Tag: fiction
A Dark Path
There were the sounds of panic
In the moment she had slipped
But the child searched in the dark
Until he felt his mother’s grip
This forest is much too dark
She had very often warned
And too dangerous to walk
Between the sunset and the dawn
But they had stayed late in town
And needed to travel home
And though the path was obscured
The gently-led child was not alone.
They walked in complete silence
Hand in hand, footsteps in sync
He pictured monsters watching
Staring from shadows dark as ink
He questioned when they turned left
Down a path unfamiliar
But mother lay dead miles back
And the silent guide did not answer.
Alone
She should have been the one to move out.
It was his house, after all. He had convinced her to buy it with him, but it was all his idea. He wanted to buy that dilapidated shell and then renovate it all himself. They would save money for their future that way. The big white wedding she didn’t want, children he convinced her she would love.
It was quiet with him gone, but she kept expecting to hear his voice, his stomping feet, his anger. She dropped a glass a week after he had left and she found herself instinctively hunching over shattered glass, waiting for a fury that didn’t come.
It hadn’t been that bad at the beginning. He had never hit her, after all. But the holes in the walls and broken personal items had demonstrated enough to keep her quiet.
The worst parts were the accusations of infidelity. As he spent more time working on the house, he became paranoid about what she was doing alone. Or not alone. Phone calls turned to video calls, turned to surprise visits. After he stormed in during a video conference, she almost left. But then they sat and talked, and she found herself agreeing that it would be better if she moved in sooner rather than later.
Which is how she found herself moving into a half-renovated house. Some of the rooms were locked away from her initially. For the first few weeks she only had the toilet and the sink in the laundry to use. He had insisted on finishing the bathroom before letting her use it.
Over time, painstakingly, the house became finished. Without his energy spent elsewhere, the anger started rising again. There had been no Internet in the house, so she was a leech for having quit her job. She tried to help with the renovations, but asking for instruction made her a hindrance. The kitchen was the last room to be finished, but she was lazy for not finding a way to cook for him after a long day’s work.
Finally, the moment she waited for. He said they should just break up. Rather than begging him to stay, as she had a hundred times before. She stayed silent. He said it again, louder, prompting her for the correct response.
“OK.”
It was not the correct response.
Read More »Drifting
She had arrived earlier that day
Weary and lost, exhausted and nervous
They had kindly offered her a place to stay
Provided she came to their service
She agreed and happily met the preacher
Who showed an icon of their God
A statue of a dripping creature
She laughed at what she thought was fraud
The boat is gently pushed from the dock
She sits still in her seat, face grim
Terrified as the boat gently rocks
Her limbs tied so she cannot swim
The boat floats to the centre of the water
Following a deep and unseen tide
From the shore she hears chatter and laughter
And there is torchlight on all sides
She had sought safe harbour
but knows now she will never leave
And as boat rocks harder
she sees something stir beneath
Bump
Pete had never been a slim man, so when he gained a few kilos he hardly noticed. A few more and he started to blame Christmas and New Years celebrations. Weirdly the only physical change was a swollen stomach, but that was not large enough to justify the extra kilos on the scales.
A few more weeks and even his most polite friends started expressing their concerns. He just slapped his expanding gut and joked about needed to run off some baby weight at the gym.
In private, he chose to ignore the growth. He hardly looked in the mirror, walking directly from the shower to cupboard to find some previously baggy clothes to wear.
He had convinced himself that it could not be too bad, as he had felt no pains, although he could swear he felt it shift sometimes. He refused to see a doctor, telling loved ones not to worry, that he would go if it got more serious. In his mind, the uncertainty that only flared up when he thought about it was better than living with the constant reminder of a death sentence that a doctor might give him.
The pain started below dawn. It was quick.
Pete lay in his bed, on his side. His stomach had burst, but he was unable to moved. He lay in a pool of his own cooling blood, paralysed by the pain. He looked at the phone on the nightstand, and impossible arm’s reach away. He heard skittering beneath the bed and saw a glimpse of something that stared back at him, before hiding again.
It had his eyes.
