Short Stories

Short stories are magical - they make beauty out of brevity.

Room 246

February 6, 2024

The pale yellow walls of the hallway reeked of confusion. There was a certain sense of loss in the air, an utter thickness of bewilderment penetrating the atmosphere of the floor. It was this overwhelming feeling, not the incessant moans of the dying patients nor the antiseptics permeating the air, which nauseated the young woman walking down the hall. Her wavy dark hair was much too long and pretty to decorate such a place as this - a place of forgetfulness, decay, and death. Yet she floated gracefully down the length of the speckled tile flooring, her flowery gown brushing against open doors and vacant wheelchairs as she went.

She slowed as she approached a closed door at the end of the hall. The little plaque on the wall labeling this particular room as “246” hung haphazardly from the plaster where the screws were slipping loose. The young woman took a deep breath and smoothed down the front of her skirt, as if her perfection just might erase the ugliness of the whole home. She knocked softly on the door and pushed it slightly ajar.

“Grandpa?” She called daintily into the dark room. Her voice matched her appearance; it was airy, lighter than a feather, floating above and between the air as if it were a kite dividing the wind into two distinct halves.

The lack of response worried her. She shoved the door fully open and stepped inside, breathing a deep sigh of relief upon locking his blue eyes with her own.

“Clarisse!” The old man cried from his bed. It wasn’t his usual exclamation of joy and comfort upon her arrival. There was instead an air of fear and a hint of unanticipated frustration in his voice, which confused Clarisse wildly. She hurried over to him and knelt beside the antiquated nursing bed.

Clarisse grasped his cold hands and sandwiched them between her own.

“Grandpa,” she breathed. “What’s wrong?” Such deep concern lived in her eyes that it even overcame the beauty of their intense aquamarine hue.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he replied. His eyes darted around frantically.

“Grandpa,” Clarisse said calmly. “It’s okay. You’re in a home, remember? A nursing facility. I’m only here to visit.”

“No!” He exclaimed, agitated. She jumped a bit, taken aback by the old man’s abruptness. He was typically a mild-mannered, soft-spoken type of man. From what Clarisse could remember, he always had been.

He noticed her sudden alarm. “No,” he repeated, more calmly this time. “I still know who I am. I still know where I am. But I am telling you, my dear, you can’t be here. You really must go.”

“Why?” Clarisse demanded. She tried to stay composed. They told her this might happen when the old man began to decline.

“Please,” he begged. There was desperation in his voice. Coughing spasms suddenly overtook him, and he turned from Clarisse as he tried to catch his breath.

Clarisse reached for his glass of water on the makeshift bedside table. His breathing slowed to normal and he turned to face her once more. The sheer beauty of this young woman in her happy little gown with her bright eyes and blush-touched cheeks was, in that moment, utterly wretched to the dying old man.

“Go,” he spat. “I love you, dear, but I need you to go now.”

Clarisse ignored him. She glanced at the empty bed beside her grandfather’s.

“Grandpa,” she said. “Where’s Jack?”

He squeezed her hand tightly. A single tear appeared in his eye - an eye that had seen much more life than most could boast.

“They took him,” he said.

“Who?” She asked. There was deep confusion in her voice.

“You really must go,” he repeated into the darkness.

“Okay,” Clarisse said. “Okay, fine.” Perhaps, she thought, it was best not to upset him anymore. She hugged him across the chest and touched her painted lips to his forehead. His skin was soft and thin, almost like the delicate flesh of a newborn.

Clarisse pondered the twisted irony of this as she stood and made her way, slowly, to the door.

“I love you,” she called from the open doorway. “Goodbye for now.”

The old man said nothing. He simply laid there, alone in the dark, his eyes shut so tightly it seemed he may never open them again.

Clarisse turned away, stung by the rejection of such a lonely man. How lame and unappealing her presence must have been for him to send her away so quickly!

It was this ugly pride which prevented such an attractive young woman from considering more deeply the circumstances.

