Dogs bark at mailmen, thunder, ghosts in plumbing, and their own reflections. They bark because the world keeps arriving uninvited. But Mercy stood in the hallway each morning, silent and rigid, staring past me toward the far wall as if waiting for someone polite enough to knock.
I poured coffee into a chipped mug and watched steam rise in slow, uncertain spirals. The kitchen light hummed overhead with the tired commitment of a government employee. Rain stitched itself against the windows. Dawn came weak and colorless, like it had second thoughts.
Mercy didn’t move.
“Either there’s a murderer in the hall,” I said, “or you’re developing performance art.”
Nothing.
His ears twitched once. His eyes stayed fixed.
I carried my mug to the living room.
The apartment still looked like a place someone had paused rather than lived in. Books stacked where shelves should’ve been. A jacket slung over the chair for three weeks. Dust in the corners gathering tenure. Since Lena died, I’d become an expert at maintaining just enough disorder to call it temporary.
Then I saw the mirror.
It hung beside the old lamp near the wall—cheap frame, warped glass, bought years ago because we needed something to make the room look bigger. Now a thin crack ran from top corner to center like a vein under skin.
And in the fogged surface stood the outline of a woman.
Dark hair. Head bowed. Hands at her sides.
Still.
My coffee hit the floor before I knew I’d dropped it. Ceramic shattered. Hot liquid spread across the boards in branching rivers.
The reflection vanished.
Only me remained—wild-eyed, half-dressed, middle-aged and ridiculous.
Mercy finally padded into the room. He stepped carefully around the shards and sat beside my leg.
“You saw that,” I said.
He blinked once.
Useful.
I knelt to gather the broken pieces. My hands shook harder than I wanted to admit. One shard caught the light and for a second I saw her again—not the shape in the mirror, but the woman in the park. Her tired smile. The strange sparks moving across her coat. The way she’d said He belongs to you now.
Not He is yours.
Not Take care of him.
Belongs to you.
Like ownership could run both directions.
I wrapped the broken mug in newspaper and threw it away. Then I covered the mirror with an old bedsheet.
The room changed instantly. Smaller. Meaner.
Mercy growled.
A low sound, deep in his chest. The first noise he’d made since I found him.
The dog looked at me like he already knew I was lying.
I stood in the doorway with rain on my coat and mud on my boots, holding a trembling Cavalier spaniel against my chest like a confession wrapped in fur. His ears were damp silk. His heartbeat was frantic and tiny, tapping against my ribs as if he wanted out of this story before it got worse.
“Where’d you get him?” my sister asked from the kitchen.
That was the problem with family. They never ask if you’re okay. They ask logistical questions.
“Found him in the park.”
“At midnight?”
“Dogs don’t wear watches.”
She stared over the rim of her coffee mug, unimpressed. I’d always admired her discipline. If sarcasm were a martial art, she’d have been undefeated.
I dried the little animal with a towel and set him on the couch. He sat there with the solemn dignity of a retired priest. Outside, the wind dragged branches across the windows. The whole house sounded like it regretted being built.
I hadn’t meant to be in the park that late. Sleep and I had been in negotiations for months, and neither side trusted the other. So I walked. The barren trees there looked like black veins against the fog, and the path gleamed wet beneath the lamps. A place for insomniacs, widowers, and people meeting strangers they shouldn’t.
That’s where I saw her.
A woman standing in the mist, holding the dog. Dark coat. Head bowed. Hair moving in the wind like ink in water. There was something wrong with the light around her. It shimmered in blue and amber sparks, like circuitry trying to remember how to be stars.
“You look tired,” she said without turning.
“I practice.”
She smiled faintly. Some people smile with warmth. Others smile like they know the ending.
“He belongs to you now,” she said, kneeling to place the dog on the ground.
“I think you skipped several steps.”
“He’ll help.”
“With what?”
“With staying.”
Then she looked at me—really looked—and I felt the old grief inside me shift like a man waking in another room.
I took one step forward.
The fog moved.
She was gone.
No dramatic flourish. No scream of violins. Just absence. Clean and immediate.
The dog trotted to me and leaned against my leg as if this sort of thing happened all the time.
Back in the house, my sister crouched beside him. “What’s his name?”
I remembered the woman’s eyes. The tired kindness in them. The way she spoke like someone leaving instructions for a house she’d once lived in.
“Mercy,” I said.
“That’s a terrible name for a male dog.”
“Then he’ll have character.”
She rolled her eyes and carried him to the kitchen for water.
I stood alone in the living room, listening to the bowls clink, the kettle hiss, the ordinary sounds of survival.
For the first time in a long while, the silence didn’t feel like punishment.
Later that night, Mercy climbed into bed uninvited and slept against the hollow place beside me.
1. Of the gardens of Adonis, Lydia, I love Most of all those fugitive roses That on the day they are born, That very day, must also die. Eternal, for them, the light of day: They’re born when the sun is already high And die before Apollo’s course
Across the visible sky is run. We too, of our lives, must make one day: We never know, my Lydia, nor want To know of nights before or after The little while that we may last. 2. To be great, be whole: nothing that’s you Should you exaggerate or exclude. In each thing, be all. Give all you are In the least you ever do. The whole moon, because it rides so high, Is reflected in each pool.
Reflection
There’s a stage in life where you think consistency is the goal.
Be the same person everywhere. Hold one opinion forever. Never change enough to make anyone uncomfortable.
It sounds noble.
It’s often fear.
Because neat identities are easier to explain. Easier to market. Easier to defend. They require less courage than growth.
Whitman understood that.
When he says he contradicts himself, he isn’t confessing failure. He’s rejecting the smallness of being reduced to one version of himself.
He’s saying:
I am alive enough to evolve. Wide enough to hold tension. Human enough to be unfinished.
Then Pessoa enters the room and deepens the challenge.
“To be great, be whole.”
Not perfect. Not simple. Whole.
That’s harder than it sounds.
Wholeness doesn’t mean ironing out your contradictions until you become smooth and socially acceptable. It means integrating them honestly.
The part of you that wants solitude and the part that wants connection.
The version of you that failed badly and the version still trying.
The tenderness you hide and the steel you needed to survive.
The younger self who believed everything and the older self who knows better.
Most people spend years amputating pieces of themselves to gain approval.
Be less intense. Less emotional. Less curious. Less complicated. Less real.
Then they wonder why they feel incomplete.
Because wholeness is not achieved through subtraction.
It comes from acknowledgment.
From saying:
Yes, I have changed. Yes, I contain conflict. Yes, some days I am wise and other days ridiculous. Yes, I am still becoming.
That kind of honesty threatens people who built identities out of rigidity.
But it frees everyone else.
Reflection Prompts
Which parts of yourself have you hidden to appear more consistent?
Where are you mistaking rigidity for integrity?
What would wholeness look like if you stopped trying to seem simple?
She played records the way some people confess—slowly, carefully, with one hand trembling where nobody could see it.
The bar was called The Lantern, which felt like a joke the owner had long since stopped explaining. Nothing inside it had looked bright in years. Amber bulbs hung low in stained glass shades, throwing tired halos across warped wood and cracked mirrors. Smoke from decades ago still seemed trapped in the walls, mixed now with the scent of bleach, stale beer, wet wool coats, and the faint medicinal bite of cheap gin. The floor stuck to your shoes in places, as if the room wanted to keep something from leaving.
I came there on Thursdays because Thursday was when she worked.
I told myself it was for the music.
That was the kind of lie a man can live inside if he keeps it modest.
Nobody knew much about her. They called her June because somebody once did and she never corrected them. Maybe that was her name. Maybe it was the month she buried a version of herself. Maybe it was just easier to let strangers label you than explain the truth. In places like The Lantern, names were less identity than camouflage.
She stood behind the turntables dressed in black mesh sleeves and dark fabric that caught the light only when she moved. Silver rings flashed on her fingers. Headphones rested around her neck like a doctor’s instrument for diagnosing dead things. Her short blonde hair curled at the edges as though it had opinions of its own. There was nothing flashy about her, nothing begging to be seen.
Which made everyone look.
Her hands were the first thing I noticed. They moved with the patience of someone who had once ruined everything by rushing. She touched knobs, sliders, and vinyl with the care of a woman handling old wounds. Each motion deliberate. Each pause earned.
She never looked at the crowd.
That was part of the magnetism.
Most people who perform want hunger in the room. They want applause, attention, proof they exist. She seemed interested in the opposite. Distance. Control. The ability to give people feeling without giving them herself.
When she blended one record into the next, the room changed temperature. You could feel it happen. Shoulders loosened. Bitter couples found reasons to lean closer. Men who had spent all day being ignored stood a little straighter, remembering they once had names too. Women laughed from somewhere deeper than politeness. The bartender polished glasses slower, like even he knew interruptions could be a kind of violence.
And me?
I watched her the way lonely men watch storms through windows—awed, safe, and secretly wishing for damage.
I tried not to make a habit of it. Failed elegantly.
There was something in the way she kept her eyes lowered. Not shyness. Not fear. It looked more like discipline. Like she knew eye contact was expensive and had stopped spending it on strangers.
She caught me staring once.
Her gaze lifted and landed on me with the clean precision of a blade set on a table. No smile. No annoyance. No invitation. Just a long, measuring look that made me feel counted, weighed, and found unremarkable.
Then she dropped the needle on a song so bruised and beautiful it sounded like regret learning how to dance in heels.
The bass rolled through the floorboards into my legs. Cymbals shimmered like broken glass in warm light. A woman somewhere near the back exhaled sharply, as if the song had touched a memory she’d hidden badly.
I stayed until closing.
Chairs were flipped upside down onto tables. Cash drawers clicked shut. Neon signs buzzed themselves tired. The room emptied in stages, like people leaving church uncertain whether they’d been forgiven.
She packed records into a scarred milk crate, sliding sleeves into place with reverence.
“You take requests?” I asked.
My voice sounded too loud in the near-empty room.
“Not from strangers.”
Her voice was low, roughened at the edges, the kind of voice that suggested cigarettes, secrets, or surviving.
“We’ve seen each other for months.”
“That just means you’re a familiar stranger.”
There are lines that flirt. Lines that wound. That one simply told the truth.
I nodded toward the final record still spinning in the silence of its own groove. “What was that last track called?”
She paused. One hand resting on the crate handle. The other lightly touching the platter as it turned.
For a moment, something crossed her face. Sadness maybe. Or memory. Sometimes they wear the same coat.
“Some songs are safer unnamed.”
I wanted to ask who hurt her. I wanted to ask who she hurt back. I wanted to ask what kind of life teaches a person to ration tenderness like wartime sugar.
Instead, I said nothing.
Wisdom arrives late, but it still counts.
She lifted the crate and walked past me, carrying enough music to ruin or save a person. As she passed, I caught the scent of rainwater, vinyl sleeves, and a perfume so faint it might have been imagined.
At the door she stopped.
Without turning around, she said, “You should stop coming here for me.”
The sentence landed clean and deep because it was accurate.
“Why?”
“Because I only know how to speak in songs.”
Then she opened the door.
Cold air rushed in smelling of wet pavement, exhaust, and dawn still hiding somewhere down the block. It moved through the room like bad news.
Then she was gone.
I still go on Thursdays.
I sit in the same booth with the cracked red vinyl and order the same bourbon I sip too slowly. Sometimes another DJ fills in. Sometimes the turntables stay dark.
Some habits aren’t hope.
Some are grief wearing better clothes.
Some are the shape hope leaves behind when it finally gets tired of waiting.
Not quiet—never quiet. Quiet would have required mercy. This place had none left to spare. It groaned instead. Tires whispered over wet asphalt like men sharing bad secrets. Sirens bled somewhere distant, too far to save anyone, close enough to remind you saving was still marketed as a service. Neon signs buzzed with the stubbornness of dying insects. Steam rose from sewer grates in pale ribbons, carrying the smell of rust, grease, and old heat. Even the rain felt used twice already.
I saw her first in the reflection.
Not the woman herself. The suggestion of her. Her face stretched across a rain-slick storefront window, fractured by rivulets of water and scratches in the glass. Eyes lowered. Mouth set in that careful line people wear when they’ve learned emotion can be used against them. Headphones covered her ears like armor. Inside the dark contour of her silhouette, blue bars of light climbed and dropped in rhythm—an equalizer pulsing where a heart should’ve been.
I turned.
She stood beneath the awning of a shuttered electronics store, ten feet away, hands in the pockets of a black coat gone shiny at the seams. Rain had threaded itself through her hair, clinging there in silver strands. The kind of face painters fail at because symmetry would have ruined it.
“You staring,” she said.
Her voice was low, smoke-bruised, with the flat calm of someone who no longer wasted tone on strangers.
“You hiding badly,” I said.
That earned half a smile.
Half smiles are dangerous. Full smiles tell the truth or a practiced lie. Half smiles invite you to finish the sentence yourself.
I stepped beside her. The wind carried the cold off her coat. Wet wool. Faint cigarette ash. Beneath that, something clean and nearly erased—soap, maybe. The scent of somebody still trying, despite evidence.
The sidewalk reflected blue light in torn ribbons. Pedestrians passed us with collars up and faces tucked inward, each person carrying a private storm in public.
“What are you listening to?” I asked.
“The dead.”
“Good bass line?”
“Terrible advice.”
She handed me one side of the headphones.
The padding was warm from her skin.
I expected music. Some bruised jazz trumpet. Piano that sounded like regret climbing stairs. Maybe synth-pop for people who collect emotional damage as a hobby.
Instead: voicemail.
Voices layered over static.
A man apologizing with the urgency of someone who had just discovered consequences. A woman saying goodbye in a tone that wanted to mean later but knew better. A child laughing somewhere far back in the mix, clean and bright enough to hurt. Another voice whispering come home as if the words themselves were kneeling.
Underneath it all ran a low mechanical hum, steady as a train entering a tunnel.
I pulled the headphone away.
The rain hit harder, ticking against the awning like impatient fingers.
“What is this?”
“Everything people wanted to say after they ran out of time.”
She said it casually, but grief always sounds casual once it gets old enough.
I looked at the crowd moving through the street. Silhouettes in the blue wash of storefront light. Shoes splashing through puddles. Faces lit by phones, by cigarettes, by nothing at all. Nobody looking up. Nobody looking inward either, if they could help it.
Whole lives collapse because people commit themselves to surface level.
“You collect these?” I asked.
“I inherit them.”
“From who?”
She turned then, and really looked at me.
Her eyes held that clear, weathered emptiness you only get after surviving several versions of yourself. Not sadness exactly. Sadness is young. This was older. This was what remains after sorrow pays rent too long.
“From people who mistake me for someone who can help.”
There are nights instinct tells you to leave. Then there are nights loneliness outvotes instinct by a landslide.
“Can you?” I asked.
She touched the side of the headphones.
A small gesture. Tender almost.
“No,” she said. “But I can make sure they’re heard.”
The bus I’d been waiting on hissed to the curb, brakes exhaling like old lungs. Doors folded open. Light spilled across the pavement in a tired rectangle.
I turned for one second.
Just one.
Long enough to consider warmth. Routine. The small narcotic of going home unchanged.
When I looked back, she was gone.
No footsteps. No retreating figure. No cinematic miracle. Just absence.
The bench beside me held the headphones.
Rain steamed faintly off the cushions. They were still warm.
I sat. My knees complained. My coat soaked through at the shoulders. Somewhere nearby, a bottle rolled in the gutter with the hollow sound of something empty rehearsing itself.
I put them on.
Static bloomed first.
Then my own voice.
Raw. Unperformed. The voice people use only in dark rooms and prayer.
I met them in the hour when memory loosens its tie and starts speaking honestly.
The hall sat on a side street like an old secret too stubborn to die. Marble steps worn shallow by generations of polished shoes. Brass handles gone dull from anxious hands. Inside, the air carried layers of time—dust in the curtains, lemon oil on the wood, old perfume trapped in velvet, and the faint metallic scent of rain brought in on coats. People filed in quietly, wearing the practiced faces adults use when they want to seem composed. You could feel the loneliness under the fabric.
I took a seat near the back. Men like me learn to love exits.
The stage was bare except for two chairs, two stands, and a single pool of amber light. No flowers. No grand drapery. No nonsense. It looked less like a concert and more like a confession waiting to happen.
Then they stepped out.
Two women in black, moving with the calm precision of people who had survived things no one applauds. They stood back to back without touching, close enough to feel each other’s heat, far enough to remain sovereign.
The first woman wore spring and winter as if contradiction were simply another form of elegance. Cherry blossoms threaded her hair, soft pink against dark fabric, while frost seemed to gather at the hem of her dress and along the edge of her sleeves. Beauty and warning in equal measure.
The second carried summer and autumn in the angle of her jaw and the stillness of her shoulders. Warm gold light seemed to cling to her skin. Leaves circled low around her feet, turning slow in an invisible current. She looked like the last warm day before everything changes.
No host. No speech. No theatrical grin asking us to love them.
They lifted their bows.
