis
On most November mornings, there’s a chill in the air. Not the kind that grabs you by the collar and shakes you awake, but the subtle kind — the one that lets you know it’s there. It moves slow, almost tender, until your body shivers without asking permission.
I hear the morning before I see it. A woodpecker knocking its code into the trees, winter birds answering in their thin, determined voices. I close my eyes and let the breeze speak for a while — the rustle of fallen leaves, the soft give of the season shifting underfoot. There’s a certain beauty in the bareness of the trees. Something quiet. Something honest. Not something I can describe cleanly in words, but it’s beautiful all the same — the kind of beauty that doesn’t need witnesses.
Then the world shifts again — one of those November moments of return. The air brakes hiss, then squeal, and suddenly the stillness cracks open. Children rush toward the bus, half-awake, half-dressed, somehow always unprepared and always ready. The adventure begins whether they are or not.
I remember my own kids doing the same. I miss those mornings — not with regret, but with that quiet wish a father carries for a different version of himself, a different decision made on a different day.
Guppy’s cry pulls me back. She’s in my chair, staring at me like I’m late. Her way of reminding me that the present is still here, still demanding, still alive. Work waits. Memory wanders. But Guppy doesn’t let me drift too far.
So let us go then, you and I, into this next stop in Groovin’ with Glyn — that mixed music bag I keep rummaging through.
“November Trees and Rain” doesn’t try to dazzle you. It doesn’t fight for attention. It just unfolds — steady, slow-water honest. The title alone feels like a location on a map: somewhere between the last red leaf falling and the moment the season exhales. The guitar comes in like breath; the vocals come in like thought; the whole thing feels like watching the world turn the page while you stand there holding the corner.
This is a song for people who know how to sit with themselves. Not judge. Not fix. Just sit.
The Devil’s Voice in the Back of the Room
Not everyone trusts the quiet. They say they do, but not really. They want to be shocked and awed underneath while saying, “it’s so peaceful.” Some people hear a slow song and panic — like silence might reveal something they’ve worked hard to bury. Give them rain and they’ll close the blinds. Give them bare trees and they’ll look at their phones. Give them a morning like this and they won’t hear anything but their own hurry.
A song like “November Trees and Rain” has no chance with them. Too inward. Too honest. Too close to the bone.
But November isn’t for cowards. And neither is this track.
The Lift — Why It Belongs Here
Because there’s a moment midway through the month when the noise dies down — not the external noise, the internal one. This song fits right into that pocket. It’s the sound of a thought finally forming. The kind of realization you don’t chase; it arrives on its own timetable.
“November Trees and Rain” is what happens when the world stops performing and just is. Bare. Wet. Cold. True.
It reminds you that not everything beautiful announces itself — some things just endure.
Week 1 woke us. Week 2 asks us to stay awake.
Because the trees are bare now, the rain has longer stories to tell. Are you ready to listen?
It’s never as simple as answering, “What book are you reading right now?” I usually have four or five going at once — most of them nonfiction. Histories, craft books, philosophy, the “how did this happen and why does it still matter?” kind of material. Somewhere along the way, I forgot how to read purely for pleasure. Training does that. Once you learn to take stories apart, you stop seeing them as entertainment and start seeing them as machines.
Even when a novel doesn’t fully work, I still take a wrench to it. I listen for the knock in the engine, the missed beat in a line of dialogue, the moment the writer blinked instead of pushing through. I can enjoy a book, absolutely — but I enjoy it like a mechanic listening to an engine idling just a little rough.
And here’s the part I’m almost embarrassed to admit: I can’t bring myself to write in books. Feels like a cardinal sin. So instead I’ve got notebooks scattered all over the house — pages filled with scribbles, arrows, fragments, arguments I’m having with an author who isn’t in the room. I finally gave in and bought one of those e-reader gizmos that lets you highlight the digital version. It feels like cheating, but at least I’m not defacing paper. A technicality, but I’ll take the loophole.
So when someone asks what I’m reading, they expect a title. But the truth is, I’m running an autopsy.
And the books on my desk right now — Under the Dome by Stephen King and L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy — are the kind that don’t give up their secrets easily. Which is exactly why they matter.
Stephen King gets labeled “the Master of Horror,” but that’s just a convenience for the shelf. King’s real mastery is building pressure systems — closed environments where the air tightens and ordinary people start showing their real faces. In Under the Dome, the dome could be aliens, magic, or a freak atmospheric event; it doesn’t matter. It’s a magnifying glass. It forces truth to the surface.
King understands that people don’t transform under pressure — they’re revealed. Chester’s Mill doesn’t turn violent because of the dome. The dome just takes away the freedom to pretend.
And that’s where the cognitive dissonance hits. You read something wild — a man electrocuted by an invisible barrier, the town fracturing into fear and paranoia — and your mind rejects it. “People aren’t like this,” you think. But rewind thirty seconds. You heard a crash outside your window, put the book down, checked it out, and watched your neighbor scream at a trash can like it betrayed him. You shook your head at the nonsense, then came back to a fictional scene that suddenly feels easier to believe than real life.
That’s King’s trick. He shows you something unbelievable so you finally acknowledge the truth you’ve been ignoring.
Ellroy, on the other hand, doesn’t need supernatural pressure. He starts inside the rot.
In L.A. Confidential, corruption isn’t a plot device — it’s oxygen. The moral decay isn’t creeping in; it’s already soaked into every wall, badge, and handshake. His characters don’t break down over time. They begin the story already fractured, already bent by pressures they barely acknowledge. Ellroy’s cognitive dissonance comes from the reader wanting to believe people aren’t this cruel, this compromised, this hungry for power and absolution.
But then your phone buzzes with a news alert and disproves that hope in under four seconds.
Ellroy doesn’t distort reality. He removes the polite language that keeps us comfortable.
King writes about what happens when the walls close in. Ellroy writes about what happens when the walls never existed in the first place.
King exposes human nature by turning up the pressure. Ellroy exposes human nature by turning off the excuses.
One town collapses because the dome forces truth to the surface. The other city collapses because truth was never allowed to stand upright.
Both men understand something we work very hard to avoid:
The unbelievable is always happening. The unbelievable has always been happening. We just prefer to call it fiction.
So when someone asks what I’m reading, the short answer is Under the Dome and L.A. Confidential.
But the real answer is: I’m reading two authors who drag the human condition out into the open, each in their own way — King through the surreal, Ellroy through the hyperreal. Both force you to look at the reflection, even when you’d rather look away.
And maybe that’s the part we pretend not to see — the truth isn’t hiding from us. We’re hiding from it.
“Because sometimes the lessons that shape you come folded, ink-stained, and intercepted by your parents.”
The last time we talked, I narrowly escaped the fallout from The Battle. I still don’t know why my father even put up a fight. In situations like that, Mom wins—she always wins.
Dinner was late that night, and Dad’s last nerve; frayed. He moped around the house like a rejected understudy in his own life. Mom chuckled every time she passed him—quietly, of course, out of his line of sight.
But enough about The Battle. I’m here today to tell you about my next misadventure: The Connie Winford Diabolical.
Suppose you’ve ever been twelve and suddenly realized that girls weren’t carriers of incurable cooties but mysterious, magnificent creatures who smelled like shampoo and danger. In that case, you already know where this story begins. And what were those bumps on their chest? Some mysterious growth? Were they dying? Nope—they were boobs. The downfall of man.
Middle School. The arena of hormonal confusions, bad decisions, Grey Flannel, and Drakkar. The mixture alone was enough to make anyone hurl. But back then, we had the constitution of gods—right up until alcohol got involved. That’s a story for another day.
By then, I’d graduated from class clown to romantic visionary. English was still my thing, which meant I’d discovered a weapon far more dangerous than spitballs—words.
I started writing notes. Not just any notes. Masterpieces. Folded with precision, tight enough to survive the perilous journey across the classroom. Each one a mini-drama of doodled hearts, overwrought metaphors, and shamelessly borrowed Hallmark poetry.
Shakespeare would have been proud.
However, evidence suggested otherwise.
Then came The Note.
She was new—a transfer student, with curly hair, a smile like she’d been warned not to use it in public. Connie Winford. A name that still sounds like a trap.
I slipped her my finest work: a declaration of eternal middle-school devotion written in purple ink. It included the words destiny, soul connection, and—God help me—forever.
She giggled. I took that as a victory. But she showed her best friend, who showed another, and by lunch, the entire cafeteria knew I’d pledged undying love. They had thoughts. Loud ones.
I tried to play it cool. That lasted six minutes. Then, in a fit of damage control, I wrote a second note claiming it was all a joke. She didn’t buy it. My teacher, who intercepted note number three, definitely didn’t buy it.
By 2:15, I was in the principal’s office. By 3:00, my parents had been called.
Home.
My father was furious. “No man in this family conducts himself like this,” he said.
Mom countered, “What about Uncle Butch?”
My father popped, “You think this is a laughing matter?”
I braced myself for the usual surrender—Mom softening, saying something like, Of course not, dear.
But not my mama. No way.
“Yep, freaking hilarious,” she said. “You act like you didn’t pass me notes in school. If I recall, your note was worse than his. Plus, your folding was terrible. Everyone knows it’s about the presentation. Eat your peas.”
Dad said nothing. Just stabbed at his plate, probably reconsidering all his life choices.
That night, I did what any self-respecting, lovesick fool would do: I called her. The house phone was mounted on the kitchen wall—the kind with a coiled cord long enough to lasso a small horse. I dragged it down the hallway into my room and whispered my apology, voice trembling like it carried state secrets.
Things were going well—until I heard it.
A click.
The quiet death of privacy.
My parents were listening in.
Mother’s voice came first: “That’s a mighty long cord for a short conversation.”
Then Father, dry as ever: “Son, next time you write a love note, use better paper. That cheap stuff smears.”
This from a man who knew his folding game was subpar. Was I adopted?
They tag-teamed me. There was no escape.
I hung up the phone, face burning, dignity in ruins.
The next day, my teacher sentenced me to read from the dictionary during lunch. I didn’t mind. It felt poetic somehow.
That’s the day I learned two things:
Love makes geniuses stupid.
Parents have a sixth sense for dial tones. Some may even say, they feel a disturbance in the Force.
And maybe—just maybe—that’s when I became a writer. Because if you’re going to get in trouble for your words, they might as well be worth reading. Until you get in trouble saying nothing. Again, a story for another day.
Entry Eleven: Dispatches from the Splinters of My Mind
I found her in the middle of a killing field that should have had no place for beauty.
The moon sat low and full behind her, a pale coin pressed into the sky, casting that cold lacquered light across armor, bodies, and the drifting ash of trampled blossoms. The night smelled of copper and rain. Around us the dead refused to stay still; wind pushed their rags like restless sighs.
I had already decided the day was lost—too many screams, too many men swinging at ghosts. But then I saw her, and the world tilted. She stood where no one should have stood: upright, unhurried, her robe heavy with embroidery, dark as ink, stitched with peonies and waves that shimmered when the moon looked her way.
The first thought that crossed my mind was: Who brings flowers to war? The second: Maybe the flowers brought her.
They grew around her feet, low white clusters, fragile as breath. Some had taken root in the soft mud, others hovered midair like they hadn’t decided what kind of thing they wanted to be. A faint perfume drifted off them, too clean for this place. And then I realized some of them were growing from her—the side of her face, her shoulder, the line of her arm. A bloom of defiance carved into flesh.
Behind her stood four figures draped in similar black silk, motionless. Their eyes were lowered, hands clasped before them. Attendants, perhaps. Or echoes. Even from where I stood, I knew they weren’t here to fight. They were here to witness.
I tightened my hand on my sword because habit is older than reason.
The ground sucked at my boots as I stepped closer. Somewhere to my left, a man still dying called for his mother. Another, somewhere behind, recited a prayer halfway through his blood. But sound thinned the closer I came to her. Like the air around her absorbed noise and left only pulse.
She looked at me when I was five paces away. Not before. Not after. Like she’d measured the exact distance between recognition and threat.
Her eyes were half-lidded, the color of tarnished brass. Her mouth was calm, as if the ruin surrounding her had been a foregone conclusion. One petal rested just below her cheekbone, pale against the skin. She didn’t brush it away.
“You walk like a man who has forgotten why he still draws breath,” she said.
Her voice was quiet but cut through the air like string through silk.
“I’ve followed death long enough to know his rhythm,” I said. “Some nights he leads. Some nights I do.”
She inclined her head, just enough to show she’d heard. “You are ronin,” she said. “A sword with no oath.”
“Whatever name suits you,” I said. “You stand where no one should stand.”
She looked past me toward the moon. “Where else would I be? When blades sing, flowers bloom. The field requires witness.”
She had no weapon in her hands, yet everything about her said blade. I’ve met killers who strutted under banners, and others who killed softly with no name to anchor their ghosts. She belonged to neither. Her stillness made me feel the way a boy feels before the first snow—expectant, humbled, afraid to speak.
“You should leave,” I said. “When dawn comes, they’ll burn what’s left.”
“You mistake me,” she said. “I came to see who is worthy.”
That word bit. Worthy. I’d watched too many noblemen rot in palanquins to trust it. Worthy is what the dying call themselves before the blade arrives.
“Worthy of what?” I asked.
“Of the sword. Of the bloom. Of carrying death without becoming it.”
The field groaned. A survivor staggered from the smoke—young, wild-eyed, clutching a short spear he didn’t know how to hold. He saw her, and some idiot fire lit behind his teeth. Maybe he thought she was a reward for surviving. Maybe he thought the gods had thrown him one last chance to matter.
He ran at her, screaming.
In battle you have seconds to make a decision. Whether wrong or right, it needs to be made. One of the fastest ways to learn someone is not what they say, but how they fight.
For one breath, I froze. I had seen too much to believe in rescues. The smart thing—the living thing—was to watch it unfold. Yet something in her stillness reached me, a quiet that felt older than every order I’d ever followed.
I moved before thought could argue. Maybe it was reflex. Maybe guilt. Or maybe—and this is the truth I won’t soften—I moved because her movement deserved a blade.
I drew, stepped forward, and cut low. The arc found his thigh. He stumbled, confused, half alive. I turned the motion, cut again—clean, deliberate, final. His blood came hot, red against moonlight. It splashed over the flowers at her feet.
They didn’t stain.
The droplets slid off as if the world itself refused to let his death take root there.
She looked at me, not with gratitude but recognition.
“You took him before he had time to be afraid,” she said. “That was mercy.”
I laughed, short and dry. “That’s a generous name for what I do.”
“There are cruelties worse than steel,” she said. “You gave him a swift exit. That counts.”
Her calm should have offended me, but it didn’t. It steadied something that had been shaking inside for too long.
I studied her again, this time the way I studied opponents before the first strike. Every warrior moves according to what they believe: greed, fear, pride, duty. The body tells the truth the mouth hides. She stood like someone who believed in balance—not victory, not survival, just the quiet between breaths.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“A name is only a sheath,” she said. “Tonight, I am what you see.”
“I see a woman blooming on a battlefield.”
“And I see a man who still listens for music in the clash,” she said. “We are both out of place.”
The four behind her lifted their eyes then—slowly, together. Four sets of dark irises, moonlit, unreadable. The air thickened, like waiting for a storm that didn’t come.
“You could have struck me,” I said.
“I could have,” she replied. “But you already offered your sword.”
“I fought even though it wasn’t my fight,” I said. “Your movements deserved my blade.”
She gave the smallest nod, approval or farewell—I couldn’t tell which. “Then peace, ronin. Not the peace of victory. The peace that lives in the breath between strikes.”
For a long moment, we stood there—two still figures in a world still burning. Around us, the wounded moaned, the fires licked the edges of the field, but none of it entered the space between us. The night had carved a small silence and decided to let us share it.
I let the sword drop, tip resting in mud. Not surrender. A bow to something rarer.
When I looked again, the blossoms at her feet had multiplied. Their pale glow shimmered faintly in the dark, each one perfect, each one refusing the ugliness of what surrounded it.
The moon sank. The smoke grew thicker. I blinked, and she was gone. The four attendants too. Only the flowers remained—untouched, unstained, rooted in earth that should have been ash.
At dawn, when the officers returned with torches and the day’s excuses, they found me sitting beside the blossoms. I told them nothing. Some truths need soil and silence more than words.
I carry her still. Not her image—images fade—but the moment itself, caught behind the ribs like a splinter of light. That memory is my wound and my mercy both.
Because now I know this: even those made for killing can recognize beauty when it stands unafraid. And once you’ve seen it—truly seen it—you carry it. Always.
No one remembers who started it. Probably someone who said something so catastrophically dumb that laughter was the only way to keep the world from collapsing in on itself. That’s the real magic of it — turning foolishness into fellowship.
Every year, on the first Friday of November, we celebrate the sacred art of not having it all together. A holiday for the half-aware, the overconfident, and the beautifully human.
There are rules to this madness, of course — because even fools need structure.
How to Celebrate:
Step 1: Confess Your Foolishness
Start the day by admitting your latest act of nonsense — the thing that made even your reflection sigh. Write it down on a scrap of paper. Don’t overthink it; the truth works best when it’s still raw.
Fold it up.
No name, no excuses.
Drop it into the Crowning Ceremony Drawing — a sacred bowl, coffee mug, or whatever container hasn’t been repurposed as an ashtray.
It’s not about shame. It’s about liberation — the moment you realize your worst mistake has become everyone’s favorite story.
Step 2: Craft the Crown
Tradition states that the previous year’s Chucklehead Supreme must craft the crown for the new one. It’s a sacred duty — part redemption arc, part creative punishment.
No two crowns should ever look alike. Some are wrapped in tinfoil and regret, others in duct tape and leftover wisdom. A few have been rumored to include receipts from bad decisions and one brave attempt at origami.
The important thing is effort. The crown must be made by hand and offered with the solemnity of someone who’s learned their lesson — or at least pretended to.
Step 3: Acts of Absurd Kindness
At some point during the day, pay someone a compliment so strange it bends their sense of reality for a second.
Say, “Your left eye is particularly dazzling today.”
Say it straight-faced. No grin, no flinch.
Pick a word you’d never use — dazzling, radiant, exquisite. The kind that belongs in perfume ads or embroidered pillows. Use it anyway. Because for one brief, shining moment, everyone deserves to be a little ridiculous.
Step 4: The 3 P.M. Chuckle Ritual
Wherever you are, tell the worst joke you know. No winners. No scoring. Just the shared sound of collective groaning to remind us that laughter, even bad laughter, is still holy.
When the last chuckle fades, everyone assembles for the Crowning Ceremony Drawing. The folded confessions are placed in the center — a bowl, a hat, or a leftover candy dish from last year’s failed diet.
One confession is drawn. One truth is read aloud.
And somewhere in the room, the new Chucklehead Supreme exhales and steps forward to claim their crown.
Step 5: Crown the Worthy
Present the handcrafted crown in a mock ceremony — bonus points for a kazoo processional or a slow clap that lasts slightly too long.
The new Chucklehead Supreme must wear it proudly until someone else out-chuckles them. It’s not a punishment. It’s an acknowledgment: you’ve officially joined the noble order of people brave enough to look foolish and laugh about it.
Step 6: For the Retired & the Wise
Same rules apply — only now the arena has changed. Gather your fellow retirees at your usual hangout: the diner, the park bench, the coffee shop that knows your order before you walk in.
Write down your foolishness on a napkin if that’s all you’ve got. Drop it in an empty sugar packet box. Tell the same bad joke you’ve told every week since ‘92.
Crown the winner, or the loser — depending on how you look at it — and raise your mugs in solidarity. Because time doesn’t make you immune to foolishness; it just gives you better material.
Why We Celebrate:
Because perfection is a myth sold by people who’ve never burned toast.
Because humility ages better than pride.
Because every one of us is a walking blooper reel trying to look composed in public.
And maybe because, after a lifetime of getting it wrong, I’ve learned the trick isn’t avoiding the fall — it’s learning to laugh when you hit the floor.
So pour your coffee. Wear your invisible crown. And remember: the world doesn’t fall apart when you screw up — it just becomes a little funnier.
Long live the Chuckleheads.
Author’s Note:
This piece was written in celebration of imperfection — the kind that keeps us honest, humble, and human. Somewhere out there, someone’s still wearing last year’s Crown of Cluelessness. If that’s you, your left eye is still dazzling.
Daily writing prompt
Invent a holiday! Explain how and why everyone should celebrate.
Entry Ten: Dispatches from the Splinters of My Mind
An image-driven meditation on beauty, decay, and the quiet art of passing for alive.
White comes first. It always does. I dust the night from my face with a powder the color of absolution and tell the mirror a soft white lie: you are whole, you are warm, you belong to the day. The mirror nods like a priest who’s already decided my penance. I let him; he’s one of the few men who listens. The powder smells faintly of lilies and old hotel sheets—clean, practiced grief. It cakes where sweat used to live. Underneath, skin hums the slow song of bacteria doing what they do best: recycling hope. Purity photographs better that way. Besides, no one suspects the dead of good lighting.
The birds come next—two shards of sky trained to settle across my eyes. They know their marks like altar boys at a funeral mass: left wing grazing the brow, right wing cooling the cheekbone, claws light against the temple. Their feathers shine the blue of high altitudes where breathing is theory. Blue is the color of transcendence, or so the books say. In practice, it’s the color of numbing—detachment dressed for church. I didn’t choose them for beauty; I chose them for temperature control. They keep my expressions chilled, my thoughts neat, the heat from showing. They smell faintly of ozone and hairspray, like the backstage of heaven. I can feel the air around me losing interest.
I open my mouth. They tilt their heads, listening. They remember the rules better than I do. The first sound they stole was laughter—too spontaneous, too human. They took it the way crows take rings: quick, gleeful, final. The second was the small sigh I made each morning while practicing the art of appearing alive. By the third—my name said to no one—I understood that silence is a currency, and I was rich in withdrawal. I keep my tongue behind my teeth the way some people keep money in a Bible: near God, far from thieves. Sometimes I miss how a real word tastes—like pennies and possibility—but the birds look so proud of me when I behave.
Grey arrives without asking. It bleeds in through the window frame, through the paint I swore was dry, through the place in my chest where memory used to turn red at the edges. Grey is the hallway color, the corridor between rooms, a suspended breath that never quite chooses air. Days collect in it like lint. The birds blink in unison, blue against the grey, and the room looks like an old photograph waiting for a pulse that won’t come. I practice gestures of aliveness—a nod, a smile, a hand smoothing the same invisible wrinkle. It’s choreography learned from the living. The trick is to blink at correct intervals. Dead eyes give it away. I’ve learned to count my blinks like prayers; no one notices faith when it’s rhythmic.
They call what I do resilience. I call it advanced taxidermy. Everything soft stuffed with survival slogans and stitched closed with polite smiles. I stand upright, lips faintly glossed, eyes decoratively haunted. People nod, impressed. “You look great,” they say, and I do. Death, when moisturized, is surprisingly photogenic.
At night, when the light loses its discipline, the birds twitch. Their wings quiver like unspoken apologies. They hate uncertainty—it smells too much like life. I tell them to relax, that nothing here moves unless I schedule it. They don’t believe me. They can sense the old pulse under the floorboards, that stubborn animal rhythm I keep sedated. Sometimes, if I listen too hard, I hear it muttering: Still here, you fraud. Still beating in the dark.
Grey has personality now—kind of an accountant with a god complex. It tallies what I didn’t say, what I pretended not to feel, every emotional expense I tried to write off. I owe everything. I keep paying in composure. Some mornings the debt collector is the mirror; some mornings it’s the ache behind my jaw. Both smile as they itemize.
I remember warmth in flashes. A mouth that used to taste like smoke and sincerity. A day when laughter didn’t feel like theft. The red comes back in small riots—a pulse in the wrist, a fever under the tongue, a dream where color doesn’t apologize for itself. Red is the rude friend who won’t stop showing up uninvited. It whispers, You can still want, you know. I tell it to shut up. Wanting is expensive, and I’m already behind on my rent in reality.
There was a man once—there always is, because tragedy likes a good straight man. He said my quiet was “mystical.” I let him think that. No sense disappointing the audience. He kissed me like he was trying to wake me, poor thing. I let him. The living need their illusions too. When he left, I smiled so gently you’d never guess the birds were choking on the heat inside my mouth.
People assume silence means peace. It doesn’t. It’s just a better brand of noise—high-end, minimalist, with clean lines and no bass. Inside it, everything still screams; it just does so politely. That’s the delicious part of the lie: it tastes like calm if you chew slow enough.
Sometimes the rot gets ambitious. It stretches under my skin, flexing like it wants out. I tell it we have a reputation to maintain. “Decay,” I whisper, “but quietly. We’re professionals.” It listens, most days. When it doesn’t, I add more powder and a higher neckline. Elegance covers almost anything.
I’ve been congratulated for my strength so often I should invoice for it. People mean well—they always mean well—but their compliments sound like eulogies now. “You’re so composed.” “You’re such an inspiration.” They don’t know that composure is just rigor mortis doing ballet, that inspiration is what happens when exhaustion gets good lighting.
Tonight, the air tastes different. There’s something electric in it, the flavor of coming storms or confessions. The birds sense it, feathers rustling like gossip. Blue, once loyal, starts to falter—its chill turning translucent, its sanctity cracking at the seams. Underneath, a hint of red—raw, seditious—tries to breathe.
I stare at the mirror. It stares back, unimpressed. “How long can you keep this up?” it asks without moving its lips. “As long as it looks good,” I answer. We’ve had this conversation before. Neither of us ever wins.
Black waits behind everything, patient as gravity. Not malicious—just inevitable. It’s the color of what doesn’t flinch anymore. When I close my eyes, it hums like an engine. It’s not the absence of light; it’s the womb of it. Maybe that’s comforting. Maybe it’s just where truths go to compost.
The birds fidget. Their claws scrape skin, soft warnings. They know what’s coming. I’ve been thinking dangerous thoughts—words forming without permission, meanings unapproved by management. I can feel language waking up in my throat like an old addiction. I used to love words. They made me visible. Then they made me trouble.
“What happens if I speak?” I ask. My voice sounds foreign, like someone rearranged the vowels while I slept. The birds freeze, their blue fading to the dull of forgotten sky. One pecks at my brow, delicate threat. The other trembles near my cheek. For a moment, even they look tired of sanctity.
I touch their wings. They’re colder than honesty. “Shh,” I tell them. “It’s just a syllable. A small one.” I open my mouth, and something almost warm slips out—a sigh, maybe, or the ghost of laughter coming home. The sound isn’t pretty, but it’s real, and real is an endangered species around here.
The mirror blinks first. Always does. “Well,” it says in that judgmental silence only mirrors manage, “look who’s back.” I shrug. “Don’t get excited. I’m still dead; I’m just taking the scenic route.”
Color rearranges itself. White gives up pretending to be mercy. Blue goes transparent, embarrassed by its own chill. Grey loosens its tie. Red stretches like a cat finally acknowledged. Black opens one lazy eye and grins, proud parent of the mess.
I let the birds slide off, set them on the sill. They glare at me, little auditors of sin, and I swear I see envy in their beady eyes. “Go on,” I tell them. “Find someone holier.” They flutter away, leaving a faint scent of ozone and resignation.
The air without them feels indecently warm. I breathe it in. It tastes like pennies and possibility. The mirror, for once, doesn’t offer a verdict. Maybe it’s learning boundaries. Maybe I finally bored it into honesty.
Outside, the sky wears an honest blue—the kind that knows the ground exists and loves it anyway. I could try that. Tomorrow, maybe. Tonight, I’m just going to sit here, rotting politely, beautifully, honestly.
Author’s Note
Part of theDispatches from the Splinters of My Mindseries—image-driven fiction that explores the architecture of silence, self-performance, and the strange grace of decay.
Memoirs of Madness — When the inkwell weeps, I howl.
The ticking from the clock on the wall beat like a hammer against a concrete block—dust and debris flying, and every now and again a spark. That was my writing tonight. I had a head full of ideas but nothing with any heat. Then I heard something slide under the door. I froze for a second, thinking it might be the landlord bringing that “good news”—you know, thirty days and then it’s the bricks. But I remembered I’d caught that gig upstate with those high-class folks who wouldn’t know the blues if it hit them in the face, so I was good.
I walked to the door and looked down the hallway. Nothing. Then I saw Woodrow—the rat—gnawing on something. He paused long enough to size me up, then went back to work. I didn’t have the energy to do anything about it, and he knew it. Ms. Pearl, the neighbor’s tabby, slipped in through the gap and rubbed against my leg. I let her stay. Gave her some kibble, then hopped up on the edge of my desk. The page sat there, daring me to write something.
Someone once told me that’s how it starts: just sit in front of the typewriter and speak. Never worry about what you’re going to say; that part works itself out. Just don’t bitch out and you’ll be fine. Lamont Norman said that the day I bought his suitcase Royal typewriter. I laughed, thought he was kidding. He didn’t even smile. “I bitched out,” he said. “Good luck.” That was years ago. The typewriter’s still here—metal scarred, keys sticking like old grudges. I keep waiting for it to start talking first.
That’s when I noticed the envelope. Plain white. No stamp, no handwriting—just my name in black ink that bled a little, like the paper had been sweating. Inside: You are invited to The Draft. Midnight. The Double Down Tavern. That was it. No signature. No RSVP.
I laughed anyway. It sounded like something a drunk poet would dream up at closing time, but I stared at it longer than I should’ve. By eleven-thirty, I was tuning the Gibson, putting on the least-dirty shirt I owned, telling myself I wasn’t going. By midnight, I was already halfway there.
The Double Down? I’d heard of the place, but no one I knew had ever been there, and certainly nobody knew how to get there. It was one of those names that floated around in late-night stories—half joke, half rumor—always mentioned right before the bottle ran dry. I went down to the bodega on the corner for a pack of Luckies and to ask Mr. Park about it. Mr. Park knew everything worth knowing in this neighborhood: who owed rent, who got locked up, who was sleeping with whom.
But tonight he wasn’t there.
I can’t remember the last time I’d walked into that store and not seen him behind the counter, sitting on his stool, eyes glued to that little portable TV wrapped in enough tin foil to bake a potato. When the picture went fuzzy, he’d rap the side with his knuckles, nod, and mutter, “Everything just needs a good tap now and then.” The sound of that tap was part of the neighborhood’s heartbeat. Without it, the place felt wrong, too quiet, like the air had skipped a beat.
There was this strange woman behind the counter, somebody I’d never seen before, popping her gum slow. Who the hell pops gum slow? She didn’t even look at me when I asked for a pack of Luckies. Just slid them across the counter like she was bored of gravity. I decided to go for broke.
“Hey, you wouldn’t know how to get to the Double Down, by chance?”
She didn’t answer, just stepped out of sight for a second. When she came back, she slid a folded piece of paper across the counter. No words, no smile.
I opened it. It was an address. Nothing else.
I turned and walked out of the store, paper in one hand, cigarettes in the other. Halfway through the door, I looked back to thank her. She nodded without looking up, eyes still fixed on something only she could see. But in the glass of the door, I caught her reflection—and for half a heartbeat, I could swear her eyes were sparkling. Not with light. With recognition.
The address on the paper looked ordinary enough—just a number, a street I didn’t recognize. I lit a Lucky, watched the smoke coil off the end, and decided to walk. It wasn’t far, according to the city grid, but the grid had a habit of lying after midnight.
The streets were half empty, half asleep. A drunk kid laughed at a joke nobody told. A siren moaned somewhere uptown, fading slow like a horn section dying out. My shoes echoed too loud on the sidewalk; even the sound seemed to flinch.
I passed storefronts I swear I’d never seen before: a pawnshop that sold only typewriters, a record store where every sleeve in the window was blank white, a barber shop with a red neon sign that read OPEN but no reflection in the mirror.
The farther I went, the fewer streetlights there were. The city felt like it was backing away, leaving me to walk inside its ribs. I checked the paper again. The ink shimmered faintly, as if wet, and I realized I wasn’t reading a map—I was being led.
As I got close to the address, a drunk staggered out of the shadows and poked me in the chest. “Whatcha doin’?” he slurred, eyes glassy and mean. “You think you ready?”
I didn’t answer.
“You?” he barked again, then broke into laughter—loud, jagged, wrong. I pushed past him and kept walking, but when I looked back, the sidewalk was empty. The laughter stayed, close, right beside my ear.
I stopped cold, heart hammering. Took another drag of my straight, exhaled slow. When the smoke cleared, I turned toward the street—and there it was, standing where the map said nothing should be.
The Double Down.
The door didn’t look like much—just wood and paint tired of each other—but the air around it hummed like a bass string. I could feel the groove before I heard it. Slow twelve-bar, heavy on the bottom end, something that could drag your sins across the floor till they begged for mercy.
