Not a hole in something; no torn fabric, no broken ground, no missing piece of a wall. Just a hole, freestanding, as if someone had cut a circle out of reality and forgotten to fill it back in. From where it came, I do not know. But everywhere I went in dreamland, it followed me.

It didn’t move like a creature or an object. It simply was, and then it was closer. Sometimes it drifted behind me like a lazy balloon. Other times it appeared ahead of me, waiting, as though it had grown impatient.

It beckoned me.

At first it was small, no bigger than a pinprick, a tiny dot of brightness that hovered in the air like a star that had lost its sky. Through that dot I could see something, light, movement, maybe a landscape, but it was too small to understand. I squinted, leaned in, and the hole pulsed, widening just enough to show me a flicker of something that might have been a face, or a memory, or a place I had never been.

Then it shrank again, shyly, teasingly.

But the hole did not stay small. It could also grow tall, taller than me, taller than any doorway, stretching upward like a column of absence. When it grew like that, it made a soft sound, like fabric being pulled taut. And when it followed me in that form, I felt certain it would swallow me whole.

I tried to outrun it. I tried to ignore it. I tried to pretend it wasn’t there. But the hole had the patience of eternity. It drifted behind me as I walked through the dream’s shifting landscapes: a hallway that led to a forest that led to a childhood bedroom that led to a train station with no trains. The hole followed through all of them, unbothered by the dream’s lack of logic.

At times I thought I could see eyes on the other side, just looking at me. Unblinking, and certainly not judging, but simply observing, as though I were the strange one.

Then the eyes would vanish, and the hole would turn empty again, an empty that was neither darkness nor light. Its color was of nothingness, a shade that made my mind ache when I tried to name it.

I asked the dream-people about it. They were the usual cast: familiar faces wearing unfamiliar expressions, strangers who acted like old friends, animals that spoke in riddles. But none of them seemed to notice the hole. When I pointed to it, they looked at me with polite confusion, as though I had gestured toward an invisible cloud.

Only one person reacted differently.

I met her in a room that smelled like rain and old paper. She sat at a desk, writing in a notebook with a pen that had no ink. Her hair was long and dark, and her face was blurred, as if the dream hadn’t finished rendering her.

When I entered, she didn’t look up, but she said, “It’s following you.”

I froze. “You can see it?”

“Of course,” she said, still writing. “It’s yours.”

“My… hole?”

She laughed softly. “If you want to call it that.”

“What else would I call it?”

She shrugged. “A question. A doorway. A wound. A beginning. An ending. It depends on what you do with it.”

I turned to look at the hole. It was medium-sized now, about the height of my chest, hovering a few feet away. The edges shimmered faintly, like heat rising from asphalt.

“What does it want?” I asked.

She stopped writing. Slowly, she lifted her head. Her face was still blurred, but her eyes - those I could see clearly. They were the same eyes I had glimpsed inside the hole.

“It wants you to look,” she said.

“I have looked.”

“No,” she said gently. “You’ve only glanced.”

I felt a chill. “What happens if I look properly?”

“That depends on what you’re afraid of.”

I wanted to ask more, but the room began to dissolve, the way dream rooms do when they’ve served their purpose. The walls melted into fog. The desk faded. The woman’s blurred face stretched into a smear of color before vanishing entirely.

And I was alone again, with the hole.

It hovered in front of me, larger now, wide enough for me to step through. The edges rippled like water disturbed by a pebble. I could feel a faint pull, like gravity had shifted direction.

I took a step back.

The hole followed.

I took another step back.

The hole grew.

I felt something then, not fear, exactly, but a pressure behind my ribs, as though the hole were pressing against my thoughts. It wanted something from me. It had always wanted something from me. I just hadn’t understood what.

“Fine,” I said aloud, though my voice sounded distant, as if spoken underwater. “I’ll look.”

The hole stilled.

I stepped closer. The edges sharpened. The nothingness inside deepened. I leaned in, expecting to see eyes again, or light, or darkness, or some impossible landscape.

But I saw myself.

Not a reflection, since there was no surface to reflect from. It was simply me, standing on the other side, staring back. My double looked calm, almost serene. I raised my hand. It did not mimic me. Instead, it reached toward me, palm open.

I hesitated.

The hole pulsed.

My double spoke, though its lips did not move. The voice came from everywhere and nowhere.

“Do you want to wake up?”

I blinked. “I…I am awake.”

“No,” the voice said. “You’re dreaming.”

“I know I’m dreaming.”

“No,” it repeated. “You’re dreaming inside the dream.”

I didn’t understand. The hole pulsed again, and the air around me vibrated.

“Step through,” the voice said. “Wake up.”

I felt the pull intensify. The edges of the hole shimmered brighter, as though lit from within by something I could not see.

But something in me resisted.

“What happens if I don’t?” I asked.

The voice paused. Then: “Then you stay.”

“Stay where?”

“In the dream.”

“For how long?”

“For as long as you avoid the truth.”

I swallowed. “What truth?”

The voice did not answer.

Instead, the hole began to shrink, slowly at first, then rapidly, collapsing inward like a dying star. My double faded with it. The pull weakened. The air stilled.

“No, wait!” I reached out, but my hand grasped only empty air.

The hole shrank to the size of a coin.

Then a pinprick.

Then nothing.

I stood alone in a blank space. There was no forest, no hallway, and no train station. Just white, or maybe grey, or maybe the absence of color entirely.

I waited for something to happen.

Nothing did.

I waited longer.

Still nothing.

Then, from behind me, a soft sound, like fabric being pulled taut.

I turned.

The hole was back.

Small. Bright. Pulsing gently.

It hovered in front of me, patient as ever.

I sighed. “You’re not going to leave me alone, are you?”

The hole pulsed once, as if answering.

I stepped closer.

This time, I didn’t hesitate.

I leaned in.

And I looked.

“I’m fixing a hole where the rain gets in and stops my mind from wandering where it will go…”

A Clock Bloomed

A clock bloomed in the center of the garden the morning after the last frost. No one planted it. No one claimed responsibility. It rose from the soil like a pale mechanical flower, its brass petals unfurling with a soft, decisive click, as if time itself were stretching after a long sleep.

