You’re so welcome! Thanks for reading, and for the comment - they’re equally appreciated my end.

Oh, thanks TA. Would love to see what you come up with for this - hope you write.

Ben and Maya lay on the rooftop terrace, watching the clouds of Earth 4 drift by above. They’d been best friends for twenty years — since they were kids — and had been waiting for this moment ever since.

“Think they’ll be different on 3?” Maya asked.

”Hm?”

”The clouds. Think they’ll be different? Prettier, maybe?”

He considered. “No. Or, maybe. But I think they’re plenty pretty enough here.”

She took his hand and squeezed it. “Me too.”

It was the evening before judgment. Tomorrow the angels would arrive and deliver certain people to Earth 3, others to Earth 5.

Ben and Maya had spent twenty years preparing for judgment — twenty years of performing good deeds together, trying to buy their ticket to Earth 3. Helping the elderly across roads, feeding the homeless, campaigning for the environment, for animal welfare. Always together.

They lay silent now. Ben wondered if Maya felt a similar unease in her belly. What was causing it? It was as if he could hear the angels singing in the distance, debating their decision about them in an off-key song.

“I hope it was worth it,” said Ben. “We’ve given our lives for this place. If we don’t both make it…”

“Then we’ve improved Earth 4.”

He swallowed back a flash of anger — that hadn’t been what he’d meant. ”Barely. We’ve been constantly sweeping the floor but more dirt is always falling down behind us.”

Maya rolled onto her side and looked at Ben. “You’ve not done it all to escape here. Don’t pretend for a second that’s why you did it.”

“Of course it’s why. It’s why we both wasted our lives here.”

“Wasted.”

”You know what I mean,” said Ben. “We could have done anything else with the years. Stuff for us instead of others, you know?”

She paused a moment then said, ”Did I tell you I saw Leo again the other day?”

”Leo?”

”The junkie you saved with the Naloxone. Except, he’s not a junkie anymore. He had new teeth and showed me a big new smile. He said to pass on his thanks to you.“

”That’s nice,” said Ben, downplaying the emotional gut punch as much as he was able. He’d been certain he’d see Leo’s obituary sooner rather than later.

”He’s working construction now. Does charity work on Saturdays.”

”Huh. Maybe we’ll see him on Earth 3.”

“Ben… I don’t know if I want to go.”

”What?”

”I’ve heard Earth 3 is pretty nice. Calm. Pious.”

“That’s kind of why we’re trying to get there, isn’t it?”

“The bad apples have mostly been left here to rot, and in the realms further down, too. There’s not much wrong on Earth 3 because everyone there wants to make it to Earth 2. Like, they’re actively working on it — being polite and fake and as good as they can be. Here, that’s not the case. Plenty have given up on moving. They’re happy with the grey morality. Some find it more fun, even.“

The unease grew in Ben’s gut. He could hear the angels song better now, louder, and was sure it was the broken melody of rejection — a song he knew well enough, that his own parents had sung when he’d been just a baby.

“This is everything we worked towards, Maya. Please don’t throw it away now.”

”Ben, if we keep going here… If we inspire more people like Leo, then what’s to say this can’t be Earth 3? But better, maybe. Because people want to be here, not just pass through it.”

”And you thought it’d be a good idea to talk about this now? On the evening before judgement?”

She shook her head. “No. I knew it wasn’t a good idea. And I’m sorry I left it so late. But it’s an idea that’d been growing recently. Avalnching even, and now it’s way too big for me to ignore. I hope you can understand that.”

It had been Maya’s idea, back when they’d been kids, to get into Earth 3 together. To help as many people as they could. It was an idea, she’d said, that was too big to ignore. She’d only been nine. They’d been orphans together.

He said, “I’m not going to be able to persuade you to go, am I?”

She shrugged. Her eyes glistened. “I don’t think so.”

“This’ll never be Earth 3,” he said.

”I know… But—“

”Not without us putting in a lifetime of work.“

It took Maya a moment to understand. Up until Ben squeezed her hand.

“You know,” he said, “we’re going to have to rob a bank or something at this point. Or commit a lot of petty crimes.“

Maya laughed. “You can reject the angels, you know.”

”Yeah,” said Ben. “But where’s the fun in that.”

They remained silent, staring at the clouds as the sky reddened. The unease in Ben’s belly was gone — the voices silent. He wondered now what had even been causing the feeling of unease. The thought of leaving, perhaps, rather than the idea of not making it. Either way, it was calm inside him now. As if everything was just how it was meant to be.

The Wishmaker’s Key

A trio of disturbing tales that hold a mirror up to your innermost fears, and that shine light on the bleakness of the human condition. Join us today for the first of these horrific stories, starring Richard Bankins, a milquetoast layabout who wishes to change his ways. A chance encounter with a mysterious stranger might just give him the supernatural impetus to do so.

Everyone has a story hidden behind the locked door of their soul. A door that can only be unlocked by… The Wishmaker’s key!

​

The Internet Falls

The internet was down.

The fucking internet was down!

Richard wiped sweat off his forehead as his eyes flicked between the red light on the router and the Netflix error message. He shovelled in a few more Doritos for a dusting of courage. The new episode of Picard would be out by now — and yes, true, he despised the show and believed it ruined the legacy of a something he was too young to have ever watched, but still! He loved to hate it, and that meant something.

And now… Now no Picard. What a cruel twist of fate. What had he done to deserve this?

The key! Of course, it had to be the key the old hobo had given him yesterday. Richard had flicked the scraggly bearded man a dime as he’d left Walmart. The man caught the coin in a dirty palm and rose from his nest of threadbare blankets as if Richard had charmed some kind of human looking snake.

“Many thanks, friend, for the cents. Now let me do you a favor in return.”

Richard thought the flash of silver to be a gun and had raised his hands, squirmed, begged for his life. But it was a key! A key as large as a good-sized child’s hand.

“Make a wish on this key and there’s a decent chance it’ll come true.”

”You’re kidding?”

”I kid you not.”

Richard had taken the key, partly out of fear, mostly out of curiosity. And later that evening, after binging The Last of Us for a third time and declaring on IMDB that it was overrated and overhyped, he made his wish.

“I wish I wasn’t so lazy and so addicted to the net. I want to go out and meet people. I want a real relationship, be it friendship or love. But I’m a compass pointing towards the magnetic north of the internet and I just can’t look away.”

Now, as Richard stared at the red light of the router, he thought of the key and knew his wish had been granted.

He was free. Totally free of it! Like a genie who had wished itself out of bottle it’d fallen inside of and then corked up. Free!

The world was his oyster.

Where would he go first though? The gym? The park? A walk in the woods? A nice soak at a hot spa perhaps?

A hot spa…

A hotspot?

He pulled out his phone and quickly, dextrously, set up a network.

Soon Picard was dottering through space and Richard was typing up his comments for Reddit.

What a lovely message! I’m thrilled you want to start writing again - I really hope you do. There’s nowhere better to get back on that horse than Writing Prompts, imo - not just for the inspiration but because people who read the stories are very supportive.

I really appreciate you going through the story and telling me what you liked/worked - it’s very useful, and just nice to hear.