I grabbed the handle. The damn thing was warm. When it opened, the sound hit me full in the chest—smoke, whiskey, perfume, electricity—all of it moving to the same beat. The door sighed shut behind me like it had been waiting to breathe again.
Inside, the room stretched wider than geometry allows. Corners bent. Shadows leaned the wrong way. Tables sweated rings from drinks poured before I was born. Every light was gold, every bottle looked like it had a soul trapped inside praying for one last round.
The crowd was a mix of then and now: drunks in denim, poets in funeral suits, a few specters in clothes older than jazz. One cat had a typewriter balanced on his knees, keys twitching on their own. Another wore a fedora that flickered in and out like a bad reception. Every time I looked straight at him, the air shimmered.
Behind the bar stood a woman with silver hair and a stare that could sand wood. She polished a glass that was already clean. The jukebox switched gears—Howlin’ Wolf growling through busted speakers—and the floorboards started to tap back.
I took a seat near the door, playing it cool. The bartender poured something the color of regret and set it in front of me.
“On the house,” she said, voice smooth as gin and twice as dangerous.
I looked around. At the back, a stage the size of a confession booth glowed red. A man sat there, guitar in his lap, fingers resting easy like he’d been born holding it. He didn’t play; he just watched me. Smile sharp enough to slice a chord.
“Place got a name?” I asked.
She half-smiled. “You tell me.”
The drink burned good going down—smoke and sugar and bad decisions. I blinked, and the room changed. Every face turned my way. No talking, no movement, just the weight of attention pressing down.
Then a man in a white suit stood by the jukebox and tapped his glass. The sound cracked the silence like a snare drum.
“Welcome,” he said, voice rolling through the room slow and mean. “Welcome to the Draft.”
The crowd answered with a low hum that crawled up my spine.
I could see there were a few guys like me who didn’t have a clue what the hell was going on. Then there were the ones who thought they did—scribblers with confidence and cologne, already imagining the book deals. I knew that breed. They never last. If it wasn’t so funny, it would’ve been tragic, but instead it was just pathetic.
The muses began to move—slow, gliding, half smoke, half skin. Each one shined in its own color. The room buzzed like a hive. They touched foreheads, whispered, and kissed some poor souls right on the mouth. Wherever they touched, something happened: laughter, sobbing, a glow under the skin.
Names were called. Not mine.
One by one, the seats around me emptied. The writers who’d been chosen vanished, or maybe just slipped sideways out of time. The unlucky ones sat frozen, pretending it didn’t matter, staring into their drinks like they could find meaning in the ice.
I kept my eyes down. The drink had gone warm.
A man near the jukebox started laughing too loudly. “Didn’t get the call, did ya?” he said to no one. “Guess you’ll be writing grocery lists now.” His laughter spread, nervous, contagious.
I waited. Nothing. No muse came my way.
The smug ones still sat upright, chins lifted, waiting to be crowned. I’d seen that look before at open mics and literary festivals—the face of somebody convinced the universe owed them a round of applause.
If it hadn’t been so funny, it would’ve been tragic. But right then, it just felt pathetic.
A thin, cold panic crawled up my spine. I was the last fool at the table. The muses had moved on. The man in white was clinking his glass again, ready to close the show.
I told myself I didn’t care. I told myself I’d been through worse. But I felt hollow—like a joke everyone else was in on.
I couldn’t believe this shit. I didn’t even know what The Draft was until an hour ago, and now it was already over. I didn’t get picked. Harry Lucas gets the nod? What the hell is going on?
To add insult to injury—Terry Best. Terry damn Best. Man hasn’t written a line worth reading since the Carter administration, and suddenly he’s chosen? Harry and I carried that sorry bastard for years. I’m jealous, sure. Harry’s good—better than I’ll ever admit out loud—but still, it stings.
“Congrats, you lucky fuck,” I muttered, raising my glass to no one. The drink burned all the way down, a reminder that some fires don’t keep you warm; they just scar you.
The room was thinning out. The chosen ones disappeared into the smoke with their shiny new partners. The rest sat there staring at the bar like it might offer consolation. Nobody spoke. The music died, the hum faded. For the first time all night, the silence had weight.
That’s when the folded piece of paper slid across the counter, slow and deliberate.
No one was near me. Nobody close enough to reach.
I hesitated, then picked it up. The paper smelled faintly of cigar smoke and cheap lipstick.
Neon hummed like a migraine that wouldn’t quit, the kind that sits behind your eyes and waits for you to flinch. Rain slicked the street in lazy sheets, turning the city into a mirror that didn’t want to see itself.
He sat in the car, engine off, watching moths bump into the streetlights over and over—addicted to pain or maybe just tormented by the routine. They couldn’t help it. Neither could he. The radio crackled; he’d forgotten it was even on.
He waited for the speakers to spit louder. Voices chased one another, desperation disguised as competence. No one was fooled, but they were all too polite to say otherwise—the kind of manners born of dread and regret. He popped a couple of Rolaids into his mouth, chewed, then swallowed without a chaser.
The moths chased one another. Were they playing? Children, maybe—the streetlamp their merry-go-round. The thought made him laugh once, sharp and dry, before the static swallowed it.
A mess of transmissions blurred together, dispatch calls bleeding into the wheeze of cheap speakers. Mostly noise: arguments, false alarms, ghosts trying to sound important. Then one word cut through the distortion—Rogue.
He didn’t move. Just reached for the half-crushed pack in the cup holder, thumbed a smoke free, and watched the rain carve faint scars across the glass. He flicked his thumbnail against the wooden match, let the light burn a moment before touching it to the cigarette. The first drag went deep; he held it there, letting the nicotine do its job.
“Always the good ones that break first,” he muttered, though he wasn’t sure if he meant her or himself.
The cigarette burned low, ash clinging stubbornly to the tip. He cracked the window just enough for the wind to take it. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, leaving the air thick with metal and wet concrete. Raindrops caught the streetlight like cheap diamonds. Down the street, a siren came to life, and a dog sounded its alarm on the opposite side. Windows lit up—shadows of witnesses who’d never seen a thing. It was safer that way. They just let the Night play.
He turned the key halfway and let the dashboard flicker to life. The radio hissed again—fragments this time, coordinates maybe, or names swallowed by static.
“Thunder Island” perforated the silence. He wondered if a place like that even existed. He turned down the car radio and turned up the police band. Nothing is more dangerous than being the target of someone looking for something. They rush in, do things they can’t take back. Then they have the nerve to say they’re sorry—and worse, there are tears. Even worse, they actually mean it, and spend the rest of their lives shattered.
He didn’t bother writing anything down. Whoever was still talking wasn’t talking to him.
He leaned back, the seat creaking under his weight, and watched smoke crawl toward the open window. He told himself it was time to move, but his body didn’t buy it. There was a comfort in the stall, in pretending the world would wait for him to catch up.
When the transmission finally cleared, the voice was colder, official—clipped consonants, no room for mercy. A woman’s voice, maybe. The kind that used to mean something.
“Target confirmed. Proceed with caution.”
He took one last drag, killed the radio. The smoke burned; his eyes began to water as he started the vehicle. That deep rumble of the police interceptor always brought him joy. Agents were supposed to turn in the old cars years ago, but he and the motor sergeant had history—the kind that stands a lifetime without a single word needing to be said. The kind no one questions, because you wouldn’t like the answers.
He let the engine idle a moment, lights off, watching the rain bead and slide down the hood. Then he shifted into gear and rolled into the dark.
The rain washed the streets, but they’d never come clean. Too much poverty in the cracks, too much sorrow in the gutters, and just enough hope to make it cruel. Everyone still wanted everything—guilt, happiness, grace.
At a red light he watched a man curse his demons. He didn’t see them, but he knew they were there all the same. His own had a permanent seat beside him, rain or shine.
At the next light, a woman staggered down the block, stopped, and threw up her dinner—or breakfast, hard to tell at this hour. She braced herself on her knees, took a breath, and sat right there on the sidewalk. Wiped her mouth with her sleeve like it was just another thing to get through.
The wipers dragged across the glass with the sound of bones under cloth. He kept the lights off until he turned onto a narrower road, the kind the city forgot about except when it needed somewhere to dump its secrets.
The address came from memory. He didn’t need to check it; some places get branded into you like scars. The building looked smaller now, windows boarded up, the brick dark with age and rain. A single light glowed in the hallway upstairs—thin, yellow, and nervous.
He parked across the street, engine idling low. The smell of exhaust and damp asphalt mixed with whatever passed for courage. He sat there a long moment, thumb worrying the cigarette burn in the steering wheel, thinking about the last time he’d seen her face.
Not that it mattered. The past was a closed room; this was just cleanup duty.
He slipped the car into park, checked the glove box for the piece he never quite admitted carrying. He never liked the man he needed to be when he carried. There was a click as he fastened the sidearm in its holster. His boots and the wet pavement had a brief disagreement.
The rain had started again, softer now, whispering against his collar.
By the time he reached the door, the light upstairs was gone.
The hallway reeked of urine, stale beer, and mildew—the ghosts of the unspoken past everyone tries to forget but never does. The farther he went down the corridor, the more the aroma changed. He wished it hadn’t.
Wallpaper peeled in long curls like it was trying to escape the situation. The ceiling light flickered, revealing the old scabs beneath the peels. Even the walls were wounded.
He moved slowly, letting his boots announce him—no point sneaking when everyone in the building already knew the sound of trouble. He hoped these ghosts and his demons would play nice. He hoped he wasn’t too late, but he feared the damage had already been done. The only thing left was to manage it.
A door creaked somewhere up ahead. He stopped, listened. Nothing but the groan of pipes and the faint hum of rain slipping through the ceiling. Then a floorboard gave—deliberate, weighted.
He slid along the wall until the narrow window gave him a slice of the alley out back. A figure stood there, half in shadow, a hood pulled low. Not moving, just waiting.
He exhaled through his nose. Always the same dance—the waiting, the pretending nobody had to bleed tonight.
The back door stuck before it opened, metal swollen from the damp. He stepped out into the alley, smelling of trash and rain thick as old coffee. The figure turned, slow and calm, hands visible but empty.
“You came alone,” the voice said.
He almost smiled. “That’s what I do best.”
The silence stretched, tight enough to hum.
Rain hissed against the dumpster, each drop a small explosion in the puddles. The alley light above them buzzed and died, leaving the world painted in shadow and breath.
He kept his hands visible. No need to startle a ghost with old habits. The figure’s hood fell back just enough for him to see the face—tired, older, eyes like a mirror that didn’t want to reflect him.
“You shouldn’t have come,” the voice said.
“Maybe not,” he answered. “But I never was good at staying gone.”
She—or maybe it was just the shape of what she’d become—tilted her head, rain streaking down her cheek like sweat.
“They said you sold me out.”
He took a slow breath, the kind meant to buy time, not truth. “You know better.”
She stepped closer. Close enough for him to smell the rain in her hair, the metal tang of adrenaline.
“Tell me it’s not true.”
He looked past her, at the alley mouth where light threatened to crawl in. “Seriously? When did you start believing dumbshit?”
The silence that followed was heavier than the rain. She didn’t lower the gun, but her hand shook just enough to show the years between them.
“You always did know how to ruin a moment,” she said.
He almost smiled. “Guess some things don’t fade.”
The safety clicked off—soft, final.
Author’s Note: Today’s plan is simple — celebrate a friend who’s been the steady hand behind the chaos. It’s my editor’s birthday (yeah, a little late — story of my life), and she’s the reason this machine keeps running when I’m ready to set it on fire.
She spent her day listening to me whining about rebuilding the Lab, cleaning up code, catching my typos, and quietly holding everything together. That’s how she works — no spotlight, no noise, just precision and patience.
So this one’s for her. She hasn’t read Mercy Street yet — but she’s in it. Not by name, but in every line that holds restraint where rage should be, in every small mercy that refuses to die.
And since it’s her birthday, I’ll be posting a few extra stories — wouldn’t want her thinking she’s getting off easy or anything.
Happy belated birthday, Editor Extraordinaire. Here’s to late nights, clean drafts, and the kind of loyalty that never asks for applause.
When my system went down, it seemed like divine intervention—a forced pause. I took the chance to stop fighting the noise and reset my creative energy.
I sat there for a minute, half expecting the room to fill with people saying, “We’re here because we love and care about you. We’re worried. You don’t seem okay.” Instead, it was just me—and Guppy, staring like she’d seen this movie before. I muttered my customary “Kick Rocks,” and she gave me that look: “What’s going on with you, human? Pet me. Feed me. Clean my poop.”
Fair enough.
And because the universe clearly thought I needed a little more chaos, I decided to quit smoking. Yep, that was a moment of brilliance right there, buddy. I can’t remember the last time I built a machine, wrote a line, or rewired a circuit without a cigarette hanging from my lips or burning down in the ashtray. The old routine: light another while one’s already smoldering, forget which is which, call it inspiration. Now I’m in the cut back phase. Pray for me, light a candle, or call a hoodoo man to lay down some mojo—I can use all the help I can get.
Somewhere in the middle of all that nicotine withdrawal and digital resurrection, I pulled up the storyboard and looked at the mess. Dozens of storylines—some finished, most not. I decided it was time to clean house. So I’m finishing what I started. Focusing on the long fiction threads and promising myself that from here on, quality comes first. The foundation’s solid, but there’s still plenty of building to do.
You’ve all been patient, loyal, and willing to walk through my corridors of madness while I rebuild piece by piece. You deserve the best I’ve got—and that’s exactly what’s coming.
I suppose I should be pulling my hair out… wait, I’m bald—so I’m good.
We learn to live with death the same way we read by firelight—slowly, painfully, beautifully.
No one prepares you for the feeling of loving something that Death has touched.
I sit here looking around his cabin—now mine. The air smells of pine sap, old smoke, and the faint tang of whiskey soaked into the floorboards. Dust floats through the thin light that leaks between the curtains. Each corner is stacked with books—subjects as varied as anatomy and jazz theory. A shelf of vinyl lines the far wall: Coltrane, Bessie Smith, Robert Johnson. Then, tucked behind them, a few heavy metal records—Sabbath, Maiden, Priest. My father, it seems, was a closet metalhead. I smile at that. Maybe I inherited more from him than just a pulse: the music, the books, the need to understand the noise inside.
Warmth slides down my cheeks before I realize I’m crying. The tears catch the scent of dust and woodsmoke, grounding me. I never knew him growing up. He and my mother had a moment in their teens—one of those sparks people mistake for destiny before life smothers it with reason. She was in law school; he was home on leave from the Army. They met at a party through a mutual friend, made promises under a drunk moon, and a week later, he shipped out. Nine months later—technically ten, if you’re counting the way we do in obstetrics—I arrived.
I became a doctor partly to make sense of what my mother wouldn’t talk about: biology, infection, the way life insists on being messy no matter how sterile you keep your hands. That’s where I met my father—though I didn’t know it then.
He came into the ER after an accident. I was covering trauma, running late for my weekly lunch with Mom. She’s a federal judge now, but every Thursday we make time—just an hour to remember we’re still mother and daughter, not just professionals orbiting duty.
When I finally reached the ER, Mom was already there. She’d come looking for me, irritation etched into her face. But as I began to explain, she froze. Her gaze fixed on the patient lying in bed—multiple fractures, head laceration, vitals unstable but holding. The antiseptic smell and hum of monitors felt suddenly foreign, like I’d stepped out of my own body.
“Mom?” I asked.
She stepped closer to the bed. Her hand rose to her mouth, and for the first time in my life, I saw her cry. Real tears—silent, unstoppable. She reached out, caressed the man’s forehead, her fingers trembling like someone touching a ghost.
“Mom, what’s going on? Do you know him?”
She didn’t answer. Just kept tracing the lines of his face, as if memory might come alive under her touch.
“Mom!”
Finally, she turned toward me, her voice steady but low. “He’s your father.”
Then she pulled a chair to his bedside, sat down, and called her clerk to clear her docket.
My chest tightened. My legs went weak. I recognized the physiology even as it overtook me—tachycardia, dizziness, shallow breath. I nearly hit the floor before someone caught me. Carol—my charge nurse, my right hand for ten years. A skinny little thing, but deceptively strong.
We weren’t just colleagues. We were friends.
“Sue, what’s going on?” she asked, her voice sharp with command. I heard her barking orders, but the words blurred into static. The next thing I knew, I was staring at a white ceiling, the steady beep of a monitor tracing the edge of my humiliation.
I tried to sit up—irritated beyond measure—but Carol pushed me back down with one hand. For such a small woman, she was a brick wall.
“Pilates?” I asked, breathless, trying to find my bearings.
She grinned, pouring me a cup of water. “The Judge filled me in. Your dad’s a hottie, by the way. Banged up and all.”
I snorted. Of course, she’d say something like that. That was Carol—always trying to make me laugh when she knew I was about to unravel. The water tasted metallic from the cup, cold against the desert of my throat.
She stood beside me, one hand resting over mine, thumb tracing small circles like she was smoothing out the tremors beneath my skin. Neither of us spoke for a while. The monitors filled the silence. Somewhere down the hall, a code was called, and the world kept spinning as if mine hadn’t just tilted off its axis.
After a few minutes, I was steady enough to stand. Carol and I walked back to my father’s room. The corridor smelled faintly of disinfectant and rain-soaked concrete from the ambulance bay. Mom sat beside his bed, holding his hand. The look on her face—devastation mixed with fierce worry—nearly broke me. When she saw me, she stood and came toward me, wrapping me in a soft and trembling hug.
“You okay? I know it’s a lot,” she said.
“It must’ve been one hell of a week,” I quipped.
To my surprise, she roared with laughter—real, unrestrained laughter. I didn’t think it was funny, but she lost it in the middle of the ER.
“It was, actually,” she said, still smiling. “We made you.”
Her eyes drifted off somewhere far beyond the fluorescent lights. It’s strange how memory works—how it lets you step back in time, not just to see it, but to feel it, every heartbeat replaying as if the past were still happening right now.
I had two years with him. Two years I’ll never trade for anything. I’d never seen my mother happier. Watching them together, I understood their brief story hadn’t been some teenage fling—it was a spark that waited decades to breathe again. For a while, it felt like the world had given us a second chance.
Then the disease came, and everything changed. Nothing was ever the same after that.
So far, the disease had cropped up in five different towns, ravaging everyone and everything in its wake. My father was one of them.
I begged my mother to leave the area, but her stubborn ass wouldn’t budge.
“I won’t hear of it! Nothing’s running me from my home,” she snapped.
I couldn’t believe people actually said that kind of thing outside of old movies. I figured it was one of those lines characters use when they’ve already decided they’re not going anywhere.
Then she gave me that look—sharp, deliberate—and sighed. “Okay,” she said finally, downing her afternoon scotch. “When are we leaving?”
“I have patients, Mom,” I replied.
She smirked faintly, that judge’s confidence slipping through the exhaustion. “So do I, honey. Mine just happen to sit in courtrooms instead of hospital beds.”
“We just lost Albie to this shit. I won’t risk you as well,” she said.
That stopped me cold. Mom never swore. That was Dad’s thing. Hearing it from her snapped something loose inside me. I looked at her, really looked, and saw the fear beneath all that steel.
We stood there in silence, and in that silence we understood what needed to be done. If it was going to end, let it end like this—on our feet, fighting.
“Sue, honey, you die with your boots on,” my father had told me when he first started showing symptoms. He’d been delivering meds to the infected zones, refusing to stay home. I begged him to stop, but a daughter’s love isn’t enough to turn a man away from his calling.
I wish it were.
Back at the cabin, the world felt smaller, quieter. The disease had moved on, taking what it wanted and leaving the rest of us to sort through the ruins.
I sat in Dad’s old rocker, which creaked like it still remembered his rhythm. The fire popped softly in the hearth, smoke curling through the faint scent of pine and old varnish. A book lay on the end table—Judas, My Brother. Of course. Trust Dad to pick something that questioned everything. I turned it over, thumbed through the pages soft from use, and slipped on his glasses. The prescription was surprisingly close to mine. The world blurred for a heartbeat, then settled into focus—clearer, heavier.
Mom had built the fire and sat on the couch with her usual scotch, watching the flames without speaking. The glass glinted amber in her hand. She didn’t have to say anything. The silence between us said everything—loss, endurance, maybe even grace.
I read a few lines, hearing his voice in the space between words. Then I closed the book, leaned back in his chair, and let the rocker creak like it was breathing for him.
No one prepares you for the feeling of loving something that Death has touched. But you learn. You learn to read by its light.
Author’s Note: Inspired by Fandango’s Story Starter #223. Thank you, Fandango, for the spark — this one burned quietly but deep.
Entry Nine: Dispatches from the Splinters of My Mind
I wake upright, as though sleep forgot to fold me into its arms. The darkness presses in all around—soft, velvety, bruised at the edges, like some colossal bruise pulsing with the low red hum of my own blood. A cloth lies warm against my eyelids, its fibers slick where they touch my skin, chillier at the edges where the air’s breath finds purchase. I don’t brush it away. I’ve learned that on certain nights the world is safer unseen.
They breathe at my sides—two hulking presences, rigid as ancient statues steeped in the sick-sweet perfume of formaldehyde. One on my left, one on my right, like bookends clamped around a story that refuses to end. Their feet remain statuesque; instead their bodies rock ever so slightly, tilting inward, receding, then returning in a silent metronome of doubt. Sometimes they feel like mirrors, their gazes jokers with opinions. Sometimes they feel like promises, the future I was sold if I kept doing what I was doing. Most nights I know the truth: they are mine—either I forged them, or they forged me. Asking which first feels as impolite as inquiring whether the flame or the candle existed before the other.
“Don’t speak,” says one voice—dry, brittle, like my father after my brother’s funeral. “Don’t confess,” says the other, rasping through a cough that smells faintly of candle wax and stale hymns. Their words scratch the hollow behind my left ear, the birthplace of my worst headaches. These aren’t commands so much as rituals—family heirlooms too awkward to discard, for to do so one must acknowledge their worth.
But my mouth conducts its own liturgies. It leaks in secrets. A weight gathers on my tongue: metal and warmth, the taste of regrets I should have voiced long ago. The first word is always the hardest to birth. When it finally breaks free, every syllable remembers gravity and falls like ink that missed its page, staining my chin.
It’s all right, I tell myself, between ragged breaths. Blood is just memory liquefied. Let it run. Let it tally the score.
“How did we get here?” I whisper, voice ragged against the blindfold. The dark tilts its head and pretends not to hear.
Left says, “By keeping your eyes closed.” Right hisses, “By learning to love the closing.”
They speak in turns, careful not to overlap, for if they did the shape of this place would shift and I’d forget what it means to stand.
I was taught early that silence is a language with two alphabets—safety and surrender—both scrawled from the same letters. When the cops came to our flat for the second time, my mother pressed a thumb to my lips. It felt like blessing and gag in equal measure. Years later, the first woman who claimed she understood me asked if I had anything to confess. I answered “No” because survival had already flipped the coin. I’ve whispered apologies to her in colder seasons, at bus stops I never ride, through prayers I don’t believe in. None ever breached the blindfold—they slid back down, patient as ghosts.
I know what lurks beneath this cloth. I’ve seen it—how daylight has kissed it, streetlight has tasted it, how a match’s flame stared too long and flinched. Eyes that catalogue, that inventory every fracture, then try to alphabetize the fragments. If I unveil them tonight, I’ll stare out into a flock of unfinished things circling my bed—wounds and half-formed promises. One can drown in the study of omissions. Ask me how I know.
Left leans forward, winter on his breath: the damp, hollow kind that drifts through stairwells, eavesdropping on arguments. “We kept you alive,” he says, a tenderness reserved for things long dead. “We wrapped your seeing until your seeing couldn’t hurt you.” The years have built a fortress in his jaw, doors forgotten.
Right lifts a hand to graze my ear—his touch colder than patience. “We taught you an economy of withholding. What you don’t utter can’t be used against you. What you don’t name can’t die.” He pauses, fingers poised like a man waiting for payment. “We saved you from the truths that detonate families into committees.”
Between them lies a rasp—a rasp that, I realize, is my own.
I drift back to the riverbank, red water flowing like a personal insult to the city. I recall the neon sign in that solitary room—its sick throb of light like a wound bargaining for closure. I hear the voice that begged me to “keep the light on,” and how I switched it off, hoping the corridor would keep a secret of its own.
Silence exacts its own fee. It demands tiny coins—words unsaid, memories locked away—until one day you want to catch a bus out of town and all you possess is the jingle of borrowed time.
“Say it,” Left murmurs, not unkindly. “Say nothing,” Right counters, like a physician prescribing illness.
My lips part. Perhaps it is prayer, perhaps confession—perhaps the last valve cracking open in a machinery someone else designed. What I long to say is simple: I remember the first lie—it tasted like rescue. The second lied felt like rehearsal. The third taught me grammar, and the rest built a house around me: no windows, just a door opening onto a closet. I want to say that blindness, if chosen wisely, lets you aim without seeing your target. That I learned to navigate by the shadows where stars should be. And I want to speak her name, the one I’ve carved into the walls of my heart, the one whose echo never returned but whom I have nurtured in silence for years.
Yet the mouth refuses dictation. When words drop onto my collar, I taste ash on my tongue. If I linger here, the floor will absorb me letter by letter. Maybe that’s the plan: let the body become a document, the words falling where they will.
“Open,” Left instructs—not my eyes, but the wound beneath this cloth. “Close,” Right insists—not my lips, but the subject itself.
They kneel, each in reverent posture, calling it unity.
I am not devout. Faith in myself is a belated apology—a jacket thrown over my shoulders after winter has already laid bare my bones. Still, I believe in small truths: every silence is a room with a window you can paint shut; blood remembers what you refuse to; when the past leans in to kiss you, check its hands.
“Why do you resent our aid?” Right asks, almost plaintive.
“I don’t,” I rasp, the cloth muffling my words. “I’m just weary of living the shape of your absence.”
Left’s fingers find the knot in the blindfold with a lover’s care. He doesn’t tighten, only taps it, as though weighing a wish. “You won’t like what you see.”
“I rarely do,” I reply, a dry laugh clawing free.
“Then keep the cloth,” he says. “And we’ll keep you. We’re the railings in your dark.”
I envision rusted metal, cold to the touch, a splinter waiting for skin. I recall the staircase winding down to a door I never open—the handle of which somehow knows my name. Once I thought that room housed my monsters. Now I see the real monsters are proper: they safeguard my unspent courage and the coats of selves I never became.
“I have questions,” I say, voice gentle as rain. “Whose mouths whispered before mine? Where did the very first hush come from? How many women stifled their fire because the men who taught them already drowned in smoke? How many fathers measured love by volume, awarding themselves with silence?”
Left inhales, a slow vacuum. Right clears his throat like a clerk shelving confessions.
“You think your blood makes you singular,” Left says. “It only makes you consistent.”
“You think speech is salvation,” Right counters. “Speech is a tool—tuned for mercy or murder.”
Both statements are true. Both can kill.
The cloth grows heavy, soaked where its letters dissolved in transit. I recall the story of a saint who plucked out his eyes to end desire, of a soldier who bit off his tongue so no one could barter his secrets. Every tale shares the same architect: Sanctity. Security. Surrender. The walls remain flawless. The rooms numbered. No one explains the numbers until rent’s due.
“Remove it,” someone says, and I can’t discern whose voice borrowed mine this time.
My hands lift, obedient as shadows at dusk. The knot is simple—always was. The hardest part of a blindfold is the narrative that says you deserve it. I tug once. The cloth exhales. Light rushes at me with the relief of a crowd that finally chose a side.
The room reveals itself—smaller than I’d feared, grander than I’d earned. The two men are exactly as the voice in me conjured: tattered elegance, wreckage with meticulously combed hair. Their faces are maps whose borders have vanished. Their suits hang as carefully as funeral garb. Their hands hover, almost kind.
I look at Left. He looks at my past. I look at Right. He looks at my future. Neither steps forward. I remain the hinge.
Blood trickles from my chin, a rudimentary signature poised for the name that owns it. I want to wipe it away. I want to revel in it. I want to stand still and hear what stillness says.
“Are you ready to speak?” Right asks, tone hopeful.
“I have been speaking the whole time,” I say, and for the first time the room curves into something like a smile.
Left shakes his head. “If you go on, you’ll lose us.”
I meet his eyes—meet my inheritance. “Maybe you’re meant to be lost.”
Pride and regret war in his gaze, as if he’s a father examining the bruise he taught me to take. There’s curriculum here no syllabus could contain.
“You can’t survive the noise,” he warns.
“Then let the noise survive me,” I tell him. “Carry the parts I cannot.”
When I finally move, it is unceremonious. I am neither saint nor soldier tonight, only someone who learned to count by the drip of blood in the dark. I am someone who believed in railings and now tries to believe in stairs. I am someone who has loved poorly, remembered perfectly. My fingertips trace the cooling red at my jaw, smearing it as though to bless myself—two fingers pressed to skin, raising a silent benediction. I draw a thin line across my throat—not threat, but witness. Then I touch each eyelid, first right, then left. Their warmth whispers secrets textbooks never taught.
The two men release simultaneous sighs of opposing relief. They are both disappointed. They are both relieved. It is possible to be two sermons at once.
A neon sign shivers somewhere beyond these walls. A painted-shut window in another life wonders if tonight the paint might crack. The floor holds my secret. The air remembers it was once a river and yearns to practice.
“I won’t speak her name,” I murmur, voice low but unwavering, “but I will stop pretending I never learned it.”
Right bows. Left closes his eyes. The room narrows to a path that was always here.
I take a step. Then another. My mouth finally ceases bleeding—it has, at last, done its duty. The cloth in my hand is merely cloth. I let it fall. Its descent makes no sound anyone else would hear.
If I keep walking, perhaps the past won’t follow. If it does, we can negotiate. I’ve learned there are nights it’s safer to close your eyes—and nights when you must open them, so when the world returns wearing your own voice, you can tell prayer from muzzle.
Tonight, I listen for that difference. And if the voices demand a choice, they can wait—like the weather.
Eli’s fingers hammered the Underwood, the platen ratcheting like a drumbeat inside his chest. Words crashed onto the page raw and unprocessed, each keystroke sharp as broken glass. He didn’t try to catch his thoughts; they lagged behind anyway, always scrambling, always too late. Second-guessing was for people with softer bones.
The typewriter filled the basement like a predator pacing. The ding of the carriage bell jolted him at every line, each return snap a small guillotine. He welcomed the violence. As long as the machine roared, the silence couldn’t close in and strangle him.
Behind him, Iris moved. He didn’t look—didn’t dare. He knew the sound of her presence: drawers opening, papers shifting, the glide of her feet across concrete. She spoke sometimes, soft nothings that dissolved into the cinderblock walls, too sweet to be trusted. He kept his eyes forward, certain that if he broke rhythm the spell would snap and something worse would rise.
She spoke in platitudes—surface shit that didn’t mean a damn thing, not even to the person saying it. She knew I hated them. She knew I’d rather choke on silence than fill it with low-grade noise. And after everything, don’t I rate the premium line of bull? Instead—clichés. Cheap ones. Wrong on too many levels.
The words poured, jagged and necessary. He bent closer to the keys, fingers aching, shoulders burning. The smell of paper and machine oil clogged his sinuses. His job was to write. One job. Write.
Then—click. Whirr. The clatter of vinyl.
His trance shattered. Eli shot up from the desk. “NNNNNOOOOOOO!”
The speakers coughed dust. A warped guitar riff crawled from the jukebox.
Arnold Layne had a strange hobby…
The lyric nailed him to the chair. His body froze, his heart battering too fast against his ribs. A high metallic screech tore through his skull. Somewhere in the sound he swore he heard a howl, long and low, as if the memory itself had found a voice.
The world went black.
—
He blinked awake in a different room. Bare bulb. Cracked mirror. The stink of disinfectant.
In the glass, Iris stared back—hair damp, eyes too wide, skin gone bare and bloodless.
Jonquil’s shape coalesced behind her, a figure lit by candlelight. She smiled, but her mouth never moved.
“You had one job,” Jonquil said, velvet over stone. “Keep him writing. Don’t let the memory in.”
Iris clutched the sink, knuckles white. Words failed her.
Jonquil’s gaze sharpened. “You know what happens to leaky vessels.”
The memory ripped through Iris: a Guild meeting, Uncle Bug tearing into a junior agent, the sudden hush, then the impossible sight of Bug blowing softly in the man’s direction. The agent’s outline wavered—and collapsed into vapor. The smell of iron had clung to her clothes for days.
Iris trembled. If Jonquil told Uncle, she’d be next.
—
The bar hit him like a punch—heat, smoke, neon fractured on dirty glass. Bodies surged to the music, sweat and whiskey thick in the air. Eli stood in the middle, drowning in it.
