Category Archives: HorrorDailies 2023

Think You Remember

Whatever It Is That You Think You Remember

by

Think You Remember

Memory is fallible. You tend to treat it like it’s not, but you’re wrong. It’s pliable, suggestable, sometimes even amorphous. What really happens and what you remember happening – those are often completely separate things.

Here’s an example:

You wake up covered in blood and assume you got into a fight the night before, but your mind is blank, and when you turn the phone camera to see your face, there’s no sign of bruising. Even your knuckles are pain-free. But there’s blood flowing from your neck. Weird.

You close your eyes, try to think. Where were you last night? You swallow, and your saliva tastes like old blood and stale beer. Gross! But then you recall…

You were at a bar. You met a woman. She had blonde hair. She looked vaguely familiar, but you couldn’t place her, until…

“Paul? Oh my god, how are you?” Her enthusiastic greeting was met by your blank stare.

“Do I… know you?”

“I’m Sam’s sister,” she said. “Don’t you remember? I used to try to tag along whenever you and Sam went to the movies.”

Sam was a friend from childhood. Every Saturday, they’d ride their bikes to the dollar theatre to see second-run movies and gorge themselves on junk food. But he didn’t remember a sister, until…

“I had a pink bike with streamers.” The woman – Sam’s sister – was still talking. “With this really tinny bell and you guys hated it. You told me I could come to the movies if I kept up, but…”

“… but you never did.” The memory was there as if it had been implanted. “We’d kill ourselves trying to outrace you, and you almost caught up once.” You paused. “Your hair was darker then, wasn’t it.”

“So, you do remember me!”

“Sure,” you say. And you realize that an age gap of three years when she was nine and you were twelve was an unbridgeable chasm, but now that you’re thirty-one, a three-year difference is nothing. “Can I buy you a drink?” you offer.

“Do you buy drinks for a lot of women?”

“Hardly ever,” you say. “But you’re Sam’s sister.”

You spent the night drinking and telling stories about Sam. “I haven’t seen him in years,” you said, trying to recall the last time you even called him. “He moved around a lot. He’s somewhere back east, isn’t he? New York? Or…?”

“Pennsylvania,” she answered. And you nod. Because you’re suddenly quite certain there’s a postcard of Liberty Hall on your fridge with Sam’s newest address.

The evening flew by. The drinks flew faster. You aren’t typically the kind who drinks to get drunk, but somehow you’d stopped keeping track. You were surprised when the bartender announced the last call.

“I should go,” you told her, “Can I give you a lift somewhere?”

“I’m good,” she said. But when you stumble at the curb, she pulled the keys from your hand. “I guess I’m giving you a lift. Where do you live?”

You don’t recall the drive. You can’t remember how she got you up the stairs to your apartment. But you remember her voice in your ear. “Invite me in,” she’d said, a faint rasp coloring her tone. Had that been there before?

The hazy image of undressing comes back to you. Your skin was hot and hers was cool. You kept reaching for the light switches, and she kept preventing it. “Darkness is better,” she said.

You remember her pushing you backwards onto your bed, and you feel the echo of her weight on top of you. You reached for her face, to pull her closer for a kiss, but she dodged and got your neck.

(Your neck where the blood is coming from.)

“She bit me,” you remember with a start. “Holy fuck, she was a vampire.” You say the words out loud even though your apartment is empty. “Wait, that’s not even possible.”

You have a sudden urge to call your friend Sam and ask him if he knew his sister was a vampire.

Except… you’re pretty certain Sam never had a sister, that the girl with the pink bike was some other kid on your street, that there was no postcard from Pennsylvania stuck to your fridge with a Domino’s Pizza magnet.

Your phone chirps. An incoming text from an unknown number. A single word. “Forget.”

You move to the bathroom and start the shower. By the time your hot piss hits the cold water of the toilet, you only remember that you met a woman in a bar and had some drinks.