Thanks again, and I hope you have an amazing day, too.

Aw thanks, and thank you for the cool prompt. I was short on time but really wanted to try writing for it :)

I sat outside with my son. Everyone sat outside that night, it seemed, or leaned out their windows and over their balconies. You’d think we were all trying to escape from something sinister indoors, and maybe we were. Maybe that’s what we’ve been trying to do for millennia.

We’d dragged out two slatted chairs from the kitchen so we could lounge and stare up at the sky. Andrew wore his WWE cap and a shirt that was too baggy on him but that didn’t used to be. It wasn’t the way a twelve-year-old should be growing — he shouldn’t be deflating.

”It’s amazing,” Andrew said, and I said I agreed, although I was maybe the only person that night not looking up. I hadn’t seen him smile much recently. Not the genuine type — just the brave plastic type he wore because he didn’t like to see me sad. So I didn’t look up.

“What do you think their wish was, exactly?” he said. “Because, like, they didn’t have pollution back then, right?”

”Not really,” I said. “Maybe whisks of smoke curled up from their fires. I doubt there was much more than that.”

”So, what do you think it was? The exact words?’

I thought a while. Wondered, if I saw a sky like this, what I’d wish for. “Maybe this person had this very same view, thousands and thousands of years ago. And it blew their mind so much that they wished to share it with everyone. That we could all see the heavens as clearly as them.”

”That’s cool.”

”It’s selfless,” I said. “I think if it had been me, I’d have wished for only me to have seen the sky like this every night. I just wouldn’t have thought beyond that. But whoever that was, they wanted us all to share in the beauty.”

This was the second night we’d been able to see the night sky so clearly — even in a city as bright as this. The sky had cleared up yesterday evening, as if god’s hand had swept over the dirt and cleansed the air itself. Not even light could pollute it now.

”Remember,” Andrew said, “how you used to tell me dad was a star and watching down on us?”

I felt a sudden, guilty nausea. Andrew had been young and I’d mostly said it to soothe him. Maybe to soothe me, too. He hadn’t mentioned it in a couple of years. “You remember that, huh?”

“We’d be able to see him now.” Andrew peered up at the stars, eyes slowly roving, seemingly taking each one in and assessing the possibility. Except there were millions. “Maybe, you know, after… Maybe I’ll be up there sitting next to him.”

I told him not to say such things and turned away as I wiped my eyes. Told him he was going to be fine — that he was strong and going to make it. But the shirt was so big on him, and nothing yet had worked, and I’d kept none of my promises so far, so I think he knew better than to trust to my new ones.

After a while he said, ”Do you really think it was someone’s wish?”

”What else could it be?“ I replied. “No one can explain it.”

“I hope it was.”

Before we went indoors, I finally looked up at the sky. I knew a wish would take thousands of years to reach the wishing star — if it even existed — and I knew that it might never come true. It wasn’t a wish for me, or even for Andrew. We were on our own now. And I knew I wouldn’t be around to see a wish I made take shape. But one day I hoped that no other parent or child had to go through this, so I closed my eyes and wished.

It is opening night.

In the center of the fair a dragon cranes his long neck high above the rides, lets moonlight slide over his scales like a jug of milk being poured. Master, a humanoid bug in top hat and red waistcoat, standing by the dragon’s clawed feet, laughs and slaps his six hands together and says, “Let there be light!”

Flames spout into the air as if a rocket is taking off. The queue gathered at the fair’s entrance, gold-leaf tickets clutched protectively to their chests, whoop and clap. The fair is open.

Beatrice is not thirsty but will drink tonight regardless. She stands outside her tent, between the two cardboard-teeth that drape down around the entrance. She inhales and holds in her stomach, lets it out again. She’s getting plump and she knows it. It’s incredible, she thinks, how many people are willing to pay to have their blood drained by a vampire. What a dull world it is must be for such people to exist. She is not one of the more popular attractions, except perhaps with housewives fresh from a steamy novel, and yet there will be a steady stream of paying customers tonight. More blood than she wants.

Beatrice watches Harry rotate his shell in the distance. Harry, once a travelling shoe salesman in a different life, is a gigantic snail with benches screwed into his shell. Later, he will undulate his body and rotate his shell to win screams from visitors.

Another burst of flame. Every five minutes Randolph cascades fire into the sky, blue, red, white — a light show, shadows cast, faces illuminated momentarily, the cold winter air shocked into warmth.

Beatrice hears the chants from outside the ground. On the fair’s first night in any town, the protestors are as much of a specatacle as the fare itself. They are their own festival of bibles and microphones, bubbling anger and frothing wine. Even the non-religious preach against the satanic creatures within the walls. Creatures like her.

Visitors are marching through now. The night has begun in earnest. Children point and run from freakshow to freakshow as parents hurry after them like their kids are housecats escaped.

”Look like you want to be here, Beatrice,” master demands. She hadn’t seen him scuttle to her tent, but he stands there now, whip in hand. She’s never seen him use it but wouldn’t be surprised if he had.

”I’m a vampire,” she retorts. ”They like us moody.”

”Well I like you seductive, smiling. Understand? You’re prettier when you smile.”

She understands well enough. There is nowhere else in this world for creatures like them. Without the security that comes from being part of this wandering pack, this bizarre family, there is only death. They are loathed as much as they are adored, often more so. If the master kicks her out it would be a death sentence.

Besides, where would she get her blood from? She can’t bear the thought of taking it from the unwilling.

Beatrice has her first customers. She bites neck after neck, careful to leave a twisted toothy imprint — a souvenir most desirable — and careful not to take too much for fear of bloating early. Still, the blood gives her a buzz and she lets herself enjoy this first night in town.

Giant Sarah strides by Beatrice’s tent on her break. She bends down, hand on back, and peels open the flap. “All good, Bee?”

Beatrice looks at Giant Sarah’s feet, mostly because that’s all she can see of the huge woman. They are blistered and bandaged, toes like smashed boulders. “What’s he had you doing, Sarah?”

”What’s he not?”

Beatrice knows she’s set up half the fair herself. Did most of the heavyy moving, as well as running the helter-skelter, constantly bending to pick up children and adults alike who want to ride the whirling slide.

”You need to take it easy,” says Beatrice.

The tent flaps fell back in place. “Yeah. I know,” drifts Sarah’s resigned voice as the ground rocks. “We all do.”

There are each under the same threat. Of being kicked out of their supposed family. But what can they do? Master saved them all. He’d gathered them, the freaks that they’d become, once they’d woken in this world. He’d been the one to come up with a plan that would keep them safe, had made deals with land owners to allow their fair to tour and set up.

Safe. Kept them all safe.

But not truly.

Beatrice doesn’t know his real name. No one does. He is the master of ceremonies, he said, and that was all.

Beatrice closes a little early tonight and stands outside her tent, watches her friends — the dragon forced to breathe fire on clockwork as his throat tears itself to ribbons,

She is careful as she meanders through the fair a few moments later, blends in with last visitors, navy hoody shading her face. She has never been in master’s caravan before, but tonight she creeps inside. He’s out by Tara the yeti now, who is gluing back hair that’s falling out in tufts under the stress.

