Tag: short stories

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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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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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From the Editor’s Desk

Reading a book in front of a campfire, with a pine tree line and sunset in the background

Musings from Amanda Pica, our Editor-in-Chief

As we come into spring and the blossom of seasonal allergies and bug bites, I’ll be spending the newly bright, warm weather reflecting on coziness.

We aren’t a “beach reads” sort of publishing house, but I think the beach can get whatever read you want to give it, so take that, summer. I’m not exactly Morticia on vacation over here, but to be totally transparent (much like my skin in July thanks to my SPF 1000), I’m not really a summer person. I love a fluffy blanket, a hot drink, and dim lighting, and all of that is tough to enjoy during the season of sweat and blinding sun.

But our next anthology, The Ordinary Magic in Extraordinary Tales, is all about coziness. Our official release date is TBD, but it’ll be just as the leaves burn orange in cool sunlight, the breeze nips your skin, and the nights get just a little bit longer. We have fourteen cozy fantasy stories for you, each more delightful than the last. They’ll be grouped thematically and paired with essays written by yours truly on how to curate a cozy life for yourself, full of conviviality and contentment.

If you didn’t know, I have a graduate degree in educational psychology and a decades-long background in recovery-based mental health. This book is a real passion project for me that combines two areas of great interest.

Let’s be real, though. All of our books are like that. I love them all—this one’s just a different type of intersection for me.

If you aren’t familiar with the cozy subgenres, the concept is a smaller cast of characters, and a more upbeat and optimistic tone. The plots have action, adventure, and emotion, but they’re lower stakes that are more about interpersonal relationships and personal development rather than world-ending issues.

Anyway, the stories have been chosen and we’re working on finalizing the last of the contracts with our authors, as well as on the details of the book. I can’t wait to get these tales out to you. There’s a wonderful mix of fantasy elements across the stories, including witchy tales, dragon tales, and ghost stories. We have modern day magic, second-world mysticism, and post-apocalyptic settings.   

Choosing the final stories for the book was really difficult, and the overall quality and quantity of submissions this time really blew me away. I had to reject some that I loved out of considerations like physical layout space and theme. It’s such an honor to attract so many talented authors willing to trust us with their work, and it allows us to build out our concept in the best, most complete way that we can.

Next up, we’ll be finalizing the cover and the essays, then the book will go to our amazing and talented layout editor, Austin Gray.

In the meanwhile, I’ll be doing a lot of reflecting on how coziness is a mindset, and how we can always make the choice to live a life of simple pleasures and contended relationships. Even while swatting mosquitos in the dead of summer.

With gratitude,
Amanda

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Live-Journaling

An Acorns Flash Fiction Feature

By: Karl El-Koura

Thank you for joining me on this live read-through of what’s supposed to be the greatest horror novel ever written. The book is claimed to actually be haunted by readers with overactive imaginations. On Goodreads the reviews spend more time chronicling people’s paranormal experiences than discussing the novel’s literary merits. The Amazon reviews are a series of warnings to read the whole thing in daylight and surrounded by friendly people.

So consider yourself warned, especially if you’re on your own at night! (With apologies for spoiling anyone’s fun, though, I don’t believe a word of those “experiences.”)

I stand by what I said, but boy do our minds play tricks on us! Especially in the dark.

I’m in my office, sitting in my most comfortable chair and sending these notes from my phone as I read through the book—yes, to all the fifteen people actively watching this thread right now. My wife and kids are asleep upstairs. No one else is in the house. But, just as the main character catches a glimpse of the dark creature crawling across the ceiling of his bedroom, I heard something in our basement. Thought I heard something.

It’s kind of funny, really.

I heard it again, just as the main character goes for a midnight run.

For the record: no one else is in our house. I went downstairs; I turned on all the lights. Just to be sure, right? No one is there. Obviously the novel’s bleak atmosphere is seeping into my mind! What possessed me to start reading this book so late at night?

Well, if you believe the people on Goodreads—and I don’t!—the only way to exorcise whatever has come into your house is to finish reading the novel.

I was convinced the reviews were fake, everyone’s tongue planted in their cheek. But I’ve been hearing the noises in the basement again. They started up as soon as I came back to my office and sat down. Someone’s walking around in my basement, trying to be quiet about it, but I can hear the footsteps.

I skipped ahead, to the last paragraph—he finally decides to seek help for his addiction to amphetamines, which of course is what is causing his insomnia. The sun rises over the hospital as he checks himself in. I skipped ahead, thinking I’d…stop hearing things. I’ve read the final paragraph twice. The first time I heard a creak on the stairs…I know it’s a step mid-way up the stairs that creaks. The second time I heard nothing for a while, and thought everything was fine and started laughing at myself, then I heard it—the sound of weight on the top landing, where the carpet gives way to tile. The reviews don’t tell you this, because they’re not real—most of them, I mean. But: you can’t skip ahead.