Her initial airy gait now transformed into a depressed trudge. Clarisse dragged her feet down the hall, the moans of the patients suddenly seeming much louder than before. She turned the corner at the end of the hall and, a few steps later, shoved open the heavy double doors, oblivious to the ancient woman hunched over unnaturally in a wheelchair beside the entryway.

The old woman’s dying eyes followed this strange young woman’s exit from the home with typical confusion.

Yet somewhere in her blurry, dementia-stricken mind, she wondered a shockingly crystalline thought: How could such a beautiful woman appear so sad?

But just a moment later, the youth and her flowing gown were gone, stealing with them any memory the old woman had that they’d ever existed.

She sat still in her chair, as she had every day for the past half decade, and stared absentmindedly at the flyers tacked to the bulletin board across the entryway.

The papers fluttered at the sudden entrance of two uniformed men, who confidently approached the overworked, pale-faced woman who manned the front desk. The woman’s frizzy hair, pulled back in a particularly unattractive messy bun, bounced awkwardly as she shook her head in response to a question posed by one of the men. She pointed a bony finger at the old woman in the chair, who had not once broken her gaze from the bulletin.

The men thanked the receptionist and sauntered over to the old woman. One knelt in front of her chair in a vain attempt to make eye contact with her.

“Mrs. Drake,” he said softly. The old woman didn’t so much as blink at the sound of her name. The only evidence that she still lived was the steady heaving of her chest as she breathed.

“It’s time,” he continued. “We must take him now.”

Still, the old woman didn’t budge. The man, a gruff, rugged-looking person, glanced up at his partner, who shrugged back at him.

“Well,” he sighed, standing. “I guess we just-”

The old woman grabbed his wrist, the sudden movement of an otherwise immobile person sending a chill through the man’s spine.

The old woman slowly cocked her head until her dark eyes met the man’s own. Although blurred by the thousands of wrinkle lines already spread across her face, her forehead was noticeably crinkled in confusion.

“Who?” She croaked. Her voice was unnaturally high-pitched, dried out from her self-imposed dehydration.

“Your husband, Mrs. Drake,” he said gently. The confusion plastering her face remained unchanged.

“George,” he said. “You husband, George. Do you remember him?”

The old woman let her head fall back, slowly, to its natural resting place. There was a twinkle, per se, at the back of her mind - a twinkle that appeared at the mention of that name.

George, she thought. What a lovely name. What a royal name. Perhaps one day I’ll name a child that.

The man gently released his wrist from the old woman’s grasp.

“Come on,” he said to his partner. “Let’s go.”

Together they left the woman in her chair and headed across the entryway.

“What’s the room?” The gruff man asked.

His partner pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. “246,” he said. “How strange - weren’t we just there last week?”

“Huh,” the gruff man replied. “Yeah, I think you’re right.”

The two took a right and marched down the hall, their heavy boots thumping against the tile flooring.

“They really oughta repaint this place,” the gruff man said. “This yellow is depressing.”

His partner only nodded, focused instead on reading the room numbers plastered to the ugly walls.

His eyes locked on the right sign - there was the “246” plaque hanging loose from the plaster, just as it had been one week prior.

The two men glanced at each other - as they always did before a grave extraction such as this - and, sighing, they shoved open the door to reveal the blackened room of Mr. Drake.

Missing (Part One)

April 28, 2024

Everything in West was fine until the little girl went missing. It truly was quite the tragedy: a little doll, only three years old, sporting thin blonde hair and the brightest blue eyes, always wearing the innocent expression of a toddler - the face of a child yet untarnished by the darkness of the world. This little girl had that pageantry-type cuteness, the child prodigy look of Colorado’s JonBenét Ramsey, who - would you look at that - also disappeared.