Beatrice rifles through every drawer in the caravan, breaks open suitcases. It has to end, she thinks. They are being treated like animal, not a family. It’s time for the truth.

But there is no truth to find. Not in here. What was she expecting anyway? A diary saying his evil scheme of working them all to death is going wonderfully. Idiot, she thinks.

She’s about to leave when the door bursts open and master walks in. His eyes roam over the scene methodically, as if he’s ironing a shirt with his gaze.

He settles on Beatrice. “You’re done. I knew we shouldn’t have kept a vampire. Especially once you got fat. I want you out, tonight.”

In her old life she was married, had a child. She had love. In this life she has only misery.

Rage. She dives at master. She buries her teeth into his neck, cracking through carapace. He screams but the dragon fire outside is roaring louder.

She pulls her mouth away, smears his blood from off her lips, then gazes into his eyes. She’s only done this a handful of times before, and even then she wasn’t sure if it they were lucky guesses or she really did see into their minds.

This time she concentrates with her entire being. His pupils grow, the black water pooling deeper, wider. And she begins to see.

She sees him as young man in a different life. Sees him full of hate for the world but cannot see why. Sees a lust for control that he can never have. He is reading esoteric ancient texts, those about moving on, past lives and new lives, controlled reincarnation.

He is studying how to make bombs.

He is looking at maps. Areas densely populated. It does not matter to him who lives there, whose lives he’s ripping away, whose families are being deprived. Density, ease of access, that’s what matters.

She watches his grinning face as he sets the explosives.

It’s enough for her.

In a frezy she goes for his neck again. She will not stop though. She is a leech. She will take it all until master is a dried out husk.

​

Three nights later, with master still missing and presumed to have left the fair — perhaps run off with some local — the attractions pack themselves up and ready to move. Beatrice does not know whether to tell them what she found out, let alone what she did. Would it help them?

There is more laughter in the air than on usual leaving nights, more hope, Beatrice thinks. No one forced into roles, everyone simply working together.

He manages to find her in most of his lives. And he still loves her enough to fleetingly consider killing her, so that they can start over again, same age, nearer locations, maybe. Wouldn’t have to waste his life searching.

He runs his bulbous, gnarled fingers through reams of white and wiry beard. She’s thirty. It could never work, even if she remembered him. Least, not for very long. The doctors were currently propping him up with a dozen pills and a pacemaker — and still it wasn’t enough, still he was dying. Silver lining though: in previous lives, he’d have been dead a decade ago and would have left without finding her.

He’s sitting in a beat-up Dodge outsider her house; the Dodge has seen most of North America, its rear carpeted with sandwhich containers, bottles, cigarette packets, state maps swirled by red ink — possible locations where she might have been. He can usually narrow her down a little from what he knows: she’d want a job where she sees to a lot of people, always hated silence; will live just outside a city but never in, never suburbs. This only works in America and Europe so the times she starts elsewhere he rarely finds her.

There’s an old frayed teddy at the bottom of the passenger seat. Not that it’s the one her mother had given her as a child, the one that meant so much to her heart, but it’s similar. Once, a few lifetimes back, he found her and showed up with the teddy in his hands as if it was a bouquet of flowers, or perhaps a magical amulet that he’d hoped could bring back her memories. She’d just looked at him like he was odd. Had refused to accept it and closed the door.

Couldn’t blame her.

He sees her now in his rear mirror, walking hand in hand with two little girls, the orange sun above streaking through clouds like tinfoil. His heart does the same thing it always does, regardless of the medication trying to keep it calm. It squeezes, like there’s a fist in his chest clenching.

He hauls himself out the car and leans on it, watches them tread through yesterday’s snow, hears the meltwater slurp beneath their boots. He imagines lifting one of the girls on his shoulders, laughing, his beard brown again, his lungs cancer free.

It could be his life. It almost was, once. Not that they’d had kids, but they would have, they’d talked about it. Back then, boys were the golden ticket, but he’d have been just as happy either way.

Three years they’d been together before he was sent off on a boat to a war he knew nothing about, half the world away.

She’d thought he’d died. God, everyone must have thought it. He’d been imprisoned for a decade and when he’d returned, when his stopwatch began to tick again, he realised it was lagging badly behind everyone else’s.

She’d remarried and had children and he only had one arm and couldn’t compete nor provide so he didn’t stick around long after. He’d thought the pain of that discovery — of her moving forward and him stuck in time — far worse than the ten years in a cell; at least then he’d been able to strike up a fire on a kindling of memories and hopes and keep himself warm.

Then, after death: the soup kitchen. The hand of god, he’d thought, feeding his broken lips, nurturing and revitalising. But now he knows it was the devil’s hand moving the spoon to his mouth.

They’re opposite him now, on the other side of the road. One girl jumps in a puddle and giggles and their mother chastises her, albeit gently, for splashing them, and he knows she’s a good mother. He’s always known. The other girl sees him and stares. He wants to speak to her mother, to tell her a hundred lifetimes worth of tales. To tell her he still loves her after all of them, and will continue to after a hundred more.

But as always, he does not. The bear was as close as he ever got.

He holds up a calloused hand and the girl looking at him smiles in return.

He doesn’t stay to watch them walk into their drive. It’s cold out and he‘s coughing and he should really keep his next appointment — he doesn‘t like starting over and remembering that he remembers.

He takes a last look at the family then tucks away the memory, notes how happy they look. It’s memories like this that somehow make him feel a little warmer next time around, although he doesn’t quite understand why.

Congrats winners! Thank you mods for organising this again

Thanks for the interesting prompt, and for reading!

It was a Tuesday evening, I was hours from graduation — to becoming a semi-qualified hero — and it was the day I’d die.

“They turn them into supervillains,” I sputtered, face tomato-red, outrage almost suffocating me. We’d just come from of our final lecture, the last secrets of herohood revealed to us during it. ”Gaslight them into become villains. It’s not that they’re bad people, but they’re made bad.”

It was me, Corpse Kenny, and Jen Phoenix. We were stewing together in an empty locker room. They sat on slatted benches, heads down, as I marched back and forth in front of them. We’d gotten friendly over the last few months. Not my initial intention — my intention had been purely to scope out the hero course and to use any knowledge gained to my later advantage.

“We’re not fighting to make a difference,” said Jen Phoenix, not bitterly, just ruefully. A single flame of bright red danced over the fingers of her left hand, back and forth, back and forth.

“We’re fighting to not make a difference,“ said Corpse Kenny. Corpse Kenny was born with two skeletons, an extra on the outside. It was like he was wearing an armoured shell at all times. Not the greatest power, but he was as brave as a bullet.

I continued my polemic, “We wear sponsorships slogans on our cloaks and costumes. Come out of battles looking victorious against the scum of the earth. For what? To sell another cola. This whole thing’s rigged. We’re pawns.” By ‘we’ I’d meant villains — people like me. People tormented by the system, orphaned and mistreated, rejected by society and told it’s all just bad luck or our attitudes. But no, that was a lie; it’s premeditated rejection. Forcing us to become villains so the heroes have someone to defeat.

“People like us are getting used,” said Jen.

