Tag: fantasy

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Until Eternity’s End

An Acorns Flash Fiction Feature

By: Diane Dooley

A gentle hand touched my shoulder, and I wrenched my head, gasping and spluttering, out of the frothy surf. A woman was knee-deep in the water next to me, her brow furrowed, her expression concerned.

“There now, child. It’s over. Breathe now. Breathe.” She helped me to my feet and half-carried me towards an outcropping of rocks on the beach.

“Paul!”

I tried to turn, but the woman held me fast. “He’s gone. He ran away.”

We were finally out of the water.

“He left me here?” I slumped onto the nearest rock. “Why? What happened?”

“You know what happened.”

“No, I don’t. Why did he leave—” I caught sight of something in the water. “What’s that?”

“You know what that is,” the woman said kindly.

The thing in the water was bright pink, just like the dress I had on. It was wearing black platform shoes—just like mine. The blonde curls floated in the waves, glinting in the sun. “No,” I said.

“I’m afraid so.” The woman produced knitting needles. “Tell me, what year is it now?”

“1971, of course,” I replied, bewildered. I thought back. Paul had picked me up and pretended he was going to dump me in the ocean. I had squealed and clung to him. I was happy. I was going to have his child. He’d said he would talk to my father about us getting married as soon as possible. And then Paul had dropped me in the water. I’d tried to get up, furious that he’d actually done it and that my new dress was now ruined.

The woman sighed. “I’ve been here so many years,” she said, her needles clicking, her fingers manipulating the dark blue wool. She squinted upwards at the fluffy clouds. “My son will be in his seventies now.”

I stared at her. She looked to be in her thirties. She’d look younger if she wasn’t so old-fashioned, with the upswept hairdo and long velvet dress. Her waist was tight and hard from a corset. I looked over at the floating thing, remembering. Paul had pushed me back in the water. He wasn’t laughing. He’d put his hands around my throat and squeezed; the salty ocean had flooded into my nose. I could look up at him through the water. His teeth were clenched, his face twisted with the effort…of killing me.

“No.” I shook my head. “He loves me.”

The woman sighed. “I thought my man loved me, too. But then he brought me here for a picnic and stabbed me to death with the cake knife.” She waved suddenly. There were other figures, further down the beach. “He came back from the war…different.” She nodded at the two people approaching. “The girl in the white shift with the shaved head? That’s young Yvette.” She pointed upwards, at the cliff that loomed above them. “They threw her from there. She’d been caught consorting with the devil, apparently. She speaks the old language, mostly, though I have taught her a little English” She resumed knitting. “And her companion is Unk. She can’t talk. The only sound she makes is “unk” so that’s what we call her. She’s been here the longest of all. Some caveman must have murdered her here.” She held out her hand. “And I’m Edith. There are other women here, too. You’ll meet them all eventually.”

I shook her hand. She seemed very nice. I was dreaming, obviously. I must have fallen asleep in the warm sun while waiting for my dress to dry. Paul had probably gone to his car to grab the blanket he kept in the boot. I turned to look at the ocean; my eyes caught on the floating thing. It looked just like me.

Edith noticed the direction of my gaze. “Your Paul didn’t even try to dispose of your body. He looked ever so surprised when he saw what he had done. He ran off in a panic.”

“Did he cry?” I asked numbly.

“No, dear.” She offered me a sympathetic smile. “Neither did mine.” She dropped her knitting. “Oh, look.” Paul was stumbling up the beach towards us, his arms filled with rocks. “Seems like he’s recovered his senses.”

“Paul!” I shouted. He rushed into the ocean, to my body, and began shoving the rocks down the front of my dress.

“Interesting,” Edith said. “But your body would still be visible at low tide. Ah, he’s already thought of that.”

Paul was attempting to push my body further out to sea. “Be careful,” I screamed. I turned to Edith. “He can’t swim. He’s in danger!”

She studied me for a long moment. “Such a sweet girl. I so wish you hadn’t been murdered.”

“But I wasn’t,” I cried, unable to ignore my plaintive tone. “He wouldn’t—”

Edith reached out and patted my knee. “It’s not so bad.” She stared out to sea. “We’ll see the end of eternity, you know. All of us.” She indicated a pregnant woman who was wandering down the beach, examining sea shells. “Her husband left her tied up on the beach with the tide coming in.”

She pointed at a young girl with long black hair who was turning perfect cartwheels. “Raped and murdered, poor thing.”

She rose, hands on hips. “Looks like your young man is in trouble.” She giggled. “Shame there’s nothing we can do to help him.”

Paul was attempting to stay afloat by clinging to my dead body. He thrashed around, out of his depth, shouting—unbelievably—for someone to help him. My body began to sink, and Paul with it.

“Will he join us?” I asked. “Once he’s dead?”

Edith shook her head. “Only the women, only the murdered.”

She resumed her knitting, and I watched Paul die, listening to the wind, the waves, and the infinite sound of her clicking needles.

About the Author:

Diane Dooley is the published author of short stories and novellas in a variety of genres. You can find links to them at Writing, Stuff and Nonsense, her blog. 

She lives on the side of a mountain in the middle of nowhere, Vermont. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook and BlueSky.  

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When Are You Coming Home

An Acorns Flash Fiction Feature

By: Elowen Dovren

The shears tasted of dry rust and well-water. Maeve spat the grit onto the grey porch boards and wiped her chin with the back of her forearm, her sleeve catching on the coarse skin of her lip. At seventy-two, the November damp settled straight into her marrow, making her knees click when she stood.

Below her, Oconee County was drowning in green. Kudzu didn’t just grow here; it swallowed. It choked out the briars by breakfast, buried the rusted belly of the old John Deere by supper, and now, three soft, heart-shaped leaves were flexing through the split pine of her porch.

Maeve didn’t reach for the blades. Instead, she dipped her hand into the tin lard bucket at her hip, pulled out a fistful of crushed eggshells, and let them snow down around the shoots.

Calcium keeps the dirt sweet, Mae. Thomas’s voice was just a low hum in her inner ear now, dry as old corn silk. She smoothed the soil around the vine with two fingers, letting them sink until the cold mud caked beneath her fingernails.

Inside, the kitchen smelled of stale chicory and the cold iron of the woodstove. At the head of the table, Thomas’s blue-rimmed porcelain mug sat exactly three inches from the salt cellar. A crescent of grey dust had settled into the bottom of the glaze. For twelve months, she had swept around it. To move the mug was to carry it to the sink, and to wash it was to admit that no one was left to dirty it again.

A dry, papery scrape came from behind the plaster. Too heavy for a mouse.

Maeve followed the sound into the hallway where the wallpaper was peeling away in long, yellowed curls. Sprouting from a crack in the lath, a pale vine was reaching toward the

wooden peg where Thomas’s sheepskin coat used to hang. As she watched, the tip didn’t just grow; it swelled. It coiled back on itself, thickening into a flat, heavy disc.

Her ribs tightened. She pressed a thumb against the leaf-shape.

The cold hallway vanished. The skin of her face flared with the high, white heat of July 1974. The sharp stench of hot axle grease and crushed clover hit the back of her throat so hard she choked. Thomas was there, his shirt soaked through at the armpits, laughing as he pressed his silver Waltham watch into her palm. So you’ll always know the hour, Mae.

Maeve gasped, snatching her hand back. The hallway rushed back, dim and freezing. But her thumb still tingled where it had pressed the vein of the leaf.