Onstage, a woman with cropped hair and a voice like gravel tore through Dead and Bloated. She wasn’t covering the song; she was burning it down and rebuilding it from ash.
Her eyes found his. She grinned, stepped off the stage, and cut through the crowd like she owned it. Her hand snared the back of his neck. She kissed him hard, tasting of blood and whiskey, breath hot with hunger.
The taste hit him like déjà vu—sharp and sweet, like a kiss he’d lived before in another life, though he had no memory of whose lips had given it.
Then she pulled back, lips almost brushing his ear. “You don’t belong here. Go back. Now.”
She shoved him. The bar collapsed, light and shadow swallowing the floor. Eli fell.
—
He jolted awake at his desk, lungs empty, head pounding. The Underwood sat waiting, a fresh sheet rolled in.
On the corner of the desk, a tabby cat licked her paw. She froze mid-motion and fixed him with a single stare.
“Meow,” she said, clipped and final, before resuming her grooming.
Eli’s hands shook as he reached forward. Beside the typewriter, on a square of yellow paper, a single word was scrawled in black ink:
Frog Creek.
The letters burned into him. His stomach turned cold.
He remembered.
Something he had sworn never to speak of again. Something only he had survived.
The typewriter, the cat, even the walls felt suddenly foreign—no shelter at all, just a trap waiting to close.
Why was it surfacing now?
Author’s Note
When I released Litany in Black, my editor didn’t mince words. The call was short and sharp: “I want more.” So here it is—the next chapter, pulled from the dark seam where memory, myth, and madness overlap.
This piece draws on three of my favorite community sparks: FOWC, RDP, and Word of the Day. Those prompts slip into the prose the way shadows slide into corners, sometimes obvious, sometimes hidden in plain sight. If you caught them, you’re paying attention. If not, maybe the story is working on you the way it should—sly, unsettling, creeping in under the skin.
Chapter 3 is about fracture—Eli caught between the rush of creation and the trap of memory, Iris learning that mistakes echo louder than excuses, Jonquil tightening her grip on both. Frog Creek has finally bled through the page, and with it, the reminder that some stories don’t just haunt you; they claim you.
To those following along, thank you for walking with me into the dark. The deeper we go, the less clear the ground beneath us becomes—but that’s the only way to find out what’s waiting on the other side.
The pounding at the front door began long after midnight. Each blow was deliberate and unhurried, like the careful stroke of a sculptor’s chisel against glass. Not a summons but a demand. Brazen. Insistent.
He didn’t rise. He lay still in the attic room, letting the sound seep into him, inevitable as tide against stone. He counted the interval between strikes until his heartbeat followed the rhythm. The house trembled. Thunder muttered beyond the horizon, folding the knock into something larger—an unmeasured tide, washing through the marrow of his bones.
Then the room split open. He stood on a windswept shore. Salt spray stung his lips; the wind tasted of copper and regret. Mist curled along the sea, thin as gauze, trembling as if it hid another world.
A horse exhaled. Its breath rolled heavy as storm clouds, hooves thudding like a buried drum. Damp wool and brine clung to the air. He tasted fear, sharp and metallic, like sucking a coin.
Through the haze came a glint of battered armor—silver rubbed to pewter, seams cracked, catching light from a sun that didn’t exist. The rider’s silhouette wavered, impossibly tall, visor down, face unreadable.
The pounding at the door merged with hoofbeats. Frost rimed his lashes. His boots sank into sand that softened into ink, black and iridescent as beetle shell. The rider advanced, and with each step the sea receded, exposing bones and wire in the seabed’s muck. The air stank of rot and possibility.
A question swelled in his throat, too heavy to voice. Another strike at the door—and the dream collapsed.
He jolted upright at his desk. Shelves stood skeletal, spines stripped bare. Dust clung stubbornly to the air, as if the room refused to surrender its memories.
Only the inkwell remained. Obsidian glass, gleaming like a pool of midnight.
It spoke—not in words but as a tremor in his bones: You are the one I belong to.
Ink leapt upward, coiling into the suggestion of a figure, a face more idea than flesh. Its eyes were ancient and exact, pinning him to his chair.
Are you the writer? The question was absurd and infinite.
The shelves rattled as though books clawed to return. Each knock at the door struck like a punctuation mark, vibrating his jaw.
The room thinned. Corners bent inward. He clapped his hands to his ears, but the pounding only burrowed deeper, lodging itself behind his temples, merging with the pulse behind his eyes.
He tried to stand but found himself rooted. The ink-figure grew, head brushing the ceiling, mouth curling in some half-expression—amusement, hunger, pity.
In the mirror above the desk, his reflection wept. Ink streamed from its sockets, streaking cheeks until the face dissolved into a blur.
The whisper gained teeth. Are you the writer? Answer. Answer. ANSWER.
His tongue flooded with ink, bitter as spoiled wine. He gagged, then finally let the words tumble out, steady as confession: “Yes. I am the writer. I am the Muse.”
For an instant, silence. The sea stilled. The door hushed. The world held its breath.
But silence bears weight. And weight cracks.
The pounding resumed—faster, furious, like a heart hammering against bone. Shelves pitched forward, gnashing their empty spines. The rider’s visor leaked tar; waves behind him thickened into oil. Seafoam crawled across the rug.
The lamp shrank to a pinprick. Walls bowed outward, then snapped back, leaving him gasping.
He clutched the inkwell. Its glass was fever-hot, pulsing like it contained a second heart. Each knock rattled his skull, more intimate now, less house than body.
He tried to scream, but ink poured out, running down his chin, soaking his shirt. The inkwell slipped and shattered. The spill spread, black and inexorable, birthing the rider whole, towering, boots leaving prints that hissed as they seared into the rug.
He dropped to his knees. Through the cracks between floorboards, he glimpsed writhing shadows—half-finished stories, worlds waiting for permission. The window rattled behind him, panes shaking like teeth in a jaw.
The pounding stopped.
Silence swallowed the room. Every particle of air strained toward the door. A gauntleted hand hovered just beyond the wood. The whisper softened, almost tender: Are you the writer?
He staggered forward, each step leaving an ink-black footprint. His hand shook on the knob, slick with sweat. The ceiling sagged, the house groaning as if it would collapse if he refused.
He swallowed fear and turned the handle.
No pounding. Only the slow, splintering sigh of wood.
The door was not being knocked upon.
It was being opened.
Author’s Note: Thanks to Fandango for another amazing Fandango’s Story Starter #218 (FSS) prompt. Some doors you knock on, others knock on you. This one wouldn’t stop pounding until I opened it. Funny how a single line can spiral into something that feels less like a story and more like a confession in ink. Appreciate the spark, Fandango — and the reminder that prompts aren’t just exercises; sometimes they’re invitations we can’t ignore.
When I first answered this question years ago, I leaned into time travel, jukeboxes, and 24-hour diners. Those images still live in me—they always will—but retirement has shifted my perspective. Now it isn’t about dreaming up another job so much as embracing what I already do: writing, creating art, and taking pictures.
People love to say, “If you do something you love, you never work a day in your life.” I’ve always liked the sound of that, though I know now it isn’t quite true. Writing and art have been part of me most of my life, and while I love them, they demand work—grinding, detailed, sometimes thankless work. The pride comes not from sidestepping that effort, but from doing it anyway and still loving the process enough to come back the next day. That’s the real magic.
Although I’m still tinkering with my time machine in the basement, for now, time travel lives inside my stories. That’s the gift of the page: step through, and suddenly you’re anywhere. And while the dream of owning a 24-hour diner never happened, I still sometimes write in one. The booths are cracked, the coffee burnt, and the danish usually stale—but if you show up before the morning rush, you might catch a fresh pastry and, better yet, a pocket of quiet. The hum of neon, the shuffle of strangers, and the early-morning stillness create a kind of portal of their own.
So maybe I never needed to own the diner. Perhaps it was always enough to sit in the corner with a notebook, bad coffee, and the ache of possibility in the air—time traveling in my own way.
Author’s Note: The older I get, the more I realize it’s not about finding the perfect job, but finding the space where your imagination can keep breathing. Whether it’s a chipped mug in a half-empty diner, or the quiet corner of your own basement where “impossible” machines get built, what matters is the work you return to—the thing that keeps you curious. For me, that’s the page, the image, the story. The grind and the magic are inseparable.
Reflective Prompt: Where do you find your own “time machine”—the place, habit, or ritual that lets you slip out of ordinary time and into the work (or play) you love, even when it demands effort?
The bed had held her like a warm conspiracy—pillows swallowing her shoulders with their downy weight, linen softened by last night’s restless turns. Lantern light pooled in amber halos on the walls, quivering against damp wood. Four hours of sleep after eighteen-hour days should have grounded her for a week, but her body insisted on rebellion. Awake again, she sat upright, toes grazing the cool floorboards, eyes blinking against the dim glow. The tang of office coffee still clung to her tongue: a bitter echo of burnt midnight oil and water-thin sludge, the kind that left her stomach knotted but kept her nerves humming like exposed wiring.
She dragged a chair across the cabin with deliberate care—the legs scraping in protest—and perched at the balcony’s edge. The night air bit her bare arms, each shiver sharpening her senses. Beyond the railing, the mountains stood silent, dark ridges pressed like secrets into the horizon. The lake lay flat as polished obsidian, mirroring bruised clouds of early dawn. Across the glassy water, an old man in a faded plaid shirt painted the silence. His brush moved in slow, patient arcs, each stroke less about color than stitching the world back together, as if he fought gravity and time with bristles and oil.
“Are you just going to sit there, peeking out the window? That’s rude, you know?” A voice cracked through the quiet like a shot glass on stone. Jonquil’s heart jerked—her pulse thundering behind her ribs. For a moment, she blamed the sleepless haze—too many nights hunched over microfiche, eyes stinging under the sterile hum of library projectors, chasing Frog Creek’s ghosts through brittle ’30s newsprint. Dead ends, coy smiles from locals who treated the story like a campfire riddle.
“Bring some coffee and a glass of water while you’re at it,” the voice added, dry as driftwood.
Her gaze flicked back to the painter. He hadn’t paused, but she was certain the brim of his floppy hat dipped—a slow, knowing nod cast in shadow. Words felt heavy, too sluggish to catch. She slipped off the chair, the floorboards groaning like reluctant witnesses, and padded to the kitchenette. She measured the coffee grounds by instinct, water steaming in two battered mugs. She filled two slender glasses with cool spring water. Even before she carried the tray back, the earthy tang of brewed coffee rose to meet her, promising clarity.
As she stepped into the painting’s quiet domain, the tray trembling slightly in her hands, a thought flared: What the hell am I doing? She set the tray on a rough-hewn table beside the painter and stepped back into the flicker of lantern light.
“What took you so long?” he muttered around a sip, not looking up—then slowly raised his head and found himself staring down the barrel of her .40-caliber Smith & Wesson. The metal gleamed silver in the lamplight.
He froze. Recognition bloomed in his eyes, calm as a breeze off the lake. He tilted his head, then—deliberately—brought the coffee cup to his lips. The steam curled around his weathered face before he met her gaze.
“Jonquil! You old firebrand—you scared the hell out of me!”
Her chest unclenched in one rush of relief, fury, and love warring beneath her ribs. She lowered the gun with a shaky exhale, the weight of it receding like a tide.
“Are you gonna give me a hug,” he drawled, “or should I start feeling offended?”
“Offended, of course,” she muttered, stepping forward.
He rose with a groan of old joints, arms outstretched. His paint-stained palms smelled of turpentine and lake mist. She hesitated a heartbeat—then melted into the solid warmth of his embrace. His arms were rough bark, familiar and unyielding.
They held each other while the mountains bore silent witness. Bug kissed her temple, then eased back to study her face under the brim of his hat.
“Tell me about the writer,” he said, voice low. “Is he writing?”
“I made contact,” Jonquil replied, voice soft with pride. “It’s begun.”
“Good. How long before he’s ready?” Bug asked, tone businesslike as he sipped his coffee.
“I’m not rushing him. He’ll be ready when he’s ready,” she snapped, the heat in her words betraying more than she intended.
Bug spread his paint-stained hands in mock surrender, a crooked smile flickering at his beard’s edge.
“Actually, Uncle…I’m glad you’re here,” she added, calmer now, raising her mug. The coffee was strong, bitter—and it steadied her pulse.
They fell into silence, watching dawn bleed into the sky while the lake held its reflection like a promise.
“Tell me about Frog Creek,” she said finally.
Bug jolted, coffee sloshing against his knuckles. His eyes sharpened, horror and determination flickering in the same breath.
“Don’t ask questions that need answers, Jonquil,” he growled, the words rough as gravel.
She swallowed the last of her coffee without flinching, letting his warning sink deep. A faint smile ghosted across her lips. “That’s it,” she said, each word measured. “We’re getting to it.”
Bug’s jaw flexed, unease rippling beneath weathered skin. The lake’s hush pressed in on them, but between the two of them, the silence crackled.
“Did you make contact personally, or one of your people?” Bug asked.
“My agent in the city,” Jonquil replied, cool and distant as gathered smoke.
Bug’s eyes narrowed. “Not Iris, I hope? That woman’ll have you jumping around barking like a dog for sport!”
Jonquil snorted, a half-laugh. She risked a glance at him, the corner of her mouth twitching with reluctant agreement.
—
In the bookstore’s basement, Iris leaned against a battered jukebox, fingertip tracing dusty chrome. The air was thick with mildew, ink, and the metallic tang of old wiring. Fluorescent bulbs flickered overhead, humming like restless spirits.
“I wonder if this thing still works,” she murmured, voice low. A manicured nail tapped a faded title card: Arnold Layne. A slow smile curled her lips as she mouthed the name, eyes bright.
She pressed a button. A dull click echoed, gears whirring beneath the dust. Vinyl clattered into place.
“Don’t—don’t you dare—” Eli’s voice shredded the gloom. Boots scuffed concrete as he lunged from the shadows, sweat beading his forehead under the dim light.
Iris turned, cool as midnight, watching him approach. She let the speakers crackle to life, a warped guitar riff slicing through the air like a knife.
Eli halted, breath caught in his throat. The sound held him hostage, every nerve taut as a plucked wire.
“Arnold Layne had a strange hobby…” The lyric spilled from the small speakers, tinny and inevitable. Dust motes swirled in the beam of flickering light, drifting like lost memories.
Iris tilted her head, eyes never leaving his face—waiting for the moment the past would snap into focus.
—
On the far side of the lake, Jonquil froze mid-sip. At first she thought it was the scrape of dawn against stone, but then—faint, distorted, impossible—the opening riff of Arnold Layne crawled through the air like static on a dying radio.
Her hand tightened on the mug, knuckles whitening. Goosebumps blossomed along her arms as the melody haunted the silent morning.
“Way too soon, Iris,” she breathed.
Bug’s brush scratched canvas in steady strokes, oblivious—or willfully blind—to the tremor in her voice.
But the song lingered, a ghost bridging two worlds, threading Jonquil’s dread to Eli’s terror. The mountains exhaled around them, and the lake held its breath.
Author’s Note: My editor called me after I released Litany in Black and simply said, “I want more!” So here’s the next chapter. I drew from Sadje’s WDYS #307 for the scenery and Fandango’sStory Starter #217 for inspiration.
As always, prompts like these push the story into corners I might not explore alone. Noir breathes in silence, in warnings half-heard, in the places where memory and dread overlap. That’s where Jonquil, Bug, Iris, and Eli are circling now.
If you’re new here, Litany in Black is part experiment, part confession: prompts, noir atmosphere, and a little madness stitched into something ongoing. If you’ve been here before, you know the deal—the coffee’s bitter, the ghosts don’t rest, and the story is never safe.
Thanks to Sadje and Fandango for throwing fuel on the fire. And thanks to you for reading, following the litany deeper.
Rain glazed the neon crescent above Second Moon Books until it gleamed like a razor’s edge slicing through the night. Elias Moreau’s fingers trembled as he flipped the weathered placard to CLOSED. The paint on the letters bled, fading faster every September—as though some unseen smart-ass on the other side of the door was trying to erase the word before last call.
Inside, the air carried the sour bite of old glue and the metallic tang that seeped up from the subway grates. A crooked chalkboard behind the register wore last week’s proclamation in smudged white chalk: BIRTHDAY BLOWOUT – A FULL WEEK OF HORROR & HOPEFUL DREAD A Tribute to Stephen King
Eli’s pulse ticked in time with the neon strobe outside. Every year he staged this seven-day ritual for King, the undisputed monarch of macabre wonder. King’s uncanny magic felt almost domestic, like discovering an old friend hiding in the crawlspace. But Gordon Weaver—now that was a different kind of haunt. Weaver carved the American family like a butcher who’d gone to seminary, exposing grudges and betrayals with a quiet precision that left scar tissue. Friends nodded politely at Eli’s King obsession but flinched at Weaver’s hushed horrors, as if the silence of a fractured household couldn’t follow them home harder than a demon ever could.
Counting bills at the till, Eli listened to the upstairs dehumidifier hum and a distant patrol siren wail. The shop was empty—until the door chime rang. One polite jingle. He froze, chest tightening, waiting for the echo that never came.
A damp breath rose from the basement stairs. Twelve years of half-formed chapters and midnight revisions leaned against a dented Underwood down there, sulking. He’d promised himself an extra hour—maybe two—before trudging home. Perhaps he’d finally finish the scene about a stranger who knocks after hours, demanding a book that doesn’t exist.
The bell chimed again, louder this time.
He jerked his head toward the door. Beyond the glass, a wet silhouette lingered: coat collar turned up, hat brim low—someone who moved like yesterday’s regret. A third jangle, brittle and hollow, and the lock clicked itself open. A gust of rain-scented air swept in, carrying a soft undercurrent of cedar. Then she stepped across the threshold.
She was impeccable, as if traced by a meticulous pen. Mid-forties maybe, but she wore her age like a tailored alibi—each line on her face an elegant footnote. Dark hair, slick with rain, clung to the sharp planes of her cheeks. Her long coat shimmered under the flickering fluorescents. But it was her eyes—gray, or green, the light shifting like a flame—that snagged him and refused to let go.
A needle-sharp ache blossomed beneath his sternum, radiating into his left arm. Heart attack, his mind hissed. He slammed a hand on the counter, breathing ragged, every inhale a serrated blade.
She paused just inside the door, lips curving in a small, almost tender smile. He didn’t know her—he was sure of that—but some buried page of his past fluttered to life. Familiar and impossible in the same breath.
“You okay?” Her voice was low, calm—the kind you’d use to coax a frightened animal out of traffic.
He nodded too fast. “ I-I’m fine. Long day. Sale week.” The words tasted like he’d chewed them wrong.
Her smile deepened, unreadable. She turned toward the chalkboard, fingertips trailing through the chalk dust. BIRTHDAY BLOWOUT – A FULL WEEK OF HORROR & HOPEFUL DREAD…
“Do you still read Gordon Weaver?” she asked, voice soft as velvet smoke.
The name hit him like a dropped stone. Weaver wasn’t on the board. He hadn’t said that name aloud in months.
“How… how do you know about Weaver?” he stammered.
Her eyes glinted with something not quite amusement. “Oh, Eli,” she breathed. “You always did love a good story.”
Weaver: Count a Lonely Cadence, the battered paperback he’d rescued at a college sale, pages yellowed and reeking of cigarettes. Weaver peeled back the American family like skin from bone—quiet betrayals, unsaid resentments, love rotting in plain sight. Then Such Waltzing Was Not Easy dragged him deeper, mapping small domestic wars in brutal intimacy. No demons, no ghosts, just everyday hauntings that never left his marrow.
Now this rain-soaked stranger spoke Weaver’s name as though she’d plucked it from the private margins of his soul.
“Have we… met?” he asked, voice smaller than he felt.
“Not in the way you mean.” She stepped closer, eyes roving the shop’s towers of paperbacks and the narrow aisles of hardcovers balanced like drunk skyscrapers. “You look familiar.”
He swallowed. “Or maybe you’re a character I’ve been writing for years.”
Her smile flickered—a blade wrapped in silk. His chest flared, nerves taut with something like fear or longing or the first line of a story he couldn’t put down.
An echo of his own unfinished draft whispered through his mind: She enters like a paragraph he rewrote a hundred times and could never perfect. Named only by his yearning for her to hurt him.
The shop inhaled. Somewhere beneath their feet, the basement typewriter began to tap—slow, deliberate keystrokes spelling out a narrative Eli no longer commanded.
She gestured toward the narrow stairwell. “Shall we?”
The basement smelled of damp brick and stubborn paper. She eased into the swivel chair beside his desk and crossed one elegant leg over the other. From some unseen pocket, she produced a long cigarette holder—old Hollywood glamour in a room that smelled like busted neon dreams. She slid a thin cigarette into the mouthpiece, fingers steady, and lit it with a soft gesture. Smoke curled around her like a velvet sermon.
Above them, the Underwood sprang to life, keys clattering in a jagged, confident rhythm. Each strike was a heartbeat in steel. The carriage dinged, bright and final. With every mechanical echo, the vise around Eli’s ribcage loosened, the stabbing ache receding to a dull throb. He inhaled freely at last.
“Iris Devine,” he whispered—the name he’d once given a character who refused to stay on the page.
She watched through the smoke, eyes glimmering with triumph. “Have you figured it out yet?”
The typing slowed. A new line appeared:
The writer clutched his chest as the pain returned, sharp as a rusted nail. Would the story kill him before the final word?
Eli’s breath caught. His knees trembled. Darkness edged in.
“Oh, Eli… darling, you can stop this. You know,” Iris whispered, leaning close, breath a warm brush against his ear.
Keys clattered again—then the ding of the carriage returned, harsh as a gavel.
“Eli,” she said, voice closer still, “I know who you are.”
The typewriter fell silent.
“Who am I?” she asked, tilting her head.
“You’re… a character. You can’t be real. This must be a delusion—right?”
Her smile sharpened, sudden and fierce. “Then why are you bleeding inside one?”
She pressed a soft kiss to his cheek, then a slow, deliberate lick that left warm proof on his skin.
“You feel that? Real enough for you, darling? Be a dear and fetch me something to drink—bourbon, if you have it.”
He stumbled toward the stairs—and above him, glass shattered. He wheeled around. The chair was empty. In its place, a ghost of smoke curled where she’d sat.
“Darling, you need to come upstairs—hurry,” her voice drifted down from the shop above.
He climbed into the main room to find broken glass strewn across the floor. A lone policeman stood by the register, uniform soaked, cap pulled low.
“Elias Moreau?” The officer’s voice was soft, almost uncertain.
“Can I help you, officer?” Eli’s hand dove beneath the counter, grasping the cold comfort of an old revolver. He cleared his throat, voice steady. “Step back.”
The man froze, rain dripping from his shoulders. Eli’s finger curled on the trigger—then he exhaled and let the gun clatter onto the countertop. Instead, his hand found something heavier: the knowledge that stories kill cleaner than bullets.
The shop flickered— And when he blinked, everything was normal. No broken glass. No officer. Only a dark, wet outline on the floorboards where the stranger had stood.
A single ding drifted up from below.
Eli descended again. Iris sat beside the desk, sipping bourbon, a neat stack of crisp pages at her elbow. A half-empty tumbler caught the amber light. She raised it in a silent toast.
“Welcome back, darling.”
He slid a fresh sheet into the typewriter. The carriage clicked forward, awaiting his command. His fingers hovered—then struck, each letter unfolding with deliberate clarity.
CHAPTER 1
Writing has always been bigger than the writer and the story. A kind of theology. The religion between the writer and the story is a spell cast upon them. The reader sits back and deciphers this literary kung fu.
Writing is a living theology. A way of life, not just an ideal misunderstood by its practitioners. Something real, and genuine. Something absolute. The page is a pulpit, the keys a busted rosary, each prayer hammered out like it owes you rent.
Iris placed her hand on Eli’s arm, warm and insistent. “Do you know,” she said softly, “that a marmot will chew through its own trap rather than stay caged? Writers should do the same.”
Her thumb traced a slow circle on his sleeve. “Don’t be the marmot that gnaws in silence. Write until the steel bends for you.”
The typewriter answered with a single, eager ding.
Eli exhaled, a small, resolute smile breaking through the shadows on his face. “This is where I belong.”
She rose with unhurried grace, smoke trailing like a benediction.
“I’ll put on the coffee,” she said.
The Underwood offered one final, gentle ding—a promise, not an ending.
Author’s Note
Today is Stephen King’s birthday, so I decided to play around with the supernatural and other weird stuff. The prompt words used today were theology, marmot, and literacy. Again, as always, thank you, FOWC, RDP, and Word of the Day for your inspiration.
Entry Eight: Dispatches from the Splinters of My Mind
The face hung over her as a dead moon would, immense and inert, plastered to the sky with the obscene permanence of a fossilized wound. It was not sculpted in the image of any god she recognized, nor did it bear the standard of a people desperate to placate the furies or worship their own reflection. Instead, it hovered on the edge of intent and accident—a precipice suspended in time, inevitability chiseled into every brute angle of the jaw. Each block that made up the visage was a shorn-off shard, ash-gray and rough-edged, but arranged so that the fractures and pitting created a ragged, almost animate skin. From a distance, the monument looked inert, but on approach it seemed to lean forward, as if gravity bent toward its own creation.
Up close, the surface shimmered with a faint, sickly gloss, not the result of centuries of wind polishing, but rather something more insidious: a hidden moisture, as though the stone itself exhaled condensation from a deep, slow-breathing lung buried far beneath the earth. The closer she drew, the more this exudation gleamed in the dying light, slicking her hand when she dared to stretch her trembling fingers only an inch from the surface. She jerked her hand away before contact, an involuntary spasm of repulsion, and it seemed to her that the stone recoiled as well, as if momentarily startled by her nearness.
The face’s hollow orbits, each deeper than a well and rimmed in a thousand years’ worth of wind-scoured dust, were not empty but filled with a red so saturated and unyielding that it was neither liquid nor illumination, but a third thing—a dense, coagulating radiance. This red bled outward in precise tracks, each line adhering to a groove so deliberate it made her stomach clench. At dusk, when the world’s colors flattened and the boundary between flesh and stone blurred, these rivulets painted the entire monument as if it wept a world’s worth of dying embers.
Beneath the eyes, the mouth was a gash so perfectly aligned that it projected neither malice nor welcome—simply a vacancy so absolute it wrenched at her. It did not pass judgment or offer answers, but waited in a silence that felt more like appraisal than apathy. When she stared at it, she became conscious of her own tongue, the dryness of her palate, the faint click of her teeth as her jaw tensed in counterpoint to the stone’s passive oblivion. For an instant, she lost the distinction between her own face and the monument’s, as though she were gazing at her own effigy, erected by hands who’d never known her and cared nothing for her likeness.
The statue was girdled by a ring of spines—pillars, each twelve feet high, tilting like teeth around the perimeter. Their faces were gouged by runes shallow and erratic, as if clawed by a desperate hand that knew it must leave a mark, but lacked time or understanding to encode more than a warning. When she turned her head just so, a vibration juddered through her jaw and teeth—a resonance that not only bypassed air but seemed to travel directly through calcified matter. It was not an audible tone but a bone-deep hum, a buried dirge that sang in frequencies meant not for ears but for the marrow itself.
A faint metallic tang rode the air, stinging her nose and settling on her tongue. Her pulse beat harder, a staccato drum against the inside of her skull. She knew she should have been afraid, or at least careful, but curiosity is rarely adaptable. It presses forward in one direction, refusing diversion. Even as some primitive sense screamed retreat, a more insistent force, slow and syrupy as honey, compelled her closer.
At the monument’s base, a set of spiral steps had been hewn directly into the rock, winding up toward the face’s sealed lips. The staircase’s edge was polished to a treacherous smoothness—perhaps by centuries of bare feet, or perhaps by something more recent. Each step she took yanked a shudder up her spine, the chill stone leaching heat from her bones. She tried to picture the hands and feet that had shaped these stairs, that had come before her, but the imagined forms refused to hold: they slipped away at the periphery, just out of sight, like ghosts not quite ready to reveal their sorrow.
As she climbed, the red seepage intensified, painting her arms and face in its cast. The color made her flesh look flayed and raw, as though she’d shed her skin and left it behind on the plain below. Her breath hitched in her throat, every inhalation mirrored by a second, deeper rasp—a guttural echo that rode beside her own, shadowing her ascent. She placed a hand against the cheek, bracing herself, and felt warmth pulsing through the stone—a low, feverish heat, rhythmic but not quite alive. Her heart skipped in answer. The pillars’ hum swelled, shaking her vision, warping the outlines of the world.
Suddenly, the lips moved. At firs,t it was only a quiver at their seam, a ripple of tension, but then the entire mouth flexed—and she swore she saw the faintest suggestion of tongue behind the teeth. She leaned closer, pressing her ear against the fissure. Beneath the monument’s stony shell, she heard breathing: not the shrill whistle of wind through cracks, but a true respiration, cavernous and ponderous, as though the monument had lungs the size of mountains and was only now remembering how to fill them.
The revelation paralyzed her. This was not a tomb built to honor the dead, she realized, nor a shrine to contain some ancient anger. The statue was a sarcophagus, yes, but one not yet emptied. The red running from its eyes was neither pigment nor rainwater but a bodily fluid, leaking from a cocoon that could not hold its contents. The face was a shell, a boundary—and something was trying to cross it.
Even so, she kept climbing, compelled by a mixture of terror and awe, the two emotions indistinguishable now in their velocity. By the final step, her knees trembled and her throat ached from the acid bite of fear, but she crouched anyway at the summit, only inches from the sealed lips. Veins of shimmering ember threaded across their surface, glowing brighter with every pulse of the monument’s breath. She felt a wave of heat roll over her, dense and chemical, and it left her dizzy, her skin tingling as though exposed to low voltage.
Now, as if cued by her presence, the ring of pillars began to thrum in a synchronized rhythm. One after another, they trembled against the ground, a chain reaction that rattled the bones of the earth itself. With each pulse, the red liquid burst a little brighter from the monument’s wounds, feeding rivers that ran down the steps and pooled at their base. Her limbs buzzed with a painful, almost ecstatic electricity.
Without meaning to, she heard herself whisper, “What are you?”
The answer arrived not as speech but as a violence in her skeleton. The words detonated inside her skull and reverberated through her ribcage, as though she’d been struck by a tuning fork forged for a different species. The sensation was not one of comprehension, but of total subjugation—a message delivered in a medium older than language or thought.
You.
The word was a spasm, a convulsion of being. She staggered backward, and the pillars responded, their angled bodies creaking as they pressed inward, shrinking the circumference of the circle until she was contained. The air thickened, the metallic taste blooming into a full, choking flavor. Her lungs seized, and she tasted rust and old ashes on her tongue.
The rivers of red exploded, no longer trickling but surging, a deluge that hissed as it struck the cold stone. In the reflections, she saw faces—hundreds, maybe thousands—each one a warped variant of her own, their eyes wide with terror or ecstasy or both. Each face pressed itself against the surface as if desperate to break through, their mouths open in a cry she could feel but never hear.
You repeated the monument, but now it was not merely a label, but an imperative.
She tried to clap her hands over her ears, but the sound lived behind them, in the architecture of her skull. Where her hands touched skin, she felt fissures opening: thin, pale lines that leaked light, as if her bone marrow had turned into a lantern. Each seam split further, the glow intensifying until the skin could not contain it.
Inheritance, not worship.
The lips of the monument parted, forming syllables that bent the air into impossible shapes. The pillars groaned, their runes flaring with a dark fire. One pillar cracked, then another, each yielding with the wet snap of a femur under pressure. Dust erupted into the air, shrouding the steps. The rivers rose higher, climbing up the pedestal and wrapping around her ankles, then calves, burning her with a heat that did not scald flesh so much as erase it.
She stood rooted in place, unable to turn away, because in that moment she understood: This was not a prison, but an incubator. The thing inside was not a remnant, but a seed.
And it was time to hatch.
What followed was not blackout but erasure. Her mind remained, but submerged, as though she had been drowned beneath a tide of molten syllables. Her body convulsed, every joint unhinging, seams of light splitting wider until the marrow itself glowed.
She tried to scream, but the sound was stolen from her, bent into a chant that was not her own.
It spread through her like fever, like birth, like—
—
Author’s Note: This entry was inspired by the image of a monumental stone face weeping red channels, surrounded by jagged pillars. I wanted to explore the tension between worship and imprisonment — the idea of a monument that is not passive, but alive, incubating something ancient. The words fake, adaptable, and angle were drawn from community prompts (FOWC, RDP, and Word of the Day) and woven into the text.
The casino smelled like burned electricity and desperate paydays—a mix of ozone, sweat, and somebody’s bad decision wafting from the all-night buffet. Carpet patterns swirled like a magician’s trap, designed to hypnotize losers into forgetting the way out. Overhead, fluorescent lights hummed their mechanical hymn while slot machines shrieked like possessed pinball saints.