Except JonBenét was most certainly dead, and we had absolutely no clue if West’s missing girl was dead. The rumor was that nobody could figure out where the hell she went. There was no body, no little dress left behind, no hair clip or cutie little bow dropped haphazardly in the snow. No footprints - well, besides her own, which had suddenly vanished between a pair of pines one winter day at the Colorado ski resort her family was visiting. There were the little shoeprints, the dainty indents in the snow: step step step, then the pines, and then - nothing. Just crisp, clean snow splayed out ahead, all the way down the side of the slope, curling into the mountains a few miles out - the mountains just visible through the light snowfall. It was as if she had vanished into thin air.

It may have been a Colorado mystery, but I suppose the facts suggest her story was much less like JonBenét’s and much more like Madeleine McCann’s.

Oh, I’m sorry - I’ll stop being so dark and dramatic. I’ve gotten really into serial killer podcasts and missing persons shows lately. It’s not good for the soul, but it makes for better storytelling.

What is it about us that loves to hear the darkest stories - what is it about humans that makes us crave a story of dark mystery and despair, the loss of life and suffering of others? I don’t know, but damn - it’s addicting, isn’t it?

But this story is real. I swear. Little girl, cute little thing, disappeared between the pines. No evidence, no body, vanishing footsteps. That’s the whole bloodless story. Crazy, no?

What’s wilder still is how the little town of West found out about the disappearance. There must’ve been some kind of police or news connection with somebody in Colorado, some kind of leak, because the story got down to Texas in record time. The community got together and held a vigil for the little girl, as if she’d already been confirmed dead. There we were, candlelight reflecting in the faces of West’s nervous parents, oblivious cowboy boot-sporting children, and the deep wrinkles of downtrodden grandparents. Cowboy hats cast shadows across mens’ unshaved faces, light weaving between the trimmed beard hairs of these true, heart-of-Texas conservatives.

The little girl’s parents seemed shockingly optimistic when they returned to West. They’d waited nearly a month to come back, supposedly stuck in Colorado searching day and night for their daughter - except when they were stuck in police interviews, of course. Their extended family was all down in West - the worried-sick grandparents, the prayerful aunts and their heavy-set husbands, even the little cousins who cried that sweet, goofy Ellie wasn’t returning with the rest of her family.

Parents often decide it’s better not to tell their kids when something terrible has happened. It’s to “protect them from evil,” or something like that. What a stupid thing to do - kids don’t stay kids, they grow up one day and are forced to face the darkness - and worse still, when they inevitably meet it head-on, most will also discover the people they trusted most had lied to them!

“No, it’s not lying,” you will say. “It’s just bending the truth a bit. It’s keeping innocence intact. It’s protecting little minds so kids can just be kids.”

“Okay,” I’d respond. “Tell that to the kid who was adopted, but didn’t find out until their 18th birthday. Or the kid who sprung from an affair and found that out as an adult. Or the one whose dog didn’t go to a special farm to live out his “golden years” - he really got hit by a car just down the street. I mean, where is the line? What dark things should we tell kids, and what dark things should we not?”

Anyways, this is exactly what happened with little Ellie’s cousins. Nobody told them she wasn’t coming back, because their parents didn’t feel it was their place, and Ellie’s parents didn’t have the heart. It was an odd period of limbo, an awkward hush-hush at depressed family gatherings, Ellie’s siblings attempting to keep their advanced knowledge quiet for fear of parental discipline.

For the next couple of months, life went on in West, the little girl’s parents flying back and forth between Texas and Colorado as the search continued. Eventually, spring rolled around, the constant blanket of fresh snow at the ski resort thinning until, one day in mid-April, the ground became visible. The earth between the pines, where Ellie’s footsteps had mysteriously vanished back in late December, had of course been cleared of the snow and searched when the girl went missing. In fact, the whole region had been combed, the areas boasting multiple feet of snow dug deep into in search of her. But nothing had been found. There was nothing to suggest she was dead or alive, nothing to suggest that she had ever visited the resort, nothing to suggest that she’d ever even existed. Just nothing - a deeply frustrating and horrifying mystery for her parents, her siblings, the resort staff, and the entire town of West.