By the time you emerge from the shower, all traces of blood down the drain, you’ll be absolutely sure that you cut your neck shaving.

 

“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, or whatever it is that you think you remember?” –  Elizabeth Loftus

 

 

Photo credit: PkProect
Operation

Operation

by

Operation

She always arranged her tools before she began any operation. Just as in an any operating theater, it was important to be able to lay your hand on the correct instrument without looking, without thinking. Her young assistant was inexperienced and didn’t always make the right choice, so it was best to be able to direct her to the proper implement.

The operating table had been draped in protective material designed to collect any leaking fluids or stray bits of flesh, and the lighting had been adjusted to illuminate the field with no confusing shadows.

Her hands were already clean, so she drew one glove and then another over her fingers, and down around her wrists. The girl across the table had already done the same, and, she noted approvingly, her long hair had been tucked into a cotton cap. Good.

The patient was already in place, with glistening skin ready to be pierced by a blade. They had marked the surgical site to ensure no mistakes would be made.

“Wait,” she said. “Something’s missing.”

“I forgot to start the music!” Her assistant had the decency to look embarrassed. The girl gave an order to Alexa and the first notes of Camille Saint-Saëns’ “Danse Macabre” wafted from the speaker system, the opening monotone chime seeming very like a countdown clock.

“No, there’s something else.” She surveyed the scene, and then smiled as realization dawned. She left the area for a moment and returned with metal container. “The collection bowl was missed,” she explained, placing the thing in position. One more confirming look, and then, “Alright, now we’re ready.”

“I hope this goes well,” her assistant said. “Last time we messed up the mouth, and it really wasn’t pretty.”

“We’ll be fine,” she said. “Hand me the first blade.” The girl’s small hand placed the serrated knife into her larger one. “Making the first incision now.”

The blade pierced the patient’s skin and fluid oozed out. Her assistant wiped it away with a paper towel and the two shared a look of glee.

“Shall we continue?” she asked, and when the girl nodded her approval, she made the second cut, announcing, “Alright, Jack! Time for your lobotomy!”

Mother and daughter giggled together. Pumpkin carving had never been more fun.

la_tlanchana_by_andro_san12_df23o87-414w-2x

Tlanchana

by

la_tlanchana_by_andro_san12_df23o87-414w-2xThe Mother of Water has many moods and many forms.

When she is sad or angry, her tears fill the basin of the lake near our home, and the power of her emotion fuels wicked storms. The fishermen and sailors beg her for mercy, but she is the snake mother then, and she whips her tail in agitation. The men know to remain ashore and use the time to sit near the fire repairing their nets or stitching new sails.

They tell stories of my mother’s worst tantrums, but their voices are full of respect in equal measures as the fear.

“I remember,” the oldest man says, “that when conquerors tried to cross the lake and take our village, the Water-Mother used her snake tail to whip their weapons from their hands and push their ships back with her well-placed waves.”

When my mother is feeling happy, the skies reflect the bright blue of her eyes, and the waters in the lake are calm. She takes a fish-tail then, swimming alongside the fishing boats and guiding them toward the best catch.

She likes to play with the children on these days, and while I was not the first or the last to wrap my young arms around her neck and let her carry me over and under the surface, coming up for air always at the exact right moment, I am the one who is never afraid.

“The Water-Mother is our protector,” the other mothers tell their children. “And it is an honor to be invited to swim with her.”

Sometimes, though, the Mother of Water must take human form, trading tail for legs, and walking on the land. She did this once to find a mate, and that’s how I was made, but she also comes to shore whenever one of the elders passes out of this life.

In those times her tears are salty, and she cries them over the graves of those who have left. She wraps her silky hair around herself like a cloak and keeps vigil over the bones of the dead.

The old grannies cook for her at those times and leave pots of food and jugs of water to sustain her while she sits in silence. She might sit for two nights or five, or even seven, but when she leaves, it always seems she takes our collective grief away with her.

“Death is part of life,” she reminds us, as she returns to the lake.