The first note entered the room like a blade slipped between ribs.
I have heard music in bars where laughter was mostly camouflage. In churches where people negotiated with heaven. In cheap apartments through thin walls while someone tried to keep from breaking. I have heard songs used as seduction, sedation, distraction, branding. But this was not entertainment.
This was excavation.
Spring came first.
It smelled of wet soil, cut stems, windows opened after a long winter. It carried the bright stupidity of hope—the kind that makes you believe apologies matter, that timing can be corrected, that love is just effort with better lighting. I thought of a woman I once almost married. We had mistaken wanting for wisdom. We kissed like architects while the foundation cracked beneath us.
Then winter answered.
Its notes were clean, severe, almost merciful in their honesty. Frost across a windowpane. Hospital corridors at dawn. The silence after someone says what they really mean. I remembered funerals where casseroles outnumbered truth. I remembered the years I wore toughness like armor, not noticing armor freezes to the skin after long enough.
Summer rose next from the woman behind her.
Warmth rolled through the hall like sunlight through blinds. It tasted of porch beer sweating in the bottle, skin salted by heat, city asphalt after sundown, laughter shouted across yards. It was youth with its collar open. It was the old arrogance of believing there would always be another June.
Then autumn stepped forward.
Dry leaves skittered across the stage in widening circles. Her tone held smoke, distance, and the grace of surrender done properly. Not collapse. Not defeat. The mature art of release. I thought of the selves I had already outlived—the angry boy, the performing man, the cynic who called numbness intelligence. Some identities don’t die dramatically. They flake off quietly when no one is looking.
Still, the women never turned.
They did not glance back for approval, cue, or reassurance. Their trust was older than eye contact. Their distance held intimacy deeper than touch. That bothered me more than it should have. Most of us spend our lives begging to be seen while never learning how to stand beside another soul without consuming it.
The music swelled.
Blossom met frost. Heat pressed against decay. Joy dragged grief into the light and made it dance. It sounded like marriage, divorce, birth, burial, relapse, forgiveness, rent due Monday, coffee at sunrise, a hand reached out too late, another reached out just in time. It sounded like being alive without edits.
I felt my throat tighten.
There are moments when art stops flattering you and starts indicting you. This was one of them. I saw how often I had mistaken control for strength. How often I kept one foot out the door so I could call abandonment strategy. How often I blamed the weather for storms I personally financed.
The final note landed and kept vibrating in the wood beneath our shoes.
No one moved.
The room was so still I could hear someone crying three rows ahead, trying to do it politely. Somewhere else, a man cleared his throat like that would restore dignity.
When the lights rose, the stage was empty.
No encore. No names. Two abandoned chairs and a hundred people suddenly aware of their own unfinished lives.
Outside, the night air was mild and impossible to classify. Warm breeze, cold edge. Rain smell, dry pavement. The sky itself undecided.
I knew something had changed the moment I looked at her and felt pity.
Up until then she had been danger dressed for evening. Smoke wrapped in silk. A knife taught manners. Every line of her had suggested precision, the kind that leaves no fingerprints and rarely apologizes. But now, standing in front of me beneath that broad-brimmed hat, she looked less like a predator and more like a grand old theater after the fire—still elegant, still upright, but carrying collapse in the beams.
Her face held the damage openly.
Cracks threaded across one cheek and climbed through the brow in delicate black veins, like drought lines in a riverbed that used to know abundance. Fine fractures radiated from the corner of her eye. Some shallow, some deep enough to hold shadow. The skin between them looked pale and smooth, almost beautiful in the insulting way ruins sometimes are.
She wore the damage better than most people wear confidence.
The cigarette between her lips burned with a blue ember that pulsed each time she drew on it. Not orange. Blue. Wrong enough to be memorable. Smoke slid from her mouth in slow ribbons, carrying the scent of tobacco, rainwater, cold stone, and something faintly medicinal. The smell of places where people wait too long.
And inside her—
That was where the room temperature dropped.
I could see movement beneath the fractured half of her face. Not under skin. Behind it. Depth where there should’ve been surface. Hallways where cheekbone ought to be. A lamp glowing somewhere behind her temple. A narrow doorway carved into shadow near the jawline.
And a man in a hat standing motionless in that doorway.
Me.
Recognition rarely arrives with thunder. Mostly it slips a knife in quietly and lets you discover the blood later.
“You see it now,” she said.
Her voice came smooth, but tired around the edges. Like velvet dragged over nails.
“I see enough.”
“No,” she said softly. “You see the outline. Men like you fall in love with outlines.”
That one landed center mass.
Because she was right. I had spent years preferring possibility over presence. Half-kept promises. Half-loved women. Half-finished grief. I called it caution because cowardice is a hard word to shave with in the morning.
I stepped closer.
The floor beneath my shoes gave a low wooden creak, though it had been tile a second ago. This place rearranged itself whenever truth got near. Helpful in the same way a mugger helps you travel lighter.
The silhouette inside her shifted.
My silhouette.
One hand lifted toward the doorframe. Fingers trembling slightly.
I hadn’t trembled in years.
Or maybe I had and called it stress.
“What room is that?” I asked.
Her blue eye fixed on me with the calm cruelty of a surgeon who already knows the diagnosis.
“The one where you left her.”
The air changed at once.
Warmer.
Thicker.
I smelled wet asphalt after summer rain. Heard tires hiss across city streets. Somewhere nearby a jukebox muttered through a bad speaker. The sharp scent of cheap perfume cut through it all, followed by whiskey and the salt of nervous skin.
Memory doesn’t knock. It kicks the door in.
Her hand was on my sleeve again.
Warm fingers. Tight grip.
Her voice trying not to fracture in front of me.
Don’t disappear on me.
And me doing exactly that.
No noble motive. No dramatic sacrifice. No need to save the world before breakfast. Just fatigue, fear, and the selfish instinct of a man who mistook leaving for honesty.
I swallowed hard enough to feel it scrape.
“She moved on,” I said.
“She might have,” the woman in front of me replied. “But you didn’t.”
Blue fire flared at the tip of her cigarette.
Inside her face, the room sharpened into focus. Cheap apartment. Crooked lamp. Rain tapping the window like unpaid debt. A woman stood in the middle of it with her back to the door, shoulders rigid in that posture people use when they’re trying to hold themselves together out of spite.
Waiting.
Every nerve in me wanted to look away.
So I stared harder.
“That’s impossible.”
She smiled, and it had all the warmth of tax season.
“Memory has never been interested in your opinions.”
The doorway widened another inch.
The man in the hat—me, or the version of me that calcified there—still stood at the threshold. Not entering. Not leaving. Suspended between cruelty and courage like a decorative idiot.
I knew that posture.
I’d built a life out of it.
“You keep unfinished moments,” I said.
“I keep what people feed me.”
No venom in her tone. No triumph. Just fact.
Which was somehow meaner.
“Regret is fertile soil,” she added.
Smoke thickened around her shoulders, curling into shapes that almost became faces before collapsing back into haze. I heard whispers in it now—half-apologies, names spoken too late, the rustle of letters never mailed.
My chest tightened.
Not panic.
Recognition.
This place wasn’t built from lies alone.
It was built from deferred truths. The things we schedule for later until later dies.
“What happens if I open the door?” I asked.
A new fracture traced down her cheek with a faint dry sound, like porcelain deciding it had done enough.
“You feel it.”
“And if I walk away?”
“You keep pretending you already have.”
Fair answer.
The room inside her brightened. The woman at the window turned slightly. Not enough to show me her face. Enough to show she had heard something once and never fully stopped listening for it.
I hated myself then with an old, familiar precision.
Not dramatic hatred.
Nothing operatic.
The ordinary kind.
The kind men carry in the pockets of their lives like spare change—heavy enough to notice, common enough to ignore.
My hand rose before I fully meant it to. Fingers hovering inches from the fractured side of her face where the doorway waited.
She did not flinch.
For the first time since I met her, she looked tired.
Not physically.
Structurally.
As if holding everybody else’s unfinished business had put mileage on the frame.
“You don’t have to be the jailer,” I said.
Her blue eye narrowed slightly.
“And you don’t have to audition forever for the role of prisoner.”
Touché.
I almost laughed.
Almost.
My fingers brushed the crack in her cheek.
Cold first.
Then sudden heat.
Then rain striking pavement hard enough to bounce.
The smell of whiskey.
The lamp glow.
The ache of words I should’ve said when they were still useful.
The room lunged forward and swallowed me whole.
And somewhere behind me, just before everything changed, I heard her exhale smoke and murmur—
That’s the first mercy this place pretends to offer—absence. A clean break. Space to breathe.
But the air didn’t loosen.
It thickened.
Sat heavy in my lungs like I’d been breathing through damp cloth. Every inhale came with a taste—metallic, faintly sweet, like old blood cut with cheap sugar. My ears rang in that low, constant way you only notice when everything else goes quiet. Not silence.
Pressure.
The kind that waits for something to crack.
I didn’t move.
Couldn’t tell if it was caution or something worse—something quieter. Something that had already decided staying put was easier than risking whatever came next.
The floor beneath my boots felt uneven. Not physically—no shift, no stumble—but wrong in memory. Like it remembered other feet standing where mine were. Like it held impressions that didn’t belong to me.
And then the smell changed.
Sharp this time.
Ozone and ash.
Something recently burned.
Light fractured open behind me—thin at first, like a crack in a door you weren’t supposed to find.
I turned slow.
Didn’t want to spook it.
Didn’t want to confirm what I already knew.
She stood there again.
Closer.
Too close.
The brim of her hat no longer swallowed her completely. One eye cut through the dark—blue, but not natural blue. Too precise. Too focused. Like light had been sharpened into something with intent.
It didn’t glow.
It targeted.
The other side of her face—
That’s where everything broke.
The lines I’d noticed before had deepened, spread, split wider. Jagged fractures ran across her cheek, down into her jaw, threading through her skin like fault lines under strain. I could see depth now. Not just surface.
Layer.
Beneath.
Something moved in there. Slow. Patient. Not trying to escape.
Just… waiting its turn.
Her cigarette burned hotter this time, ember pulsing like a heartbeat. Each inhale lit the cracks from within, turning her into something briefly transparent. Not flesh.
Structure.
Hollow spaces where something used to be—or never was.
“You stayed,” she said.
Her voice didn’t settle anymore.
It doubled.
A second tone trailing just behind the first, slightly out of sync. Like her words had to travel through something before reaching me.
“I told you,” I said, though the sound scraped coming out. Dry. Detached. “I wasn’t lost.”
Her head tilted, slow as a pendulum.
“You’re closer than you were,” she said. “That’s not the same thing.”
The air between us tightened. I could feel it in my teeth. That faint, electric ache like biting into foil.
The smoke from her cigarette didn’t drift.
It circled.
Looped back on itself like it didn’t trust the space beyond her.
“What are you?” I asked.
My throat tightened around the question like it didn’t want it spoken.
Her eye fixed on me.
Not my face.
Not my chest.
Deeper.
Somewhere behind the ribs where things sit heavy and unspoken.
“You already know,” she said.
And just like that—
Something inside me gave way.
Not around me.
Not the walls.
Me.
A memory split open without warning.
Rain hitting pavement hard enough to bounce. Neon bleeding into water, smearing color across the ground. My hand wrapped around a glass I didn’t need. Her laugh—too bright, too loud—cutting through it all.
Different woman.
Different night.
Same mistake.
“You don’t get to leave like that,” she said, grabbing my sleeve. Fingers tight. Desperate in a way I pretended not to notice.
“I’m not doing this,” I remember saying.
Cold. Clean. Final.
Her grip slipping.
Her voice cracking—
“Don’t disappear on me.”
Then nothing.
Gone.
Not faded.
Removed.
Like the memory had been lifted out by something that knew exactly where to cut.
I staggered, breath catching mid-inhale. The air felt thinner now. Or maybe I just noticed how little of it there’d been all along.
“What did you—”
“I didn’t do anything,” she said.
The ember flared again.
“You brought that with you.”
Another fracture split across her face. Deeper this time. I heard it—a dry, brittle sound, like porcelain giving under pressure.
I should’ve felt fear.
Instead, I felt—
Drawn.
Not to her.
To what she was holding up in front of me.
“What is this place?” I asked.
The question came out softer now. Less defiant. More… tired.
She stepped closer.
The temperature shifted with her. Warmer, but not comforting. Like standing too close to a fire you didn’t start.
“This,” she said, “is where unfinished things come to rest.”
Her hand lifted.
Slow.
Measured.
It hovered inches from my chest.
I could feel it without contact—a subtle pull, like gravity had narrowed its focus.
“Regret,” she whispered.
The word landed in my gut.
“Guilt.”
Lower.
“The version of you that almost chose differently.”
Her fingers curled slightly, like she was holding something invisible—something that belonged to me whether I wanted it or not.
“I give them shape,” she said.
Her eye never blinked.
“And you give them permission.”
My chest tightened.
Because that was the truth I didn’t want to touch.
“You think I want this?” I asked.
Even as I said it, I knew how weak it sounded.
Her expression didn’t shift.
“That’s the part you keep getting wrong.”
Another step.
The space between us collapsed into something shared.
“You don’t want truth,” she said. “Truth demands something from you.”
Her voice dropped, softer now.
“You want relief.”
The word didn’t land.
It sank.
Because relief doesn’t ask anything back.
Relief lets you sit down.
Her cigarette burned low, ash clinging stubbornly to the tip like it refused to fall.
“You came here for something,” she continued. “You just haven’t admitted what it is yet.”
The walls didn’t flicker this time.
They opened.
Slow.
Deliberate.
A doorway formed behind her, light spilling through it in soft, golden waves. It didn’t feel like this place. It didn’t smell like it either.
Warm wood.
Rain after heat.
Something faint and human.
Home.
Or something pretending to be.
“That one’s yours,” she said.
I didn’t move.
Couldn’t.
“What’s in there?” I asked.
She didn’t hesitate.
“Peace.”
Too smooth.
Too practiced.
I stepped forward anyway.
Because that’s what we do.
We walk toward the thing we know is lying because it sounds like something we need.
Each step felt heavier than the last. The air thickened, resisting me. Or maybe testing.
The closer I got, the more the light pressed against my skin—warm, almost soft. It wrapped around my hand before I even reached the threshold.
Behind me, her voice followed.
“If you go in there…”
I stopped.
“…you don’t come back out the same.”
I let the words sit.
“Do I come back out at all?” I asked.
Silence.
That was answer enough.
I glanced back.
Her face had fractured further now—lines splitting wide enough to reveal movement beneath. Not chaotic.
Controlled.
Like something patient enough to wait for collapse.
“You ever go in?” I asked.
For the first time—
She paused.
A flicker.
Barely there.
“I don’t need to,” she said.
That’s when it clicked.
She wasn’t above this place.
She was made from it.
Every regret she held.
Every lie she preserved.
Every room she built—
She was the sum of it.
Curated.
Just like she said.
I turned back to the doorway.
The light pulsed.
Familiar.
Inviting.
It knew me.
Or knew enough of me to pretend.
My hand lifted.
Hovered.
The warmth seeped into my skin, spreading up my arm, loosening something in my chest I didn’t realize I’d been holding tight for years.
Behind me, her voice softened.
“You don’t have to carry it anymore.”
That’s the hook.
Not desire.
Not fear.
Release.
I closed my eyes.
Just for a second.
Long enough to feel the weight of everything I’d walked away from. Everything I’d cut clean and called necessary.
Long enough to realize—
She wasn’t offering me a way out.
She was offering me a place to stop paying for it.
I opened my eyes.
The light didn’t waver.
Didn’t question.
Didn’t judge.
It just waited.
My hand moved forward—
—
—
Then stopped.
Right at the edge.
The warmth lingered, but didn’t take me.
Not yet.
I pulled my hand back.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Behind me, something shifted.
Not the walls.
Her.
“You’re learning,” she said.
No satisfaction.
No disappointment.
Just… acknowledgment.
I didn’t turn around.
Didn’t want to see what she looked like now.
“Or maybe,” I said, my voice steadier than it had any right to be, “I’m just not ready to let it go.”
A pause.
Then—
“Same thing.”
The doorway dimmed slightly.
Not gone.
Just waiting.
Always waiting.
I stood there, feeling the weight settle back into my chest. Heavier now that I’d touched the idea of putting it down.
Heavier…
But mine.
For the first time since I got here, I understood the real cost.
Not getting trapped.
Not getting lost.
But choosing to carry what you could set down—
Because at least it was honest.
And somewhere behind me, just beyond the edge of sight—
I could feel her watching.
Not hunting.
Not pushing.
Just waiting for the moment I’d decide I was tired enough to stop fighting.
Places like that had a smell—stale coffee, wet plaster, something electrical burning just beneath the surface. The kind of scent that clings to your tongue long after you leave, if you ever do. The air was thick, humid in the wrong way, like breath trapped in a closed room. Every step I took echoed a half-second too late, as if the floor needed time to remember I was there.
