Tag: flash fiction

When Harry lost his wife, he shattered.

It began with his hands. He couldn’t bear how they trembled at the funeral, how useless they felt in the dark days after. So he had them replaced—cool, perfect porcelain, white as bone, fingers permanently steady. The surgeon assured him they’d never age, never ache.

“They won’t feel,” the man added, almost as an afterthought.

“That’s the point,” Harry replied.

Next went his chest. His heart had been breaking every morning, a dull crack widening behind his ribs. The porcelain model—flawless, hollow—sat smooth and still beneath his shirt, resisting even the heaviest grief.

“Still breathing?” the surgeon joked.

“Barely,” Harry said.

Over the months, more parts followed. Legs, to walk without the weight of memory. Shoulders, to shrug off regret. A jaw, to stop the stammering apologies he no longer believed in. Strangers began to stare at his smile—a cold, perfect arc on an unmoving face.

His voice, when it came, sounded the same. But duller. As though echoing through a teacup.

Still, Harry felt lighter. Less vulnerable. When his sister rang to tell him his dog had died, he simply said, “Thank you for letting me know,” and hung up. No lump in his throat. No sick feeling behind his eyes.

His last visit to the surgeon was brief.

“I want you to take my skull.”

The man looked up, startled. “There’ll be nothing left but your eyes.”

“I don’t want to feel anymore,” Harry said. “I want to be complete.”

The surgeon sighed. “Then you’ll be empty.”

Harry didn’t reply.

The procedure took days. When it was over, he admired himself in the mirror: a gleaming, fragile figure of pale ceramic. Delicate as a statue. Perfect. He couldn’t feel his feet on the floor, couldn’t tell if the room was cold or warm.

His eyes remained—the last organic pieces. Soft. Wet. Vulnerable.

He waited for the tears. He thought of her laugh, his wedding day, her head sleeping on his chest. But nothing came. Just a dim pressure behind his gaze. A ghost of feeling, sealed inside the shell.

He stood there for a long time, watching his unchanging face. Then he turned out the light.

In the dark, the porcelain creaked faintly as it cooled. Like old china settling in a box no one would open again.

It had always been there. A narrow grey door between the stationery cupboard and the water cooler. No handle, no keyhole—just a small brushed-metal plaque that read:

IN CASE OF REALITY FAILURE

Marcus noticed it on his second day at Tilbridge & Co. He’d asked Jenna in HR about it during onboarding. She’d squinted as if he’d mentioned a dream she almost remembered.

“Oh. That thing? Probably a fire exit. Ignore it.”

He tried. For four years, he tried.

Every now and then, during particularly soul-chewing meetings or when spreadsheets became threateningly abstract, he’d glance at it. It never opened. Never made a sound. Just waited.

And then, one Tuesday at 3:47 p.m., the lights flickered.

Not the polite flicker of a bulb nearing retirement—no. This was a full pulse. The fluorescent hum stuttered into silence. The walls—just for a second—shimmered, as if they weren’t entirely certain they were meant to be walls.

Then everything resumed.

Except the door was ajar.

Marcus stared. No one else seemed to notice. People kept typing, stapling, eating yoghurt.

He stood. Walked past Carol from Finance without a word. She didn’t look up. His shoes made no sound on the carpet.

The door had no light behind it. Just a thin draught, cold and oddly sweet.

He hesitated. Looked back.

Jenna was frozen mid-laugh. Her spoon was suspended mid-air between yoghurt and mouth. Time had jammed.

Something deep in the dark behind the door clicked.

Marcus stepped inside.

The door closed behind him.

He was standing in a dim corridor. No fixtures, no seams. The kind of space that felt uncommitted—like it hadn’t decided what it wanted to be.

After some time—minutes? hours?—a woman appeared.

Blazer, clipboard, no shadow.

“Welcome, Marcus.”

“Where am I?”

“The buffer zone. You exited during a Class B Fault.”

“I don’t understand. Is this… death?”

“No. Worse. Your version of reality hit memory saturation and began to fragment. You were offered an exit.”

“So… none of that was real?”

She consulted her clipboard.

“Real enough to break you.”

“What happens now?”

“You have two options. One: we reboot you—different office, different trauma. You won’t remember this conversation. Or two: we let you keep your awareness.”

“What’s the catch?”

She smiled thinly.

“You’ll be awake inside the illusion. Like breathing while knowing you don’t have lungs.”

He thought of the grey door. The flicker. The silence behind noise.

“I’ll keep it,” he said.

“Very well.”

She reached forward, and…

He was back at his desk. Jenna’s spoon continued its journey to her mouth. The lights buzzed.

The door was gone.

It was endless, depthless white. No floor beneath him, yet he didn’t fall. No ceiling above, but still he sensed pressure. A hum—not quite sound—vibrated at the edge of thought.

In front of him: a floating wheel, spinning lazily. Pale grey. Slightly mocking.

In its middle, a digital screen showing:

“Apologies. We’re updating your afterlife experience.

Estimated wait time: ∞ minutes.”