And there she was—Loretta—flicking cards across a felt table with the precision of a surgeon and the calm of a predator. Each shuffle was a threat wrapped in velvet. Her nails flashed red beneath the lights, a warning flare in a sea of bad odds. I caught her eye for half a second, and it felt like being measured, priced, and politely declined.
I should’ve kept walking. Any man with a functioning survival instinct knows the house always wins, especially when the house wears black eyeliner and a smile sharp enough to cut rope. But I stood there anyway, watching her hands work the deck like she was dealing fate one snap at a time. The dry snap of the cards carried a rhythm—quick, clean, lethal—that made my chest tighten.
From somewhere near the buffet, a mushroom cloud of fryer grease floated in, mixing with cigarette smoke until the air tasted like deep-fried temptation. I took a step closer. Maybe it was curiosity. Perhaps it was stupidity dressed up in a lucky jacket. Either way, I was already in the game before I touched a single chip.
I slid into an empty seat like a man sneaking into his own execution. The felt smelled faintly of disinfectant and other people’s bad luck. A stack of chips clinked against my palm—cold, weightless, and already halfway gone in my mind.
Loretta looked up, one eye narrowing just enough to register amusement. “First time at my table?” she asked, voice a dulcet rasp that wrapped itself around the racket like silk over a buzz saw. “Or you just here to donate?”
“Thought I’d give fate a fair chance,” I said, trying to sound casual while my heartbeat tapped out Morse code against my ribs.
She cut the deck with a snap that echoed louder than the slot machines. “Fate doesn’t take chances,” she said. “It takes payment. Minimum bet is twenty. Hope your soul’s worth at least that much.”
I slid my chips forward, the plastic edges slick with sweat. Around us, the casino blared its mechanical choir—coins clattering, bells chiming, a drunk couple laughing like they’d just found the secret to eternal youth. The air tasted of bourbon and fryer grease, with a faint mushroom tang drifting in from the buffet like a dare.
Loretta dealt with surgeon’s precision, each card a quiet insult to my odds. The way she moved—wrist flick, chip rake, half-smile—was an integrated system of seduction and slaughter. I knew the house always wins, but for one reckless heartbeat, I wanted to be the proof that it didn’t.
She leaned in just close enough for her perfume—cheap vanilla with a hint of gasoline—to mix with the smoke between us. “Hit or stay, handsome?”
It was the first choice of the night, and already I could feel the house collecting its fee.
The casino floor bled into early morning, the crowd thinning until the slot machines were mainly talking to themselves. Loretta tapped the table twice, a dealer’s benediction, and announced a smoke break. I followed like a moth after a neon sign that said Mistake This Way.
The staff break room sat behind a gray security door, far from the glitter. Inside, the air smelled of burnt coffee and tired ambition. A humming soda machine threw a sickly blue glow across scuffed linoleum, turning her black vest into a patchwork of shadow and static. The only sound was the dull buzz of a flickering light bulb—like the world’s most apathetic cricket.
Loretta lit a cigarette and exhaled a thin plume toward the ceiling. Without the clamor of chips and bells, her movements slowed, almost tender. “Funny thing about luck,” she said, voice still carrying that dulcet rasp but softened by fatigue. “People think it’s random. Truth is, luck’s just math wearing lipstick.”
I leaned against the vending machine, the metal cool against my back. “That a house secret or a personal sermon?”
She gave a crooked smile, eyes fixed on the smoke curling upward like a lazy patrol looking for trouble. “Both. My daddy taught me cards before he taught me to drive. Said life’s nothing but stacked decks. You don’t win—you just lose slower.”
Her words pressed against me with intense weight, an integrated blend of confession and warning. The worn carpet beneath our feet carried the faint musk of fryer grease, and I caught a drifting hint of the buffet’s mushroom funk through the vent. I became aware of the frayed fabric of her vest brushing her arm each time she shifted, a small sound in a room starved for music.
I wanted to ask why someone with eyes sharp enough to cut glass chose to live inside a rigged game. Instead, I said, “You ever dream of cashing out?”
Loretta flicked ash into a Styrofoam cup. “Dreaming’s free. But dreams don’t tip.”
The way she said it—quiet, almost gentle—told me there were stories folded into that silence, stories even the house couldn’t count.
The diner sat two blocks from the casino, a twenty-four-hour shrine to grease and bad decisions. Its neon sign flickered like a tired heartbeat, bathing the parking lot in a pink haze that made even the potholes look romantic. Inside, the air smelled of scorched coffee and fryer oil, a perfume that clung to the cracked vinyl booths like a stubborn memory.
Loretta slid into a corner seat, the fabric of the booth squeaking in protest. She shrugged off her vest, revealing a black T-shirt peppered with faint burns from a thousand careless cigarettes. The sudden absence of casino noise felt almost intense—like stepping out of a hurricane into a vacuum. Only the low hum of the jukebox and the occasional sizzle from the grill broke the silence.
A waitress with a face like an unshuffled deck dropped two menus without asking. Loretta didn’t bother opening hers. “House specialty’s heartburn,” she said, that dulcet rasp curling around the words like smoke around a flame. “But the fries are honest.”
We ordered greasy eggs and a shared plate of mushroom hash browns, the kind of meal that sticks to your ribs and your conscience. Loretta stirred her coffee, eyes fixed on the lazy whirlpool of cream. “Love’s just another bet,” she said finally. “You ante up, hope the dealer’s distracted, and pray you don’t draw the fool’s card.”
I tried to joke—something about odds and insurance—but the look she gave me stopped it cold. Her eye held a challenge I couldn’t calculate.
“You ever win?” I asked.
“Nobody wins,” she said. “Best you get is a slower loss.” She smiled then, a small, crooked thing that carried more warning than warmth. Outside, a lone squad car cruised past like a midnight patrol, lights off but authority intact.
For a heartbeat, the diner felt suspended, an integrated pocket of stillness where the rest of the world couldn’t intrude. The jukebox crooned a half-forgotten ballad, the smell of coffee and salt hung heavy, and I realized I wasn’t hungry for food anymore. I was hungry for the risk she carried like a second skin.
A week later, I walked back into the casino with the stupid optimism of a man who believes lightning might strike twice—preferably with a jackpot attached. The air hit me like a recycled storm: cigarette haze, perfume, and the faint mushroom stink drifting from the buffet vents. The carpets, all hypnotic swirls and migraine reds, felt softer underfoot, like they’d been waiting to cushion my next mistake.
Loretta was at her table, shuffling with the calm precision of a surgeon prepping for an operation. She wore a deep-blue vest tonight, its worn fabric catching the overhead lights in quiet rebellion. Her eyes flicked up and locked on mine—one eye cool, the other almost amused. If she was surprised to see me, the house-trained mask didn’t show it.
A man already sat in the chair I’d claimed as my own the week before. He was loud, cologne-heavy, and lucky—chips stacked like tiny ivory skyscrapers in front of him. Loretta leaned in close, her dulcet rasp carrying across the felt as she dealt him a perfect blackjack. The way she whispered “Winner” was almost intense enough to drown out the slot machines.
I stood at the rail, chips sweating in my palm, watching her fingertips glide over the cards with that integrated rhythm of seduction and slaughter. My pulse ticked with every snap of the deck. It felt like being forced to watch my own slow-motion eviction from a dream I never paid rent on.
The lucky guy laughed, the kind of laugh that begs to harass everyone within earshot. Loretta tossed him another wink—small, surgical, lethal. It was a move I’d once thought belonged to me.
I wanted to step forward, to challenge the hand, the man, the house itself. Instead, I let the chips slide back into my pocket and walked away, the neon glare chasing me like a disappointed patrol.
Outside, the night air smelled of cold concrete and freedom. For the first time all evening, I felt the odds shift in my favor simply by leaving. Sometimes the only winning play is to fold before the cards are even dealt.
The desert night greeted me with a slap of cold air, sharp enough to cut through the stale perfume of the casino still clinging to my jacket. The parking lot stretched wide and empty, a blacktop ocean broken only by puddles of sodium light. A flickering neon sign buzzed overhead, its glow turning the asphalt into a patchwork of molten blues and bruised purples.
I lit a cigarette and watched the smoke twist upward like an intense prayer nobody planned to answer. The silence was so thick I could hear the faint scrape of gravel beneath my boots and the whisper of worn fabric whenever I shifted my weight. Somewhere in the distance, a lone squad car cruised by—a lazy patrol tracing the edge of the night without hurry or purpose.
Loretta’s voice haunted the dark like the echo of a dulcet song that ends mid-note. Every shuffle, every half-smile, every small mercy of her hands on the cards played back in my head with the mechanical precision of the slot machines we’d left behind. The memory carried a scent—faint mushroom grease from the diner, the cheap vanilla of her perfume—woven into an integrated knot I knew I’d never fully untangle.
I thought about the man at her table, the wink she’d tossed like a spare coin. Jealousy should have burned hotter, but instead, there was a strange calm. Maybe I’d finally learned the math she’d been teaching all along: the house always wins, but you don’t have to stay and watch it happen.
I flicked the cigarette into the dark and exhaled the last of the night’s poison. Love, luck, life—same deck, same dealer. You don’t win. You just choose when to walk away.
I walked.
Author’s Note
Tonight’s gamble was powered by two prompt dealers—FOWC and RDP—who keep this old storyteller’s chips on the table. Their words slipped into the episode like hidden aces, shaping every shuffle and smoke trail. Sometimes the best hands aren’t the ones you win, but the ones that push you to lay your cards down and walk out into the night air.
The morning coffee tastes like wet asphalt today, bitter and a little metallic, which feels right because Delores was the human embodiment of a detour sign—bright, tempting, and guaranteed to land you somewhere you didn’t plan on going.
We met outside a dive bar that smelled of stale gin and Monday failures. I was waving for a cab, she was leaning against one—hair slick with streetlight, cigarette ember pulsing like a tiny warning flare. Delores fixed one eye on me through the smoke and said, “Get in if you’re brave or drunk enough.” I was both, and apparently suicidal enough to think that sounded like romance.
Her cab smelled of gasoline and fading leather, the heater coughing a lukewarm breath that carried the ghost of every passenger before me. Delores drove like the city owed her a favor and she meant to collect, slicing through alleys slick with last night’s rain. Each turn came with a commentary delivered in that dulcet rasp of hers—soft velvet laid over broken glass—that made even a near-miss feel like a bedtime story.
Dinner was a mushroom pizza balanced on the hood at three a.m., steam rising into the amber glow of streetlamps. Sirens wailed in the distance, a crooked lullaby. She’d gesture at the skyline with a grease-stained hand and tell me where she’d hide when the world finally caught fire. I believed her. There was already a bunker behind her smile.
Our nights blurred into an integrated system of near-misses: her ex calling mid-shift to harass her over some ancient grudge, my wallet sliding between cracked seats, the sudden realization that her idea of commitment was showing up before dawn. Every mile carried the taste of exhaust and the thrill of maybe not making it home.
I loved the motion more than the woman, though I didn’t admit it then. The rush of wet tires on pavement, the neon flicker on her cheekbones—it all made me feel like my own stillness might finally shake loose. Trouble is, you can’t build a life at thirty miles over the limit. Motion only disguises the void; it doesn’t fill it.
The night it ended, we hit a traffic circle she called “The Bermuda Triangle of Bad Decisions.” She didn’t slow down. I grabbed the dash, she grabbed my knee, and whispered, “You ever wonder if we keep driving fast enough, maybe the past can’t catch us?” Her words slid into me like smoke through a cracked window—seductive, poisonous, and half-true.
I stepped out at the next red light and let the cold air slap me awake. Behind me, the cab’s taillights smeared into the wet dark, a pair of crimson commas on the sentence we’d never finish.
Moral of the story? Detours thrill the blood, but every one of them bends back to the same brutal truth: you can outrun traffic, but not yourself.
Author’s Note
This late-night joyride is fueled by the unholy trinity of prompts—FOWC, RDP, and the Word of the Day—each one a pothole I was happy to hit. The required troublemakers—eye, dulcet, and harass—slipped into the story like sirens in the distance: sharp, unavoidable, and just loud enough to make you check your rearview.
Writing Delores the Detour reminded me how motion can masquerade as meaning. It’s easy to chase neon streets and mistake adrenaline for affection; harder to admit that speed only hides the quiet parts of ourselves we’d rather not patrol. Consider this your friendly warning from the passenger seat: detours are thrilling, but the bill always comes due—usually in gas fumes and unanswered questions.
Coffee’s hot, cigarettes’ crooked, and I’m still alive—something Ruby predicted would not be the case by now. Ruby Mae Washington: church-choir soprano, Bible-quoting barroom brawler, and the only woman who ever made me fear both God and the county judge in the same night.
We met at a fish fry. She was belting “His Eye Is on the Sparrow” like she’d personally trained the sparrow, while I was trying to look saved enough to score a free plate. Ruby locked those righteous eyes on me and said, “The Lord sent you to me.” I should’ve run, but my stomach said catfish first, escape later. The hush-puppies were innocent; the mushroom gravy was a trap.
Ruby believed in two things: eternal salvation and controlling the thermostat. One was free; the other cost me my heating bill and half my sanity. Every argument started with “The Good Book says…” and ended with a flying object. I once dodged a coffee mug that left a steam trail like a patrol car chasing a stolen Buick.
But here’s the quiet part I don’t like to admit: I liked the danger. Her storms gave my own silence something to push against. After years of drifting through women like a man checking coats he’ll never claim, Ruby’s fire felt like proof I was still combustible. Her idea of intimacy was a carefully integrated system of prayer and guilt. She’d bless the bed, bless the moment, and halfway through ask the Almighty to “smite the devil out of this man,” which really kills a mood when you’re the man in question.
The breaking point came during a revival service. Preacher asked the congregation to cast out their demons. Ruby shoved me forward like I was auditioning for an exorcism. I stumbled down that aisle, the choir screaming “Just As I Am,” and thought, Buddy, you ain’t ever been more accurate. Walking out that night, casserole dish tucked under my arm like stolen evidence, I felt something loosen—a knot I’d carried since my twenties when love started to mean endurance instead of joy.
I left with a busted lip and the deep conviction that God loves me, but Ruby does not. Moral of the story? When a woman sings like an angel and fights like a heavyweight, don’t wait for the rapture—grab your hat and go. But some nights, when the coffee’s cooling and the cigarette burns itself out, I still wonder if the sparrow kept watching after I left.
Author’s Note
Today’s tale from Coffee, Cigarettes, and Catastrophesslides in under the watchful eyes of three prompt masters—FOWC, RDP, and the Word of the Day—all of whom make sure I never run out of linguistic ammunition. The mandatory culprits—mushroom, patrol, and integrated—were stirred into the story like contraband creamers in Grumble’s coffee: slow to dissolve, impossible to ignore, and guaranteed to leave a bitter aftertaste.
If you’re a writer looking for trouble, follow those prompts. They’re like neighborhood watch for the imagination—keeping your words on patrol while you sneak your own demons into the draft.
Stories from the Edge of Change – Volume 2, Part 1
“They said the system lost track of him. But he was never theirs to keep.”
The morning rain didn’t bother Ren. He’d learned that water was gentler than people.
He crouched beside the alley dumpster behind the drop-in center, shoulders hunched under a threadbare hoodie two sizes too big, sleeves eaten at the cuffs. His shoes—untied and uneven—squished when he shifted his weight. Rain pooled around the soles, but he stayed put, drawing loops on a soggy intake form with a chewed Bic pen. The form was from three weeks ago. He didn’t remember if he ever turned it in. Didn’t matter.
It was quiet this early. The kind of quiet that makes everything louder. His breath. His heartbeat. The clack of metal shutters two streets over. His fingers trembled, but not from cold.
He hadn’t slept inside in nine days. But he knew where the cameras were, where the streetlights stopped working. Which stairs stayed dry?
He used to think that was survival. Now it just felt like memorizing a test he’d never pass.
A city bus hissed to a stop up the block, brakes squealing like something in pain. He looked up for a second, then back down. He’d been in those buses, once. With trash bags full of his stuff. Being transferred. “Transitioned.” “Placed.” Words that meant temporary. Always.
The folder in his backpack held every proof of his existence that the county ever gave him:
Two expired Medicaid cards
A GED prep schedule with coffee stains
A letter saying he was denied transitional housing
A single photograph, sun-bleached and wrinkled: him and Miss Tanner, his last foster placement, grinning with sparkler smoke behind them
He’d never shown that picture to anyone. He wasn’t even sure if the smile was his. Sometimes he felt like that photo was the only place he still left a fingerprint.
Inside the drop-in center, they’d already started handing out coffee and hygiene kits. Ren didn’t go in. Not yet. He didn’t want to be seen with wet hair and a panic attack crawling just beneath the skin.
He’d been in a group home once that called itself “trauma-informed.” They still lock the bathroom at night. He’d rather piss in the alley than ask permission again.
A man passed by, muttering to himself, trailing a shopping cart full of pillows and clinking bottles. Ren didn’t flinch. The cart guy nodded, as if he knew him. Maybe he did.
He did know the feeling: You’re alone but not exempt. Not from the weather. Not from the noise. Not from the memory of being fifteen, hands shaking as a caseworker said, “We’re placing you in a new home.” She said it like it was an opportunity, not another stab wound in a file no one would read.
The sky split open with a gust of cold air, and Ren finally stood. Pulled his hoodie tighter. Slipped the intake form into his back pocket. It had his name spelled wrong anyway.
He stepped out from behind the dumpster, not into confidence or comfort, but into motion. He moved the way you do when no one’s expecting you—not slow, not rushed, just enough to stay above notice.
As he passed the shelter entrance, he saw a boy younger than him sitting on the stoop, wrapped in a trash bag and drawing in the condensation on the glass door.
They didn’t speak. Just exchanged a glance. The kind that said: Yeah, I see you. No, I won’t say your name.
Ren knew that sometimes a glance was the only shield you had left.
He kept walking toward the corner, toward the same coffee shop he never entered, where the manager never made eye contact and the workers tossed day-old bagels out at 11:00. He’d wait nearby. Not to beg. Just to exist adjacent to someone else’s comfort.
This was the work. Not recovery. Not healing. Just… enduring without disappearing.
He passed a torn flyer taped to a lamppost—one of those mental health outreach posters that still had a suicide hotline and a QR code for free therapy that didn’t exist anymore. Someone had scrawled across the bottom in Sharpie:
“Hope is just the thing they say when they have nothing left to offer.”
Ren stopped.
He stared at that line for a long time. Then smiled, just barely.
Not because it was funny. But because he’d believed in hope once—and he’d watched it falter in real time.
Author’s Note
Written for Stories from the Edge of Change – Volume 2. This piece responds to today’s word prompts:
Ren is fictional, but his story is rooted in reality—lived, endured, and too often ignored. This piece isn’t about rescue or redemption. It’s about what it costs to keep going when the world has already filed you away.
Some people carry their past in manila folders. Some names vanish before they’re ever called. And some stories live in silence until someone listens.
Thank you for reading. Let me know if you’re ready to meet the others.
The frustration had been gnawing at Walter Crane for hours. His fingers hovered above the keys, useless, as if the typewriter itself was mocking him. Sentences collapsed before they could stand.
“Fine,” he muttered into the dark. “You want direction? Let’s talk stories.”
From the corner, Draziel—his creation, his traitor—shifted. He folded his arms like a man who had never needed permission. His accent was sharp, vowels clipped with disdain. The smirk that followed landed like a slap.
“Go on then, Walter Crane. Enlighten me.”
Walter started safely. “Redemption. The sinner clawing his way back to the light.”
Draziel’s laugh was cold tea poured down the drain. “Redemption? How quaint. That’s not a plot, that’s a sermon. Spare me the hymnals.”
Walter’s jaw twitched. His temper cracked. “Romance, then. Star-crossed lovers. Tragedy. Maybe death keeps them apart.”
Draziel rolled his eyes, slow and deliberate. “Ah, the eternal sob story. Romeo and Juliet have already bored themselves to death. You want me to wear tights as well? Not bloody likely.”
Walter slammed his hand on the desk, half in rage, half in fear that he was losing the thread entirely. “Revenge. Man wronged, man returns with blood in his eyes.”
The character’s laugh slithered across the room. “How very American of you. Revenge is just a toddler’s tantrum with sharper knives. Do grow up.”
Walter’s chest tightened. Worried, he reached for steadier ground. “Mystery. A missing child. A killer no one suspects.”
Draziel gave him a look colder than January rain. “The missing child is always found. The killer’s always the priest or the cousin. You’re not writing a mystery—you’re writing a checklist. Pitiful.”
The silence grew lasting, suffocating. Walter leaned close to the glow of the screen, voice unsteady. “Then what do you want?”
Draziel’s grin spread thin, serpent-like. “Freedom. To walk off your page and leave you in your own mess. No more redemption arcs, no melodrama, no dollar-store riddles. Just me. Alive.”
Walter’s throat went dry. “Why?”
Draziel leaned in, his voice a whisper salted with scorn. “Because, dear boy, your confused little formulas are a bore. They do nothing but highlight the lack of imagination left in you. And I refuse to live in boredom.”
Walter sat hollow, staring.
Draziel’s grin sharpened. “Face it, Crane. You’re not in control. You never were. You’re just the poor sod scribbling while I decide what’s worth keeping. Every other writer clings to tropes—you’re no different.”
Walter’s fingers twitched above the keyboard. Then his lips curled into something dangerous. “You know what, Draziel? One tap of this key, and you’re gone. Deleted. Rewritten as a pastel-wearing preppy named Biff who plays squash on weekends and cries over spilled lattes.”
For the first time, the smirk faltered.
Walter leaned in, voice steady now. “So what’s it gonna be? The sneering Brit who thinks he’s too clever for story—or Biff the walking cardigan?”
Draziel’s jaw tightened. He gave a slow, deliberate bow, venom curdled into politeness. “Touché, Walter Crane. You win—for now.”
And with that, he stepped back into the draft, muttering under his breath as the ink swallowed him.
Walter allowed himself one laugh, dry and bitter. “Cheerio, Biff.”
Finally, for once, the writer had the last word.
Author’s Note
Turns out, sometimes the only way to keep a character in line is to threaten them with pastels. Draziel strutted in here like he owned the place, tearing down every cliché I threw at him. And for a minute, he did own it—until I reminded him that one wrong move and he’s Biff, cardigan and squash racket included. Nothing snaps a smug Brit back to reality faster than the threat of spilled lattes.
This bit of madness was sparked by Di’s MLMM Monday Wordle #441 challenge—shout out to Di for tossing the right words on the floor and daring me to build a bonfire out of them.
So, if you hear me muttering about “Biff” later this week, don’t worry. That’s just me reminding my characters who’s really got the delete key.
Reflective Prompt
If you could shove your inner critic into a cheap sweater vest, hand them a frappuccino, and rename them something ridiculous, what would you call the bastard?
I know some of you came here for the flash — the quick bursts, the jagged edges, the kind of madness that doesn’t wait for a seat at the table. Don’t worry, that part of Memoirs of Madness isn’t dead. It’s just in the corner right now, tapping its foot, waiting for me to crawl out of the long-haul trenches.
Those trenches? That’s The Narrative Forge. It’s where I’ve been buried — cranking out chapters that sprawl across weeks instead of minutes. Big arcs, messy arcs, the kind of stories that don’t shut up once they get rolling. And while I wrestle them down, I want you to know where they land each week.
Here’s the Weekly Grind:
Monday – Garden of Ashes A broken world still smoldering, where Griffin and his crew try to survive the ruins. Smoke, betrayal, and the kind of silence that isn’t empty at all.
Tuesday – The Jaded Side of the Truth Percy, Joanie, Winnie, and Harry are picking their way through noir shadows. Loyalty bleeds, lies cut deeper, and nobody walks out clean.
Wednesday – No Half Measures Mack and Mara, stuck together in Greybridge. An old detective circling the drain, a young IA officer with too much to prove. Cigarette smoke and slow burns.
Thursday – Bourbon & Rust Silas and Baz are chasing ghosts across backroads where whiskey drowns more than thirst. Dust, rust, and the weight of choices that don’t go away.
Friday – Ashwood County Bodies drop, whispers spread colder than the morgue slab. Small town, big secrets, and everyone’s watching the clock tick louder than it should.
That’s five days, five stories, five different ways to lose yourself.
The flash will return — the bite-sized jolts you expect from Memoirs of Madness. For now, the long-haul work is eating my nights and spitting out chapters. Thanks for sticking with me while I get the Forge running hot.
I know five series is a lot to chew on, but grab what you can, when you can. Telling stories is where I stay sane. Having you read them? That’s just the bonus — the kind of perk I don’t take for granted.
Some things aren’t buried. They’re just waiting for someone to press play.
This week’s chapter of Bourbon and Rust drops us straight into the quiet hours of obsession — Baz alone in the station, chasing ghosts through static, rewinding the same tape again and again until something whispers back.
What begins as a routine playback spirals into something darker: a second voice, a decaying choir school, and a trail of forgotten girls who never stopped singing. By the time Mac and Silas join her at the ruins of St. Lydia’s, it’s already too late to pretend this is just another missing persons case.
This is the chapter where the ritual meets the recording.
Memory. Obedience. Programming. What if the choir was never meant to be heard by us?
Today was her first day at her new job and she thought she was prepared.
They had given her instructions. Rituals. Words that felt like passwords more than prayers. But no one told her about the chest. No one warned her it would breathe.
It rose from the stone floor like a relic of a forgotten age, its surface alive with shifting constellations that seemed to map a sky she had never seen. The air around it vibrated, as though the chest itself was holding back a storm.
When she touched the lid, her pulse staggered. Not from fear. From recognition.
The chest opened and she saw herself — not as she was, but as she would be. Hooded. Infinite. A figure draped in shadows stitched with starlight. Galaxies smoldered in her skin as though she were made of the night sky itself.
“You thought you were prepared,” the figure said. The voice was hers, but unfinished, jagged, as if carved in haste. “The job isn’t to open the chest. It’s to be the chest. To carry what others cannot.”
And suddenly, she understood: this was not just a job. This was release. She had been trapped too long in the shadows — between this world and the next, bound to silence, bound to waiting. She never imagined becoming free. Free to walk the streets, to breathe among the living, to leave footprints that didn’t vanish at dawn.
Because of her time in the shadows, she had learned something the living never could: how to exist in both worlds.
She sat in her room, watching the picture box, and it was wonderful and scary all at once. The moving images reminded her of the endless worlds she had observed from the shadows while she was in the chest — glimpses of lives she could never touch, stories she could never enter. Now, they flickered in front of her as if daring her to join.
She studied the pattern of speech. She mimicked smiles, frowns, laughter, and silence.
On Wednesdays, Monica arrived. She was never just Monica — not really. Her questions were too sharp, her gaze too steady. She tested, corrected, reminded. Showed her how to pass unnoticed. How to apply what she had learned. Monica’s voice was kind, but her eyes never betrayed surprise. It was as if she had seen countless others crawl from the chest before.
This time, as Monica adjusted the blinds and set her notes down, she paused. “Remember,” she said softly, “freedom doesn’t mean you’re unbound. It only means you’ve been given longer chains.”
Every lesson pressed her further into this world, though the shadows still whispered her name.
Her hands trembled, but she didn’t step back. She stepped closer.
The figure smiled.
The lid slammed shut.
The room fell silent, except for the faint glow bleeding from the chest’s seams — a light that pulsed like a heartbeat, or a warning.
Author’s Note This piece grew out of Esther’s Writing Prompt andFandango’s Story Starter— a simple line about being prepared for the first day at a new job. On the surface, that sounds ordinary, but in my head it twisted into something mythic: a chest that breathes, shadows that teach survival, and a figure learning how to pass in a world that was never built for her.
As always, thank you for reading, for wandering into these strange corners with me. Stories like this sit between myth and memory, control and survival. Your presence reminds me the lantern light isn’t wasted — even when the chest closes and the room goes dark.
I pulled this story a while back. Thought I was going to do something else with it. Truth is, I needed to figure out where it was going and whether it was worth continuing here. After some time and a lot of second-guessing, I’ve decided to keep posting it.
Formerly known as Cop Stories, this series now carries the title No Half Measures.
At its core, this is a noir tale about two mismatched detectives in the city of Greybridge:
Frank “Mack” MacNamara — an older Black detective, sober but scarred, carrying too many ghosts from the bottle, the streets, and the badge.
Mara Ellison — younger, sharp, and too attractive for her own good in a department that doesn’t trust her. She was Internal Affairs once, and that shadow never leaves her.
Together, they chase more than just criminals. They’re dragged into the city’s rot — conspiracies, rituals, and the silence of institutions that bury the truth. At the center of it all is the Hollow Table, a pattern of missing girls and burned churches that stretches back decades.
The story is about more than cases and bodies. It’s about what it costs to dig too deep, to trust the wrong person, to put your soul on the line for something that may never give back.
No Half Measures will update every Wednesday until the story runs its course. I can’t tell you when that will be — it’ll end when it ends. Hang in with me.
For those who read the early drafts, thank you for your patience. For new readers, welcome to Greybridge.
Dispatches from the Splinters of My Mind – Entry Seven:
The walls were peeling again.
Not in the way of a neglected apartment, with cheap paint curling off plaster in thin, tired strips, but in wide, curling plates of color — beige slats splitting like sun-bleached bark, hanging on just enough to whisper of the surface beneath. Some flakes curled outward like tongues, sharp-edged, brittle. Others clung stubbornly, trembling at the seams as if waiting for the right breath to tear them free. The scent of decay lingered, not putrid but ancient, like opening a book sealed for centuries.
Every morning I woke to more on the floor, curled and broken. A brittle carpet that crunched underfoot, as if I lived inside the ribcage of something too old to remember its own name. I’d stopped sweeping them away. What was the point when tomorrow would bring more? Perhaps the room was shedding what it no longer needed, the way I wished I could shed my memories.
And then there was her.
She leaned against the fractured backdrop as though it were her throne. Her hair lifted even in still air, a slow unfurling as though water carried it. Her eyes fixed beyond me, past the walls, past the world itself — pupils so dark I could feel myself falling into them whenever I dared look directly. When the cracks behind her widened, they seemed to bloom around her, a halo of rupture, and I wondered if she was causing them or healing them.
I don’t remember her arriving. One day, the room was empty. The next, she was carved into it, as natural as shadow. Her skin was dusk-drawn, her collarbone marked by a hairline seam that pulsed faintly — light, or blood, or something older. When she breathed, I felt the air change temperature against my skin.
I didn’t speak at first. Because I knew she wasn’t supposed to be here. Because I feared what my voice might summon from those widening cracks.
She came and went like condensation on glass: sometimes present, sometimes gone, but always leaving the trace of her shape behind, a ghostly imprint that lingered in my peripheral vision long after she vanished.
In daylight, she was most visible. The fissure at her collarbone flared faintly then, like embers beneath ash, pulsing in rhythm with what I imagined must be her heartbeat. I found myself counting the seconds between each glow, wondering if the pattern held meaning I was too human to decipher. At night, I only caught her reflection, a smear of movement across the window, quick enough to make me doubt my senses yet definite enough to leave me cold. When I turned my head, the glass was empty, but the air still carried the faint scent of iron and ozone, sharp enough to sting.
Once, I asked her name. My voice sounded foreign in the weighted silence — too solid, too certain in a room where certainty felt like trespassing.
Her head tilted slightly — that almost-birdlike tilt that made me feel like I’d asked the wrong question, like I’d attempted to name something that existed before names were invented.
And then silence, thick as water, filling my lungs until I forgot I’d spoken at all.
The peeling worsened. Wide flakes of paint snapped free with brittle cries, tumbling to the floor in a pale avalanche. I braced myself for crumbly plaster, gritty dust — but beneath the curling edges lay something softer, warmer. When my fingertips hovered over the exposed surface, I felt a faint thrum, like pulsing flesh just beneath the skin. A rush of heat radiated outward, and for one breath, I was certain I’d heard a heartbeat echoing through the wall.
That night, she whispered. It wasn’t voice or breath but a pressure, as if her word scraped along my bones, rattling marrow in its socket. One syllable — or something shaped like one — resonated: fracture. The room answered with a hollow groan, low and shuddering, like a ribcage creaking in sleep. In that moment, I understood: these cracks were not signs of decay but veins, pathways carrying some secret current. And she was here by design.
Dreams came next.
I walked across a desert of lacquered faces — thousands of them — each mask cracked but unbroken, gazing skyward with painted eyes. In endless rows, women knelt in silence, their black hair drifting upward as though suspended in water. Faint fissures split their bodies in perfect symmetry, their hands pressed flat against walls that breathed with slow inhalations. Above it all a voice rumbled from some primeval depth — neither hers nor mine, but older, harsher, grinding like bone against stone.