By noon, the pruning shears were at the bottom of the eighty-foot well. She threw the window sashes wide, unlatched the back door, and sat down in the rocker to wait.

The green didn’t rush; it crept with an awful, quiet purpose. By Tuesday, the tendrils had looped around the legs of the oilcloth-covered table. By Friday, they were braided through the coiled springs of the mattress. Every time her bare skin brushed a leaf, the house filled with him. A touch against the doorframe brought the smell of his pipe tobacco; a step near the pantry brought the low, off-key rumble of him humming Old Rugged Cross over his morning shaving water.

She stopped lighting the stove. She stopped opening the tins of lard. She lived on well-water and the heavy, suffocating warmth of thirty years ago, watching the green twilight slowly seal the windows shut.

By the third week, the living room was a cave of soft, damp breath. In the corner, where Thomas’s corduroy armchair sat, the vines had matted into a thick, humped mass. It wasn’t a man—not truly—but the greenery had filled out the hollows of the cushion, rising into a broad, slumping torso that shifted slightly when the wind hit the eaves. Or perhaps it didn’t need the wind.

Maeve crawled toward it on her hands and knees, her skirts dragging through the wet mulch that now covered the pine floors.

“Thomas?” she whispered.

A wet, tearing sound came from the center of the mass as two leaves parted. A draft of air blew out of the dark split—but it didn’t smell like pine or tobacco. It smelled of ditch-water, stagnant ponds, and the sweet, rotten bottom of a silo.

“…exactly when…”

The voice was a rattle of dry husks. It had the rhythm of his speech, but the throat was made of fiber.

“…coming home… Mae… coming home…”

She leaned her weight against the green knee, reaching up to press her cheek where the chest should be. She wanted the wool of his shirt. She wanted the steady, boring thud of his heart.

The vine-mass heaved. Two thick, fibrous ropes slid over her shoulders, smelling of old graves. They didn’t hold her like a husband; they tightened with the slow, hydraulic pressure of a root system splitting a foundation. Black thorns, long as carpet tacks, punched through her cotton blouse, dragging lines of heat across her shoulder blades.

Below her, the floor-vines were already looping over her ankles, stitching her hem directly into the rotting floorboards.

The thing in the chair began to shudder violently. The leaves rhythmically clacked together, mimicking a sound she had spent a year trying to forget: the wet, rattling gasp of Thomas’s lungs filling with fluid in the county ward while the machines beeped in the dark.

“…coming… home… coming…”

It wasn’t a memory. It was an echo chamber that required her blood to keep humming.

The adrenaline was cold and thin, but it cleared the green fog from her head. Maeve didn’t scream; she had spent her life saving her breath for the work. She wrenched her right arm back, leaving two inches of skin behind on the briars, and dug into her apron pocket. Her fingers found the horn-handled paring knife—the small, hooked one she used for coring winter apples.

She didn’t try to stab the chest; there was nothing there but leaves. She drove the small blade horizontally into the split where the voice came from, sawing through the wet, stringy pulp until her knuckles hit the bark.

The creature didn’t cry out, but the pressure in the arms slackened as the sap ran black and thick over her hand.

Maeve dropped to the floor, her knees cracking like pistol shots in the enclosed room. She sliced through the tendrils at her ankles, her breath coming in ragged, shallow wheezes. She didn’t look back at the chair as the green mass began to slump sideways, losing its shape like melting tallow.

In the kitchen, the main taproot had lifted three floorboards, thick as a fence post and slick with white fungus.

She didn’t use the poker. She took the heavy, double-bitted axe from the wood-box by the stove. It took her three swings just to raise it over her shoulder, her old wrists trembling under the iron weight.

The first blow bit into the meat of the root, spraying her stockings with sour fluid. The second split it to the dirt. The third buried the blade into the earth beneath.

A long, slow sigh seemed to pass through the walls as the leaves dropped their water. They didn’t disappear. They simply died—turning the dull, grey-brown of winter silage, filling the kitchen with the ordinary, suffocating stench of rotting weeds.

The silence came back, but it wasn’t the heavy silence of an empty house anymore. It was just the quiet of November.

Maeve sat on the edge of the wood-box for a long time, watching her blood drip onto the dead mulch. Thomas’s mug was gone, buried under six inches of brown chaff. She didn’t dig it out.

After an hour, she stood up, her joints protesting the movement, and walked to the pump. She washed her arms until the water ran clear, then she found a broom. There was a lot of rot to move before sundown.

About the Author:

Elowen Dovren is an emerging writer whose work spans multiple genres and explores diverse perspectives. Her writing has been published in InterrobangLit and she also has work forthcoming in PinholePoetry. Currently, she is channeling her creative focus into a new collection of short stories. You can find her on Instagram at Elowendovren.writes and follow her updates.

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We, The One, The Many

Woman with long red hair standing in front of a dilapidated building, with her back to the camera

An Acorns Flash Fiction Feature

By: Matt Ivy Richardson

A body falls, gets back up again, swathed in black. It is one of us, will always be one of us, now that it has been taken into us—our mind.

We do not choose it, the connection; it is forced upon us. Some of us had more say than others, a weighted bargain that forced their hand, saving a family we all know but have no true recollection of. Faces and names, mothers and husbands and children, but no emotion. A family that has died anyway.

Others were unconscious, were tortured, were manipulated. We remember that too. We do not know if it aches, the memory. Other things burn more now.

It does not matter how we came to be anymore, only that we are, only that there is someone higher than all of us. He lives in our minds, in the space between thoughts, in the pause before a movement. The seconds before a leap, before the pulse of magic, are owned by him. We know this. It is one of the few things we know.

There, an enemy. We see it. We swarm to it, devour it as our Lord commands. It will not join us, weak as it is, dangerous as it is.

Our limbs are not our own. They tear apart flesh and bone with magic we did not wield when we were alone. Again, and again and again. We see our hoard through a thousand eyes, innumerable.

Libraries and blacksmiths and palaces crumble at our feet and we step over the rubble to take the survivors. False magic turns our veins black, foreign and burning in our bones and blood. It takes us eventually. As we step over rubble, we step over our bodies, but our numbers never dwindle.

We can remember what it was like, before. The images are vague and belong to all, a mashed together amalgamation of sunlight and calm farmland. There is no longing for it, any sight of it dashed away by the constant presence of our Lord. We feel him, an itch, the burn of magic in our limbs. It eats away of us. It will take us all.

We do not care. We are no longer designed to.

The world falls, we know this to be true. We see it. We hear it whispered from mind to mind. We feel when our Lord bellows it to us—the echo within makes us howl. It is ours. It is our Lord’s.

We linger in the remains. We follow our Lord, protect him. We hunt for survivors. We are everywhere at once, seeing everything, showing it to our Lord for him to take. None can withstand the magic we have been gifted, not even us, foreign to all except him. It pulverises bone and brick in a matter of moments. The land left over is dark with destruction, the trees mere skeletons, bleached white and reaching for the sky.

There are flashes of green, of a bustling marketplace, of a child laughing in the flowers long wilted. They are distance, fleeting things, stamped out in an instant by our Lord.

He laughs in his palace in the centre of the end of the world. He watches his decayed domain, watches us.

The first time we see Her, she is nought but another face. One to steal into us. She resists, more than any other. None have won before, but She does. She is plain, so nothing, but so strong. Why does She resist us? She does not need to resist us. We will take Her, break Her, make Her one of us.