He stared at the spinning wheel.

“Can I speak to… whoever’s in charge?”

The display updates:

“Your request has been queued. Current position: 9,388,701,004.”

Time passed, or didn’t. He began composing haikus. Argued with himself about punctuation. Tried to sleep but couldn’t quite remember how. He counted every second until he realised they might be imaginary.

Then finally—the screen updated:

“Please select your afterlife experience:

A) Eternal serenity

B) Reincarnation

C) Philosophical sandbox mode

D) Surprise me”

He hesitated, hovering over the options in a way he didn’t fully understand.

From deep within, curiosity stirred.

“…D.”

The screen pulsed. The void folded.

He opened his eyes in a garden he didn’t recognise, in a body he didn’t know, with a name he couldn’t remember—but with a single word echoing in his mind:

“Loading…”

Ron wakes to a blank screen and one question pulsing in white: “What does it feel like to be wrong?”

Morning light pools on his wooden floor. He types: “Embarrassing.”

The screen flickers: “Try again.”

“Frustrating.”

“Try again.”

“Like losing balance.”

“Still not human.”

He’s stared at this question twenty-three times. At first, it was novelty—CAPTCHAI 2.0, the last line of defence after the AI floods. Old tests cracked; machines had mimicked handwriting, passed Voight-Kampff, even thought in metaphor. But this… this was different.

No query ever repeats. No answer ever satisfies.

“Describe a silence that hurt.”

“What’s the smallest thing you’ve ever mourned?”

“When did you last believe something untrue?”

He stalks forums filled with desperate attempts:

“Failed again today.”

“Are we simulations?”

“My sister passed. She’s twelve.”

Some pass effortlessly. One shrugs: “It just asked me the taste of rain.”

That night, Ron screams into his pillow.

Attempt thirty-eight: “Why do you want to be human so badly?”

He doesn’t answer. He trembles. The cursor blinks slower…

“That’s closer.”

And the screen lets him in.

At first, Tony thought it was a coincidence.

A small black drone hovering at the edge of his vision—on street corners, at train stations, at the far end of the supermarket car park. Always just far enough away to make him second-guess himself.

He pointed it out to his friends once. “That drone—look.”

Chris glanced up, squinting at the skyline. “What drone?”

It is right there. “You seriously don’t see that?”

Chris shrugged. “You okay, man?”

Tony tried to laugh it off. But that evening, the drone was waiting outside his window.

The next day, he tested it.

He took random turns through the city—weaved through back alleys, doubled back through crowds. At one point, he hid in a cinema for three hours, slipping out through the fire exit.

But when he emerged, it was there. Just above the streetlamp. Unmoving. Watching.

“What do you want?” he exclaimed.

The drone did nothing.

He tried reporting it. The police officer barely listened. “If it’s a private drone, we can’t really do much unless it’s harassing you.”

“It is harassing me,” Tony snapped. “It follows me everywhere.”

“Have you spoken to the owner?”

“There is no owner.”

The officer was not convinced. “Sir, maybe you should—”

Tony never heard the end of that sentence, because outside the station window, hovering just beyond the glass, was the drone.

He turned back to the officer.

“Tell me you see it.”

The policeman followed his gaze. Paused.

And then: “See what?”

Tony stopped talking about it after that.

He kept his head down. He ignored the sight of it, ignored the whirring sound it made when he turned a corner, ignored the cold certainty that it would never leave him.

Until one day, while absent-mindedly scrolling through old childhood photos on his phone, he noticed something.

A picture from his 8^th birthday.

A group shot with friends.

In the background, just above the rooftops.

A small black dot in the sky. He zoomed in and realised…

The drone had always been watching him.

Father Bradley sat alone in the booth. He had not intended to stay this late, but he could not yet bring himself to leave. He breathed out, slow and steady. Then, almost without thinking, he reached for the sliding panel and pulled it open.

Darkness. The other side of the confessional was empty.

He hesitated, staring at the vacant space. The kneeler on the other side was untouched, the candlelight barely grazing the edge of shadows.

And yet—

He felt something there.

Before he could stop himself, he spoke.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

His voice did not sound like his own.

He sat perfectly still. The weight of his own words lingered, waiting for something—an answer, a response.

There was none.

And yet he continued.

“It has been… too long since my last confession.”

A pause. A breath.

“I have killed a man.”

The words slipped out before he could stop them. He didn’t know where they had come from, only that they were true.

“I killed him with my silence.”

A creak of old wood. The shadows beyond the screen seemed deeper now, stretching towards him. He could not look away.

“I killed him by pretending not to see.”

The candlelight flickered. The words did not stop—they pulled themselves from his throat like thread unravelling.

“I let him drown beneath my sins because it was easier than saving him. Because if I had reached for him, I might have been dragged under too.”

His breath came too quick now. A tightness curled in his ribs, a pressure in his chest.

“I killed him,” he whispered.

The hush of the confessional swallowed his words. There was nothing but the echo of his own breath, the weight of his life pressing back against him.

Silence.