The pipes in floor beneath us screeched, twisting in response to my balled fists. I controlled copper. Not much of a power — but if I had a decent power they wouldn’t have made me a villain. I’d have been too dangerous. Too much of a risk to defeat.

”I don’t think I can do this,” said Kenny. “The hero thing.”

”Because it’s not a hero thing,” said Jen. She patted his hand. “And you’re a hero.”

The three of us had grown close, even choosing to group together during some practice missions. There was a purity to the pair of them that I had at one point hated — an innate goodness. I’d wanted to get near to them to slowly corrupt it, to make them see the world as I did.

But I knew better now. There is no world as I see it, or as they see it. There is only the world how the powerful see it.

The pipes groaned under the weight of my rage. I’d need to be careful; a water leak would give us away. And then a thought occurred.

”We could destroy this place,” I said. “We could destroy the Ministry of Heroes. Reset the entire game.“

”What?” said Jen, the flame leaping off her hand and down to the wet tiles where it extinguished in a sizzle.

”We destroy it. We flood it. Or we burn it down. All files and records. And then we show the world who did it — heroes about to graduate from this very institute. We’ll show the system is flawed. We’ll make everyone rethink. Or at least think for the first time in their lives*.*”

”I don’t know if I can,” said Kenny. “Ma thinks I’m a hero. She loves this placed and cried the day I got accepted. If she saw me destroy it…“

”I’ll take the blame then,” I said. “You two just need to help me do it. I’ll say that I forced you into helping me or I’d kill you both.”

Jen looked up. Her blue eyes met mine, hovered. I wondered if she’d imagined the same world I had over these last few months; a world where we graduate and we leave all this behind. Heroes, villains, all in our rearview mirror. We start something new together — a remote gas station far from the city, anything.

”I’m in,” she said. “This rot needs to burn.”

Her eyes flared bright with the hot hope of something better.

I should have known they were listening in. Of course — if they made villains then they knew who I was and would have been monitoring me this entire time. And they didn’t need cameras. They had supers who could feel every word said through the vibrations of the building.

They burst in. Heroes we’d all seen on television. The most powerful, popular.

”Sorry,” said Dr Bend. “But we can’t let you do that. You’d ruin a much too good a thing.”

There were eight of them; three of us.

”You,” Bend said, smirking at me. “You helped us find two more potential villains. Helped us kill them, too. For that, I thank you.”

Kenny charged forward yelling: Bastards.

Dr Bend was too fast.

With the sickening cracks of both Kenny’s spines, it became eight of them, two of us.

The piping in the ceiling, walls, floors, gutted itself as it coiled like an anaconda around the group of heroes, locking them in position, squeezing their life. For a second, I dared think I had them.

AntiMatter thought differently. The copper rusted like a dry autumn leaf between a child’s fingers. Dusted to the ground.

I looked at Jen and hoped my look said a lifetime of words. Then I ran at them

I felt my neck click. Then I was gurgling on the ground, coughing up a pool of red.

Someone laughed as I slowly died.

My final memory was of fire. Of the great flame that leapt from Jen, who had become blue and white, as fierce, wrathful, and beautiful as the sun itself.

They screamed as they burned.

​

***

​

Hours later we woke. The three of us. We weren’t fully reformed yet, our dust still pulling together like iron filings to magnets, our consciousness still rebuilding.

Phoenix.

I’d never known she had a second ability.

Maybe she hadn’t either.

For a moment our dust connected — me and Jen — as our minds rebuilt. We shared a single thought, or maybe it was all our thoughts.

An orange horizon unfurling to the distance like god’s palm. Sycamores whisking in a dusty breeze. A little gas station, the only building for many miles, with a cat sitting on the roof. Two people beneath the veranda, lazily rocking back and forth, sipping on iced teas with not a care in the world.

When I returned to 221B, I found the curtains closed and Holmes deep in rumination within the darkness. Only his hawk-like features were visible, seemingly perched on the armchair, lit by the flickering blaze of his pipe. He didn’t seem to notice me enter and I wondered what else, besides tobacco, he’d been ingesting in my absence.

“Had a good day, Holmes?” I tried. Then, when no response was forthcoming, I said, “The Royal Family have all been murdered and really it seems an impossible affair. If only someone were interested in investigating.”

Of course, Holmes was too lost in his own morphine dreams to hear a word I had to say. There was a chill in the air. I drew the curtains then went to make the fire.

”Watson, you’re back,” said Holmes, as I adjusted the logs.

”It seems so,” I said.

”I have a question. What does death of the author mean to you?”

”Mm. Apart from a pretentious attempt at furthering literary criticism?”

”Yes. Apart from that.”

”Apart from that, I’d say it’s what‘ll happen to me if you can’t stay off the damned substances and bring yourself to solve something.”

”Droll,” he said.

”I mean it though, Holmes. If not for my sake, for your own. Your mind is being wasted here. It’s rotting away. And your mind is too great to waste.”

”What if it’s not my mind solving these cases, Watson? What if it’s never been?”

“Then I’d like a little more credit for my part.”

”Droll again. You’re on a roll.”

I lit a match and threw it on the fire. The fire’s crackle merged with rain tapping on the window and created something of a soporific atmosphere. I stretched, yawned, and toppled myself into a leather armchair next to my friend.

“Anything good in the paper?” I asked, picking it up.

“Good? What constitutes good, exactly?”

”A murder, a robbery — anything to to give you purpose and get you out of this room for an hour or two.”

”Watson, here, do you not find it funny that every story you have documented — well, perhaps documented is too strict of a term — that every story you have embellished into your particular form of entertainment has a most satisfactory ending for the reader?”

”Reluctantly, I do think the credit for the endings goes to you.”

”But they’re all so neat, Watson. So perfect. Each one like a sheet of origami creased along the exact correct lines until it folds into a complete solution.“

I didn’t know what to say to that. “I suppose they are neat. And what’s wrong with that, pray tell?”

”Nothing for readers of the Strand, I dare say. But for real life? Everything! What about chaos theory, Watson? What about the mess that is itself life. Not everything we do is a string with two ends. Sometimes scissors cut the string into pieces and the pieces become lost and can never be stitched back together.”

”You’ve overdone the morphine, and the metaphor.”

”I’ve not touched any morphine!” he rebutted, indignant. “Cocaine on the other hand…”

”Ah, I should have known.”

”But my thoughts have been brewing far longer than the cocaine has been inside me. The world is too neat by far. The stories you write are too satisfying. They are as if you are tracing over letters already written.”

I placed down the newspaper. “What are you trying to say Holmes? That someone has set up all these crimes for you to solve? Some mastermind of criminality?”

”Not of criminality. Just a mastermind.”

”And your evidence is solely that you solve almost every case?”

”Precisely.”

I considered this a while. Imagined that we were characters in a book. In a series of stories. That someone had the good sense to place the two of us together. To set a crackling fire and let the clouds open and to place a bottle of whiskey on the table by my side.

I yawned as I poured us each a drink.

”If we’re but characters in stories,” I said passing Holmes a glass, “then here’s to many more being written. For the writing is indeed worthy of more stories, wouldn’t you say?”

Holmes’s frowned. Then smiled. He took the glass, a sip, and a long look out of the window. “Quite, Watson. Quite.”

