I burned my soul to ash but the pain paled in comparison to the terror that struck my heart like a match, anticipating her arrival and the tirade she would carry in tow. An unwarranted fear, as she was calm when she saw what I had done. Calm and nurturing. Soothing my pain with herbs and aromas, and each early morning during the hour of the wolf, she laid an ear on my back and listened as my soul mended itself.
She never spoke the words of disappointment aloud but it registered in her eyes. Although residing within my body, this wounded thing, this unwanted soul, did not belong to me. She had laid claim to it many years past, and in my despondency, I had taken liberties with her property and attempted to destroy it. Again.
ii.
The first time, I threw my soul into a sinkhole and allowed the ground to swallow it whole. I made her acquaintance when she plucked it from the soil like a tattered tuber. “I saw what you did,” she said. “And since you would so recklessly toss this precious thing away, it is no longer yours, but mine, agreed?” I nodded and she handed my soul back to me for safekeeping.
I honored our pact for a few years, caring for it within my limited capacity, but during a particularly nasty bout of depression, I tied heavy stones to my soul and pushed it off the sea wall. For a second time she appeared, fishing my soul from the waves, and scolded me, “You are charged with protecting this thing that it mine, do you understand?” Again, I nodded. Again, I lied.
iii.
“Why do you want this worthless soul when it has been crushed by the earth? Why do you want it when it has been drowned in the sea? Why do you want it when it has been set alight like so much tinder?” I searched long and hard yet found no answer in her silence.
iv.
During the day, when she thought me preoccupied, she secreted herself in the shadows and slept. One day I followed her into the darkness and watched her body twitch from dreaming and listened as she muttered,
One more soul, once buried deep.
One more soul, in ocean steeped.
One more soul, by fire burned.
One more soul, of air returned.
v.
Under her care, my soul grew healthier and it frightened me. I was pitilessly plagued and badgered by the phrase, One more soul, of air returned, that repeated in my mind’s ear until it turned dogged and cacophonous. But she was unaware of my inner torment, in fact, she was in an exceptionally good mood today, her voice almost a song, “I know you don’t see it, but you are a gift, you are. You have no idea just how special.”
vi.
Today was the day. I felt it in my marrow. Something was destined to happen, something I most likely would not survive. I should have embraced this eerie premonition, for it was no secret that I did not want to continue in this manner, broken, detached, and alone. But the choice of how and when I departed this wretched life was mine to make and mine alone. So, I stalled by distracting her with trivialities. “May I have more broth? Have you seen my shoes? No, not that pair, the other ones? Can we go for a walk?” If she knew my plan, her expression never showed sign. No request was too large or small on this day. She granted them all.
vii.
We strolled along the pathway in the park that led to the duck pond, a place we visited often during my convalescence. Picked, naturally, as not to arouse suspicion as I searched for the proper diversion in order to make my escape. But I was so wrapped in my own thoughts, I failed to notice that she was walking slower than usual today. “Can we rest a moment?” she asked as we neared the benches. “I am a little short of breath.”
Her breathing became a labored and raspy thing before it hitched and became lodged in her throat. When her face went dusky blue and she slid off the park bench, I panicked. The opportunity had presented itself and there I stood like an idiot, frozen. Entangled in the decision of whose life to save, or more accurately, whose death I could live with.
There was no real choice.
viii.
Her breathing was a trembling, liquid sound as I pressed my mouth to hers and exhaled, but instead of me breathing air into her body, I felt her sucking air from my lungs, and not just air…
I tried desperately to pull away but her thin, vise-like hands clamped down on the nape of my neck and held me firm in a kiss that was collapsing me. My hold on life became dim and futile, but before I slipped away into emptiness, I noticed the oddest thing: her belly began to swell.
Every fiber of my actuality was drawn into her, and my soul, the object I had forever been so reckless with, was systematically being stripped of concern, of negativity, of identity. I fell further and further into a darkness that pressed on me from all sides. So tight, so constricted. I was still unable to breathe but the sensation was somehow different now.