Mara was the first to see it. She had come outside with her usual intention (to check whether anything had survived the winter’s final tantrum) but the sight of the clock halted her mid‑step. It stood about knee‑high, its stem a slender column of interlocking gears that turned with the slow confidence of something that had always known how to move. The face of the clock was translucent, like thin ice, and behind it tiny hands circled in patterns she didn’t recognize.

She crouched beside it. The air around the clock felt warm, almost summerlike, and carried a faint scent of oranges. When she reached out, the petals shivered, not in fear but in acknowledgment, as though it had been waiting for her.

By noon, the neighbors had gathered. They whispered theories—art installation, prank, omen, malfunctioning drone—but none of them dared touch it. The clock continued its quiet rotations, shedding a soft golden dust that settled on the grass and made it glow faintly. Children tried to catch the dust in their palms, giggling when it tingled like carbonated water.

Mara stayed closest. She felt, without knowing why, that the clock was hers. Or perhaps she was its. When she leaned in, she could hear something beneath the ticking: a layered murmur, like overlapping voices speaking in a language she almost understood.

That night, she dreamed of the garden. The clock had grown taller, its petals wider, its hands moving in spirals instead of circles. Time in the dream bent around it—stretching, folding, looping back on itself like ribbon. She saw herself as a child, then as an old woman, then as someone she didn’t recognize but felt intimately connected to. When she woke, the dream clung to her like dew.

The next morning, the clock had indeed grown. Only by an inch, but unmistakably. Its petals had deepened to a burnished copper, and the warm air around it pulsed gently, as though it were breathing. Mara touched the stem. It vibrated faintly, like a cat purring.

Days passed. The clock continued to bloom, each new petal adding a new sound to its chorus. The neighbors stopped visiting. They said it made them uneasy, that the ticking followed them home, that their dreams had begun to warp. Mara didn’t mind. She felt steadier near it, as if the clock were tuning her to a frequency she’d forgotten she could hear.

On the seventh morning, the clock opened fully. Its petals spread wide, revealing a hollow center filled with swirling light. The hands inside dissolved into threads of brightness that drifted upward like seeds on a breeze.

Mara stepped closer. The warm air wrapped around her. The murmuring grew clear.

It was her name.

And when she answered, the clock welcomed her in.

Yesterday Glass

The first report came from a barber on Veldt Street, who noticed that the man in his mirror was wearing a Tuesday tie on what was clearly a Wednesday morning. He said nothing (barbers are a discreet profession) but he angled his own mirror away from himself for the rest of the day and worked by feel alone.

By noon, the whole city knew.

The mirrors had slipped. They had not broken, nor had they cracked. No mirrors had gone dark the way mirrors do in houses where someone has died. No; the mirrors simply showed yesterday. The bathroom mirror gave you your face from twenty-four hours prior. Shop windows reflected the previous afternoon’s crowds, bustling with purpose through a Thursday that had already been spent. The great mirrored facade of the Aldermanic Tower played Wednesday’s clouds across its surface while Thursday’s rain fell in the street below, and nobody standing under an awning could quite decide how to feel about it.

Philosophers were contacted. Several of them declined.

A television anchor held a compact mirror to the camera and showed her audience yesterday’s broadcast already playing inside it. “We are,” she said carefully, “looking into the past.” She paused. “Twenty-four hours is not very far.” She paused again. “And yet.”

People became strange around their own reflections. A young woman brushed her hair in front of her bathroom mirror and watched her yesterday-self do the same, and she found she could not remember if she had been sad then or only looked it. A retired postal worker sat in front of his hallway mirror for the better part of an afternoon, trying to catch himself doing something he didn’t remember. He never did. This comforted him in a way he couldn’t explain to his daughter, who called twice.

The blind moved through the city with new authority. They had always navigated by other means, like by echo and texture, or by the smell of the bakery on Carn Street, and by the particular give of the cobblestones outside the old post office. They knew what day it was because they had lived it arriving, hour by hour, in the ordinary way. Sighted people stopped them and asked, “What day is it? What time? Is this still morning?” The blind answered patiently, honestly, with a generosity born of long practice at being asked for things they were not expected to have.

A child asked her mother why the mirrors were broken. Her mother said they weren’t broken, exactly. The child asked what exactly meant. Her mother looked at her own hands, which were not in any mirror, and were therefore unambiguously present-tense, and said: it means the mirrors got confused about which moment was worth keeping.

The child accepted this. Children accept things that adults find shattering, because children still understand, dimly, that time is not as fixed as furniture.

By Friday, the mirrors had corrected themselves. Nobody could say how.

But for weeks afterward, people paused before their own reflections, half-expecting to find someone they’d already been.

STORY A

Well, all I can say is this: I’m going to accept his invitation. Yes, I am. I’m not ready for anything else, but I’ll also accept the invitations to visit my other options, more out of curiosity than any expectation that I’ll change my mind.

So, what is this all about?

Last night I was visited by three ethereal entities. It was mortifying, because I sleep au naturel and it was a warm night, so the covers were nowhere near me.

“What the hell?” was my first reaction when a lovely lady, who introduced herself as Nirvana, materialized beside my bed. She blushed lightly, which I appreciated.

Her visit was immediately followed by one who called itself Pits. Pits had nine heads, a not‑so‑subtle nod to Dante’s circles of hell. Pits was also naked and had nine of… well, let’s just say nine of something else, which left me feeling rather inadequate. It smelled like a barbecue gone wrong, very smoky.

But the third entity was the real surprise. He didn’t arrive; he was already living inside me. He called himself Curiosity. Curiosity was not naked. He wore my best custom‑tailored suit and somehow managed to look like a cheap body in an expensive outfit.

All three declared, “You are soon to leave the realm of human life and have been granted your choice of which direction to travel. This is a great honor.”

Naturally, I unleashed a torrent of questions, so many that they began to look annoyed. In response, each offered to take me on a brief tour of their respective domains. The only rule: I must remain silent and observe, and at the end of each tour I could ask one question.

Fair enough, I thought. Off we went.

Nirvana, to be honest, was a snooze fest. A highlight reel of everything I’ve ever done, everywhere I’ve ever been, and everyone I’ve ever met, including a few I hadn’t realized had already departed this earthly plane.

The Nirvanaland tour felt like a moment too long.

The lady asked, “What’s your question?”