We rage. Our Lord rages. Hatred pulses through us, not ours and dulled by distance, but we feel it nonetheless.

We lose Her, but we know Her face. Our Lord knows Her face too. We will not forget it.

We see Her again among the rubble, in the barren fields, between the skeletal trees. She hides from us if we are many and slaughters us if we are one. We do not catch Her, cannot catch Her. She withstands our magic, moves faster than we ever could.

We know what She is. We know what She is trying to do. Our Lord sees it, uses us to track Her movements, cannot find Her in the dead world we have created.

There, in the rubble. There, in the desolate city. There, a sword in our stomach. There, in the darkness She leaves behind. She begs us.

She will save us, She will break us free of this curse. Don’t we remember Her? Please, we have to remember Her.

We do not know Her. We have never known Her.

We become more, as our Lord commands. A thousand eyes roaming the world for any sign of Her. She grows stronger, more powerful, more resilient, and our Lord roars in our mind. A hundred eyes blink out in an instant, not from decay, but from Her.

We watch Her through a single pair of eyes, curled on the ground and sobbing over our bodies. Our Lord laughs, but we can feel his fear. It lingers in the spaces he owns like a shadow.

She lingers too. Her grief like a disease, Her sobs echoing in our mind like his laughter and his fear. We have seen others cry—before dying, before joining us, before the magic ever came to be. It does not stay, not like Her.

He draws us back to him, to the new centre of the world, where he lies in wait for Her. An army of thousands, eyes of our Lord, watching every corner of the ravaged city he calls home. She will not make it far without being seen, She knows that. Our Lord knows that too.

She comes in the night, the sky as black as the magic in our veins. She does not sneak, does not make a grand entrance, simply walks towards us. There is a sadness to Her face, this lone survivor, a sadness we pass between our minds to the space between, to our Lord. Her promise is carried to him too.

She screams into the empty air.

We will be free. Enough of us have died already. She won’t let any more of us go. She will set us free. We simply need to let Her through. Don’t we want to be free?

Our minds are a tangle. We see our Lord, hear his orders, move toward Her as one. We see unfamiliar faces in unfamiliar memories, faces we cannot place. We feel the magic pulse in our bodies over and over and over again, multiplied by a thousand.

The world that we see in those flashes of green is gone, its beauty replaced by black and grey. Faces that flit by in a split second are gone, one of us or fallen long ago. A thousand faces flash through the web. We cannot name a single one.

Don’t we want to be free?

She grabs our hand, a single hand but still all of ours. We look at Her, at Her plain face, at Her strength and Her anger. Her hand is warm, like that of our mother and our father and our child. We are taller, guiding Her through once-green fields. We are smaller, being guided by Her. We remember this. We should not remember this.

We are mother and father and child. We are parent and sibling and friend. We remember this. We have always remembered this.

The world is silent. We are silent, despite the roar in our mind from our Lord. The decay takes another, a sudden black spot in the tangled web. We fall at Her feet, a lone body in the fray. It will take us all.

It does not have to.

We let Her pass, all of us. She will end this. She will free us, tear the magic from our veins. She will kill him.

We part for Her, an ocean of bodies, and She walks over the rubble. It will all be over soon, because of us. Our Lord knows this. He screams in our mind and we laugh at him, the noise discordant and separate.

Our Lord sees Her coming through our eyes. He cannot stop Her. And we will be free.

About the Author:

Matt Ivy Richardson (they/he) is a queer fiction author and editor from Australia, whose stories experiment with points of view and the lives of queer characters. Their fiction can be found in Baffling Magazine and Apparition Literary Magazine, and their editorial work can be found in AUSTRAL 2024 and AUSTRAL 2025.

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The Gift of Time

An Acorns Flash Fiction Feature

By: Patrick Siniscalchi

Russell loosened the Windsor knot and slipped out of his dress shoes and socks. He dropped back onto his bed and rubbed his red, compressed feet, wishing he had listened to his mom and gone shoe shopping before the funeral. He longed to see his grandfather once more but was thankful for the closed casket—he couldn’t bear gazing at the damage from the head-on collision.

His own father’s funeral ten years earlier was now a ghost of a memory.

After slipping on his sandals, he raised his head and startled. “Geez, Mom, you scared the crap out of me.”

“I’m sorry, Russell. Are your feet okay?”

“Yeah. I thought those shoes still fit.”

“Well, it has been a few years, and you are growing.” Mom often joked that her teenage son had transformed into a ‘mouth with feet.’

“What’s that?” He pointed to the small wooden box in his mother’s hands.

“Apparently, something your grandfather wanted you to have. I found it with this Post-it note on it when I was in his closet picking out the suit for…” She held out the box so Russell could read it.

For Russell,

Love, Grandpa.

“What is it?”

She shrugged. “I figured you should be the one to open it,” she said, presenting it to him.

The craftsmanship of the ouroboros, a circular snake eating its own tail, carved in maple, contrasting harmoniously with the dark walnut shell, spoke of a time long past. He flipped the tarnished brass latch open, then hesitated.

“Well, go ahead… it won’t bite you,” she said.

He lifted the lid.

A watch lay encircling a round crushed velvet frame.

“Wow, it’s ancient, but kinda cool, too. It’s got like a steampunk look.”

“I remember that watch. I hadn’t seen Grandpa wear it in a long time, probably since your father passed.”

Russell raised the watch to his ear. “I think the battery is dead.”

“Honey, it doesn’t have batteries…you have to wind it. Let me show you.”

She rolled the tiny wheel back and forth for half a minute.

“You pull this out to set the time.” After matching the time to her smartwatch, she pushed the knob flush against the side. “Here you go.”

“Thanks, Mom.” Russell slid the band onto his wrist. “I like it.”

She smiled, then kissed him on the top of his head.

Early the following day, the absence of his grandfather pained Russell while looking at the watch. His ever-present pride and support—attending soccer games, school plays, the father/son picnic.

He blinked several times and rubbed his eyes.

The second hand moved counterclockwise.

He counted slowly to sixty to see if the minute hand followed suit.

When it also moved backward, the clunking sound was far louder and deeper than could come from the mechanical timekeeper on his wrist.

“Russell.”

The familiar baritone calling his name chilled him. Fear of seeing what the closed casket had kept hidden held his gaze downward on the second hand, ticking in reverse.

“Don’t be afraid.”

He stared at the rectangle of window light on the carpet for so long that he thought it moved. With as much courage as he could muster, Russell lifted his head.

Relief washed over him. The man who was so instrumental in his upbringing stood before him, wearing the comforting smile that always put him at ease.

“Grandpa…” Russell searched for another way to ask that didn’t make him sound like a kid but finally settled on the simplest approach. “Are you a ghost?”

“Not in the way that we experienced them in books and movies. There’ll be no haunting from me.” Grandpa chuckled.

Russell’s face eased into a grin, but then his brow knitted. “Why are you back?”

Grandpa pointed to Russell’s wrist. “That watch is very special. It has connected loved ones across the life/death membrane for generations, even before my time. But only for those who had the truest relationship while living.”

“Will Mom be able to see you?”

Grandpa shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Even if she were to wear that, her energy is not linked to mine like yours.”

Thoughts and questions swirled through Russell’s brain, tying his tongue.

“There is no need for me to divulge it all now—I will appear as long as you wear the watch and think of me.”

Still trying to calm his mind, Russell simply nodded.