Unlike the other girls in our village, the Mother of Water is also my mother of blood. When I am older, she tells me in her voice that ripples like a stream, I will learn to shift my form, to take on the snake tail when I must be fierce and the fish tail when I am being playful, and legs when I am ready for love.

Sometimes she visits in her human form, just to spend time with us.

“Did you love my father?” I ask her.

“I did,” she says. “I do,” she adds.

And she walks on legs into the candlelit depths of our house and shares her joy with the man who raises me. When she departs after those times, her eyes are dry, but my father’s face is wet with tears, and so is mine.

The Mother of Water has many moods and many forms, but in every one, she protects those of us she calls her own.

Art credit: Andro-san12
1730 - Dreams

The Warehouse of Lost Dreams

by

1730 - Dreams

 

“So, it’s your first night at the warehouse, huh, kid?” The paunchy older man with the graying whiskers and faded denim overalls asked. His tone was conversational. His smile was sincere. “Lemme guess… you’re putting yourself through college?”

“I am,” I said. My own coveralls were new, the indigo still deep and dark, with creases from where they’d been folded in the package. With self-deprecating humor, I said, “I’m on the six-year plan.”

“Better six years than no years,” my mentor said. “I’m Maury; lemme show you around.”

“Sure,” I said.

“As a custodian you need to know the sorting policy. Here, on the first aisle are the Childhood Fantasies… things kids grow out of before they turn ten.”

“Like being an astronaut?”

“More like being a spaceship captain, although we still get a lot of firefighters, lion tamers, and superheroes.” Maury shakes his head. “Some of those are messy – the kids who tried flying before they gave up on the idea… their bodies usually didn’t suffer much, but those dreams literally went splat! That’s why we cover up.”

“I was wondering,” I said. “What’s next?”

“Well, this next section, it’s the dreams that are set aside when we’re coming of age.” He reaches into a bin and retrieves a handful of pointe shoes, dangling from faded pink ribbons. “Lots of ballerinas in this section, and tap dancers, but also baseball and soccer players. These are the sports and arts that kids give up when they head off to college.”

“Because their tastes change?” I ask.

“Some of them.” Maury returns the ballet shoes to the bin, picks up a soccer ball and bins it, and then moves a unicycle into a bike rack. “Others… they just didn’t have time, or they couldn’t afford to keep up after high school.” He stops, turns to face me, and stares for a long moment. “Your clarinet is three over, fourth shelf,” he says.

“How did you know about that?”

Maury favors me with a sympathetic smile. “You work here long enough, and you start to pick up on things.”

“How long have you been working here?” I ask.

“A long time,” he answers vaguely.

I follow him up and down a few more aisles until we reach a bin of hard hats. “Put this on,” he says, handing me a yellow one. He places an orange one over his buzz-cut hair. “This section can be dangerous.”

We enter a warehouse aisle that has bits of things – dolls, china, musical instruments, paint brushes, running shoes… riding saddles and medical texts.

“Broken dreams?” I guess aloud.

“Yup,” Maury answers. “Next aisle isn’t dangerous, but it might make you a little sad…”

“Oh?”

But he doesn’t need to explain. One side of the aisle is bins full of college sweatshirts and corporate IDs. I gulp, knowing that if I’m not careful my own future could end up folded and graying here. The other side of the aisle, though, is different. Smaller bins. Engagement rings. Wedding bands. Baby shoes.

“Oh,” I manage to say, since Maury seems to expect a reaction of some kind. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” he answers, as if we’ve just had a profound conversation. And maybe we have. It just didn’t involve a ton of words. “C’mon.”

More rows, some are things I recognize, some are poorly lit, and the shapes are abstract and indistinct. But there’s a warm light emanating from the very furthest aisle, and here’s where we find rows of easels, fishing poles, knitting supplies, baking equipment.

“This stuff doesn’t seem like it’s lost or broken,” I say.