“I don’t have one,” I said.

Her look was pure disappointment.

Back in my bedroom, still unclothed, I thought, “To hell with me.”

Right on cue, as if Dickens were directing the scene, a clock struck the next hour. The nine bobbleheads appeared, the floor dissolved, and down into the circles of hell I fell.

What can I say? It really is a terrible place. Every imaginable horror was there. Indescribable tortures. The stench of naked, rotting humans. No escape. Death only comes once, but hell is forever, or so I thought.

“What is your question?” Pits asked.

“What total idiot, what kind of brainless creature, would pick this as their final resting place?” My voice trembled as I forced the words out.

All nine heads grinned and chortled before giving me a shocking answer.

“Most of your fellow humans choose this path because it offers the only guaranteed escape plan. After residing here for a period equal to your time on earth, you will be able to design your own personal ultimate final resting place. Given the infinity of time, this is unimaginably valuable. The other two options don’t offer this.”

Now I had some heavy thinking to do. Doubt filled my mind. A somber miasma settled over me. And then, once again, the clock struck the final hour of this strange episode.

There was nowhere to go but inward. I found Curiosity quickly. He told me I needed no guidance and left me to wander on my own.

I walked the backstreets of my existence. Lived again the triumphs, the disappointments, the discoveries, the endless learning. I felt the love I’d known and the empty years without it. The pain of failure, the fear of loss, the joy of winning, the miracle of waking up each new morning.

I knew before I asked. I chose Curiosity.

So I asked myself, “What do I get?”

The answer was simple: I get the continuing adventure of not knowing what comes next.

The End

STORY B

“Well, all I can say is that I’m going to accept his invitation.”

The words were barely a full sentence in my mind before the doubts started creeping in. What if this wasn’t a real invitation but simply one of those courtesy suggestions, like “we should get together sometime”? Does anyone actually follow through on those?

No. I’m going. I’m definitely going.

The invitation promised a fun time, which means adventures and new sights and fascinating ideas — and I love all of those things. He hadn’t mentioned anything specific, which left my imagination with entirely too much room to work. Could it be a museum visit? Hiking through some gorgeous trail? Swimming in clear water somewhere, sunshine on my face? Maybe a cooking class. Maybe there’d be music: a concert, a recital, something lovely in the evening.

Maybe it would be skydiving.

I have to say, the idea of voluntarily throwing myself out of a perfectly functional aircraft is somewhat less appealing than the cooking class.

But here’s the thing about a “fun time:” what if we have completely different definitions of fun? What if he thinks noodling is fun? I have never been bitten by a catfish, and I’d like to keep it that way. What if he wants to go spelunking? I have no interest in getting wedged into a crack in the earth’s bedrock.

What if it really is skydiving?

And if it’s skydiving…what does one even wear for that? Is there a regulation outfit for hurtling toward the ground at 120 mph? What about bungee jumping? What kind of shoes are appropriate when you’re dangling upside down from a bridge by a giant rubber band? What happens if they don’t hold?

Actually, I suppose bungee jumping would be marginally better than skydiving. But I’m struggling to understand how nearly plummeting to your death qualifies as entertainment. Are there genuinely people who enjoy this? Who wakes up on a Saturday morning, stretches, and thinks: yes, today I’d like to be snapped back from the brink like a human yo-yo? And what happens if you’ve had a large breakfast?

Speaking of food: what if he wants to go fishing?

Fishing. I’m sorry, but no. If you don’t catch anything, you’ve spent an entire day staring at water feeling like a failure. If you do catch something, there’s an unspoken social contract that you will now kill and consume it. What if it has eyes? What if it has a whole family? What if it looks at me funny?

And what if he combines activities? What if we go fishing, catch something deeply unpleasant (like an eel, let’s say), eat it, and then he suggests bungee jumping? Absolutely not. I don’t care what shoes I’m wearing. There are limits.

Then again, maybe it’s four-wheeling. Which means mud. There will be mud. There is always mud. Or paintball, which I can only picture ending with fluorescent paint ground permanently into my favorite sweater. Naturally. Because that would be exactly my luck…

*ting*

Sorry — really not feeling well, going to have to postpone. Let’s try again next week?

I stared at the screen for a long moment.

Damn it. I was actually looking forward to it.

The End

Story A - The cab driver grunts and pulls away from the curb into traffic.

At first, everything behaves as it should. The meter clicks on with a soft, insectile chirr. The city exhales its usual breath of brake dust and street food and impatience. A neon aura slides across the windshield like rain. I give the driver an address I’ve memorized so thoroughly it no longer feels like a place, more like a conjuration.

He nods once. We move.

As the cab proceeds up the boulevard, the traffic thins in a way that feels less like luck and more like permission. The red lights grow farther apart. The sidewalks empty. Storefronts close their eyes. The city, always loud even when pretending not to be, lowers its voice.

I check my phone. No signal. The screen reflects my face back at me, pale and slightly wrong. When I look up again, the street has become too straight. Too suffused. Buildings dissolve into suggestions, their edges smudging like charcoal rubbed by an absent thumb.

The driver hums. It’s tuneless but confident, the sound of someone who knows the road by touch alone.

“Is this the right way?” I ask.

He grunts again. This time, there’s something companionable in it.

Ahead, the air begins to wrinkle. Color gathers where color shouldn’t be, violets folding into greens, whites snapping into gold. The boulevard doesn’t end so much as surrender, curving inward on itself until perspective gives up. At the center of it all, a vortex blossoms, luminous and rotating, a storm made of stained glass and lightning.

The cab does not slow.

My body understands the danger before my mind does. My hand reaches for the door handle, but the metal is warm, almost pulsing, and my fingers hesitate. The driver’s humming deepens, vibrating through the seat, through my bones.

“Hey,” I say. “Hey!”

He finally speaks. His voice is rough, as if it’s been unused for a long time. “You paid for the ride.”

The cab enters the vortex.

There is no sensation of speed, only pressure, too many thoughts pressing too hard against the inside of my skull. The windows show everything and nothing, cities folding into deserts, oceans suspended in midair, versions of myself standing still while the world rearranges itself around them.

Then the pressure releases.