Two Sentence Stories (Part 15)
It was absolutely mortifying, coming home from preschool with the wrong child. Still, looking at the label on their clothes, this one’s parents could afford the ransom just the same.
She wasn’t sure what kind of creature ate the scraps she left in the backyard, but she liked the gifts they left. Her favourites were the bones, spending hours comparing them against her mother’s human anatomy textbooks.
Hearing the echo in the cave had been fun at first, but now he was in loop: “Help!” “Help!” “Help!” “Help!”
He swore that as he stayed in the dark, his replies quieter and quieter, that the echo was now moving towards the exit.
A Helping Hand
The steam had set off the smoke alarm for the third time that morning.
Tom had only rented the carpet cleaner for 6 hours and was starting to get frustrated. He could not simply remove the batteries in the alarms, as they were hardwired into the electricity. He could not just ignore them either. Between the night of celebrating his last evening with his parents and the long drive to his new home, his head was pounding and the alarms were only making things worse.
Tom looked through his supplies, for something that could help. Pulling out a packet of something yellow and rubbery, he had an idea.
Several minutes and too many rickety chair climbs later, the alarms were now all wearing rubber gloves. Fully covered, the alarms did not sound again while he finished cleaning the carpets.
On his way out to return the steam cleaner, Tom high-fived one of the hanging gloves. He swore he felt resistance in the empty rubber.
Later, finishing unloading his furniture, Tom forgot completely to take the gloves back off. They surprised him each time he entered a room, seeing a disembodied hand, but then he found them amusing. He was nowhere near the stage of cooking for himself, so he did not worry about the alarms being unavailable.
Tom slept deeply that night, unaware that his fallen covers were pulled back up over him as he shivered in his sleep.
Little Brother
My little brother has the biggest bedroom
Which I do not think is fair
He takes up the entire basement
and Mum says I’m not to go alone downstairs
I sneak down some nights
After my parents go to bed
He cries until I visit him
And stroke his soft forehead
Other nights he waits quietly
His joy barely restrained
He rushes to hug me when I visit
But I tell him not to pull at his chains
He is not in the family photos
Hung upon the walls
and when I ask my parents why
they say visitors would not understand at all
For a little brother, he’s very large
Taller than mum and dad
But he’s gentle and he’s happy
Unless something makes him mad
Mum is trying to show him
How to brush his teeth
But he has far too many
For any brush to reach
Dad still tries to teach him
How to read and speak
But it’s hard to form words
With hard lips, like a beak
I tell my brother I have a surprise
As I turn the key, the chains unlocked
I hold what I think is his hand
Tonight, for the first time, we will go for a walk
Exhaustion
She had to stay awake.
Carol felt her eyes drooping and bolted to her feet, swaying and immediately dizzy. Her fast and heavy heartbeat told her that she could not have any more caffeine. Her hair was still wet from her most recent frigid shower. She began to jog on the spot, hoping to keep herself awake, just a little while longer.
Outside her bedroom it was a bright and sunny day. Families walked past, laughing and smiling in the spring breeze. A car drove by, playing music she remembered from her teenage years. The colour of the car was familiar.
The same family walked past again, the opposite way. They little girl was giggling, riding her father’s shoulders. Her hair was the same colour as Carol’s.
Read More »Rise
Ghosts can only haunt the places where they had died. This was why he was so careful to never kill anyone in his own home.
He was clever and well-connected enough to not be concerned about being caught, but a haunting was something that terrified him. He refused to be at the mercy of something that he could not fight. Most sensible people did not believe in ghosts, so it was unlikely that he would be able to seek help if he were to find himself so assailed.
And, to be clear, he was a sensible person. He was simply also a person who knew ghosts existed. The first time he saw one he had spent too long at a scene after he had finished. His meditation was interrupted by a woman’s weeping. The very same sound that he had permanently ended hours earlier. For a moment he saw the woman, whole and standing and impossible, and he had fled. He had needed to hire a cleaner for that one, which was embarrassing, but he could not return.
In the following weeks, walking the streets of his city, he began to feel unsafe for the very first time. Faces in windows were staring directly at him. Some he recognised.
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