And then there she was.
Cut clean against all that distortion.
Her hat cast a shadow that swallowed her eyes whole, leaving only the suggestion of them—dark, patient, watching from somewhere just out of reach. Smoke slipped from the corner of her mouth in slow, deliberate strands, curling upward before dissolving into the black behind her. It didn’t drift. It lingered, like it had a reason to stay.
Her skin looked wrong up close.
Not broken—no. That would’ve been easier to understand. It was textured, faint lines running across it like dried riverbeds, like something that had been stretched too far and never quite settled back into itself. Time hadn’t touched her. It had pressed into her.
She wasn’t looking at me.
That’s what pulled me in.
Everyone else in that place watched you like you were a question they needed answered. She didn’t. She stood still, listening to something I couldn’t hear, her breath slow, controlled. The cigarette ember pulsed faintly in the dark—alive, steady, refusing to die out.
I stepped closer before I realized I’d made the decision.
The floor beneath me shifted—not physically, but in memory. A hallway flickered into a hospital corridor for a split second. I caught the sharp sting of antiseptic in my nose, heard the distant hum of machines. Then it was gone. Back to cracked tile and dim light.
She didn’t move.
“You lost?” I asked.
My voice sounded wrong. Too loud, like it didn’t belong in the same space as her.
She smiled around the cigarette. Subtle. Controlled. The kind of smile that doesn’t give anything away because it doesn’t need to.
“No,” she said, exhaling smoke that brushed against my face before disappearing. It smelled faintly sweet—jasmine, maybe. Or something pretending to be.
“I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.”
Her voice didn’t echo. It settled. Sank into the space like it had always been there.
I should’ve walked away.
Instead, I studied her.
The way her fingers held the cigarette—steady, no tremor. The way her shoulders didn’t rise with her breath. Even the fabric at her neck sat too still, like gravity had negotiated with her and lost.
“You don’t look like you belong here,” I said.
She tilted her head just enough for the light to catch the edge of her lips. Not her eyes. Never her eyes.
“Neither do you.”
Something in my chest tightened. Not fear. Recognition.
That was worse.
The walls behind her flickered again. A bar bled into a chapel. I heard laughter cut into quiet prayer. The smell of whiskey folded into candle wax. A memory brushed past me—mine, I think—but I couldn’t hold onto it long enough to be sure.
She stayed the same.
That’s when it hit me.
Not part of the place.
The anchor.
“You built this,” I said.
She took another drag, the ember flaring brighter for a moment, casting a brief glow across her cheek. It revealed more of those fine lines—like fractures beneath the surface.
“I didn’t build it,” she said. “I curated it.”
The word landed heavy.
Curated meant choice. Intention. Selection.
I looked around again—really looked this time. Faces frozen mid-conversation. Movements that looped just a little too perfectly. A man raising a glass but never drinking. A woman laughing without sound.
“They’re stuck,” I said.
She stepped closer.
The air shifted with her. Warmer. Tighter. I could feel it in my lungs, like there was less room to breathe.
“They’re comfortable,” she corrected.
Her voice softened, but it carried weight. Not persuasion. Conviction.
“People don’t want truth,” she continued. “Truth cuts too clean. Leaves nothing behind to hide in.”
She reached up, tapping ash from her cigarette. It didn’t fall. Just vanished before it hit the ground.
“So they build something softer. Something manageable.”
Her head tilted again, and I felt it—that quiet pressure, like she was peeling something back inside me.
“I just give those things… structure.”
The smell hit me then.
Not jasmine.
Not really.
It was something older. Dust and paper. Rain on pavement. A trace of something burned—like letters you never meant to destroy.
“You trap them,” I said, but it came out weaker than I intended.
“I preserve them.”
She was close enough now that I could hear the faint sound of her breathing—or something like it. Slow. Measured. Almost mechanical.
“And me?” I asked. “Why am I here?”
For the first time, she paused.
Not long. Just enough.
That was the crack.
“That depends,” she said quietly. “Are you searching for something…”
She stepped closer. The smoke between us thickened, curling like it didn’t want to let me see her clearly.
“…or are you hiding from it?”
My mouth went dry.
Because the answer wasn’t simple.
It never is.
Images flickered at the edges of my mind—things I hadn’t thought about in years. A face I couldn’t fully remember. A voice just out of reach. The weight of something left unfinished.
I didn’t answer.
Didn’t need to.
She already knew.
That’s the real trick.
It’s not seduction.
It’s not charm.
It’s recognition.
She sees the version of you you’ve been avoiding—the one buried under better stories—and she doesn’t drag it into the light.
She builds a room around it.
Makes it livable.
I reached into my coat, fingers brushing the familiar shape of a lighter. The metal was cold, grounding. Real.
I struck it.
The flame wavered for a second—then steadied. The light caught her face just enough to reveal the truth I’d been avoiding.
Those lines in her skin?
They weren’t cracks.
They were seams.
Like something had been pieced together. Carefully. Deliberately.
“Do you ever leave?” I asked, my voice quieter now.
She stepped back, the darkness reclaiming her inch by inch.
“Why would I?” she said. “Everything I need comes to me.”
The walls shifted again. This time slower. More deliberate. Like they were listening.
“You came looking for me,” she added.
The flame in my hand flickered.
I didn’t remember that.
Didn’t remember how I got here.
Didn’t remember what I was chasing.
Only that I’d been chasing something.
The lighter snapped shut.
Darkness folded back in.
She was almost gone now—just the outline of her hat, the faint glow of the cigarette lingering where her mouth had been.
“And now that you’ve found me…” her voice drifted through the space, softer, closer than it should’ve been—
“you don’t have to keep looking.”
Silence.
Thick. Absolute.
The place settled.
Different now.
Quieter.
More… familiar.
I stood there for a long moment, listening to my own breath. Feeling the weight of the space press in, not resisting it this time.
Not questioning it.
I looked down at my hands.
They felt steady.
Too steady.
Like they’d finally stopped searching.
And that’s when it hit me.
The worst part of a place like that isn’t getting lost.
Morning doesn’t break so much as it leaks in—thin, hesitant light slipping through the blinds like it’s not sure it belongs here anymore.
I sit at the table in your robe. Still yours. Still smells faintly of tobacco and something warm I can’t name without you here to confirm it.
The coffee hums behind me. The house breathes. I don’t.
The pen waits.
My hand doesn’t.
It drifts—slow, instinctive—down to my stomach.
I don’t even remember when I started doing that.
There’s a weight there now. Not heavy. Not yet. Just… present.
Like a quiet truth I can’t outrun.
Dear Darling,
It’s morning. The light’s soft today—the kind you used to stop and notice, like it meant something more than just another day starting.
Coffee’s almost ready. I made pancakes. Syrup already on the plate—you said it soaked in better that way.
I’m wearing that silk gown. The one you never got tired of looking at like it was the first time, every time.
My hand presses against my stomach as I write this.
You don’t know.
You were never going to know.
We made something, and I walked away from it before it had a name.
Before it had a chance.
Things still work. That’s the part I hate. The coffee brews. The light comes in. None of it checks to see if you’re still here.
You would’ve taught this child how to listen.
Not just hear—listen.
Bebop the way it’s supposed to be felt. Not explained. Not dissected. Felt. Motown like it lives in the spine whether you want it to or not. The Philly sound… the way you talked about it like it was church without the pews.
I can tell them.
I will.
But it won’t be the same.
I don’t have your patience. Your reverence. The way you respected the silence between notes like it mattered just as much as the sound itself.
I miss the way you sang Big Joe Turner off key—loud, unapologetic, like the room belonged to you and nobody else had a say in it.
You never got it right.
Not once.
And I never told you how much I loved that.
I knew what staying meant.
I just didn’t want to pay for it.
I pause.
My thumb circles slow against my stomach.
There’s nothing there yet. Not really.
But I keep my hand there anyway.
I almost told you. I didn’t.
I told myself I could do this without you. That it would be easier that way. Cleaner.
My heart didn’t agree.
I stayed quiet anyway.
We said we’d do it backwards. A girl with your name. A boy with mine.
I don’t know if I’m allowed to keep that promise without you here.
Do you remember that trip?
The desert. Three of us and a plan that sounded better in your head than it ever had a chance of being.
And she just… handled it. Like none of it was ever serious to begin with.
I see it now—clear as anything.
That scorpion. Bigger than it had any business being.
She picked it up like it was nothing and chased you with it.
You ran. I ran.
She laughed.
I forgot she knew what she was doing.
You always said she understood things most people wouldn’t touch—bugs, venom, all of it.
An entomologist.
I just remember thinking she was out of her mind.
Your sister’s going to be an aunt.
I can see her now—trying to be you.
Picking up your bad habits like they still belong to someone.
Pushing them a little further each time.
Like there’s no one left to tell her where the line was.
Teaching them the wrong things on purpose. Letting them taste what they shouldn’t.
Laughing like rules were just suggestions someone else wrote.
Holding it all together just long enough for nobody to ask questions.
Trying to be you.
And not even knowing it.
I finished another chapter.
It’s sitting here, waiting for you like it used to. I can still see you reading—thumb brushing your beard, twisting that one side longer than the other.
You always said you’d fix it.
You never did.
I miss the way you stood behind me. Quiet. Certain. Like the world could fall apart and you’d still be there, steady as breath.
I try to remember that feeling.
I try to give it to something that’s never going to meet you.
I keep pausing like you’re about to say something. Like I didn’t train myself out of that already.
I’ll write again tomorrow.
I love you.
Never doubt that.
I read it twice.
Not for grammar.
For truth.
My hand stays there longer this time.
The lighter clicks.
Flame blooms.
The paper curls, blackens, disappears in on itself—like it’s trying to take the words back before they settle somewhere permanent.
I drop it into your ashtray.
Your pipe’s still there.
That hand-carved one from Ireland you wouldn’t shut up about. You said it would last forever.
I pick it up.
Turn it over in my hands.
Cold.
I press it gently against my stomach.
I wait anyway.
The smoke rises—thin, quiet.
My hand tightens.
Not a thought. Not yet.
Just something—
wrong.
Author’s Note: This piece was written for Sadje’s What Do You See #335. The image offered quiet, but the story refused it—pulling instead at absence, at the things we leave unsaid, and the consequences that continue long after the moment has passed.
The city kept its treasury locked behind marble and lies. I kept mine in a dented coffee tin under the sink—loose change, bad decisions, and names needing forgetting. Funny thing about value: theirs needed guards; mine needed forgetting. When they finally audited me, I handed them silence. It accrued interest faster than truth ever did. Then I sent an invoice.
The room smelled like something that had overstayed its welcome.
Old smoke. Varnish. A faint trace of cologne that had long since lost the man it belonged to. It clung to the curtains, to the seams of the chair, to the back of the throat—coating everything in a thin, stale film that didn’t leave, no matter how long the windows stayed shut.
She stood beside the chair, unmoving.
Black silk wrapped her frame like a second thought—quiet, deliberate. When she breathed, the fabric barely shifted, absorbing the light instead of reflecting it. It made her harder to read. Harder to place.
That was the point.
The man in the chair didn’t breathe at all.
Not visibly.
His chest didn’t rise. His shoulders didn’t settle. He existed in that space between—where the body hasn’t quite admitted it’s finished, and the room hasn’t decided what to do with it yet.
His head leaned forward, chin hovering just above his collar. The skin along his neck sagged slightly, loose in a way that suggested time had been pulling at him for years… and had finally gotten what it came for.
His hand hung over the armrest.
Heavy. Slack. Fingertips pale, as if the blood had retreated somewhere safer. The other hand rested in his lap, curled inward like it had tried to hold onto something at the last second and missed.
The chair held him upright anyway.
It was too large for him now.
Carved wood curled outward in elaborate, unnecessary flourishes—each detail catching shadows that didn’t belong to the light in the room. The leather had cracked in thin, branching lines, like something once alive had dried out and stayed that way.
It didn’t creak.
It waited.
The smoke told the truth.
It didn’t rise from a cigarette. There wasn’t one.
It came from him.
Slow at first—thin strands slipping from the seams of his coat, from the hollow at his throat, from the faint parting of his lips. It didn’t rush. It didn’t panic.
It knew this moment.
It had been preparing for it long before she arrived.
She watched it with a stillness that bordered on reverence.
Not admiration. Not curiosity.
Recognition.
Her eyes tracked the way it moved—how it coiled, how it tested the air, how it lingered near the edges of his body like it wasn’t quite ready to let go.
She understood that hesitation.
“You took your time,” she said.
Her voice didn’t break the silence—it settled into it, low and even, like it had always been part of the room.
The smoke shifted.
Barely.
But enough.
Her gaze moved across his face, slow, deliberate. Taking inventory.
There had been power there once. You could still see its outline—the set of his jaw, the stubborn line between his brows, the faint tension still lingering around his eyes like they might open if something called him back hard enough.
Nothing did.
Men like him never listened when it mattered.
Her jaw tightened—just slightly.
Not anger.
Something closer to acknowledgment. The kind that comes too late to change anything.
She stepped closer.
The floor whispered beneath her weight—a soft, reluctant creak that sounded louder than it should have. The air shifted with her movement, carrying the smell with it, thickening it, pressing it deeper into her lungs.
She didn’t flinch.
Her hand lifted, hovering just above his shoulder.
Close enough now to feel the temperature.
Cool.
Not cold.
Not yet.
The smoke reacted first.
It curled upward, slower now, more deliberate. It gathered near her fingers, brushing against them without touching—testing the boundary between where he ended and she began.
She held her hand steady.
“You built all of this,” she murmured, her voice quieter now, closer to him, as if the distance between them mattered. “And still… this is how it ends.”
The room didn’t answer.
It didn’t need to.
Her fingers lowered.
Contact.
The fabric beneath her hand felt worn—soft in places where time had rubbed against it too often. Beneath that, the structure of his shoulder remained, but diminished. As if whatever had held it together had already started to leave.
The smoke surged.
Not violently.
Not desperately.
Just… certain.
It slipped from him in long, quiet threads—each one stretching before it broke free, like it was remembering the shape of the body it had lived in.
His chest shifted.
A small thing.
Almost nothing.
But enough to mark the difference between holding on and letting go.
The chair creaked then—low, drawn-out, like it had been bearing the weight of more than just a body.
She closed her eyes.
Not in grief.
In focus.
The smoke moved differently now.
It no longer drifted.
It chose.
Each strand bending toward her, drawn to something deeper than heat, deeper than air. It touched her skin in soft, fleeting passes—cool at first, then warming as it lingered.
Her breath hitched.
Just once.
Unintended.
She felt it.
The residue of him—not memory, not thought—but something closer to pressure. Weight settling behind her ribs, along her spine, threading itself through places that had been empty… or waiting.
Her fingers tightened against his shoulder.
Not to hold him.
To steady herself.
When she opened her eyes, the room looked the same.
But it didn’t feel the same.
The air had shifted.
Lighter in some places. Heavier in others.
The smoke was gone.
Not vanished.
Transferred.
The man in the chair sagged.
Subtly at first—then completely.
His head dipped further, chin finally meeting his chest. His hand slid an inch along the armrest before stopping, as if even gravity had lost interest in him.
What remained was just a body.
Structure without presence.
A shell that no longer remembered how to hold itself together.
She stepped back slowly.
Testing her balance.
Testing the weight now sitting behind her eyes, in her chest, along the edges of her thoughts.
It settled.
Not comfortably.
But completely.
Her gaze lingered on him.
Not with sorrow.
With clarity.
This was always the ending.
Not the grand fall. Not the dramatic unraveling.
Just this—
A quiet emptying.
A chair that remembers more than the man ever will.
“Thank you,” she said.
Not because he deserved it.
Because the moment required it.
She turned toward the door.
The silk followed her movement in a soft whisper, brushing against itself like something alive, carrying with it the faintest trace of what the room had just lost.
She worked in the quiet hours—those thin, in-between moments when the world forgot to be loud.
The vials in front of her breathed more than they sat. Each one held a memory of the earth: crushed root, fermented leaf, sap coaxed from bark that had learned how to survive drought and fire and the careless hands of men. The smoke curling upward wasn’t just smoke—it was language. It spoke in slow spirals, telling her what the mixtures would not.
People used to understand this.
Not the recipes—those were the easy part. Anyone could follow steps, grind this, boil that. But the listening… that was the lost art. The knowing that a plant didn’t give itself the same way twice. That the soil it grew in, the grief it absorbed, the storms it endured—those things lived inside it. Healing wasn’t extraction. It was negotiation.
She dipped the tip of her tool into the darkest vial and hesitated.
“Too bitter,” she murmured, though no one else was there to hear it.
Her fingers hovered, then shifted to another—lighter, thinner, but stubborn. This one had grown in shadow. It would fight her. Good. Medicines that didn’t resist weren’t worth trusting.
Behind her, the walls carried symbols older than memory. Not decoration—records. Every mark was a conversation someone had once had with the earth and survived to tell about it. She didn’t look at them anymore. She didn’t need to. They had moved into her bones long ago.