We emerge onto a road that is not a road so much as an agreement between places. It stretches through a sky the color of tarnished brass. Gravity feels optional here, like a rule everyone follows out of politeness. In the distance, structures rise that might be buildings or might be thoughts that learned how to stand.

The driver pulls over.

The meter stops. It displays a number that is not money.

“This is you,” he says.

I look out. There’s no address, no sign, just a threshold, an invisible line where the air hums differently. On the other side of it, I feel something waiting. Not watching. Waiting, the way a coat waits on a hook for the right shoulders.

“I didn’t ask to come here,” I say.

He shrugs. “No one does.”

I hesitate. “What is this place?”

“A junction,” he says. “A lost-and-found.”

“For what?”

He turns then, really turns, and I see his eyes in the rearview mirror. They reflect stars that don’t belong to any sky I recognize.

“For people who missed their stop.”

Understanding lands softly and all at once. The job I didn’t take. The call I didn’t return. The apology rehearsed and never delivered. The version of myself that kept going when I got tired and called it practical.

“What happens if I get out?” I ask.

He considers. “You keep what you’re carrying. You leave the rest.”

“And if I don’t?”

The humming starts again. “I’ll take you somewhere else.”

I open the door. The air outside smells like rain. As I step across the threshold, something lifts from me, not pain, exactly, but weight. The constant inventory of what-ifs loosens its grip. I feel lighter, not happier, but clearer, like a window wiped clean.

I turn back to thank him.

The cab is already pulling away.

The road folds. The sky rewrites itself. The vortex blooms once more in the distance, patient as a heartbeat. For a moment, I wonder how many versions of me are still riding, still fighting with the door handle, still staring into the mirror and seeing stars.

Then the place ahead of me opens its arms, not wide, not dramatic, just enough.

I step forward.

And somewhere far behind me, a meter clicks on again.

Story B - My Brain is Such a Soft Surface

The restaurant Steve had chosen was called Ember. Claire filed this away immediately, permanently, and against her will.

She had not wanted to file it. She had not asked for it. But her brain, that soft, yielding, indiscriminate mass of tissue, accepted the information the way a fresh coat of paint accepts a fingerprint. Ember: pretentious, small plates, and the kind of place where the menu describes things as “kissed.”

Steve was already at the table. He stood to greet her and knocked over a water glass. A small event, objectively. She knew, even as the water spread across the white tablecloth, that she would remember this moment for the rest of her life in forensic detail: the glass, the water spreading, and the particular expression on his face, not embarrassed exactly, but more philosophically surprised, as though the water had previously agreed not to do this.

“Great start,” he said.

She smiled. She would also remember the smiles. She was already tired.

This was the problem with Claire’s memory: it had no editorial standards. It accepted everything. It had no filter for relevance, nor mechanism for deciding that some things did not need to be kept. Other people, she understood, forgot things constantly, whole conversations, entire afternoons, the faces of people they had kissed. This seemed to her an extraordinary and unearned gift.

She sat down. The waiter appeared and described the specials with the gravity of a man delivering a eulogy. Claire listened and knew she would retain every word. The seared scallop. The “deconstructed” something. The phrase pan-jus, brought out without irony.

“What are you thinking?” Steve asked.

“The scallop,” she said, absently.

She was actually thinking about a Tuesday in 2009 when a boy named Derek had told her, in front of several people, that she laughed like a dog sneezing. She thought about this approximately four times a week. Derek was now, by all accounts, a regional manager for the water and power district in Kings County. She hoped he was fine. She had not forgiven him.

She was also thinking about a woman called Janet, who had been her line manager in 2014, and who had once said great stuff, Claire in a tone that could only be described as the verbal equivalent of a participation trophy. Janet had said it about a quarterly report that Claire had, in fact, stayed up until 2 AM to finish. Claire thought about Janet every time she completed anything. She had completed a jigsaw puzzle last Sunday and there Janet was, prompt as ever: great stuff, Claire.

“I’m a bit nervous,” Steve said.

“Don’t be,” she said, which was the socially required response.

He smiled. There it was; imprinted.

She was now also thinking about the specific sound of her own voice saying I think we should probably just be friends to a man named Paul, and the specific sound of Paul saying I thought we already were, and the silence that followed, which she had been storing, rent-free, for eleven years. Paul had handled it badly. She had handled it worse. Paul was married now with twins and appeared, from his social media, to own a very confident dog. She was glad. She was also still in the silence.

The waiter returned. Steve ordered confidently, which she noted and filed under promising, provisional. She ordered the scallop.

Outside, it had started to rain. She would remember the rain. She would remember the particular way it looked through the window behind Steve’s left shoulder, and the way the candlelight caught the rim of his replacement water glass, and how he’d laughed, quite genuinely and easily, when she’d made a small joke about the menu. She would remember that laugh when she was eighty, in the same drawer as Derek and Janet and the silence after Paul, all of it kept with the same fidelity, the same terrible care.

Her brain was such a soft surface. It took everything in and let nothing go.

“So,” Steve said, “tell me about yourself.”

She considered where to begin. She had, after all, forgotten almost nothing.

“I have a very good memory,” she said.

He nodded, politely. He had no idea…

If you like our prompts, please give them a try! We’d love to see what you create!

Our motto is: ‘Vive vitam tuam ita ut multa scribendi habeas’ (translation: ‘Live your life such that you have a lot of things to write about’).

Every morning, we have a ‘morning round-up,’ where we discuss specific news stories, the day’s schedule, and any new ideas we’ve come up with. We also discuss whatever we are writing at the time, as well as deciding what to work on next. This morning, we came up with a new idea: The Prompt-Off.

The Prompt-Off is structured like this: each week, we will do a ‘dip’ into a book from our book collection (and we have a few) and pull out a line at random. Once we’ve got three or four lines selected, we each will write a flash story using our chosen prompt. We won’t say which one is which, but you can tell us which you like better! Should be fun!

Story A

Prompt: “Skunk skull smell before the coyote call…”

The night always warned her before it spoke.

First came the skunk‑skull smell: dry, chalky, a ghost of rot drifting low across the sagebrush. It meant the veil was thinning again. It meant something old was walking.

She paused on the dirt road, boots sinking slightly into the cooling dust. The moon was a thin coin tonight, stingy with its light. She could barely see her own breath, but she could feel the shift: the way the air tightened, as if the desert were holding itself very still.