But when the snow started to melt away, when Spring had finally sprung - the sun’s rays uncovered something strange.

A little boy, just about Ellie’s age, made the discovery. He’d wandered off a bit, but of course stayed within eyesight of his father, who was acutely aware of the recent story of the missing little girl. With no indication of anything gone awry, the little boy skipped back to his father, a co-owner of the resort who unassumingly strolled the grounds with his son on this particularly warm April morning.

Tugging insistently on his father’s arm, the little boy grinned as they made their way over to a ridge on the side of the slope. There, in the ground, was something very odd indeed - a hole, perhaps three feet wide by three feet deep, sat just at the edge of the slope. The hole was much too large and precise to have been dug by an animal, the dirt perfectly scraped away so that the inside was smooth all around, as if it had been patted down with a shovel. But the oddest part of all was the single pink snow boot that stood decidedly in the center of the hole - the very center, in fact. The left foot boot appeared soaked inside and out from the melted snow, but otherwise, stood perfectly upright, not a scrape or hint of dirt anywhere on it.

“You found it just like this?” The man asked the little boy.

The child nodded confidently.

“Are you sure?” The man reiterated.

“Yes, daddy,” he said. “I’m sure.”

“Did you touch it?” The man asked.

“No, daddy,” the little boy said, exasperated. “I remembered what you told me. Don’t touch any weird things on the slope until they figure out the mystery.”

“Good job,” the man said, wrapping his arm around the little boy’s shoulders and trying to maintain a calm composure.

The boy’s father pulled out his cell phone and dialed 9-1-1.

Not the end yet… stay tuned for Part Two!

I-35

September 13, 2024

A bump in the road shook the driver’s seat as the semi flew down I-35. Eyes peeled on the highway, Ed reached blindly for his gas station cup of Mountain Dew. Grasping the condensation-soaked paper, he lifted it from the cupholder and gave the drink a little swirl. The ice was long gone, melted a couple hours back from the heat of the summer sun beating down on the semi’s massive windshield. Ed tried to imagine the ice hadn’t melted and the drink wasn’t watered down - in fact, for just a moment, the fizzless soda wasn’t a soda to him at all, but a strong martini served poolside in the tropics.

The raggedy mutt he’d picked up on one of his countless cross-country drives yawned from the passenger’s seat. The dog stretched, his brown paws curling around the seat’s edge. He stood slowly, wobbling with the movement of the truck, and hobbled towards Ed.

“No,” Ed insisted, staring mindlessly at the road ahead. “No way - you’ll make my legs go numb.”

But the old dog didn’t move. He stood still as a statue, his legs locked to keep his balance and his beady eyes trained on the side of Ed’s bald head.

Ed glanced at the pup - a brief error, but a mistake still grave enough for him to glimpse the irresistibly sad eyes of an ex-stray.

“Damnit,” he sighed, begrudgingly patting his leg. The mutt, triumphant, hopped into Ed’s lap.

Ed grunted as the dog circled atop his thighs, trying to find a sufficient space to curl up between the steering wheel and Ed’s immense gut.

The sun had almost fully disappeared along the horizon. A minuscule sliver of orange still held on to the day, peeking just barely over the rolling hills to Ed’s right. He smiled at the golden glow - sunsets and sunrises were the best part of the job, and night driving was the best time to ride. Less traffic, less noise - and best of all, the world flew by much faster in the dark.

Despite his grin, Ed felt an overwhelming eeriness that particular evening. It was as if the cars passing by were more suspicious, the curves in the road more ominous, even the trees along the highway more unnerving than they’d ever seemed before.

Ed ignored the oddity the same way he ignored any other abnormality in his brain: he cranked up the radio volume until “Master of Puppets” rang so loud he couldn’t focus on anything but James Hetfield’s screaming voice.