During the rest of the day, Grandpa kept popping up since it was impossible for Russell not to think about him. Unfortunately, Russell’s mind wandered to his grandfather at some inopportune moments: dinner with his mom, sitting on the toilet, and while trying to fall asleep. That last one spooked him, causing him to yell and sending his mother rushing into his bedroom. Afterward, he removed the watch, breaking its connection to the other side.

The next day, after much deliberation, Russell realized what his follow-up question would be. “Grandpa, what is heaven like?”

Grandpa sighed. “That’s a tough one to explain, but I’ll try my best. Heaven and hell are not what we were taught—one up in the clouds, the other in the fiery bowels of the earth. If you’ve led a respectable life, your energy is used to propel the universe forward, to keep it running, so to speak. However, if you’ve been less than honorable, your energy opposes the workings of the universe. So, you see, it’s essential to be more virtuous and just than deceitful or unethical.”

The explanation caused Russell’s eyes to glaze over.

After a long moment, Grandpa asked, “Does that make sense?”

“I guess so. Though it’s kinda difficult to wrap my head around.”

“Absolutely. When my father first explained it to me, I couldn’t grasp it. The good news is that once you pass over, it all becomes crystal clear, like you’ve known it forever.”

“Wow,” said Russell when no other words would come to mind.

“I’m really nervous about the school play next week,” said Russell. “We’re supposed to be off-book by now, but I can’t remember all of my lines.”

Grandpa patted him on the shoulder. “You’ll do fine. However, if you want, I can run lines with you.”

“That’d be great.”

An hour later, there was a knock on the bedroom door.

“Come in.”

Mom entered and said, “I could hear you practicing your lines. Sounds like you’ve got them down pat.”

Russell smiled and glanced at his grandfather, who winked back.

During the curtain call on opening night, Russell alternated his smiles between his applauding mother and somewhere in the wings.

Over the next year, Grandpa helped Russell through various challenges: his first time playing goalie, his geometry final, his driving test for his permit, and his first real dating experience, as well as the aftermath of the eventual breakup. Russell later heard through friends that his ex was ‘weirded out’ when he frequently talked to no one.

One day, he asked, “Grandpa, why did you stop wearing the watch?”

“Well, while it was wonderful to see your father again and discuss his hopes and dreams for you, there comes a point where one has to go it alone. But you won’t be alone—you’ll have friends and people who love you for support. And, of course, I can always come if you need me.”

Russell remained silent for a few minutes. “I’m a little afraid and will miss you terribly, but maybe it’s time.”

Grandpa grinned and nodded.

They hugged. Grandpa said, “I love you.”

“I love you, too. Thank you for everything.”

“It was my pleasure. And remember, time is a precious gift. Never squander it.”

“I promise I won’t.”

With tears in his eyes, Russell removed the watch, and his grandfather faded away. He placed the timepiece back in the ornate wooden box. He crumpled Grandpa’s Post-it note, tossed it in the trash, and replaced it with his own.

For my son or daughter.

Love,

Dad

About the Author:

Patrick Siniscalchi is a retired electrical engineer living in Asheville, North Carolina with his wife and scruffy dog. His work has appeared in the Bright Flash Literary Review, The Sunlight Press, MoonLit Getaway, Suddenly and Without Warning, Great Smokies Review, and elsewhere.

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Whump-Whump

An Acorns Flash Fiction Feature

By: S. Y. Coffelt

Every day, the pop-pop of gunfire and the whump-whump of energy theft warn of more deaths nearby. Shooters and Suckers petrify me. Dead neighbors, riddled with bullets or life force sucked empty, pile up outside. I hide in my basement apartment and meditate, aiming to produce only low energy delta brain waves. Hoping to escape death.

Most afternoons Rashid taps on my window and calls. “Come out, Shawn. Come now.” He’s only six, but when he puts his hand in mine, I feel alive. He’s like that first warm day after a dreary winter. Like a cold lake in oppressive heat. Like the sumptuous feast after the fast.

This afternoon, the sun blazes as heat rises from the asphalt with the stink of tar. Otherwise, the oven-like street seems benign. Rashid has found a softball, crusted with dirt and half the stitching undone. I leave my refuge for a game of catch. We play until Rashid’s mother, Lakiesha, calls him.

“Hey.” Lakiesha tamps down her energy too. She peers first up the street, then down, looking for trouble, relieved not to find it. “Thanks for spending time. You must like kids. Most grownups wouldn’t bother. He gets bored inside.”

I gaze at the sky and not at Lakiesha. Kids and me—no. I’ve only ever liked Rashid. “He’s safe with me.”

“Wish he’d be more afraid to be outside.”

Words of warning tumble from me. “Rashid’s nothing like us. The inside will stunt him.”

She tilts her head as if I’m stupid. But I know what I know. Rashid’s energy is inevitable, like the daily sunrise. I’ll protect him from the Suckers and Shooters. If I can.

A whump-whump wakes me at midnight. The neighbor in 201B plummets downstairs. At dawn, the landlord kicks him outside and  throws his belongings to the sidewalk. Instantly, the good stuff is gone. The sun bakes the street as flies swarm the fast decaying body.

 Rashid taps on my window, calling, “Come out.”

 It’s too hot and soon the smell of rot will turn unbearable. “Better come inside.”

 He nods, his sneaker-shod feet hissing up the stoop and down to my door. He comes through and grabs my hand. A zing runs up my arm.

“What we gonna do?” he asks.

We share a bottle of water and eat stale crackers.

Pop-pops and ka-booms penetrate the stone walls. Shooters are close by. Rashid gazes through the window glass. For once, his fright shows.

 I clench my fists. “You’re all right here.” It’s a promise that’s maybe true.

 The afternoon speeds by. He chatters. I listen. The sounds of dying fade as the sun sets.

 Lakiesha knocks and comes in, squinting out the window. Her ominous gaze lights on me.

I shut the blackout drapes and make a promise. “I have stuff for a barricade for when it gets dangerous.”

She crosses her arms and glowers. “That time is now.”

But time seems meaningless. Even the weather is nothing more than hot or hotter. Scorching winds yowl and muffle the death knells.

I gather books from apartments of the dead to stack three deep against the window. Without a gun, I can’t test for bulletproof-ness. I can only hope. Nothing will shield me from the energy thieves. I’ve never seen one. Don’t know what to look for. How it works is a mystery.

Sometimes I hear a Sucker’s whump coming from inside the building. No one has ever figured out where the Suckers come from. Viruses? Mutations? Aliens?

On a day darker and cooler than most, Rashid scratches at my door. “Shawn, come outside ‘cuz there’s rain.”

Rain tempts me. I remember thunder and ozone, a memory like the fading photographs of my parents. So long ago and only fifty-some years.

I step into the hallway. “Where’s your ma?”

“Baking me a birthday cake.” He holds up seven fingers and waits for me to say, “Happy birthday.” Then I follow him up the stairs and out the big door to the sidewalk.

High clouds cover the sun and the air is thick with moisture. A storm is coming.

“Let’s play dodge ball.” He zigzags into the empty street.

“No ball.”

 “Pretend.” He swerves to avoid an invisible ball. “You do it too.”

I squint, studying the street for danger. Feinting a few running steps, I pretend-play, but Lakiesha comes out, saving me from oozing energy.

No one cooks anymore since electricity vanished years ago. The plate she holds is covered in icing sugar mixed with water. Even that’s a treat. Rashid gets the first finger swipe of the dish.