Then the coyote called.

Not the usual yip‑yip laughter of the living ones; this was longer, hollow, stretched like a shadow pulled too far from its source. It echoed in her ribs more than her ears.

She touched the small wooden box in her coat pocket, the one she’d found half‑buried behind the shed, the one that hummed faintly when she held it. The one she hadn’t dared open.

The smell thickened. The call came again, closer.

She realized, with a strange calm, that the desert wasn’t warning her.

It was inviting her.

And the box in her pocket began to knock, softly, from the inside.

Story B

Prompt: “It's easier to kill people when you're already dead…”

‘It’s easier to kill people when you’re already dead.’

Marcy had learned this the hard way, or the easy way, depending on how you looked at it. Stage three diagnosis, six months to live, suddenly every social obligation evaporated like morning dew. Book club? Gone. Her cousin’s destination wedding in Cancún? Tragic, truly. Her mother’s passive-aggressive Sunday dinners? Deceased; regrets only.

The real revelation came at work.

“Marcy, did you cc Henderson on the Pemberton account?”

“No,” she said. “I forgot.” Silence.

Darren from Accounting opened and closed his mouth like a fish who had just been told the concept of water was optional.

Here was the thing about Darren: he needed her. She knew where everything was filed. She knew the passwords. She knew that Henderson himself had once cried in the supply closet over a pivot table. Darren could not afford to fire her, and Darren could not afford to make her feel bad, because you cannot make a dead woman feel bad.

She had become, in the parlance of their open-plan office, untouchable.

She stopped attending the 8 a.m. standups. She ate lunches that smelled like fish. She replied to emails at whatever hour she felt like, which was sometimes 11 p.m. and sometimes never. She told the VP of Marketing, to his face, that his rebrand idea was “a little silly, honestly.”

He had laughed nervously and agreed.

Marcy leaned back in her ergonomic chair - the good one, the one technically assigned to someone else - and gazed out the window.

Six months, they’d said. That had been two years ago.

She was starting to think she’d live forever, if only out of spite.

What did you think about our stories? Let us know which one you liked better in the Comments! And if you are so moved, please feel free to join us!

The prompt:

It’s been a week since he left. I had asked him to call, although I’m not sure why: there was nothing we could do for each other anymore. There was no animosity, just a simple disdain for the other’s presence. Two months without speaking, one month since we’d slept in the same bed.

His mother had warned me: “he can be like that” but I thought I had loved him, and I wanted it to work. All that meant was that I worked, two jobs, and kept the house up. “Too depressed,” he had said, when I told him the sawmill was hiring.

The cats never liked him; he petted them too roughly. “I should get rid of them,” he had warned, and I thought to take them over to Misty’s house for a while. But he had chosen to leave instead, just crawled out the door with the big knife sticking out of his back, showing off his perpetual martyrdom as usual. I had yelled after him, “Call me when you get settled.” I didn’t expect him to.

Why does that damn phone keep ringing?

Oh, chonky squirrel, chonky squirrel - waddles through the branches in a whirl! Can’t fit through holes, can’t climb so high, but still the finest squirrel in the sky!

He found the birdfeeder, claimed it as his throne, ate every seed and corn kernel known. The other squirrels just shake their heads while he naps all day in his cozy bed.

Oh, chonky squirrel, chonky squirrel - living his best life, give it a twirl! Maybe not graceful, maybe not lean, but he’s the happiest squirrel you’ve ever seen!

(They say, “Slow down, you’re getting round!” He says, “More snacks are what I’ve found!”)

Oh, chonky squirrel, chonky squirrel - the legend of the neighborhood unfurled! A fluffy tail and a heart of gold - the chonkiest story ever told!

People first noticed it in Madagascar. The vanilla-bean traders were up early, bundling their goods in preparation for the day’s brisk trading, when they noticed a dark cloud forming along the horizon. It was thick and dense, though no one could say if it was dust, or water vapor, or smoke. It rolled toward them slowly, inescapably, and silently. As the haze surrounded them, tiny glints of light appeared, bathing everything in a faint glow, an almost heavenly luminescence that shimmered slightly and penetrated every corner of the darkness.

The cloud continued its trek westward, a billowing line moving across the face of the Earth, covering the entire surface in a murky haze.

After an hour, the cloud began to dissipate, leaving behind a never-before-seen clarity. The air felt cleaner, lighter, yet fuller somehow. Birdsong took on a new sweetness. The vanilla traders began their day’s dealings with their usual vigor, yet the exchanges took on a more lighthearted tone. There was laughter during trades. Everyone walked away from the tables smiling.

All across the globe, those who were just rising awoke with smiles. The sun was a little brighter, and people everywhere heard sounds they normally didn’t hear in the mornings: laughter, birds, music. Everyone breathed in a little more deeply and felt their energy lifted. Everyone - every last creature on Earth - paused, looked around, and sensed that something was just a bit different.

By midmorning, the changes had become impossible to ignore. In São Paulo, a traffic officer directing cars through a congested intersection found himself humming, then singing softly. A driver rolled down her window and joined in, though neither knew the words to what they were creating together. Within minutes, the gridlock had transformed into an impromptu concert as people joined in the joy of singing together.

In hospitals everywhere, surgeons preparing for difficult operations felt clearer and steadier, more capable. Patients who had been suffering found their pain dulled, not by medication, but by something they couldn’t name. They asked for their curtains to be opened, wanting only to see the sky.

The afternoon brought even deeper shifts. In conflict zones across the globe, something unprecedented occurred. Young soldiers and civilian grandparents found themselves sitting side by side, sharing water from the same bottle, unsure of who had offered it first. They began talking, really talking, about their children and their fears and their exhaustion with it all. Others gathered around them, the usual lines and divisions blurring in the strange new clarity of the day.

Children seemed most attuned to the change. In schoolyards around the world, they abandoned their competitive games for something else entirely: building elaborate structures together, creating art that required a dozen hands, teaching each other songs in languages they’d never heard before. Teachers stood watching, unable to articulate what they were witnessing but feeling it in their bones. This was what childhood was meant to be.