At the very moment when it seemed the darkness was about to claim me for eternity, there came a burst of light so bright as to cut my eyes. Thankfully something soon blotted out the light – a face, slowly coming into focus but I knew her before I saw her. From the moment I heard her soft cooing, “You are a gift, you are. You have no idea just how special.”
The confession booth had been boarded shut for nearly a year while the cathedral underwent restoration. Contractors working late occasionally reported hearing someone inside. The voice always began with the same urgent sentence, wait, I can explain, followed by a breathless torrent too muffled to understand through the plywood.
Everyone blamed the building.
Old cathedrals produce voices from pipes, ducts, settling stone, and distant conversations caught by architecture. The priest believed this until he remained after evening mass and heard the words clearly from six feet away.
The voice sounded terrified of being misunderstood.
He listened for nearly twenty minutes. It described a door left unlocked, money hidden beneath a floorboard, a promise made to someone unnamed, and an act involving water that the speaker repeatedly insisted had looked different from where he had been standing. The details overlapped and contradicted one another as though several explanations were being attempted simultaneously.
The booth was opened early.
Both compartments were empty. Dust covered the seat and floor except for a worn depression in the kneeler, deep enough to suggest years of use. The wood there was polished smooth by pressure from knees nobody had seen.
Opening the booth made the voice clearer.
After the last service each evening, it began again. Wait, I can explain. Parishioners occasionally stayed to listen. Some heard theft. Others heard adultery, betrayal, cowardice, or murder. No two people agreed on the exact confession afterward.
The priest eventually began sitting on the listening side.
He noticed something the others had missed. The voice adjusted itself to whoever was present. Details shifted. Circumstances changed. The desperation remained constant.
One night he interrupted and asked whom the voice expected forgiveness from.
For the first time, it stopped speaking.
The silence lasted nearly a minute. Then the priest heard his own voice from the other side of the screen saying, wait, I can explain.
He has continued sitting there every evening since. The confession now includes incidents from his life, some remembered and some unfamiliar, delivered in his voice with increasingly persuasive detail. He has begun to suspect the booth contains no trapped penitent at all. It may simply be very old, very patient, and exceptionally skilled at discovering how much explanation a person requires before admitting there are things forgiveness cannot make unhappen.
The scheduling system at the clinic was older than several employees and possessed enough quirks that everyone had learned which ones to work around. The strangest was a single appointment that entered itself every night at midnight, always for the following afternoon and always under the same patient record. The file contained a date of birth, an insurance number, and decades of appointment history, yet nobody remembered the patient ever walking through the door.
Each morning a receptionist called the name anyway. It had become a ritual, delivered toward the waiting room with the same practiced voice used for everyone else. Nobody answered. After thirty seconds the appointment was marked as a no-show, only to reappear after midnight for tomorrow.
A temporary employee became curious during flu season and searched the archives. The digital record went back twenty-seven years. Paper schedules extended the pattern another nineteen. Farther back, she found handwritten appointment books in storage, each reserving the same afternoon slot for the same person. Some entries predated the clinic itself and carried the letterhead of a physician whose office had once occupied the building.
The office manager admitted that someone had deleted the appointment years earlier. For three days afterward, computer clocks stopped advancing past 11:59 p.m. Lab results arrived dated one day ahead. Patients called complaining that prescriptions had expired before being issued. Restoring an old backup fixed everything, including the appointment. Nobody had touched it since.
The temp began reading the patient’s chart more carefully. There were no diagnoses or visit notes. Each page contained only the date and the same notation: EXPECTED TOMORROW.
She still calls the name whenever she works reception, though she no longer marks the appointment as a no-show immediately. She waits until closing.
Recently, the record has begun changing. Beneath several old dates, new handwriting has appeared describing headaches, fatigue, and increasing difficulty remembering yesterday. The symptoms belong to the temp.
This morning she opened the schedule and found her own afternoon appointment missing.
The other one remained.