Once, people traveled for days to sit where she sat.
They came with sickness, yes—but more often with confusion. A body doesn’t break without reason. A spirit doesn’t ache without history. She had learned early that most of what they called illness was simply a life lived out of rhythm. Too much noise. Too much taking. Not enough listening.
Now they came less.
They had pills that worked faster. Machines that spoke louder. Certainty packaged in clean white containers that didn’t ask questions back. Healing had become a transaction—quick, efficient, empty of memory.
She pressed the mixture into the parchment before her, letting it bleed into the fibers.
“This one is for forgetting pain without forgetting the lesson,” she said softly, as if naming it anchored it to the world.
Her hands stilled.
That was the problem, wasn’t it?
People didn’t want lessons anymore. They wanted silence. They wanted the wound gone without understanding what had cut them open in the first place.
Outside, something shifted—the wind, maybe. Or something older moving through it.
She closed her eyes and let the room breathe around her.
Nature had never stopped speaking. Not once. It whispered in cracked soil, in the way leaves curled before a storm, in the quiet defiance of weeds breaking through stone. The language was still there, patient as ever.
It was people who had forgotten how to hear.
She opened her eyes, reached for another vial, and began again—not because anyone was coming, but because the work itself mattered. Because somewhere, someone would remember. Because healing, real healing, was never about saving the world.
I didn’t notice it at first. Change doesn’t announce itself. Not really. It doesn’t kick the door in or make promises it can’t keep. It just… arrives. Slips into the empty seat beside you like a stranger in a crowded train station—close enough to feel, easy enough to ignore. So I ignored it. I kept scribbling in my notebook, one thought chasing the next, no shape to any of it. Just movement. Just noise. It was past midnight. My eyes burned. My hands cramped. And Guppy—Guppy reminded me, loudly, that her litter box needed changing. No patience. No grace. Funny how something that small can pull you back from the edge of your own head. I changed the litter, washed my hands, and came back to the page. That’s when it shifted.
I looked at the notebook and decided I wasn’t going to choose. A story. An essay. Something else I didn’t have a name for yet. All of it. So I wrote. Straight. No chaser. No polishing. No second-guessing. Just the truth the way I’d lived it—uncomfortable, uneven, mine. And then something opened. Everything I’d read, seen, heard… it was there. Not as memory. Not as reference. As if it had been waiting. I could feel it lining up behind the words.
I looked up from my notebook.
The train station was empty.
A woman was walking away, her footsteps the only sound left in the room. Slow. Measured. Certain. I turned, trying to follow the sound, but there was nowhere for her to go. No doors. No exits. Just space where she should have been.
And then the footsteps stopped.
I sat there, listening.
The clock on the wall took over—each second grinding forward with a hard, shifting sound, like tiny workers buried inside it, cranking the hands inch by inch.
I didn’t know how long I’d been sitting there. Didn’t know if I had moved at all.
The sound of fluttering wings filled my office, but I didn’t look up right away. Guppy did. She let out a sharp, offended meow before hopping onto the desk, then down into my lap like she owned both the space and whatever had just passed through it. “Can’t you see I’m working?” I asked. Didn’t matter. She turned once, twice, then settled—final say. I shifted, adjusted, gave in. There’s a rule about that, unwritten but absolute. A cat chooses your lap, you don’t move. Not for discomfort. Not for reason. Not even for sense. I used to think there was a time limit attached—ten minutes, maybe fifteen, something measurable. But sitting there, hands still, the room too quiet, I couldn’t remember the number. Couldn’t remember if there ever was one. Guppy’s weight anchored me in place, and for the first time all night, I wasn’t sure if I was staying still because of her… or because something else in the room wanted me to.
I was wrong.
Not a little.
Completely.
The fluttering grew louder.
Guppy’s claws sank into my thigh, sharp enough to anchor me. She let out a low, uneasy sound, looking back at me like I was the one out of place.
The room shifted.
I knew this place.
This is where I go when the story comes.
Only this time—
it didn’t come alone.
Voices layered over each other, pressing in. Not words at first—just presence. Then fragments. A street folding in on itself. Something blooming where it shouldn’t.
And the woman—
closer now.
Or maybe I was.
The noise swelled, crowding the edges of everything I thought I understood.
I exhaled. Slow. Forced.
Held on to that one thread.
The rest didn’t disappear—
but it bent.
Aligned.
Waited.
The picture sharpened.
Not clear. Not safe.
But enough.
I picked up the pen.
And this time—
I didn’t pretend the words were mine.
The pages are filled.
My handwriting.
…I think.
I lean closer.
What is this?
I don’t recognize what’s on the page. The lines twist into something older than language—symbols that feel familiar in the wrong way. Like something I’ve seen before but was never meant to read. It reminds me of those ancient books—the ones that never made it to the shelves. The ones kept behind the desk, clutched in the arms of that librarian. The one who always watched a little too closely.
“Are we going to behave today, Master Khan?”
Her voice—calm, precise. Not a question. Never was.
“Yes, ma’am.”
I hear it before I remember saying it.
She scoffs. A small sound, sharp enough to cut. Then the look—that same scowl that made you sit up straighter whether you wanted to or not.
“Peppermint?”
Always peppermint.
Always after.
The sun has faded. Night has returned. The glow from my desk lamp is too much—pressing in, bleaching the edges of everything. I turn it down before it burns through my eyes. Something moves at the edge of my vision. I turn. Nothing. The cigarette smoke thickens, curling slow through the room, clinging to the light. I take it in. The scent is wrong. Not American. Turkish, maybe. Or something older. Something I don’t remember lighting.
“Excuse me, Mr. Khan. Do you think you can help me?”
The voice comes from the shadows.
I look around the room, slow, deliberate—trying to catch movement before it disappears.
Nothing.
“I need you to tell my life story,” the voice continues.
Still nothing.
I strike a match. Light a cigarette. Draw it in deep, hold it there like it might steady something.
Exhale.
Then a sip of coffee.
Cold.
Of course it is.
“Why in the hell would I want to do that?” I ask.
Guppy hisses. Low. Sharp.
I look up.
And there she is.
Standing like she’s always been there.
Too much to take in at once. Too many details competing for attention—like she brought her own gravity into the room and everything else had to adjust around it. Every part of her felt… intentional. Nothing wasted. Nothing accidental.
My first instinct was simple.
Run.
Get the hell out. Find a church. A monastery. Somewhere quiet where stories don’t follow you home.
But then the thought hit—
Who’s going to look after Guppy?
I didn’t move.
I stayed.
Who is she?
A memory of a forgotten love? A glance across a crowded room that never quite left? Or something pulled from a story I never finished?
…Doesn’t matter.
She wears a wide straw hat, the brim low enough to hide most of her face. What little I can see isn’t enough to hold onto—but the way she moves… that says everything. Measured. Certain. Like she’s been here before. Like she knew I would be.
She pulls out a chair. Sits. No hesitation. No permission asked.
The room shifts around her, like it’s adjusting to a weight it didn’t expect.
She leans in, close enough to blur the edges of everything else.
“Just write,” she whispers.
Like it was never up to me.
And I do.
Now I’m back in my office.
The coffee cup sits where I left it. A cigarette burns slow in the ashtray, curling smoke into the stale air like it’s been waiting on me.
I look around.
How did I get here?
For a moment, I don’t move. Just stand there, listening—half expecting to hear something… or someone.
Nothing comes.
So I sit down at the desk. Open the notebook. The pages are filled.
My handwriting.
…I think.
Guppy gives a quick, impatient meow as she shifts in my lap, settling in like she’s been there the whole time.
I start entering the notes into the computer, pecking at the keys in that old, stubborn way of mine. Slow. Uneven. Familiar.
That’s the first thing they took—not physically, not in some surgical horror you could point to and say there. No blood. No scar. Just… absence. A quiet erasure. Like someone dimmed the world until it forgot how to reach me.
They told me the implants would fix it.
“Restore perception,” they said. Not vision. Not sight. Perception. That should’ve been the warning.
Now I see everything.
Not the way you do. Not color and shadow and distance. I see corridors where there shouldn’t be corridors. Layers behind walls. Heat signatures of people who haven’t entered the room yet. The visor hums low, like it’s thinking, like it’s deciding what I deserve to know.
And sometimes… it shows me things that don’t belong to now.
There’s a hallway in the red. Endless. Clean. Clinical. It stretches farther than geometry should allow. I don’t walk it—no, that’s the worst part. I am already inside it when it appears. No transition. No warning. Just—
There.
Every time.
The air smells sterile, metallic. Like rain on iron. Like memory stripped of warmth.
They said the cost would be minimal.
Minimal is a lie engineers tell when they don’t have the language for loss.
I used to dream. I know that much. I can feel the shape of it, like a phantom limb of the mind. Faces I loved, maybe. A voice that softened the edges of the day. But now when I try to recall it, the visor flickers—red floods in—and the hallway replaces whatever was trying to surface.
It edits me.
That’s the truth I wasn’t supposed to reach.
The machines didn’t just help me see. They decide what is worth seeing. What stays. What gets buried.
There are moments—small, dangerous moments—when I lift my hand to the edge of the visor. My fingers hover there. The material is warm. Alive, almost. It pulses faintly, synced to something deeper than my heartbeat.
If I take it off… do I go blind again?
Or do I finally see what they’ve been hiding from me?
Last time I tried, the hallway came faster. Closer. The lights overhead stuttered like a warning. And at the far end—
Something moved.
Not a person.
Not a machine.
Something that recognized me.
I haven’t tried again since.
Because here’s the part they never tell you about restoration:
Sometimes the thing you get back isn’t yours anymore.
And sometimes the thing watching you from the other side of the lens…
is learning how to wear your memory better than you ever did.
At a glance, it looks like collapse—skin splitting like dry earth, fragments peeling away into a black that feels less like absence and more like hunger. But look closer. The fractures don’t fall apart. They bloom. Blue pushes through the ruin, not delicate, not ornamental—insistent. Violent in its quiet way.
Her face is a battleground where something refused to stay buried.
The blue isn’t soft. It stains the grayscale like a bruise that never healed right. Petals press through her cheekbone, her temple, her jaw—as if the body tried to contain something and failed. Or worse… tried to forget.
Her eye—sharp, awake—doesn’t ask for help. It measures you. Like it’s deciding whether you’re another witness or just another person who will look away once the beauty wears off and the damage starts to mean something.
There’s ash in the cracks. You can almost smell it—burnt memory, old rooms, something that once had a name. The texture of her skin feels wrong, like stone that remembers being flesh. Like something lived there, left, and took the softness with it.
But the flowers stayed.
That’s the part that unsettles.
Because flowers aren’t supposed to grow in places like this. Not in fracture lines. Not in ruin. Not in whatever kind of darkness clings to her like a second skin.
Unless they’re not symbols of life.
Unless they’re proof of survival that came at a cost.
She doesn’t smile. Doesn’t need to. There’s a steadiness in her that feels earned the hard way—through nights that didn’t end clean, through versions of herself that had to be buried just to keep walking. The kind of strength that doesn’t inspire. The kind that endures.
And still—
color remains.
Not everywhere. Not enough to make things easy. Just enough to remind you that something inside her refused extinction.
There’s a certain kind of moment you don’t recognize until later—the quiet ones that change your direction without asking permission.
Mine came in a used bookstore.
The owner didn’t say much. He just walked up, placed Bad Haircut in my hands, and said, “Read this.”
No urgency. No explanation. Just certainty.
He’d mentioned Tom Perrotta before. I’d filed it away with all the other I’ll get to it authors. The list was long. He wasn’t near the top.
But something about that moment—something in the way the book didn’t feel optional—cut through the noise.
So I read it.
And somewhere between the first page and the last… something shifted.
What keeps pulling me back isn’t just the stories—it’s the people inside them.
Perrotta doesn’t build characters to serve a plot. He lets them exist first. And that changes everything.
He goes the extra mile in a way that doesn’t announce itself. There’s no dramatic spotlight, no forced moment telling you what matters. Instead, he works in the margins—the hesitation in a sentence, the wrong thing said at the wrong time, the silence that lingers just a second too long.
That’s where the truth lives.
His characters aren’t polished. They’re not particularly heroic. Half the time they don’t even understand themselves. But that’s exactly why they land.
They feel human.
Not the version we rehearse for other people—but the one that shows up when things don’t go the way we planned. Insecure. Conflicted. Trying. Failing. Trying again, sometimes worse than before.
And because of that, you don’t just read about them—you recognize them.
Worse… you recognize yourself.
That’s where the shift happens. That’s where you start to care.
Not because the story tells you to. But because you’ve seen that version of a person before. Maybe you’ve been that person. Maybe you still are.
There are a couple of moments in Bad Haircut that never really left me.
One of them is the way Perrotta describes the city—not as one place, but as two towns pretending to share the same space. There’s this invisible line. You cross it, and everything shifts. The tone. The people. The expectations.
No sign telling you it’s there. But you feel it.
That stuck with me because it’s real.
I grew up around cities like that. I’ve walked those lines without knowing what they were until I was already on the other side. Places where one block feels like possibility and the next feels like something closing in on you. Same city. Different rules.
Then there’s another moment—the one that hits a little closer.
The protagonist gets involved with an older woman while he’s still in high school. For him, it isn’t casual. It isn’t a story to tell his friends. It’s everything. The kind of moment that rewrites how you see yourself, how you think the world works.
And then she tells him she’s going to marry someone else.
Just like that.
It’s messy. Complicated. A little reckless. The kind of situation adults would label a mistake and move on from.
But for him, it’s not a footnote.
It’s a fracture.
That’s what Perrotta understands—something we tend to forget once we’ve put distance between who we were and who we are now.
Back then, everything mattered.
Every conversation carried weight. Every touch meant something. Every loss felt permanent.
There was no such thing as just a moment.
And when you read it now, older, supposedly wiser… you realize how much of that intensity never really left. It just learned how to hide better.
My all-time favorites are Count a Lonely Cadence by Gordon Weaver and Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison.
Those books move differently.
They carry weight in a more deliberate way—language that feels carved instead of spoken, themes that stretch beyond the page into something larger. Identity. Isolation. The cost of being seen—or not seen at all.
They demand something from you.
But Bad Haircut doesn’t move like that.
It doesn’t reach for myth. It doesn’t try to explain the world.
It stays smaller. Closer.
And somehow… that makes it hit just as hard.
Because where Weaver and Ellison deal in systems—power, institutions, identity under pressure—Perrotta works in something quieter.
He shows you how those same forces live in ordinary spaces. In school hallways. In neighborhoods. In the small decisions that don’t feel like decisions at all.
Not whether you survive a system…
But whether you become the kind of person who never questions it.
I return to these books because they recognize the life I’ve lived—even the parts I didn’t at the time.
Not the dramatic moments. Not the ones that make stories worth telling at a bar.
The quiet ones.
The ones that shape you before you even realize something is changing.
I’ve read other work by Tom Perrotta. Good work. Solid work.
But nothing hits me like Bad Haircut.
There’s something about it that doesn’t let go. Or maybe it never needed to—it just waited until I caught up to it.
It might even make my desert island list.
Count a Lonely Cadence. Invisible Man. And Bad Haircut.
Three different kinds of weight. Three different ways of telling the truth.
If you looked at those copies, you wouldn’t see pristine pages. You’d see wear. Creases in the spine. Edges softened from being opened too many times.
Dog-eared pages.
I hate dog-earing a book.
Always have.
But these?
These don’t feel like objects you preserve. They feel like something you return to—again and again—until the marks stop feeling like damage and start feeling like proof.
Proof that something in there wasn’t just worth reading—
Not the first drop—that would be too clean, too cinematic. Life doesn’t announce its turning points with a single, obedient moment. It seeps. It stains. It builds in quiet layers until one day you look in the mirror and realize something has marked you permanent.
The world around her has already drained itself dry. Everything reduced to bone and shadow, to the honest language of black and white. No distractions. No soft places left to hide. Just contrast—truth sharpened into edges.
But the red… The red refuses to behave.
It clings to her like memory. Not just what was done, but what couldn’t be undone. It splashes across her cheek, streaks along her brow, settles into the corners of her mouth like a secret she’s tired of keeping. It doesn’t ask permission. It doesn’t fade.
Her grip tightens around the handle in her hand—not trembling, not uncertain. Just… anchored. Like it’s the only real thing left in a world that has forgotten how to feel.
She’s learned the difference between noise and signal.
People talk. They always do. About justice. About lines you don’t cross. About who you’re supposed to be when the lights are on and someone’s watching. But none of them ever explain what happens when the lights go out. When the rules start bending under the weight of reality.
That’s where she lives now.
In the quiet aftermath. In the space between decision and consequence.
Her eyes don’t wander. They don’t soften. They don’t apologize. There’s a calculation there—cold, precise—but underneath it, something heavier. Something tired. Like she’s already counted the cost and paid it in advance.
That’s the part no one sees.