In Chicago, a lady named Phyllis awoke to find her grandchildren preparing breakfast and laughing together in the kitchen. The aromas of coffee and pancakes filled the house, and the sounds of dishes and glasses and cups and silverware mingled with the voices of neighbors calling cheerfully to each other as they walked their dogs or played with their kids. “This is how it should be,” she thought to herself as she dressed and headed to the table.

As evening approached, no one wanted to go inside. In parks and plazas, on beaches and rooftops, people gathered in spontaneous celebration. Strangers cooked meals together, sharing food they’d brought from home. Musicians played instruments they’d long abandoned. Old quarrels were forgotten, not through forced reconciliation but through a simple dissolution of whatever had kept the bitterness alive.

For twenty-four hours, the world glowed, hummed, and basked in the most delicate illumination of life. For twenty-four perfect hours, everyone smiled and laughed and shared stories and music, food and hugs, memories and hopes. For one bright, twenty-four-hour-long day, the sun shone on all equally, and all were able to dance in the glow around them.

In the twenty-fifth hour, the vanilla-bean traders in Madagascar went to work and noticed that the glow was no longer there. They started their trades, but a few of them did not trade as enthusiastically as the morning before. “They’re tired,” they reasoned about each other. But still, the smiles weren’t as bright, and the voices had their usual edge once again.

Traffic ground to a halt in the metropolitan areas, now filled with noise. Children, quickly noticing the shift, played quietly, wondering what had happened and asking each other what had gone wrong.

In the conflict areas, someone drank a little too deeply from a water bottle and was immediately accused of taking too much. Soldiers warned civilians to stay in their houses or face the consequences. The politicians went back to their arguments and insults. The criminals went back to their crimes.

The President appeared on-screen again to discuss the “celestial anomaly.”

“We still don’t understand what passed through our atmosphere. Our scientists are working to analyze the data, to determine if there are any lasting effects we should prepare for. But I think everyone can feel that something changed. Whatever it was, it showed us something new: it showed us what we are capable of.”

Darkness finally fell, and people looked up at the stars and wondered. The anomaly was gone, already hurtling toward the sun, but for many its gift remained foremost in their minds. In the quiet of that first night afterward, the world went to sleep different than it had awakened, wondering if tomorrow could be as bright and peaceful, as phenomenal, as the day without a night had been. Many asked themselves what they would need to do to make that so. Because for this one perfect day, the whole world had remembered what it felt like to be gentle with each other, and with themselves.

Travis hated mirrors.

Every time he caught his reflection, he saw the same image: wiry frame, same narrow shoulders, the short stature that betrayed him. He was fourteen, but he looked eleven. His black curls were unruly, and his squinty grey eyes always narrowed in suspicion or anger.

His father was tall and broad-shouldered, with hands like shovels. His two older brothers, Marcus and Dean, already towered over six feet, and strong from years of farm work. They didn’t tease him, not really. They didn’t need to; their very existence was enough to remind Travis of his inadequacy.

At school, things weren’t any better. His classmates didn’t bully him outright, but they ignored him. They said he was too prickly, too hostile - too quick to lash out. He had no friends, and he told himself he didn’t want any. Friends were just another way to be reminded of how small he was.

So Travis withdrew. He stopped spending time in the house or trying to sit at the table with his family. Instead, he wandered into the cornfields that stretched for acres behind the farmhouse. The corn was tall, taller than him, taller than most men he knew. In its shadow, he could disappear.

And there, in the middle of the field, stood Angus.

Chapter Two: Angus

Angus had always been there. Travis couldn’t remember a time when the scarecrow hadn’t loomed over the corn, its tattered clothes flapping in the wind, its wooden arms stretched wide as if to embrace the sky. A small plaque nailed above its head read simply: ANGUS.

Travis began talking to Angus when the anger inside him grew too heavy to carry alone. He would sit cross-legged in the dirt, staring up at the scarecrow’s stitched face, and pour out his bitterness.

“They’re all bigger than me,” he muttered one afternoon, his voice sharp. “My brothers, my father, even the boys at school. I hate them. I hate this world full of giants.”

Angus listened, or at least, Travis imagined he did. Sometimes, in the rustle of the corn, or in the creak of the scarecrow’s frame, Travis thought he heard answers.

“You are small,” Angus seemed to say one day, “but I am tall. Taller than any man. From up here, I see the whole world.”

Travis’s eyes widened. “What’s it like?” he asked eagerly. “What’s it like to be tall? To see everything?”

But Angus didn’t answer. Instead, his voice, imagined or real, shifted, becoming stern and cold.

“Grow up. Be happy. You are a boy in the real world.”

The words struck Travis like a slap. His face twisted with rage. “Don’t tell me to be happy!” he screamed. He leapt to his feet, grabbed at the scarecrow’s straw-stuffed arms, and tore them free. He ripped the clothes, kicked the wooden post, pulled Angus apart, stomped on the pieces, until nothing remained but scattered straw and broken wood.

Chapter Three: The Silent Rebuilding

The next morning, Travis returned to the field, still seething. But Angus was there again, whole and reassembled. Watching him.

Travis froze. His heart pounded. “I destroyed you,” he whispered.

Angus said nothing.

Travis’s anger flared. He tore Angus apart again, scattering straw across the dirt.

The following day, Angus stood tall once more. Silent.

This became a ritual. Travis destroyed Angus, and Angus returned. Each time, the scarecrow grew quieter, refusing to answer Travis’s questions or acknowledge his fury. The silence was worse than words. It was a judgment, a refusal to engage.

Chapter Four: The Father’s Warning

One morning, Travis’s father confronted him.

“Stop tearing up that scarecrow,” his father said, his voice heavy with anger. “You hear me, boy? That scarecrow’s been in this field longer than you’ve been alive. You keep this up, and there’ll be hell to pay.”

Travis’s face burned. “You care more about that filthy scarecrow than you care about me!” he shouted. His brothers stared, wide-eyed, as Travis’s rage spilled out. “You don’t care that I’m small, that I’ll never be like you. You just care about your stupid corn and your stupid scarecrow!”

His father’s jaw tightened. “Enough. Go to your room. Stay there until you calm down.”

But Travis didn’t calm down.

Chapter Five: Revenge

That night, Travis slipped out his window. He carried a torch and a can of gasoline, his heart pounding with anticipation. He would end Angus once and for all.