I’m typing into my phone whenever I feel myself getting tired. It helps me stay focused. Alert. I’ve read as quickly as I can, but I can’t finish, can’t finish before it reaches me, whatever has come up from my basement and is now slinking toward my office.

I’m going out to face it.

There’s nothing there. I’ve turned on all the lights on the main floor, all the lights in the basement. I’ve left everything on. Should I wake up Maisy? But she’ll laugh at me. Deep breath—I am being crazy, though. There’s nothing there!

Heard the footstep—just outside my office. I’m so tired—but I can’t go to sleep. I have to keep reading to the end.

The door to my office is open. I should’ve closed it—but, no, I couldn’t do that! Close myself in. But I can feel it, sense it—I’ve felt it for the last page or two, standing there, watching me. I don’t want to glance over; I think I know what I’ll see. I want to finish reading this book.

I’ve caught myself trying to fall asleep. My eyes having a mind of their own, trying to trick me into giving them what they want.

I saw it. I couldn’t take it anymore, not knowing—I looked over, and it retreated, but not before I glimpsed its light-sucking voidness. Like looking into a hole in reality. It’s the Netherwere from the novel, the shadow-creature that wants to take over the main character’s body and life. I saw it.

What does it want? It wants me to fall asleep. Like the Netherwere in the novel, its power is greatest in the liminal state between wakefulness and sleep. Only in that moment—in the novel, I mean—can it leap forward and inhabit you, evicting you from your own body, taking over your life, turning you into a Netherwere to seek out your own tired victim. It stalks our hero but never gets him, because he doesn’t fall asleep—at least, not until he checks himself in.

People…it can’t stand other people. I should wake up Maisy. It’s a small price to pay, being laughed at, isn’t it?

But if I can just power through to the end of the book, I won’t have to explain why I woke her up in the middle of the night like a frightened child. I can make it.

Caught myself again, drifting off. Can’t let that happen.

Well—I hope I didn’t pull your leg too long. There is no such thing as Netherweres, and they can’t enter our world seeking bodies for themselves.

No, the claims of this book being haunted, or being a conduit to another reality, are not true, of course. It’s a very good book.

You should read it for yourself.

About the Author:

Karl El-Koura lives with his family in Ottawa, Canada’s capital city, and works a regular job by day while writing fiction at night. To find out more about Karl, visit his website at ootersplace.com.

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The Last Page is Always Warm

An Acorns Flash Fiction Feature

By: Khayelihle Benghu

The Last Page Is Always Warm

The first time Miriam noticed the warmth, she thought it was the radiator.

It was early October, in the late hours of the afternoon, when the library grew hollow and echoing. The old pipes beneath the floor ticked and complained like tired bones. She had been re-shelving returns in the history aisle where the spines were old and some darker, the fonts more ancient. When she pulled a paperback from the drop cart, she felt heat against her palm, not body heat, no, not quite.

The book was warm the way a mug might be warm long after the tea inside has gone cold.

She held it there, confused, before checking the cover.

The Long Watch, by Arthur Bell. No dust jacket and slight curl at the corners. The library stamp inside was faded, as if impressed decades ago. She pressed her thumb to the pages and found them still warm.

Miriam looked around, half-expecting a prank, but the aisle was empty. The overhead lights hummed and the windows showed only her own reflection, thin and pale, framed by shelves.

She set the book aside and finished her shift.

The book must have embedded into her subconscious. That night, she dreamed that inside the library, the pages were live and they scanned her fingerprint.

The next afternoon, the book was back in the returns cart.

Miriam frowned. She was meticulous, had always been. She remembered placing The Long Watch on the shelf between two anthologies. However, here it was again, spine scuffed, pages faintly warm.

This time, curiosity overcame her caution. She slipped it into her bag at the end of the day and checked it out under her own name.

At home, she placed it on the kitchen table and let it sit while she made soup. The steam rose and the windows fogged. Still, when she returned and touched the book, it was warm in a way that did not belong to rooms or weather.

She opened to the first page.

The prose was spare, almost old-fashioned. A man standing watch in a lighthouse and the sea restless. The isolation familiar, Miriam read a few pages and then paused.

There was a line she did not remember from the first paragraph.

He thinks of the sound his wife made when she slipped on the rocks.

Miriam read it again and her throat tightened, becoming dry as if something was lodged inside it.