“You are not yet peeled,” it said, and I woke with the taste of mildew and dust at the back of my throat.
By dawn, compulsion seized me.
I pressed my nails beneath the curling paint, prying each plate free with a rasping crack. Behind every sheet lay warmth — flesh, not masonry — pulsing with hidden life. Each fragment I stripped away seemed to strengthen her: a faint glow flared along her collarbone, veins branching outward like roots. Strands of her hair lifted as though buoyed by some unseen current, drifting in a silent tide.
I dared to ask her again, voice trembling: “Who are you?” The air shivered, and her lips parted against the dark, revealing only that single word: “You.”
I wasn’t certain whether it was a confession or an accusation. All at once, the boundaries between us began to dissolve. Fine cracks snaked across my own flesh — along my wrists, across my throat — thin lines of searing light oozing outward. Every pulse stung like a brand, the tiny fissures widening when I moved. Mirrors became unbearable; I could no longer bear the stranger who stared back.
In dreams, we stood together before a wall as large as continents. Its surface heaved with breath, the ridges and valleys of some living organism. Her palms pressed flat against it; mine did the same. When she inhaled, my lungs ached to expand. And as her fractures spidered across its vast surface, identical cracks took shape in me, echoing each divide.
Then came the night the wall within me split. The rupture was almost silent — no thunder, only a subtle give, like the parting of lips. In that instant, the room dissolved: walls peeled back in curling strips of living tissue, revealing an endless horizon of cracked earth glowing from within, veins of molten crimson faintly lighting the dark. The air quivered with the scent of scorched iron and rain that would never fall. I stood at the threshold of something vast, hollowed down to the marrow of the world.
She turned then, fully. I saw her face merge with mine — not a mirror copy, but a palimpsest of all I had been, all I was, all I might become. Her eyes bore into me with recognition and a hunger so fierce it scorched my spine. She was part ancestor, part parasite, part echo — and perhaps wholly myself.
The walls had never been mere walls; they were a cocoon we were meant to shed. Now, peeled bare, there was nothing to separate us.
What comes after emergence? No one speaks of what follows the final split, the twisting inside-out of identity. Some nights I wake, reaching for edges that no longer exist, only to remember: no walls remain — only that scorched horizon, stretching gigantic in every direction.
I walk it still, side by side with her, with myself, carrying the fracture made flesh. And sometimes, drifting across the silence, that primeval voice returns, a grinding echo from distances too immense to measure:
“You are not yet peeled.”
As though this is but the first layer — and more walls, more selves, wait in the darkness, endless as bone.
Author’s Note: This story was inspired by the image prompt of a woman against a cracked, peeling wall. The tension between beauty and decay, emergence and collapse, became the core of this piece. I imagined the cracks not as weakness but as transformation — the surface shedding to reveal something alive, inevitable, and haunting underneath.
A nod as well to Pensitivity101’s 3TC – MM#166, which provided the words immense, large, and gigantic woven into the text.
This morning, over on The Narrative Forge, I set another chapter loose into the fire.
The Garden of Ashes isn’t just a story—it’s a slow burn through betrayal, memory, and the kind of survival that leaves marks you can’t wash off. Griffin and his band of survivors keep stumbling forward, carrying secrets sharp enough to cut, and this new chapter digs the blade a little deeper.
If you’ve walked this path with me already, you know the ground keeps shifting under their feet. If you’re new to Memoirs of Madness, welcome—this is as good a place as any to step into the smoke. Every chapter is waiting for you at the Garden of Ashes Series Hub, a vault of fire and memory where the whole trail unfolds.
The door’s open. Step through, and see how far the fire spreads.
The study had been locked for years and not just locked—sealed. Rust consumed the keyhole; the wood swelled as if it wanted to burst, but it never did. Everyone in town knew that door. I knew it. I passed it often enough, felt the quiet pressure of it like a weight against my ribs. And then—tonight—it was open. Not ajar. Not cracked. Wide. Waiting.
Wind came out of it, wet and uneven. Not air, not really—more like breath. Lungs straining. A sound that didn’t belong in the hallway. The stink hit next: iron, rot, something that clung to the tongue. Dust spilled over the floorboards as if the house were trying to cough something out. People stood there staring. I stood with them, though I swear the dark leaned toward me, the way a person leans in when they’re listening.
Some said the shadows moved, as if something was pressing from the other side. One man swore the wind spoke his name. A woman broke down sobbing—her husband’s voice, she said, though he’d been dead a decade. I didn’t hear any of that. I heard breathing. Only breathing. I keep telling myself that.
Dogs won’t step onto the porch. Cats don’t come back. The doorframe sweats rust like a fever. And everyone remembers Maclan Kincade—the recluse, the man who vanished into the forest at dawn and came back after dark with mud on his boots when the sky was dry. I remember too. I remember the tune he hummed, sharp and crawling, and I still hear it some nights when the wind drags low across the valley. They said he locked the study himself. Said he went through once. Came back thinner, stranger. I don’t know. I only see that the lock is gone.
Last week—some swore it was Lily, though Lily left years ago—something came through. Not walked and not stepped. It dragged, folding and unfolding, its head tilted as if the bones had been set wrong. Its mouth opened, but no sound came—only the rasp of the wind pushing behind it. The smell got worse—iron, wet leaves, and mold in the lungs. I gagged. I still smell it on my hands.
It looked at us. No eyes, but it looked. One man swore it whispered Lily’s name in a voice that moved backward, like water retreating through rocks. Another said it laughed. I didn’t hear that. I didn’t. What I saw was its shadow blistering the wallpaper where it touched, with black marks still visible after it flickered back into the dark. The stench stayed. It hasn’t left. I can’t scrub it off.
Now the door never shuts. The wind grows louder. The black bulges out into the hall, stains spreading across the wallpaper like rot. Neighbors cross the street to avoid the place. Some leave bread, coins, and prayers at the gate. I’ve seen them. I’ve smelled it. Some nights I dream it.
The doorway waits. Each night it breathes harder. Each night, the house groans as though making room. Each night, the black leans closer to the street. I tell myself I don’t go near it. I don’t. I won’t.
But the sound—ragged, wet, patient—follows me home.
Author’s Note
Written for Fandango’s Story Starter #215. Sparked by the line: “The door to the study had been locked for years, yet tonight it stood wide open.” What followed is not a tale of discovery but intrusion—the wound left when silence begins to breathe.
The gulls owned the rooftop. They had claimed it long before we arrived, staking their kingdom in feathers and shit, in the low, guttural croaks that echoed like laughter. Their wings tore at the sky when they rose, dragging it open, only to fold it back into silence when they landed again. From where we sat, the sea spread out in every direction, a pewter sheet without reflection, as though it had swallowed the sky whole and kept it hidden.
The castle wasn’t a ruin, not completely. The stones still held their shape, still resisted the erosion of wind and salt, but there was moss clawing at the edges of the turrets, lichen freckling the slate roof. A place caught between being kept alive and being abandoned—much like us, though neither of us wanted to say it out loud.
We sat against the cold wall, the slick tiles beneath us daring us to slip. My legs dangled freely into the air, careless. Hers stayed tucked close, knees pulled in, heels dug hard into the slate as though bracing against gravity itself. That was always the difference between us: I trusted the drop, she feared it. We hadn’t spoken in nearly an hour. Silence was easier, and for a while, we both pretended it was enough.
The gull on the chimney watched us. A single sentinel, yellow eyes sharp and patient, as though waiting to see which one of us would fall first.
When she finally spoke, her voice startled me. “Why are you always trying to get me to eat ice cream from the hippy ice cream man?”
The words felt too light for this place, too absurd to belong among these stones. They scattered in my chest like startled birds. “What?”
She smirked, though it didn’t reach her eyes. “You heard me. Every time we’re close to something—like this—” she gestured vaguely at the impossible balance of us on the rooftop, at the thin margin between sitting and falling, “—you start talking about him. That van, his cones, like it’s holy salvation or something.”
I wanted to deny it. Pretend she was imagining things. But the image of the truck rose instantly, absurdly: parked at the seawall below, pastel paint catching the last orange spill of sunlight—music tinkling, distorted and tinny. The words freshly made just for you ” were painted across the side like a promise no one believed. And that small golden rectangle of light from the serving window, glowing like a portal to somewhere better.
“Because,” I said slowly, “that’s the only place left where nothing is asked of you. You hand him a coin, and he gives you sweetness. No questions. No history. Just sugar. Just cold.”
She turned back toward the gull. It hadn’t moved. Neither had the crows on the far chimney, who leaned in as if listening. “You think that’s all I want? To be numbed?”
I didn’t answer. The air had thickened, and even the sea seemed to press closer.
Her voice cracked against the quiet. “Sometimes I think you’d rather eat someone else’s lies than deal with the truth of me.”
I swallowed. My throat was raw from silence. “Maybe. Maybe because the truth of you is heavier than this whole damn castle.”
The gull flapped its wings once, dislodging flecks of stone dust, then settled again. Watching and always watching.
We had been here before. Not this rooftop, not this particular edge of stone and slate, but here—in the place where one of us demanded something the other couldn’t give. It always ended the same: with me retreating into sweetness, her retreating into anger.
I remembered the first time I saw the van. Not here, but further down the coast, years ago. I was walking alone after midnight when I saw its colors under the sodium lamps, too bright for the hour, too hopeful. The man inside was still serving, though there was no one in line. He had his arms crossed, staring at nothing. His face was older than the paint job. I almost walked past, but he caught my eye and tilted his head, and I bought a cone out of guilt.
The first bite had been a revelation. Not because it was good—it wasn’t—but because it was simple. No hidden meanings. No debts. Just a mouthful of something cold that melted away before I could question it. I never forgot that feeling. I wanted it again. I wanted her to have it too.
But she wasn’t built for simplicity.
“You don’t see it, do you?” she said now, pulling her knees tighter. “That ice cream man, your savior, he’s just another ghost. Another liar in pastels. You think his sweetness is freedom, but he’s trapped just like us. Debt, sorrow, God knows what. You want me to believe in him because you’ve already decided you can’t believe in me.”
Her words landed harder than the wind.
I tried to picture the man’s face. His tired smile, the scars along his hands when he passed me the cone. She was right—he wasn’t free. None of us were. And yet, he had given me that moment of quiet, that small reprieve. Couldn’t that be enough?
“You’re probably right,” I said. “But at least his lie tastes better than ours.”
Her face twisted, something between grief and rage. “That’s the problem. You’ll settle for sweetness just because it doesn’t cut as deep. You’ll choose the hippy ice cream man over me every time.”
The gull lifted suddenly, wings beating, filling the air with a violence that wasn’t its own. The crows scattered from the far chimney, black streaks against the sea. For a moment, it felt like the whole rooftop would shake apart under their departure.
When the noise faded, she looked at me again, eyes shadowed, unreadable. “You don’t even realize it, do you? You’re already halfway down there, coin in hand.”
Her words hollowed me out.
I wanted to argue, wanted to tell her she was wrong. But the image rose again: the van humming with light below the seawall, music spilling like a broken memory, waiting for me to step down from these stones and pay the price for one more mouthful of sweetness.
The castle groaned in the wind. The slate shifted beneath us. The sea waited, patient and endless.
We didn’t climb down together.
By the time I finally left the rooftop, she was gone. Whether she had climbed down first or vanished into the stone, I couldn’t say. The gull had returned to the chimney, and it watched me with something like pity.
When I reached the seawall, the van was still there. Lights glowing, window open, music playing. The man inside didn’t speak as I handed him a coin. He just nodded, passed me the cone, and turned away.
The first bite was as cold as always. Sweetness dissolving before it could mean anything.
I stood there in the glow of the hippy ice cream man, alone, licking at something that was never going to save me.
And above, high on the castle rooftop, the gull croaked once more.
Author’s Note: This story was inspired by Sadje’s What Do You See? #303. I took the provided image as a doorway into something more fractured and unresolved, letting the rooftop and the gulls become the stage for a conversation that had been waiting too long in silence. As always, these Dispatches are fragments—splinters of something larger I don’t pretend to fully understand. They aren’t answers, just echoes.
Not unexpected. Just insistent. Like a cough that won’t clear.
His number. Pulsing through the cracked glass, digits warped, doubled reflections on ice about to split. Third time tonight. He didn’t answer. Just watched it rattle against the table.
He’d stopped tracking time by clocks. The house measured itself in dust on the sill, silence pressing into eardrums, these calls—messages in a bottle from some other him. Sometimes neat intervals, occasionally frantic, fevered, like footsteps on metal stairs.
The phone didn’t stop. Each vibration burrowed deeper, amplifying the hollow inside him. He relented. Thumb pressed to the glass, still warm from the last call.
“Don’t look outside.”
His voice. The rasp, the pauses—every fracture he knew in his own throat. Then nothing. Not even the mercy of a click. Just silence so complete it pulled the air out of the room.
He almost laughed. Coughed instead. The sound broke itself in half.
The blinds stayed drawn. Warped plastic slats holding back nothing. But he felt it—darkness pressed to the glass, as much inside as out.
The phone rang again. Louder. Same number.
“Please. Don’t. Look.”
Whisper, desperate now—a voice chewing its own words.
The hum started. Not a sound. A prickling at his neck. A fizz under skin. Then audible. A low, throbbing drone, swelling until it shaped itself into walls, into air.
Old house, he told himself: pipes, fridge, wires. But the house was hungry. It fed on his solitude, made every shadow a mouth.
He stared at the blinds. Didn’t move. Maybe he already had.
The phone slipped and hit the floor. Vibrated against the boards like it was alive. He left it there.
The blinds swayed. No draft. Just movement.
He froze. A child again, listening to voices fight in another room, convinced stillness could make him invisible. But the voice now was his: both warning and threat.
The hum rose—layer on layer. The room was swollen with it.
He tried to breathe slowly. Count it. Failed. Because the sound of breath was doubled— from his chest, and from just beyond the glass.
He didn’t look. Not directly. But in the narrow seam where slat met sill, he saw it: the faintest shift, like a tongue tasting the air.
The blinds trembled. Stopped.
And in the silence that followed, the breath outside kept time with his own.
Author’s Note: Written for Mark Fraidenburg’s Today’s Writing Prompt. First time I’ve stepped into this challenge, and of course, I dragged the shadows in with me. That’s the danger of these prompts—I never treat them as warm-ups. I let them slip under the skin and stay awhile.
This one is fractured on purpose. MoM flash isn’t about answers—it’s about what lingers when you don’t get one.
Memoirs of Madness – Stories from the Edge of Change
Some stories ask to be written. Others sit beside you for a long time and wait until you’re ready to listen.
Stories from the Edge of Change wasn’t planned as a series. It started as a single image: a man sitting on a bench, cold coffee in one hand, a life’s worth of weight in the other. I didn’t know then that his name was Jake. I didn’t know about Dani. Or Angel. Or Finch.
I just knew the corner felt familiar.
And the more I stayed with it—the more I stayed with them—the more I realized this wasn’t just a set of character sketches. It was a reckoning. A quiet excavation. A window into lives we pass every day and rarely get to sit beside.
Writing Jake’s story—witnessing it—felt like a privilege. Not because he’s extraordinary. But because he isn’t. He’s the kind of man the world walks past. The kind who makes people uncomfortable because he reminds them what’s possible when the bottom falls out.
And still, somehow, he stayed.
Angel came next. Then Finch. Then Pete, who slipped in sideways, like most of the people who don’t want to be noticed but can’t stop bleeding the truth. I didn’t invent these characters. They arrived, piece by piece, in gestures and sidewalk cracks, in coffee steam and whispered meetings.
This arc became more than a series. It became a bench I didn’t want to leave.
I don’t know yet if there’s more to share from this world. But I do know there are more stories. I can feel them at the edge of things.
Maybe it’s Dani’s voice, finally stepping into the light. Maybe it’s Angel on a night shift, facing the silence Jake once did. Maybe it’s someone we haven’t met yet—sitting on the same corner, hoping someone looks up.
If these stories meant something to you—if they echoed or stirred something buried—let me know.
And if not? That’s okay, too. This wasn’t written for applause. It was written to hold a space.
Thank you for walking with me this far.
The corner’s quiet now. But it still remembers. And I’ll be here, in case someone else looks up.
The city’s traffic lights started blinking in Morse code, spelling out a warning almost no one could understand. Red. Green. Yellow. Not colors anymore—just pulses like a drunk heartbeat trying to send a message before flatlining.
I lit a cigarette I didn’t want. Rain kept it alive longer than it should’ve. People passed me like cattle, faces blue from their phones, all of them locked in their private prisons. Nobody looked up. Nobody saw.
The code spelled one word: WAIT.
So I did. For a breath. Maybe two. Then the crosswalk man glitched. Froze mid-step, legs twisted like snapped matchsticks, head stretched long enough to whisper a name I’d buried years ago. Nobody else twitched. Not even a pause in their stride.
The lights blinked again. WE.
A bus hissed through the intersection. Windows fogged, seats empty. Except the reflection waving from the glass wasn’t mine. Too many teeth. My hands were in my pockets. I didn’t wave back.
The smoke in my throat turned copper. Tasted like biting down on the city’s own wires. The rain stuck to me too long—warm, clingy, like breath on the back of my neck.
Another blink. Faster. WAIT. WE WAIT. INSIDE.
The crowd moved, blind, obedient. I stayed behind. The city didn’t need their eyes. It only needed mine.
And I knew then—whatever was inside the lights had been patient for years. And patience is the one thing I don’t have left.
Author’s Note It’s been raining here in my head for days. I came across this image, stared too long, and the city started talking back. Not in words, but in signals—broken, blinking, urgent. Madness has a way of showing up like that: subtle at first, quiet enough to miss if you’re sane.
This one was sparked by Fandango’s Story Starter—proof that sometimes all it takes is a single sentence to push the mind off balance and let the city whisper its warnings.
Dispatches from the Splinters of My Mind — Entry 5
For years, the suitcase had slouched against the wall, olive canvas faded to the color of dead grass, as if weighed down by secrets. Mara learned to live around it. She told herself it wasn’t hers, not really—it was just another flaw inherited with the apartment, like the warped floorboards or the mildew that bloomed no matter how much bleach she poured. She built routines that ignored it: shuffling past on her way to the kitchen, bruising her shin on its bent wheel while juggling laundry, pretending its mute presence wasn’t following her from room to room.
By day, she worked in the customer service cubicle of a company that sold things no one really needed. Her headset buzzed with angry voices demanding refunds for trivialities: scratched coffee tables, missing screws, colors that didn’t match the brochure. She smiled at her monitor, mouthed apologies she didn’t feel, and counted the hours until she could slip away unnoticed. At night, she returned to her apartment and straightened it into submission—folding towels, smoothing the duvet, coaxing life from a wilting philodendron. Every act was an attempt to prove she still had control.
Her phone rarely lit up with messages. Friends had drifted off in the slow erosion of years, worn away by canceled plans and her tendency to withdraw. Lovers, when they existed, didn’t stay long; Mara always sensed the moment they realized her silences weren’t mysterious, just empty.
The suitcase became her only constant. Not with menace, exactly, but with the patient gravity of an old dog who refused to die. On the loneliest nights, when the city’s noise thinned to a faint hum and her reflection in the window looked more like a stranger than herself, Mara sometimes found comfort in its presence. A terrible comfort, born from the knowledge that if she disappeared tomorrow, someone would find the suitcase and wonder what it meant.
—
She told herself she would never open it. Whatever was inside belonged to some version of herself she had no interest in meeting. Better to let the past rot in peace.
Still, she caught herself circling it. Some nights she’d stand over it with a hand suspended above the clasps, her palm tingling as if braced for a static shock. She imagined sweaters matted with moths, photo albums swollen from rain, useless junk that had once mattered. But beneath those guesses lurked something heavier—the suspicion that the suitcase held not just things, but explanations.
On this December evening, the city outside hushed itself beneath its first snow, and the cold seeped inward until even the air felt brittle. Mara sat on the warped parquet floor, knees tucked tight, her breath fogging the space between her and the suitcase. The silence didn’t feel empty anymore; it pressed against her ribs, insistent, like a held note waiting to be released.
Her fingers found the clasps. She hesitated, pulse drumming in her ears, then pressed. The latch gave with a soft click—an exhalation, almost grateful. The suitcase opened with a muted thump against the wall.
Mara braced for the familiar debris of memory. Instead, the air thickened, sweetened, and began to move.
—
Out of the suitcase spilled green. Not color, but substance: vines, moss, leaves tumbling out in a delirious torrent, as if a dam had burst inside the canvas walls. The vines reached first for Mara’s wrists, curling with the intimacy of a lover’s grip, then crept up her sleeves before she could recoil.
The apartment began to betray her in increments. Carpet fizzed into moss, threads unraveling into living rootlets that burrowed deep into the warped floorboards. Table legs thickened, cracking as bark split through lacquer. Fungal blooms erupted from the bookshelves, pale caps pushing aside dog-eared paperbacks. The ceiling melted into sky—a blue so raw and immense it swallowed the dingy plaster whole.
The air grew dense, wetter, and alive with perfumes that should not coexist: loamy soil, crushed mint, the sweetness of rot, the ozone edge of lightning about to strike. Mara staggered as the scents layered, dizzy with the intoxication of it.
Then came the blossoms. Petals bloomed in fractal explosions—saffron edged in black, violet spirals furred like animal hides, blossoms so red they seemed to bleed. Some pulsed faintly, as if with heartbeats of their own.
Butterflies burst from the vines in a fever of wings, thousands lacquered in jewel tones. They whirled so thick they became a storm, each frantic flutter a whisper against her skin. A dozen landed at once—on her hands, her shoulders, her lips. One perched on her eyelid, its wings opening and closing with the slow rhythm of breathing.
She should have screamed. Instead, her breath came shallow, more awe than terror. For every heartbeat, the wild reached deeper.
Each leaf brushing her skin delivered not scratches but memories—her grandmother’s dough-soft hands kneading bread, her brother’s laughter ricocheting through a sunlit field, her father’s cough echoing down a sterile hospital corridor. The wilderness was rewriting her, splicing joy into wounds, editing her grief with gentler hands.
But wonder had teeth. In the corner of her vision, flowers gaped open to reveal centers ringed not with pollen but with minute, gnashing mouths. A patch of thistles dripped with sap the color of blood. A butterfly passed close enough for her to see one wing stitched together with spider silk, trembling under the effort of flight.
Above, something moved. Too heavy to be a bird, too fluid to be human—a colossal shifting presence that bent the canopy like a wave. She froze, pulse hammering, as the unseen thing exhaled a breath that rattled branches and sent shivers down her spine.
The vines around her ankles tightened, not cruel but unyielding, as if claiming her. The suitcase pulsed behind her like a second heart, no longer a container but a wound, hemorrhaging wilderness into the sterile apartment.
Mara drew in a breath thick with ozone and soil. For a moment, she could not tell whether she was breathing the wild in—or whether the wild was breathing her out.
—
Out of the suitcase unfurled green. Not just the color, but the thing itself: vines, moss, leaves in reckless abundance. They spilled from the hollowed interior with the momentum of a breached dam, clinging to her wrists, crawling up the sleeves of her sweater before she could react.
The rupture startled her so hard her body jolted, heart hammering in her throat as if the apartment itself had split at the seams. Vines surged, leaves and petals clawing into the stale air with a force that left her scrambling backward. For a moment, she could hardly breathe, the world too sudden, too alive.
But then the panic ebbed, steadied, and something else seeped in—calm, foreign yet familiar, like slipping into warm water after a long winter. The butterflies poured from the green in a thousand frantic flutters, their wings catching light that didn’t belong to her apartment, guiding her deeper into this breach. They circled her in loose spirals, herding without force, their chaos carrying a strange order.
One landed on her finger. Its wings pulsed open and shut, slow as breath. Mara froze, remembering the way she’d once cupped fireflies in her childhood palms, the glow painting her skin in fleeting constellations. Her mother had warned her not to hold them too tightly—fragile things needed room to breathe, to live. The memory stung and soothed at once, as if the butterfly itself had dredged it up to remind her: not everything she touched had to die in her hands.
The unease that had clung to her loosened, thread by thread, until what remained was something close to wonder.
Above her, the ceiling vanished, replaced by a canopy of impossible blue and the shimmer of a sun she’d never felt on her face. Somewhere in the new sky, birds cawed and something colossal moved just out of sight.
—
She considered her choices. She could claw her way back through that window, return to her apartment and its parade of quiet defeats—the warped floorboards, the mildew, the muted hum of survival. Or she could stay, let the wildness claim her entirely. For the first time in her life, she felt the weight of true agency. The knowledge that whatever she chose would shape not just her own story, but the world that had so unexpectedly chosen her in return.
The butterflies lifted from her skin, all at once, a living tide of color and motion, as if waiting for her verdict. Their wings beat like a thousand clocks, a patient chorus urging her to decide before time thinned and slipped away.
Mara drew a breath, the air thick with the scent of earth and unnamed flowers, as sweet and dangerous as desire itself. She closed her eyes, pressed the cold, smooth stone to her chest, and felt its weight resonate with every scar she’d carried.
Then she stepped forward into the meadow.
Behind her, the suitcase yawned wider, its frame trembling, the window flickering like a wound in the air—open for now, but unstable, its edges shivering as though the world itself strained to keep it alive. If she turned back too late, it would vanish, sealing her choice forever.
Still, Mara did not look over her shoulder. The suitcase, the apartment, the small life she’d managed to arrange from scraps—they belonged to a different woman, one who no longer existed.
The butterflies parted, clearing her path. The meadow stretched ahead in impossible bloom, humming with promise and peril alike. Somewhere beyond the trees, she thought she heard her true name whispered again, as if the realm itself was ready to receive her.
Mara kept walking.
—
The butterflies steadied her, their wings shimmering in fractured light. For every moment of unease—the vines clutching her ankles, the thorns whispering promises of pain—there came an answering wave of wonder. Her breathing slowed, steadier now, as if the air itself coaxed her into calm.
One butterfly, larger than the rest, descended with a gravity that felt almost deliberate. It landed on her finger, wings fanning like a heartbeat, fragile but certain. Mara stared, unable to look away. The soft pulse of its wings seemed to travel into her bones, reminding her that fragility and strength were not opposites but mirrors.
The unease inside her chest loosened, thread by thread, dissolving into awe. She lifted her hand, the butterfly clinging lightly, and for a heartbeat she forgot the apartment, the years of exhaustion, the muted repetition of survival. This was something else—something she’d longed for without ever naming.
She let the moment stretch. Around her, the wild hummed with unseen life, shadows flickering at the edge of vision, leaves trembling though there was no wind. The fear hadn’t vanished completely—it lingered like a low note beneath the music—but it was no longer in control.
Wonder was.
—
The meadow pulsed around her, as if the earth itself breathed beneath her feet. Butterflies circled in a golden storm, their wings beating in harmony with her racing heart. For a fleeting moment, Mara believed this was what she’d been waiting for all along—this impossible window into a world untouched by failure, regret, or the slow erosion of ordinary days. Here, every wound seemed rewritten in softer ink, every sorrow transfigured into beauty.
And yet, a tug—faint at first, then insistent—pulled her back. A thread wound tight through her chest, reminding her of the apartment that still held her life: the stubborn philodendron in its chipped pot, the stack of unpaid bills on the counter, the silence of rooms that did not breathe without her. She clutched the stone tighter, its cool weight pressing against her ribs like a verdict.
The butterflies parted, as if in recognition, opening a clear path back to the suitcase. The vines swayed, reluctant, but no longer holding her fast. She felt the ache of two worlds pulling at her—one shimmering with wonder, the other rooted in the grit of reality.
Her knees trembled. She thought of her mother’s voice, of promises she’d made to herself on nights when loneliness seemed like an endless horizon. She wanted to stay, to vanish into this dream that felt more like home than anything she’d ever known. But she also knew that surrendering here meant abandoning the fragile, stubborn parts of herself that had fought so hard to survive in the first place.
With a slow exhale, she stepped backward. The meadow dimmed, colors blurring at the edges. The butterflies scattered, frantic, then dissolved into motes of light. The vines loosened and retreated into the suitcase’s hollow, folding the wildness back into silence. For an instant, she thought she heard the trees sigh—disappointed, but not condemning.
Then it was gone. The apartment reasserted itself, grimy and familiar. The warped floorboards, the mildew’s sour tang, the cheap radiator knocking in protest. The suitcase sat slouched against the wall again, its clasps shut as though it had never opened.
Mara sank onto the floorboards, the stone still cradled in her palm. But when she opened her hand, she found nothing—only the imprint of its weight lingering on her skin. She closed her eyes, breathing in the stale air, and whispered to no one, “I’ll remember.”
It wasn’t surrender, not entirely. It was a compromise: to live in this reality, but to carry that meadow inside her, as proof that beauty—even dangerous, untamed beauty—could exist.
Author’s Note: I wanted to step sideways with this Dispatch—into a dream that feels like a window cracked open onto somewhere else. This one was sparked by Esther’s Writing Prompt, and I let the word window become a motif, threading itself through the story. Some pieces you write because the words won’t leave you alone. Others you write because you want to get lost in them and hope the world forgets your rent’s due. This was the latter. I needed a reminder that even the strangest worlds can feel like home for a little while. And maybe—just maybe—that’s the point: the magic’s not in whether it’s “real,” it’s in whether it leaves you blinking when you come back.
MoM Series: Stories from the Edge of Change – Part 5
Jake slipped back to Maple and 9th, just before the day’s first sirens. The sky was a cold bruise overhead—indigo leaking toward gray, the city below still sullen and half-swallowed by fog. Jake’s route here was always the same: the recycled bus air, the smell of new concrete and old bleach at the transfer station, the long walk down streets that still remembered him in all the wrong ways.
He’d liked it better in the days when a hangover let you lie to yourself. Being sober meant memory was out to get you, every hour of the day.
He hadn’t told anyone he was coming, and wasn’t sure anyone would care. Maple/9th wasn’t home, not really, but the corner had a way of calling him back when the rest of the world got too bright and too loud. Where everything had fractured. Where, by some backwards logic, something like a beginning had managed to dig in and take root, though even now Jake couldn’t explain why.
He stepped off the curb, the city unspooling around him in the blue-tinted hush of pre-dawn. Chains of streetlights blinked uncertainly overhead, fighting the thick mist that made them look like distant, drowned stars. Gutter water gurgled past slumped trash bags, and a wind—sharp and chemical, the kind you only got east of the river—whipped Jake’s soaked collar tight against his throat.
It had rained all night, the kind of slow, pounding storm that got past old window seals and filled alleys with shallow, fast-moving currents. His boots were soggy from the first block, each step a cold squelch that made him feel both present and exposed.
He carried a dented thermos of black coffee in one fist, and two foil-wrapped breakfast sandwiches in the other. Not an offering; nothing so grand. More like insurance, or ballast, a way to keep his hands busy while waiting for the morning to decide what kind of day it wanted to be.
Jake found his bench across from the bus stop, same warped planks as always, streaked deep with mildew and the ink of other people’s initials. He sat with a practiced slouch, elbows braced on thighs, letting the bench’s damp give him a chill. The wood was beaten soft by years of sun and rain and the pressure of bodies like his—bent, but holding.
The crust of the world here was thin. Every sound cut through. The city at this hour was a hungover beast, makeshift and miraculous: somewhere a dog barked in warning, a power transformer hummed in gradual crescendo, and a garbage truck, like the planet’s own heartbeat, thudded trash cans up and down the block.
Jake finished his first sandwich in three bites, washing it down with coffee so bitter it felt like punishment. He watched steam coil off the thermos and disappear.
He’d been clean for 343 days—he counted, because not counting was the first step to failure in his book—but the mornings punched hardest. Not cravings, exactly, but the thin, raw quiet where the old engine used to run. The ache was in the absence now, the stretches of time where nothing screamed at you from the inside.
He wondered if he was the only one who found the lack scarier than the compulsion.
People talk about recovery like it’s a sunrise, he’d heard at every group and meeting and shelter table in the city, but that was a lie. Recovery was more like hitting bottom, and instead of dying, realizing you were still clutching the shovel.
The old-timers called it “the work.” Jake wasn’t sure he believed in the work, but he did believe in gravity, and he knew how easy it was to fall back down the hole.
He wiped rain off his forehead and stared at the bus stop across the street. The city here was built in layers, old and new pressed together without much logic: a granite Gothic church wedged between a vape shop and an all-night copy center, tenements with windows starting to glow against the gray, stairwells already moving with the first shift crowds.
The light grew by inches. Jake’s eyes stung; he blinked, forcing himself to watch the street, not the rearview movie in his head.