The night was strange. Fog drifted through the corn, thick and shifting, encompassing. Clouds covered the moon, plunging the field into darkness. Travis stumbled, disoriented, the rows of corn twisting around him like a maze.

Hours seemed to pass. The air grew cold. His torch sputtered, then flared to life, casting long shadows across the stalks. He huddled near it, shivering.

Then he heard it. A sound, like rustling or creaking, approaching through the fog.

Travis looked up.

Angus towered above him, taller than ever, impossibly tall; his stitched face loomed in the firelight. His arms reached down, wooden fingers curling around Travis.

The scarecrow lifted him effortlessly, raising him until they were face to face.

“Now,” Angus said, his voice deep and resonant, “you will learn what it is like to be a scarecrow.”

Travis screamed, thrashing in Angus’s grip. His torch slipped from his hand, falling into the dry brush below. Flames erupted, racing through the corn. The fire spread quickly, devouring the field, but Angus held Travis aloft, untouched by the inferno.

Chapter Six: The Morning After

At dawn, Travis’s father and brothers fought the fire, isolating the burned portion of the field. Exhausted, they stood in silence, staring at the strange sight before them.

In the center of the charred earth, Angus stood untouched. His clothes looked new, his frame refreshed. But something was different.

The scarecrow now had black curly hair…and squinty grey eyes. A strange smile stretched across its stitched face.

Above its head, the plaque no longer read ANGUS.

It read: TRAVIS.

Chapter Seven: Legacy

The family never spoke of it.

Marcus and Dean avoided the field, muttering that the scarecrow gave them chills. Their father, though, insisted it remain. “It’s tradition,” he said gruffly. “That scarecrow’s been here longer than any of us. It stays.”

But sometimes, late at night, Dean swore he heard whispers drifting from the corn. Marcus claimed he saw the scarecrow’s head turn, just slightly, as if following him.

And in the silence of the farmhouse, their father wondered if his smallest son had finally gotten what he wanted.

Travis was tall now - taller than them all.

Epilogue: Years Later

The corn grew back. Seasons passed, and the farm endured. Marcus and Dean became men, strong and broad like their father. They married, had children, built lives, and tried to forget the night the fire had nearly consumed the fields.

But the scarecrow remained.

It stood at the center of the corn, its black curls never fading, its grey eyes never dimming. The plaque still read TRAVIS, and the stitched smile seemed wider each year.

One autumn evening, Marcus’s son wandered into the corn. He was small for his age, thin and wiry, with restless eyes. When he returned, he told his father he had met someone tall, who could see the whole world.

Marcus’s blood ran cold.

Dean’s daughter swore she heard laughter in the corn, a boy’s laughter, sharp and bitter.

And sometimes, when the wind was just right, the family heard a voice drifting from the field: “I am tall now. Taller than you. Taller than everyone.”

The scarecrow watched, patient and eternal, waiting for the next small, angry child to wander into its domain.

to pause, reflect, and let the silence grow.

In smallest moments, joy begins to heal,

as comfort blooms beneath the gentle flow.

So take a breath, recharge beneath the gray,

learn how to dance while skies begin to cry.

Let worries wash like footprints swept away,

and chase the rainbows painting up the sky.

The silver lining waits behind the shroud,

the storm will pass, as all things come and go.

Rain falls on saint and sinner, meek and proud,

“A quiet hymn beneath the skies of woe.”

So think less of clouds that linger overhead,

and rejoice the sun’s return with hope and light.

My grandmother was a bit of a curandera, and I learned a few things about nature and folklore from her. I hope you like it!

(It does contain a few spicy words - apologies in advance!)

“Nasty fucking peacock!” screamed the surly teenager, his wiry frame trembling with anger. The menacing bird had him cornered and was closing in. Ramon tried to stare the bird down, “I’m going to pluck out all your feathers!” he shouted. Responding to the threat, the peacock fanned its tail, masterfully displaying the dozens of sinister eyes adorning its plumes. Ramon made a break for it, darting past the watchful bird – but the bird would have none of it.

For a moment Ramon thought he had escaped, but the peacock launched itself, feet first, at the unsuspecting boy, knocking him to the ground. Winded, Ramon flailed his arms, trying to deflect the bird’s attack as the peacock pecked at his head, pulling out tiny tufts of hair.

In the vegetable garden, nearer to the house, Don Perfecto, Ramon’s grandfather, heard the ruckus. Putting down his hoe, he started down the gravel path toward the barn just in time to see the screeching thirteen-year-old running toward him with the peacock in full pursuit.

“Help! Help! The fucking monster is trying to kill me!” Ramon yelped, as he reached the old man, gasping for breath. He hid himself behind Don Perfecto.

“Calm down!” scolded the stooped octogenarian. “He just doesn’t know you. You might be a thief, a murderer, or just some young cock trying to steal his women.”

“Women? What women?” the panting youth asked.

“The peahens that make up his harem. The big brown birds that look like fat chickens,” Don Perfecto answered.

This was Ramon’s first day on the farm; in fact, his father Edgar had just dropped him off an hour earlier and he was still in shock that this strange place would be his home for the whole summer. From his hiding place behind his grandfather, he surveyed his situation.

The farm was old. The house looked even older, like something from a horror movie. He imagined men in leather masks wielding chainsaws. Now he was being pursued by a killer bird that had bloodied his head. He wanted to cry but mustered all his energy to hold it back.

“Ramon, Juan Pablo – that’s his name but you can call him JP – is a very old bird. He’s over fifty. He has guarded this farm his entire life, so we owe him our gratitude and respect. So please, no more cussing and yelling at him. He’s really rather gentle, and when he gets to know you he will also protect you.”

The pair sat on a bench adjacent to the flower garden and a small pond with a tiny waterfall that sounded like a babbling brook. Ramon recoiled as JP strutted over to him and stood glaring at him eye-to-eye. Don Perfecto took a small canvas bag from his pocket and handed it to Ramon. “Here, offer him some of these.” Opening the bag, Ramon found seeds and dried fruit. “Put some in your palm and slowly extend your hand toward him.”

Doing as he was told, the youth made the offering, albeit with slightly trembling hand. Surprise and relief overcame him when the bird gently took the treats. The floodgates opened and Ramon began to cry.