There’s not enough sunlight for the trees to grow as they once did. They’re short, stubby things now. They’re like children deficient of vitamins, their spines curved, life-expectancy reduced.

All the same, trees do grow again in this corpse of a city. They broke through the ancient concrete like fists battering layers of sheet-ice until it cracked.

I sit on a patch of weeds in front of a crackling fire. The day — or night — is grey and shadowed. The clouds are swirls of black and purple that won’t settle in my lifetime. I feel like I am in a box, or a coffin perhaps, and the lid has been shut on me.

I throw more wood onto the fire then cook a skewered rat over the blaze. The fire leaps excitedly at the food.

The city teems with rats and trees and fruit that rots before it ripens. It is life after death for the city, like poppies growing on a battlefield. But it will never be what it was. There was a time I’d spend my days searching the city, hoping to find something but not knowing what that something was. Now, I barely move. Only to catch food and to cook.

I throw a piece of well-browned meat onto the fire. Then I lean back and try to read my book in the firelight hoping it distracts me from the pain. There is no cover to the book and I can’t be sure of the author, but I think it’s a classic. A slice of American life when the American dream was whole but rippled — like a stick had poked a watery reflection, but the reflection was still just about visible.

“It’s kind of you,” says a voice. “But I’d appreciate my meat less well done.”

It’s the first voice I’ve heard in a decade.

I hold my trembling arms together at my chest as a woman approaches my fire. Sits calmly opposite me.

“Are you… are you real?” I ask, in a raw unpracticed voice.

It wouldn’t be my first hallucination.

Her features are silhouetted, the darting flames only lighting up to her neck.

“It’s impressive,” she says.

I shake my head. I’m at a loss. “What is?”

”That your faith is still with you after so long. After everything.”

“Who are you?”

”The person at the other end of the phone.” She smiles — I see her white teeth even in the semi-darkness. “I’ve been listening to your calls. Every night for almost forty years. You believe you’re the last, don’t you?”

”The last?”

”The last person.”

”Oh.” It’s a thought I’ve suffered many times — it’s the lid that closed my coffin. I haven’t seen anyone since leaving the sewer. Not a soul. And if I was the last, if I allowed myself to believe it, then what would be the point? Humanity would have already ended and I would be a scene playing after the credits. Why would I keep wandering if there was no hope, or future — if there’s nothing more than this?

”They’re doing well,” she says. “I’m looking after them.”

“Them?”

”Your prayer.”

I try to laugh. “Prayer? I don’t pray. It’s clear there’s no god or the world wouldn’t look like this. I wouldn’t be like this.“ I tap the stump of my right foot with my walking stick. A slight cut turned infectious turned self-amputation. Since then, my search for others has stopped. Now I wait in this city, hoping someone finds me instead.

“You pray for them not yourself,” she says. “That they’re happy. That they’re taken care of. Your parents. Your wife. Your children. You pray for this each time you eat. Are you really that torn that you can’t remember your prayer?”

”I don’t believe in god.”

She smiles again. “And yet you pray. Subconsciously, perhaps. Every single meal. Because deep down, below all the pain and hate, you do believe. You need to.“

”You’re not real,” I say. I‘ve known it since she sat down but now I’m firm in my belief.

“You pray for you dog, too. You hope animals end up in heaven. You hope you’ll see them all again.”

Tears cut trails through the dirt on my face.

“You’re not real,” I say, softer.

She stands now. Walks around the fire until she is sitting by my side.

”You hung on so long,” she says.

”I…”

”You hang on still.”

”…Why? Why do I?”

”Because to be human is to hope.”

She touches my leg. Moves a hand slowly down my calf to my stump.

“Your amputation wasn’t enough. Your blood is still poisoned.”

I don’t look down at it; instead I look at the velvet coffin-box sky. I’d hoped to live but I’m not going to.

“You’re here to take me, then?” I say. “You’re something people see in their own mind, to come to terms with their death.”

She tilts her head. “I’m here to thank you. For never giving up on me or yourself or on those you loved. On your faith. And I promise I’ll look after them for you.”

She presses her hand hard against my calf and I feel my body pulse, as if my blood is being drawn to her palm.

“What is…”

”Shhh,” she says. “Rest now. Tomorrow is a new day. You’re not the last. Keep your hope alive.”

I want to struggle, fight, I want to ask a hundred questions, but a tiredness floods my veins and I fall slowly back on the bed of weeds.

​

When I wake, she is gone. I am well rested. I feel like I have slept long and deep.

I look up at the sky. There seems to be a glimmer of light on the horizon, as if the coffin’s lid has been opened just a crack.

I imagine the trees growing a little taller next year.

After breakfast, I begin my search about the city. Perhaps today I will find something.

Thanks, I really appreciate that! And yes, I think one of the best parts of stories is being able to project and make up our own bits.

It’s not my name but I also really like it. I was thinking of an old movie star, Errol Flyn, when it came to naming this guy. And thank you :)

Aw thanks for reading, Rice, and for the award. Really kind of you :)

Errol had been the first and final man to visit her on her rock-pool island in the uncharted sea. He’d been a handsome captain of an exploration vessel, and when her wailing had hit his ship like a vile storm, when mens’ ears bled and they begged for mercy, it had been Errol who’d tied cloth around each of their ears, dampening the terrible sound. It’d been Errol who’d rowed alone in a smaller vessel to find her.

To stop her.

Now, many years later, she watched this new vessel with interest, her mouth — for now — closed.

Although this ship was much larger than Errol’s had been, it wore the same livery and flags as Errol’s ship once had. Bore the same topless goddess carving as its figurehead.

​

—

​

Men and women screamed alike as the sea bubbled up around their ship. Babies wept in their mothers’ arms. The ship moaned, rocked. Lifted.

”Where’s the captain?” yelled Maria, struggling against the rolls of water that rushed through the inside of the ship.

Morgan, the dogsbody, pointed to the stairs, said, ”At the wheel. Not that it’s—“ Salt water sprayed against him, a wave threw him to the floorboards.

”Here, take my hand.” Maria helped the boy to his feet then made her way up the stairs, knuckles red as she gripped the bannister each time a wave battered against her.

”Captain!” she yelled, stumbling towards him like a drunk. “Captain!”

When the captain saw her, he took the rope from off his own waist and tied it around hers. “It’ll keep you from being washed away.”

“What’s happening?”

“I made a mistake. I shouldn’t have brought us this way. It’s where Errol vanished — I knew it as well as anyone. Better, even. This sea is cursed!”

”That was a century ago! It’s a legend, nothing more. And if you—”

Her mouth remained open but no words left.

The creature rose above them.

It blotched out the sun and shadowed the ship. Loomed over it like a tidal wave of scales and teeth.

A tentacle as thick as a tree crashed down on the deck near to them, splintering wood.

”God help us.”

-

Errol had landed on the pebble beach; she was sure he’d come to kill her. His head was wrapped by shawl and scarf.

Her singing was of no use.

She swiped at Errol with her clawed hands as he tried to clamber out of his boat.

”Please!” he said. “I come unarmed. I come with only peace in my heart.”

​

So long ago, she thought. She held a piece of cloth that had once covered Errol’s ears and watched as the Kraken rose above the latest ship.