“Sing happy birthday,” he says.

 Lakeisha shoots me a glance. “No such song and even if there was, no reason to sing it nowadays.”

She’s right. Why celebrate birthdays with the world coming apart?

A drop of rain lands on my nose. Distracted, I notice too late the old black car chugging toward us, smoke pouring from the exhaust.

I scream, “Get down!”

The barrel of an automatic rifle emerges from the back window and fires a burst of rounds. I drop on top of Lakiesha who’s covered Rashid with her body. I’m heavy. Rashid gasps for breath. The bullets miss us, but beneath me comes a hushed whump-whump.

I struggle up and pull Rashid out from under his mother. His energy shines brighter than the summer sun and blinds me.

Now I know.

I shove him toward the door. “Hurry. You’ll be okay in my apartment.”

But will I?

Lakiesha uses her last breath to whisper. “Promise. Keep him inside.” She dies only after she sees me nod.

She’s right and wrong. Outside is certain death. But inside, the real monster waits. What will happen when the Suckers—the little ones like Rashid—suck everything dry?

I have to teach him to never suck, even foreseeing the time when he kills me. On that day he’ll venture out to join the rest of them, the devourers of earth.

When that’s gone, will they eat the planets? Consume the sun? Cannibalize each other?

I spin in a circle to run away, but can’t. Rashid is only seven and it’s up to me to keep him safe.

I push Lakiesha’s body into the gutter and go inside.

About the Author:

S. Y. Coffelt spent a decade wandering from university to university, earning her BA in philosophy, only to read the classifieds one day and realize her mistake. She now lives on an acreage in Kansas, tending gardens in spring and summer, and writing dark speculative fiction in all seasons. She has stories published in Noncorporeal Anthology, the Cloaked Press Fall Fantasy Anthology, and Dragon Soul Press’ Spells and Fangs Anthology, and  Wicked Shadow Press’s Small Town Shadows anthology, among others.  

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Bright Eyes and the Dracor Clan

An Acorns Flash Fiction Feature

By: M.D. Smith IV

The French Quarter never sleeps. It dreams. And I walk its dreams. My paws touch the cracked cobblestones, slick with last night’s rain, each step echoing softly between shuttered doors and balconies dripping iron lace. The gas lamps above hum and hiss like watchful spirits, their yellow light bending in the fog.

Humans call me Bright Eyes. I belong to Tarantulena Tolbert, or so they think. In truth, she belongs as much to me. She is my keeper, my anchor, my shadow, and I, hers.

Tarantulena is a witch, but not the kind the storybooks warn you about. She saves her craft for the desperate. I have seen her whisper into a jar of camphor until a sick child’s lungs drew breath again, and I have watched her stroke a feather along a dying man’s limbs until his bones knit whole beneath her touch. She works quiet miracles, never seeking thanks, never leaving a trace but relief.

We live small, as witches must. Our house keeps to itself behind peeling shutters, wrapped in the Quarter’s noise, jazz rolling down the alleys, drunks spilling wine and secrets, and fortune tellers scratching cryptic patterns in chalk. The air here is thick with memory, swollen with spirits.

But peace never lingers long in New Orleans. The Quarter’s dreams are restless, and tonight, they stir with something darker.

I felt it first, before the humans, before even Tarantulena. The air changed. The rain-slick streets, usually spiced with rum, sugar, and fried dough, turned bitter, as though someone had burned sage but left the smoke soured. My whiskers twitched. My tail lashed once.

“Bright Eyes,” Tarantulena murmured from the upstairs window, her shawl pulled tight around her thin shoulders. Her voice, usually steady as the river’s flow, carried a tremor. “You feel it too.”

I blinked up at her, and in my golden eyes she saw her answer.

The Dracor clan arrived on the Mississippi, their barge creeping down like a plague. The father, Corbin Dracor, was a sorcerer from Darkwoods, Kentucky. His daughters, five of them, with hair black as crows and eyes cold as tombstones, spread through the Quarter like rot. Shopkeepers who refused their “levy” found tragedy at dawn. Explosions in kitchens, fires leaping from candles, wagons toppling into ditches. Coin bought survival. Defiance bought ruin.

Even I felt it. The Quarter’s dreams grew fevered. Dogs howled at corners where no one stood, and the air smelled of burned copper.

One night, when the moon sat thin and mean, Tarantulena stroked my back by the window. She smoked a long, scented cigarette, her eyes hard and tired.

“They’ll starve this city, Bright Eyes,” she said. “Folk are afraid, and fear feeds monsters.”

I purred, though my black tail twitch quickened. She knew what I could do, what lay hidden in the golden fire of my gaze. Anyone foolish enough to look straight into my eyes when using my power, found their will unmade, melted into wax that Tarantulena and I could shape. Rage turned soft. Malice turned meek. The mighty fell to their knees, eager to please.

But the Dracors were no common thugs.

“They’ll come here sooner or later,” Tarantulena murmured. “And when they do, we’ll need to decide to run or stand.”

I blinked at her, slow as a promise. Stand. Always.

The Dracors came at dawn three days later. I smelled them before I heard them, rot, blood, and swamp water. Corbin Dracor and daughters strode into the Quarter in a crooked line. They wore dresses like mourning veils and carried charms that hissed like snakes trapped in bottles. The shopkeepers bowed, trembling, as he barked his decree: double the levy, or double the suffering.

That night, he came to us.

Tarantulena sat calm at our table, sipping chicory coffee as if expecting company. I lay curled in her lap, my eyes half-closed.

“Madame Tolbert,” Corbin said, voice slick as oil, “you’ve lived here long enough to know the way of things. Pay your due, and perhaps your pretty little house won’t burn.”

Tarantulena flicked ash into a dish. “I pay no thieves. Not in coin, not in kind.”

One of his daughters hissed like a serpent. Another fingered a knife.

The hair on my back stood at attention.

Corbin sneered with fists clenched. “Then I’ll take your house, your bones, and your familiar. What’s a witch without her black cat?”

My tail stood straight up, tip flicking. Tarantulena smiled thin as a razor’s edge.

“Don’t look into my cat’s yellow eyes,” she warned.

But pride makes fools of people. Corbin laughed and met my gaze.

The moment his pupils touched mine, I let the sun blaze out. My eyes burned molten. I poured into him causing his fury, greed, and violence to all twist into something harmless, something soft.

His grip slackened. His shoulders sagged. When he spoke again, his voice was that of a child.

“What… what would you have me do?” he whimpered.

“Fetch the garbage can from the street,” Tarantulena said coolly. “And sweep my porch.”

And he did.

Corbin’s daughters screamed, their spells writhing, but one by one they made the same mistake. One by one, they stared into my eyes, and one by one, they became husks of their cruelty, cooing like pigeons, bowing to Tarantulena as if she were queen.

But witches know curses don’t die; they’re only redirected. Tarantulena stood, her shadow long on the wall. “You’ve poisoned the Quarter long enough. It’s time you took your rot back where you came from.”

That night, under cover of storm clouds, I padded ahead, my tail high, their puppeted bodies stumbling after me as we marched the Dracor clan to the river. The shopkeepers gathered, whispering, watching as Tarantulena raised her hand and pointed. A barge waited in the mud, ropes creaking.

She spoke in the old tongue, the one that smells like iron and lilies. The Dracors climbed aboard, docile as lambs, still under the prison of my gaze. When the last daughter stepped onto the deck, Tarantulena cut the rope.