Seeing this, JP retreated a few steps, once again displaying his tail feathers and letting out a resounding call. Suddenly he withdrew to the barn to find the peahens, leaving behind a single molted feather.

“Pick up the feather and come with me,” the old man beckoned to Ramon as he headed toward a large shed at the far end of the house.

The shed looked more like a small abandoned barn. Stripped of paint, missing clapboards, slightly leaning, it was possibly the oldest structure on the farm. Stepping inside Ramon was awestruck and a bit frightened.

“This is my place of business,” Don Perfecto announced and before Ramon could ask he added, “I am a curandero.”

“What the hell is that?” Ramon asked, then quickly mumbled, “sorry.”

“A curandero is also known as a witch doctor, or an apothecary, or perhaps a more acceptable title is a folk healer,” Don Perfecto explained.

Every square inch of the space was chock full of wondrous and scary wares. Bunches of dried herbs hung from strands of cotton twine, just above Don Perfecto’s head. Along one wall, rows of narrow shelves were filled with apothecary jars of all sizes, each containing dried flowers and petals, or small colored stones, or other, less definable contents.

Brightly colored candles, more than Ramon had ever seen in one place, were tucked into various spaces; most were new, but some had been lit before, and now stood in small hardened puddles of their own wax. On a long, low wooden table were glass jars of oils, some infused with herbs and flowers, others clear, and some with insects. Next to the oils stood stacks of small cards bearing images of saints; the back sides of the cards were imprinted with prayers.

Don Perfecto guided Ramon to the wide workbench where earlier he had been peeling roots for an elixir, directing him to sit down in one of the old, creaky drafting chairs. From his perch, Ramon watched his grandfather collect several jars from the shelves. He spread out a small square of cotton muslin and cut a neat circle from it, then placed a pinch of herbs from each of the jars into the center. Adding a small blue stone and a thin strip of dried orange peel, he gathered the edges of the cloth into a tiny beggar’s purse, the top of which he bound with white cotton thread.

Ramon studied his grandfather’s gnarled hands as he worked silently, using a tiny needle to stitch three very small peacock feathers onto the side of the bag. He added a long loop of cotton twine, and hung the amulet around Ramon’s neck.

Ramon brought the little bag close to his eyes, then sniffed it delicately. “It smells like my mom’s sweater drawer,” he told Don Perfecto.

“Yes. It is a charm to protect you from many of the evils in the world. You should wear it always.”

“How is a spoonful of old dried leaves supposed to protect me from anything?”

Don Perfecto smiled. “It’s not just old dried leaves. The essences of the herbs combine to make powerful energies.”

“How?”

“The energies are like spirits – they go out into the Universe and become part of everything.”

Ramon considered his grandfather’s words carefully. Don Perfecto turned back to his workbench, putting away the root shears and folding the extra pieces of muslin. “JP will see this and he will know he must protect you as well.”

“Speaking of JP,” Ramon began, “what am I supposed to do with this?” He held out the long peacock feather.

“You should keep it. It is his gift to you, and it has strong magical powers.” Don Perfecto used a soft brush to gather the tiny bits of herbs that had drifted onto the table, brushing them into a small wooden bowl. “The peacock’s eyes collect stories from the people JP meets – some of them sweet, some strange and puzzling, and some of them frightening. If you find a feather and put it under your pillow at night, you will dream of the story hidden in the eye.”

“Even in this one?”

“Yes. Since JP gave it directly to you, it will be the best dream you could ever have. But you will only dream it once, so do not waste it.” Don Perfecto carried the bowl outside, tossing the tiny drift of herbs onto a small bed of flowers.

Ramon followed him out, his fingers lightly clutching the bag. “I don’t know if I should believe you or not,” he muttered.

“It is your choice to believe me – or not – but you must remember one thing: never steal a feather from the peacock. Never pull one off him, because the magic will turn on you.” The old man whistled low, and the peacock strolled casually toward him, stopping to nuzzle its head against Don Perfecto’s knees. JP turned to stare at Ramon, peering at him as if recognizing an old friend, then ambled off to a shady spot next to the shed, tucked his feathers in and settled down comfortably.

I’ve started this Section to feature some of that writing. Some of it is meant to be funny, and some a little scary. A great deal of it is flavored by my heritage and background, and some of it is inspired by whatever was happening in my life at the time.

This was a story I wrote quickly after reading a silly ‘advertorial’ (about some sort of body lotion that made you look thirty years younger or something), as part of a Hallowe’en collection.

I hope you enjoy it!

I have an old woman’s body. At some point, it was a young woman’s body, with firmness, flat planes, rounded curves. It was slender, earlier on. The skin was smooth, and flawless, like the skin of a warm ripe peach; only the barest hint of delicate fuzziness on the arms.

No wrinkles, no spots, no blemishes to be found, anywhere.

This body grew, taller and steadier, and more capable somehow. The feet and hands remained delicate, but sure, while the curves became a little fuller, a little sleeker.

Then children came, and the once seemingly perfect body was no longer picture-perfect, but took on new characteristics, new features. Suddenly, there were marks where none had been before.

With each child, the marks became a little more obvious. The skin no longer shone; there were tiny lines and folds, and little areas of greater mass than before the children.

But the body was still lovely, in its own way: it took on a sort of patina, a feeling of accomplishment and maturity that had been absent when it was newer.

As the children grew, the body grew as well: tired. The marks were unmistakable, now, the skin losing its tautness, and freshness (and all those adjectives they use in the ads). It is now just skin, skin that has seen a little too much sun, too little sleep, and not enough care over the years.

There were often choices that had to be made: exercises, and expensive lotions that would make the body softer, and smoother, and maybe a little more taut; or time to spend making cupcakes for a sleepover, and a few more hours of work for a few more dollars to add to the college savings.

(The cupcakes always won out, and the body was happy, at least for a little while, with the leftover cupcake at the end of the sleepover.)

Eventually the body stopped doing the things it used to do. It no longer straightened up so quickly, or stood as tall, or looked as beautiful. The body now looked tired, from too many cupcakes and too many children, and too many nights without sleep, and too many hours upright, struggling over some difficulty.

I love my old woman’s body, and all it has gone through, and seen and felt, and been a part of.

But I really have to clean out my freezer.

Does anyone want an old woman’s body?