They’ll look at her and see violence. Rage. Maybe even madness if it helps them sleep better at night. But they won’t see the discipline it took to get here. The restraint that came before the breaking point. The thousand moments she chose not to act… until the one where she did.
The red doesn’t make her a monster.
It makes her honest.
Because deep down, beneath the noise and the rules and the performance of being “good,” everyone knows there’s a line. And everyone likes to believe they’ll never cross it.
She used to believe that too.
Now she just wonders how many are already closer than they think.
Dispatches from the Splinters of my Mind: Entry 15
We like to believe that progress is a straight line—one step after another, measured, deliberate, inevitable. We imagine the climb as something clean, something earned through effort alone, as if willpower were enough to carry us upward. But no one tells you how heavy each step becomes when you’re not just carrying ambition, but everything you’ve tried to bury along the way.
The stairs are never just stairs.
They remember.
Every hesitation. Every false start. Every moment you almost turned back but didn’t. They hold the imprint of your weight—not just your body, but your doubt, your fear, your unfinished conversations with yourself. You think you’re climbing toward something—success, clarity, becoming—but the truth is, you’re also climbing with something. And that something doesn’t always want you to reach the top.
You feel it in the pauses.
Not the kind you plan, not the kind you earn, but the kind that finds you halfway up, when your body is still capable but your mind begins to fracture. You sit down for a moment, just to catch your breath, just to recalibrate—but the stillness stretches longer than it should. The silence begins to speak.
This is where the demons step in.
Not loud. Not theatrical. Not the monsters you were warned about in stories. These are quieter. More precise. They don’t drag you down the stairs—they convince you that staying where you are makes sense. They speak in your voice, with your logic, using your past as evidence. They remind you of every time you tried and failed, every time you reached and came up short, every time the climb cost more than you were prepared to give.
They don’t need to stop you.
They just need to make stopping feel reasonable.
So you sit.
And the longer you sit, the heavier everything becomes. Not because the stairs have changed, but because the weight you’re carrying has started to settle. It spreads out inside you, filling spaces you didn’t realize were hollow, pressing against the edges of who you thought you were. It tells you that maybe this is enough. That maybe the version of you sitting here—paused, contained, controlled—is safer than the one still trying to climb.
There’s a strange comfort in that lie.
Because climbing requires confrontation.
Not with the world—but with yourself.
Every step upward forces something into the light. A doubt you can’t ignore. A fear you can’t rationalize away. A truth that doesn’t fit the version of yourself you’ve been presenting. The higher you go, the less room there is for illusion. And for some, that exposure feels more dangerous than failure.
So they stop.
Not forever. Not officially. Just… long enough.
Long enough to lose momentum.
Long enough to forget what the next step felt like.
Long enough to convince themselves that they’ll start again later—when things are clearer, easier, more aligned. But clarity doesn’t arrive in stillness. It arrives in motion, in friction, in the uncomfortable act of continuing when continuation doesn’t make sense.
That’s the part people don’t talk about.
Success isn’t built on motivation.
It’s built on movement through resistance.
And resistance is rarely external.
It doesn’t come from the stairs.
It comes from the weight you carry up them.
That weight has a history.
It is made of everything you’ve internalized but never resolved. Expectations that were never yours but feel like they are. Failures that were supposed to teach you something but instead taught you to hesitate. Voices that told you who you were before you had the chance to decide for yourself.
You don’t leave those things behind at the base of the staircase.
You bring them with you.
And at some point, they begin to speak louder than your reasons for climbing.
That’s when the climb changes.
It stops being about reaching the top.
It becomes about deciding whether you’re willing to keep going while carrying what you haven’t yet understood.
Some people turn back here.
Not because they can’t climb.
But because they can’t carry.
Others stay where they are.
Suspended between who they were and who they might become, convincing themselves that stillness is a form of control. That if they don’t move, they can’t fail. That if they don’t climb, they don’t have to confront what waits for them at the next level.
But there are a few—quiet, stubborn, often misunderstood—who do something different.
They don’t drop the weight.
They examine it.
They sit on the step, not in surrender, but in recognition. They begin to understand that the demons they’ve been fighting are not external forces, but internal constructs—built, reinforced, and sustained over time. They don’t disappear when ignored. They don’t weaken with avoidance. They adapt.
So instead of running from them, these few turn toward them.
They ask uncomfortable questions.
Where did this come from?
Why does it have this much power?
What part of me still believes this is true?
This is not a dramatic moment.
There is no sudden clarity, no instant transformation.
Just a slow, deliberate shift.
The weight doesn’t vanish—but it changes.
It becomes defined.
And what is defined can be carried differently.
So they stand.
Not lighter.
But steadier.
And they take another step.
Not because the path is clear.
Not because the fear is gone.
But because they’ve decided that stopping is no longer an option.
This is where the illusion breaks.
Not all at once.
But enough to see through it.
The stairs were never the obstacle.
The climb was never the enemy.
It was the conversation you refused to have with yourself along the way.
And once that conversation begins—honestly, without performance, without deflection—the nature of the climb shifts. It is no longer about proving something to the world. It is no longer about reaching a destination that validates your effort.
It becomes about alignment.
About becoming someone who can move forward without being anchored to what no longer serves them.
That doesn’t mean the demons disappear.
They don’t.
They evolve.
But so do you.
And at some point, the thing that once stopped you becomes the thing that teaches you how to continue.
Not perfectly.
Not effortlessly.
But truthfully.
So when you find yourself sitting on the steps—paused, uncertain, weighed down by something you can’t quite name—understand this:
You are not stuck.
You are in the moment where the climb asks something real of you.
Not effort.
Not ambition.
Understanding.
And once you begin to understand what you’re carrying…
That was the first lie I told myself. It went down easy, like cheap whiskey—burned just enough to feel honest, then settled in like something I didn’t have to question.
The mountains behind her were bruised with fading light, the sky pressing low like it had weight to it. Wind came off the ridge in uneven breaths, carrying pine, damp earth, and the faint ghost of rain that never quite made it. It cut through my jacket and stayed there, needling into bone.
She leaned against the railing like she owned the quiet. One shoulder dipped, fingers tracing the cold iron scrollwork—slow, deliberate, like she was counting something. Time, maybe. Or all the reasons she shouldn’t be here.
The whole thing felt staged. Like we were standing inside some memory dressed up as a parlour—clean lines, soft edges, nothing sharp enough to admit what was actually happening.
I should’ve spoken the second I saw her.
Instead, I watched.
That’s my tell. I observe. I measure. I wait until the moment passes, then I pretend I didn’t want it anyway.
I conjure the courage to speak to you.
The thought kept circling, but it didn’t land. It never does. Courage isn’t something I lack—it’s something I delay until it becomes useless.
Her hair shifted in the wind, catching the last scraps of light. There was something in her stillness, something coiled and ready to animate if the wrong—or right—word got said.
“I was hoping you’d come out.”
Her voice didn’t move much. No lift. No fall. Just flat enough to keep things from breaking.
I stepped closer. Gravel cracked under my boots—too loud, too late. Close enough now to see the tension in her jaw, the way her eyes stayed fixed on the distance like it might answer for both of us.
“I almost didn’t.”
That’s the truth I deal in. Half-measures. Almosts. Enough to sound real, not enough to cost me anything.
She gave a small smile. Not kind. Not cruel. Just… tired.
“You always almost don’t.”
That one didn’t bruise. It cut.
I moved beside her, hands gripping the railing. Cold metal. Solid. Something I could hold onto that wouldn’t walk away. My pulse was wrong—too fast, too loud. Like it was trying to outrun something I hadn’t admitted yet.
Below us, a car door slammed.
Final.
“I don’t want you to leave.”
There it was. No buildup. No cover. Just dropped between us like something that might detonate if we looked at it too long.
She turned then.
Really turned.
And for a second, I saw it—the crack in the armor. The hesitation. The thing I’d been too careful to name.
“Then why didn’t you say something sooner?”
No anger. No edge.
That made it worse.
Because she wasn’t fighting me.
She was done.
Because I was afraid.
Because wanting something gives it leverage.
Because I’ve spent years learning how to hide—how to fold myself down into something manageable, something safe, something that doesn’t risk collapse.
“I thought I had time.”
It sounded thinner out loud. Like something already breaking.
Her eyes held mine just long enough to make it count.
“There’s always time… until there isn’t.”
The wind shifted—colder, sharper. It slid under my skin like it knew where the weak spots were. I realized then I’d been warm before.
Didn’t even notice when it left.
The engine below turned over.
Low. Steady.
Waiting like it already knew how this ends.
I didn’t look. Didn’t need to.
I could see it anyway—the tail lights stretching out, thinning into nothing. That red glow people talk about like it means something. Like it isn’t just distance made visible.
Baby please don’t go.
It stayed in my throat, thick and useless.
“Stay,” I said instead.
Too small. Too late.
She studied me like she was checking for something—truth, maybe. Or proof that I hadn’t changed.
She didn’t find it.
“Not this time.”
No softness. No hesitation.
Just the sound of a door that doesn’t open again.
She moved past me. Her shoulder brushed mine—warm, real—and then it was gone. The absence hit harder than the contact. Like stepping off something you thought was solid.
And that’s when it came.
The truth. Late, like everything else.
What I really meant to say… I can’t help the way I’m built. I never meant to be so closed off to the love you showed me.
But meaning something and saying it are two different acts, and I’ve made a habit of choosing the easier one.
Her footsteps faded. Gravel. Wood. Silence.
The engine pulled away, sound stretching thin before it disappeared altogether.
I stayed there, hands locked on the railing, staring at a view that didn’t give a damn whether I learned anything from it or not.
The mountains didn’t move.
The sky didn’t shift.
Only the space beside me.
I exhaled, slow, uneven. Something inside me gave—not loud, not clean. Just a quiet fracture spreading under pressure.
Broken again.
Not the kind you notice right away.
The kind that holds.
The kind that waits.
And maybe that’s the worst of it.
Not that she left.
But that I saw it coming… and still chose not to stop it.
Some stories arrive loud. This one didn’t. It lingered. It waited. It asked for restraint, for silence, for the kind of truth that shows up a second too late.
And maybe that’s the point.
Thank you for the nudge, the tension, and the reminder that even a single word—placed at the right moment—can open something we didn’t know we were still carrying.
The light finds her the way memory does—uninvited, precise, impossible to ignore.
It settles along her face, tracing the small constellations of freckles like it’s reading a map only it understands. She doesn’t move away from it. Doesn’t lean into it either. She lets it sit there, like everything else she’s learned to carry.
Because she carries things.
Not in the loud, obvious way people talk about—no dramatic confessions, no visible fractures. Her grief is quieter than that. It arrives in increments. Measured. Cataloged. Lined up in the private ledger she keeps somewhere behind her eyes.
A look someone gave her once and didn’t mean to. A goodbye that felt unfinished. The message she never sent, still sitting in a thread that has long since gone cold.
She measures them all.
Not to weigh herself down, but to understand the shape of what remains.
Her gaze drifts past the frame, fixed on something that isn’t here anymore. You can tell by the way her eyes don’t quite settle—like they’re adjusting to distances that no longer exist. There’s a softness in her expression, but it isn’t innocence. It’s recognition. The kind that comes when you stop asking why something hurt and start asking what it changed.
The wind moves through her hair, and for a second, it feels like the world is trying to interrupt her accounting. Trying to scatter the pages.
But she’s practiced at this.
She doesn’t chase the past. Doesn’t wrestle it into meaning. She simply meets it, one grief at a time, holding each one up to the light the way you might examine a scar—not to reopen it, but to remember how it healed wrong… or right… or not at all.
There’s a faint smile at the corner of her mouth, and it isn’t misplaced.
It’s earned.
Because somewhere along the way, she learned that grief isn’t a single weight—it’s a series of small calibrations. Adjustments. Quiet reckonings. And if you pay attention long enough, you begin to notice something almost dangerous in that process:
Not all grief breaks you.
Some of it teaches you how not to break again.
And in that space—between what was taken and what remains—she sits, still and steady, measuring… not the loss itself, but the distance she’s managed to travel beyond it.
The cold doesn’t ask permission. It settles in like an old debt—something inherited, something owed before you ever understood the terms. It lives in the marrow now. In the quiet spaces between breaths. In the pauses where truth almost shows itself, then thinks better of it.
The cloth over my eyes is damp. It smells like rain that never quite reached the ground. Whoever tied it didn’t rush. There’s a precision to the knot. A message in it.
You’re not meant to see your way through this.
At first, I thought the darkness would strip things away.
Instead, it gave them back.
Sound arrives sharper. The world presses in closer. Snow settling. Wind dragging its fingers through bare branches. My own breathing—too loud, too human. And beneath it… something else.
Not a sound. Not exactly.
A weight.
It stands behind me like a thought I’ve spent years refusing to finish. I don’t need eyes to know it’s there. I feel it in the way the air thickens, in the way my spine straightens without permission. In the way my body remembers something my mind tried to forget.
There’s a particular kind of fear that doesn’t panic.
It recognizes.
I don’t turn. Not because I’m brave. Because I know what happens when you finally face something that’s been patient.
It stops waiting.
I used to believe control came from seeing. That if I could map the edges, name the threat, I could keep it where it belonged—outside of me. That’s the lie. Sight lets you pretend the line exists.
It doesn’t.
Behind me, the animal breathes.
Slow. Certain. Familiar.
Not hunting. Not guarding.
Knowing.
I wonder when it started.
Was it always there? Sitting just behind my better decisions, my rehearsed restraint, my careful words? Was it there when I swallowed anger and called it discipline? When I walked away and called it growth? When I stayed silent and called it strength?
The wind shifts, and I catch it—the scent beneath the cold. Not fur. Not blood.
Recognition.
The kind that doesn’t come from meeting something new, but from realizing you’ve been avoiding a mirror.
My hands don’t tremble.
That’s how I know.
Fear shakes you when something is foreign. This… this is steady. Grounded. Like gravity finally deciding to introduce itself properly.
I inhale. Slow. Measured. The way you do when you’re about to say something that can’t be taken back.
Behind me, the animal exhales.
Closer now.
Or maybe I’ve stopped pretending it was ever far away.
I think about turning. About tearing the cloth loose, forcing the world back into something I can explain. Something with edges and distance and names that make it smaller than it is.
But I don’t.
Because I know what I’ll see.
Not teeth.
Not hunger.
Not a thing waiting to destroy me.
Something that learned to wait while I tried to become acceptable. Something that held every word I didn’t say, every line I refused to cross, every truth I buried because it didn’t fit the version of myself I thought I had to be.
The animal shifts.
Not forward.
Not back.
Just enough to remind me—
It has always moved when I did.
I let the breath out.
Long. Unsteady now, just enough to be honest.
“I know,” I say, though I don’t know if I’m speaking to it or finally to myself.
The wind carries the words nowhere.
Good.
This wasn’t meant for the world.
The cloth stays in place. The dark doesn’t break. But something loosens anyway—not outside, not in the frozen air or the unseen horizon—
It started with a tremor—so slight Daniel thought it was his imagination catching on something. Then came the hum. Low. Electrical. Wrong. It crawled under his skin before it reached his ears, like something waking up beneath the ground rather than inside the wires.
He saw the lights flicker from the road.
One bulb. Then another. A broken string of carnival glow stuttering back to life like a heartbeat trying to remember its rhythm.
He should’ve kept driving.
Instead, his foot eased off the gas. The engine idled like it was waiting for permission he didn’t need to give.
The gate hung open.
Not wide. Not welcoming. Just enough to suggest it had been that way for a long time—or had only just been moved for him.
Inside, the air smelled of rust and old sugar. Burnt oil. Damp wood. The kind of scent that clings to your throat and settles there, like something you forgot to say years ago.
Then the lights came on.
Not bright. Not clean. They buzzed overhead in tired colors—faded reds, sickly yellows, a blue that looked like it had been left out in the rain too long. The Ferris wheel groaned into motion, slow at first, metal dragging against metal with a sound that felt too close to breathing.
Music followed.
A warped calliope tune, stretched thin and uneven. Notes bending where they shouldn’t. Like memory trying to play itself back but getting the details wrong.
Daniel stepped forward.
Not because he wanted to.
Because something in him leaned toward it.
And then he saw her.
She stood beneath the Ferris wheel like she belonged to the place more than the rust did. Still. Unbothered. Watching the wheel turn like it meant something.
“You made it,” she said.
Her voice cut clean through the noise—steady, grounded, like it didn’t need the rest of the park to exist.
Daniel frowned. “Do I know you?”
“Not yet.”
She stepped closer.
The closer she got, the more the world seemed to settle. The flickering lights steadied. The warped music smoothed just enough to be recognizable. Even the air shifted—less decay, more… presence.
He noticed her eyes first. Not because they were striking—but because they weren’t searching. They already knew where to land.
“What is this?” he asked.
“A place that doesn’t lie to you,” she said. “At least not the way the rest of the world does.”
That answer didn’t help.
It didn’t need to.
She took his hand.