She spent the rest of the day watching the waiting-room clock, wondering whether all those reserved tomorrows had ever belonged to a patient at all, or whether the clinic had been keeping them somewhere until someone accumulated enough of them to be called in.
The gossip began the way gossip always does, over fences, at checkout counters, beside mailboxes where people lingered after collecting bills. The subject happened to be the end of the world, though everyone discussed it with the delighted concentration usually reserved for a neighbor’s scandalous divorce. Apparently this apocalypse had peculiar tastes. It disliked loud restaurants, appreciated handwritten thank-you notes, and had already formed opinions about several people in town.
The details multiplied.
Someone heard it would arrive on foot. Someone else insisted it had rented a room above the pharmacy. A woman at the bakery claimed it preferred lemon in tea and had been asking careful questions about property lines. Each rumor contradicted the previous one in minor ways while preserving the same strange intimacy, as though everyone were describing a person encountered separately at different stages of acquaintance.
I dismissed it until the gossip began including details about me.
A cashier repeated an argument I’d had with my sister the previous week, laughing as she explained that the apocalypse apparently found my exact choice of words unnecessarily dramatic. Someone else knew I kept emergency cash inside an old cookbook. A man I’d never met asked whether I still woke at 3:17 every morning and listened for footsteps upstairs.
I stopped asking where people had heard these things. The answer was always several conversations removed, a chain of friends, cousins, customers, and strangers that dissolved whenever I tried following it backward.
Then the town began adjusting itself around the rumors.
The café added the tea everyone said it preferred. The library placed a chair near the western window because someone heard it liked afternoon light. People stopped parking along one particular street after word spread that it disliked having its path obstructed. None of these changes was officially organized. Everyone simply seemed eager to be accommodating.
Last Thursday, a welcome basket appeared on the steps of an empty house across from mine.
Nobody admits leaving it there.
The house has remained vacant for years, yet curtains appeared in the windows yesterday. This morning smoke rose from the chimney, and several neighbors waved toward it while passing, though none could say whom they were greeting.
The latest gossip says the apocalypse finds the town charming.
There is considerable relief about this. People seem to have forgotten that being liked by something does not necessarily mean being spared by it. In fact, judging from the way everyone now lowers their voice whenever they pass that house, I suspect the town has already decided hospitality is safer than asking what sort of ending prefers to arrive somewhere it intends to feel at home.
The damnedest thing can place a bug in your brain. Rod Serling is the source of one of mine.
It happened while I was deep within my Twilight Zone infatuation phase, in the prehistoric information days before civilian access to the internet, when I devoured every Serling-related book, article or fanzine I could lay my grubby little mitts on. In one of the pieces, I read how Rod’s widow, Carol, found a number of scripts and stories amongst her late husband’s possessions that were unproduced at the time.
And thus the bug found a home in my grey matter.
I pictured Rod in the final moments before he shuffled off this mortal coil, his gaze sliding across the room until it fell on the closet door, eyes filled with that unique brand of sadness only known to writers. Carol would remember that stare and later be drawn to the closet by a mysterious force that urged her to dig out a box buried deep beneath the material remnants of Rod’s life, shed like so much old skin. A box filled with his regrets, the stories that remained untold, that never found a proper home.
You don’t have to say it, I know that’s all rubbish. Simply me fictionally placing myself in the position of a man I never met. If Rod had any regrets at all, I certainly wasn’t privy to them. But that doesn’t make my brain bug any less real.
You see, I have a box–well, it started off as a file folder and grew into a box–filled with stories in various stages of development. Ideas written on scraps of paper, composition notebooks loaded with concepts and outlines, and completed stories that only exist in paper form–written pre-computer on an Underwood typewriter, circa 1950–as I haven’t gotten down to the laborious task of transferring them to my computer.