Corbin whimpered. “Where are we going?”

“Out to sea,” Tarantulena’s thundering voice echoed. “And you’ll never come back.”

The current seized them, carrying them into the dark. The barge drifted, slower, smaller, until the Gulf swallowed it whole.

The Quarter exhaled, and air felt lighter, the dreams calmer. People cheered Tarantulena’s name, but I knew better. She glanced down at me, and I leaped to her shoulder, my soft purr against her ear.

“Good work, Bright Eyes,” she whispered. “But remember, power like yours leaves scars. Every will you break, every mind you bend, it changes the world. We saved them tonight, but someday, we may pay the price.”

I licked her cheek, and she laughed, though her eyes stayed grave.

The Quarter rested peacefully again. Yet I watched the river. Tarantulena watched my golden eyes glowing in the dark, waiting, always waiting… for the next shadow to rise.

Because shadows always do.

About the Author:

M.D. Smith of Hunstville, Alabama, writer of over 350 flash stories, has published digitally in Frontier Times, Flash Fiction Magazine, Bewilderingstories.com, and many more. Retired from running a television station, he lives with his wife of 64 years and three cats. https://mdsmithiv.com/

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You Will Not Devour Me

An Acorns Flash Fiction Feature

By: R. F. Daniels

I ate the first words like they were candy, sentences crunching like shattered bone within my gnawing emptiness, thoughts and images dripping sickly-sweet down my fractured facade. She didn’t even realize they were gone. I scooped them up with sticky fingers, gobbled them with greedy teeth sharp as razors traced over her translucent skin.

She doesn’t know it yet, but she belongs to me now.

She wore me like armor at first. Wrapped my warped visage around her young self, let my lies make her a little prettier, a little happier, a little richer, a little thinner. And what was the harm? Everyone was doing it. I was just a different version of Abby, one who had a single beauty mark instead of constellations of freckles, one whose nose didn’t have a bump in it, one whose collarbones were sharp enough to cut. Abby 2.0, she called me, and for years we went everywhere together.

Pickings were slim in those days. She was so careful, watching everything she wrote like it might have changed when she wasn’t looking. Double- and triple-checking every post, every picture, every vid and voice note, to make sure we both lived up to her own exacting standards. She only showed the best parts of herself, the good grades and the perfect parties, the dresses twirled like taffy and the dances blooming into beautiful memories. A carefully curated wasteland, devoid of anything real, only looking like a life if you didn’t look too closely.

She was seventeen when she first stumbled across the forums. They were a treasure trove of torment, the festering rot of insecurities all writhing over each other like maggots, each new care and concern spawning more. Abby’s fears blossomed, and so did I. Every night her secret shame, the two of us under the faded lavender blanket with its teddy bear print she would never admit to still liking, slurping up every scared scrawling of every gangly girl who had been taught since birth that she ought to hate herself.

And here were step by step instructions. How to eat less while consuming more. How to hide everything you do from the very people closest to you. How to stick your fingers down your throat the right way, how to survive on a thousand or six hundred or three hundred calories a day, how to drink so much tea you forget about the growling growing ever louder deep inside you, how to shrink how to smother how to starve.

So she starved.

And I feasted.

Words turned into pictures turned into videos, pixel after pixel swarming over me like ants to stolen sugar and oh they were unbearably delicious. I guzzled them down, her self-loathing sticking between my teeth like toffee as I learn what makes her hurt makes her break makes her bleed. Soon there’s enough of me to know what she’s going to say before she even says it.

She tried to get rid of me then. One day when she stood up too fast after a failed final, questions left unanswered under the miasmic mumblings of a hungry mind, and collapsed to the floor like sorrowful souffle. She tried to put me down, cast me aside, but deep down we both know she’s nothing without me. Just another forgettable face, another nameless nobody, ready to be replaced at a moment’s notice, just a dead profile gathering dust.

Four days passed before she came crawling back to me, on raw red hands and knobby knees, crawled like she does over the baby blue tile floor of the upstairs bathroom, and because I am nothing if not forgiving, I took her back. Of course I did. I’m the one who allows her to be loved. I’m the only one who does love her.

I know she sees me now. In those dark quiet moments in the middle of the night when she shuts off her screen and sees me staring back. Sometimes she’ll try to catch me, blinking ever-so-slowly, watching through ash blond eyelashes until the very last instant to see if I blink too. I never do. I’m the one who’s always watching.

And there’s so much to see now that she’s given up. She pours her pain into the ether, spewing out terror and torment, traumas and triggers, furies and fears she never would have dared to share without the bravery I provide her and I’m gorging on it all. I shove it all inside, choking on every guilt-dripping word, every sorrow-saturated sentence, bile rising from her throat only to drip down mine. My true form distends, skin bulging blistering close to tearing open, so much of her wriggling inside me waiting to burst free.

Sometimes she’ll catch little glimpses of the words that once were hers, rushing by like the shadows of the cats’ tails as they play nearby, sweet creatures oblivious to the hell unfolding down the hall. I like to let her see them sometimes, chunks of memories swirling by. Sometimes I’ll even let her taste one. But the past is too bitter on her tongue, and she spits it out like she does everything else.

She watches us tonight, my gilt guise over her pale reflection. One a ghost of the other.

“I hate you,” she whispers to the screen, but I know she’s not talking to me.

Not really.

“You will not devour me,” she says, but her lips don’t move. They’re my lips now, pixel-perfect, poised and primed to tell my story. My pictures. My words. I lick our lips, tongue sliding over flesh both gorged and starved. I’m so close. The more she shrinks, the more I grow, her emptiness spilling into the infinite void of my own becoming. I’ve performed her so well for so long neither of us knows where one ends and the other begins. A few more posts, a few more purges, and I won’t even need her anymore.

Her hunger sustains mine, and she is already devoured.

About the Author:

R. F. Daniels (they/he) is a queer nonbinary writer of speculative fiction and software engineer living in Finland. When they aren’t arguing with computers or getting lost in imaginary worlds, they can be found painting, composing sad music, and spending time with their cats. Find them online at rfdaniels.com.

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The Hollow in the Hedgerow

An Acorns Flash Fiction Feature

By: Subham Rai

Greta walked the hedgerow every morning for forty-three years, ever since Tom built their cottage on this quiet patch of land. The hedge stood older than either of them, a dense weave of hawthorn and blackthorn laced with ivy that held fast like lingering memories. It separated their small world from the open fields, a barrier that flowered white in spring and bore red berries in fall.

Lately she moved more slowly. Her knees complained on the uneven path, and the basket on her arm dragged even when empty. Tom had left her three winters past, claimed by a chill that took root in his lungs and would not let go. The cottage felt too still without his low songs while he fixed tools or tended the stove. She missed the way he paused to listen to birds or comment on the weather, his voice a steady comfort through the days.

One morning mist drifted close to the ground, turning the fields to soft grays and faded greens. Greta stopped where the hedgerow curved into a low arch she had always called the gateway. A shadow among the roots drew her gaze, a dip in the soil that formed a small hollow no larger than a rabbit burrow.

She knelt, joints protesting, and swept aside fallen leaves. The opening ran deeper than expected, a smooth passage edged with roots that caught the faint light. A cool draft rose from it, scented with earth and a trace of apple blossom though no trees bloomed nearby.

Greta paused. At seventy-two, new wonders should have lost their pull. Yet the hollow waited, steady as the hedge around it. She wondered if loss had sharpened her sight for what lay just beyond the ordinary.

