Tag: FSS

By Its Light

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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.

The Inkwell Rider

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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.

Litany in Black 2

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Chapter 2

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’s Story 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.

Pandora’s Return

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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 and Fandango’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.

Through the Black Frame

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The study had been locked for years and not just locked—sealed. Rust consumed the keyhole; the wood swelled as if it wanted to burst, but it never did. Everyone in town knew that door. I knew it. I passed it often enough, felt the quiet pressure of it like a weight against my ribs. And then—tonight—it was open. Not ajar. Not cracked. Wide. Waiting.

Wind came out of it, wet and uneven. Not air, not really—more like breath. Lungs straining. A sound that didn’t belong in the hallway. The stink hit next: iron, rot, something that clung to the tongue. Dust spilled over the floorboards as if the house were trying to cough something out. People stood there staring. I stood with them, though I swear the dark leaned toward me, the way a person leans in when they’re listening.

Some said the shadows moved, as if something was pressing from the other side. One man swore the wind spoke his name. A woman broke down sobbing—her husband’s voice, she said, though he’d been dead a decade. I didn’t hear any of that. I heard breathing. Only breathing. I keep telling myself that.

Dogs won’t step onto the porch. Cats don’t come back. The doorframe sweats rust like a fever. And everyone remembers Maclan Kincade—the recluse, the man who vanished into the forest at dawn and came back after dark with mud on his boots when the sky was dry. I remember too. I remember the tune he hummed, sharp and crawling, and I still hear it some nights when the wind drags low across the valley. They said he locked the study himself. Said he went through once. Came back thinner, stranger. I don’t know. I only see that the lock is gone.

Last week—some swore it was Lily, though Lily left years ago—something came through. Not walked and not stepped. It dragged, folding and unfolding, its head tilted as if the bones had been set wrong. Its mouth opened, but no sound came—only the rasp of the wind pushing behind it. The smell got worse—iron, wet leaves, and mold in the lungs. I gagged. I still smell it on my hands.

It looked at us. No eyes, but it looked. One man swore it whispered Lily’s name in a voice that moved backward, like water retreating through rocks. Another said it laughed. I didn’t hear that. I didn’t. What I saw was its shadow blistering the wallpaper where it touched, with black marks still visible after it flickered back into the dark. The stench stayed. It hasn’t left. I can’t scrub it off.

Now the door never shuts. The wind grows louder. The black bulges out into the hall, stains spreading across the wallpaper like rot. Neighbors cross the street to avoid the place. Some leave bread, coins, and prayers at the gate. I’ve seen them. I’ve smelled it. Some nights I dream it.

The doorway waits. Each night it breathes harder. Each night, the house groans as though making room. Each night, the black leans closer to the street. I tell myself I don’t go near it. I don’t. I won’t.

But the sound—ragged, wet, patient—follows me home.

Author’s Note

Written for Fandango’s Story Starter #215. Sparked by the line: “The door to the study had been locked for years, yet tonight it stood wide open.” What followed is not a tale of discovery but intrusion—the wound left when silence begins to breathe.

Above the Churn

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“You funny little man.”

The words slid through my dream and cracked it in half. I came up out of the dark slow, like surfacing through tar. The TV in the next room kept spitting out canned laughter, each burst bleeding through the plaster like a bad memory you can’t scrub out.

I left breadcrumbs for them to find me. Hell, I practically lit the path in neon. So why the delay? They should’ve been here hours ago. Unless this is the variant where they let you stew first, make you sweat until you start negotiating with yourself. I’ve seen that play before.

I hope they come. No—I need them to. It’s the only thing holding the walls together. But hope’s a sucker’s bet. Optimism’s for pretty people and the kind of bastards who get served first in every bar. The rest of us? We know the rules. They get champagne. We get the backwash.

Paranoid? Maybe. But paranoia’s just the truth with the varnish stripped off. And here I am, sitting in a sweat-stained chair in a mildew-sick motel room with a suitcase full of cash at my feet. Waiting for men without faces to come take it—and maybe me—with them. People say those types don’t have a code. That’s bullshit. Everyone’s got a code. Theirs just doesn’t match yours, and it sure as hell doesn’t care about your pulse.