Her skin was warm.
That surprised him more than anything.
The moment their fingers closed, the park surged.
The Ferris wheel picked up speed, wind whispering through its spokes. The carousel jolted into motion, horses rising and falling with a rhythm too smooth to be mechanical. Lights stretched into streaks as if the night itself had started to move.
Laughter echoed.
Not distant. Not imagined.
Close enough that he turned, expecting to see faces—but there was nothing there. Just the sound lingering a second too long, like it didn’t know where to go after it existed.
“You feel that?” she asked.
He did.
It wasn’t joy.
It was sharper. Edged. Like standing at the exact point where something could still change—but probably wouldn’t.
They rode everything.
Or maybe everything rode them.
Time didn’t pass—it folded in on itself, collapsing minutes into moments that felt too full to measure. The wind cut across his face on the Ferris wheel, cold enough to sting, grounding enough to remind him he was still in a body that had forgotten how to feel like this.
He laughed.
It came out rough. Rusted. Like a door that hadn’t been opened in years.
She watched him when he did.
Not with amusement.
With recognition.
“You’re starting to remember,” she said.
“Remember what?” he asked, breath uneven.
She didn’t answer.
Instead, she led him into the funhouse.
The mirrors didn’t distort.
They clarified.
In one, he saw himself younger—jaw tighter, eyes sharper, something unbroken sitting just behind them like it hadn’t been introduced to the world yet.
In another, older—shoulders slumped, gaze dulled by a thousand small compromises he never named as such.
And then—
A roadside.
His car idling.
His hand on the wheel.
That moment.
The one where he almost turned left instead of right.
He stepped back.
His chest tightened like something had reached in and pressed against the inside.
“What the hell is this?” he asked.
“This is where the things you walked away from keep breathing,” she said quietly.
He turned to her.
“And you?”
For the first time, she hesitated.
“I’m one of them.”
The words didn’t echo.
They sank.
The park shifted again.
The colors dulled. The lights flickered harder now, exposing the rust beneath the paint, the cracks beneath the illusion. The music stuttered, skipping notes like it was losing its grip.
“You’re not real,” he said.
She smiled—but it carried weight now.
“I was,” she said. “Just not in the life you chose.”
That hit harder than anything else had.
Outside, the sky had begun to thin. The black giving way to something weaker. Something inevitable.
Dawn.
“You don’t have much time,” she said.
“For what?” His voice came out quieter now.
“To decide if this matters,” she said.
He looked at her.
Not the idea of her.
Her.
The way she stood like she didn’t need permission to exist. The way she saw him without asking him to explain himself first.
“You feel real,” he said.
“I am,” she replied. “Just not in a way you get to keep.”
There it was.
The truth, stripped clean.
He swallowed.
“Then what’s the point of this?”
She stepped closer, close enough that he could feel her breath—warm, steady, human.
“To remind you,” she said, “that the man you almost were… didn’t disappear. You just stopped listening to him.”
The Ferris wheel slowed.
The lights dimmed.
The hum faded into something hollow.
He felt it leaving.
Not the park.
The feeling.
That sharp, dangerous clarity slipping back into the quiet place it had come from.
“Stay,” he said.
The word surprised him.
She shook her head gently.
“You don’t want me,” she said.
“I do.”
“No,” she said. “You want the version of yourself that exists when I’m here.”
He didn’t argue.
Because the worst part was—
She was right.
At the gate, the world outside waited. Still. Ordinary. Safe in the way things are when they don’t ask anything from you.
She let go of his hand.
“This is where you go back,” she said.
“And you?”
“I stay where I’ve always been,” she said. “Right at the edge of the choice you didn’t make.”
He nodded slowly.
“Will I see you again?”
She stepped back into the dimming light.
“Only if you forget.”
And then—
Nothing.
The park stilled.
The lights died.
The music cut off mid-note.
Daniel stood there, the silence pressing in heavier than the noise ever had.
He could still feel her hand.
Still smell the rust and sugar.
Still hear the echo of laughter that didn’t belong to anyone.
He got back in his car.
The engine turned over like it always did.
The road stretched ahead like it always had.
But something in him didn’t sit the same.
Because now he knew—
Some places don’t come alive to entertain you.
They wake up to remind you who you were before you decided to be someone easier to live with.
Dispatches from the Splinters of My Mind: Entry 14:
There is a version of you that has never spoken. Not because it lacks words, but because it understands the cost of being heard. It lives somewhere behind your eyes, just beyond the reach of mirrors and rehearsed conversations—a quiet architecture of memory and instinct built from moments you swallowed instead of expressed. It is not hidden in the way a secret is hidden; it is hidden in the way a scar disappears under skin—still there, still shaping the structure, just no longer visible to those who don’t know where to press.
You feel it sometimes—in the pause before you answer a question you’ve been asked a hundred times, in the moment when the truth rises sharp and immediate, only to be softened, reshaped, diluted into something acceptable. Something survivable. Something that won’t make the room shift. That version of you doesn’t argue. It watches. It has learned the language oftolerance—not the kind that expands understanding, but the kind that compresses identity into manageable pieces, the kind that allows you to sit in rooms where you are only partially present. You call it maturity. You call it growth. But somewhere beneath those polished names, something quieter calls it what it is: survival.
Inside you, there is a forest. You don’t visit it often. It is not curated, not symmetrical, not safe. It does not exist for aesthetic appreciation or poetic metaphor; it exists because it grew that way—wild, tangled, ungoverned. The trees lean at angles that don’t make sense, the ground shifts underfoot, and the deeper you go, the less certain you are that you can find your way back. That is why you stay at the edge, because the edge is manageable. The edge is where society lives. Out here, everything has a name, a function, a script. You learn quickly which parts of yourself are welcome and which ones should remain theoretical.
So you edit. You refine. You present. You become a version of yourself that fits within the boundaries of collective comfort—and they applaud you for it. They tell you to be an individual while handing you a template. They tell you to stand out while rewarding you for blending in. Somewhere along the way, you begin to forget what your unedited voice sounds like. But the forest remembers. It remembers every thought you abandoned halfway through, every instinct you silenced before it reached your mouth, every moment you chose peace over truth—not because peace was right, but because truth would have cost you something you weren’t ready to lose.
The forest is not empty. It is crowded. It is filled with versions of you that never made it past the threshold of expression. They move between the trees like ghosts of possibility—not dead, not gone, just unrealized. Waiting. Watching. Becoming something else in the absence of acknowledgment. This is where the anomalous begins, because those versions do not remain static. They evolve. They distort. They adapt to the darkness you’ve left them in. What starts as silence becomes pressure. What starts as avoidance becomes fragmentation.
You feel it in small ways at first—a hesitation you can’t explain, a reaction that feels disproportionate, a quiet sense that you are not entirely aligned. You tell yourself it’s stress, fatigue, nothing—but it is not nothing. It is the accumulation of everything you refused to explore, everything you labeled inconvenient, everything you chose not to understand because understanding would have required change. The mind does not discard unused pieces; it repurposes them. And when those pieces are left in the dark long enough, they begin to form something unfamiliar—something that does not recognize the version of you that stands in the light.
That is the part no one warns you about. They talk about self-discovery like it is clean, like opening a door to neatly arranged truths waiting patiently for your arrival. They do not talk about the possibility that what waits inside may not be interested in being understood, that it may not be gentle, that it may not recognize you as its origin—because you abandoned it, because you taught it that it did not belong. So it built something else. Something that could survive without you.
Now, when you feel that pull—that quiet, persistent pressure to look inward—you hesitate. Not because you are afraid of what you will find, but because you are afraid of what will recognize you. Society has an answer for this, as it always does: stay busy, stay distracted, stay within the lines. There is comfort in repetition, safety in conformity, peace in not asking questions that don’t have easy answers. What they do not tell you is that this peace comes at a cost—that every unasked question leaves a mark, that every suppressed truth adds weight to something already struggling to hold itself together.
They do not tell you that becoming part of the herd requires a slow, deliberate quieting of everything that makes you unpredictable—not because unpredictability is dangerous to you, but because it is dangerous to them, to the structure, to the illusion that everything is under control. So they teach you to sleep—not physically, but mentally, emotionally, spiritually. They teach you to function without fully engaging, to exist without fully inhabiting yourself, to move through the world as a shape that resembles you but does not require the full presence of your internal world. And you comply, because it works, because it keeps things smooth, because it avoids conflict.
But survival is not the same as being whole.
Somewhere, in the quiet moments you try to avoid, you feel that difference—a fracture, a subtle misalignment between who you are and who you allow yourself to be. You feel it when you are alone, when the noise drops, when there is no one to perform for. That version of you steps forward—not loudly, not aggressively, but with a presence that cannot be ignored. It does not accuse. It does not demand. It simply exists. And in that existence, it asks a question you’ve spent years avoiding: what would happen if you stopped editing yourself?
Not recklessly. Not destructively. But deliberately. Quietly. In a way that acknowledges the forest instead of pretending it isn’t there. In a way that steps beyond the edge—not to conquer it, not to control it, but to understand it. To walk among the trees without needing to name everything. To sit with the versions of yourself that never had the chance to speak, and to listen—not for comfort, not for validation, but for truth.
That is where things begin to shift. Not outwardly, not immediately, but internally. The fragmentation slows. The pressure eases. The anomalous becomes less foreign, less threatening—not because it disappears, but because it is no longer ignored, no longer abandoned, no longer left to evolve in isolation. There are no applause lines here. No audience. Just you, and everything you’ve avoided, and the quiet, uncomfortable, necessary work of becoming someone who can hold all of it without turning away.
That is not conformity. That is not rebellion. That is integration—and it is far more difficult than either, because it requires you to let go of the illusion that you can be accepted without being fully known, even by yourself.
So the question isn’t whether you have these unspoken worlds within you.
You do.
Everyone does.
The question is whether you are willing to step into them.
Because the longer you pretend they don’t exist… the louder they become.
The storm started before sundown and never bothered to stop. Snow slid sideways across the window like the world was being erased one line at a time. Out here, the weather didn’t arrive politely. It came the way bad news comes — sudden, cold, and without asking if you were ready.
I had been alone in the station since noon.
Most days were like that. Just me, the wires, and whatever passed through them.
People think telegraph work is exciting because messages travel fast. Truth is, the faster the message moves, the less it has to do with you. You just sit there, tapping out words that belong to other people, lives that never once stop to wonder who carried their news across the miles.
I used to imagine the wires as tethers stretched across the country. Thin lines tying one lonely place to another.
After a few winters out here, you stop feeling tethered. You start feeling like the knot nobody checks anymore.
The lamp hissed beside me, throwing a weak circle of light across the desk. The rest of the room sat in shadow, the corners dark enough to swallow a man whole if he leaned back too far. The stove had gone low, and I hadn’t bothered to feed it. Coal was for nights when someone might come through.
No one was coming through tonight.
The key clicked once under my fingers, just to make sure the line was still alive. A habit more than anything. When the storm got bad, the wires sometimes went quiet, and the silence could make a man start hearing things he shouldn’t.
Click.
Nothing back.
Good.
I reached for the paper roll and fed it through the register, listening to the small mechanical chatter that meant the machine still remembered its job, even if nobody else did.
For a while, that was all there was.
Wind. Lamp. The soft tick of metal.
Then the register started moving.
Not fast. Not urgent. Just steady.
I frowned and leaned closer, watching the strip of paper curl out across the desk, the punched dots marching along in neat little lines.
No call sign first.
No operator on the line.
Just the message.
I waited for the signal to stop, thinking maybe some fool down the line had bumped his key. It happened sometimes when the weather got bad. Loose hands, tired eyes, a man tapping nonsense because he didn’t feel like going home to whatever waited there.
But the tapping didn’t sound like nonsense.
It sounded careful.
Deliberate.
I pulled the tape free and held it closer to the lamp, squinting at the pattern, letting my fingers run along the holes the way a blind man reads a page.
It took a minute for the words to settle in my head.
STATION 14 WILL CLOSE AFTER FIRE NO SURVIVORS INSIDE DO NOT REMAIN
My first thought wasn’t ghosts.
It was the railroad.
Everything out here came down to the railroad. If the line held, the town held. If the line broke, the town dried up like a creek in August.
I’d seen it before.
Not here, but back east, when I was still green enough to think grown men knew what they were doing. The summer of the strike, when the yards filled with shouting and smoke and men who hadn’t been paid in weeks. Engines sitting cold on the tracks while soldiers stood guard like the trains were prisoners instead of iron.
We barely held the line together then.
Some towns never did.
I rubbed my thumb along the edge of the tape, feeling the thin paper curl under my hand.
Ten years, the message said.
Ten years from now.
Could the railroad survive another hit like that?
Could this place?
I looked around the station, at the stove, the desk, the little clock the company sent when they built the line through here. Nothing fancy. Nothing worth much to anyone but the men who worked it.
This job was the first thing I’d ever done that didn’t belong to my father.
He’d sent me west with two shirts, a watch that didn’t keep proper time, and a letter of introduction that opened just enough doors to get me out of his house. Said a man ought to learn how to stand on his own legs where nobody knew his name.
Most folks out here still didn’t take me serious.
To them I was the boy shipped west by a railroad man with friends in the company office, another soft-handed son sent out where nobody cared if he failed.
Truth was, I didn’t know if I believed in myself either, not at first.
But the wires made sense.
Dots. Lines. Signals that meant the same thing no matter who sent them.
Out here, the machine didn’t care whose son I was.
It only cared if I got the message right.
And this one…
This one I wished I hadn’t.
STATION 14 WILL CLOSE AFTER FIRE NO SURVIVORS INSIDE DO NOT REMAIN
I wanted to tell someone.
Supervisor. Dispatcher. Anybody.
But the storm had the line half dead already, and even if I got through, what would I say?
A message from ten years ahead says the railroad’s going to fall apart?
Out here in the middle of nowhere, a man could shout the truth into the wires all night long and still sound like a fool on the other end.
The lamp flickered, and the shadows shifted across the wall like the room itself wasn’t sure it believed me either.
Then the tape started moving again.
Slow.
Steady.
No sound from the key this time.
Just the paper sliding forward like something inside the machine had decided it wasn’t finished talking.
I didn’t touch it right away.
Didn’t breathe either.
When the strip finally stopped, I leaned in and pulled it free, holding it up where the lamp could reach it.
This time the message was shorter.
Only one line.
The holes looked clean, sharp, like they’d been punched by a careful hand.
I read it once.
Then again.
Then I looked at the clock on the wall.
January 14.
I lowered my eyes back to the tape.
MESSAGE SENT JANUARY 14 TEN YEARS FROM NOW
The wind hit the side of the station hard enough to rattle the glass, and for a second I thought the whole place might tear loose from the ground and go sliding off into the dark.
I could leave.
The thought came quick.
Just put on my coat. Walk out. Let the station sit empty.
Nobody would know until morning.
Nobody would care until later.
I looked at the key.
Looked at the stove.
Looked at the lamp burning low beside the window where the snow kept falling the same way it had all night.
I sat back down.
Fed the tape through again.
Set my fingers on the key.
If the message was coming from ten years ahead, then maybe the line still ran both ways.
Maybe the wires didn’t care what year it was.
My hand hovered before I pressed the lever.
STATION 14 RECEIVED WHO SENT THIS WHAT HAPPENS
The machine sat quiet.
The wind howled.
The lamp flickered low enough to make the shadows crawl.
For a moment I thought that was the end of it.
Then the register started again.
Not fast.
Not slow.
Just steady.
I watched the tape roll out across the desk, my hands flat against the wood, afraid if I moved the whole thing might stop.
When it finished, I didn’t want to read it.
But a man alone in a place like this doesn’t get the luxury of not knowing.
I picked up the strip.
Held it to the light.
YOU SENT IT
The lamp sputtered once, then steadied.
Outside, the wires kept singing in the storm, stretched tight across the miles, holding one lonely station to another, same as always.
Only now I couldn’t tell if they were keeping me tethered to the world…
He looked like a man the world had tried to erase in slow, deliberate strokes.
Not violently. Not all at once. No—this was something quieter. More patient. The kind of erasure that comes from being overlooked just often enough that eventually, you begin to agree with it.
The lines in his face didn’t just mark time—they recorded negotiations. Every crease a compromise. Every shadow a place where something once mattered more than it does now. His eyes held that particular stillness you only see in people who have outlived their expectations. Not dreams—those die easy. Expectations are heavier. They rot slower.
There’s a moment, somewhere between who you were and who you settled into, where the argument ends. Not because you won. Not because you lost. Just… because you got tired of hearing yourself make the case.
He had that look.
Like he once believed in something with both hands. Like he fought for it, maybe even bled for it. And then one day, he realized the fight had gone on without him—or worse, that it never needed him at all.
The world has a way of teaching that lesson without saying a word.
His gaze didn’t accuse you. That’s what made it heavier. No bitterness. No spectacle. Just a quiet acknowledgment: this is how it goes. People come in loud, convinced they’ll bend something. Change something. Leave a mark that matters.