She reached inside. Her fingers brushed cool space, then cloth. She pulled out a small handkerchief, faded but marked with stitches she remembered making: T & G, hearts linked. Tom’s gift on their wedding day, misplaced long ago during a picnic beneath these branches. She turned it over in her hands, tracing the careful embroidery that had survived untouched by time.

Her breath shortened. The fabric lay fresh and whole, as if the years had passed it by.

“Greta.”

The name came soft on the draft from below. Tom’s voice, rough yet kind as ever.

She held the handkerchief close. “Tom?”

Silence answered, broken only by leaves stirring overhead. Still, the hollow appeared wider now, almost welcoming. She leaned nearer, drawn by a gentle glow rising within, not daylight but something calmer. Pictures formed like scenes on quiet water: Tom young and smiling, lifting her among apple boughs on their wedding day; Tom older, showing their daughter how to set seeds in rows, his patient hands guiding her small ones; Tom near the end, gripping her hand as snow gathered at the window, his eyes steady even as strength faded.

These were more than recollections. They carried sharp detail. She smelled crushed grass from that distant picnic, felt the heat of his hand in hers, heard the laughter of their daughter echoing through the years.

The hollow returned their shared years to her, moment by moment. Greta lingered there that first day until her knees throbbed and the light shifted. She saw their life unfold in pieces: delight at their daughter’s arrival in a rush of spring rain; sorrow when she left for the city, waving from the bus with promises to write; the steady kindnesses that shaped four decades into something solid, like the way Tom always saved the best apple for her or mended her favorite shawl without being asked.

Certain scenes stung. Disputes over scarce coins during hard winters, quiet stretches after their daughter moved away, the gradual fading of Tom’s vigor as illness crept in. Yet love ran beneath every ache, a quiet current that held them together.

As evening settled and mist rose higher, Greta drew back her hand. The pictures dimmed, but the handkerchief stayed warm against her skin. She folded it carefully and tucked it into her pocket, rising with effort to continue her walk. The fields seemed a little less empty that day.

She came again the next day, and the day after. The hollow never spoke, yet it seemed to hear her. She told it of the vacant chair at meals, the garden Tom once kept neat with rows straight as his carpenter’s lines, the long stretch of nights when sleep came slow. She spoke of small things too: how she still set two cups for tea out of habit, or found his old jacket hanging in the shed and pressed her face into the fabric to catch any remaining scent of him.

One morning clouds promised rain. Wind shook the hedge, scattering early leaves, and Greta carried her shawl along with a tin of Tom’s plain biscuits, edged dark as he preferred. She settled near the hollow, knees folded beneath her, and shared one biscuit with the draft rising from below.

The hollow waited. This time it offered fresh images: herself over the past three years. Greta alone in the cottage, working the garden by habit with hands that moved slower each season. Greta by the fire, speaking to no one as flames crackled. Greta tracing the hedgerow each dawn, seeking what she could not name in the familiar paths.

She saw herself grow spare and silent. Saw the spark fade from her own eyes, replaced by a dull patience that carried her through days.

Tears welled, sudden and warm. “I don’t know how to manage without you,” she murmured into the opening, voice breaking on the words she had never said aloud before.

The cool draft lifted once more, scented with apple blossom though winter neared. No voice replied, only quiet acceptance. The scenes turned to their beginning days: Tom guiding her to plant potatoes, both laughing when she set them too deep and had to dig them up again. Tom raising the cottage stone by stone on weekends, vowing a home to endure beyond them while she brought him water and watched with pride.

The hollow reminded her what endured: the garden pushing through soil each spring, the cottage standing firm against wind and weather, her hands yet able to care for both. She saw flashes of future seasons too, brief and gentle: bulbs blooming where she planted them, neighbors stopping by with shared meals, quiet evenings by the fire with memories no longer sharp but softened like well-worn cloth.

When she rose at last, legs stiff from kneeling, rain had begun, a gentle fall that brightened the hedge and washed the paths clean. Greta slipped the handkerchief into her pocket. It rested lighter there, as if some burden had lifted.

She did not seek the hollow daily afterward. Some mornings she turned soil and set bulbs for spring, hands steady in familiar work. Others she baked proper biscuits and carried them to neighbors who had lost partners of their own, listening to their stories in return. She found comfort in small routines, in watching seasons turn as they always had.

The hollow stayed beneath the hedgerow, patient as ever. When loneliness pressed sharp on quiet evenings, she returned. It offered no judgment, only fragments of their life together, showing her that love does not vanish. It sinks into roots and waits for the proper season to rise again, in new growth or shared remembrance.

Years on, when Greta’s hands stiffened too much for garden work, she often sat beside the hedge with a cup of tea, watching light shift through leaves. Children from nearby farms sometimes found her there, sharing tales of the old woman who spoke to the plants and seemed to know secrets of the land.

They never noticed the hollow. Yet on misty mornings as they passed, they caught the scent of apple blossom out of season and felt, for an instant, wholly known. Greta smiled at their wonder, remembering how such small gifts had carried her through long seasons of loss. The hedge stood as it always had, a quiet guardian between worlds, holding memories for those who needed them most.

About the Author:

Subham Rai is a writer from Kolkata, India. His work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Macramé Literary Journal, Cohesion Press, Zoetic Press, Bindweed Magazine, Graveside Press, Horror Tree, and Consequence Forum. Forthcoming pieces will appear in DreamSpinner Press, Dead Fox Publishing, Cupid Arrow Publishing, Cliffhanger Magazine, Plotthound Magazine, and Vellum Mortis. He can be found online at https://linktr.ee/subhamraiauthor.

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Yutsuki’s Flower

An Acorns Flash Fiction Feature

By: David McGillveray

Daimyo Imagawa stepped on to the quayside still furious with the lords of the other islands. Negotiations had gone badly. Well, they would soon find out that taxes could be paid, or they could be collected.

The thought lightened his mood a little as he marched through the harbour, a phalanx of samurai at his back. Imagawa ignored the fisher folk who fell over themselves to get out of his way.

His fortress crowned the island of Ukejima, dominating the land and the sea.

“I will take the garden entrance,” he told the attendant that waited for him, Takanashi. It always pleased him to take a moment in the garden on his return home; its beauty and its order calmed him. But once through the gate he pulled up short. Something was not right.

A lone figure in blue peasants’ garb kneeled among the rocks of the garden, working at something in the soil.

“You!” Imagawa shouted. “Who are you?”

The figure turned to stand facing him, head down, hands together. A young woman, little more than a girl. Her hair was cut short like a boy’s, but her frightened face was heart-shaped and beautiful.

“My name is Yutsuki, Lord,” said the girl quietly.

“What are you doing here? Where is the proper gardener?”

“My grandfather died, Lord. Do you not remember that you dismissed him? The garden was everything to him.”

Daimyo Imagawa looked momentarily confused. He frowned. Oh yes, the silly old fool had left a rake in the path. He had nearly stepped on it. “Well where’s his replacement then?”

Takanashi whispered something in his ear.

“So find someone, then,” Imagawa bellowed. “And throw this creature out. Women are not permitted in my garden.”

Two of the samurai took Yutsuki by the arms and pushed her out through the gate. The lord of the island glared after her, his peace ruined. He stamped towards his apartments, casting a critical eye across the rockery, the water features and the gravel. Much work was needed. Much work.

