Hope For Sale

January 29, 2025January 18, 2025 ~ Miriam H. Harrison ~ 5 Comments

Though small, the key was heavy and intricate, almost needlessly ornate. Its tangle of curlicues wrapped and twisted like overgrown brambles.

“Are you sure this is the one?” she asked, turning the key in her hand doubtfully.

“Without a doubt,” the merchant said cheerily. “The key to the heart!”

“To any heart?”

“Perhaps not quite any,” the merchant conceded. “But most, by far.”

She remained unconvinced. “But how would I know?”

“The same way we know anything, my dear,” he laughed. “By trying, and trying again. It will not be long before you find its proper match. It is always nearer than you think.”

She was not quite sure that she believed him. But neither did she wish to leave empty handed. Not when there was hope for sale.

***

Trying proved to be a messy, uncertain process. True, the key fit many a heart. But so far those hearts seemed hollow, more show than substance. She tried each time to imagine she had found her treasure, only to leave with her regrets and that heavy key back in hand.

But worse were the hearts it didn’t fit. The hearts broken and bloodied by trying too hard. She stepped away from another still-writhing body and regretted the blood-stained key that had caused so much pain.

After a time, she stopped trying. She washed the blood from the key’s ornate tangles, polished it as best she could, hoping the merchant might yet buy it back. But she returned to the market only to learn that he had long since disappeared.

***

She wore the key around her neck, not knowing what else to do with it. Not ready to try, but not ready to part with the hope.

She pondered the hearts she had known. The empty disappointments. The broken, bloodied mysteries. What had she hoped to find there? What was it she was missing?

How strange to realize that she did not know. Did she even know the state of her own heart? Could she? Did she have the courage to find out?

Her hands shook as she took the key from around her neck. Looking in the mirror, she traced her fingers down from her clavicle, saw her own locked heart. She thought of the empty many. She thought of the bloodied few. Which was she?

The pain was worse than she could have imagined. Though small, the key cut deep. For a moment, she wondered if knowing was worth the pain. But even in the pain, she felt the contact, the release. She felt her heart opening.

She looked down to see herself, wide and empty and aching. But at last, she knew. She knew that she was empty. And she knew that there was hope. With that heavy key, she could begin to fill the emptiness herself.

∼ Miriam H. Harrison

Diversion

January 22, 2025January 18, 2025 ~ Richard Meldrum ~ 3 Comments

Initially, my journey had gone to plan. It wasn’t until I was instructed by the GPS to turn off the highway onto a narrow country road that the problems started. Just as my tires crunched onto the dirt road, the clouds, threatening all day, finally released their snow. I checked the GPS and saw I had about fifty miles to go. I decided I could make it, as long as the snow didn’t get worse.

It got worse.

I found myself crawling along at about ten miles an hour. The snow was settling and the going was slippery. I had neglected to put on my winter tires and could feel the car losing traction and sliding dangerously towards the ditch. I slowed to a crawl, worried I might lose control. The wind buffeted my car, making the going even more unsteady. It didn’t take me long to notice my GPS had malfunctioned, it was showing I was still on the highway. My cell phone had no bars. I realized I had no idea where I was going. The road was too narrow to turn round. I decided to keep going, to try to find a house where I could ask for directions.

“Why the hell didn’t he just agree to meet me at the office?”

I already knew the answer; rich clients expected their architects to come to them, not the other way round. I had to drive out of the city to meet my newest potential customer at his country estate. He didn’t care if it was February or if snow was forecast; the planning meeting was scheduled for today. If I refused to attend; well, there were plenty of other eager, young architects happy to step into my shoes.

The road started to incline. I floored the accelerator to keep my momentum up. My car wasn’t four-wheel drive. I reached the top, just.

As I crested the hill, there was a four-way stop. There was a police cruiser parked up and a cop standing beside it, wearing a high visibility jacket. I lowered my window, feeling the biting cold of the wind for the first time.

“Is there a problem?”

“The road is closed. Please turn left and follow the diversion.”

His voice was strangely flat. I guessed he was bored.

“Thank you!”

There was no response.

I turned left and headed down the hill. A sign told me a place called the Witch’s Gorge was two miles away. As I drove, an idea dawned on me. I nearly slapped myself. I should have asked the cop where I was and how to get to my destination. Luckily, this road was a bit wider, so I could turn the car round, albeit with some difficulty, and head back up the hill. As I arrived at the top, I saw him still standing by the police cruiser.

“Do you know how to get to the Croxley house from here?”

“The road is closed. Please turn left and follow the diversion.”

“I know, you just told me. I just want some directions. I’m lost.’

“The road is closed. Please turn left and follow the diversion.”

“You just said that. Are you okay?”

I got out my car, thinking he was suffering from hypothermia or something. As I got closer I realized something was definitely wrong. The figure was lumpy and misshapen. Instinctively, I put my hand out. My hand encountered something that felt like straw. I used my cell phone to illuminate the face. A pair of very human eyes stared out at me from a mass of dried grass, topped by a police officer’s cap. The eyes were alive, full of pain and despair.

“The road is closed. Please turn left and follow the diversion.”

There was no mouth.

The next few moments were a blur. I vaguely remember running through the snow, jumping into my car and hitting the accelerator. The next memory was reaching the highway. I made it home in record time. I never did get to meet my rich client.

No-one believed me. I wasn’t sure I believed it myself. It took a few days for the news to emerge, but then it hit all the main outlets. Five abandoned cars, including a police cruiser, had been found near the Witch’s Gorge, stuck in deep snow. There was no sign of the occupants. The assumption was they’d left their vehicles and wandered off into the snowy wilderness. The authorities termed the search a ‘recovery operation’, meaning they were looking for bodies. I suspected they wouldn’t be found and I was right.