Arthur Bell’s wife had died that way. It was a minor detail mentioned in an obituary she had read years ago when cataloguing local authors. A coincidence, she told herself. Writers borrowed from life all the time.

She turned another page. The book was warmer now.

Miriam began to notice changes, sentences shifting and details deepening. Passages that felt less written than remembered. The lighthouse keeper began to think thoughts Miriam herself had once tried to forget: the hospital room with its too-clean smell, the way her mother’s hand had gone slack mid-squeeze, the silence afterward that felt heavier than grief.

She closed the book, her heart racing.

The warmth lingered on her fingertips.

For two days, she avoided it. She returned to work, catalogued donations, and answered patron questions. Almost pretended not to notice how often people paused in the history aisle, touching spines as if testing with their fingers.

On the third night, she opened the book again.

This time, the lighthouse keeper was no longer alone.

There was someone standing just beyond the reach of the light. Someone familiar, maybe someone he loved and had lost. The prose did not describe the face directly, but Miriam knew it anyway.

Her mother’s face, as it had been before the illness. Miriam slammed the book shut.

The cover was hot now –unmistakably so. She dropped it onto the table, breath shallow and pulse loud in her ears. She did not sleep that night. The following week, a patron approached the desk holding The Long Watch.

“Excuse me,” the woman said, eyes twinkling. “Is this new?”

Miriam stared. “No,” she said too quickly. “It’s old stock.”

“It feels alive,” the woman whispered, almost apologetically. “I’ve never read anything like it.”

Miriam swallowed hard. “I’m afraid it’s… fragile,” she said. “We’ll need to keep it in the archives.”

She took the book with careful hands. It was warm again, even through her sleeves.

That night, she locked it in the back room, inside the metal cabinet reserved for rare and damaged items. She told herself this was enough. That stories, however strange, were only stories. However, warmth is patient.

Miriam began to notice patrons lingering longer in the back room when she fetched holds. Fingers brushing the shelves and their eyes unfocused. One man stood too close to the cabinet once, breathing shallowly, as if listening for something inside.

She moved the book again. Wrapped it in archival paper. Placed it in a locked drawer within the cabinet, but the warmth seeped through anyway.

Feeling almost haunted, she dreamed of pages turning themselves. Hands reaching out from margins, of a lighthouse whose beam swept not over water but over memories, illuminating moments she had buried. The arguments left unresolved, words unsaid and the particular way grief could feel like being watched. When she woke, her palms were warm. Miriam tried to research Arthur Bell, but records were scarce. His biography was thin, contradictory, and one note in an old newspaper mentioned that the final manuscript of The Long Watch had been unfinished at his death, discovered among his papers with “no clear ending.”

She checked the library copy.

There was now an ending.

The lighthouse keeper, aged and tired, stood before the light for the final time. The warmth was unbearable. The presence behind him no longer waited in shadow. It stepped forward, and the prose grew intimate, tender.

He understands now that someone must remain.

Miriam felt a pressure behind her eyes.

The final paragraph was written in a hand that felt uncomfortably close to her own thoughts.

The watch does not end. It is passed.

She closed the book slowly.

It was hotter than she could comfortably hold. She considered destroying it. Fire would do, she thought. Or water. She imagined the book sinking into the river, pages bloating, ink bleeding away. However, the warmth felt almost pleading now. Not malicious, no, not exactly. But lonely.

That night, the power went out at her apartment. Darkness pooled in corners. She lit a candle and sat at the table, the book between her hands.

Her mother’s voice came to her, not as sound, but as presence, familiar warmth. The ache of connection.

Miriam felt aggrieved and wept. Not loud but in silence. She let herself read—the final pages had expanded again.

They spoke not of the lighthouse keeper but of a woman in a quiet building full of books. A watcher. A caretaker, someone who noticed what others passed by. Someone who listened.

The warmth grew steady, no longer threatening, but expectant.

The next morning, Miriam returned The Long Watch to the history aisle.

She did not stamp it. Did not catalogue the changes. She slid it into place and stepped back.

A young man reached for it moments later, eyes widening at the touch.

Miriam watched him go, heart heavy and calm all at once.

At the end of her shift, she noticed something strange.

Her hands were no longer cold.

Over the weeks that followed, the library felt different to her. It felt fuller and charged. She sensed stories breathing behind their covers and seemingly waiting. She began to linger after hours, walking the aisles, touching spines, feeling warmth bloom and fade.

Sometimes, when she paused long enough, she felt memories stir hers, others indistinguishable and some human. She understood now.

The watch does not end. It is passed, and the last page, she learned, is always warm.

About the Author:

Khayelihle Benghu is an emerging author residing in Johannesburg, South Africa. Except writing she has a heart for photography, mainly nature.