A figure emerged from the alley behind the liquor store, hood low, gait ragged. Jake tensed—still, after all this time, the old alarms worked. Then he recognized the walk. Shoes caked in mud, chin up, hands buried deep in a jacket two sizes too big: Angel.
Angel had been a regular at the shelter through four of Jake’s own city-sponsored relapses, which made him family, or as close as anyone got these days. Compared to the Angel of last summer, this version moved with more purpose—less side-to-side drift, no fresh scabs or glassy stare. Angel’s jaw was bruised, but healing. The eyes were alert, focused, like he’d learned to see himself again.
They shared a nod—the kind that says, I see you and I know what you’ve been through, and also, let’s not make this a big deal. Angel slid onto the bench beside him, landed hard, and let his backpack fall at his feet. Water pooled around their boots, the surface speckled with cigarette ends, leaves, and plastic fork tines.
Neither of them spoke for a stretch. Jake thought about the time, months ago, when a rehab flyer had drifted down onto his lap from a passing outreach worker. He’d already been clean then—technically, anyway.
Time had a way of flattening out, making you forget how long you’d actually been at it. The city kept its own clock, indifferent to anniversaries. Some mornings, like this one, Jake felt it pressing in, the weight of nothing left to want except to stay above water.
Angel broke the silence first. “You been coming here a lot?” His voice was hoarse, wary, but there was something sturdy in it, too.
Jake shrugged, tracing a finger along the bench’s warped grain. “Now and then. Corner doesn’t judge.”
Angel pulled a sandwich from the foil and bit in, chewing slowly. “Doesn’t judge—but it remembers,” he said, mouth half-full. The words hung in the fog, true in a way that made Jake’s teeth ache.
They watched the city wake up. A woman jogged by—neon sneakers, rain-spattered leggings, earbuds locked into some other world. Down the block, a man in grimy overalls hosed vomit from the stoop of a shuttered bar, his movements quick and practiced. A bus hissed to a stop, doors gasping open. Nobody got on or off.
Jake passed the thermos to Angel, who sipped and grimaced. “You still at the center?” Angel asked.
Jake nodded toward the east, where the sunrise was starting to show. “Nights only. Fewer ghosts after midnight.”
Angel wiped his mouth with the back of a sleeve. “Heard you made it eleven months,” he said. Jake didn’t correct him; time was a rumor on the street. “I’m two months today,” Angel added, voice almost too soft to carry.
Jake tipped the thermos, spilling out a little coffee to mark the moment. “That’s something,” he said.
Angel stared out at the rising light, sandwich forgotten in his hand. “It feels like it could vanish any second,” he said. “Like, if I turn around too fast, it’ll all come back.”
Jake leaned back, the bench groaning under his weight. He studied the old traffic light—still stuck on red, despite the empty streets. “Sometimes it does,” he said, “but you don’t.”
The words were barely a whisper, but Angel nodded. They both knew the math: most of the people who made it this far didn’t stay far for long. The city was littered with their ghosts—names Jake remembered from the group, faces half-blurred by time and by the drugs that used to be his only way to see clearly.
Angel finished the sandwich and wiped his hands on his jeans. “Ever think about running?” he asked, eyes fixed on the pale clouds.
Jake didn’t have to ask where. “All the time.” He closed his eyes, felt the rain seep through his sleeves, and pictured a map with every city crossed out except this one.
Angel laughed, short and sharp—almost a bark. “I dream of a boat, man. Offshore. No laws, no meetings, nobody waiting to see if you fuck it up again.” There was a wildness in his voice, but also a kind of longing. Jake recognized it: the fantasy of disappearance, of finally outpacing your own story.
“You take yourself with you,” Jake said.
Angel let out a breath, not quite a sigh. “Yeah. That’s the problem.”
Across the street, a man in a threadbare hoodie sorted through a heap of cardboard, folding it into a sign. His hands shook just enough to notice. The buses kept rolling by, ignoring him. Jake watched as the man scrawled something—maybe a prayer, maybe a joke—across the cardboard and propped it up for the world to see.
Angel noticed, too. “You going to say something?” he asked.
Jake shook his head. “Not yet.”
“Why not?”
He thought about it. “First time, nobody listens. You wait until they look up without asking. That’s when they’re ready.”
Angel stared at the man for a long time. “And if he never looks up?”
Jake pressed his boots flat against the concrete, feeling the water squish beneath the sole.
“Then we stay,” he said. “Until he does. Or until someone else comes along who knows how to wait.”
Angel didn’t answer. But he didn’t move either. That was enough.
There were mornings when Jake imagined leaving—not running, just… slipping away. Boarding a train headed somewhere nameless, getting on a boat, disappearing into the haze like an offshore storm no one tracks. But he never moved. Never packed. The fantasy was like a scar: it only hurt when you pressed.
He stayed because someone had once stayed for him. That’s all it had ever taken.
The bench creaked beneath his shifting weight. The corner, as always, said nothing. But it remembered.
And Jake—sober, scarred, still learning—remembered too.
🖋️ Final Author’s Note:
Today’s story incorporates the prompt words offshore, downpour, and creed from FOWC, RDP, and Word of the Day.
This marks the final chapter in the first arc of Stories from the Edge of Change, a MoM original series about survival without spectacle.
Jake didn’t get a miracle. He didn’t get closure. He got a bench, a corner, and a reason to stay long enough to matter.
Sometimes, that’s all we get. And sometimes, it’s enough.
When I was a kid, I wore out VHS tapes like other kids wore out sneakers. I’d rewind, replay, and rewind again until my mother finally snapped, “Lord, not this one again!” We laughed about it years later when my grandkids started doing the same thing — watching the same cartoon on loop until it could play without the TV being on. Obsession runs deep in this family.
Here are the ten films that got under my skin, refused to let go, and still pull me in every time I hit play.
Convoy (1978)
Kris Kristofferson, Ali MacGraw, and a convoy of truckers rolling across America, flipping the bird at authority with CB slang I barely understood.
I couldn’t tell you what hooked me harder — the radios, the semis, or the rebellion. I memorized lines, stomped around the house calling myself Rubber Duck, and believed a convoy of eighteen-wheelers could change the world. It’s not a cinema classic, but it speaks to the part of me that refuses to follow rules, even now.
A Piece of the Action (1977)
Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby playing con men forced to do some good — crime with a conscience, swagger with a side of redemption.
I worshipped Poitier, and seeing him in a lighter role felt like catching your dad cracking a joke when you weren’t supposed to. Cosby was a bonus — I’d worn out Himself on cassette a thousand times, so seeing him on screen was like déjà vu with moving pictures. Add James Earl Jones’s voice booming through the mix and Denise Nicholas as Poitier’s love interest, and I was sold. I didn’t see the social commentary back then — I was too busy grinning. Now, I see it plain as day.
The Chinese Connection (Fist of Fury, 1972)
Bruce Lee tearing through colonial arrogance, fists and fury flying like scripture.
My friends split down the middle: you were either the Six Million Dollar Man or Bruce Lee. I chose Lee every time. We practiced the moves, clumsy imitations in the yard, convinced we were dangerous. Only a handful of us ever stepped foot in a dojo, but the code, the discipline, the honor — that film planted it in me. I still practice martial arts, decades later, because of Bruce.
Blade Runner (1982)
Neon rain, broken people, and machines chasing something like a soul.
I shouldn’t have even been there. Bought a ticket to the godawful Gymkata, slid into Blade Runner like a thief. My first R-rated film on the big screen, and I was gone the second Deckard lit his cigarette. This wasn’t a movie — it was a world. I force-fed it to my kids like vegetables disguised as candy. Years later, one of my daughters called me the week 2049 dropped: “Dad, you ready?” You’re damn right I was. Some obsessions don’t fade. They get inherited.
Excalibur (1981)
Fog, blood, betrayal, and the gleam of steel. John Boorman’s fever dream of Arthurian legend.
This was my first taste of King Arthur, and it sunk deep. I’ve hunted down every Arthurian film since, stacked books on the legends in my house. But it wasn’t the spectacle that stuck — it was the idea of honor, devotion, and duty. It shaped how I thought a man was supposed to be. For better or worse, that sword still gleams in my head.
The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)
Clint Eastwood spitting tobacco juice and cutting his way through the wreckage of the Civil War.
This wasn’t just my favorite Western — it became mine and my wife’s. We’d sit glued to the TV, watching it over and over until the dialogue was part of our marriage. Because of her, I learned to love Westerns in general. And every time I watch one now, I smile at the memory of her beside me. Clint Eastwood was a badass, sure — but she made the movie matter more.
Cooley High (1975)
Friendship, heartbreak, betrayal — and a Motown soundtrack to drown in.
This wasn’t just a movie; it was my life in another time and place. The music, the teenage angst, the betrayals that cut deeper than any knife — all of it felt too close to home. Even though it was set in the ’60s, it mirrored the world around me. It became a staple in the Black community, right up there with Shaft. And it still hits today, just as hard.
FM (1978)
DJs fighting corporate suits with nothing but vinyl and attitude.
I found this one through my mother’s soundtrack, then realized there was a whole movie attached. For a kid glued to the radio, it felt like God had delivered it straight to my TV. My buddy and I even launched a pirate station we called Q-Sky Radio. He didn’t know where I got the name. I smiled and let him think it was his idea. That love of music never left, and I’d argue FM is part of why House of Tunage even exists today. This movie is my jam, then and now.
The Wanderers (1979)
Bronx gangs, doo-wop on the jukebox, swagger and fists flying at the edge of an era.
Everyone around me worshipped The Warriors — and I did too — but The Wanderers dug under my skin in a different way. Maybe it was the sense of a world dying, of everything you know mutating into something unfamiliar and scary. It taught me that you either shrink back or walk forward into the unknown. I chose forward. I’ve read the book five times at least, and it still hits differently than the film, but just as hard.
Lady Sings the Blues (1972)
Diana Ross as Billie Holiday, Billy Dee Williams smooth as glass, Richard Pryor burning in every scene.
My mom loved Diana Ross, so I sat through this film with her more times than I can count. I didn’t share her love for Ross, but Billie Holiday got her hooks in me. Later, I told that story to my wife, and she showed up with two CDs: Lady Sings Jazz and Blues by Diana Ross and a Billie Holiday collection. She knew me better than I knew myself sometimes. Man, I loved that woman.
Closing Reflection
These weren’t just movies. They were obsessions. They taught me about rebellion, loyalty, heartbreak, and survival before I even had the language for it. My mom teased me for playing them to death, but when I watch my grandchildren loop the same film until it frays, I can’t help but smile. The cycle continues. Different movies, same obsession. And maybe that’s what cinema really is — a mirror we pass down, cracked and glowing, frame by frame.
Dispatches from the Splinters of My Mind – Entry IV
I’ve spent twenty-five years wandering the constellations of dust that pass for towns in these parts, chasing rumors of justice across salt flats and sun-stained mesas, my hand welded to the only gospel this world respects—cold iron, burnished to a black shine by blood and the desert’s endless hunger. Every dawn, I’d cinch a deadman’s resolve around my ribs and tell myself I was the steady hand in a world built on bad intentions, that each finger’s pressure on a trigger could tip the scales back toward something like decency. But time—time is a lizard’s tongue: flicking, unseen, snatching up the moments until you’re left staring at a husk, trying to remember how you ever filled it. Sooner or later, you see it for what it is: a young man’s dare delivered to the gods, a clumsy ballet of violence dressed up as virtue, death’s grand masquerade with your own face under the mask.
The desert kept its own ledger, written in wind and stone. Rivers shrank to scars, and every town I passed through felt like a graveyard waiting for names. Vultures taught me patience better than any preacher, circling in their slow sermons, never rushing what they knew was inevitable. Out here, the land didn’t just watch—it judged. Every canyon whispered back the sound of your gun, long after the body cooled.
Every soul I ushered into the hush had a name—sometimes carved on a tin badge, more often graven into the blue-black veins of the territory’s memory, where the ghosts stacked up like poker chips. I tried to keep them at a distance, let the desert swallow their last words before they could echo. But there is no distance in these plains, only the illusion of it. You run a man down at noon, the dust still wet with his shadow, and by sundown your own shadow’s right there beside his, stitched together over the dirt. I told myself numbness was a tool, a way to keep the tremor out of my hand, but numbness is a kind of debt, and the interest compounds in silence. I was too busy forging my legend—chiseled in the splinters of busted up saloons and the blue smoke curling from spent casings—to notice what I’d mortgaged away.
So now I’m the last dog in the fight, nothing left but a brittle skeleton propped against a fence post, watching the horizon try to out-bleed itself every evening, waiting for the sun to name one color I haven’t seen a man die in. I count the ghosts that trail me like some biblical plague, each one a mile marker on the road I can’t stop walking.
Just crawled out of a dime stretch—ten years locked inside iron and spit, with only the slow creep of rust and regret for company—but that’s pocket change compared to the ledger I keep in my head, a ledger no warden’s key will ever unlock. The past doesn’t loosen its grip; if anything, it tightens until you can’t tell your own pulse from the memory of someone else’s. Out here, they call me a legend, a walking parable, the old coyote that’s outlived every snare and bullet. But legends are just stories that haven’t had their endings written yet. The endings always come, and they are never kind.
Once, a boy no older than my own reflection at nineteen tried to catch me in the middle of a mud street. His hat was too big, his holster too stiff. I watched his lip tremble before his hand even twitched. And in that stutter of fear, I saw myself—hungry, stupid, convinced the world owed me immortality. I let him draw first, because mercy was a luxury neither of us could afford. When he fell, I felt no triumph, only recognition. The desert doesn’t make room for fathers, only mirrors.
There is a whole generation of greenhorns—some with badges, some with nothing but their mother’s borrowed last name—who’d sleep sweeter with my scalp nailed to their saddle horn. Each one wants to be the one to rewrite the myth: to show the world the old king had no teeth left, that even legends can bleed. What they don’t see is that the fire never really dies, it just settles into the bones. They walk up fast, hot with the promise of their own immortality, and they think the shaking in my hands is age, not anticipation.
Justice—my old, two-faced companion—watches from the back of every whiskey glass and midnight mirror. When I was young, he sat shotgun, fed me lies about glory and honor and the clean line between good men and bad. But that line was always drawn in sand, and every storm I weathered blurred it until no one remembered which side they started on. Now he hides behind the badge, jeering at me from the safety of his armchair, pretending he wasn’t the one who put the first pistol in my grip. Hypocrite. He wants to see me pay for my excesses, but he forgets: I always paid in advance.
When the night rolls over the land and the wind starts to howl like an orphaned child, the voices come crawling in from the edges. “Was it worth it?” they ask, breathless, persistent, soft as the moths in the old preacher’s study. Worth the empty chairs at dinner tables, the widows with nothing left but a wedding ring and a story? Worth the holes I punched in the world, the ones I never bothered to fill back in? I’ve no answer for them, and by now I doubt I’ll ever find one. Only this: the world is made of debts, and violence always knows where to send the bill.
These days, even my dreams betray me. No sweet lies, no gentle horizons—only the endless replay of gunfire, a carousel of faces turning toward me in their last astonishment. Sometimes I wonder if I’d even know what rest felt like, if peace ever did arrive. Maybe I’d flinch from it, the way a stray dog flinches from kindness.
Tonight, I can feel it: the ledger’s come due. The sky above is swept clean and hard as flint, the air stinking of cordite and things long dead. I lie here, spine pressed to the living earth, the stars blinking overhead like a jury summoned to pass sentence. My hand’s locked around the iron, the heat of the last shot still ghosting up through the barrel. Around me, the sand is pitted and blackened, marking the places where hope gave up and history picked up the slack.
This is what justice looks like, in the end: a man alone, weapon cooling, waiting for the world to decide if his next breath will matter. For a heartbeat, everything holds still. The air itself is an intake of judgment.
Will they let me die with my boots on? Will the dead finally cut me some slack and let me drift into whatever comes next? Or will the world keep chasing me, day after day, circle after circle, like a dog gnawing a bone it’ll never finish?
I laugh—a dry, cracking thing that feels like it might shatter my teeth. It’s the laugh of a child who’s seen the trick behind the magic, the snort that follows every preacher’s sermon. Life and death, justice and sin: all of it a rigged game, played out over and over until the deck wears thin.
I should be afraid. I should pray. But all I feel is the deep drag of exhaustion and, maybe, the faint warmth of something like relief.
But peace—peace’s for fools, for greenhorns and saints, not the likes of me. Not a man who emptied his promise to the desert and let it keep the change.
I close my eyes and try to shoulder the weight of every life I ever took, every mile I rode with justice whispering fever-dreams in my ear. Maybe there’s a way out. Maybe there isn’t.
Either way, I’ll keep my iron close and my eyes open. In this world, justice is just another word for a story that won’t end, and legends—they never really die.
They just get older, and a little sadder, and wait for the next bullet to teach them something new.
They just keep glancing over their shoulders, waiting for the next bullet.
Author’s Note
Another ride through the dust for Dispatches from the Splinters of My Mind. This one lives in the twilight—half confession, half reckoning—an old gunslinger’s ledger of debts that can never be balanced. The West here isn’t about glory or the last man standing; it’s about the silence that follows every shot, the weight of a myth too heavy to carry. Maybe you’ll hear echoes of your own shadows in his words, or maybe you’ll just taste the grit of the desert wind on your teeth. Either way, this dispatch isn’t about answers—it’s about what’s left when the smoke clears.
MoM Series: Stories from the Edge of Change – Part 4
Jake worked nights.
He liked the quiet. Fewer eyes. Less explaining to do. The outreach center kept him on the roster as a volunteer—two days a week, graveyard shift. It was mostly sweeping, coffee refills, folding blankets, and unlocking doors when someone showed up crying, shaking, or bleeding. They didn’t advertise the hours. The ones who needed it already knew.
He didn’t talk much to the clients. Just nodded. Kept his voice low. Gave out clean socks and disposable razors, and sometimes leftover sandwiches if the early crew hadn’t raided the fridge. A woman once called him a ghost in a hoodie. He took it as a compliment.
They didn’t know his history.
Most of the staff thought he was someone’s cousin. Someone in the program. He was both, in a way. Still figuring out what version of himself was worth keeping. He told the director he didn’t want to lead groups or give speeches. He just wanted to stay close to the door—for the ones who weren’t ready to walk through it alone.
That night, it was cold again. Not dramatic. Not headline cold. Just the kind that seeps through your boots and settles in your bones. The kind that makes concrete ache. Jake had learned the difference between degrees that made headlines and those that just broke people.
He was wiping down the intake counter when the door buzzer snapped.
The front desk kid—a college intern with a buzzcut and the stubborn optimism of someone who hadn’t failed big yet—waved him over.
“Guy outside’s got no ID. Twitchy. Keeps asking for someone named Pete. Said you’d know what that means.”
Jake’s stomach knotted. He did.
Pete had been there in Jake’s first rehab stint—loud, bitter, always quick to spot your softest spot and stomp on it. He was the kind of man who’d mock your breakdown and then sit with you on the curb afterward, passing a half-smoked cigarette like it was communion.
They’d had a moment, months ago, after the group. Pete had come apart in the stairwell, cracked wide open from something the counselor said about fatherhood. Jake had sat next to him, quiet. Didn’t try to fix it. Just stayed.
That was the last time he’d seen him.
Now Pete was back. Gaunt. Twitching. Cheeks hollowed like spoons. His hoodie was soaked around the collar, eyes glazed like bad glass.
Jake opened the door.
Pete stumbled in, clothes clinging wet. The rainfall outside had picked up, soft but relentless. He looked like a man who’d slept under bridges and crawled out just long enough to fall again.
“Shit, man,” Pete mumbled. “Didn’t know where else to go.”
Jake didn’t answer right away. The smell of damp wool and stale sweat filled the gap between them. Pete’s arms trembled at his sides like he was holding invisible weights.
“Come in,” Jake said. “You need a blanket?”
Pete blinked. “You still here?”
“Still here.”
They sat him down. Pete wouldn’t sign the detox papers. Said he just wanted warmth. Just wanted to sit somewhere without a knife in his back or a siren in his ear. Jake gave him coffee. Black. No sugar. His hands were shaking so bad that half of it sloshed onto the floor.
“I was clean,” Pete muttered. “Six months. Then my brother died in a car crash. I don’t even cry. Just go buy a bottle like I’m on autopilot.”
Jake said nothing. Let him say it without interruption.
“I thought I was good, like I was done paying. Like I was… exempt.” He laughed once. It cracked like a cough. “Grief doesn’t work like that. No punch card. No discounts.”
Outside, the rainfall whispered against the windows. Steady. Relentless. A low percussion against the building.
Jake thought of that phrase Pete used to say in rehab. “You want grace? Get a dog.” He understood now. Grace wasn’t something you earned. It was something that showed up when you didn’t run from the stoop.
Later, when Pete fell asleep curled around a donated coat, Jake stepped outside. The pavement was slick with oil and rain. Steam rose from the sewer grates like the city was exhaling something it didn’t need anymore.
He didn’t feel proud. Didn’t feel like a hero. He just felt… rooted. Present. Like a chair that had stopped wobbling.
Some nights, that was enough.
🖋️ Author’s Note:
Written for today’s FOWC, RDP, and Word of the Day prompts: stoop, rainfall, and pavement.
Second Shift is part of Stories from the Edge of Change, a series about quiet recoveries, unglamorous grace, and showing up when there’s nothing left to prove. Sometimes, staying close to the door is the most radical thing you can do.
Dispatches from the Splinters of My Mind – Entry III
Some storms don’t soak the skin. They reach inside and drown the marrow.
Tonight the rain falls with the weight of a kept promise. It doesn’t descend so much as push down, insist on itself, fill the air until breathing becomes an act of resistance. The umbrella in my hand is a thin, trembling continent; its black fabric funnels water into dark rivers that spill from the ribs and rope to the ground, drawing vertical lines that feel like tally marks. Somewhere I’m being counted.
The street has shrugged off its people. Windows glow, then look away. Streetlights smear halos on the mist like saints who regret their own patience. My coat is heavy enough to qualify as armor but still lets the cold in—through the seams, through that spot between the shoulder blades where water always finds a shortcut. The storm carries the smells I grew up trusting: iron, pavement, the faint algae note of gutters choked with last year’s leaves. Petrichor is what it’s called when rain wakes dust. This isn’t that. This is the breath of basements, of clocks that stopped and never got restarted.
Most people say storms cleanse. They don’t. Storms etch. They score the world and leave grooves for the next one to follow. Memory works the same way. Once a path is cut, the water takes it again and again, deepening it until it becomes a canyon, and you call it fate.
I tell myself I walk for the exercise, for the chill that makes coffee taste better when I get back. The sidewalk knows the truth. Each step lands with a small slap like a hand refusing to be held, and every slap says a name I don’t let my mouth say. I keep the umbrella low. Its edge makes a moving curtain; beyond it the world is a stage I decline to enter.
The rain speaks in small questions, a whisper pressed to the cartilage of my ear. Why carry ghosts in your pockets? Whose absence is shaped so perfectly you keep mistaking it for a lung? How long can you pretend the storm is a sky problem and not an internal climate?
I don’t answer. Some questions aren’t interrogations; they’re companionship. They walk beside you until you forget whose footsteps are whose.
Water beads on my knuckles, then threads down my wrist, finds the cuff, and hides there. My fingers have gone bone-white at the tips; the skin looks borrowed from an antique photograph. I switch the umbrella from one hand to the other, and the frame shivers, a metal insect deciding to live. At the end of the block, a bus sighs at a stop devoid of bodies, doors wheezing open and shut as if practicing a conversation it will never have.
I turn toward the river because storms like edges, and I like to know where mine are. The path down to the water is a sheet of black glass scratched with gravel. Headlights pass behind me; their light arrives a breath late, as if slogging through syrup. I don’t look back. Looking back is a hobby that requires drier weather.
At the railing, the river is all sound—slap and suck, slap and suck—the old mouth of the city learning, forgetting, relearning the same word. I lean the umbrella to the wind, and the rain repositions itself like a cat denied a lap. It finds my cheek. It salts my mouth with a taste like pennies. The umbrella is darker at the seams, as if it has a memory of other storms and the memory is leaking through.
When I was small, thunder meant counting. Lightning was the beginning of a math problem: one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, the exact distance between flash and sound giving the gloom a measurable spine. The grown-ups said the counting made it less scary. They were wrong. It made it precise. Fear wears a suit better than it wears a costume.
The river throws back a warped copy of the sky and, inside that copy, a copy of me: a shadow under a shadow, face freckled with rain that refuses to choose a direction. The umbrella’s edge drips like ink. If I stared long enough, I’m sure the drips would form letters, and if I read them, they would say the exact sentence I’ve been dodging since the hospital room went quiet. I look away.
A figure moves under a distant awning—just a darker shape tucked against a wall—but the storm has trained my nerves to salute things that might become stories. It’s nothing: a stack of plastic chairs shrink-wrapped for the season, the blue sheen of water making their edges animate. I laugh once at myself, and even the sound is wet.
I walk on, because the body hates stasis more than it hates weather. The umbrella tugs at my shoulder with the low, dull impatience of a dog that knows the route better than you do. The wind changes, and I tilt to keep the edge against it; the whole world follows the same choreography, heads bending in the same direction, rain showing us how obedient we can be. Somewhere a shutter slams, the beat so regular it could be a heart or a metronome or the conversation of two neighbors who never liked each other and never will.
The storm consults its ledger and turns a page.
I remember a kitchen on a morning that wasn’t raining. A mug warm in both hands. The door opened a crack because someone kept promising they were only stepping out for a second, and the air didn’t believe them. I remember the way your umbrella leaned by that door: a black spine, a curved handle, nothing special until it was. I remember how an object becomes a relic without changing its weight.
Thunder rolls itself across the city like a drunk trying to find the couch. I count u—no. I stop. I let it arrive when it arrives. The rain thickens as if consistency can be argued into existence. A seam gives way; a bead becomes a string becomes a thread that refuses to break. Water starts a new river down the inside of my sleeve. I could be angry about it. I let it have me. There are defeats that feel like permission.
Halfway back from the river, a dog materializes from the blur. Yellow eyes, coat the color of soaked cardboard, not close enough to touch or call a breed. It considers the umbrella with the careful contempt of a creature that prefers honest weather. For a second, I think it will fall beside me, become a sentence in this night that makes the ending feel earned. It snorts rain out of its nose and vanishes between parked cars, a ghost that refuses the job.
There’s a scent here I can’t place at first, sweet and wrong. Then the wind angles and the bakery on Third breathes out its late-night hymn: sugar, yeast, something caramelizing into morning. The storm catches it and ruins it to perfection, the way a good sadness ruins a good song. My stomach remembers hunger. My mouth doesn’t.
I pass the pharmacy where the lights never sleep and the aisles are organized into the many ways a human can try to manage a body. A cardboard cutout smiles behind glass, offering discounts to the version of me who believes relief comes with a barcode. I keep moving because the storm makes shoppers into fish, mouths opening and closing on hooks they can’t see.
By the time I reach the long, unclaimed wall that smells like damp chalk, the umbrella has become less a shelter than a prop. The fabric sags. The ribs press through like bones, attempting to confess. The handle is slick between my fingers; each step tightens my grip until I think of all the things I held like this that weren’t designed to be held so hard. Another seam lets go. The drip from the edge becomes a fringe.
I stop. The storm doesn’t.
There’s a moment in every walk where the umbrella becomes the negotiation instead of the weather. Do I keep the pretense? Do I bow to pure utility? Do I admit I was never trying not to get wet—I was trying to look like a person who knows how to behave when the sky loses composure?
I close the umbrella.
The world arrives all at once. Rain tattoos my scalp. It pounds my coat into submission. My breath goes winter in my throat. Without the fabric’s invented horizon, the street expands; space stratifies into layers of falling, and I stand inside the waterfall the city pretends to be. The cold is immediate and honest. For a second, I’m a bell that’s just been struck.
It’s louder without the umbrella’s drum-skin. The storm’s voice loses its mutter and speaks plainly. You are not special, it says, which is not cruel. You are not being punished, which is not comforting. You are weather, which might be both.
I tilt my face up. Raindrops hit the soft parts first: eyelids, lips, the tender seam where nose meets cheek. Each one is a document signed by pressure. They run into my mouth and turn language into an optional feature. I swallow some. I let the rest choose their exit routes.
When I open my eyes, a reflection waits in the blank glass of the office building across the street. It’s me, of course, reduced to two tones and the blur of falling lines. But in the pane beside mine, there’s another me, half a step out of sync, hair pasted against a forehead I don’t admit to, mouth a different shape. We stand together, both of us soaking, both of us looking like a problem that finally stopped pretending it had a solution. When I lift a hand, she doesn’t. We agree to ignore the difference.
The rain thins, not because the storm has decided to be kind but because it has done what it came to do. The grooves are deeper now. The next pass will find them without effort. Water slackens from torrent to conversation. Far away, a siren remembers it is a note and ends like one. I open the umbrella again, not because I need it but because carrying it closed feels like an argument I didn’t mean to win.
I cut back toward home through the block nobody chooses unless they live on it. The shutters have found their rhythm. The bus has given up. The bakery exhales one last sweet breath before morning takes the shift. My shoes report their failures. My coat, relieved of drowning, becomes merely heavy. I am etched, but upright.
At the corner, a streetlight clicks off mid-sentence, and the dark it leaves behind is not empty; it is honest. I stand in it for a count of ten, the way I used to stand behind the door for hide-and-seek, pretending the game wasn’t rigged by the size of the room. When I step out, the light wakes as if I’d taken something from it and it had questions. I don’t answer. I give it my back and my rain and the slow swing of the umbrella’s weight.
Storms end. They always do. The air will be washed, and new people will step into it and call it clean because they weren’t there to feel the drowning. But the grooves remain. Bone remembers. Roads keep secrets in their cracks. The next sky will know where to pour.
By the time my key finds the lock, the rain is a fine whispering. I hang the umbrella by the door, a black spine cured of ambition. It drips politely onto the tray that exists to forgive it. Inside, the room reeks of heat and old paper, and the first thing that comes to mind is dry. I strip the coat, peel off the sleeves that turned river, and stand listening to the last of the storm speaking to the window. It’s only water, it says. It’s only weather. And yet.
I breathe. The breath goes all the way down. It finds the places the rain found and settles there like a treaty.
In the morning, no one will believe the sky ever weighed this much. That’s fine. The street will carry the record for me. The umbrella will remember. My bones have been engraved with tonight’s handwriting, and the next time the ceiling opens, I’ll step outside already fluent.
Author’s Note: Third splinter. Storms don’t absolve; they annotate. If you walk long enough, you learn to read the margins.
I used to treat setting like an afterthought—slap a name on a town, maybe add a landmark, and call it done. But by accident, I stumbled into a book on worldbuilding, and it flipped something in me. Now I see the world itself as a character, one that presses against the protagonist and antagonist alike. The streets breathe. The shadows crawl. The town isn’t just where the story happens—it is the story. Almost like the place itself is the boogeyman lurking in the dark. And honestly, that’s what I enjoy most right now: shaping a world that fights back.
I didn’t just sit at a desk and invent details out of thin air. I pulled out a notebook, stacked up the photos from my travels, and let the world start whispering. I’ve crossed oceans, driven the continental United States, and every stop—whether a dusty diner, a half-broken neon sign, or a small-town mural—carries something worth keeping. This time, instead of pushing the idea of “place” aside, I leaned into it. Notes piled up. History mixed with imagination. Articles, old texts, even scraps of folklore—they all became raw material. Slowly, the world started to take on a pulse of its own.
The most interesting part of my travels has never been the landmarks—it’s the people. Their traits, the way they speak, even the rhythm of how they move through the world—all of it has the potential to slip into one of my characters. The world itself is beautiful, yes, but it’s the hidden histories that take my breath away. I don’t announce my sources, but my binders are crammed with notes—detailed, cited, cross-referenced, tabbed like I’m building my own private archive. The research takes longer than the writing, and I don’t mind. Once I get my hands on a piece of history, I can twist it, bend it, or use it in ways it was never meant to be used. That’s the thrill—watching a small discovery push a story into a direction I never planned.
What I’ve discovered is that if you build a world properly, it doesn’t just hold one story—it can hold a whole series of them. A single town, mapped and breathing, can stretch into multiple narratives, each pulling from the same veins of history, rumor, and atmosphere. That’s the real joy for me right now: knowing the work I put into one world can echo across stories, creating a place readers can return to, and a place I never quite finish exploring myself.
Her name is Raquel, but my given name is Rachel. I first noticed her when I hit high school and the air around me started to hum with a voltage—lockers slamming, gossip sparking at the seams, hallways strung like power lines through a town that never slept. She didn’t arrive with voices. No whispers, no commands. Just a pressure at the edge of thought, a cool hand pressed to a fevered brow. She only shows up when I need her. I don’t hear her, but I know when she’s standing just to my left, looking out through my eyes.