And then time answers back.
Not cruel. Not kind. Just consistent.
What remained in him wasn’t defeat. It was something more unsettling—acceptance without peace. The kind that doesn’t soothe, doesn’t resolve. It simply sits with you. Like an old coat you never throw away because, at some point, it stopped being about warmth.
You could imagine him once laughing. Loud. Unapologetic. The kind of laugh that fills a room and dares anyone to disagree with it.
Now, whatever was left of that laugh lived somewhere behind his eyes, folded into memory, waiting for a reason that would never come again.
And still—he remained.
Not because he had something left to prove. But because leaving, in its own way, would have required more energy than staying.
Dust hangs in the light like a verdict not yet delivered. The musicians blur at the edges, bodies dissolving into motion, bow against string, string against silence. Only he remains fixed at the center, a man carved out of hesitation and necessity. The conductor lifts his hand, not like a command, but like a confession he isn’t ready to finish.
Paper litters the floor at his feet—scores abandoned, rewritten, rejected. Ink bleeding into itself. Whole movements discarded like bad decisions you can’t quite remember making. He doesn’t look down. He never does. If he starts counting the failures, the music dies before it’s born.
There’s a tremor in his fingers. Not fear. Not quite. Something older. Something that remembers every wrong note, every missed cue, every time the orchestra slipped away from him like a crowd turning its back.
He brings the baton down.
The room obeys—but only barely.
The violins surge too fast, the cellos drag behind like grief that refuses to keep pace. Brass flares, then falters. It isn’t chaos. It’s worse. It’s almost right. Close enough to taste, far enough to hurt.
His jaw tightens.
He hears it—the fracture buried beneath the melody. No one else will catch it. They’ll hear beauty. He hears betrayal. A single thread out of place unraveling everything he thought he understood about this piece… about himself.
He cuts them off with a sharp flick.
Silence crashes harder than the sound ever did.
For a moment, no one moves. Not the players, not the dust, not even the light. They’re all watching him, waiting for the verdict he doesn’t want to give.
He lowers his hand slowly.
“Again,” he says.
Not angry. Not defeated. Just certain in the way a man is certain when he knows he has nothing left to hide from failure.
Because somewhere in the wreckage of what they just played, there was a glimpse—small, dangerous, undeniable—of something true.
And that’s the thing about truth.
Once you hear it, even broken… you don’t get to walk away.
The cold didn’t arrive all at once. It settled—quiet, deliberate—like a verdict no one bothered to announce. It crept into the bones first, numbing intention, dulling memory, until even the past felt like something borrowed from someone else’s life.
He had learned to live that way.
To wear the frost like armor. To let it harden him into something unbreakable—or at least something that didn’t look like it could break.
But glass always remembers.
That was the problem.
The fracture didn’t start where you could see it. It never does. It began somewhere beneath the surface, in the quiet spaces between decisions, in the things he told himself didn’t matter. Tiny cracks. Hairline betrayals. Each one small enough to ignore. Together, enough to shatter a man clean through.
And then the light came.
Not gentle. Not kind.
It burned its way in—through the broken places, through the parts he had sealed off, through the lies he had polished into truth. It didn’t ask permission. It never does. Light like that doesn’t heal. It exposes.
And behind it—impossible, stubborn—there was life.
Flowers where there should have been nothing. Soft petals pushing through ruin. Color daring to exist in a world that had already decided on gray. He hated it at first. Hated the way it reached for him like it knew something he didn’t. Like it expected him to remember how to feel.
But hatred takes energy.
And he was so damn tired.
So he stood there, caught between frost and fire, watching something fragile refuse to die inside him.
The cracks widened.
Not from damage this time—but from pressure. From growth. From something insisting that breaking wasn’t always the end of the story. That maybe—just maybe—what shattered wasn’t the man, but the version of him that could no longer survive the truth.
He touched the fracture.
Felt warmth for the first time in years.
And for a moment—just a moment, he wondered if the cold had never been strength at all.
The rain didn’t fall. It hovered—like it had somewhere better to be but couldn’t quite commit. Hung there in the air, thinking things through. I respected that. Commitment’s a tricky thing. People talk a good game until it’s time to actually land somewhere.
My name is Tailfeather Jenkins. Private Investigator. I locate disappointments, misplace truths, and send invoices that rarely get the respect they deserve. The fan above my desk turned slow and uneven, like it owed somebody money and was hoping they forgot.
That’s when she walked in.
She didn’t enter the room so much as dim it. Like someone turned the brightness down without asking.
Widow Jones wore darkness like it had been tailored specifically for her—fitted, measured, deliberate. The hat did most of the talking. Wide brim, cutting her face in half, keeping her eyes in shadow and leaving those red lips out front like a warning sign nobody reads until after the accident. Not painted for beauty. Painted with intent.
Her skin caught the light reluctantly, like it didn’t trust it. Smooth. Pale. Unhurried. The kind of stillness you only get after you’ve either finished grieving… or decided it wasn’t worth the effort in the first place.
You couldn’t see her eyes right away. That wasn’t an accident. Eyes give things away. Widow Jones didn’t strike me as the charitable type.
Her hair fell in controlled waves over her shoulders, not a strand out of place. That told me two things immediately—she plans ahead, and she doesn’t panic. People who don’t panic are either very smart… or very dangerous. Sometimes both. Those are the ones you don’t rush unless you’ve got a death wish or a backup plan. I didn’t have either that morning.
The dress didn’t ask for attention. It knew it had it. Black on black, fabric moving just enough to remind you it wasn’t decoration—it was intention. No noise. No desperation. Just control.
There was a scent, but it didn’t introduce itself properly. Not floral. Not sweet. Something quieter. Like memory after it’s had time to settle and doesn’t need your permission anymore.
She didn’t fidget. Didn’t scan the room. Didn’t need to.
Women like that don’t go looking for trouble.
They wait for it to recognize them.
“I’m looking for Tailfeather Jenkins,” she said. “You him?”
“That’s the rumor.”
She didn’t smile. That was promising.
She moved toward the chair like it already belonged to her.
Then the room reminded her it didn’t.
Her heel caught the leg just enough to betray her. Not a fall—nothing dramatic. Just a brief hitch in the rhythm. A break in the illusion. She steadied herself without grabbing anything, adjusted without looking down, without looking at me, like the moment had been negotiated and quietly dismissed.
But it happened.
And I wrote it down anyway. Not in the notebook. Somewhere more useful.
Women like that don’t make mistakes.
Which means when they do… it’s not the mistake that matters. It’s what it reveals about the rest of the act.
She sat, crossed her legs, and took the room back like nothing had happened.
“My husband is dead.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. It came out clean, practiced. Like something I kept in a drawer and pulled out when required. Sympathy has a script. Authenticity usually shows up late, if at all.
“I believe he was murdered.”
That shifted the air. Not enough for anyone else to notice. Just enough for me.
“He left the house three nights ago. No note. No call. No nothing.”
“Nothing’s expensive these days,” I said. “Except honesty. That’ll cost you everything if you’re not careful.”
Still no smile. Discipline like that usually comes with a history.
I’ve trusted my instincts about women before. That’s how I met a psychopath. Beautiful. The kind of beautiful that makes bad decisions feel like destiny. Didn’t notice the eyes until it was too late. By then, I was already part of the lesson.
I opened my notebook. Blank pages. Full confidence. It’s a system that hasn’t failed me yet, mostly because I don’t trust either one completely.
“Name?”
“Earl Jones.”
“Occupation?”
She paused.
That pause told me more than anything she could’ve said. People hesitate around lies, truths, and things they don’t want to categorize. I didn’t push it. No need to chase something that’s already circling you.
The house sat at the end of a quiet street that looked like it minded its business a little too well. Lawns trimmed, windows clean, everything in its place. The kind of neighborhood that doesn’t ask questions because it already decided it doesn’t want the answers.
Inside didn’t smell like anything.
That’s not normal.
Every place smells like something—coffee, dust, old arguments, decisions that didn’t age well. This place smelled like nothing had ever happened there. Like someone had erased the evidence of living and left the structure behind.
The counters weren’t tidy.
They were cleared.
There’s a difference. Tidy is effort. Cleared is intention.
The sink was dry. Not recently cleaned—unused. A man lives somewhere, there’s always something left behind. A glass, a plate, something that says, “I was here, and I’ll deal with it later.” Later never comes, but the evidence sticks around.
Earl Jones didn’t leave anything.
Cabinets were organized. Plates stacked like they were waiting for inspection. Then the spices.
Alphabetized.
That stopped me.
Men don’t alphabetize spices. Not unless they’re performing for someone who might be watching. Or trying to convince themselves they’re a different kind of man than they actually are.
The living room was arranged like a photograph. Furniture positioned, not lived in. No imprint on the cushions. No remote abandoned in the middle of a decision. No blanket draped over the arm like it lost an argument.
Just a room pretending to be a life.
The bedroom followed the same script. Bed tight. Closet half full. Not too much, not too little. Measured. Controlled. Like someone had calculated what absence should look like.
The only thing missing…
was a person.
Happy’s Diner smelled like burnt coffee and things people avoided saying out loud. Neon sign buzzing like it was hanging on out of spite more than purpose.
They made a good pastrami.
That told me Earl had been trying. Men don’t chase good sandwiches unless they’re chasing something else too—routine, comfort, a version of themselves they haven’t fully earned yet.
I didn’t stay long.
Didn’t need to.
A photograph told me everything I needed to know.
A girl. Young. Eyes too sharp for her age. The kind of eyes that don’t belong to childhood anymore. His eyes. Not the smile from the photo on my desk—that one felt borrowed. This was the original version.
That didn’t fit the man I’d been shown.
But it fit everything else.
Outside, the air had that quiet weight that comes before something decides to happen.
That’s when I saw it.
Black sedan. Across the street.
Parked wrong.
Not careless.
Intentional.
You can tell the difference. One says “I forgot.” The other says “I’m waiting.”
I didn’t turn my head. Didn’t need to. You feel that kind of attention before you see it.
Widow Jones stepped up beside me. Closer than she’d been before. Close enough to suggest this wasn’t coincidence anymore.
“You see it?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“They’ve been following me.”
No tremor. No panic. Just confirmation. Like she’d finally said something out loud she’d been carrying for a while.
I nodded.
“They’re not looking for him anymore,” I said.
She didn’t ask how I knew.
That told me she already did.
The girl stepped out behind us, quiet, observant. Not afraid. Not yet. That worried me more than fear would’ve.
Three of us standing there.
One past.
One present.
One problem none of us had control over.
Earl Jones didn’t disappear.
He split.
One life he built carefully, piece by piece.
One life he didn’t know he had until it showed up and demanded space.
And somewhere in between—
something found him.
I watched the car. Still. Patient. Like it had all the time in the world and knew it.
I thought about the house. Too clean. Too careful. A place designed to remove fingerprints, not collect them.
Thought about the way she caught herself on that chair. The smallest crack in a performance built on control.
Thought about the girl.
The only thing in this whole situation that felt real. Unmanaged. Unpolished. Unfinished.
And that’s when it happened.
I laughed.
Not out loud. Not long. Just enough to feel it move through me and settle somewhere it didn’t quite belong.
Because none of it was funny.
But for the first time—
after all the pieces stopped pretending to be something else—
When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?
When I was five, I wanted to be something.
That’s what people expect you to say. Something simple. Something you could draw with a thick crayon and hold up like evidence—see, I’m already becoming this. A clean answer. A future you can pronounce.
Problem is—I don’t remember being five. Not in any way that feels reliable. No clear picture. No moment that holds still long enough to trust it. Just gaps where something should be. Like a room you know you’ve been in, but can’t describe.
There was a theory floating around for a while—picked up just enough traction to be worth repeating—that I was never a child. Just born a grumpy old man. I’ve never done much to argue against it.
In fact… there’s no evidence of me being a child. I made sure it was eliminated.
Not in some dramatic, burn-the-records kind of way. Nothing cinematic. Just time doing what it does—wearing things down, sanding the edges off, letting the unimportant slip through the cracks. Memory isn’t a vault. It’s a leak.
But not everything disappeared.
I remember sitting at a table—cheap wood, uneven, rocking just enough to notice. Paper in front of me, curling at the corners. Markers scattered like tools I didn’t quite understand yet. I drew a self-portrait. Or tried to.
I remember the hesitation more than the lines. The way my hand hovered before committing. The face on the page looking back at me and feeling… wrong. Not broken. Not bad. Just not true. I didn’t have the language for that then. I just knew I didn’t like it.
My family told me it was good. Warm voices. Easy encouragement.
But it didn’t land.
My Madre stood there a little longer. Quiet. She didn’t tear it down. Didn’t dress it up either. Just looked at it like she was measuring something I couldn’t see yet. Her eyes moved slower, sharper—like she wasn’t looking at what it was, but what it wasn’t.
Her opinion mattered the most. So I bore down. Practiced harder. Chased something I couldn’t name yet.
I had a friend who could draw—really draw. His lines made sense. Mine didn’t. Not like that. Not clean. Not confident. I couldn’t figure out how he got from nothing to something that looked right. I didn’t understand the process. Just the distance.
I remember the markers. The sweet ones—the ones that pretended to be fruit. Thick in the air, artificial, almost sticky. And the Sharpies. No disguise. Just raw, chemical bite that sat in the back of your throat. We used to sniff them like it was part of the process.
It didn’t help.
But I kept going.
Writing started creeping in somewhere along the way. Uninvited. Didn’t ask permission. Didn’t care that I was trying to focus on drawing. Stories showed up anyway—half-formed, persistent, sitting just behind whatever I was trying to put on paper.
I wish I could’ve just focused on the art. Would’ve been simpler. But the stories wouldn’t leave.
In high school, sitting at my best friend’s house, his brother said it like it was nothing—you can write and illustrate your own book. Before that moment, it never crossed my mind. Not once.
Even after that… I doubted it.
Even after my first story was published. Even after I stood in front of a room teaching seminars on poetry and short stories. Still didn’t quite believe it. Like the evidence was there, but it didn’t belong to me.
I’m still doing it.
Of course… there were detours. Soldier. Marriage. Kids. Whole chapters written in a different language. Life filled the margins whether I asked it to or not.
But I keep coming back. Blank page. Quiet room. That same friction between what I see and what I can actually put down.
Sometimes it feels like looking in a mirror and not arguing with what’s there anymore. Like the version I kept chasing was already doing the work—I just didn’t trust him yet.
Kids want to be something. Astronaut. Superhero. Firefighter. Clean answers.
I think I missed that part. Or maybe I didn’t.
Maybe this was always it.
Not the title. Not the uniform. Just the work. Trying to get it right. Even when it doesn’t come out that way. Even when you don’t believe it counts.
So no—I don’t remember what I wanted to be when I was five.
Saying no to everyday distractions has never been much of a problem for me. Noise, nonsense, people wanting your time for things that don’t matter — that part is easy. By trade I’ve always been a troubleshooter. Something breaks, you figure out why, you fix it, and you move on. Most goals work the same way. Make a plan, follow the steps, don’t overthink it, and eventually the job gets done.
External interference I can handle. Internal interference is where things start getting interesting.
Right now I’m working on the first draft of a novel. The idea started about a year ago on Memoirs of Madness, and once I got rolling the pages came faster than I expected. I’m sitting at fifty-four thousand words out of an eighty-thousand word goal. At this pace I should have the first draft done by the beginning of the third quarter, assuming I don’t lose my mind before then.
On paper, everything looks fine. Inside my head, it sounds like a different meeting entirely.
There’s a voice in there that keeps asking what the hell I think I’m doing. Tells me I’m only good enough to write short pieces. Reminds me — very helpfully — of all the other novels I started over the years that are now sitting on hard drives like unfinished home improvement projects nobody wants to talk about.
The problem isn’t ideas. It’s confidence. Or more accurately, the lack of it at exactly the wrong time.
The strange thing is, I probably write better now than I did years ago. At least I think I do. Hard to say. Self-evaluation has never been my strong suit. I can fix a machine without questioning my life choices, but put a blank page in front of me and suddenly I’m negotiating with ghosts. I’m pretty sure they make pills for that. No idea if my insurance covers it.
When my wife was alive, I didn’t second-guess things this much. I’d write something, hand it to her, and wait. She’d read a few lines, get this look on her face like she wasn’t sure whether to laugh or schedule me an appointment with somebody. Then she’d shake her head and tell me there was something wrong with me.
That’s how I knew I was on the right track.
If she liked something too much, I’d delete the whole thing and start over. Couldn’t trust it otherwise. If it didn’t make her look at me sideways, it probably wasn’t worth keeping.
I don’t get that look anymore.
So these days saying no to distractions is easy. Saying no to doubt is the part I’m still working on.
Because if I let that voice run the show, this novel will end up in the same place as the others — sitting on a hard drive somewhere, taking up space, right next to all the projects I was absolutely sure I was going to finish.
And I’ve got enough of those already. I don’t need another one.