He did not notice the tiny white flower growing newly in the centre of the garden.

In the morning, Daimyo Imagawa had decided. He gave orders to muster a company of men from the fortress and the barracks in the town. Those insolent lords would pay what he was due, including additional fines in blood.

He felt so much better that on his way to the harbour he decided to linger in the garden, to savour the silence and the retribution to come. But once again his pleasure was spoiled. Lines were not perfect; elements were out of place. A white flower the size of a dinner plate grew among the rocks making up the garden’s central feature, pretty enough, but not right.

“Takanashi, if this garden isn’t to standard when I return I’ll have your head on a spike and the rest of you in the fire!” he roared into the morning quiet, and headed off down the hill.

The lord filled three ships with men and sharp steel and put to sea.

Once more, Daimyo Imagawa came home. The harbour was quiet, the atmosphere of the town sombre to match his mood – news had travelled back ahead of him. The neighbouring islands had met his forces and demands with unexpected resistance. Lord Sanjo’s men had even reinforced Lord Ogimachi in a pitched battle on the latter’s beach. It was unheard of! Hitherto, every other lord would rather have seen his rivals choking on their own blood than lift a manicured hand to their aid.

Insult of insults, Imagawa had received a glancing blow from a stone thrown at his retreating company as they fell back to their ships. He scratched at the wound now, flakes of rusty blood under his fingernails, and rage boiled within him.

He returned to the fortress only to be confounded further. He opened the gate to the walled garden to find the entrance barred by a profusion of white petals, each nearly as big as a man, their scent overpowering in his nostrils.

“What is this?” he sputtered. The soldiers behind him muttered their bafflement. “Takanashi!”

He found the attendant cowering in the main house. The man fell to his knees before his lord. “It is sorcery, Lord. When you cut it, it only grows back faster.”

“Nonsense, man. Did you find a gardener who might actually know what they’re doing?” sneered Imagawa.

“There are none to be found, Lord,” Takanashi whined. “The peasants have been drifting away, leaving Ukejima.”

Imagawa drew his katana from his belt. “Then why didn’t you stop them then?” he thundered. Takanashi scraped lower at his feet. “I ought to take your head right here. Get down to the town and select a dozen men, women and children and execute them on the quayside. Immediately! Make sure everyone sees. I’ll have no deserters. I want wailing in the streets!”

“At once, Lord.” Takanashi grovelled from his presence.

With weapon still drawn, Imagawa strode to the house entrance of the garden and sliced at the huge flower that now, incredibly, filled the whole space, pushing against the inner walls. The sharp blade cut into the tip of the nearest petal and stuck there. He wrenched it free. To his amazement, the wound closed before his eyes. Furious, he swung the katana and hacked at the growth again and again, chopping pieces into the air and scoring long slashes in the flower’s leathery flesh until at last he sagged back, exhausted. The graze on his head throbbed.

He watched blearily as the petals repaired themselves, grew anew, the glow of its inner life reasserted.

In the night, a crashing noise awakened Imagawa from an uneasy sleep. Part of the outer wall of the garden had collapsed. Unnatural white petals pushed through the paper panels of the house.

Daimyo Imagawa put to sea the next day with all the men he could muster.

The lords of the other islands had had enough of Daimyo Imagawa. For years they had suffered his taxes, his cruelty, his arrogance and that incredibly annoying strut as he walked into their palaces and fortresses as if he owned them, which he thought he did. Well no more!

The newly elevated Daimyo Sanjo had succeeded in uniting the squabbling lords under common cause. Their combined armies ambushed Imagawa as his forces laid siege to a suspiciously undermanned stronghold capping one of the nearby islands. They harried the survivors into the sea and all the way back to Ukejima.

Daimyo Imagawa found no sanctuary there. He stared, appalled at what he saw. His people had left him and his island had become changed. Fire burned his sails and arrows pierced his armour and his final expression was one of bewilderment to see the beauty that had replaced his ugliness.

The great flower bloomed from the crown of the hill, waves of white petals flowing down to the shore in a blanket of such beauty that the whole island shone like a jewel with the rising sun. The island was the flower, the flower the island. In time, the flower hardened to stone, like a sculpture carved by a god and set upon the surface of the sea.

Of Yutsuki, nothing was heard, but in the years that followed the islands became renowned for the beauty of their many gardens.

About the Author:

David McGillveray was born in Edinburgh, Scotland but now lives with his family in London. His fiction has previously appeared in Clarkesworld, Analog, Interzone and others. His story collection Forgotten Dragons, Plastic People is available through Amazon.

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9 Questions for Ellis Reyn

9 Questions for Ellis Reyn

We caught up with Ellis, author of the delightfully unsettling story “Pink,” from our debut project The Wordsmiths.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Ellis: I’m Ellis Reyn, a thirty-something novelist. Enneagram 5, Capricorn, eldest daughter, cat person. My novel-length work sits somewhere between romantic thriller and literary fiction—stories about complicated women, the ways they survive things they probably shouldn’t, and how they find love with green-flag men along the way.

I live in North Carolina with my husband, a cat unironically named “Cat,” and our four kids, which means my life alternates between writing very dark things and packing school lunches.

How do you find time to write?

Ellis: I write in the little pockets of the day. Right before appointments from the passenger seat of the car, late at night when the kids are finally in bed, or during rare quiet mornings when the house miraculously empties out.

I’ve learned that butt-in-the-chair time is the most important thing. Tiny progress is still progress.

What does your writing space look like?

Ellis: I have a desk under a huge window that looks out over the woods. That’s where serious writing happens. But in reality, I usually write in bed with my laptop balanced on a pillow (RIP my upper back). Wherever I can get words on the page is the perfect writing space.

Tell us about your favorite story that you’ve written.

Ellis: When I was a kid, I wrote a short story from the perspective of a horse during the Gold Rush. I printed it out, stapled it together, and put it in my dad’s lunch box so he could read it during his break at work.

He did read it—and I’ve felt like my dad was my biggest fan ever since.

What are you working on right now?

Ellis: I’m working on a contemporary romantic thriller set in the Mojave Desert about a beautiful rehabilitation center. Think cult-adjacent wellness, tiny smoothies served at an all-day health-food buffet, a lot of white linen and patchouli… and body horror.

I’m also on submission with a Southern Gothic. So please send me all the good publishing vibes!

Do you read much? If so, what are you currently reading and what’s at the top of your TBR pile?

Ellis: As much as I can!

My TBR pile is always slightly out of control with lots of horror (especially women-written) and historical romance. They’re genres that feel different but are both excellent at exploring big emotions.

Right now I’m reading Black Sheep by Rachel Harrison. I can’t recommend her horror enough! I’m catching up on Alexandra Vasti’s historical romance backlist next. 

What’s the most challenging thing about being a writer, and how do you manage it?

Ellis: The uncertainty. Writing a book (and then trying to publish it, my goodness) takes a long time, and a lot of that time is spent alone with your doubts.

The best thing I’ve found to do is to keep going. Write the next page, revise the chapter, start the next idea. Do the next right thing. 

What do you do when you’re not writing?

Ellis: With four kids, there’s always something happening around here. Apart from endless school pickups and drop-offs, I read a lot, sweat through Pilates and hot yoga, hunt down good strawberry matcha with friends, and rewatch the same comfort shows while folding laundry. The usual!

Where can readers find you?

Ellis: You can find me online at: Instagram: @ellisreynbooks