------------

A couple of hours flew by before Ed pulled up to a podunk gas station somewhere in Oklahoma. The sun was long gone by now, darkness flooding the world once again. Ed was grateful - the music on the radio had been good tonight, and he was damn lucky he’d come across an open gas station in the middle of nowhere - no matter how trashy it might be. The semi’s tank was almost empty as he rattled into the parking lot and pulled up to a pump.

The battered gas station lights flickered overhead as he hopped down from the truck bed. It was a desolate scene - there was only one other vehicle in the parking lot, a beat-up dodge ram parked by the convenience store. It took Ed a minute to make it out - the truck was tucked under the shadow of a scraggly tree that blocked the store’s porchlight.

Glancing through the glass windows, Ed saw a lanky cashier inside, chatting with a customer at the counter. The customer - whom Ed presumed to be the dodge owner - wore an oversized green hoodie and a baseball cap. He laughed with ease at something the cashier said as they made an exchange - likely money for lottery tickets or cigarettes. The man in the hoodie sauntered off towards the back of the store.

Ed put the company card in the chip reader and waited for the confirmation. He poked the PIN numbers, removed the card, and stuck the pump in the truck’s gas tank. Knowing from experience that he needed a fresh Mountain Dew or he wouldn’t make it through the night, Ed trudged across the lot. He tried to ignore the desperate expression of his mutt, who had smudged its face against the driver’s seat window in protest of its owner’s absence.

Ed used the store’s dirty bathroom and sauntered over to the fill-a-cup machine. Grabbing a large, he pretended to consider the other soda options before filling his cup to the brim with Mountain Dew.

He walked lazily around to the chip bag aisle, a little taken aback to find the guy in the green hoodie standing there. The man was probably in his 50s, with a mid-sized gut and a scraggly brown beard that had started greying at the ends. He appeared to be torn between the Bugles and the BBQ Lays. While these were starkly different choices, Ed respected them both. Ed exchanged a curt nod with the man as he grabbed a bag of sour cream and onion Lays and made his way over to the cashier.

“That all?” The worker asked in a thick Indian accent. His grey crewneck nearly swallowed his thin frame.

“I’ll take a pack of Camels,” Ed huffed. The skinny cashier turned and pulled the cigarettes from the shelf. He quietly rang them up with Ed’s soda and chips.

Ed paid and left the store. Finding that the semi’s tank was full now, Ed returned the handle to its pocket and opened the door to the truck bed. He pulled himself up to set down his purchases.

“Come on,” he said to the dog, scooping it under an arm as he lowered himself back to the ground. “Shittin’ time.”

The dog’s tail went crazy as Ed hauled him over to the shadowy grass next to the convenience store. He dropped the mutt on the ground and commanded him to go.

But the dog refused. Instead, he stared at Ed with an obstinate look on his face.

Then the mutt began to whimper.

Ed found this behavior very unusual. The dog almost always went right away. He was generally obedient, and he hadn’t gone to the bathroom for eight hours or so, so Ed couldn’t imagine he didn’t need to go.

Ed wrinkled his face in confusion.

“What?” He demanded. “Grass ain’t pretty enough for you?”

The dog whined louder. His whine morphed into a low growl.

He barked.

Ed realized that the dog’s beady eyes weren’t trained on him. They were staring past him. With mild curiosity, Ed turned.

Behind him was the four-door dodge.

At first, that’s all Ed saw.

But since his dog kept growling and green hoodie was nowhere in sight, Ed decided it couldn’t hurt to take a closer look.

He stepped up to the tinted back window, squinting to see through the darkened glass. Ed made out some light-colored clothes piled in the back seat, but he didn’t see much else.

The mutt barked again. Just as Ed was about to tell it to shut up, the pile of colors shifted.

A woman’s terrified eyes suddenly appeared in a tiny strip of light. The eyes widened at the sight of Ed. The woman let out muffled screams, shaking her head violently in an intense plea for help.

Ed staggered back.

He peered around the hood of the truck, trying to locate green hoodie, but he couldn’t see inside the store from where he stood.