The suitcase sits there like a loaded confession. The clasps are worn, the handle tired, but the weight… Jesus, the weight hums in the air. Life-changing kind of weight. The “fresh start” kind. But that’s a fairy tale for the clean and the lucky.

Me? I’ve got ghosts baked into my bones. Every choice I ever made cut a groove I can’t climb out of. And no matter what’s in that case, I’m not getting out clean.

Author’s Note:
It’s been weeks since I’ve thrown down a little flash fiction. I’ve been neck-deep in the world-building swamp for a project that keeps getting bigger every time I turn a corner. Figured I’d come up for air before it swallows me whole. This one’s thanks to Fandango’s Story Starter and FOWC for tossing me the match—sometimes you just need the right spark to remember you still know how to burn.

The Note Was Just the Match

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She smiled. He believed it. But the fire had already started.

The woman sitting next to me slipped a note into my hand that read:
“He’s not who he says he is.”

She didn’t look back. Just placed it there—neat, deliberate—and folded herself into stillness, like she’d already said too much.

I didn’t open it. Not yet. The paper pulsed against my palm like a second heartbeat.

Outside, the river caught fire. Sunlight splintered across the water, all rust and ruin. Temple silhouettes watched from the banks, hollow and grieving.
Grief has no language. Just echoes. Just light bleeding through the wreckage.

Across from me, he sat, impeccable. Tie straight. Wristwatch catching the last of the sun.
“You alright?” he asked, voice drenched in honey and soothing like always.

But I wonder—Is this false comfort?
That soft menace people only hear in hindsight.

I’ve been here before.
My finger found the scar hidden in my palm, the one shaped like escape.
It remembers what my heart tries to forget.

I smile. He believes it. Because that’s the thing about men like him—they love the surface.
And some people never notice the smoke. They only see the flames.
By then, it’s too late.

My stop is next. So is his.
He doesn’t know I’ve been here before. That this time, I won’t look back.
I know he wants me to.
But he’s not ready for what comes if I do.

Author’s Note:
This piece was written for Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge (FSS #209).

There’s a strange, satisfying freedom in flash fiction—the constraints force you to choose each word like a scalpel. It’s a literary pressure cooker where character, tension, and atmosphere have to collide fast and leave a mark.

For me, flash is where I go to explore the edges—grief, memory, survival, those quiet gut-punch moments when the world shifts and no one else notices. Stories like this come out like smoke under a locked door. You don’t always see the fire yet—but it’s there.

Want to try your own version of this story’s beginning?
The prompt was: “The woman sitting next to me slipped a note into my hand that read, ‘He’s not who he says he is.’”

Kimonogate

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FLASH FICTION SERIES – FOWC/RDP/SoCS/FSS #203

A suburban saga of secrets, sequins, and sabotage.

Episode 1:

The Mayor, the Kimono, and Capote’s Forbidden Love

The text the mayor received simply read, “I know what you buried, and it wasn’t just a time capsule.”
He dropped his spoon into his cereal with a neutral thunk and slowly looked toward the back garden, where the freshly disturbed earth sat like a guilty secret under a patchy rhododendron. He took a deep breath and tugged at the collar of his robe—not the pink kimono, no, that one was currently six feet under with a copy of Mamma Mia! Live at the Greek in a glittery DVD case.

He clutched his phone with one hand and his cereal tube with the other. The mayor didn’t own bowls. Too vulnerable. Too open. Like a confession with handles.

Across the hedges, Myrtle McKlusky—seventy-nine, semi-retired, fully judgmental—was watching him from her sunroom. She sat in her recliner like a falcon in a floral nightgown, sipping from a pint glass of prune juice and fanning her three Chinese Crested dogs, each trembling with a different neurosis.