I don’t discuss my box much and I only brought it up to respond to an email I recently received (copied and answered here with permission):
“I want to write a blog but I’m scared of being exposed and having people judge or attack me because of my opinions and I don’t think I have the writing skills to get my point across in the right way. What gives you the courage to write?“
Guess what? Self-doubt and anxiety regarding humiliation and criticism is all part of the process and grist for the mill, so welcome to the club. What separates writers from non-writers is that instead of running away from that fear, we invite it in for wine and cheese. Befriend the beast that frightens you most because there’s a story just waiting to be revealed in that encounter.
It’s true that honest writing takes courage, as does sharing your writing with people who may not be kind in their opinion of it, but you also have to realize that it’s not your job to make people like your writing. Some people will flat out hate it because of your views (see: The Opinions Expressed) or your writing style, and because they may not know any better, can possibly hate you because of it. Hopefully, it’ll be the minority. Accept it as an unavoidable truth and move on.
As for the question, “What gives [me] the courage to write?” Everyone has their own reason for writing, and fear of acceptance isn’t high on my list. Sure, it’d be great if the unwashed masses loved my work, but the simple truth is all writing has its audience, whether infinite or infinitesimal, and if you never put your writing out there, there’s no chance in hell of your audience ever finding it.
The real reason I write is because of the aforementioned box. I just don’t want to be lying on my deathbed–hopefully many, many, many years from now–and staring at that damned box full of unwritten stories. I no doubt will have my fair share of regrets in my final days, but I’m determined not to have that box be one of them.
And since we’re on the topic of regrets, I recently read a book, “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing” by Bronnie Ware, a palliative care nurse who cited the most common lamentations as being:
I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
I wish that I had let myself be happier.
So, while I can’t offer you reasons why you should write, I can tell you that most of the regrets listed above factor heavily in my need to write.
In closing, someone once wrote, “writing is like getting into a small boat with a wonky paddle and busted compass and setting out on rough waters in search of unknown lands.”
Author’s note: Since I’m never at a loss for ideas, I don’t dip into my story box as much as I’d like to, though I occasionally slip one or two of them into or in between current projects. The story idea folder on my computer… that’s a whole different story.
There was a knock at Tim’s front door. Impossibly, there was a knock on a day there shouldn’t have been one. Not that it was a big disturbance, it had only interrupted his woolgathering. He began reading a book hours ago and somewhere along the way his mind drifted off to the point where he wouldn’t have been able, even with a gun pressed to his temple, to tell which page he was on or what part of the story he last read.
The knock again. Tim placed the book open face down on the side table. Next to it was the handheld trigger for the silent alarm which he picked up and let his thumb hover over the panic button. Should he press it or simply answer the door? Smart money was on activating the alarm but he had always been a slave to curiosity so he pocketed the remote, rose from his comfy chair, exited the living room and padded across the hardwood foyer floor on the balls of his feet.
The closer he got to the door he heard some sort of commotion going on outside and as his hand landed on the doorknob he drew in a deep breath and held it for a long moment to quell the anxious feeling hatching in the pit of his belly. Tim hadn’t realized just how unaccustomed he was to answering his own door, it had been so long.
As he turned the knob a thought crossed his mind, perhaps the person on the other side of the door, the lawbreaker, was a deranged lunatic or religious fanatic who saw it as their duty, their purpose, their God-given right to put an end to what they viewed as an abomination. He knew that wasn’t the case, though. The knock was far too polite. They were all so damned polite, the knockers. Lightly rapping on his door all day, all night, in any weather, even on holidays. Especially on holidays. The only time they didn’t knock was on Sunday, his sanctioned day of rest.
He opened the door to shouts and protests. A crowd of people clustered on his front porch began forming a semi-circle behind the woman who stood in the doorway directly in his face. They accused her of jumping the queue, shouted that what she was doing was illegal, and warned/threatened her with the prosecutable penalties of her actions. And the discontent was spreading along people of all ages, ethnicities, male and female alike who gathered in a line that ran the length of his front walk to the pavement, down the block, and most likely around the corner, who were waiting their turn for an audience. But all the chatter came to an abrupt halt the moment they caught sight of Tim.