“No. This… this is where I come when the rest of it gets too much. This is the place where later-in-life dreams are protected until they’re ready to be used. Most of these dreamers are grandparents, and they’re either planning retirement activities or embracing hobbies to share with their grandchildren.

“Oh… wow.”

“It’s not good to linger too long,” Maury says quietly. “Maybe I’ve come here too many times.” He picks up one of the fishing poles. “Work hard, while you’re here, kid,” he says. I notice that his hard hat is now a canvas one with fishing lures attached to it. Like that guy from the TV show M*A*S*H.

“I don’t understand,” I say.

“Don’t let go of your dream,” he continues. “Six years, even seven, you finish college.”

“I won’t,” I say. “I mean, I will. I’ll finish.”

Maury turns away from me and walks down toward the brightest part of the light. I take two steps to follow him, but then there’s a loud alarm from somewhere above me, and a computer voice announces “Incoming shipment. Custodian, please report to the loading dock.”

I turn toward the place where I came in, which is suddenly only a few feet from me, instead of rows and rows away. It’s my first night at the Warehouse of Lost Dreams, but it won’t be my last.

Art credit: Max Steksov

 

 

Itchy by adiruch

Itchy

by

It was her face that had attracted him, her profile picture on the dating app. But it was her fingers that really caught his attention. They were long, perfect for the piano her bio said she played, and tipped with pink-painted nails that were slightly sharp. Those nails and the expression in her green eyes promised a host of wicked delights.

He swiped right, sent a note, started the kind of textual flirting that passes for courtship in the twenty-first century. They met for drinks. He ordered a beer, and she had a pink cocktail that lingered on her lips when they kissed. She tickled his palm with her nails and the shivery feeling left him wanting – no, needing – more.

Itchy by adiruch

He was charming. She was willing. He left her bed at three the next morning with the feeling of her nails on his skin and an empty promise dripping from his tongue. “I’ll call you.”

Three days later he hasn’t called. It’s not that he didn’t have fun, but that he knows he could do better.

On the fourth day, she texts him, but he doesn’t answer.

She texts him a few more times, but he doesn’t respond. She’s too clingy, he decides, even if her nails were exquisite.

Two weeks after their date, he’s in the same bar with another woman, one who sips bourbon, and he sees her across the room. She’s with a group of friends, but their eyes lock. She mouths a single word that he can’t understand. Bitchy, maybe? Whatever. The bourbon-sipping blonde squeezes his thigh with her hand.

“Let’s get out of here,” she says.

He’s too glad to agree.

But he can feel the other woman’s eyes follow him out, and the memory of her fingernails raking his naked back is suddenly fresh in his mind. “Ohhh.”

“Hmm?” asks his date.

“Nothing.”

His right shoulder blade is itchy, and he reaches backwards to scratch it, but the spot moves just out of his reach.

By the time they reach his apartment, he’s squirming in his clothes.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“I’m fine. I’m just… itchy.”

“Want me to scratch your back?”

“God, yes.”

With him shirtless in his living room, she tries to alleviate his itch, but it seems that with every stroke of her short nails the feeling only gets worse. “Is there something there?” he asks. “On my back? A bite? A rash?”

“No, nothing.”

The itching is increasing. He can’t stop scratching long enough to kiss her again let alone get it up so they can do more. She leaves without promising to call.

He didn’t expect her to.

He tries rubbing his back against the rough stucco of the wall outside his bedroom, where the hallway forms a corner, then tries the door frame itself. But his skin demands more.

He tries a cold shower, uses his back scrubber with as much pressure as he can muster. But the water seems to spread the itch.

He swallows a couple of Benadryl and tries to sleep, but his skin is on fire, and he ends up wired and wooly, using object after object – a wire hanger, an old toothbrush, a vegetable brush, the closed blades of his kitchen shears – in vain attempts to alleviate the itching.

Morning finds him naked and shaking, trying to reach the spot between his rib and shoulder with the blade of a carving knife, passing the edge sideways across his burning skin while he waits on hold for the advice nurse his insurance provides.