The largest, Capote, was vibrating like an old blender. He had recently discovered his feelings for Misty, Myrtle’s black Chow, and now stared out the window with the unrelenting passion of a Tennessee Williams heroine.

Capote had needs.

The mayor knew Myrtle had seen him. She always did. She had binoculars shaped like opera glasses and judgment shaped like artillery. He had tried to be discreet, but it’s hard to bury shame quietly when you’re panting in crocs and elbow-deep in mulch.

The kimono was silk. It had a peacock on the back. A punt of brandy had been involved.

And now someone was taunting him.

He stormed out of his house in cargo shorts and a tank top that said “Hot Dogs Over Handguns,” and made a beeline for Myrtle’s porch. She met him at the screen door, holding her smallest dog, Pontius—Pont for short—who barked like he was doing Shakespeare.

“Spying again, Myrtle?” the mayor growled, wiping sweat from his forehead and trying not to pant.

Myrtle narrowed her eyes behind rhinestone bifocals. “I would hardly call ‘having working eyes’ a crime.”

“That text wasn’t funny.”

“I didn’t say it was,” she said coolly. “Capote typed it. He’s quite dexterous. Especially since he caught your Misty presenting.”

The mayor’s eyes widened. “That’s my dog.”

“And that’s my Capote,” Myrtle said, lifting him proudly like a neurotic Simba. “And he’s in love.”

“She’s fixed.”

“So is he. Love finds a way.”

The mayor clenched his fists. “Call off your pervert dog or I swear, I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” Myrtle leaned forward, dangerous now. “Threaten three hairless angels with names from the Harlem Renaissance? Do it, Mayor. The HOA already wants your head after that incident with the inflatable disco duck.”

He froze.

She smiled.

“You wore the kimono to Dancing with Myself, didn’t you?”

Silence.

“And you did the full choreography. With backup. Solo.”

He turned and stormed away, sweat rolling down his temple, heart pounding, ears pent up with the ghost of Billy Idol.

Capote licked the glass longingly as Misty rolled in a pile of mulch. Somewhere, a wind blew through the garden. Somewhere, a love story had just begun.

And under the rhododendron, a peacock shimmered in the dirt, waiting.

The Twist

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FLASH FICTION – FOWC/RDP/FSS #204

Carla sprinted from the archaeological site, clutching an artifact that could either save or destroy the world.

The desert wind tore at her coat, slicing her cheeks with grit and heat. Behind her, the canyon bellowed—low, deep, the sound of stone waking from sleep. She didn’t look back.

The artifact pulsed in her palm—black stone, veined with silver that moved like quicksilver, coiling and recoiling. Cold as ice, yet burning her skin. It didn’t make a sound, but its pressure settled in her jaw and spine, like a voice she couldn’t quite hear. A warning. A dare.

She had read the glyphs. Scratched into bone, buried beneath layers of false chambers and cursed earth. Left twist: seal. Right twist: release. A simple choice.

Until it wasn’t.

A sound cracked the sky—a roar too wide to come from a throat. Carla reached the ridge and turned.

The site had vanished. In its place stood a figure made of shadow and ruin, shrouded in strips of black that bled smoke. It held a scythe that scraped the air, hissing with each movement like it sliced through time. Beneath its feet: a field of skulls. Beyond it, the expedition fortress, aflame, its banners melting mid-flap.

Her legs went numb. Her breath caught in smoke. She wanted to run. To cower. To vanish. But the heat from the artifact anchored her. Reminded her: she had opened the door.

She had let it out.

The spirals on the artifact shifted. A recess opened. The mechanism waited. Her thumb hovered over it, trembling.

It was her sister’s voice she heard next. Not real. A memory, maybe. Or a trick.
“The world’s been broken before, Carla. Someone always seals it shut again. Someone just like you.”

The creature stepped forward. The ground cracked. A second sun burned in its wake.

She twisted left.

The silence after was total. Not peace. Something worse.