The woman in front of him, the illegal knocker, had a familiar face but her features were too average, too face-in-the-crowd, to recall outright, Tim had to flip through his mental rolodex and play the association game. He twigged her face was connected to some sort of event that would have revealed a location that eventually would have produced a name. Taking a deep breath, he relaxed his mind and softened his focus and let his gears spin a bit until he came up with:
Fundraiser ~~> community center ~~> Dick Cole
This woman was a friend of Dick Cole. Linda something-or-other. Rhymed with seed. Greed? Mead? Plead?
“Linda Reid,” Tim smiled, more at the swiftness of the connection than the pleasure of seeing the woman. “It’s been a while. A couple of years, I think.”
“Settle down, everyone,” Tim addressed the throng beyond the woman. “You know I’m not allowed to accept appointments today so she’s not cutting in line ahead of any of you. She happens to be a friend.”
Tim gestured for Linda to step inside which prompted the grousing to recommence but he merely closed the door to let them vent amongst themselves.
“Sorry for causing a commotion,” Linda said, smiling a bit too much. “And for not keeping in touch. Things have been so hectic down at the center with budget cuts and understaffing…and other things, that I don’t socialize much anymore. And you’ve got a lot on your hands at the moment—”
Tim waved off the rest of the sentence. “No worries,” he said, leading her past the empty administrative desks and into the sitting room.
“Awful lot of furniture crowding your foyer,” Linda said.
“That’s for the staff, doormen, greeters, admin assistants, all government appointed. They see to visitors. There are also bodyguards posted at each of the house’s ingress and egress points but they all have the day off because it’s my day off.”
“I suppose that’s another thing I’m sorry for.”
“I don’t get many non-work related visitors so this is a welcomed change,” Tim said, gesturing for Linda to take a seat. “Can I get you anything? Water? Juice? Or I could put the kettle on?”
“Do you have anything stronger?” Linda asked sheepishly as she sat down.
“I don’t imbibe, I’m afraid. Rules of my employment and all.”
“Yes, of course, how foolish of me. Water’s fine, then.”
Tim popped into the kitchen and returned with two glasses and ice water in a silver pitcher dotted with dew-like condensation.
“Not to fret,” he said, sitting opposite Linda and filling her glass. “Most people never consider it when they drop by.”
She took the water glass and swallowed two gulps. “I–um–I think I have a slight confession to make.”
“This isn’t a social visit, is it?”
“I can explain.”
“Explain what exactly? That you’re a lawbreaker and you seek to make me complicit in your crime? Is this a trap? Did the organization send you? Are you here to test me? Well, I’m not having it so you can go back and tell your bosses that I don’t cut side deals to pocket a little extra cash. We made an arrangement and I’m honoring it to the best of my ability!”
“So, how does this go? Do I have to fill out an application? Sign a legal document? Do you need proof? I didn’t think to bring any with me but I can get whatever it is you need.”
“If your request is granted, you’ll need to sign a few documents, including one that absolves me of any blame should the outcome fail to have the desired effect,” he said automatically.
“Naturally, without a doubt,” Linda answered, a bit too eagerly.
They’re always so eager at this stage, before the harshness of reality sets in, Tim thought. “But for right now, all you have to do is tell me what brings you here.”
“Um, okay,” she adjusted herself in the seat and wondered how her breath could so suddenly get caught in her throat. “It isn’t for me, you understand, I’d never come to ask for myself.
It’s my fiancé, Dick, you’ve met him, in fact, he introduced us at a fundraiser two years ago.”
“Yes, I know Dick. What’s wrong with him?”
“He has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis,” Linda said in a quiet voice.
“Lou Gehrig’s disease.” Tim’s stomach turned over. He didn’t need her to elucidate further.
She nodded, her eyes fading down to the throw rug, absently tracing patterns. “It’s in the late stages now. I would have come sooner, but it’s taken me some time to talk Dick into this. He doesn’t think it seems right. Not what you do, that’s fine and he thinks you’re a saint for doing it. He doesn’t think it’s right asking you for help, especially this kind of help. Dick doesn’t want you or anyone else taking pity on him. He’s never taken a handout in his life and he can’t help but see this as charity.”