“Try a moisturizing lotion,” she suggests, “or an ice massage.”

Neither suggestion considers the fact that he can’t reach the infernal itch.

He calls out sick, fills his tub with ice, lies in it until his skin is blue and thinks relief has finally come. But when he’s warm again the itching returns.

He flips channels on the television to distract himself, landing on an ad for power tools. A belt sander would be perfect, he thinks, except there’s no way to make it reach the spot.

He takes more Benadryl and chases it with a healthy swig of vodka.

* * * * *

He spends three days in a near-coma induced by alcohol and antihistamines. He’s given up on the carving knife and tried a hand saw. He’s sure the teeth are drawing blood because he can feel fluid oozing down his back, and it’s definitely not sweat.

He wonders if he could use an x-acto knife to excise the spot. He calls his buddy from work to ask for help. The friend arrives with gauze, alcohol, a couple of knives, and – oddly – a role of sage and a Bic lighter.

“What’s that for?” he asks.

“In case a demon caused the itching. We can smoke it out.”

“Will that work?”

“No idea. It can’t hurt.”

But the smoke just sets off the fire alarm.

“Just cut it…” he begs. “Please. Just slice it away.”

“Here?” his buddy asks pressing under his shoulder blade.

“Lower.”

“Here?”

“More to the left. No – higher – no, down and to the right. No – FUCK!”

“Maybe,” his buddy said, “You should tell me exactly how this happened.”

And so, he explains about how he saw the girl he’d ghosted when he was out on a date with someone else, and she’d mouthed “bitchy” at him.

“Bitchy?”

“Well, I thought it was at the time. Now I’m thinking she said itchy.”

“She cursed you.”

“You think?”  His friend is silent. “Sorry,” he says.

“We’re cool,” his buddy answers. “I think…. I think maybe it’s not me you need to be apologizing to, anyway. I think you have to apologize to the woman who did this.”

“Seriously.”

“That or scratch yourself to death. Your back already looks a lot like hamburger.”

“Damn.”

“Sorry I couldn’t help.”

* * * * *

It’s another two days of torment before he can make himself contact her. He hasn’t slept but he’s figured out how to attach sandpaper to a broom handle to scratch more. It comes back bloodier every time, but he doesn’t care. Anything to stop the itching for a few seconds.

He’s taking enough antihistamine and alcohol that while he doesn’t sleep, he does enter a sort of altered state where he can see her face and feel her fingernails on other parts of his body. It’s when the itching moves to his balls that he caves and texts her.

“I think maybe I owe you an apology,” texts.

Her response comes, several hours later, in the form of a question. “You think or you know? You promised to call,” she adds. “Keep your promise.”

He almost throws his phone across the room, but the itching is getting worse again. Scratching his crotch with one hand, he keys in her number with the other.

“This is Cat.” Was her voice always that smooth?

“Hello, Cat. This is Dave, from… from the other night. I’m sorry I didn’t call. It was really rude of me.”

“Yes, it was. I wasn’t expecting a lifetime commitment, but a call telling me you didn’t think we were a match would have been the adult thing to do.”

“I guess it was just easier to blow you off and move on.”

“Easier for you, you mean.” Her tone was calm when she had every right to be mean or petty. “Not so easy to be the one waiting for a call that never comes.”

“I never thought of it that way,” he admitted.

“No, you just rely on your charm and lack of conscience. That’s what the itching is by the way. It’s your conscience trying to get your attention. It doesn’t usually take this long though.”

“I guess I’m particularly obtuse.”

“I guess you are.”

“Can you… make it stop… please.”

She laughs into his ear. “Haven’t you realized? It already has.”

He goes quiet, forcing himself to feel… and she’s right… there’s no more itching. There can’t be. Because he’s scratched away every last nerve on his body.

His phone falls to the floor, and his body follows soon after.