“Shit,” Ed cursed. He whirled around to face his dog, who now barked repeatedly.

“Shut up!” He urged, though he knew the mutt wouldn’t quiet down.

Ed’s mind raced; the thoughts swirled around in his brain, creating a useless soup of ideas.

He knew he should run back to his truck and call the police. But they were in such a remote spot; he knew green hoodie could get far away before the police arrived. The only way to save this girl for sure would be to do it himself. Maybe he could break her out…

Who do you think you are? The voice in his head interrupted. You’re no vigilante.

But Ed knew he’d never forgive himself if he didn’t try.

Ugh, he thought, why me?

He felt an instant pang of guilt for his selfishness.

His dog was still barking. Ed knew he needed to do something about that. Fast.

He grabbed the mutt and jogged back to the semi. He tossed him in the front seat and shut the door. As Ed hurried back towards the darkened grass, the dog’s incessant cries grew softer and softer behind him.

Ed quickly formed a plan as he approached the shadows. His heart pounded. He struggled to tuck his large body behind the shrub closest to the dodge’s driver’s seat.

It felt as though he waited for hours, but it wasn’t more than a few minutes before green hoodie came bounding out of the convenience store. Ed peered through the sparse greenery as the man approached.

Abruptly, green hoodie paused. Ed held his breath, watching silently as the culprit glanced over his shoulder.

Green hoodie shrugged and kept moving. Ed grew more anxious with each step he took.

The man rounded the truck hood and approached the driver’s side.

He was now less than three feet from Ed. Ed wanted desperately to reach out and grab him, to choke him by his own hood, to stop him from getting any closer to the woman he’d locked in his truck.

Instead, Ed shuffled towards the side of the bush, waiting for the right moment to attack.

Click.

Almost there. Green hoodie had unlocked the truck’s front door.

He reached for the door handle.

Shocked at his own agility, Ed leapt out from behind the greenery and pounced on green hoodie’s back.

The man froze in surprise. Ed took the opportunity to wrestle him to the ground.

Green hoodie’s shock didn’t last long, though. He soon began to fight back, shocking Ed with his strength as he shoved the trucker off of him. Throwing their fists into the air like the amateurs they were, the two rolled around on the asphalt at the edge of the gas station parking lot.

If it weren’t for the gravity of the situation, Ed would’ve found the scene quite funny.

Green hoodie threw another aimless punch, this time just barely missing Ed’s head. Ed knew he couldn’t hit his opponent effectively like this; he had to pin him down. He threw his weight over green hoodie and got on top of him, but he had a tough time grabbing the man’s arms. They flailed about frantically until green hoodie finally landed a punch - the strong blow caught Ed right in the throat.

The sudden force threw Ed off. He coughed in pain as he tried to catch his breath.

Green hoodie tried to use the win to his advantage. He shoved Ed hard, fighting to push him off and regain control. But the man underestimated Ed’s weight - those hours on the road sipping Mountain Dews served him very well today - and Ed succeeded in landing a forceful punch to green hoodie’s face.

Alerted by the commotion, the cashier sprinted outside and stood paralyzed on the porch.

From underneath Ed, green hoodie tried to wriggle free. Encouraged by the throw he’d just landed, Ed ignored the man’s efforts and began pummeling him. Green hoodie’s nose started to bleed, but Ed didn’t stop. He kept punching until, finally, green hoodie lay still, passed out from the shock.

The cashier ran back inside. Ed hoped he was going to call the police.

Wiping his brow, Ed pushed himself up to a standing position. He stared down at the battered man without even the slightest twinge of guilt.

Ed tried to ignore the soreness in his throat as he opened the front door of the dodge and peered inside.

The bound young woman stared at him from the back seat.

The terror in her eyes began to subside when she recognized Ed.

“Don’t worry,” Ed said. “You’re safe now.”

EMMA GRACE WRITES

Short Stories

EMMA GRACE WRITES