“Yes,” Tim said, not bothering to hear the rest of the pitch. That’s what they were, pitches. Not simple requests or implorations, these were stories designed to pull at his heartstrings. But who ever bothered to listen to his story? Not one of them. Not a single person among the many that crossed his threshold ever bothered asking him a personal question. As if he wasn’t human, as if he wasn’t allowed his own tragedy.
“What? I don’t understand.” She set the glass down on the nearby table, missing the coaster by half an inch. Tim either hadn’t noticed or decided not to comment.
“I’m saying, yes.”
“Yes, you’ll help?” Linda blinked and met the man’s gaze as a hopeful smile began to split her face.
“Yes.”
“I — I don’t know what to say,” she was on her feet before she knew what was happening, moving in for a hug. “I — thank you, Tim!”
Tim put his hand up, stopping the woman in her tracks. “Don’t thank me yet. There are still a few things you need to realize before you accept my offer.”
“It doesn’t matter. Anything! And I mean anything!” Interest colored her face.
“Please calm down for a moment and listen to me. This thing you’re asking of me, this gift of blood, it may not solve your problems and could possibly worsen matters for you.” Tim traced his finger around the rim of his glass.
“I’ll take that chance… we’ll take that chance!”
“Listen to me!” Tim brought the glass down on the table, just hard enough to startle and capture her full attention. At the cost of a wet sleeve and the water stains that would surely mark the cherry wood. “Ever since scientists discovered the curative properties of my blood, tests have been run. Mostly successful, I’m a match for all blood types, and my white blood cells haven’t encountered a disease it can’t cure—”
“Which is why I came to you. I did my research and you cured other ALS patients before—”
“The problem isn’t my blood,” he interrupted. “It’s Dick’s immune system reaction that’s the danger. If his body rejects my blood and tries to attack parts of it, there won’t be a second chance. He instantly becomes a non-match. On the other hand, if his body takes the transfusion, in a few month’s time, his white blood cells will resemble mine and he’ll automatically be enlisted in the same line of work as I am.”
The weight of Tim’s words slowly settled on Linda. “You mean, he’ll—?”
“He’ll never know another moment’s peace for the rest of his life. People will hound him, pleading for themselves or family or friends, day and night, night and day. Nonstop. Some gentle, others less so.”
“But why is that necessary?” Linda asked.
“My white blood cells can’t be synthesized. Top minds have tried and failed time and again. And although my blood can be stored, the white blood cells lose their miraculous properties over a period of thirty-six hours outside my body.
“I would have been strapped to a table in a laboratory for the rest of my natural life if I wasn’t for my brother. Hell of a lawyer. Fought his ass off to petition the quality of life rights that allow me the tiny bit of freedom I have. The stipulation is I must share my gift, triage the world, help the sickest among you. There are restrictions, legal hours when people have the right to approach me, but no one listens. How can they be expected to follow the rules when they or their loved ones are dying?
“I used to fight it. Turn people away when the established workday was through. Dealt with the angry mobs and the death threats. Then I asked myself, “Why?” Why fight my fate? If I’m meant to help people, why shouldn’t I do it when it needs to be done and not only when I want to do it? And there’s a selfish reason if I’m honest. You see, if I help enough people, if enough of the populace possesses my blood, I won’t be special anymore or alone in all this. Maybe then, when there’s enough blood to go around and my bit for the world is done, the price of my gift paid, maybe then I can be left alone to die in peace.”
Linda hesitated. She shook her head and turned to leave. “This… this is… “ She stumbled over the words, not knowing how to express her thoughts.
Tim realized too late that he said too much, chose the wrong person to unburden himself on. He regretted his action instantly. “It’s a lot to process, I know. Why don’t you go home and discuss it with Dick? You can contact me if you decide to go through with it.”
From his shirt pocket, he fished out a solid white business card, imprinted only with a faint phone number that had to be viewed at the proper angle in order to be seen. “A direct line, please don’t share it with anyone.”