The road hadn’t really been closed. Something had set up the terrifying straw effigy, something that was smart enough to understand the prey it sought. Something had taken the eyes and the vocal cords from one of the victims and crafted a facsimile; something that was close enough to pass for a cop. Something that could fool us. The victims were sent down towards the gorge, and God alone what happened to them then.

I was grateful I’d escaped, but it was pure, unadulterated luck. What still keeps me from sleeping is the sure and certain knowledge that whatever killed those folks is, without a doubt, still out there.

∼ RJ Meldrum

The Whistler

January 15, 2025December 11, 2024 ~ Elaine Pascale ~ 9 Comments

The scouting trip had been in the works for months. What had not been planned was the loss of a scout on the second day of the trip.

And not just any scout, they had lost Hayden. Hayden was the troop member who needed the most attention. Each event the scout master planned was precluded with warnings from Hayden’s mother. Hayden had allergies, Hayden had diagnoses and conditions, Hayden required eyes on him at all times.

Hayden was special.

Hayden’s mother’s anxiety had grown with the approach of the camping trip. She had called the scout master daily to remind him that Hayden needed to take his Ritalin. She had explained that he needed his sleep mask and ear plugs even in the deepest, darkest woods. She had produced his inhaler and backup inhaler.

She reminded him that Hayden was special.

Despite Hayden’s mother, or maybe to spite her, the scout master determined to treat Hayden as if he were any other boy as the troop set off into the woods.

That first morning had been accompanied by clear blue skies and a bright sun. Backpacks brimming with supplies and snacks, the boys had told “Whistler” stories as they ascended the mountain.

“If you hear a whistle, run for your life!”

“He will skin you alive!”

“He will eat your eyeballs!”

“He carries a sack of his victim’s bones on his back!”

Hayden had his ear buds in so he did not join in the spinning of tales. His mother had insisted that Hayden needed to listen to nature sounds to ground him. The scout leader had suggested that Hayden listen to the nature sounds of the actual forest they would be walking through, but that recommendation was derided because Hayden was special.

Midway up the mountain, the troop stopped for lunch. This was the first time Hayden disappeared.

”Hayden…” the boys called up into the trees, figuring he had gotten the urge to climb.

“Hayden…” the boys called into the bushes, assuming he was hiding.

It wasn’t until they had finished their post-lunch granola bars that Hayden reappeared.

He pointed at a wrapper and announced, “Those are made in a facility that processes nuts.”

The other boys laughed at the word “nuts.”

“Hayden, where were you?” the scout master asked.

The boy said nothing as he hiked his backpack higher, causing the interior items to rattle.

***

Despite the scary tales they had been telling all day, the boys had fallen asleep at a decent hour from the fatigue of hiking. The scout master was awoken with rising shouts to accompany the rising sun.

“Hayden is gone!”

“He’s gone!”

“The Whistler got him!”

The scout master looked in the empty tent and then asked, “Are you sure he is gone? Can he hear us calling? Are his ear plugs in?”

The boys exchanged quizzical looks.

“Let’s not notify his mother just yet.” The scout master feigned composure. He said this despite knowing how Hayden’s mother was, or maybe because he knew how Hayden’s mother was.

They spent the day scouring the woods, looking for Hayden. That night, no one slept. The boys reported that the sound of whistling kept them awake. They were certain that the Whistler was coming to collect their bones.

“He will drag us around the mountains forever!”

“We will never make it home!”

“Poor Hayden!”

The boys claimed they heard the rattling of bones coming from the bushes. They noted shadows moving through the forest.

“We have to leave!”

“He is after us!”

“We have to face Hayden’s mother at some point.”

The scout master was more afraid of Hayden’s mother than he was of the Whistler, so he asked for one more day to look for Hayden, agreeing to descend the mountain at the following daybreak.

***

The rising sun brought panicked whispers coming from inside the tent. The boys called for the scout master, “We can’t leave the tent; he is right outside, whistling.”

Despite knowing the troop would be worried, or perhaps to spite the troop, there was a whistler seated by the dying campfire, a very special one.

It was Hayden, whistling through his nearly empty inhaler and stripping unidentified hides, stashing the bones in his backpack.

∼ Elaine Pascale

But What of Home

January 8, 2025December 27, 2024 ~ Charles Gramlich ~ 3 Comments

Always, the man traveled, first away from his home in the country, then away from the city, then away from Earth, the sun, the solar system. Ever onward, ever outward. At nearly the speed of light, which didn’t seem fast enough. He called himself an explorer, never a coward. In the coldest, deepest depths of space between stars, he came upon a derelict spaceship floating silently. But not emptily. He went aboard.

The other pilot in his seat was long dead. He wasn’t human but the man felt a kinship with him. This being, too, had been a traveler, an explorer. And somewhere along the way he’d despaired and opened his space suit to a vacuum he’d let into his own ship. He’d left a last recorded log. The button to play it rested under one thin tentacle.

The man pressed the button. And he understood the message. These aliens must have had some kind of translator that connected directly to the man’s brain waves and turned strange gibberish into language. The words said:

I ran until I couldn’t run anymore. If you’re hearing this, go home. In the end, there’s nothing but home.

The man began to weep. He thought of the family he’d left behind, the lovers he’d spurned, the children he’d never had. He went back to his own ship and turned it around. He blasted for Earth. He yearned for the blue marble; instead, he found a dirty brown cue ball. The traveler had forgotten one thing in his urge to flee his past—time dilation. He’d aged a few years in his journey; the earth had aged millions. There was no home to go to.

Before opening his suit helmet to the air, and his ship to the vacuum, the man recorded a message for whoever might find it, though he knew it would be useless: “You can’t go home again. The only thing to do is never leave!”

∼ Charles Gramlich