 

Photo credit: adiruch

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sleepless

Sleepless (a remix of the Endymion myth)

by

The first time she saw him, she knew. She needed him to pose for her. She’d put him on film. On canvas. Maybe even in stone, though sculpting wasn’t really her forte.

He was too beautiful not to enshrine that way – too handsome for words. Sitting on the library steps with his guitar, the case open at his feet he exuded the quintessence of youth, confidence, and sex appeal.

He’d already collected several handfuls of coins and a few bills, and it was barely ten-thirty in the morning. This did not surprise her.

Sleepless

If he were still there when her class was over, she thought, she would introduce herself. Gauge his interest in modeling. As she didn’t have time for even a ‘hello’ right then, she dropped a twenty in the guitar case, and mirrored his grateful smile as she moved beyond him.

The art room was on the third floor of the library building, overlooking the front steps. She could hear the faint notes from his guitar through the open window. They were doing abstracts that week.
“Here’s today’s challenge,” she told the group of first-year students. “Try to depict music through painting.”

After the expected questions about the kind of music and if she meant actual notes or just how music made them feel, questions she’d been fielding for centuries, it seemed, she took up her own notebook and sketched him from memory. It was a decent likeness, but it didn’t do enough justice to his real beauty. If nothing else, she had to see him again.

The steps were empty when she left the building at the end of her day.

But she couldn’t get him out of her mind. She remembered the soft, dark, chocolate of his curly hair, the startling blue of his eyes, and the way his lips formed a perfect, kissable bow. She recalled long, elegant fingers plucking the strings of his acoustic instrument and the definition of his chest beneath the tight T-shirt he’d been wearing.

Every night, she drew him, the details shifting as her memory faded.

Her obsession, however, did not fade. Several weeks after she first saw him on the steps, she caught his image – badly photographed – on a flyer for a local club. She ripped it off the bulletin board and went home to take her first real shower in weeks.

The club was dark and close. The neighborhood was typically seedy. The crowd was almost entirely students, but not, as she’d expected, almost entirely female. She got a glass of wine from the bar – slightly better than the two-buck chuck that had been her mainstay when she was an undergrad – and took a seat in the second row of tables.

The young folk around her sang with him on the choruses, but she was silent, watching him. Memorizing him. During his last song, their eyes met, and she made a gesture, which he answered with a nod. After the show, they met in the alley behind the bar.

“You’re the art lady right? I’ve seen your stuff in the university gallery. I liked it.” His words were casual, but the expression on his face was anything but.

She smiled a slow, seductive smile, and pitched her voice low. “I’m going to make you immortal,” she said, if you let me.”

He kissed her with his perfect mouth.

She took him home to do a lot more than kissing.

She woke before him and used the time to drink in all the details that had begun to seep from her mind. She ran her fingers over his bare skin, memorizing the textures. She leaned over him and inhaled his scent.

She never asked his name. Nor he hers. It didn’t seem to matter.

Heady from sex and the need to truly capture him – perfectly this time – she crept from the bed leaving him in deep sleep. She skipped the sketches, went directly to the canvas. He slept the clock around and she kept painting the whole time.

It became their routine. He played in different bars every night, and she went with him. They went back to her place after, and she painted while he slept.

His mornings came later and later, and her nights grew shorter and shorter.

She was with her nameless musician in her bed and still with him in front of her easel when she crawled out of the covers. She started a second painting, then a third. She stopped going to his gigs – he played for her when he came back every night.

She couldn’t get the paintings right. But she continued to try. She made cups of tea but set them aside to correct a line that was too dark or a strand of hair that wasn’t in the right place, only to pick them up later to find the liquid within cold and bitter. It can’t have been that long… she thought, padding to the kitchen to make another cup.

Her canvases piled up, and when she was out of stretched canvas she pulled the photographs off the wall and started painting him directly on the cracked plaster. She twisted her hair into a messy bun and didn’t even try to scrub the paint from her skin.