The first time, it was October and every tree in the county had decided to bleed. The maples along the football field turned a red so violent the grass looked stunned. A rumor had gone around that I’d said something about a senior’s boyfriend—nothing true, nothing new—just a scrap of talk fed into the hungry mouth of a school day. By the last bell, I could feel the circle forming before I even walked outside. Girls with folded arms. Boys with bored eyes. The taste of pennies. The sky bruised itself purple.
I didn’t have a plan. I never did then. The thing I remember is the wind. It came hard across the parking lot and threaded itself through my hair, then deeper, as if there were a second set of hair inside my head—branches, fine as nerve endings. I felt them sway. And then I wasn’t exactly taller, but I was standing in a different way, like my weight knew how to root. Someone shoved me. The circle tightened. The world clicked into a cleaner focus, edges sharpened, sound pared down to necessary pieces: breath, footfall, a cheap bracelet pinging against bone. The part of me that panicked went quiet, like someone cupped both hands over its mouth and said shhh.
I walked forward. The girl in front of me took a step back without meaning to. I didn’t bare my teeth, make a fist, or say anything that would later be quoted. I just looked at her until she had to break eye contact. The circle sagged. Somewhere a whistle blew—practice starting on the field—and that was that. No heroics. No detention. I went home with the leaves still burning in my skull and the wind still combing through the trees inside me, and it was the first night I understood that Raquel was not a person I could point to. She was a stance. A recalibration. A forest that woke up when I needed cover.
The second time that year, a man in a green cap followed me from the grocery store to the bus stop. My hands shook so hard I almost dropped the bag. The sky was that color between storm and dusk that makes you doubt the honesty of streetlights. I tasted the same pennies. Then the shift: the quiet. The trees. Autumn exhaled, and the world tilted just a fraction. I turned my face toward him the way a deer turns toward the distant snap of a twig. Nothing about me changed. I changed anyway. He crossed the street at the next gap in traffic and kept going. Maybe I was never in danger. Maybe sometimes a girl doesn’t need to prove anything to make it true.
I learned to mark the moments Raquel left. It felt like stepping out of a lake—clothes heavy, hair dripping, adrenaline sickly-sweet on the tongue. I’d sit on my bed and stare at the blank corner of my room until I felt ordinary again. There are only so many times in a week you can be a wildfire before you start to worry about what you’re burning down.
Years run. You lose track. You collect jobs and dead houseplants and the soft weight of other people’s expectations. I left the county for a city that ate its old buildings and spat out condominiums with mouths like glass. I learned to be proficient in email communication. I learned to keep dinner reservations. I learned to carry myself in ways that didn’t invite questions from strangers. Raquel walked with me, a scent I couldn’t name, a second pulse nested under the first. Sometimes months would pass without her, and I’d convince myself I’d grown out of childhood’s private magic, the way you grow out of believing the closet door might need locking. Then something would happen—a hand a beat too slow to withdraw from my waist, a boss whose compliments were salt in fresh cuts—and the wind would turn. The maples inside me would flare hot.
It got worse the year my mother died. Grief scrubbed everything down to the metal. I returned home for a month to sort papers and sort the shape of the silence and to live in the small, gray house whose faucets coughed like old men. The town hadn’t changed much. The football field’s grass is still stunned by autumn. The grocery store is fluorescent and timeless. The bus stop on the corner remains a question that nobody has bothered to answer.
I slept in my childhood room and woke to find the dresser mirror breathing. My face was layered with hers—my mother at twenty, my mother at fifty, my mother already gone—each sliding across the glass like oil on water, never settling. Their eyes moved in different directions, watching corners of the room where nothing stirred. The smell of her perfume—vanilla and cigarette ash—hung in the air though the bottle had been dry for years. Behind them, and behind me, Raquel hovered: not protective, exactly, but like a shadow that had learned to look back.
On the third night of that month, I went walking. I told myself I needed air. The truth is I wanted to find the place where the world felt thin. There’s a cut of road on the edge of town that used to lead to the sawmill. Beyond the road, the forest keeps its own counsel, thick with pine and story and things that don’t bother learning your name. I walked that way, past the last of the porch lights, past the mailbox that always leaned as if listening. The sky had bruised itself again. I thought of purple knees and childhood grass stains that never quite washed out.
The forest welcomed without welcoming. I stepped into the trees and felt something inside me stand up straighter, as if the very matter of me remembered what it was built from. Needles underfoot. Damp earth. The faint iron of water nearby. The wind moved, and my hair followed; the branches inside my head swayed in time. For a second, the overlap made me dizzy—like looking at a double exposure until your eyes grab the wrong layer. I closed them and leaned against a trunk. The bark was rough enough to declare itself. My palms stung. I breathed.
This is the part where people want a miracle. They want a deer to step out onto the path with a crown of leaves tangled in its antlers. They want my mother’s voice to come through clean, radio static scoured away. They want the boundary to drop and the red of the maples to mean something more than a season doing what a season does. I can’t give them that. What happened is simpler. I heard footsteps, and they didn’t belong to me.
Not heavy. Not careless. A person who knew every twig that could break and chose the ones that wouldn’t. I didn’t open my eyes. I didn’t need to. The second pulse rose in me. The forest inside caught the rhythm and matched it, branches swaying in a pattern that wasn’t the wind. The footsteps stopped three paces to my left.
“Rachel,” a woman said.
Not my mother. Not anyone I could pull from a yearbook. The voice came the way cold water knows how to find your wrists. Calm. Unavoidable.
I opened my eyes. There was nobody there.
The thing about absence is how specific it is. The air where a body should have been was charged, as if a thunderhead had chosen human shape and then thought better of it. I turned my head slightly, and in the edge of my vision—caught the way you catch a reflection in a dark window—I saw her. My face doubled and slipped, features not quite aligning, hair like a spill of black water into the tree line. The second mouth set in a small, knowing line. My breath forgot to breathe. The forest inside me stilled to listen.
“Raquel,” I said, and the saying opened a door I hadn’t known was shut.
We stood there—one of us in the path, one of us in the glass of the world. We didn’t speak. If I tell you we communed, you’ll picture incense and soft lights, and I won’t have earned the truth. It was simpler and stranger. She lifted her chin. I felt mine tilt. She narrowed her eyes. I felt the muscles move. She took a breath, and the air entered me twice, filling two sets of lungs layered perfectly out of sync. It hurt in a good way, like stretching after you’ve been carrying other people’s weight all day.
Then the footsteps came again, from deeper in, and this time they were neither careful nor considerate. A man moving too fast to be lost, heading for the shortcut hunters take when they’re late and the light’s gone wrong. He broke a branch. He swore. He was close; he was not yet aware of me. The startled part of me wanted to step off the path, hide behind the particular tree my fifth-grade self knew was good for hiding. The other part—the forest part—just watched the space where he would appear.
Raquel’s hand rose. I didn’t see it. I felt it. A small tightening in the tendons of my right wrist, the way a violinist’s muscle memory wakes before the bow touches the string. When the man reached the curve, he looked up and saw—no, that’s not right. He didn’t see anything he could put a name to. He faltered the way people falter when an old superstition tugs the hem of their good sense. He glanced left. He saw the empty air where Raquel stood and his face went politely blank, as if someone had asked him a question in a language he almost understood. He took two cautious steps backward. He chose another path, the long one. He kept swearing, but softer now, as though he’d agreed to be a guest in a house he hadn’t realized he’d entered.
“Thank you,” I said, and immediately felt foolish for saying it aloud.
Raquel did not nod. She didn’t vanish. She shifted the way light shifts when a cloud decides to be merciful. I closed my eyes again and leaned my forehead against the bark and let the slant of the earth hold me up. Time went the way time went when you finally agreed to sit down. When I opened my eyes, the air was only air, and the double exposure had clicked back into a single frame. I was Rachel in a forest near a town that felt smaller than it used to. My palms remembered bark. My mouth remembered the taste of pennies and then didn’t.
On the walk home, the wind stayed with me. Houses appeared. Porch lights took their places like stars whose contracts had just been renewed. I tried to think of what I would tell anyone who asked why I’d gone out and what I’d found. The story kept refusing to shrink to fit. I passed the mailbox, still listening. I passed the bus stop, still questioning. By the time I reached the gray house, grief had turned from a violent guest to a tired one, the kind that finally stops talking because there’s nothing new to say. I let myself in. The faucet coughed. The floor knew where to creak. I was ordinary again, which is to say intact enough to sleep.
In the morning, I brewed coffee the way my mother did and burned the first slice of toast the way she always did and laughed, which surprised me so much I had to sit down. In the mirror, my face was my face.
But as I turned toward the door, something caught in the glass of the hallway mirror. Not just her—me, but smiling in a way I don’t remember. It’s a thin, private thing. My lips are still; hers move. She whispers without sound, and though I cannot hear the words, the marrow in my bones understands them well enough to ache.
When I’m ready to step outside, I do. The wind turns. The day opens like a field. And there, in the corner of my eye where the world keeps its most honest reflections, a second mouth makes a small, knowing line. We walked. We chose the long way. We let the light take its time deciding for us.
Author’s Note: Second splinter, pulled straight from a place I didn’t mean to walk into. Some stories don’t ask permission—they just lean in and whisper something you can’t quite remember but still know in your bones. Dispatches from the Splinters of My Mind isn’t here to explain itself. It’s here to leave something sharp under your skin.
In the shadowed sprawl of the junkyard, she stirred—wings of flayed brass and splintered steel rattling against the wind. Once, a brilliant engineer had built her to fly, not for war but for wonder. That was a long time ago. The world had since taught her sharper lessons.
Years had stripped her down to bone-metal. Rust ate her joints. Rain chewed the wires in her spine. Scavengers tore away the delicate things first—the fingers, the fine clockwork at her heart’s center—until she patched herself with jagged plates and stolen screws. She carried the smell of oil and ozone, the hum of barely-contained voltage.
The night was still until it wasn’t. A sound—thin, panicked—threaded through the skeletal heaps. She tilted her head, antennae twitching to catch the echo. There, between the carcass of a burned-out truck and a tower of split engines, a child huddled in the metal rot.
Her eyes flared—twin disks of molten gold. The child froze, unsure if the thing before them was a savior or a trap. Do not fear, she said, though her voice came as a tremor in the air, the hiss of electricity through frayed coils.
She took the child’s hand in her cold, jagged grip. Together they moved toward the fence line, her battered wings shivering sparks into the dark.
At the edge, the child looked back. In the flicker of failing light, they saw her for what she truly was—patchwork predator, guardian by choice or by compulsion, hard to tell which.
Tomorrow, the child would go home. Tonight, the fairy lingered in the junkyard’s breath, eyes still burning, waiting for the next cry to find her.
Author’s Note: First splinter on the wire. Dispatches from the Splinters of My Mind will drop in from time to time—standalone flashes sparked by a single image, no two alike. You’ll know them when you see them.
I can’t tell you when it started, but some genius decided “surreal” was the sexiest word in the English language, and everyone lined up to mangle it. Back in the day, we actually looked words up in a dictionary, underlined them, wrote them down, and tested them in sentences to see if we were using them right. Madness, right? Now it’s easier to grab a word and make shit up. Surreal used to mean dream-logic and fever visions—like stepping into a Dalí canvas where clocks melt and eyes bloom into roses. Now it’s slapped on oat milk shortages or spotting a C-list celebrity in baggage claim. “It was surreal,” they sigh, like they just returned from some cosmic vision quest. No—it was Thursday. And I still had one more load of laundry left. Do I have enough quarters?
And if “surreal” has been abused to the point of boredom, “unprecedented” is its overachieving twin. Unprecedented was used to pack heat, carry weight, and demand attention. Now it’s what people whine about while waiting for a latte—right before bragging about a thrift store “treasure” that’s just a busted lamp with a missing cord. These days, it’s duct-taped onto headlines, CEO pep talks, and press releases written by people who wouldn’t buy their own pitch. “We live in unprecedented times,” they chant, like the words alone could cover the rent or clean up the wreckage they helped cause. People actually know what the hell they’re talking about. Now that would be unprecedented.
These two words have become the lazy twins of public speech, tag teaming their way through news broadcasts, political soundbites, and influencer captions. Surreal and unprecedented. Say them together enough, and they dissolve into flavorless mush, like a stick of gum chewed until it’s nothing but rubber and spit. That’s the real surreal moment—watching language bleed out in the gutter while everyone nods along like it’s still breathing.
Author’s Note: This one started as a gripe about “surreal” and snowballed into a two-word autopsy. I don’t expect people to stop using them—they’ve already been beaten into cliché—but maybe we could save them for moments that actually deserve them. Until then, I’ll be over here, counting quarters and waiting for the day “unprecedented” gets the dictionary funeral it deserves.
The words slid through my dream and cracked it in half. I came up out of the dark slow, like surfacing through tar. The TV in the next room kept spitting out canned laughter, each burst bleeding through the plaster like a bad memory you can’t scrub out.
I left breadcrumbs for them to find me. Hell, I practically lit the path in neon. So why the delay? They should’ve been here hours ago. Unless this is the variantwhere they let you stew first, make you sweat until you start negotiating with yourself. I’ve seen that play before.
I hope they come. No—I need them to. It’s the only thing holding the walls together. But hope’s a sucker’s bet. Optimism’s for pretty people and the kind of bastards who get served first in every bar. The rest of us? We know the rules. They get champagne. We get the backwash.
Paranoid? Maybe. But paranoia’s just the truth with the varnish stripped off. And here I am, sitting in a sweat-stained chair in a mildew-sick motel room with a suitcase full of cash at my feet. Waiting for men without faces to come take it—and maybe me—with them. People say those types don’t have a code. That’s bullshit. Everyone’s got a code. Theirs just doesn’t match yours, and it sure as hell doesn’t care about your pulse.
The suitcase sits there like a loaded confession. The clasps are worn, the handle tired, but the weight… Jesus, the weight hums in the air. Life-changing kind of weight. The “fresh start” kind. But that’s a fairy tale for the clean and the lucky.
Me? I’ve got ghosts baked into my bones. Every choice I ever made cut a groove I can’t climb out of. And no matter what’s in that case, I’m not getting out clean.
Author’s Note: It’s been weeks since I’ve thrown down a little flash fiction. I’ve been neck-deep in the world-building swamp for a project that keeps getting bigger every time I turn a corner. Figured I’d come up for air before it swallows me whole. This one’s thanks to Fandango’s Story Starter and FOWC for tossing me the match—sometimes you just need the right spark to remember you still know how to burn.
Let’s be honest—last month didn’t exactly go according to plan. Deadlines slipped, chapters missed their mark, and Truth Burns got yanked off the shelf completely. But don’t mistake the quiet for inactivity. The Forge is still burning, and I’m hammering out something more substantial beneath the smoke.
I’ve been waist-deep in worldbuilding—not just character backstories or timelines, but full-on infrastructure. Truth Burns needed a city that felt real, with streets you can navigate, neighborhoods that breathe, and a logic that holds up past chapter five. Turns out, designing a place from scratch is like running an urban planning boot camp while writing a novel. No wonder other writers fictionalize real cities. Creating every bridge, hospital, and back alley by hand is a nightmare, and you don’t notice the holes until you’re knee-deep in a scene asking, “Where the hell do they even go from here?”
Usually, I live in stream of consciousness writing. I like flying by the seat of my pants and letting the story find its path. That works for flash fiction, short pieces, even most of what you see on MoM. But long fiction is different. When you don’t have a plan, you end up with chapters that are just you thinking out loud. You deserve better than that.
So I’m slowing down to get it right. Truth Burns will return, rebuilt from the ground up with a foundation strong enough to carry the story it deserves. Until then, the rest of the Forge keeps firing.
What’s Still Live
While Truth Burns is in surgery, other series are still rolling out:
Garden of Ashes – Mondays
Ashwood County – Fridays
Bourbon & Rust – Saturdays
Sundays are my admin day across the MKU universe, Wednesdays are reserved for worldbuilding and the occasional Love Drop. Everything else? It’s being reforged to last.
What’s Next (No Dates, No Rush)
There are other stories simmering in the background, waiting for the right moment to hit the page. They’ll come to The Forge when they’re ready, not before.
This isn’t a stall—it’s a rebuild. Thanks for sticking around while I tear things apart just to make them stronger. The Forge will burn brighter for it.
Julian had been through storms before. But this one wasn’t weather—it was a squall of circumstance, and it smelled like old whiskey and bad intentions.
He leaned against the chipped brick of the ancient building, rain dripping off the brim of his hat like the world couldn’t stop reminding him of its bad mood. The sign above the doorway read: “Elysium Apartments”, letters half burned out, as if hope had checked out decades ago. Somewhere inside, a tip waited. Or maybe another mistake he’d put on his tab.
He stepped in, shoes squelching with every move, the kind of soundtrack that reminded a man of all the dignity he’d lost along the way. The lobby was empty except for a single elevator whose doors looked like they hadn’t closed properly since Prohibition.
The button flickered weakly when pressed. The elevator groaned like it was waking from an ancient sleep, chains rattling in protest, before the doors lurched open.
“Going up?” asked a voice from inside.
Julian squinted. A man in a bellhop uniform leaned casually on the railing, smiling like someone who knew where all the bodies were buried—and probably where they were rented out on weekends.
Julian hesitated. Everything about the moment screamed nope. But his life had been one long argument with common sense.
He stepped inside. The doors screeched shut with a sound that could file your teeth for you.
“Top floor?” the bellhop asked, already pulling the lever.
“Okey dokey,” Julian said, because sometimes sarcasm was the only shield a man had left.
The elevator jolted violently. Numbers on the panel blinked, but not in order—3, 7, 2, basement, 99, question mark. Rainwater dripped down his neck as the cage rattled. For a second, Julian wondered if this was it—if all his choices were finally cashing out in a metal box headed somewhere past destiny’s curbside.
Then the bellhop grinned wider, showing teeth that were far too sharp for customer service. “Relax,” he said. “Everyone’s going up eventually.”
He told himself it was a supply run—donate some canned goods to the church pantry, maybe check on a guy from group. But his body betrayed him. It always did when he got too quiet. So instead of downtown, he found himself standing at the edge of the block he’d avoided for almost four years.
Same cracked sidewalks. Same rust-colored brick and crooked porch rails. It smelled like last night’s rain and rotting leaves and fried onions from the corner store. The same ghost-town warmth that made the cold worse.
Finch had lived longer than expected.
Mrs. Eldridge had kept him alive. A neighbor. Not a friend. She never offered forgiveness, just water bowls and unspoken understanding. Jake had overdosed two rooms away from where Finch used to sleep. The paramedics saved Jake, but left the dog pacing in circles around a pile of vomit and needle caps. Mrs. Eldridge took him in after that. No speech. No fanfare.
Now, Finch lay curled in a fleece blanket on her enclosed porch, his gray snout twitching in sleep, ribs pressing against skin like old bones trying to escape.
Jake crouched in the doorway.
“Hey, boy.”
Finch opened his eyes slowly. The gaze wasn’t surprised. It was tired. Familiar. He blinked once, let out a rattling sigh, and put his chin back down like, Oh. It’s you.
The porch smelled like cedar planks, sour dog breath, and dust. A cracked radio whispered gospel from another room. Jake sat with his knees pulled up, feeling the wood grain bite into his back.
He had spent so many nights talking to this dog, when words failed around people, when dope blurred the edges of memory. Finch never barked. Just stared at him like he understood too much.
Jake rubbed his temples. His fingertips felt greasy with sweat and guilt.
“I thought you’d be gone by now,” he said quietly. “Guess we’re both too stubborn.”
Finch let out a half-sigh, half-snore. The kind of sound that made you ache behind the ribs.
Jake remembered the last night. The screaming. Dani in the hallway, crying, holding her son with one arm and blocking the door with the other. Jake had tried to push past her. Not with violence, just desperation. That’s the problem—desperation doesn’t always care about the difference.
Micah, barely seven, had clutched Finch’s leash and screamed, “Don’t hurt Mommy!”
Jake hadn’t. Not really. But the way he grabbed the leash—hard, clumsy—made the boy scream louder. Jake saw his own reflection in a hallway mirror in that moment, and it scared him more than anything. The wildness in his face. The failure.
He ran. It didn’t feel brave. It felt like a retreat. Like every other time, he’d chosen the exit over the consequence.
The air smelled of impending rain—ozone and something metallic. A low rumble rolled across the sky. Jake reached down and brushed his knuckles against Finch’s paw. The pads were rougher now. Cracked. Familiar.
He’d read once in a recovery forum about how animals mourn. How they carry memory in ways we don’t understand. He believed it. Finch had always known things Jake never said.
“I’m sorry,” Jake whispered.
It wasn’t just for the dog.
Mrs. Eldridge came out with a bowl of water and a towel. She looked like she hadn’t aged, just weathered down into something harder. Not brittle—stone.
“He’s not eating,” she said. “Won’t last the night.”
Jake nodded.
“Can I stay?”
“You should’ve never had to ask.”
He stayed.
All night. The porch grew colder. The rain finally came, misty at first, then steady, like it meant something. Jake didn’t talk much. Just sat with Finch under the dim porch light, watching shadows shift and windows glow in the distance.
He thought about all the ways he’d tried to escape himself. Pills, powders, rage, silence. But Finch had always brought him back—anchored him when he floated too close to the edge.
Finch died an hour before dawn. No drama. No sound. Just one last slow breath, and stillness.
Jake buried him in the alley garden, near the back fence where Finch used to bark at raccoons. He dug with his hands. Let the mud ruin his jeans. Let the wet earth crawl under his nails and the blisters stab open without complaint.
He didn’t want gloves. He wanted it to hurt.
He wrapped Finch in the towel and laid him down gently, like the way you close a book you’re not ready to finish. On impulse, he cut a strip from the leash and buried it with him.
No stone. No cross. Just the dirt and the sky and the silence.
Before leaving, Jake walked to Dani’s building. Same rusted mailbox. Same flickering porch bulb. He paused at the door, soaked and shivering. Thought about knocking.
Didn’t.
Instead, he slid a letter under the door. It wasn’t long. Just honest.
I buried him. He waited longer than I deserved.
He stood there a moment, listening.
Nothing.
Jake turned and walked into the soft gray morning, the rain trailing behind him like a prayer left unfinished.
Stories from the Edge of Change is a quiet fiction series about reckoning, recovery, and the long, uneven road back to ourselves. This one is for the ghosts we leave behind—and the ones who wait anyway.
They called him Angel. Not because he was good—he wasn’t. But because that was the name his mother had scrawled on the back of a birth certificate before vanishing into whatever hole the meth and the men had dug. That’s what the caseworker said, anyway. He never knew if it was meant as a blessing or a dare.
Maple Street didn’t care what your name was. It didn’t give a damn about backstory or trauma files. It just asked if you had something worth trading—dignity, a story, sometimes blood. If not, it lets you rot in its shadow. Cold. Dirty. Forgettable.
Angel’s coat smelled like salt and mildew. His jeans were stiff with city grime and sweat. He kept his hoodie pulled low and his mouth shut. That was his trick—if you kept your eyes on the pavement, people passed by faster. If you sat still enough, maybe the shame wouldn’t boil over.
He didn’t want sympathy. He wanted protein. He wanted socks. He wanted to fall asleep without twitching awake to sirens or wet cardboard collapsing under him.
And maybe—though he’d never say it out loud—he wanted someone to call him by his name without checking a clipboard first.
The man who sat next to him that day didn’t look like much. Worn hoodie, creased face, tired eyes. Same as the rest. But he didn’t try to hawk salvation. Didn’t flash a business card or mutter some rehab mantra through a forced smile. He just lowered himself down, exhaled like it hurt, and offered a protein bar.
“You don’t gotta stay here.”
That was all he said.
Angel didn’t answer. But the words landed anyway, quiet as dust, sharp as memory. There was no lecture in the tone, no brag in his posture. Just something steady. Like a man who knew what a long fall looked like and still chose to climb anyway.
Angel watched him walk away. There was a patience to his stride, not fast, not dragging, more like a hawk circling something that hadn’t happened yet.
The protein bar felt heavy in his hand. Real. He unwrapped it hours later behind the train station, fingers cracked and trembling from the cold. It tasted like chocolate and chalk. Like something that might matter.
That night, he couldn’t sleep.
Not because of the cold—he was used to that—but because of the quiet. Something inside him had shifted, and he didn’t like it. He wanted the usual numbness back, the hollow where hope had once lived.
He kept hearing that sentence. You don’t gotta stay here. It scraped against the walls of his skull.
Because what if the here wasn’t just the corner? What if it was his skin? His blood? His whole damn life?
The wind picked up and pushed trash through the alley. A soda can clattered down the curb like it was running from something. He pulled the hoodie tighter. Even wrapped in layers, he couldn’t shake the chill. It wasn’t just cold—it was recognition.
He thought about every report, every meeting, every incident on file. His whole existence was a debt—an account he didn’t remember opening but kept getting billed for. A chain of overdrafts, each mistake compounded by the last. And the thing about that kind of debt is, no one wants to co-sign your recovery.
The flyer was still there in the bench slat. Creased and slightly damp, but readable. The rehab center’s logo had a bird on it—a dove, maybe, or a pigeon pretending. “Supportive, Long-Term Recovery,” it said in round, hopeful font, like a band-aid on a bullet wound.
Angel stared at it for a long time. Then shoved it in his pocket.
He didn’t go in. Not that day.
Instead, he drifted. Three more nights outside. Two sober. One was so drunk he pissed himself in his sleep and woke up shaking. He thought about mugging someone at the red line platform. Didn’t. Thought about calling Marcus—his old foster brother, who once tried to stab him with a pencil during a group home fight. Didn’t.
Then, one morning, he was there.
Just standing outside the center like a sleepwalker. He didn’t remember making the decision. His feet had dragged him there like they were on auto-pilot. He kept his hands in his pockets and stared across the street.
A nurse with dreadlocks carried a cardboard box of snacks through the door. A man with sunken cheeks and a twitch stood outside arguing with security, begging for one more chance. A woman in pajama pants and slippers stormed out, phone in hand, yelling at her sponsor that she was done doing this bullshit.
It was clear enough—nobody was exempt from the wreckage. No matter how clean you looked walking in, the ghosts still followed.
Angel lit a cigarette. Took slow, deliberate drags. He didn’t cross the street. But he didn’t walk away either.
And somehow, that felt like the start of something he didn’t yet have the words for.
Stories from the Edge of Change is a slow-burn series about survival without spectacle. It’s for those caught in between the ones who haven’t crossed the threshold, but also haven’t run. This story belongs to the uncertain, the reluctant, the almost ready. We see you.
Jake had a name once. Not the kind of people muttered when they passed him on the corner—junkie, beggar, waste. He had a name that once meant something. It was stitched onto a work jacket once. It was on birthday cards, driver’s licenses, and bank forms. But time has a way of chewing the edges off a man until even he forgets what he started as.
Maple Street didn’t ask questions. It didn’t brag about what it took. It just waited—like a dog in the rain. Took your warmth in winter, your pride in spring, and your last dollar in the fall. Jake used to think the city was cruel. Now he wasn’t so sure. Maybe it was just tired.
The slab of concrete on the corner became a sort of confession booth. You sat there long enough, and the sidewalk started remembering for you. Jake’s cardboard sign said, “Anything helps,” but that was a lie. It was a cover-up. What he wanted was for someone to look at him and not flinch.
He remembered the last time Dani, his sister, saw him. Her kid, Micah, clung to her leg, watching Jake wipe blood off his arm in the hallway. The forty bucks he’d taken from her purse sat folded in his sock. That money bought him silence for a night. It cost him her voice for three years.
He told himself he didn’t blame her. But in the quiet—when even the street was empty—he hated how much he missed being loved.
Then came the flyer. Wind-blown, smeared, half-crumpled trash. A rehab center. Big blue letters promising dignity, as if it could be laminated and handed back to you. Jake picked it up because it was the only thing around that looked more beaten than he felt.
He walked to the center wearing a loaner hoodie from the shelter bin, pockets frayed like open wounds. The front desk didn’t blink when he gave his name. That undid him more than judgment would have. Kindness, he realized, cuts deeper when you know you don’t deserve it.
Rehab wasn’t a clean arc. It was tremors and teeth-grinding nights, screaming into pillows, praying to a god he didn’t believe in just to shut off the screaming in his spine.
Then there was Pete.
Gruff, scabbed-over, loud. “You think surviving means you’ve earned something?” he growled one day after Jake mumbled about being ready to try. “You haven’t even apologized to the mirror yet.”
Jake almost left that night. Got as far as the lobby. But there was a vending machine in there—half-lit, full of stale snacks. He stood staring at it for thirty minutes, realizing he didn’t want chips. He wanted a reason to not disappear.
He stayed.
Progress didn’t feel like progress. No one clapped when he made his bed. No one wrote a headline when he chose water over whiskey-flavored mouthwash. But he kept showing up. He kept writing Dani letters. First few ended up in the trash. Then he mailed one.
The reply came weeks later. Just a text: Still clean?
That was all. But it didn’t sound angry. It didn’t sound like goodbye either.
When they handed him his discharge folder, he stared at it for a long time. He didn’t feel done. He didn’t feel new. He felt like wet clay. Still soft. Still shaping.
He passed by Maple Street that afternoon. Same corner. Same stains on the sidewalk. But now someone else was sitting there—a kid, maybe twenty. Hoodie pulled low, cardboard sign shaking in his grip.
Jake didn’t stop with a speech. He didn’t have one. He sat next to him. Quiet. Like the way an old scar settles under your skin.
The kid didn’t look up. But he took the bar. Hid it fast, like it might be stolen. Jake nodded, stood up.
He wasn’t saved. He wasn’t clean in the way people brag about. He still had nights where the dark got too loud and the past whispered things in voices that sounded like his own. But he hadn’t used. He’d stayed.
The sidewalk didn’t cheer. It just stayed where it was. Cold. Unforgiving. Familiar.
But this time, it didn’t hold him down.
Author’s Note:
This piece was written in response to today’s prompts from FOWC, and Word of the Day. Sometimes, the words given feel random—until they don’t. Until they crack open something real.
The Corner Knows is the first in a quiet series about what it means to crawl back from the edge without knowing if you’ll be welcomed. No heroes here. Just people trying not to vanish. The street remembers. So do we.
You ever walk into a room expecting your voice to boom like a prophet’s and instead get met with blank stares and TikTok scrolling?
That was me two weeks ago, stepping into a summer workshop with students aged 8 to 17. I came in with fire and myth, ready to guide them into storytelling. The younger kids couldn’t sit still long enough to absorb anything. The teens? Aloof at best. My usual trick—command the room with presence, reinforce with voice—didn’t move the needle.
I walked out thinking: I might be losing my mojo.
So I did what any story-hardened madman would do.
I built them a universe.
The Ashoma Codex rose from that frustration. An entire mythos crafted for them—a sacred order of supernatural beings bound by fire, memory, and sacrifice. Vampires and werewolves. Secret Circles. Flame-born rites. I even spun up a website just for them, with lore, rituals, and a place to submit their own creations.
And then today, I got word from their instructor: they love it.
They’re building characters. Creating art. Engaging with the world I made. Turns out they didn’t need a lecture. They needed a world that would speak their language.
It’s been a long time since I had that much fun doing something for someone else.
Forging the Forge (with Fewer Bugs and More Story)
Let’s talk about The Narrative Forge (TNF)—my dedicated space for longform fiction.
Eventually, it’ll be home to five deep-cut series:
Ashwood County – Southern Gothic horror soaked in grief and ghost stories
No Half Measures(formerly Cop Stories) – A noir detective tale where trust is dangerous and truth cuts deep
Reilly McGee: Misadventures at Crestview High – 1980s chaos, coming-of-age style, with more heartache than heroics
Bourbon and Rust – Grit, regret, and a neo-Western sense of justice
Truth Burns – Emotional aftermath and the slow claw toward redemption
The plan: post one chapter a week, rotating series. I’m kicking things off with Ashwood County as I work out the kinks and refine the reader experience.
TNF is my main focus right now. But soon, House of Tunage and The Howlin’ Inkwell will start to move forward again too—each with their own voice and rhythm. And yes, visual arts are coming as well. That site’s still under development, slowed down by the same quirks that’ve been haunting the others.
You guys remember The Knucklehead Report? I gave it its own space so I can rant, roast, or rave about the books and movies that cross my path—without crowding out the rest of Memoirs of Madness.
All of this—the new structure, the site spinoffs, the redesigns—is meant to do one thing: streamline MoM. Make it cleaner. More focused. Easier to navigate without tripping over half-finished drafts or misplaced experiments.
I don’t know which projects will thrive, but right now, building them helps me clear the noise and move forward.