Then, screaming. From the air itself. The creature reared back as spears of molten light stabbed down from the clouds. Chains wrapped its limbs. It shrieked, stumbling, clawing at the sky—but the light yanked it downward, tearing the world around it like cloth.

Then—nothing.

Carla collapsed to her knees, chest heaving. The artifact lay in her hand, cracked down the center, the silver threads gone dark. The sky was still red. The smoke still stung. But the screaming had stopped.

She stood, slowly, scanning the charred remains of the site. The fortress. Her team.

Gone.

She was lost now. A savior with no witnesses, no one left to remember the choice she’d made.

And just as she turned to leave, the wind shifted. Cold, sharp.
Somewhere far off, something laughed.

Toilet Paper and other Hard Truths

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FICTION – FSS #193

He quickly climbed the trellis and reached the balcony outside of her bedroom. He watched her through her window. She was sitting on the floor, legs crossed, phone in hand, completely unaware. She always tied her hair back when she focused, and it was. Probably texting. Probably him.

Jason exhaled slowly, pressing his back against the wall just under the window. He hadn’t planned this. Not exactly. But after three days of being ignored, after seeing that one blurry photo on her story—just a hand on her thigh and a drink in the background—he couldn’t sit still.

He could hear The Cranberries playing in the background—Linger, soft and haunting. She moved to the music, not dancing exactly, but swaying in that unconscious way, like the song had tapped into something old and private inside her. Like it spoke to her soul. Like she was his private dancer and didn’t even know it.

With difficulty, he swallowed. He needed to go. He wasn’t that guy. Not the creepy ones—the ones who watched from the dark, who mistook obsession for romance. The ones who fantasized about a glance, a laugh, a shared elevator ride, and turned it into something it wasn’t.

The ones who, when they finally worked up the nerve, stood trembling and said, “Don’t you remember? You smiled at me once.” Eyes wide. Pleading. Every breath pulling them deeper into the abyss of desperation.

Jason stared at his hands. Pale knuckles, shaky grip on the cold railing.

This wasn’t who he was.
At least, he hoped not.

He jumped from the balcony, hurting his ankle but maintaining his dignity. The pain was excruciating, but it kept him honest. Every limp, every throb was a reminder: he didn’t belong up there. Not like that.

Branches whipped past as he hobbled through the trees behind her house. The cold air cut at his lungs, the wet grass soaked through his sneakers. But he kept going—because turning back would’ve been worse.

Finally, he reached the lake, where his friend Tina was waiting. She was pacing back and forth, arms crossed tight, hoodie pulled over her head. Her eyes lit up when she saw him.

“Did you do it?” she asked urgently, stepping toward him. “Well?”

He didn’t answer right away, sinking onto a bench near the water’s edge, leg outstretched, ankle swelling fast. He winced.

“I saw her,” he said, staring out at the dark water. “She was dancing.”

Tina blinked. “So… that’s a yes?”

Jason shook his head slowly. “No. I couldn’t. I’m not that guy.”

She let out a breath, relief and maybe a little disappointment mixing in her face. She sat next to him, pulling her knees up to her chest.

“Good,” she said. “Because if you were, I wouldn’t be here.”

They sat in silence for a while, the lake still, the sky just hinting at dawn.

How did I get here?
Jason stared at the rippling water like it might answer.

Where did this notion come from—the idea that if he just showed up, climbed high enough, looked long enough, maybe something would fall into place? Some moment, some clarity, some spark between them that would finally catch.

But there was no spark. Just a girl in her room, moving to music, living her life without him in it. And him, standing outside like a stranger.

He wasn’t always this guy. Was he?

Maybe it wasn’t about her at all. Maybe she was just the screen he projected it all onto.

“I think I scared myself,” he said aloud, not even sure if Tina was still listening.

She said nothing at first. Just nodded slowly.

“You weren’t trying to get her back,” she said after a while. “You were trying to find something in yourself. And you didn’t like what you saw.”

Jason closed his eyes.

That was it. That was exactly it.