When she needed to remind herself of the precise curve of his lips or the exact position of the crease above his left eyebrow, he was there in her bed, a male sleeping beauty waiting for the princess’s kiss.

She forgot to eat until she fainted from hunger. When she pulled herself off the floor she found that the fruit in her bowl had gone rotten. She found a chocolate bar and devoured it then grew giddy from the sudden rush of sugar.

The university contacted her next-of-kin – a niece who was a second-year law student. “Your aunt has missed three classes,” they said. “She didn’t call to cancel. Just stopped showing up.”

“That doesn’t sound like Aunt Lena,” the young woman answered, worry creeping into her voice. “I’ll go to her apartment.” Her boyfriend insisted on going with her.

They found the artist, cold and breathless, on the floor in front of the wall where she’d put the musician’s image. A flyer announcing his gig in a city a thousand miles away was clutched in her stiff hand. Below his image, the name she hadn’t asked for: Endymion.

When the autopsy report came back it said that Professor Selene Perez had died of exhaustion.

Photo by stasia04.
Heat Lightning

Heat Lightning

by

The sky is tight like a drum and painted in shades of gray fading from a purplish charcoal to a soft dove with bits of white. To the west, where the sun is setting, pink and orange glow through the gray, the dying embers of a summer day. There isn’t any wind, and there isn’t any chance of rain, even though the air is thick with moisture.

Heat Lightning

It’s the kind of weather that provokes lassitude.

Sitting on the porch swing, sipping lemonade, the woman and the girl watch the sky.

There’s flickering light out to the east, swaths of clouded sky lighting up and fading out like semaphore lamps, but the code they’re using isn’t Morse. It isn’t human language at all.

“Mama, are the fairies talking about us?”

The woman reaches out to her daughter and smooths a flyaway piece of hair out of the child’s face. The flickers of light seem more urgent when she’s watching them. “They want me to come back,” she says softly. “They want me to come home.”

“But you’re not going, are you?”

“No, sweet. I’m not going. Home is here with you.” But the woman can’t help it; she turns her gaze back to the sky. The light flickering there is mirrored in her eyes, as if she’s talking back to the unseen fairies. A whisp of a breeze stirs the air, whispering through the long, loose hair of the woman, and the tight braids of the little girl.

The lights fade away, and the dark creeps in and settles around them.

When the last of the sun has drained away and the stars are visible there is a low rumble. A battered red Ford pickup truck trundles to a stop on the gravel driveway. A man hops out, sees the pair on the porch and lets his lips spread into a happy grin.

He bounds up the three stairs to the porch with more energy than anyone has a right to have in the heat of summer. “Sorry I’m late,” he says. “How are my fairy princesses today?”

“Mama’s the only fairy princess,” the little girl answers. But she leaves the swing and lets the man scoop her up into his arms. “Did you have a good day, Daddy?”

“I did.” He kisses her on the nose then joins the woman on the swing, settling the girl on his lap. “And you?” he asks. “How was your day?”

The little girl understands that the question is really meant for her mother.

The woman leans toward the man, and kisses his cheek, tan from working outside, and rough with end-of-the-day beard stubble. “It was fine;” she says, but it’s not the usage of fine that women use when they really aren’t. She means it. “We’ve been watching the sky.”

Another round of flashing light illuminates the darkness in the distance. The woman seems to read the signals, to comprehend the conversation. She nods and smiles. “It won’t rain tonight,” she says. Softly. “But probably tomorrow.”

The man follows the woman’s gaze toward the eastern sky. “Heat lightning,” he says. “No rain with that. Not for us, anyway.”

“No,” the woman agrees. “It’s just the fairies talking.”

“And what’s the word from them?”

She smiles again, and this time when her eyes light up, they’re not flickering, but glowing steadily, like twin lanterns on a windowsill. “They say I can stay.”

She doesn’t add the words “for now,” but all three of them, their entire tiny family, are thinking it.

Photo by dendoktoor.