“I won’t,” Linda muttered as she shambled to the doorway. “I — look, I know you can’t talk about the other people you’ve seen, but can you just tell me if anyone has ever turned down your help after you’ve explained everything to them?”
For a moment, Tim didn’t respond, he just watched as the hope drained from her face. “More people than you might imagine.” He noted she found no reassurance in his answer. He turned away, unable to look upon her sorrow any longer. He had his own to contend with.
Over his shoulder, he said, “Be sure you tell Dick everything I’ve told you, and if he refuses, try to understand. Sometimes there are worse things than death.”
The mirror came from an estate sale, its frame carved with roses detailed enough to include individual thorns. A diagonal crack divided the glass from upper corner to lower edge, which explained why nobody else bid on it. I liked the damage. It made the object feel less decorative and more like something that had survived being used.
For a year, nothing unusual happened.
Then the crack began closing.
At first I assumed the difference was lighting. Months later, photographs confirmed that the dark line had narrowed. The change happened slowly enough to escape daily notice, yet steadily enough that by spring only a hairline remained.
One morning the glass was whole.
That was when the reflection started behaving differently.
The delays were small. I would lower my hand and see it remain raised for a fraction of a second. My reflection occasionally seemed to inhale before I did. Once, while passing through the hallway, I saw myself standing still in the mirror even though I had never stopped walking.
The dealer remembered the mirror’s history reluctantly. It came from a house where a woman had died directly in front of it. According to the estate inventory, the crack appeared the same morning. Family members claimed it had been intact the night before.
I asked whether anyone knew what caused her death.
He said the records described no injury and no illness. She had simply been found sitting before the mirror with an expression of profound exhaustion.
After that I began photographing the glass every morning.
The crack has returned.
It started as a faint line along the old path and has widened each week. I should find that reassuring. Instead, the reflection appears healthier as the glass deteriorates. Its skin has color mine lacks. Its posture is straighter. It smiles more easily.
Yesterday I noticed the carved roses changing too. Several blossoms now face inward toward the glass. Their thorns appear longer.
I have stopped touching the frame.
The mirror seems to be dividing something again, and I am beginning to suspect the crack was never damage at all. It may have been the only visible sign that two versions of the same life had finally been forced apart. What I do not yet know is which side of the glass was considered the safe one.
The police sketch artist spent thirty years producing composites so precise that witnesses sometimes recoiled when she turned the drawing around. She credited patience. Faces, she explained, emerged through accumulation: distance between the eyes, shape of the jaw, angle of the brow, one uncertain detail corrected by another.
A young detective found the pattern while digitizing old case files.
Several sketches from unrelated investigations showed the same person.
The crimes stretched across decades and shared no obvious connection. Witnesses had lived in different cities, belonged to different age groups, and described suspects of varying heights and builds. Yet beneath changes in hairstyle and apparent age, the face remained unmistakable. A narrow mouth. Deep-set eyes. A faint scar above the left eyebrow.
The detective brought the files to the retired artist expecting her to recognize a mistake. Instead she studied the drawings for nearly an hour.
She remembered every interview. She remembered witnesses struggling over noses, chins, hairlines, cheekbones. She remembered drawing each detail individually. What she could not remember was ever choosing the face those details became.
They arranged the sketches chronologically.
The figure aged.
Early drawings suggested someone in their twenties. Later ones showed middle age, then deepening lines around the mouth and eyes. The progression roughly matched the artist’s own career.
The detective expanded the search. More sketches surfaced in neighboring jurisdictions. Some had been drawn by other artists. A few came from descriptions given before she entered the profession. The same face appeared there too, younger again.
Then they found photographs.
A blurred face in the background of a crime-scene image. A reflection in a shop window. Someone standing among spectators behind police tape. Never central. Never clear enough for identification.
The retired artist has stopped discussing the investigation. She keeps one final composite locked in a drawer, assembled from every surviving description.