-

A body lay next to Maria. A man — one of the few soliders on the transport vessel — lay crushed, chest flattened.

She untied the rope from her waist, then uncurled the dead man’s fist and took the spear from his hand.

”Maria, don’t be a fool!” yelled the captain.

She charged towards the tentacle wrapped around the mast, as it slowly cracked the wooden pole like a spine.

She shouted over her shoulder, “You have a better plan?”

He didn’t. He had no plan at all.

She thrust the spear through the scales and into the wet flesh.

The creature didn’t even flinch.

The mast snapped. Fell.

“Maria!”

-

Errol had stayed with her. His ship had sailed on without him, as he had instructed. He wasn’t sure how his plan would pan out — if he’d calm her or only enrage her further.

”Your singing,” he’d said. “It… It repels people. It hurts them.”

She had meant it to. It was the song of her heart. As tar-black as the depths of the sea.

She could not swim and had been stranded here as a child, a freak of gods and demons, on this lonely rock, to live off whatever washed up in the pools. To harbour hatred for all she was jealous of.

Here she had been for centuries.

It was her heart’s song. It was all she could sing.

And yet, she couldn’t bring herself to kill him. Not yet, at least.

She made Errol tell her of life outside of the island.

Eventually, she told him about life on it.

They fished together that night.

Cooked by fire.

Told stories of the stars.

Slowly, over many weeks, they became enchanted with each other’s quiter siren song.

-

The captain jumped at Maria and they tumbled to the floor as the mast collapsed.

Too slow. His left foot was caught, crushed. He lay trapped.

Maria had his hand, tried to free him as a tentacle rose above them.

”It’s okay,” he said. “We had a good run, didn’t we?”

”It’s not over.”

He smiled against the pain. They both knew it was.

​

And then came the sound.

A melody that seemed to rise from within each of them and make its way outward. But that wasn’t right; it was on the air, in the breeze and water. A melody so delicate and wondorous that it seemed written by the gods themselves.

The captain thought it was the song of cherubs who must be, even now, taking him beyond.

”The sound,” said Maria. “It’s like a harp being strummed in my heart. It’s beautiful.”

The tentacle, high in the air above them, slowly lowered, gently, back into the sea.

The creature itself rocked slowly as it settled and sank peacefully into the water, lulled into a deep, deep rest.

​

-

She watched the ship long after the Kraken slumbered, as the people on board repaired it the best they could.

She sang for them as the worked. All the while she held the precious rags to her chest.

Whether these people visited her after or sailed away, she didn’t mind. She didn’t feel lonely.

She was glad just to have sung the new song that possessed her heart.

Great dialogue!

Thanks, that‘s really kind of you! I do have a subreddit but it’s not got any more of this story (and hasn’t been updated in a while) so I won’t link — but I appreciate you asking <3

The rain throws itself like clumps of sand against the waiting room’s windows. It comes in waves, as if there’s a giant the other side thrumming their fingers on the glass.

The girl squeaks open the door and squeezes through. Her pink hair’s pasted by the rain onto her forehead and neck, like melted cotton candy.

I nod to welcome her.

She puffs out a breath of steam. “Hey.”

She sits two benches away from me. There’s no one else here tonight. She shivers. Tries not to, to hide her feelings, but it’s cold in here and she’s soaking.

I’m not a gentleman, or even close, but I remove my jacket and throw it next to her. “It makes a good towel.” If there was anything better in the bag at my feet, I’d give it to her.

“No thanks,” she says.

Stubborn. Defiant. “Suit yourself.”

”When’s the next train due?” she asks. She mustn’t have seen the overgrowth strangling the station, the twisted-spines of the railway track. It is dark, the moon and stars swallowed by clouds — easy to miss the dilapidation. She wouldn’t have asked if she had seen any of it.

And yet, a train will come.

”Not until the morning.”

She shivers again.

“Use it,” I say. “You won’t owe me anything for it. I’m not your stepfather.“

She looks at me, wide eyed, two twitchy turquoise pools. Doesn’t say anything though — it could just be a lucky guess on my part, after all. She takes my cotton jacket and dries her hair, looks like a bird who has shaken itself after a bath. She covers a yawn.

“It’ll be a long night yet,” I say. “You might want a little rest. I always think clearer after a good night’s rest. Everything looks better the next morning, don’t you think?”

“Why are you here if there’s no train until tomorrow?”

”In case anyone comes here.“

She frowns. ”So… You work here?”

“No.”

”Then why are you—”

She sees the blood on the cotton jacket. Looks at me, searching for a wound, hoping to find one. Then, when she fails, she reaches up and touches her own head.

”What the hell? What the hell?”

Now it’s fear causing her to shiver.

“You wanted to know why I’m here. It’s because I don’t believe anyone should be alone before their journey,” I say.

Her hand is covered in blood. Her pool of memories, leaked empty for a time, are refilling.

”He will be punished, if that’s of any comfort. I promise you that. And I will make sure he does not get to ride this train.”

She gasps at her thoughts. At the violence she’s recalling.

She is fifteen. She will never be older.

“You knew,” she whispers. “What are you?”

”A friend. And you are safe in my home.”

She looks around. The rain taps taps taps.

Only the sound of rain for a long while.

”You live here?”

”You should rest,” I say. “The bleeding has stopped. The rain made it run, that’s all. You’re safe now.”

”Am I…”

”Yes.”

”Oh.”

She says nothing else. Doesn’t cry. Just thinks.

Yawns, eventually.

When she finally sleeps, jacket balled beneath her head, I walk over to her with my bag. It is not the same teddy bear her real father had given her, that she lost when she was nine, but it looks the same. If I could leave this room, I would find the original for her. As it is, this is the best I can manage.

I tuck it into the nook of her elbow.

One is never too old for such comfort.

I return to my seat and wait for the storm to pass, for the pale light of the morning train that will take her to the place beyond.

And I will wait, as always, for the next lost soul.

Alex spritzed the bookstore with the bergamot air spray he kept beneath the counter for just these types of emergencies. The last customer had brought a Starbucks pumpkin-spiced latte in with them that hadn’t so much fragranced the air with a scent of Halloween as it had polluted it. Made the atmopshere toxic and unbreatheable for him.

This was Alex’s least favourite day in the calendar by quite some distance. It was the day people dressed as creatures that had tormented him since childhood. As the werewolf that had attempted to abduct him from his cot, as the vampire that sunk teeth into his arm as he slept, as the beautiful gorgon that had tried to turn him into a stoner at college. Well, perhaps that last one hadn’t been a supernatural creature. And perhaps Alex should have taken a drag. But letting go of inhibitions, letting himself off-gaurd… it wasn’t easy. Maybe it wasn’t possible.

He’d liked that girl too. That had been on a Halloween as evening‘s curtain was falling. He’d told her he disliked this night and she’d promised she’d look after him. Help him relax. But of course, as always, he’d ruined it. Refused to relax and left. Never saw her again after that.

He glanced at a wall-clock hanging above a stack of discounted Stephen King books. Even in a second-hand store like this, you had to cater to what customers wanted. And today, they wanted horror.