As kids, we carry around a whole warehouse full of fantasies.
I never really understood why superheroes stick in our heads the way they do, but every child has one.
I remember reading a line once that always made sense to me:
“Mother is the name for God, on the lips and hearts of children.”
When I was young, I believed my Madre could solve anything.
In a lot of ways, I still do.
Her wisdom has outlived most of the problems I thought were impossible.
But when it comes to secret abilities, superheroes are still the standard.
Over the years I’ve done a fair amount of research — highly scientific, very serious — trying to figure out the perfect combination of powers.
Unfortunately, life kept interrupting the project, and I never got to finish developing the full skill set.
Which is a problem, because everybody knows having only one superpower is lame.
Let me give you a few examples.
Superman has x-ray vision, super strength, flight, and he’s bulletproof.
And to be fair, if you can lift an entire building, is that really just super strength?
That sounds like it needs its own category.
Super strength plus.
Luke Cage has super strength and bulletproof skin, which is solid.
Not flashy, but dependable.
The Hulk has super strength, can jump halfway across the planet, and he’s green.
I don’t know if being green counts as a power, but it definitely adds to the resume.
Point is, nobody remembers the superhero with only one trick.
So after years of highly scientific research, I narrowed it down to the essentials.
Super strength, x-ray vision, and the ability to fly.
Super strength because at some point in life every man realizes half his problems could be solved if he could just pick something up and move it somewhere else.
Broken car, heavy furniture, bad decisions, people…
Not saying I would use it irresponsibly, but I’d like the option.
X-ray vision would come in handy more than people admit.
Not for the reasons everyone jokes about, but because I’m tired of not knowing what’s really going on behind things.
Walls, doors, conversations, intentions.
Most of life feels like guessing.
X-ray vision would at least cut down on the guessing.
And flying… that one’s easy.
Sometimes you just want to leave without explaining why.
No traffic.
No small talk.
No waiting in line.
Just point yourself in a direction and go.
Truth is, none of those are really about power.
They’re about freedom.
Super strength so things stop feeling heavier than they should.
X-ray vision so people stop being such a mystery.
Flight so you can get away when the world starts closing in.
That’s probably the closest thing to a superpower most of us actually want.
Not because anyone asked her to. Not because it was in her job description. She just did.
The building felt different before the doors opened. Quieter. Like it hadn’t decided yet what kind of day it was going to be.
She unlocked the front door, flipped the lights on one row at a time, then went straight to the small break area without taking her coat off.
Coffee first.
Always coffee first.
She filled the machine, measured the grounds without looking, and hit the switch. The smell started spreading through the room before the water even finished heating.
Next came the bagels.
Fresh every morning. Plain, everything, cinnamon raisin, whatever the bakery had left from the first batch.
She set them on a plastic tray on the table near the entrance, lined them up so the labels faced forward, then put the cream cheese tubs in a neat row beside them.
The people in the center complained about that.
Said she never brought anything for them.
Said she was playing favorites.
Martha never answered.
The bagels weren’t for the clients.
They were for the staff.
And even then, mostly for the ones who got there early enough to need something before the day started.
She wiped the table, even though it was already clean, then stepped back and looked at the entrance.
Chairs straight. Sign-in sheet ready. Pens in the cup, all facing the same way.
Good.
She turned toward the hallway just as the side door opened.
Gary came in pushing the mop bucket, the wheels squeaking the same way they always did, one higher than the others so it made a soft thump every turn.
“Morning, Gary.”
He stopped, looked up like he hadn’t expected anyone to be there yet, then smiled wide.
“Morning, Martha.”
He parked the bucket against the wall and started mopping the tile near the front desk, slow and careful, the way he always did, like every square mattered.
Gary never missed a spot.
Didn’t matter how long it took.
He worked like the floor was something that needed to be protected, not cleaned.
Most people in town knew what happened to him.
His family’s car went off the bridge when he was a kid. Winter. Ice on the road. Straight through the guardrail and into the river.
His parents didn’t make it.
Gary did.
So did his older sister.
Meadow.
Nobody talked about the accident around him, but everyone knew it was why things were the way they were.
Gary had trouble with numbers, with forms, with anything that changed too fast.
But he could clean a building better than anyone Martha had ever seen.
He mopped the same pattern every morning, starting at the front and working toward the back, never skipping, never rushing.
Routine kept him steady.
Martha understood that.
She went behind the desk, unlocked the drawer, and took out the sign-in clipboard.
Her desk was already in order, but she straightened the stack of forms anyway, tapping the edges against the counter until the corners lined up perfectly.
Then she opened the bottom drawer.
The toy was exactly where she left it.
Small. Plastic. Worn smooth around the edges from years of being handled.
She picked it up and turned it over once in her hand before pressing the button.
The speaker crackled.
“I’m the baby, gotta love me.”
She let the sound play all the way through before she set the toy on the desk for a second, just looking at it.
Dale gave it to her when they were kids.
Said it reminded him of her.
She never knew if he meant it as a joke or not.
He used to squeeze it over and over just to get on her nerves, holding it up in her face, making the voice talk back to her like the thing had something important to say.
You’re the baby, he’d say. Don’t matter how old you get, you’re still the baby.
She pressed the button again, softer this time, and the sound made her smile before she could stop it.
For a second she could hear him laughing in the kitchen, their mother telling him to knock it off before he broke the thing.
She set the toy back in the drawer and closed it carefully.
Gary’s mop bucket rolled past the desk, the wheel thumping once against the tile.
“All good up here?” he asked.
“All good.”
He nodded and kept going.
The front door opened a few minutes later, the bell giving its usual dull buzz.
First client of the day.
Middle-aged man, eyes red, shirt wrinkled like he slept in it, holding the intake form like it was written in another language.
He stood at the counter a second before speaking.
“Where do I put this?”
“Right here,” Martha said, tapping the desk.
He handed it over, fingers shaking just enough to notice.
She looked it over quick, eyes moving down the page.
“You left a couple lines blank.”
He shrugged.
“Didn’t know what to put.”
“You put what’s true.”
He let out a short breath.
“They ask how much you drink,” he said quietly. “You tell ’em what you drink when things are good, or what you drink when things ain’t?”
Martha held his eyes for a second.
“You tell ’em what you drank last night.”
He stared at the paper again.
“They gonna think I’m lying anyway.”
“They usually do.”
He gave a tired half smile at that, then nodded once and stepped away when the counselor called his name from the hallway.
Martha set the form on the stack and squared the edges with both hands.
Same questions.
Same boxes.
Same answers nobody ever wanted to write down.
She could see Dale at the kitchen table again, pen tapping against the paper, faster and faster until their mother told him to stop before he tore the form in half.
Just answer the question, she’d said.
He laughed, sharp and tired.
You want the number that sounds normal, or the number that’s real?
Their mother didn’t turn around.
You tell them what they ask. Don’t make it harder than it has to be.
Dale pushed the chair back hard.
Ain’t the drinking, he said. That’s just what I do so my head shuts up.
Martha blinked and the desk was back in front of her.
Coffee hissed in the machine behind her.
Somebody coughed in the waiting room.
The clock ticked louder than it should have.
The last time she saw Dale he was standing on the back steps, talking too fast, saying he just needed a little help this time.
She told herself he always said that.
Two days later the phone rang before sunrise.
They said the building went up fast. Old wiring at first. Then later it wasn’t.
Owner set the fire.
Didn’t know anyone was inside.
Dale had been sleeping in one of the back rooms.
Martha stared at the sign-in sheet until the letters stopped looking like words.
She opened the drawer, took the toy out, and pressed the button.
“I’m the baby, gotta love me.”
She turned it over once, then set it back and closed the drawer.
Gary’s mop bucket rolled past again.
Same sound.
Same morning.
Same day.
Lunch came the same time every day.
At eleven-thirty Martha locked the drawer, straightened the forms, and wiped a spot on the counter that didn’t need wiping.
The side door opened and Meadow stepped in carrying a brown paper sack and a plastic grocery bag.
She nodded toward Martha.
“Afternoon.”
“Morning.”
Gary hurried over, eyes already on the bag.
“What’d you bring?”
Meadow started taking things out one at a time.
“Turkey.” “Apple.” “Chips.” “And—”
She held up a plastic container.
Gary leaned closer.
“Cucumber.”
His face lit up.
“Cucumber my favorite!”
He laughed loud, clapping his hands once before sitting down hard in the chair.
Meadow smiled.
“You say that every time.”
“’Cause it’s true every time.”
Martha opened her own bag.
Tuna salad.
Same as yesterday.
Same as most days.
She sat across from them, unfolding the napkin slow, smoothing the creases with her thumb.
Gary crunched the cucumber loud enough for everyone to hear.
Meadow took a bite of her sandwich.
“You eating okay today?” she asked.
Martha nodded.
“Yeah.”
Meadow watched her a second, then let it go.
They ate in silence.
Outside, a car pulled into the lot.
Gary reached for another cucumber slice, smiling to himself.
Meadow wiped her hands on a napkin.
Martha took another bite of the tuna and looked toward the front door.
Not because the pipes changed overnight, but because the body hasn’t remembered itself yet. Skin wakes slower than thought. Bones wake slower than regret. When I step into the tub, the heat climbs my legs like a question I’m not ready to answer, and for a moment I just stand there, letting the steam rise until the room forgets its shape.
Morning bathing isn’t about getting clean.
It’s about negotiation.
The mirror is already fogged, which is a mercy. I don’t need to see my face yet. Not the lines that settled in while I slept, not the eyes that never quite close all the way anymore. The water laps against my ribs, slow and patient, like it has all the time in the world toteachme something I keep refusing to learn.
I lower myself deeper.
The first breath always feels like surrender.
There’s a rhythm to this ritual. Fill the tub before the sun clears the trees. Sit until the heat reaches the spine. Let the steam soften the thoughts that came in too sharp. I started doing this years ago, back when mornings felt like battles instead of beginnings. Back when getting out of bed meant remembering everything I wished I could forget.
The water doesn’t forget.
It holds the heat the way the body holds memory. Quiet, stubborn, impossible to argue with.
Some mornings I think the steam is trying to taunt me.
It curls in shapes that look like faces if you stare too long.
Old conversations. Old mistakes. Old versions of myself I thought I buried under work, under writing, under the slow grind of days that look the same until they don’t.
You sit in hot water long enough, you start telling the truth.
Not out loud. Never out loud.
Just inside, where the lies have less room to hide.
I lean my head back against the edge of the tub. The porcelain is cooler there, a thin line between heat and something almost like relief. My shoulders sink another inch, and the water closes over my chest like it’s trying to pull me under without making a sound.
There’s a part of me that understands why people stay there too long.
Not to disappear. Not really. Just to stop holding themselves up for a while.
Every day wants something from you. Every person wants a piece. Every decision ties another knot around your ribs.
The bath is the only place where nothing is asking.
Or maybe it’s the only place where I can hear what’s asking without pretending I don’t.
The steam thickens until the room feels smaller, closer, like the walls leaned in overnight. I trace the surface of the water with my fingers, watching the ripples break the reflection that isn’t quite there.
Funny thing about getting older.
You spend half your life trying to cut the ropes, and the other half realizing you need some of them.
Routine.
Work.
People who expect you to show up even when you don’t feel like you exist.
They tether you.
I used to hate that word.
Sounded like being tied to something you didn’t choose.
Sounded like obligation, like weight, like the slow death of freedom.
Now it sounds like gravity.
Without something holding you in place, you drift. Without something pulling back, you float too far from the person you were supposed to become.
The water cools faster than I expect. It always does. One minute it feels like a furnace, the next it’s just warm enough to remind you that time doesn’t stop because you asked it to.
I sit up slowly, the surface breaking around my shoulders, steam sliding off my skin like it was never there.
For a second, the air feels cold enough to hurt.
That’s the part no one talks about.
Not the getting in. Not the sitting there thinking about your life like it’s a book you forgot how to finish.
The getting out.
Standing up means the day starts whether you’re ready or not. Means the thoughts you softened in the water will harden again the moment you touch the floor. Means the world is waiting outside the door, tapping its foot like it knows you can’t stay in here forever.
I reach for the towel, but I don’t dry off right away.
I stand there, dripping, letting the last of the heat leave my skin on its own. The mirror begins to clear in patches, small windows through the fog, pieces of a face I recognize but don’t always understand.
Not younger. Not older.
Just… still here.
That has to count for something.
I wipe the glass with the side of my hand, enough to see my eyes. They look tired, but not defeated. There’s a difference. Took me a long time to learn it.
The bath didn’t fix anything.
It never does.
It just reminds me that the day hasn’t won yet.
I turn off the light, open the door, and let the cooler air hit my chest like the first step outside after a long night.
Somewhere down the hall the clock is ticking loud enough to hear.
It’s dark still, but it’s morning. You can hear the birds speaking before the light decides to show itself. The horn of 7:07 shatters what’s left of the night, and the first wave starts moving. Coffee starts brewing. Doors open. Feet shuffle down hallways like everyone’s been called to the same quiet roll call.
You stand there for a minute, cup in hand, listening to the low chatter of people on their way to the unknown. Same as every morning. Same routine. Same small noises that remind you the world is still turning whether you feel like joining it or not.
It takes a special sort of person to be an involved writer. Odd fellows, most of us. We sit around with our notebooks and half-finished thoughts, staring at things too long, hearing things nobody else notices, thinking about nothing in particular until it turns into something we can’t ignore.
I sat down at the desk and stared at the screen like I always do, waiting for the mind to decide what kind of trouble it wanted today.
That’s when I saw the sentence.
“She ran her hand beneath the park bench and sure enough, just as he said, she felt the envelope secured there by tape.“
I read it once.
Then again.
I didn’t remember writing it.
That happens sometimes, but not like that. Usually there’s a trace of it in your head somewhere, some leftover thought you forgot you had. This one felt like it had been typed by someone who knew exactly what they were doing.
I leaned back, rubbed my eyes, then stood up to stretch. My shoulders cracked like old wood shifting in the cold. I rolled my neck once, twice, and just stood there staring at the wall, waiting for the feeling to pass.
That’s when I heard it.
A soft fluttering, somewhere behind me, like wings brushing the air.
I froze for a second, then let out a slow breath.
Yeah… that again.
I grabbed my jacket and stepped outside, figuring a walk might clear the head before the day got any stranger.
The air hit cool against my face, but something felt off right away. It took a second to understand what it was.
There was no color.
The street, the houses, the trees, the sky — all of it looked drained, like an old photograph left too long in the sun. Black, white, and every tired shade in between.
I stopped on the sidewalk and looked around.
“Really?” I said, to nobody anyone else could see.
I felt the warm breath against my ear before I heard her voice.
“Don’t be scared… it’s around the corner,” Ursula whispered.
I closed my eyes and shook my head.
“Fucking Ursula,” I said, louder than I meant to.
I looked around quick to see if anyone heard me lose my shit. A woman walking her dog didn’t even glance my way. A car rolled past like the world was perfectly normal.
I turned to my right.
“What’s around the corner?”
She wasn’t there.
Of course she wasn’t.
I stood there another second, then started walking anyway.
The world stayed black and white as I moved down the block. No color anywhere. Just shapes and shadows and the sound of my own footsteps hitting the pavement.
I turned the corner.
That’s when I saw it.
At first it was just a shape near the park. Then a figure. Then a woman standing beside the bench like she’d been there longer than the rest of the street.
Everything about her was colorless, the same washed-out gray as the world around her.
Everything except her lips.
Bright blue.
Not painted bright, not glossy, just there, like the only thing in the world that remembered what color was supposed to be.
A thin trail of smoke curled upward from the cigarette holder between her fingers, the ember glowing faint against the dull air.
She didn’t look at me.
She was focused on the bench, one hand sliding underneath the wood like she already knew what she’d find there.
Across the sidewalk, a man shuffled toward her, clothes hanging loose, eyes moving too fast, voice bouncing from one word to the next like he couldn’t decide which thought to keep.
“Hey… hey… you got any change… spare anything… anything helps… you know how it is… just a little… just—”
His voice sounded scatty, like a radio stuck between stations.
The word cut through the air sharper than it should have.
The man stopped, blinked once, then backed away like he’d just remembered somewhere else he needed to be.
From somewhere deeper in the park, a woman let out a short, sharp scream, the sound snapping through the black-and-white morning and fading just as fast as it came.
The woman at the bench didn’t react.
Her hand found the envelope taped underneath, fingers closing around it like she’d written the scene herself.
I stood there on the sidewalk, hands in my pockets, watching something I already knew the ending to.
I let out a breath and shook my head.
“Yeah,” I muttered. “Alright.”
The color didn’t come back.
The street stayed silent.
I turned and walked home, not in any hurry, just letting the scene settle where it wanted to settle.
When I got back inside, the screen was still glowing the way I left it.
The same sentence sat there waiting.
The cursor blinked at the end of the line, patient as ever.
I pulled the chair out, sat down, and rested my hands on the keyboard.
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.
Memoirs of Madness 