According to the detective, the face in that drawing is elderly now.
What bothers him most is the newest case. A witness described someone standing across the street during a burglary, watching the house with unusual concentration. The sketch artist assigned to the case produced the familiar face without ever seeing the older files.
This time, however, the scar above the left eyebrow is gone.
In its place is a thin pencil mark, exactly where someone might begin correcting a drawing.
The children invented the game during a winter so cold the gutters froze solid. They built a snow fort at the dead end of the block, packed the walls nearly shoulder-high, and carved a throne into the center. Whoever occupied the throne longest became the Rampire Princess, a title assembled from words nobody could later trace. The game survived childhoods, moves, divorces, demolished houses, and every adult attempt to explain why no one used the name correctly.
When I returned to the neighborhood decades later, the fort was still there.
It had been rebuilt many times, yet the oldest section remained beneath an overgrown hedge. Even in July, when the pavement softened in the heat, a fist-sized core of ice persisted in the soil. Children still gathered around it every winter, adding fresh walls and choosing a new princess. None could explain the rules beyond the essentials: the princess sat, the others tried to remove her, and she was never supposed to leave the throne before dark.
My mother remembered more.
Years before I was born, a girl had refused to surrender the seat during a blizzard. By the time adults realized the children were still outside, visibility had collapsed. They found the fort intact and the other children huddled near the entrance. The girl was gone. No footprints led away.
Afterward, parents demolished the fort. Children rebuilt it the following winter without discussing why. Every generation did the same.
This year I watched from my mother’s window as the youngest child in the group climbed onto the snow throne. The others became unusually quiet. She sat very straight, hands folded in her lap, while frost thickened along the inside walls.
I went outside before dusk and told them the game was over.
None argued. That unsettled me more than resistance would have.
The child on the throne opened her eyes and asked whether I had come to relieve her. I said yes before understanding the question. The other children immediately began dismantling the fort around us, laughing again as though released from some obligation.
Since then, the patch beneath the hedge has finally started melting. My own hands, however, stay cold no matter how warm the room becomes, and every night I dream of sitting somewhere made of snow while generations of children wait patiently for me to decide who sits there next.
The tavern had operated under that name for so long that nobody remembered whether it referred to the red door, the stained-glass windows, or some forgotten owner with theatrical taste. The current proprietor inherited the building along with its ledgers, liquor license, and several generations of unpaid repairs, and for years regarded the name as one more piece of branding nobody had bothered changing.
During the handover, the previous owner mentioned a cellar door at the rear of the building and advised her never to open it after last call. He offered no explanation, and she assumed the warning concerned pipes, wiring, or some structural defect he hoped to avoid paying for.
She ignored him once.
It happened during a quiet winter night after the final customer had gone. Behind the door lay no storage room. A passage descended beyond the foundation, narrow and red, its walls ribbed with pale bands that tightened and released at long intervals. Warm air moved through it in a slow inward pull. When she leaned closer, the passage contracted slightly around the light from her phone.
She closed the door and began noticing details she had previously dismissed. Glasses left overnight sometimes stood empty by morning even when nobody had cleared them. Regulars who spent decades drinking at the same tables seemed to age unevenly, remaining unchanged for years before suddenly appearing much older. The building itself shifted through the seasons, floorboards rising and settling with a rhythm that never matched humidity.
She eventually tracked down the previous owner at a retirement home. He laughed when she asked about the cellar. The tavern, he explained, had always done better when crowded. It liked conversation, music, arguments, confessions, flirtations, and all the other things people released after enough drink. Owners who kept the place lively tended to prosper.
She asked what happened to everything the building took in.
He told her that was the wrong question to ask while still standing inside it.
Since then she has kept longer hours. The tavern does excellent business. Customers often remark that the place feels unusually warm and intimate, especially late at night. Lately, though, the cellar door has started opening by itself just before closing, and the red passage beyond seems slightly shorter each time, as though whatever has been swallowing the noise for all these years has begun moving closer to the room where the noise is made.