It was 6 P.M. Another hour and he could close the store and go home and lock the doors and not answer the bell and drink heavily enough to fall into something a bit like sleep.

The bell above the door clanged and in came a young boy or girl wearing a mask that looked a bit like Gollum except it had two fanged mouths next to each other. One for the main course, one for desert, perhaps.

“Can I help?” Alex managed.

The masked-child shook their head ran their fingers along a row of horrors. Along their spines. Alex imagined a sharp fingernail running along his spine too and shivered.

“Just looking,” said the kid.

Just get out, Alex thought. You’re not going to buy anything anyway. But he said nothing, inhaling the scent of bergamot to calm his nerves.

Halloween still somehow hung in the air. The bad smell you can’t get rid of. Just a few notes but enough that he could detect the pumpkin drink’s remnants. Like a shadow still hanging after its owner left. Inside Alex’s mind the smell held hands with other bad scents: rot, blood, sewage, filth. Unwanted images flickered in his mind like an old projector flashing on a half-collapsed alley wall.

The vampire, when he’d been a kid, would have abudcted him. Alex had been bitten and was in a fugue when he’d opened his bleary eyes. He was in the creatures pale arms, lifted with ease out of his bed. His heart beat against his ribs. “Please…”

Then he heard something strange and soothing. Music but without words. Just a calming melody. His heartbeat slowed and his eyes heavied. He woke to sunrise, back in his bed. The wounds on his neck already scarred over. Mostly healed but their memory left as a tattoo-like abrasion.

Where had the kid in the mask gone?

Alex had drifted into his own world and couldn’t see the child now. But the bell hadn’t gonged so they were still in the store behind one of the stacks or shelves.

He shivered again. Felt uneasy.

”Hey, kid?” he said. “Sure you don’t need any help?”

No reply so Alex began his search. Not behind the horror shelves or the SciFi or the fantasy. Alex glanced behind a row full of tattered history books when the doorbell finally rang. The kid had left the shop.

Alex leaned back against the history books and let out a long sigh. Now he was worried about kids? How pathetic had he gotten. He was meant to be an adult. Fully functional and all that.

The truth was, everything he’d seen as a kid — the horrors that had happened to him — had only ever been in his mind. The therapists had all said so. And yet Alex couldn’t accept it. He’d turned a bad childhood, an abondement, into fantasy and conspiracy. And if he couldn’t pull himself out of the fantasy then he’d live a lonely and pathetic exis—

The kid jumped down at him from on top of the shelf. No mask now. As the nails that had become claws sunk into his face, he saw the child for what it was. An old man’s face on a boy’s body. Twisted and yellow-toothed, red-eyed, no eyelids. Like an old man’s corpse had been beheaded and stitched onto this body.

”You’ll come with me one way or another,” it rasped.

The creature’s head thudded into Alex’s. Again. And again.

The world kaladiscoped. His vision twisted like his stomach might on a roller coaster. He could taste his own blood as it rolled into his mouth.

He stumbled back, tripped, fell on carpet. The kid-creature was tearing chunks of skin off his chest. It was trying to kill him. But it wanted him alive, didn’t it?

Maybe it just wanted to cause pain.

Alex screamed but the creature’s fist connected with his chin and closed his jaw.

If it wanted to cause pain, it was succeeding. Please, just hurry and be over with it, Alex thought.

And then… Something strange… A tune he vaguely recognised: mournful, hopeful, beautiful.

The creature paused, sitting on top of Alex’s mutilated chest. It looked left, then right. Slowly. Cautiously, Alex thought. As if afraid.

Then blackness took Alex.

When he woke, lying behind the counter, he wasn’t alone. A girl he recognised was patting something like sand into his wounds.

”I would have loved to have had this done before you woke,” she said with a soft smile. “But this’ll take longer than the scar on your neck did.”

Alex didn’t speak. He could have, he thought. But what would he say? He knew this woman. He hadn’t seen her in almost a decade when they’d played music together and she’d smoked weed and tried to get him to relax. Someone who seemed protective of him — a rare thing in his life.

“You haven’t aged?” he said.

”Sirens don’t tend to,” she replied. “If we did, we wouldn’t be much good at luring sailor to rocks, right?”

”I guess not.” He couldn’t work out if she was joking. Or at least how much of what she said was joking.

”Don’t worry about your young friend, by the way. He’s gone now. And he won’t be back.”

They were silent for a while as she mended his wounds with tender fingers and the sand-like substance.

”Why me?” he said, eventually. “Why do they want me?”

“They believe you’ll eradicate us all. Us mythical creatures, or whatever you want to call us. They think that if they don’t take you captive, that’s what will eventually happen.”

”But… Why the hell do they think that? I’m… I can barely run a bookshop. I’m neurotic!“

”It doesn’t matter why. What matters is they think so.”

He took a long shakey breath. He didn’t believe it. He barely believed a siren was tending to his wounds even though that was happening in front of him. ”I don’t think I believe it,” he said.

”Maybe that’s why it’s you,” she said. “Because you refuse to believe in so much. Most especially in yourself. And we, well we all need belief to go on existing. Or maybe that’s not why they’re after you at all. Maybe you’re a cliche, like the child of a god and goddess — who can really say?”

”Do you believe it though? That I’ll be responsible for ending your race?”

“I believe you deserve your own shot at your own life. I don’t think your life should be dictated by what others believe or want. It’s your life.“

They were silent for a long while after that. Silent until he said, “Thank you.” It was only then he noticed how similar her green eyes were to his. How her chin curved gently like his. How…

She smiled. “You’re welcome.”

Then the lullaby came again, more soothing and beautiful than before, and he began to drift into a long sleep.

“I was around my girlfriend’s house meeting her parents for the first time,” says my friend. “I was maybe only seventeen. Anyway, they serve onion soup to start with, which was great, super strong just how I like it. But two minutes in and I catch them all looking at me — my girlfriend, her older brother, parents — all staring at me.” He shrugs. “I figure they’re looking to see what I think of the soup, and I give them the thumbs up and carry on eating. Later, after the meal, my girlfriend is pretty mad at me. She asks if I tried to ruin the meal on purpose.” My friend pauses here.

”On purpose?’ I ask, providing my minimal part in the conversation. I’ve never been much of a conversationalist but in the last year or so I’ve almost turned mute.

”Turns out I’d been slurping the soup extremely loudly. Every spoonfull of it. Slurrrp. Slurrrp. My girlfriend called my behaviour unbearable. We didn’t see each other much longer after that.“ He smiles and sips his beer.

”So… That’s when the past lives started coming back to you?”

”You got it in one,” he says. “If this was golf you wouldn’t even need to putt. In one of my lives slurping was how I — my community — showed pleasure at the food we were devouring. And the onion soup was really good. It would have been rude not to slurp. At least, in my mind it would have been.”

Me and my old school friend are at a bar sipping half-empty beers. It’s a tacky ocean themed bar with plastic eels and starfish and seahorses dangling from the ceiling, radiating pools of imitation bioluminescense. Blues and purples. The seahorse above our table flickers every so often.

It’s the first time I’ve seen my friend in ten years. He’s handsome but he’s aged more than I expected — his hair still dark but wrinkles and crows feet settling deep into his face like fingers into wet clay.