Tina reached for his hand, hoping Jason would somehow see her, somehow feel her—not just her skin, but what was underneath. All the nights she answered when no one else did. All the pieces of him she held onto so he wouldn’t fall apart.

Her fingers brushed his knuckles. He didn’t pull away. But he didn’t look at her either.

Jason was still staring at the water, lost in his head, somewhere far away from this bench, this lake, from her.

She squeezed his hand gently, grounding him. Or maybe anchoring herself.

“You don’t have to chase ghosts,” she said, voice low. “You aren’t one.”

Jason finally turned to her, and for the first time that night, there was something behind his eyes. Not clarity, not yet—but something softer than the ache he’d been carrying.

He looked down at their hands, then back at her. And something between them shifted.

Tina noticed Jason was crying. Not sobbing, not breaking—but that controlled weep, the only kind allowed for men. Shoulders still. Jaw tight. Tears slipping down anyway.

He squeezed her hand tighter, but it wasn’t painful. It was grounding. Like he needed to make sure she was real.

She watched him, unsure if she should speak, unsure if words would help or just fracture the moment.

Were the tears for the girl he never really had?
Or for something else?
Something older. Deeper. Something even he hadn’t named yet.

Maybe it wasn’t about her at all. Maybe it was the weight of pretending he was okay for too long. The performance of being fine, being cool, being over it. Maybe this was the moment he stopped acting.

Tina didn’t move. She didn’t ask. She just let him feel it.

Because sometimes that’s the only way through.

Everyone knew Jason was the strong one. The steady one.
It was killing her to see him like this—silent, unraveling at the edges.

She remembered last summer. When she chucked every ounce of her self-respect out of the window for Marcus. God, Marcus. She could barely say the name without feeling her stomach turn.

Jason didn’t judge her. Didn’t say I told you so. He just sat next to her on the curb, handed her a Gatorade, and said, “You’ve got nothing to prove. Not to anyone.”

And then:
“I promise I’ll see you through to the other side. We can cry, get drunk, get high, and cry again—if that’s what you need.”

At the time, she thought he was just trying to make her feel better. Talking big, saying what friends say when they don’t know what else to do.

But he meant it.

The bastard was right there, holding her hair back as she worshipped the porcelain god, talking her through it like she was in labor. He had an endless supply of toilet paper, too—which, in hindsight, was no small thing. Because let’s be real: when a real crying fit hits, tissues don’t cut it. Toilet paper is the only thing that makes sense. There’s a lot, and it’s everywhere.

And now here he was. Finally cracked open.

And it was her turn.

“Why are you here, Tina?” Jason asked, voice rough. “Pity? Some sense of duty? Or something else?”

She didn’t flinch, but it stung. Not the words—she’d heard worse—but the fact that he said them. That he really didn’t know.

Tina leaned back, looked up at the night sky like it might help her find the right words. It didn’t.

“You think I came out here in the middle of the night, to a freezing-ass lake, because I pity you?” she said finally. “Come on, Jason. Give me more credit than that.”

He looked away, jaw tight.

“I’m here,” she said, softer now, “because I don’t like who you become when you think no one’s watching. Because I’ve seen you hold everyone else together for so long that I forgot you might fall apart, too.”

She paused.

“And maybe… yeah. Maybe because part of me was waiting for you to need me for once.”

The silence that followed wasn’t awkward. It was heavy. Honest.

Jason didn’t respond right away. But this time, when he looked at her, he really looked.

“There’s never been a time I didn’t need you,” he said, eyes low. “But I don’t think I knew that until right now.”

He ran a hand through his hair, exhaled like he’d been holding it for years.

“So I acted like a jackass.”

Tina didn’t speak right away. She just let it hang there, let him sit in it.

Then she smirked, just a little. “Yeah. You did.”

Jason gave a short, almost-laugh. “Thanks for the grace.”

She nudged his shoulder. “You’re welcome.”

And just like that, the cold didn’t feel so cold.
The silence didn’t feel so loud.
And maybe—for the first time in a long time—Jason felt like he wasn’t holding the weight alone.