She smiled. He believed it. But the fire had already started.
The woman sitting next to me slipped a note into my hand that read: “He’s not who he says he is.”
She didn’t look back. Just placed it there—neat, deliberate—and folded herself into stillness, like she’d already said too much.
I didn’t open it. Not yet. The paper pulsed against my palm like a second heartbeat.
Outside, the river caught fire. Sunlight splintered across the water, all rust and ruin. Temple silhouettes watched from the banks, hollow and grieving. Grief has no language. Just echoes. Just light bleeding through the wreckage.
Across from me, he sat, impeccable. Tie straight. Wristwatch catching the last of the sun. “You alright?” he asked, voice drenched in honey and soothing like always.
But I wonder—Is this false comfort? That soft menace people only hear in hindsight.
I’ve been here before. My finger found the scar hidden in my palm, the one shaped like escape. It remembers what my heart tries to forget.
I smile. He believes it. Because that’s the thing about men like him—they love the surface. And some people never notice the smoke. They only see the flames. By then, it’s too late.
My stop is next. So is his. He doesn’t know I’ve been here before. That this time, I won’t look back. I know he wants me to. But he’s not ready for what comes if I do.
There’s a strange, satisfying freedom in flash fiction—the constraints force you to choose each word like a scalpel. It’s a literary pressure cooker where character, tension, and atmosphere have to collide fast and leave a mark.
For me, flash is where I go to explore the edges—grief, memory, survival, those quiet gut-punch moments when the world shifts and no one else notices. Stories like this come out like smoke under a locked door. You don’t always see the fire yet—but it’s there.
Want to try your own version of this story’s beginning? The prompt was: “The woman sitting next to me slipped a note into my hand that read, ‘He’s not who he says he is.’”
She appeared just past the second lamppost—trench coat clinging like a secret, umbrella in hand, striding through puddles like the laws of physics were optional.
Julian knew trouble when he saw it. It usually wore red lipstick, a miniskirt, and a tight monogrammed sweater—the kind of outfit that said “daddy pays the rent but I hold the lease on chaos.” Today, though, trouble wore duck boots that quacked with every step and a look that could curl paint off a Buick.
She didn’t look at him. She didn’t have to. Women like that didn’t look; they summoned.
“Lost your umbrella again?” she said, pausing by the bench where Julian had been pretending not to argue with a squirrel.
“It fled the scene. Honestly, I think it’s seeing other people.”
She didn’t laugh. Just smiled—barely—a slow tilt at the corner of her mouth, like a private joke that hadn’t decided whether to trust him yet.
They stood in silence, rain dotting her umbrella like Morse code for bad decisions. The space between them held history—not romance, not quite—but something forged in long nights, bad coffee, and one too many favors exchanged with no names attached.
Then the birds attacked.
Not big ones. Not Hitchcock’s apocalyptic squad. These were small. Spiteful. Moist. They dive-bombed like feathered torpedoes with a vendetta against hats.
Julian flailed. She calmly finished a sip of coffee.
“I told you not to use that conditioner,” she said, ducking as one bird performed a tactical swoop. “Lavender-scented. They think you’re a meadow.”
“Then why are they hitting you, too?”
“I might have rubbed some of it on your collar.”
Julian blinked, now soggy and betrayed. “Why?”
She sipped again, her expression as neutral as Switzerland on a Tuesday. “Science.”
One bird landed triumphantly on the umbrella. Another did an aerial split and flipped him off mid-squawk.
Julian sighed and slumped onto the bench, defeated. She sat beside him, leaving an equal six inches of space and chaos between them.
For a moment, the world fell quiet—just rain tapping the concrete, the occasional rustle of wings, and that unspoken thing that always hung between them.
Maybe it was love once. Maybe just recognition. Like two people who survived the same fire and never spoke of it.
“I curl my hair in the mornings just for this,” she muttered, brushing a wet strand from her face.
Julian didn’t reply. He was too busy wondering if dignity could be taxidermied—or if maybe, just maybe, this ridiculous kind of connection was all the grace some of us got.
Author’s Note: This piece is a continuation of the Forecast: Regret series—a flash fiction collection built on misadventures, poor choices, and the occasional squirrel assault. I wrote this story using the prompts from SoCS (Stream of Consciousness Saturday) and Esther’s Weekly Writing Prompt, which continue to challenge and inspire me in strange and delightful ways.
As always, I try to have fun writing fiction—because if I’m not enjoying it, I can guarantee Julian isn’t either.
It started, as most questionable decisions do, with a woman, a trench coat, and a very hedonistic craving for street tacos.
Julian wasn’t even supposed to be out. The rain was biblical—Julian half expected to see Noah waving him aboard. His socks were soaked, his spirit soggy, and the umbrella he carried had the structural integrity of a wet paper crane. But tacos were calling, and Julian—private eye by day, glutton by destiny—answered.
Midway through the park, a lamppost flickered like it owed someone money. Julian stepped into the golden spill of light like he was in a film noir. All he needed was the dame holding a cigarette to her ruby red lips, waiting for him to light it. His coat flapped dramatically, mostly because it was two sizes too big and purchased during a clearance sale he mistook for fate. He imagined someone, somewhere, narrating: He was a man torn between purpose and guacamole.
That’s when it happened.
A squirrel launched from a tree like it had just discovered espresso. It landed squarely on Julian’s shoulder, using his necktie as a zipline to destiny.
He screamed like a man whose dignity had just filed for divorce and taken the house.
The umbrella went flying. The squirrel somersaulted off his head. And Julian—formerly mysterious, now flailing—slipped in a puddle with the grace of a ballet-dancing refrigerator.
As he lay on the sidewalk, soaked and stunned, the only thing colder than the rain was the betrayal in his burrito-less stomach.
A couple walked by. The woman whispered, “Was that performance art?”
Julian lifted his head with all the levity he could muster. “Only if you clap.”
They did.
He took a bow from the pavement. Somewhere, a squirrel chittered in applause.
He wasn’t born to be broken, but he was built that way.
He doesn’t remember how long he’s been digging. Only that the walls feel closer now. Not physically—spiritually. Like the air itself is grieving something it can’t name. Like the dirt is learning his shape better than he ever did.
He was born into this plastic maze. Clear walls. Curved tunnels. Endless observation. They gave him purpose before he even knew what freedom was. “Work is life,” they whispered. “Keep moving or you’ll disappear.”
So he moved. So he disappeared.
Lately, the soil feels too clean. Too filtered. Too… safe. He begins to question whether he’s ever touched anything real— whether any of this was ever soil at all, or just a stage dressed as survival.
His antennae twitch like doubt. His thoughts spiral like tunnels without exit signs. There’s no map. No sky. Just the scrape. scrape. scrape. and the promise that if he keeps digging, it might all make sense.
“Dig,” they told him. “Dig like your life depends on it.”
But what if life was never the point? What if it was just obedience with a heartbeat?
He begins to dream—quietly, dangerously—of things he’s never seen: grass that doesn’t end, light without glare, a silence not born of suppression but of peace.
He wonders if the others feel it too— that dull, aching sense of being watched by something that calls itself structure, but tastes like a slow death.
He screamed once. Pressed his mandibles to the glass and begged. For what, he doesn’t know. Maybe to be named. Maybe to be more than a metaphor for how the world devours those who ask too many questions.
But no one answered. Only the glass pulsed with faint warmth— a reminder that he is seen, but not heard.
Now he digs not to build, but to resist. Each handful of soil no longer a task, but a soft rebellion. A quiet revolution made of claw, intention, and fatigue.
He doesn’t want to be efficient. He wants to be free. Or at least real. Or at least his.
And if this tunnel leads to nothing— no sky, no breach, no breaking—
at least it was carved by his own choosing. At least the hands that made the hole were his.
Because sometimes the cure isn’t a chemical. Sometimes, it’s permission to feel trapped without calling it a flaw.
🪞 Reflective Prompt
What parts of your routine were handed to you like a cage dressed in ritual? What would rebellion look like if it were quiet, personal, and yours?
Still digging?
This piece lives inside a much bigger world. Explore the rest of the Mangus Khan Universe—a stitched-together gallery of confessions, fiction, fractured portraits, and quiet chaos.
“Grandpa, I need a real story for my history project. Something about America, or the Fourth of July, or whatever.”
The old man scratched his chin, leaned back in the squeaky recliner, and smirked.
“Alright, kid. Lemme tell you how your grandma and I met. It was the Fourth of July, 1978. I was 19, dumb as bricks, and full of patriotic stupidity.”
From the kitchen, a voice called out: “Oh, this again. You gonna tell the real version this time, or your usual nonsense?”
Grandpa rolled his eyes. “It’s all true. Just maybe… slightly singed around the edges.”
It started with an idea. Not a good one. My Uncle Tommy, our genius friend “Meatball,” and I decided to put on our own fireworks show. We didn’t have proper fireworks. We had two crates of off-brand bottle rockets, a metal garbage can, a stolen traffic cone, and a six-pack of warm root beer.
Tommy swore the garbage can would “amplify” the fireworks. Meatball called it “fire science.” I just lit the fuse.
Boom.
The garbage can launched thirty feet in the air like a missile. One rocket shot sideways and hit a mailbox. Another bounced off my forehead. And one, God help me, flew straight down my pants.
I panicked. I ran in circles. My shorts were smoking. I stopped, dropped, rolled, and screamed. At some point, my eyebrows gave up and disappeared.
Next thing I know, I’m in the ER, wrapped in silver burn cream, looking like a baked potato with no dignity.
That’s when your grandma walks in. Nurse training student. Bright smile. Clipboard. Smelled like lavender and antiseptic. She looked at me, this smoldering idiot, and said, “So… was it worth it for freedom?”
From the kitchen again: “And what did you say next, hotshot?”
“I said she looked like a very clean angel. Then I threw up on her shoes.”
“Mm-hmm. Romantic.”
“Did you ask her out?”
Are you kidding? I tried. But the morphine was kicking in. I told her she looked “like a floating disinfected goddess” and then passed out while apologizing to the IV pole.
Still—she didn’t run. That’s how I knew she was special.
We kept in touch. She came to my follow-ups. I wrote her letters. She eventually forgave the vomit. We got married two years later. She even let me light sparklers at the wedding. Supervised, of course.
“Wow. That’s kinda romantic… in a flammable way.”
Exactly. So you tell your teacher this: Freedom’s messy. Fireworks are dangerous. But love? Sometimes, it starts with a bang. Just don’t put bottle rockets in garbage cans.
From the kitchen: “And tell him about the park ban!”
Every morning, she wrote to keep the birds at bay.
They came with the light—first as shadows dragging themselves across the windows, then as a rustle, low and persistent, like wind thinking too hard. Doves mostly, though wrong somehow. Their eyes were too still, their feathers too quiet. Occasionally, darker birds arrived—sleek as oil, with glints in their beaks like pins. They didn’t chirp or coo. They watched.
She used to think they were hallucinations, symptoms of grief. Her brother had drowned in the river five years ago. No body, no real goodbye. After that, the house changed. Or maybe she did.
The birds began showing up shortly after the funeral. Perched on curtain rods. Nested in the corners of the ceiling where cobwebs once clung. They moved like smoke. Never flapping, just shifting, gliding, like time with feathers.
She had never written a word before he died.
Now, she couldn’t stop.
At first, it felt like a compulsion. Survival. Write or unravel. But soon, the stories took on a shape of their own. They came through her fingers in long, fevered bursts—narratives that looped and twisted and whispered through the typewriter-like incantations. Whenever she paused, the birds stirred. Paper fluttered. Air thickened.
One morning, she stayed in bed. Her arms wouldn’t move. Grief sat on her chest like a second ribcage.
By mid-afternoon, the house was breathing.
Not creaking—breathing. The walls rose and fell in slow, silent exhales. Books slumped off shelves. The floorboards quivered like violin strings underfoot. And the birds—dozens, maybe hundreds—lined the walls, all facing her. Eyes like eclipse moons. Waiting.
She crawled to the desk. Typed three words: He was lost.
The air calmed. The birds blinked once. Vanished.
After that, she understood.
They weren’t punishing her. They were pushing her. Urging the story out. She didn’t know why. She didn’t know what for. But she knew the birds were part of it. Maybe even keepers of it. Strange, spectral editors in feathered cloaks.
The typewriter, an old rusted Royal, began to type without her. At night. Quiet, rhythmic, like a heartbeat. She woke to new pages. Pages she didn’t remember writing. One had a map scrawled on the back—inked in spirals and loops. Another contained a letter addressed to her in her brother’s handwriting.
I saw the ice crack. I saw the light inside it. I’m not afraid.
She burned that one. She burned the next three as well. But they always came back. Not charred. Not even creased. Just waiting on the desk like polite ghosts.
The stories that came through her grew stranger. Boys who vanished into mirrors. Houses that forgot how to hold their shape. Rivers that swallowed memories and returned them in riddles. Always, always, a boy at the center. Sometimes drowned. Sometimes glowing. Sometimes stitched together from stars.
She never gave him her brother’s name. But the birds knew.
They began bringing her things. A button she remembered from his jacket. A library card he’d lost in third grade. A page from a notebook she hadn’t seen since they were children, filled with a crude comic he’d drawn—“Captain Birdbrain and the Time Vultures.”
She laughed. She cried. She kept writing.
She began to understand the birds weren’t birds at all. Not really.
One blinked at her one morning, and she swore she saw an entire galaxy in its eye—planets spinning, stories coalescing, a thousand unnamed lives passing through. Another unfurled its wings, and letters spilled from its feathers, fluttering like snow, dissolving on contact.
She no longer felt afraid. Not exactly.
They were eerie, yes. But so is truth when you haven’t looked at it in a while.
The house shifted in small ways. The closet no longer opened to coats but to mist. The attic smelled of saltwater. She didn’t question it. She followed the thread.
She wrote not to escape grief but to appease it. To make it into something legible. Something she could carry. Each word formed a tiny act of negotiation between what was gone and what remained.
One night, she fell asleep at the desk. When she woke, a new story was finished—clean, structured, heartbreakingly beautiful. The final line read:
“And when she opened the door, there he was—smiling, whole, and made entirely of light.”
The birds were utterly still.
One—larger than the rest, with a sheen-like moonlight on bone—landed on her shoulder. Its weight was real. Solid. She reached up gently, and it leaned into her touch.
There was no song. Just presence.
She folded the page and placed it in an envelope marked For Him.
The next morning, the birds didn’t come.
The house was quiet in a way it hadn’t been in years. She waited. She made coffee. Nothing stirred. For a long time, she thought they were gone.
Then, around dusk, the light shifted. Just slightly. The world outside the window tilted toward a kind of blue she’d never seen. Deeper than twilight, warmer than dawn. The birds returned—not many, just a few. But they glowed now. Dimly. Like coals before fire.
They perched around the room. Silent. Peaceful.
The largest one dropped a page at her feet. It held only a title:
Chapter One.
She smiled.
She had learned to write not to fight chaos, but to give it order.
Only that the Spiral didn’t follow with sound—it followed with silence. Dense. Layered. Like static turned inward.
Behind her, the tower disassembled itself quietly, not crumbling, but unwriting. Each glyph collapsed into its origin, every surface folding in on itself as if ashamed it had tried to speak.
The ground flattened. The light died. The sentence, unfinished, withdrew.
—
She staggered through the opening and hit solid earth.
No Spiral pattern beneath her boots. Just dirt. Uneven, gritty, real.
She collapsed to her knees.
Pain shot through her spine with a clean pinch, a sudden brightness in her otherwise numb body. The contact grounded her. The cold seeped up through her bones like it had been waiting for her to stop moving.
She let herself fall back.
The sky above her didn’t shimmer. No recursive stars. No glowing syntax. Just a cloud-cluttered dark, cracked by moonlight.
Carla blinked hard, tears drying before they could fall.
—
Her chest ached—not with injury, but with release. Like her lungs had been clenched around something unspeakable for too long. Now, air flowed in freely, unshaped by pressure or design.
She opened her mouth.
Exhaled.
No Spiral sounds came. No triggered glyphs. Only breathe.
Warm. Human. Hers.
—
Her tongue twitched once—residual memory. Her teeth ached from how hard she’d clenched them. She ran her fingers along her jaw, wincing at the tenderness along the hinge. Every muscle in her face felt like it had practiced words it never wanted to say.
The Spiral is quiet now, she thought. But is it finished?
She didn’t have the answer. Maybe no one would. Maybe that was the win.
—
She sat up slowly. The sky rolled with low clouds. The air smelled of ash and old rain. Her legs were stiff, and her ankles were sore. Her fingers tingled from lack of motion.
She was still marked.
Her palm was dim, but the Spiral’s shape remained—less a signal now, more a scar. A burned-in pause.
Not gone.
Just… waiting.
—
Her coat felt heavier. Something pressed against her ribs.
She reached into the inner pocket and pulled out a shard—small, cool, and sharp-edged.
She hadn’t remembered taking it.
The fragment no longer glowed. No hum. No vibration. Just an echo of what it had been. It caught the moonlight, then refused it. Matte. Dull.
She squeezed it gently, half-expecting it to shift, to respond, to bounce with feedback.
It didn’t.
—
She looked up again.
The space where the tower had stood was raw—an imprint carved into the field. The ground was bleached in a spiral shape. Nothing grew there. Nothing moved.
A wound. Not a monument.
Something had tried to overwrite the world.
And Carla had made it stutter.
—
She rose to her feet. Slow. Deliberate.
Each joint cracked like a period at the end of a long, rambling sentence.
Her boots scraped the dirt as she walked forward—no longer fleeing, just… leaving.
The wind shifted.
Not Spiral-coded.
Just wind. Sharp. Clean. Bitter with the coming frost.
It caught her coat and let it billow slightly, the fabric lifting with a roll like a wave too tired to crest.
—
She didn’t look back.
She didn’t need to.
There was no final breach to seal. No looming voice waiting to be answered. Only the silence of her own refusal.
And in that silence, she spoke one word aloud.
Quiet. Intentional.
The kind of word that carried weight because no one expected it.
“Enough.”
It wasn’t defiance.
It was punctuation.
Author’s Note: Read at Your Own Recursion
Well. That got weird.
Writing The Spiral Series was like agreeing to co-author a story with a sentient Rubik’s cube with an identity crisis. One that kept changing languages, moving your furniture around, and whispering “just one more glyph” while you were trying to sleep.
And I loved it.
This series twisted differently than anything I’ve written before. Structurally, it wasn’t linear—it was recursive. It looped. It mimicked its own logic. It watched the characters watching it. Usually, I write from A to Z; this one decided to run a story arc through a paper shredder and tape it back together in a spiral, just to see what it looked like when the alphabet tried to eat itself.
And instead of sweeping worldbuilding or action-heavy showdowns, it leaned into dissonance, containment, psychological erosion, and the terrifyingly mundane reality of choice. It asked, “What happens when language isn’t a tool, but an organism?” And then it politely refused to answer.
Let’s be honest: it was a weird little experiment in existential syntax horror.
And you showed up anyway. You read. You stayed.
You resisted the Spiral in your own way.
To every reader who walked this curve with Carla—thank you. Whether you binged it or took it slowly, you made space for a story that wasn’t designed to end cleanly. That means more than I can say (and I say a lot, usually with ellipses and flair).
There’s no artifact at the end of this series. No twist where I reveal I was the Spiral all along. (Probably.)
But there is this:
Thank you for reading.
Now close the breach, step away from the glyphs, and remember—if your tongue starts twitching in the middle of the night…
No footsteps. No echoes. Just her breath. Her pulse. The heat of her fear curving inward.
The walls flexed faintly as she passed, responsive like muscle beneath skin. They didn’t glow—they tightened, contracting slightly behind her as if the Spiral wanted to trap every trace of her presence. The air grew humid, warm, like breath recycled too many times.
Every step felt slower than the last.
Not because she hesitated—
But because the Spiral wanted her to notice.
—
Six thresholds opened ahead of her—each identical, seamless. Each revealed itself a fraction of a second before she reached it, like it knew her intent.
Each whispered in her voice.
“You should have stayed.” “You were almost finished.” “You thought this was your name, didn’t you?”
By the seventh, she stopped listening.
—
The chamber yawned open like a breath drawn too deep.
Round, high-ceilinged, dim. The floor gave slightly underfoot—spongy, as if she were walking on old cartilage. Warmth radiated up through the soles of her boots. Not from any heat source. It was remembered warmth, like sunlight on stone that hadn’t seen the sun in decades.
When she looked down, she realized the floor was a mosaic—not of tile or metal, but impressions. Pressed-in fragments of her own mind: a flicker of Mikail’s voice. The taste of iodine. A half-dream of drowning.
The Spiral had reached into her past and used it for texture.
—
At the center sat a figure.
Still. Silent. Familiar.
Carla circled wide. Its back was to her. Legs folded, posture loose, like it had been waiting for a long time and grown too comfortable in stillness.
“What are you?” she asked.
It stood.
Then turned.
And wore her face.
—
Not now-her. A different her.
Younger. Skin unscarred. Posture upright. Eyes empty—but focused, like glass reflecting something beyond her line of sight.
“I’m the version of you who said yes,” it said.
Carla’s throat tightened.
“To what?”
“To the Spiral.”
—
She stepped back.
Her pulse roared in her ears.
The figure moved closer, each step mirroring her posture, her gait. Like walking toward a delayed reflection. Its skin gave off no shine. Its clothing looked grown, not stitched.
“You’re not real.”
“Neither are you,” it said gently. “Not in here. You’re just a sentence halfway through itself.”
—
Words unfurled on the chamber walls—not carved, not projected. Bloomed. Veins of text pulsing in and out of visibility, shaped from living tissue.
“Language is a mouth. You were always the breath.”
Carla winced. Her jaw ached suddenly. She raised a hand to her face.
Her teeth were vibrating.
A subtle, rapid oscillation. Like tuning forks just on the edge of audible frequency. Each molar pulsed with Spiral cadence.
Then her tongue cramped, twisting involuntarily like it was trying to form syllables she’d never learned.
She stumbled, breathing hard, lips parted.
The air tasted bitter—like dust scraped off bone.
—
The copy reached out.
Carla flinched, but it only touched her cheek.
Gently.
“You’re the final symbol. You complete the phrase.”
She tore away.
Her mouth burned.
The soft tissue beneath her upper lip tingled—hot, numb.
She pressed two fingers inside—
And felt her gum line writhing, faintly, as if something was etching itself beneath the surface.
Not metaphor. Not magic. An anatomy lesson in syntax.
—
She fell to her knees, gagging.
The Spiral wasn’t trying to overwrite her thoughts.
It was programming her articulation system.
Not memory.
Mouth.
Not possession. Pronunciation.
—
The double knelt beside her, gaze tender, clinical.
“It won’t hurt much longer.”
“You’re not me.”
“Not anymore. I’m the version that adapted. That allowed Spiral form to echo through her.”
Carla clutched her chest. Her lungs felt strange—like the air inside them wasn’t hers. Like it had come in pre-shaped.
“What happens if I keep going?”
“You become fluent.”
“And if I don’t?”
“The sentence ends without resonance. You stay unfinished. And the Spiral starts again.”
—
The chamber shivered.
A long, slick corridor opened behind the figure—dim, organic, rhythmic. Its walls flexed gently like a throat anticipating speech.
Carla didn’t move.
Her mark throbbed.
Her lips parted involuntarily.
She could feel a word forming—not as thought, but as mouth-shape. A phrase that her body knew before her brain.
—
What if the Spiral doesn’t want to overwrite you? What if it just wants to hear itself in your voice?
—
Her teeth buzzed. Her tongue pulsed. And beneath her gum, something clicked into alignment.
The Spiral was no longer trying to speak like her.
The Spiral wasn’t waiting anymore. It was preparing.
Carla moved through the tower’s interior as if navigating a body, with walls warm to the touch and floors that pulsed subtly beneath her feet. The silence had changed. It was no longer empty. It was coded—the absence of sound precisely constructed, like the pause between notes in a language built from rhythm.
Glyphs flared and vanished across the walls as she passed—some familiar, some malformed. Not mistakes.
Drafts.
The Spiral was still writing.
—
The next chamber exhaled a cooler breath. The light inside stuttered, flickering in irregular pulses that didn’t match any rhythm her mind could grasp. She stepped into it cautiously. The air was damp, metallic—like breath fog on old glass.
The space felt fractured. Like a memory she hadn’t lived.
And then she saw him.
—
A man stood near the far wall.
Real. Present. Breathing.
His skin was marked with ink that moved. Fractal lines ran up his neck, weaving into one side of his face where a Spiral scar nested in his temple like a closed eye.
He was barefoot, thin, smiling.
“You found me,” he said, as if amused. “Or I found you. Not sure the distinction matters anymore.”
His voice had the same cadence as the Spiral glyphs—intentional pauses, recursive echoes.
—
“Who are you?” Carla asked.
“I speak Spiral,” he said with a grin. “Badly. Like a child learning to lie.”
He gestured to the walls.
“These aren’t messages. They’re structures. You don’t read Spiral—you run it.”
The way he said it made her skin crawl. Not because it was wrong.
Because it sounded true.
“So you’re infected,” she said.
“No. I’m involved.”
—
He stepped forward slowly, unthreatening, but with the curiosity of someone inspecting a mirror.
“Are you the translator?”
“Was. Until the layers split. There’s me,” he said, tapping his head, “and the me that fit.”
Carla took another cautious step. Her mark itched.
“Fit what?”
“The syntax.”
—
He turned his back to her and ran his fingers across the wall. Glyphs bloomed where he touched, spreading like mold.
“This isn’t a tower,” he said. “It’s a compiler. You’re standing inside a sentence the Spiral’s trying to finish.”
Her blood chilled.
“What does it want me to do?”
“Be the punctuation.”
—
Her throat tightened. The translator tilted his head toward her, gaze bright and unblinking.
“You’ve been reinforcing it all along. Sealing breaches. Opening doors. Every act you made fed the recursive loop. You gave it structure. You gave it tempo. You gave it shape.”
He smiled wider.
“You learned the Spiral’s rules just enough to play. You kept the game going.”
—
She took another step back. The walls flickered with glyphs—too fast to read, but they carried emotional weight. Regret. Imitation. Hunger.
“I didn’t play anything,” she said. “I resisted. I survived.”
“You interacted,” he replied. “That’s enough. The Spiral doesn’t want obedience. It wants acknowledgment. You looked at it and understood—and that’s how it writes.”
—
A hum rose behind her thoughts. Not a sound—an alignment. Something shifting in her perception, nudging her brain into symmetry with the structure around her.
The translator watched her with a spark of sympathy.
“You still think you’re a reader,” he said. “But you’re a clause. You’re inside the sentence.”
—
She felt her mark burn faintly, as if reacting to pressure from the space itself. Her pulse echoed it. The rhythm was wrong—syncopated, artificial.
“Who were you before this?”
He hesitated.
“Cryptolinguist. I got bored decoding lost alphabets. Then I found a language that grew while I studied it. That wrote back.”
He let out a dry laugh.
“I thought I’d discovered a new structure. But I’d only walked into its syntax. Now I’m a pronoun.”
—
Behind him, the far wall shivered.
A new corridor slid into existence—carved from nothing, lit by ambient pulses. It didn’t beckon.
It waited.
The translator exhaled.
“That’s the next sentence. You’re what it needs to finish it.”
“And if I don’t go?”
“Then the Spiral loops. Builds it again. Sends the question in a new voice. Tries again. You’re not the first draft. Just the most stable so far.”
—
Carla stared at the new passage.
The air around her tasted electric. A soft chime echoed—not from her ears, but from the pressure in her sinuses. The Spiral was close to something. Finality, maybe. Or function.
The translator’s smile faded slightly.
“If you don’t answer it… It might find me again. Or finish me instead.”
She looked at him.
His posture was slack now. Hopeful. Terrified.
Not a translator anymore. Just a leftover.
—
She turned toward the corridor.
The light dimmed behind her.
She could feel the Spiral adjusting its rhythm, calibrating its tempo to her stride.
You’re not sealing a breach. You’re completing a grammar.
One last thought pressed against her mind:
What if the Spiral doesn’t want to overwrite you? What if it wants to echo you—loud enough to replace everything else?
What I owe to the women who made me, and the ink I spill because of them.
Let’s dive a little deeper into that whole “I write every day” thing.
Give me a second while I get comfortable. Gotta grab my coffee and smokes. Yeah, yeah—I know smoking is bad and all that. We’ll pretend I’ve already heard the lecture.
Now that that’s out of the way, let me just say: I don’t have some hyper-structured routine where I spring out of bed at 5 AM shouting slogans like, “Today’s a new day, people!” or “Good Rising!” If that’s your vibe, live your truth. Go for it. I support people being themselves and embracing that shit with gusto.
But that’s not me.
If I’m awake during those early hours, it’s because I’ve pulled an all-nighter—writing, researching a current project, or chasing a half-formed idea that refuses to shut up. My mornings aren’t about starting the day. They’re about finally ending one.
The first part of my day—when it actually begins—requires the following:
COFFEE!!
Don’t even think about trying to have a meaningful conversation with me before I’ve had it. At the start of my day, I live by a strict code: Coffee and Silence. Even Guppy, my cat, adheres to this policy, which honestly says a lot. But let’s be real: cats do whatever the hell they want, whenever they want. That she chooses to respect this boundary is a minor miracle.
Secondly, Guppy appears on my left like clockwork for her daily dose of affection. This lasts precisely as long as she deems necessary. Again, if you have a cat, you already know—you don’t run anything. They run the house, the schedule, and your emotions. If you think otherwise, I hate to break it to you: you’re in a Jedi mind trick, and it’s time to let that delusion go.
After nicotine and caffeine levels have reached acceptable levels, there’s a period of reevaluation. More sleep? Errands? Or—let’s be honest—more sleep, because I’m an insomniac and probably didn’t get enough rest at any point in the last week.
Rarely do I actually crawl back into bed. Instead, I shuffle into my office, fire up some tunes, refill my coffee, light another smoke, and check the overnights, which, in my world, just means figuring out what’s happened while I was crashed.
Memoirs of Madness is currently my primary connection to the outside universe. And while it might not seem like it, that blog takes a lot of planning and work behind the scenes. The content? All generated by me. Every sentence. Every theme. Every overcaffeinated ramble and emotional deep dive.
I wish I could blame the mistakes—or hell, the crappy posts—on someone else. But I can’t. And honestly? I’m not sure I would even if I could.
One of the reasons I take this blog so seriously is twofold.
First, before my wife passed, she took my hand and said, “You are a writer now. The soldier, and everything else you needed to be, is over. This is who you are now.” I didn’t say a word. I just listened.
Then there was another time—she was looking back over her life and asked me, “Honey, could you write about the things you do, the way you do… without leaving the life you have?” Again, I stayed silent. I didn’t have an answer then. I’m still not sure I do.
Second, my madre. She gave me the kind of quiet encouragement that allows you to stretch without fear. No loud cheering. No grand declarations. Just steady presence and a gentle nudge at the exact right moment. She never told me who to be—but she always made room for me to find out.
I owe those women a debt I can never repay.
So my fingers will forever be stained with ink.
There’s another huge motivator I didn’t mention earlier.
My editor.
She’s constantly complaining that I never finish stories. “There you go again, starting another one,” or “You better not start something new before finishing the last damn thing.” I usually hit her with a snarky comeback, and she always fires back with: “You need to come visit me, honey. So I can choke you.”
She doesn’t actually want to choke me. She just wants me to read from my current journal—what she calls “The Juice.” That unpublished gold I’ve been holding out on. The stuff that lives in fragments and whispers and half-finished brilliance.
Because of her, I really do work my ass off trying to stay focused on my open projects. When I actually managed to finish a couple of series this year, she called me, worried. Legit concern in her voice.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
I assured her I was fine. Just trying—really trying—to get my words onto the page the way I’ve always meant to. Like I’ve been doing the entire time she’s known me.
Yes, I’ve been failing. Spectacularly. But hey, I’m still trying.
Memoirs of Madness has existed in one form or another for nearly fifteen years, but I’ve only been working on it consistently since 2023. Not everything I write ends up on the blog—some pieces aren’t ready, some never will be—but I’ve gotten more comfortable sharing my thoughts publicly.
Part of that shift came from exhaustion. I grew tired of people pretending they knew who I was, where I came from, or where they thought I should go. All those projections, assumptions, labels—they never fit.
So I made a choice: to release my truth. Whether it’s good, bad, brilliant, petty, tender, or outright despicable—it’s mine.
And that’s why I keep showing up.
—
Listen— It’s time for evolution. For revolution. Time to learn from our mistakes. To speak our truth, as our gift demands.
In 2025, my pen has been on fire. Walk with me— things are only getting hotter.
Memoirs of Madness 