“Back then,” my friend says, “I didn’t realize it was a past-life thing. It just seemed like I was doing what I was supposed to be doing, you know? Like at some point in my seventeen years someone had told me slurping at dinner with your girlfriend was a good idea. But a year or two after that, I start to remember more details. I remember my life in Japan. I remember my life in France. I get confused with who I am now because of who I was then. It’s all one great big muddle.”

We‘ve finished our beers so I get us another round then sit back beneath the flickering seahorse.

“How do you deal with it?” I ask. “I’ve had one life and thirty years in it. And that’s still too many memories that I don’t need.”

”You don’t deal with it. Or at least, I didn’t. That’s why I went AWOL.”

I frown. “What do you mean?”

”I was in an institute for five years. I couldn’t cope with the memories.“

”Whoa,” I say, unsure what else to say. I’d figured he’d gone travelling. He’d always been adventurous. The kind of kid who wanted to make the most of their one life on the planet. The fact he hadn’t gotten in contact with me during that time hurt a little, but wasn’t entirely unexpected.

“It’s okay,” he says. “Or it is now. But back then, boy. The memories flooded back and drowned me. My life in France ended in the trenches and for a while all I could see at nights were dead friends I’d never even met. How do you deal with that when you’re not even twenty and think of yourself as a pacifist? And that’s not even the worst of it.”

I felt bad. Why hadn’t I bothered to search for him? To check he was okay? Instead, ten years on, it’s my friend who got in contact with me. He saw my profile on some social media channel and wanted to see how I was doing.

”It gets worse than trenches?’ I say.

”Yes. Sort of. I mean, I’ve lost so many parents and children and loved ones that it’d make your head spin. Ah sorry, I shouldn’t mention that — I hope it doesn’t upset you?”

I raise a hand and give a meek smile. “It’s fine. It’s nothing compared to yours.”

“We all have our own demons,” he says. “Squatting on our shoulders. There’s no point comparing them. But okay, look, there’s a reason why most people don’t remember this stuff. It drives you mad to remember it. Forgetting past lives is evolution at work. We remember important bits — stay away from snakes, don’t sleep in a tree in case you fall, don’t eat bright red berries — and we lock away the rest. Except, sometimes, like with me, the hinges on the safe door crack and out it all spills.”

We have another beer and talk about sport instead, then about school.

”Yeah,“ he says, grinning at each and every school anecdote I have. “I forgot all about that. Man, we had some good times.”

Eventually, I ask what’s been on my mind, “How did you do it? How are you like this?“

”What do you mean?”

”You got out of the institute. You seem to be coping fine now. The memories aren’t crushing you.” I grab my sweating pint glass and clasp it on the table between my two hands, like if I let go of it it’ll fall and break. “How did you do it?”

He looks an me earnestly, holds my gaze and thinks a while. “They got me to concentrate on other memories. When I think of my life in France, I think of my childhood with my parents, of art, friends, poetry, gathering grapes from the vines, anything that made me happy there. I forced myself to do this each time memories of that life came into my head — I’d search for the best bits of that life. Then, I’d do it for the next life, and the next, and the next.”

I don’t pick up my glass. It feels too heavy, even thought it’s only half-full now.

“Eventually,” he says, “you learn to turn down the brightness on the worst parts and turn it way up on the good. The bad doesn’t go, but it fades a little into the background. It allows the better times to come into focus.”

”That sounds… difficult.”

”It’s not easy to do,” he says. “It takes time. But past lives do become past, become memories. It’s possible to live in the present again.”

aw, thanks for reading :)

My friend had this kid who had the number one dangling over his head like an exclamation mark. Like a warning. I didn't tell me friend about this for years. What do you say to someone whose kid has a one? Hey, you know your only child who you love dearly? Well, hate to be the bearer of bad news but he murdered someone. Nope, can't tell you who, just that he did. Well, cheers, let's get another round.

I'm not very smart but I'm smart enough to not say something so dumb as that.

He was a twitchy kid, pale, tall, spent too long indoors if you ask me. Had no friends. He was eleven when I first met him, when he came to the bar with his dad 'cause there was no one at home to look after him. Youngest kid I'd ever seen with a one hanging over them. It looked like a rope heading down to his neck, ready to curl around it.

I can't say I was ever nice to the boy. Why should I be? I was cruel instead, at least when I could get away with it. If I saw him running home from school in a storm, I'd drive straight past. Why would I give a murderer a lift, or shelter from the rain? It felt like he deserved my petty cruelties.

I tell you this because it seems somehow relevant. See, last night at dinner I see that same rope-like one hanging above my son's head. Above my own kid's head!

My kid is five. He was only over with me for the weekend and hadn't even out the house during the day so how the hell could he have a one above his head?

I questioned him. I'm not proud to say this but I questioned him until he cried and then until I cried. The numbers are never wrong -- everyone I've looked into, that I've been able to track down, has led to an old murder. You got a number over your head, you've killed another human.

I love my son. So what the hell had he done?

"You can tell me," I said, at the same time knowing how dumb it was to speak to a five year old like this. He couldn't have killed anyone. Right?

And yet he must have.

&#x200B;

I told my friend about his son in the end -- or at least, I made my friend confess. His kid was sixteen then. Me and my friend were hitting it hard in an old English pub that sold ale fit for melting your heart. I wasn't in a good place at the time -- my wife had taken the kid and left recently. Her leaving was on me but what could I do apart from drink and feel sorry for myself? It felt like my only option. I still loved her and I loved my kid, I just hated myself.

My friend, on the other hand, was going toe-to-toe with me just because I needed a friend. He was a single father, like me, but he'd been in the situation for years longer. He was used to it, I guess. And he understood my pain.

The ale soon dissolved my inhibitions and I got to thinking about his kid. About the number hanging over the boy's head and how it came to be.

"What if your child turned out to be a murderer?" I said, as nonchalant as I was capable of being.

"What?" he said.

"Hypothetically I mean. If your kid murdered someone -- another kid, maybe, or anyone really -- would you stick by them? I'm not sure I'd defend my child if that happened."

He looked at me but said nothing, then got up and went to the bar to fetch another round.

A while later the thought crosses my mind again and I push the conversation where I really shouldn't. "Say," I say, "you didn't answer earlier. If your kid was responsible for a death, what you would do?"

And then he tells me everything. It pours out like the ale.

When his boy had been born there had been complications. Sometimes these complications take years to manifest, but sometimes, cruelly, they're quicker than consciousness. His mother hadn't even seen him before she passed away.

My friend didn't blame him one bit. In his son, he saw his wife. He loved his son more than anything.

So I sat there saying nothing for a long time, sipping my ale but suddenly only tasting the sourness.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"You weren't to know."

&#x200B;

&#x200B;

It wasn't until after dinner, after me and my boy had been crying, until after I put him in his bed, that the conversation with my friend came back to mind.

I called my estranged wife. Just to check on her. I'd make some excuse, tell her our son was missing her.

I called and the phone rang.

She was okay. I was sure of it.

But a thought kept tapping at my skull. About how complications can take years to manifest.

The phone kept on ringing.